Essay on Kinky Feminsim

Hey all!

(Who do I mean by all? There are like, ten of you, ya? Hi ten!)

Last week, I wrote an essay on kink and feminism (and what it's like to live in a body where both flourish) for a friend of mine over at the Vodka Press. It's a pretty decent essay, I think, and their podcasts over there are pretty fantastic.

Anyway, check it out!

Kink Fest; The Quotes Post

I'll write a big 'ol missive on the event later, I'm sure, but for now, here are some favorite quotes from the last day and half. Heard in classes, around the festival, and in the dungeon (no names posted, because I don't have anyone's permission, or even what some of their names are). From hilarious to quippy to profound, perverts say it all.

[from a presenter, on people arriving to his class on time] "I appreciate your radical acceptance of the schedule." 

"We cannot have power exchange unless everybody has power to begin with." 

[on suffocating someone with your hands, and using different smells (wasabi, fish sauce, scat) to make breathing unpleasant] "Some people, when they smell certain smells - they stop breathing. They're like 'fuck you, fine' and just stop." 

"You, darling, might be an asshole" 

"I had a partner who identified as a human ferret." 

[on being asked to bottom in a double penetration rape scene by five new-ish tops, in a lecture given by the bottom on how to play with new tops] "I was laying there, after they'd tied me down on my back, while they were trying to figure out how to put it in. And I was just sort of waiting. And then I suggested, gently "Hey, maybe the problem is the position of the bottom..." They flipped me over and got right back in. It was awesome." 

"But I said 'Sir' at the end, so it was all okay." 

[from a very shy person, in a lecture on negotiation for shy people] "I wore a name tag that said 'My name is ___, wanna fuck?' It opened up a lot of doors."

More details later! Now: on to further adventures!

Getting to Kink Fest: A Fable

I was pretty excited for KinkFest this year. Although I was going to be working four shows over the weekend (as per usual), I was probably going to do what I did last year: buy a ticket for Friday, go to the lectures during the day, shop around at the vendors, maybe check out the party post-show.

And then I lost my job. Which is another blog entirely, so we'll leave it at that for now.

I was (among many other things) both excited to have the entire weekend free, but also a bit hesitant, because my financial situation had changed with the loss of that job. So I looked up kinkfest, and what it would cost for the weekend.

And holy fucking floggers, batman. 185$?! Plus an extra 40$ if you wanted to attend the leather dinner on Friday evening, with the keynote speaker and the fancy schmancy attire?

185$ is almost exactly what I make in a week now. I can't spend that much money on anything other than rent, much less a luxury like a kink conference. I understand that these events cost money, and I believe that, could I afford to buy a ticket, I would definitely regard my money more than well-spent. But right then, it just wasn't an option.

Wait! Excitement! There are work study volunteer opportunities! I apply! I am excited! I'm a great volunteer, and have experience, and I sent them this blog, and although I'm not super active in the Portland community, I am enthusiastic and express such enthusiasm with grammar and punctuation! But not emoticons! Because I have standards!

A few weeks later, I get an email informing me that, unfortunately, I have not been awarded a workstudy. That there were limited spots. That they are sorry, but that they hope to see me at the event. I am saddened, but spend the afternoon moving money around, to see if I could maybe pay for a day ticket. Alas, no dice.

Another email the next day, from the Education Committee, telling me that if I still want to volunteer, I can volunteer to set up the lectures and classes (which are my favorite parts anyway). I extrapolate (and learn later: wrongly) that this means I can show up and attend just the parts I volunteer for without having to pay. I am excited again! There is hope! I write an e-mail back to Eddy (we'll call him Eddy), the Education Committee Coordinator, with my schedule preferences for working the lectures and my grammatically evidenced gratitude!

Eddy is very kind in his reply, but has bad news for me. Everyone must register for the event, and if I wanted to volunteer, I would have to buy a ticket for the weekend. I tell him "oh." I tell him "bummer." I tell him "thank you for letting me know," and still, I am enthusiastic, because Eddy really is very kind, and he offers to maybe help me get involved in other kink activities around Portland, which especially right now, with Jamie and my boyfriend out of town, would be a nice refreshing burst of fellow kinksters in my life.

