Choosing a Scene Name

Unless you are sure you can be 100% out with everyone in your current and future life, we recommend that you start with a scene name, and use only it for at least your first year. At a minimum, don't use your last name - just first (or middle) name and maybe initial (if your given name is common).

Later you can decide if you want to "out" yourself. It's hard to "un-ring the bell". Before you out yourself, read the short book "When Someone You Love is Kinky"

. The main reasons for a scene name are:

• Confidentiality. Makes it harder for negative / disruptive people to connect your scene life and vanilla life.
• Brand identity. You will build a reputation around your name.
• Heightened reality. A scene name may be much more evocative than the one on your birth certificate.
• Empowerment. It's a conscious act of taking control of your personal and sexual identity.
• Liberation. Freeing your kinky / erotic personality of the repression of mainstream society / upbringing.
• Whimsy. Makes things more fun. Gets away from the daily grind.

A scene name is not an effective cover for misdeeds. If someone behaves illegally or dishonorably in the scene, they get outed promptly.

Think of a scene name much like a pen name, stage name, alter ego, pet name, or nickname. It distinguishes one part of your life.

Often people use only their scene name for everything in the scene. Other people use it on-line and with strangers, and offer their birth name to closer friends. If privacy is important, then when on-line only use your scene name.

Considerations in choosing a name:

Since there are a lot of people using realistic scene names, it's not clear which names are birth or scene. And it shouldn't matter to anyone. Do you want it to sound "real" or exotic?

Do you want it to express gender? Scene role? Sexual orientation? (Careful - many newcomers end up with a different scene role than they expected.)

It is OK to change your scene name over time. Usually this happens mainly in the first year or so, as someone gets to know themselves and the scene. Sometimes people modify their name to distinguish from another player, e.g. "The Good Emily", "Pat5", "Other Alice", or "little john".

(Caveat: Occasionally, established people have changed their scene name after serious misbehavior, in an attempt to hide. This accompanies changing which community and/or city they frequent. The hiding doesn't work. It's easy to check in their past community to see how honorable they are.)

It's OK if you're in the scene a short while with your vanilla name, then change to a scene name. Many people have. Just tell people "I go by X now."

Some people have more than one scene name, for various reasons, e.g.:

• People who switch (do both top and bottom) sometimes have a different name in each role.
• Prodommes often use a different name for their professional work ("Mistress Ing") vs. private play ("Lady Amber").
• People having substantially different personae, e.g. in animal role play, age play, or role play, may distinguish each persona with a different name.
• People usually have a different name when they change gender presentation or age.

Avoid taking names straight from well-known kinky stories. While it might seem like a tribute, it's more likely to be seen as unimaginative, pretentious, or even theft.

Avoid names where the pronunciation is not easy or obvious from the spelling.

Think about both how the name sounds and how it looks. To some people Big vs little letters matter, so you should choose how you want it written. Tops always use Upper Case. Some bottoms choose to use lowercase, some do not. However, make sure that cAsE or un¶®0n¤un¢êd $¥mbo1§ don't mess up the spoken or written versions. Or you could go with "The kinkster formerly known as Princess".

Choose a name you're comfortable hearing a lot, both in whispers and shouts.

Certain scene names cause snickering, e.g. "Master Bates".

We recommend not including a self-granted honorific or superlative in your scene name. Consider leaving off the "Sir", "Lord", or "Supreme Being" prefix (unless self-humiliation is your thing). However, a few of these have specific implications:

• "Mistress" often denotes prodomme.
• "Daddy" often denotes a nurturing dominant, of any gender.
• "Master" usually denotes an ownership/obedience -oriented dominant, of any gender.
• "Domina" usually denotes a female dominant.
• "Lady" usually denotes a femme, more likely top than bottom.
• "slave" often denotes an obedience, ownership, or service-oriented bottom, of any gender.
• "boi" (in this spelling) has a host of meanings in the different sub-cultures, typically being a bottom having mixed male and female energy, gender history, or identity.

Starting as soon as possible, you'll want a scene email account, separate from your work or vanilla accounts. Anonymous free accounts are available at mail.yahoo.com, gmail.com, and elsewhere.

Some Sources for Ideas:

There are a few people in the scene rather prolific at giving people suitable scene names. Ask around for them. Some mentors can help with this too.

There are lots of ways to get ideas for scene names, e.g.:

• Think of other people's scene names. Which resonate with you and why? How would you map their person-to-name relationship to yourself?
• Characters from stories, games, myths, legends, history, exotic places, scripture, etc.
• Look at vanilla baby-naming books (library).
• Look in other languages and cultures.
• Think of people from your past, with whom you no longer have contact.
• An ancient god/goddess;
• Something sexy, cute, cuddly, or wild;
• Something powerful, useful, exotic, dangerous, or versatile;
• Animals;
• Colors, minerals, gems;
• There are books of character names from genres of fiction. Do a book title search on "names" or "characters".
• Check an interesting concordance or gazetteer (library).
• Combine two names or word fragments.
• Think through what you'd like to express about yourself (in the scene). Then translate / transform it someway, as authors often obliquely name a character after its main characteristic (cf J.K.Rowling).

• Search the name in dictionaries, wikipedia.org, and similar.
• Search for that name in local kinky email lists, to see if it's already in use.
• Search the name on google, with a word like "BDSM", "fetish", "leather", or "kinky".
• Write down the persona that comes to mind seeing / hearing that name.
• Ask people for their frank impressions of the name. Both people close to you, and not.
• Try it out for a while.

Some arguments against use of scene names:

However:

• Not everyone is in a position to live 100% out in this repressed society.
• Newcomers don't know whether they'll "stay kinky" or are just experimenting.
• Newcomers don't know how to talk about kink to vanilla people, so outing themselves may be needlessly traumatic for both parties.
• What you do in your private life does not need to be anyone else's business.
• We have no way of knowing what future repression or witch hunts may come, but repression seems to be a perennial cycle.

Note that the use of scene names is less common in certain sub-communities. In particular, leather-identified gay men in large metropolitan areas (SF, LA) seem less likely to use them.

The more of us that vanilla people know, the less likely we are to be oppressed. At least in theorSy. Having the community out and accepted would require decades of effort and conflict, if we look at the history of other repressed sexual minorities. Under the radar has worked fairly well for us.

We know some people who used scene names, then came 100% out once they had been in the scene for a long time, all their children reached 18, and their future livelihood could not be damaged by vanilla people.

Some Related Writings:

• thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=17673
• sensuoussadie.com/sadiescolumns/practicum/sobriquets.htm
• sensuoussadie.com/sadiescolumns/practicum/protectingprivacy.htm
• gloria-brame.com/mbarchive/to_use_scene_names_or_not.htm
• urbansemiotic.com/2007/03/06/why-do-you-hide-your-identity
• collarchat.com/m_1383386/tm.htm