Black Rose is a pansexual educational and support group for the BDSM community in the Washington, D.C. area. It was founded in June 1987. Jack McGeorge was one of its founders. For almost twenty years it sat at the center of the local BDSM scene, and it is still running. For kink readers outside D.C., this is not a bar brand and not a closed leather house. It is one of the East Coast’s long-running pansexual education clubs: classes, hotel conventions, play parties, and a board elected by members. It was also one of the founding coalition partners of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, which launched in 1997.
Hotel conventions, Pantheon awards, 25th anniversary
From 1997 through 2012 Black Rose held hotel-based conventions that mixed educational sessions, vendor rooms, and play parties. For much of that stretch the events were annual, and by 2000 they had grown into some of the largest gatherings of that kind on the East Coast. Annual events continued through 2009. The group’s last large event was in 2012, marking its twenty-fifth anniversary. In 1998, Black Rose X received the Large Event of the Year award from the Pantheon of Leather Awards. Also in 1998, and again in 2000, Black Rose received the Large Club of the Year award from the same Pantheon.
The scale of those years shows up in a November 30, 1999 Salon.com Health piece. Virginia Vitzthum’s “Crashing the Black Rose” described about 1,500 players gathering in a suburban Ramada Inn “to teach and discuss the sexual art of power and pain.” That teaching convention doubled as a play weekend, large enough to draw national write-ups.
Jack McGeorge, Hans Blix, and the 2002 Post story
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2002, The Washington Post publicly highlighted cofounder Jack McGeorge’s leadership in the D.C. BDSM and leather community. McGeorge had not tried to hide it. His full name was already prominent on websites, and he said as much to the Post and other media. He still offered his resignation to Hans Blix, hoping to protect the credibility of UNMOVIC—the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission—before the weapons inspections in Iraq. Blix refused to accept the resignation. Later, Hua Jiang, spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, said that being into BDSM was no more likely to be a cross-cultural problem in the Middle East than any number of other issues. The episode remains one of the clearest public collisions between a visible kinky résumé and high-stakes international work, and Black Rose is the club whose cofounder was in the middle of it.
FetLife, The Crucible, and how the club runs
The rise of the internet, and especially FetLife in 2008, let alternative-sexuality groups multiply and cut into Black Rose’s old position as the default center of Washington BDSM. The group remains a significant presence. For newcomers an education-first door is practical and less intimidating than other ways into the scene. Black Rose still hosts regular educational classes on BDSM activities, issues, and safety at The Crucible, Washington’s longstanding BDSM club. For most of its history it has also hosted monthly socials, swinging between hands-on workshops and social play parties.
A board of directors elected by the membership governs the group. Special interest groups include Bondage; Cultural, Arts & Theatre Social (CATS); Domination & Submission (D/s); Hypnosis; New and Curious Kinksters (NaCK); and Tethers and Feathers, for people interested in tickling. Annual awards include the Jack McGeorge Excellence in Education award and a Membership Service Award.
Sibling groups and further reading
Sibling organizations in other cities include TES in New York City, the Society of Janus in San Francisco, and the Portland Leather Alliance in Oregon. Further reading includes Sadie’s It’s Not About the Whip (ISBN 1-4120-0183-8), plus the group’s official site and The Crucible. For BDSMWild readers, Black Rose helped found NCSF, ran East Coast-scale hotel cons with classes, vendors, and play, survived the FetLife-era splintering of local scenes, and still teaches safety and technique at The Crucible—with McGeorge’s public UN fight as the reminder that a teaching club’s leadership can end up on the front page.
