 Then, good morning. Welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat at GLLA. It is August 23, 2014, and it's just after 9 a.m. We'd like to thank Ms. Kendra for such an early hour. But my name is Doug O'Keefe. I am co-producer and host of the chats. These chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. They are co-produced by Christina Court and Mistress Joanne Gaddy. Today I have the distinction of being able to interview an amazingly interesting lady here at GLLA. I'd like to introduce my guest, Slade Caroline. Thank you for that charming introduction, Doug. You are most welcome. Let's go ahead and we'll just start right at the very beginning. Many people don't know that you were born in East Africa, but growing up you were aware of multiple inequities. How did seeing those inequities shape who you are today? That is true. Most people do not know that. I was born in Ethiopia, as were my parents, and that I identify as a white African. I don't talk about that much, because when you grew up in that kind of culture and you live the life of a privileged white person, it's so far beyond the norms that most people have lived. It's hard to kind of relate to it. I don't generally talk about that, but I had servants. I was ordering around my maid at the age of three. We had a very, very privileged life, because if you're white in Africa, you just basically are very privileged. I had friends who were children of African dignitaries, European diplomats. We lived in a truly multicultural kind of society in which Hindus, Muslims, Christians celebrated, respected each other, rituals and differences. I grew up in a very rich culture, but it's also true that I've also witnessed incredible, unimaginable inequities. I grew up seeing lepers in the street, in poverty that you can't imagine, public hangings, which you and I talked about a while back, and this is not the kind of realm of most everyday average people's experience in the West. But I have to say that it has truly shaped who I am. How did that shape you? What psychological issues came into play with that? Well, I think fundamentally being so privileged, you realize they're but for the grace of God, go I. And it really established for me the sense of justice and injustice in the world, that being profoundly lucky that I have a kind of a social obligation to give back to the world. Many of my peers were not like that. They became, and still are, very hedonistic. But to me it was about how do you rebalance that? But I guess there were several other things more profoundly if I think about it. It's that living in Africa, you become very aware that human life is very cheap. That survival at its most primal is what life is about. And I just became very conscious about the difference between what is real and what is not real. What is, can I say it, a profound difference about what suffering is and what it isn't. So, you know, when people complain about being victims of this, that or the other, and you kind of relate that to what real survival is about. It kind of balances that out. But I guess more profoundly, even more so than that, having grown up as a white person in Ethiopia, I think that developed a very early sense of the impact of power. And so I think my interest in my being with my understanding of power and power imbalance is deeply rooted in that experience. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? Well, I guess more profoundly that there is a huge ethical responsibility with having power. That power can be easily misused and abused. But that coupled with morality, ethics, social justice, power can also be a source of good. But it requires those things. And I grew up being very, I guess, comfortable is not the word. Because it's not a matter of comfort, but aware that life and people and interrelationship is rooted in dominance and submission. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. But that's also because I'm a precocious kind of child. I think a lot. I'm sure other people don't think that way. Why is that? Why were you precocious as a child? I have one very profound gift and it's an ability to think. And it's a gift and it's a curse. So because I was a very thoughtful child and perceptive, I think I was very precocious. Difficult as a child for my parents. I asked why a lot. More so than your average kid, but why? Why? Tell me why. I don't understand. And I read a lot. Fascinating. Absolutely. It also translates into being a difficult slide. But when and how did you know you were kinky? From forever. So how did you begin to understand that or explore it? Well, you know, as a child you don't have a kind of a construct with language associated with it. I remember my father had a very extensive library and I read a lot. So I remember finding this book of drawings, ink drawings, black ink. And it was a book on the Inquisition. Now I swear to God I was so turned off. I didn't actually have the language for what it was, but I was so turned off. I would steal this book. Take it into my bedroom and use a flashlight to kind of go over these horrendous pictures of torture. But they were exciting. They were hot. In hindsight, I know what it was that was arousing. But I knew, and here's the thing. The surreptitious behavior was an indication that I knew this is not normal. This is not. This is sick. And, you know, to be honest it wasn't until I was about 12 when I read the story about this and that gave me language around, oh, so this is what I'm experiencing. So what drew you to the MS scene and thus to the United States? I was involved in kinky activities from a very young age in BDSM. And I met when the internet kind of took over. Like I'm pre-internet. But when the internet took over, I met a master online who, because I traveled a lot, I ended up meeting fairly soon after we met online in New York. He's an American. And I became a slave. It was a complicated relationship because he was a complicated man. And I still have a very good relationship with him. But I became a secret slave because he was married in a vanilla