Aging

Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather and kink where your host, Edge (he/him), shares his 30+ years of experience in the community. In this special episode, it's all Ask Edge! Join me as I answer a series of questions submitted by all of you. This episode, it's aging. My host's AI has this to say:

Can our kink identities evolve gracefully as we age? This episode takes you through the dynamic and often unexpected journey of aging within the kink community. From the energetic experimentation of our 20s to the significant life changes and career shifts in our 30s, we share personal stories of growth and transformation. The 40s bring their own unique challenges, such as health issues and profound personal losses, but also offer a period of consolidating our kink identities and reflecting on our experiences.

We challenge the notion that chronological age dictates kink roles. Whether you're a young dominant or an older submissive, we explore how individuals can start or adapt their kink journeys at any age. Practical advice on navigating physical changes and maintaining meaningful kink play is provided, along with tips for effective communication about health and biomechanical concerns. This discussion also touches on the common anxieties in gay male kink culture, particularly regarding virility and physical limitations, offering insights to help you adapt and thrive.

The episode underscores the versatility of kink in providing pleasure from any part of the body, making it accessible for everyone. We delve into the concept of the "daddy turn" in gay male communities, where one's identity might shift from boy to daddy as they age. Exploring the balance of tradition and innovation, we discuss the importance of staying open to new technologies and evolving cultural landscapes. We end on a poignant note, emphasizing the value in embracing the aging process and finding new connections and pleasures, and invite you to join our "Ask Edge" segment to foster a sense of community and shared history.

Chapters

• 0:19 Navigating Aging in the Kink Community
• 17:47 Navigating Aging and Kink Dynamics
• 25:11 Evolving Roles in Ageing Kink
• 40:50 Navigating Change and Tradition in Kink

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Let's talk about aging, that you are an adult. Welcome to Full Cow, a podcast about leather kink and BDSM. My name is Edge, my pronouns are he, him, and I'm your host. In this episode we'll be talking about aging in kink, which can be a fairly complicated issue, since aging comes with certain advantages and certain disadvantages. So I'll share my own journey growing up in the kink community and then give something like a how-to segment that provides some cautionary tales to watch as you grow older. And then we have one.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Ask Edge question for this time. So I think it's a pretty good episode. Let's get started. Get started we're always aging. You're aging right now.

Speaker 1: 1:32

However, what I have learned through hard experience is that you become aware of the fact that you're aging at certain moments, and those moments in my experience have been very complicated. But let me start at something like the beginning. My 20s were fantastic in many ways. Actually, every decade I've experienced has been fantastic, but what the 20s gave me was sort of boundless energy, including boundless sexual energy, and that offered me a bit of an advantage as I was exploring kink, as I was relentless at finding experiences, and so I was able to accumulate quite a bit of kink experience from an early age, which correlated to accumulating quite a bit of wisdom, which is also to say, not every one of those kink experiences was positive, but they were each a learning kind of moment. I was so horny in my 20s I would masturbate five times a day. I was always online evaluating potential partners and looking for a hookup, and would sometimes drive hours for a unique and complicated scene, and I think for me, the ebullience of youth is a unique advantage that comes with starting kink early.

Speaker 1: 2:59

So if you're in your 20s too. On the one hand, you may not have much experience 20s too. On the one hand, you may not have much experience, people may not take you too seriously, but you have a seemingly endless supply of energy that will allow you to pursue your kink adventures. I remember I could be out till two or three. Actually, I remember I would go to the Lure, which is the bar in New York, and I took the train in from New Jersey. And you know New Jersey transit stopped operating at I think 140 or something was the last train and the bar closed at two. So I would always have to make this decision like am I going to leave for Penn Station or am I going to stay? And I would often stay and then be at Penn Station at like three in the morning waiting for a 4 am train or something horrible. The point is that in my youth I was able to stay out all night and that really allowed me to maximize my search for experiences I wanted and needed. I promise you that is not something I can do now. So I think the special thing about the 20s is that energy and that hunger you may experience for kink which will drive you towards the goals you set for yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:18

My 30s, instead, were about kind of growing up, and that included were about kind of growing up, and that would include, you know, actually I would say it included transitions. So in my thirties I moved here to Florida. In my thirties I started my main career. In my thirties I transitioned from bottom slash boy to top slash sir and that involved a lot of growth and development. So I think the 30s for me were this sort of growth stage. They were a decade of transition and transformation and I was becoming to understand who I was and who I could be, and that was the unique benefit of my 30s. I don't recall losing that much energy. I think I could still kind of go pretty hard. So the 30s were pretty good that way.

