There is no more cherished body in the scene than that of a single woman. You see it at munches and play parties. A single woman can even become so overwhelmed with attention (both wanted and unwanted) that we have writings on how they feel both welcome and uncomfortable and how we must come together and protect them.

And yet there is no creature in the community more reviled than a newly entered cis hetero single man. We euphemistically called it the "chopped liver" syndrome, after the dish that is often ignored, but it's more than that. The single cis hetero man is guilty until proven innocent. He has to demonstrate his value to the community. Once he does, he's accepted and embraced, but it can take a long time, and be a disheartening process.

There's an understandable caution that many of us have about hetero cis males, especially those who identify as dominant. Many of us have met the guy who thinks that he's hit the jackpot joining the scene.They come in quickly and leave nearly as fast, usually offending someone along the way.

But even so, with a community as committed to equality in all things gender, sexual and power exchange, it's time that we took some collective ownership of how we treat these new people and instead of pushing them away as a means of challenging them, putting away our preconceived notions and started treating them the same way we might treat someone who said the same exact things as them, but identified as female. It's also time that community leaders stop pretending that so much of their friendliness towards new female subs in the scene is all about egalitarianism.

If you're a community leader who has gone out of their way to send a message to a attractive, young submissive female whose joined your event, try to do the same for the less attractive older sub, or the younger attractive dom, or the less attractive older dom, because as we all know, these labels are really just about what brings us joy, and everyone deserves that opportunity, and everyone deserves to be taken at their word without being pre-judged.