relationship and had another woman who was a submissive who did not want him to have another. It was a difficult dynamic. Anyway, long story short, he, after seven and a half years, he abandoned me. That happens. We know that happens. But I was devastated. I remember we were here. We were in Annapolis. I got on the plane to go back to Australia. There is no master slave community in Australia. So I had no support, no understanding. Long story short, again, I ended up coming to my first master slave conference in 2004. At Northeast region, the one in D.C. So it was a function of agonization, isolation, a sense of needing community that brought me here and healing. And at that conference, interestingly, I met pretty much most of the people who I consider to be my other family. Master Jim, slave Marsha, Master Z and his family. He had just recently won the title. Master Skip, Master Burt. These people became my family of choice. That's what brought me here. And then, slave Robert, who was Master Steve's heterosexual slave at the time, created Slave Caroline. He invited me that year to go to South West Leather and do a presentation. Wow. What presentation did you do? The first presentation I gave in this country was about spirituality and MS. Fascinating. Let's build on that a little bit. A few years ago here at GLLA, I had the privilege of hearing your keynote address. What motivates you when you're preparing something like that, a speech like that, or a presentation like that? Primarily what comes from the heart. What I feel needs to be spoken. I also ask the people who are inviting me to speak and get a sense of who their audience is. What is it that they believe their audience wants to hear and where are they at? Over the years, since 2004, I've observed a lot of changes in the MS community in terms of what people are interested in and so on. But yeah, especially in the initial days, I've asked a lot more, what do you need? What does your community need? Because across America, different regions really have different flavors and different needs. What are some of those needs? Well, across the board MS, which is what I talk about more than SM, MS is mostly about relationships and dynamics and so on. But the levels of involvement with spirituality, let's say, versus pure dynamics versus community building are very different across regions. For example, this GLLA is one of my favorite places to come to because MS Kendra is such a remarkable community builder. And what you see here is a melding, a meshing of different subgroups in our pinky community coming together, not necessarily playing in a dungeon together, celebrating what is common. That's not as common in other places. And I've also seen an increasing number of heterosexualism. I don't mean that in a negative way, but with the advent of the internet, people have moved into visiting these events. 2003, 2004, a lot of these events were so much more mixed with a lot more of the gay men and gay women rubbing shoulders with heterosexuals and a different kind of exploration about differences as well as similarities. Let's take one step back. We briefly talked about your time in Ethiopia, and we've talked briefly about what brought you to the US, but we've missed a step. What took you to Australia? My father was a very smart man. He knew that being a white person in Africa was a kind of a tenuous game. And he wanted his children to grow up without encumbrances, educationally and so on. We're also Armenian, and so we live with the legacy of persecution. So he's super sensitive to being persecuted, being a minority white group in Ethiopia. Even though highly respected, he knew once the emperor died the politics in the country would change, and he wanted to be ahead of the game. And he actually, first off, wanted to come to live in America, and we actually lived in San Francisco for a year. But he got anxious because he couldn't get a green card, and we had papers for immigration to Australia. And I remember getting on the plane a day before those papers last, and arriving in Australia the day those papers were due. Fascinating. What motivates you or drives you as a slave? All slaves are driven by a slave heart and service, right? Yes. I could say the same. But the word service means different things to different people. And to me, whether I'm in a call of relationship or not, I've come to learn and understand that what drives me, the purpose, the telos of my life, is to be of service. And to be of service in a way that makes a difference in the world. So I, first of all, I don't think of myself as a slave in an occasional sense, because that is my being, and that permeates my work, my relationships, my family, my being in the world. I'm not American, obviously. I have more of the Australian characteristics of being a person in the world. Americans tend to be very nice generally. Don't give me that look. Okay. Australians are much more brash and confrontational. And forthright, we have a tradition of coming from traditionally convict stock, anti-authoritarian, confrontational, and forthrightness. So I tend to be a slave that sees where there are problems. And I don't shy away from challenging what needs to be challenged, what needs to be challenged. And I see that as a deep service, a very deep service to society. Can you give me an example of what you've done that? Do you really want to know more? I do. And I think the audience does too. I think from a master's slave perspective, when I see relationships that are incredibly dysfunctional, and I don't insert myself without being asked, but if I'm invited to comment or invited to intervene, I hold, I don't hold back. I'm very, very clear about this is wrong. I have no fear of masters. I'm not afraid that people are going to define me because I know who I am. And that makes, I've been told by some masters that I'm scary. And I think that's partly what it is because I do know who I am. And I know that what I'm doing is a service, whether they define it that way or not, because a service isn't just doing what you