Speaker 1: 5:15

And if you're in your 30s, I really want to invite you to consider the transformations you're undergoing at this stage in your life and to value them, because the 30s really set me up for some amazing decades to come. 40s were very good to me, but they were also the decade when I first started noticing that I was aging and I mean a lot of things happened in my 40s. This is where I experienced my first profound losses. My mother passed away, my husband passed away and especially the loss of my husband was so very difficult. And I got to know grief a little too well for my tastes, but I got to know grief and in many ways it was a decade of ascendancy. I was growing up and growing more in my career, in my finances, in my leather collection, in my kink experience, but I was also noticing shifts in my body. None of these were that troubling. You know I got diagnosed with, I think.

Speaker 1: 6:29

I might have had high blood pressure in my 30s. It's been a while. I think, I probably had gastroesophageal reflux disease in my 40s. Like in 40s, your body starts saying hey, you know, I've been running for a long time and things are going to need a little bit of support.

Speaker 1: 6:46

That's sort of what my 40s were for me. Another really big shift in my 40s is I experienced what I think was a massive shift in my sex drive, and I don't know what exactly I can attribute this to. On the one hand, it could just be changes in my body and my hormones. This to, on the one hand, it could just be changes in my body and my hormones, but I think it was also the fact that I had been exploring kink for so long that I had really accumulated a set of very satisfying experiences. So I was less driven to experience everything because I had, at that point, mostly experienced everything I wanted and some things I didn't. So the 40s was maybe a decade of consolidation, where I was dealing with the harsh realities of life in terms of aging and things like death, but also consolidating my sense of myself as a leather person, my interest in kink, in fact, as part of that, I remember I realized in my 40s that I thought I was into things, but they were just things I used to be into. I hadn't really stopped to reflect on what I was still into and I did some of that inner work. You know, fetishes change. Some fade, some rise, some develop out of nowhere, and a lot of that happened for me in my 40s. So I discovered maybe a couple of new kinks, but I also really shifted where my kink energy was going. I mean, the biggest example is bondage my 20s I was all about bondage. That was my start. If you've listened to the podcast you may already know that. And then the 30s were really a lot about cigars and in my 40s I still enjoyed cigars but I did very few cigar sex scenes. I still enjoyed bondage, but it wasn't as central to my kink sexuality as it used to be. I began to develop more of an interest in impact, play and pain as a pathway to intimacy. I began being more interested on what was inside a person instead of the outside, less how they looked and more some sense of how we connected. That really began in my 40s.

Speaker 1: 9:02

I am in my early, almost my mid-50s. I'm currently 53. In about a month, on Halloween, if you're curious yes, actually Halloween, actually October 31st I will turn 54. My 50s in many ways have been simply amazing. I have reached this sort of pinnacle of so many things. I've achieved so many goals in my life I've achieved career goals and financial goals and anything I could have ever imagined doing or having in leather I have done or now have, and that is a blessing, which is not simply related to aging, obviously, but related to all sorts of intersectional privileges that I carry with me that position me to succeed economically, socially, culturally, things like that. So I don't want to minimize my privilege, but I do feel like the 50s are a decade of enjoying my success, and I hope that if you're in your 50s, it's a decade for you to enjoy your success as well.

Speaker 1: 10:14

At the same time, I am now acutely aware of aging.

Speaker 1: 10:20

In the past couple of years I've had peers who have had heart attacks, who have had strokes, who have dealt with cancer, and that's relatively new. That didn't really happen until my 50s. And so if my 40s was about learning about the death of others including I lost both my parents and my husband my 50s are bringing me face to face with the possibility of my own demise, and that is very sobering, in case you're wondering. So all my peers are facing these health issues and I can't help but wonder oh, when is my number up, when is my turn? And that doesn't cause anxiety. I don't live in that kind of fear, but it really. Instead, I invert it towards a gratitude for this day, that I am here today, I have my health today, I have a really rich and fulfilling life today, and gratitude could also then be a theme of my 50s that I'm really grateful for everything I've experienced, everything I have, everything I've accomplished.

Speaker 1: 11:29

The flip side of that accomplishment is also a sense of well, what's next? It's a kind of midlife-y I think my therapist has called it an existential crisis sort of oh okay, well, I've reached all my goals, what?

Speaker 2: 11:43

am.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I going to do next, and that means I've contemplated some career changes. I have really refocused, I've pulled back from leather events, I've pulled back from play. I'm really being thoughtful about relationships. I am learning new things about my sexuality, that I'm very gray, sexual with a little demisexual, that all of these things are helping me figure out what's next for me, because there's still a drive to keep achieving. But if you've achieved everything, then what do you do? Well, you figure out new things to achieve.

