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njlauren -> RE: "experts" everywhere (7/7/2013 8:17:34 AM)
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Expertise in anything is always a relative term, even in a court of law you can have competing experts saying two different things about something in a court case. Plus there are levels of expertise, someone might be an expert at basic rope bondage but a rank amateur at suspension bondage, you get the idea. The way I judge expertise is multi faceted, one of the first things I look for in someone claiming expertise is when they tell me what the limits of that expertise are. If someone tells me they are an expert in something and know all about it, I am a lot more dubious then someone who tells me the experience they have had and says what they don't know, because as Dirty Harry said, man has to know his limits:). Secondly, if they can talk about plainly and cleanly to someone like myself who may not have done it, that is a good sign. Time also is a factor, a young person could very well be an expert on Shibari if they have been intensely doing it for several years, and there are plenty of 'older' experts my age or older I consider to be posers,but someone who I know has been active, who has played with a lot of people, is going to be a lot more credible then some guy on the internet claiming expertise.....and the final key rule is I filter what they are saying through my bullshit detector, and see if it notices anything odd in what the person is saying.
As far as the Old Guard leather protocols and such, a young person could claim expertise in that, though it is likely they were not taught by someone who was 'there' (it is possible, of course, but probably not likely), while there are leather communities out there maintaining the old guard protocols (which is kind of a misnomer in of itself, because there were a variety of leather protocols even back then,and that continues on to those doing it today IME).
One other thing, there is this idea out there that someone can only be an expert in 1 or maybe a handful of things, and that is hogwash, in the BD/SM community, as in life, there are true polymaths, who know a lot about a lot of things. In the BD/SM world I have met people like that, was fortunate to be mentored/friends with some, and it is possible to know a lot about a lot of different things. The interesting part is most of the people I am talking about, to whom BD/SM is really a lifestyle, is as much as they know, they constantly not just teach workshops, but attend them as well, because there is something always knew to learn, one person who mentored me is well known nationally and internationally in BD/SM circles, has taught more classes and workshops in a variety of topics, yet is always going to things herself, and she loves to go to beginners classes, because she said she often finds new approaches to things in there,especially when newbies ask questions about something they thought of......
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