I don't often talk about this on SW, but I think this is an occasion where it is appropriate.
I am on FetLife. (Just for conversation. I am not there to meet anyone or to roleplay.) Although I have been inactive for a long time.
There are a number of groups there which are geographically based, with names like "Fairbanks area kinksters" (I just made that one up.) And those groups tend to sponsor social get-togethers.
From what I have learned from women on that site, sub women often have the experience that many so-called Doms never post in a public forum, want to communicate entirely in private , and eventually try to finagle a private meeting, but they avoid those public gatherings. (A red flag, to many women!) So in a way, those meet-ups are a filter. The people who show up are regulars who get to know each other. And even if you only meet "friends" -- even couples (where the men are "taken") -- friends often have a way of finding someone you might want to meet, just as in vanilla life.
A friend of mine did exactly that -- she started going just for the sense of belonging to a kink community, and she eventually found a Dom. Things worked for a while, but they eventually ended, although that had to do with complications in her life that were completely independent of what was going on with the Dom.