Speaker 1: 12:16

I am hopeful that I will live into my 60s and hopeful that I will learn the lessons that that decade offers me, that I will learn the lessons that that decade offers me. But for all of you, I would say you don't have to think about aging. In fact, I encourage you not to think about aging, because there will come a point when you can't help but think about aging, when your body changes, when your friends change, when your life circumstances change in ways that are connected to the fact that you are growing older, and there's no reason to rush that moment. I promise you, there is no reason to rush it. There's also no reason to regret aging. There's no reason to fear aging. There's no reason to regret the loss of youth.

Speaker 1: 13:07

I will say obviously, if I had my fantasy, I would be able to take every single thing I have now, all the material goodies and toys and prizes I have and all of the wisdom and experience I have, and I would like to just sort of be rewound biologically, say 20 years. That would be really nice, but it doesn't work that way. And now then here's the effing ironic thing when I was younger, everyone around me who was older would be like wow, I wish I had all this experience and was younger.

Speaker 1: 13:38

And I'm like blah, blah, blah. And now here I am. One of the worst things about aging is you find yourself saying things that older people used to say when you were younger and that you would dismiss. And then you're like God damn it, they were right. And then God damn it. Now I'm that older person.

Speaker 1: 13:57

So, wherever you are in your journey of aging, I want to encourage you to not be too mindful of aging, since aging will mind you at a certain point. But I also want to encourage you to embrace what your age offers, and I think this is especially important, maybe the younger you are. I think when I was in my 20s, I had such a part of the drive to get experience, to get gear, to go to events was this horrible sense of what I didn't have, that I didn't have that pair of chaps, or I didn't have a really good leather jacket, or I didn't have lager boots or I didn't have which drove my search for those things and my desire to get them that I don't think I stopped to reflect on what I did have. And what I did have was boundless, relentless energy and an ability to pursue all those things I didn't have. So I think, if you're in your 20s. I would just suggest don't focus on what you're missing right now, but focus on what that age uniquely provides you that is not provided as you age. And if you're in your 30s, I hope that the transformations you are undergoing if indeed you are like me and undergo transformations in your 30s I hope that they're smooth and because obviously that amount of change can be very challenging and take quite a while to process and integrate. So I wish you strength and I wish you navigation as you move through the transformations of the 30s.

Speaker 1: 15:40

If you're in your 40s, enjoy. They're really kind of a beautiful decade and I hope they are beautiful for you. And if you're with me, in your 50s, not too bad right, not too bad. I feel like I'm at the peak of many things, which is fantastic, but that comes with an understanding that on the other side of the peak is downhill. On the other side of the peak is downhill. Hopefully I won't reach that too soon and hopefully you won't either. So I wish you well, not only on your leather journey, but on your journey in aging as well. In the first segment, I focused on my own personal experience of aging, but in this segment, personal experience of aging. But in this segment I would like to reflect a little bit more on some broader topics or things to think about in relation to aging and kink, and let me start with two important caveats.

Speaker 1: 16:38

Number one aging is privilege. To be able to age means that you have access to affordable health care, that you have access to nutritious food and don't live in a food desert, you have safe shelter and clean water, you don't live in a place with high environmental pollution or high environmental vulnerability, and you live in a place not ravaged by war or violence. All of these things are privileges and, like all privilege, it becomes invisible. But I just want to foreground the fact that, as much as we want to sort of talk about how horrible it is to age, it is a blessing to age. It is not something that everyone gets, that everyone is able to achieve, often because of their socioeconomic, political, geographical circumstances. So the fact that you're listening to this today, that you've reached whatever age you are, is a gift that reflects some level of privilege, and I would like us all invite us all at least to be aware of that.

Speaker 1: 17:47

The second big caveat is that there is no inherent connection between chronological age and kink identity. Let me repeat that there is no inherent connection between chronological age and kink identity. That means that you could start as a boy at 67 or start as a dominant at age 19. Now there's often a correlation between age and kink identity. In gay male kink cultures there are a lot of young boys and there are a lot of young boys and there are a lot of older daddies. But that correlation is not a causation. Now that can make things challenging if you don't necessarily match the correlation. So if you are a very young daddy, that could be problematic for you as well as if you're a much older boy, and we'll talk a little bit about navigating that.

