B is for Book Burning
Hi everyone! Welcome to the A to Z of Sex. I’m Dr Lori Beth Bisbey and I am your host. We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time. Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don’t have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones. Today the letter is B and B is for Book Burning – Part 2 of my Interview with Mama Viola Johnson. Part one is on Sex Spoken Here vlog on YouTube or there is the podcast only version as well.
I had the privilege of interviewing Mama Vi Johnson when I was at Master slave Conference in August 2018. Viola Johnson is a leather woman, vampire and author who has been active in the leather BDSM scene for over three decades. A mentor and confidante to many in the fetish world, she has a special fondness for the ‘boys’ of our community, and those who choose to serve as slaves and sub missives. Viola is the wife of Jill Carter, International Ms Leather 1996.
Viola had the distinction of winning the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from Pantheon of Leather and The National Leather Association, making her the only person to receive both awards in the same year. In August of 2007 she was honored with the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by Black Beat. Viola is also the recipient of the Pantheon of Leather “Woman of the Year” award, The Jack Stice Award and the Slave Heart Award.
In January 2012, Viola received within 8 days of the Master Steve’s Golden Paintbrush Awards at Southwest Leather Conference in Arizona and the Leather Leadership Award at the Creating Change Conference in Baltimore sponsored by the Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Viola is the author of two books, Dhampir and To Love, To Obey, To Serve. Currently, she is working on her third book, a follow up To Love, To Obey, To Serve
Mama Vi and her wife Jill Carter started and hosted the Carter Johnson Leather library. It has a home in Indiana and a variety of outposts. Sections of the library are taken to many events so that the public can learn from the original source material about our leather and sexual history.
We started this part of the interview asking what is going to happen if people are not taught to think critically. Viola talks about starting her teaching career in 1973 at the cusp of moving from teaching learning and teaching to the test. This was the point at which the received wisdom was that children must be promoted with chronological peer group rather than accommodating learning abilities.
We move from education to talk about the fact that if you can’t evaluate information you can’t risk assess and if you can’t risk assess you make poor choices. We talk about the fact that people are pre-disposed to categorise but we can learn to look at a continuum if we are taught to do so. We talk about the first four years of life and the fact that sexual development starts at birth. We talk about the development that occurs in childhood. If we don’t support this development, difficulties develop. It is easy to support this development but we don’t talk about it.
We moved to preventing shame and why this is important. We move to talking about fears around fascism in America. We end on my question ‘Why aren’t people doing something about this?’
Thanks for listening to the A to Z of Sex Ò this week.
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