want or what you like. Sometimes being of service is also being challenging. And my nature is to evolve people, and to evolve things to move. Remember I said I grew up in Africa, and it's about how do you better people? Does that give you an idea? It does, but building on that a little bit, if you are seen as challenging or even scary, do you see that as a badge of honor? Not necessarily a badge of honor. I don't particularly like being projected on. And I do get a lot of projections, particularly by some people who do not like the fact that when I say something I'm right. Can I give an example? Of course. Which ones? Southwest leather. Master Steve's legacy was to develop a community there of NS kinky folk that are deeply spiritual. And he was the second person to start a regional event in terms of the master slave contests in support of the title To Bring About Awareness in our community about NS and NS Dynamics. Several years after he resigned, the contest was relegated to a one hour event on Saturday afternoon. Believe me, Butchman's got a letter, a very rationally written letter, reminding them about what their legacy was and questioning why they were allowing this to happen and that it was okay if they wanted to change their minds but please don't disrespect the title. Now, I didn't get a response to that email. I know personally that people were shocked that I would say that, but the next year the title was back in its rightful slot. And I know that I ruffled feathers. Fantastic. And, you know, if I have a reputation for doing things like that, that's fine. But there are people that don't like that. I mean, more recently I've had tussles with Mast International, having been the person that established the Mast brand in Australia and New Zealand and the UK. There, I have a lot of respect for Mast, for what Master Kepler did and the idea of building community in local groups so that people support one another. But I have very little respect. I'm very critical of Mast International, which I see as a separate entity, that basically does nothing. And not only that, but is very destructive in its arrogance in thinking that they know what other cultures are about. And intervening in other cultures and other countries with that kind of, dare I say, American arrogance that really creates more shit. Pardon my French. And when I challenged them on that, they decided in the end that I'm too arrogant, that I can't work with people, and they sacked me. I have no problem with that, but it is a deep sadness on my part that people who are entrusted with community building are actually just destructive and not only destructive, but are just playing at that. To me, that is an injustice to us as a community. Fascinating. Going a slightly different direction. Please tell us about your healing workshops. I know you wanted me to talk about this. Evens all right. This is another part of my life. Again, it's related to service. I see healing as inextricably intertwined with spirituality. My background in my training is in clinical psychology, cognitive behavioral clinical psychology, and I'm a lapsed clinical psychologist, because it lacks spirit. It lacks an understanding of psyche as spiritually. So I've had a life journey of trying to understand what is spirituality, what is true healing. And I trained as a Wiccan. I'm a self-defined Hindu. My guru is the late Sai Baba, such as Sai Baba. I've studied Buddhism. I've practiced multiple different religions, Islam, Christianity, way back to those Christians. I am a six-level Reiki healer in the seven-level Reiki system. I have a deep fascination for healing arts. I believe, whether one knows this for sure or not, that in a past life I was a healer because of my affinity for particularly energetic healing. I'm a certified chronic healer. I'm sorry, I'm unfamiliar with that. What is that? Prana is cheap energy, and prana healing combines practice developed by Massachoua Kokusui, who is a Filipino-Chinese who recently passed, in being able to work with chakras and with energy fields. And it is similar to Reiki, but doesn't require hands-on. So I promote what I do as a healer, but people come to me when they know. And when people come to me, I feel a karmic obligation, a karmic duty to work with them. So all of my healing work, my healing workshops have been a result of a sense of duty to people. Because again, linked to what is my being in the world to be of service, if I have this skill and this ability, it is my obligation to provide it, but not insert it, but to provide it. Free of charge as an act of love, to promote the evolution of people and the removal of suffering. Utterly fascinating. Oh, thank you. No, it's true. I know one person who is benefitting from your healing workshops, and she speaks incredibly highly of you. I think I know who you mean. And, you know, I don't do it for thanks. I do it because it's a calling. And it does take a lot of energy out of you, but it is a calling and it is a duty. What would you say has been your greatest challenge in that? In healing? Yes. It took me on many, many years to develop a direct line. What I mean by that is to shift the ego out of the way and to truly, truly be centered in myself to simply be a vessel and a channel for what is a universal healing energy to come through. That takes a lot of dedication and a lot of work. So when I'm asked to do healing, I spend a lot of time doing self-purification because I'm very conscious that our mind and our ego is not what's required in pulling through that energy for others. That's a whole other workshop into using. It's a lifetime. But when you say when you're called to do a workshop, do people ask you on behalf of someone else or does someone directly ask you to do it for them? Both have happened when people found out what it is that I'm capable of doing like Slade Robert, who invited me to Southwest Leather. People would invite me on behalf of others to talk about this or do this and so on and so forth. As I said, I don't advertise it because I don't think that that kind of healing