Speaker 1: 18:47

At the same time, it's useful to remember that each age has certain affordances. So if you are young and dominant, you have more energy, you have more sex drive, you have more ability to pursue things. You have more sex drive, you have more ability to pursue things. And if you're an older cub, for example, that means you bring to any relationship you enter into a lifetime of experience with communication, probably some emotional stability, some life wisdom in general. The other part of this is that, because there's no inherent connection between chronological age and kink identity, over time our kink identities can evolve bidirectionally, and that might mean evolving from someone who's dominant to someone who's submissive later in life or evolving, and this is fairly common, from someone who's submissive to someone who's dominant, and this is fairly common from someone who's submissive to someone who's dominant.

Speaker 1: 19:49

As a final corollary of this caveat, please believe people when they tell you their kink identity. So, even if someone looks really young, if they call themselves a mistress, believe they are a mistress. Even if someone looks much older and they call themselves a boy, believe they are a boy. Affirm who they are, please. In terms of the sort of practicalities of aging and kink, probably the most important thing to be cognizant of is the physical changes that happen as we age. Now, ideally before any scene, if you are the top or the bottom, there's some discussion of sort of biomechanics. Are there joints that are a little tricky? Are there health conditions that could crop up in the middle of a scene? And if you are in charge of the scene, no matter your kink identity, it's really incumbent on you to be asking those questions. But if you are submitting in the scene, it is as incumbent on you to make sure the person knows if you have particular biomechanical issues.

Speaker 1: 20:57

As we age, obviously these grow and we may encounter more and more physical limitations, and I recall a very, very special dear friend of mine in New York, david Stein, who was a huge, important figure in the leather community, who in fact came up with the term safe, sane, consensual, and he was submissive, identified throughout his life and faced a lot of challenges as he grew older, not simply in finding men who would see him as the submissive that he is, but he had a lot of problems kneeling that was physically difficult for him because of his health conditions and that would obviously require sorts of accommodations to help him submit in a way that was significant but didn't involve kneeling. Even before we reach a larger age, an older age, I don't know, I don't want to put it, I don't want to talk about people being old.

Speaker 1: 21:53

That's what I'm trying to avoid Even before then. Biomechanical issues can happen at any point in time and it's important to understand that as we age, they become more likely.

Speaker 1: 22:06

So that's an even more important discussion to have Now. The good news is, if there are biomechanical issues, you can certainly make adjustments to the play. You do so, for example, for a lot of men. I play with a lot of men who have joint issues, and so I'm less likely to do bondage with hands behind the back. I'm more likely to do either restraints with hands at the side or hands in front. That also might mean taking more breaks or having fewer really physically demanding kinks and doing more mental play, maybe like sensory deprivation. So as we age, not only does our body change, but the way we play might change as well. And that's not loss, that is a shift. That is not less, it is different. As the body changes, there are increase in health considerations, obviously, and you'll have to plan with those scenes in mind, and that can happen again at any time, for gay men in particular one particular—I used particular twice, I'm so sorry—one physical change that is very common and that triggers a lot of fear has to do with virility.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Now, in our culture we tend to connect the penis to maleness, even though penis potency is not at all an indicator of one's amount of maleness. In fact, the penis is not an indicator of one's amount of maleness. But especially in the gay male culture and not just the king culture, broadly the gay male culture there's a sense that there's a real fear of your penis not working as well as you age, and this has gotten to ridiculous levels. I know people who are pretty young I mean, I'm not going to say how young, pretty young who are using Trimix because they have an anxiety around their penis potency getting hard and staying hard. Now I understand this because I have a prescription for boner pills that includes Cialis and some other special ingredients and my penis works fine. I really don't need those. But I certainly do miss my 20s where the slightest breeze could cause me a rock-hard erection and I wanted to recover that, and I will admit that that is not necessarily the edge I want to be. I would like to be a little bit more comfortable with my aging and I'm mostly comfortable with it. But around my penis I'm letting those larger cultural pressures about maleness impact me a little. I don't use my boner pills hardly ever. If you need me to fuck you, I'm going to have a boner pill, because I'm not really wired for fucking. But I'm happy to do that for people. But the boner pill helps there. So if it helps, if it helps.

Speaker 1: 25:11

The beautiful thing about kink is that it is not necessarily genital focused at all. Whether you have a penis or whatever genitals you have. I like to think of kink as a set of technologies that can extract pleasure from any point on the body. Left ear, oh pleasure. Back, oh pleasure. Right. Big toe, oh, let's get some pleasure from there. Oh, belly button, we're going to find some pleasure there. Ass cheek, yeah, yeah, pleasure there. With kink I can point to any part of the body and use it to generate pleasure.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Janital potency is not the only, and often is not the primary source of pleasure in kink, and therefore kink allows us to access pleasure all over, and that means if you're a kinky person, that you don't have to worry about genital potency or genital orgasm. That doesn't mean you don't have to like it. Some people are really huge on orgasm. Right, it helps that I'm a little gray sexual and orgasm's like meh, okay, orgasm's great, but I don't need it.

Speaker 1: 26:23

But the broader issue is that as we age, the beauty is no matter what our genitals are doing. We have access to pleasure that is equal to, and sometimes greater than, orgasm, because orgasm lasts for a couple seconds. But I can be generating pleasure through tit play for hours, you know hours. You know, orgasm lasts for a couple seconds. I can be giving someone pleasure through fisting for hours and there's a sense in which kink as a technology for pleasure, a technology that extracts pleasure from any point on the body, means that it is a beautiful thing to age in, because our capacity for pleasure does not shrink as we age. Our capacity for pleasure does not shrink as we age. So, beyond these physical changes and therefore physical adjustments that come with kink and aging physical changes, and therefore physical adjustments that come with kink and aging.

Speaker 1: 27:24

There are probably going to be some shifting roles and dynamics. Now, generally, I try to make my content gender or sexuality agnostic, because I feel like kink is fairly the same no matter your gender or sex identity. But I will for a moment turn specifically to gay male communities and talk about what I call the daddy turn. And this is a specifically gay male experience, and here's what the daddy turn is.

Speaker 1: 27:51

You're trucking along, enjoying your kink, living your best leather life, and at some point, at some point, younger men will approach you and call you daddy. Now this can be either very troubling or very empowering. It can be a painful moment of misrecognition if you identify as a boy and people start calling you daddy because it can remind you that you're aging out of that correlative dynamic, that kind of assumption that boys are young. And so it's that moment when you realize, wow, it's about to get a lot harder for me to live as a boy, because now people want to call me daddy. But for some other people, if you've been daddy identified, since you were 17, then this can confirm your lifelong identity.

Speaker 2: 28:41

It can be oh, finally at last people see me as I see myself.

Speaker 1: 28:47

I think for most of us it can be a really complex moment and I think my experience is fairly common and my experience was I resisted it until I didn't. So what you might find when you hit the daddy turn, there'll be these young men calling you daddy and at first you'll be like no, I'm not a daddy, sorry. No, I'm not a daddy, sorry.

Speaker 1: 29:09

But sooner or later you may find yourself realizing that they're really hot, they are just hot, and so you might try on daddy, and then for some of us it will fit. And this represents an evolutionary transformation and it very much was. My daddy turn happened in the late 1900s right, I've talked about this in a couple episodes this movement from being bottom slash boy identified to being top slash sir identified and it was driven by people calling me sir and me having to take that identity on, not moving into the identity and finding boys to meet it. So I experienced a daddy turn and it was evolutionary and I think it's a pretty common evolution from top to bottom. That daddy turn moment that happens a lot in gay male communities, that daddy turn moment that happens a lot in gay male communities.

Speaker 1: 30:05

But in general, with aging you might expect to evolve into different roles and that might mean moving from dominant to submission, submission to dominant, becoming more versatile, becoming more fluid, becoming more flexible. You might change your gender identity, you might change your understanding of your sexuality. This is what happened to me that I didn't really come to understand and actually I can't promise you I've always been gay, gray sexual and gay sexual. I can't promise you that I've always been gray sexual. For all I know it was an evolution, but my understanding of my sexuality has evolved into graysexuality and demisexuality. So it's going to be normal to experience evolution as you age and you may feel like a pup now. You may grow into a handler, you may transform into a master and then transform into a slave. That the pathways possible are very diverse. I'm tempted to say endless, semi-endless, but they are very diverse.

Speaker 1: 31:10

And this also means evolving beyond roles that are very active. I would hope, as I, you know, there comes a point where I no longer want to be on the apps and at the leather bar. This is me very personally. There's going to come a point where I just don't want to be at a certain age doing that, I'm just not going to be. That's not what I want. But that doesn't mean I want to necessarily retire from the leather community. Instead, I see myself evolving even further into roles of mentorship and guidance.