is totally going. But surprisingly, people come up out of the woodwork. Just recently, last week, a young woman approached me and asked me to do some work with her. I can't say no because something put her there. I don't know why, but clearly, something brought her in my path and that's the key to the path we walk together. Amazing. Simply fascinating. You've said that many powerful slaves aren't afforded community recognition. Why is that? Well, I think I think things are slowly changing there. I think things are evolving. I mean, we're having this interview. Which is not a personally going honor. It is about recognizing all slaves. I as a representative of them. I have been invited to give keynote addresses, for example, at various events. By and large, I think there is a problem in general with slaves. And I think there's several reasons for that. And I think the first one, we have a deep shadow. And I use the term shadow from a Jungian perspective. That is that which we don't want to own. We suppress, we disown, we don't like. And I think our shadow as a master slave community is we are master centric. Why is that a shadow? Because blindly, quite blindly without really any empirical evidence, we assume that if you put a capital M in front of your name that you automatically become knowledgeable or wise or capable. And there's endless workshops about how to improve on that. But we do have a shadow where we automatically assume that these are the people that we put into situations of power or leadership. Oftentimes it's the slave behind the master who is the driver, the brains, the intelligence, the doer, the functioner and the master shows up. God bless master Steve who used to jokingly but I think with a very serious intent because he was a Buddhist and he used humor as a means of getting across serious messages. He used to say, God bless the slaves, they rule the world. And I think there's a truth in that. But we don't recognize that. I think there's another aspect and I think that we delude ourselves in thinking we have community. And by community what I mean is a community is a group of people that share not only interests but a shared vision and shared goals. We don't. We're fragmented bunch of people who share a common interest in kinks or a lifestyle but we do not share goals or visions and we don't work towards building those. The gay community does. The kinky community, I'm not so sure. I don't think so. Master slave community, I don't think so. And if we were more inclined to be building community in that way I think we would be more inclined to be giving recognition where recognition is due. Whereas now slaves are just appendages of masters and masters recognize them but nobody else is supposed to. It is, what are they contributing other than to their masters? That's a very individualistic construct of, you know, I think unique to Americans as well. But it stops us from actually seeing through and seeing into people and reimagining how masters and slaves can be together. So I think those issues getting away of people actually manifesting really a sense of honor and recognition towards slaves in a real way. And I think there is a, let's call it, for want of a better word like slaveism. Now I know I've been controversial there. Australian, blunt, sad as it is. I'm sure many people will disagree but there you go. Given your slave experience, what advice can you offer other people coming into the scene? Given the kinds of problems slaves have in attaching themselves to the, you know, when you've been living with a kinky sense for decades and decades when you decide to take leave and go for it. Love slaves latch on to the first so-called bastard that comes along. That's true. So the advice I would give is take your time. Take your time. Take your time. Don't rush into relationships and be discerning. At Master's Slave Conference next week I'm giving a workshop called The Power of No. Say no. I wish I could be there for that. Oh darling. Wow. The power of no. It's a taboo. Absolutely. Breaking new taboos. I have to say I am absolutely fascinated with the PhD upon which you are working. Depth psychology. Would you please explain that for everyone? I'm sure that depth psychology can be explained in like a few key words, but I'll try. This is looking at the hidden what's beneath, what's not obvious, the unconscious, drivers around what motivates people's behavior. Whether that's individual behavior, relationships or societies. And one of the offshoots of depth psychology is liberation psychology which is looking at the underlying issues of oppression and repression in societies. I would love to read it when it's finished if you'd be willing to share it. I'd love to read your thesis. My thesis really? I would. Well, okay. I think there's a certain level of masochism in you. Nobody reads people's PhDs. Well as I've said I find your topic so absolutely fascinating that I absolutely would love to read your thesis. Thank you. I think you're one of my groupies. What's the biggest misconception about you? You know the people? From other people? Yeah, sure. About me as Slade Caroline? Yes. Several years ago I thought most people see Slade Caroline as really kind of a thoughtful, serious person. Solid. I don't think most people see me as funny. Couple of years ago when Master Taino asked me to do a keynote address, I thought okay I'm going to talk about the philosophy of shit and I have a very good sense of humor. I just don't let it out very often. I think I am a serious kind of person. When you're doing shit like PhDs you are. Yes. But most people are quite surprised and shocked that I also have a humor side to me. So that keynote kind of dispelled that misconception. I now have a reputation to uphold so I don't know whatever it is since then I'm not sure but I'd say that they don't think of me as funny. Don't ask me to tell jokes. I would like to thank you for an amazing interview this morning and I wish you a very, very enjoyable G.L.L.A. Your most welcome and thank you for letting me. This has been fun.