Speaker 1: 31:46

So this notion that as we age, not only do we face physical changes, but we evolve mentally, emotionally, through different sexual kink capacities that's really quite natural and to be expected and then, as part of this, these new capacities provide us new adventures, new emotional connections, new kinds of intimacy that then become more significant and can deepen as we age. So if you've listened to the podcast, you know that I really awakened to what feels to me a more authentic kind of dominance, really quite recently. That's part of that emotional evolution that was also part of my aging. Aging is a physical evolution and my development of my dominance has been an emotional evolution. And those are two things that have happened to me as I aged, and not the only two things Shifts in my fetishes and in what turns me on. Shifts in what I value in a relationship and who I want to have a relationship with. Shifts simply in my level of sex drive. These are not necessarily aging things as much as evolving things. Now that is not to say that aging is this beautiful journey of evolution where we grow ever more complicated, lovely butterflies. There are some challenges and I think one of them I think it's worth noting there's probably some ageism in King communities.

Speaker 1: 33:18

Now Let me just say for me this is really probably related to gay male culture specifically. I can't speak about how more broadly this is. But there's a big stereotype that gay culture is youth-obsessed and that's a specifically gay, specifically stereotype. If we go all the way back to the classic novel the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which is about this obviously gay man who doesn't age, but his picture does, that book is written at this historical moment where the modern gay identity is coming into being. So it's almost as though the moment the modern gay was created, this notion of eternal youth, the absolute attractiveness of youthfulness, was baked into what it meant to be gay.

Speaker 1: 34:15

And that means that as we age, we can have a fear that we are becoming less attractive. At least, let me be clear I have a fear I'm becoming less attractive. Is this rational? No, I'm fairly aware that people still find me attractive because they say that to me. But I do notice changes in my skin, that it's a little less elastic, it's a little more wrinkly. I do choose to get filler in my face to deal with my nasolabial folds. Those are the little lines from your nose down to your mouth, and so if you are particularly a gay leather person, gay male leather person, it can be really challenging to grow older because you could face some ageism and I think this becomes especially true if your kink identity does not fall within that chronological correlation.

Speaker 1: 35:11

So if you're a much older boy, for example, it can be really challenging for you to feel attractive, to have people treat you as legitimate. You may be more likely to face ageism. I also know that, just in general, there's an element of ageism in gay male communities. I have a friend of a friend who would be online and I think his actual age is, let's say, 60. Let's say 65. The number's not important and he would not get much attention at all. He lowered his age to 55, same photos, full recent photos, and suddenly he got a lot of attention. So there's a real sense in my experience that gay men are especially fearful of the number when it comes to an age less than the actual aging.

Speaker 1: 36:04

So part of the compl when it comes to an age less than the actual aging. So part of the complication as you age in kink is dealing with this ageism and part of the solution then is to find inclusive spaces and as part of that, a lot of traditional leather spaces and events. There's a kind of reverence for age where it's seen as an asset.

Speaker 1: 36:28

So navigating the complications of aging and growing older and dealing with that ageism and issues of attractiveness, part of that means finding places where you're valued for your age because you come perhaps, probably or are assumed to have more experience. That's not always true, but there are inclusive spaces and it's about finding them. And the beautiful thing also, I think, about people who are kinksters as they grow older is that oftentimes we move into roles of mentorship and leadership, and I think this podcast for me, is my personal example. I do a lot of mentoring in my real life as well, and of often much younger people, not always. Sometimes there are people my age as well. So navigating the scene as you age becomes complicated because of ageism, because of, if you're a gay, male leather person, because of the youth obsession of gay culture. But at the same time, the way to navigate it is to find those spaces where you're still fit and where your experience, where your age is valued. Not to mention look, there are a lot of guys who are into older men.

Speaker 1: 37:47

I live in Wilton Manors, which is essentially Fort Lauderdale, and we have a very particular population of retirement age. It's very daddy central and there are therefore a lot of men who are into daddies as well. So it's complicated, but not all negative. It just requires navigation.

Speaker 1: 38:09

As part of that there are a lot of intergenerational relationships in the King community and they're not necessarily intergenerational. If we think about daddy-boy, we think of that as older daddy, younger boy. It doesn't have to be that, however. It is often that, and the beautiful thing about that is that each member of that gains something from their discrepancy in age.

Speaker 1: 38:36

So I know I've been with some much younger men not in stable relationships, but they've been a part of my life and they offer me fresh perspective. They keep me a little current on the lingo and what's going on and the current politics in the community. So they keep me current and they offer me fresh perspective and they have energy that really kind of inspires me to match them as much as possible. That really kind of inspires me to match them as much as possible and for them, hopefully, what they gain is my mentorship, my guidance, my wisdom, my experiences that I share with them quite freely. So these intergenerational relationships are a kind of compensation for aging and kink, because when there is a great difference in age, you're able to trade off and you're able to really let your deficiencies be compensated by that other person at that different age, their strengths, and that can create a really beautiful combination that stabilizes the relationship. As part of this, I think I should probably also mention talk a little bit about young daddies. We do generally think of daddies as older and that is a misconception. That is a cultural notion, because the fact is there are literal young daddies, there are men who are 16-year-old and having children. So young fathers is an absolute thing. In general, I think daddy is about a kind of energy, and that energy comes from experience, and sometimes you get that experience simply through aging. But sometimes you're young and you go through some hard shit and that generates as much experience and wisdom as aging itself. And so young daddy is absolutely legitimately possible. Also, young master I know one man in particular who started as a master very young because he knew that's exactly what he was. Now he's probably I think he's about my age, right, we're sort of not that far different in age. So there you go.

Speaker 1: 40:50

Another challenge, though, with aging is resistance to change, and I noticed this in terms of different political issues with leather folk of my generation. I have seen leather folk of my generation be dismissive of the political fights that younger generation are fighting and sort of say that's not important or what does that matter, which obviously comes from a place of privilege. Well, it doesn't matter to you, because you've already secured your place in the community. So, yeah, it doesn't matter to you. That can be really detrimental. I really want to invite everyone to remain open to change, and that's not simply change in politics, it's also change in technology. I will say I've done my best to keep with the technology TikTok broke me man.

Speaker 1: 41:42

I tried TikTok and my content was just going to random people on their FYP page or FYP and they would leave just the cruelest, meanest comments. So I try to remain flexible. When it comes to technology, that doesn't always happen and it's also. It's not just what's evolving, it's not just the politics that are evolving, it's not just the technology that's evolving, it's also the kink that's evolving that we have the emergence of. I mean, I know people who have an orc fetish. That was not something that existed in my day and that's something that might rile people of a certain age who are used to more traditional flavors of leather. That does not rile me because I do my best to keep up with the scene as it evolves, but that adapting to new things can be really challenging as you age. And it's also about really learning to balance tradition and innovation. It's about what things do I keep and what things do I let go of, and that's a very personal decision. And it's really about what do you value? That, the things I value, I'm not going to change. I'm going to do my best to pass on. My aesthetic in leather is not the only aesthetic, is not at all like a lot of young people's leather aesthetic and I want to pass on my leather aesthetic, that doesn't mean I have to devalue their leather aesthetic. So, as much as I try to keep up with the way things evolve and change as I continue to age, I'm also learning to balance tradition and innovation, and I invite you to do the same.

Speaker 1: 43:29

Finally, I think it's worth talking about mental health and aging in kink. There is an emotional toll when it comes to aging. I think people can well. First of all, you face loss. There's the loss of your parents, there's the loss of partners and as part of that, there can be really challenging times of caretaking which can be emotionally draining as well, and that can often end up you can feel isolated, especially if the kink community has been evolving and you don't feel like you fit into it anymore or you feel excluded by this younger generation. You can end up feeling really kind of emotionally disconnected from the community and that's the emotional toll of aging. Beyond the physical changes, beyond the evolutionary changes in your kink identity, there's definitely a kind of emotional toll, your kink identity, there's definitely a kind of emotional toll. I think for me, part of what offsets that is that the beautiful thing about aging is that you find your kink peers. I know people. I know who my peers are because we all remember Leather Navigator. We all remember America Online. We all remember IRC. We all remember IRC. We all remember the lore. We all remember the first Folsom East. We all remember MAL, when it was really small.

Speaker 1: 44:52

We have a shared set of experiences that connect us to each other, even when we aren't necessarily close or we don't even know each other. But I could make you a list of my peers, simply because I've seen them for decades in online spaces and in real life spaces. And just knowing I have a group of peers gives me comfort because it means I'm not alone, even if I'm single, even if I don't currently have a partner, even if I live alone. Those things are all true of me. I'm single, even if I don't currently have a partner, even if I live alone right, those things are all true of me. I'm not alone because I have a network of peers. I have to activate that network. I have to connect with those people, but when I do, then I have the ability to reminisce and recall shared experiences and shared fears and shared hopes. And so, as you age, I hope you will also find your peers.

Speaker 1: 45:51

That's my take on aging and kink that it comes with a set of challenges in terms of dealing with changes in your body, in your sexual kink identity, in your body, in your sexual kink identity and in the scene. But it comes with a set of advantages. That may be about new pleasures discovered in other parts of the body, that might be about new sexual kink identities. That might simply be about connecting with someone of a different age so that y'all can complete each other's strengths and weaknesses. So I don't think aging is necessarily something to fear. It's certainly not something we can stop. So my best advice for you is to meet the challenge of aging by looking for what it gives you in this moment and doing your best to navigate what it takes from you moment to moment as well, and certainly remembering that aging is an incredible privilege. I sincerely, sincerely wish that you continue to age.

Speaker 1: 46:57

And finally, we have Ask Edge, the segment where I answer questions from all of you. If you would like to submit a question, you can email it to ask at full cow dot show. That's ask at full cow dot show. Or, even better, you can leave me a voicemail at speakpipecom slash leather edge. That's speakpipecom slash l-t-h-r-e-d-g-e, and both of those links are available in the show notes. This time we have one question from Charlie.

Speaker 2: 47:36

Edge. This is Charlie Brainstorming. This morning I think you should have me on your show for perhaps a 15-minute interview or longer to talk about leather avatars and the use of paradox in the creation of modern leather identities. And who am I to talk about this? Well, I'm somebody who thinks about this. What I mean by avatars are people like yourself, or Ralph Bruno or Steve Perry, who have curated an identity and actualized it, selected various strands of life in which to participate, which include leather, and brought them together and made this exquisite tapestry of them that exists in their life. Their life is a work of art. So part of that is paradox, right, the bringing together of two things which seemingly don't make sense together. So psychotherapy and porn. You know, there's the old example of Colton Haynes, who had a porn career and then was a teenage heartthrob on Teen Wolf.

Speaker 1: 49:03

Anyway, this is not a fully and unfortunately the voicemail cuts off there. However, I certainly get the point that you're making and it's a curious idea. You know, I've really pulled back from having guests on this show, primarily because of logistics. I found it very challenging, given my life and its fullness, to locate a guest, reach out to them, find a date that's going to work for them and me, coordinate all of that, get a high quality recording, edit it, bring it back into Audacity to produce the podcast, and so for a while now, if I can avoid having a guest, I do, but I think it's really interesting to. I like the idea, right. I like the idea of bringing other voices into the podcast. That's part of what ask edge is about and that's part of why originally I had a segment that was an interview, so that you could hear, literally hear, hear, yeah, yeah, that is literal literally hear other voices. So what I'm curious about is perhaps creating using something like SpeakPipe, where people can leave their own segments and where I can assemble an episode with people's stories about kink and simply offer some framing or context. So that might be something I do for season four, assuming I do a season four.

Speaker 1: 50:33

The podcast has been a lot of work lately and that has a lot to do with what else is going on in my life and also what's not going on in my life. So the future of this podcast for me is a little uncertain. Certainly I will finish season three and I would hope I move into season four, but we'll see If I do. I think one of the new features I'd like to consider is this sort of people can leave a 10-minute story, a 10-minute episode on SpeakPipe. I'll have to see the time limit on SpeakPipe, but leave it somewhere, because that frees me from all the logistical work. It allows them to plop in their story whenever they want and redo it as many times as they like until they get a version they want me to use and then I can very, very easily pop that into an episode and add some framing, context or response.

Speaker 1: 51:25

So I'm unlikely to have you on the podcast because I'm unlikely to have anyone on the podcast, which isn't strictly true. There are a couple of topics I've kind of committed to in my head that will require a guest, but generally speaking I'm avoiding guests on the podcast. Will require a guest, but generally speaking I'm avoiding guests on the podcast. But your suggestion is actually opening up ideas for me of how this podcast may continue to evolve in the future, and so I'm very grateful for that and for the rest of you. Please stay tuned.

Speaker 1: 51:56

In the meantime, I encourage you to submit questions to Ask Edge so that I can have content for this segment. And again, you can ask me anything. It doesn't have to be profound, it doesn't have to be deep. You can try to get to know about me. That's something that happens a lot on my Ask Me Anythings on Instagram, which can be a lot of fun, and it's okay, right, like, if I don't get questions, I'll just have a shorter podcast or I'll do another kind of segment.

Speaker 1: 52:21

But I really deeply love getting questions from people and I want to thank all of you, like Charlie, who've taken the time to leave something at SpeakPipe, because that really allows me some feedback that feels very visceral and immediate to me but also, I think, really enhances and enriches what I can offer in this podcast. So, thanks to all of you, consider leaving a question. If you don't, it's okay. I'm not going to be mad and that's all we have for this episode of Full Cow. I want to thank everyone for joining me. I hope you've enjoyed the episode as a whole and, as always, always, always, I wish you such a blessed leather journey, such a blessed leather journey, and that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing, or you can send feedback to edge at fullcowshow, as always. May your leather journey be blessed.