We ping back and forth a few times.

And then, and then... and then he tells me, don't hold your breath, but oh, there might be a few more workstudies available! And oh, he has asked that maybe I get one, to help the Education Committee! And oh, the next day, an e-mail from Vicky (we'll call her Vicky), the Volunteer Coordinator of Kinkfest, saying yes, she is pleased, saying yes, I have been awarded a workstudy! Full workstudy!

Hurray!

So, there's a meeting on Saturday, of the volunteers. I'm really excited to go, and I'm really excited to volunteer (and there will, I'm sure, be much writing on this blog about kinkfest over the weekend).

But it was interesting, this whole financial process. Because there have been times in my life where yeah, a workstudy would have been nice, but not necessary. There are times when I would have applied, and been rejected, and somehow scrounged up the money to go anyway.

This just isn't one of those times. And it was interesting to see, in many of the emails (not Eddy's, but some other ones) how it seemed... optional? Somehow. How in the underlying message, there was a "we know you applied for this thing because you can't really pay for this, but just in case you can still: here are some options."

I'm not trying to criticize Kinkfest. I understand that continuing to offer opportunities to those who might be able to afford them is awesome, and they asked, in between emails about workstudy and further offers, if I still wanted to volunteer - it was overtly consensual, and finance-conscious. Rather, I'm reflecting on my own personal difficulties in having things offered to me, and not being able to take them for financial reasons. I am, for the first time in a little while, farther on the other side of the line; I am definitively more poor than I was a month ago.

It's not something I'm unfamiliar with, but in a way, I'm learning to be poor again. The timing of all this is remarkable, because not only has my financial situation shifted, but there's the kinkfest scholarship thing, as well as the graduate school scholarship thing. I'm getting acceptance letters (yup! two!), and in the same breath, they offer me spot in their program, and a letter saying how much money I'm (not) getting to go there. One of the schools I've been accepted to (ranked 24th in the country, wow) is already out because I can't pay for it.

But I'm learning to sit with it. I'm learning to trust that, along the way, the right school or the right festival will come along ("right" including the money aspect of what it is to be right for me). I'm not especially bitter about it. Money is just another factor, and this is just where I am right now.

Anyway, that was a serious digression into non-feminist non-kinky territory. Or maybe: thoughts about economic barriers in the kink world deserves it's own dedicated post.

To end on a more relevant note: I just read a Lee Harrington blogpost on "asking," which links to Amanda Palmer's recent Ted Talk on the same topic. Asking is good, asking is important, and like Palmer says, when you connect with people, everybody feels good about giving.

The Conflation Game

it's a pie chart! kink is the red. just 'cause.

I get pretty excited when kinky articles or posts pop up in non-kinky settings. Feminist blogs, or blogs of my friends, will occasionally feature kinky subject matter, and it puts my worlds together in a really great way. It's both that my sexuality feels less relegated to a dark corner of the internet, but also that it's somehow less pigeonholed, less quarantined (because even when kink isn't judged worse than... other aspects of being human, it's often very insular: people talk about kink in kink spaces, with kink people, and that's the only place it happens). Coming across it this way, it feels like part of a whole, an integrated whole, as opposed to a separate space.

I had a moment like this with a post by sex geek on feministing; the post is long, really long, but it does a good job of breaking down how the mainstream media talks about kink, and tackles a couple of recent and particularly egregious examples. One of my favorite of sex geek's points, and a thread throughout the post, is the conflation of kink and violence; or rather, the mainstream's choice to ignore how pivotal, and how essential, and what a cornerstone, and what-other-language-can-I-look-for-to-reinforce-this-point, consent is to the kink community (I've also written about this conflation before, from a more personal context, so I'm excited to see it getting discussed other places).

It's like the flour in bread, dudes; if you leave it out, you don't have "sorta kinda something like bread." You have water and yeast and sugar. Which is both gross, and very, very far from bread.

Frivolous or Pathological: The Options of Kink

Although I've written before about some things that irk me about Dan Savage, I keep listening to his podcast. Partly because he's says great things much of the time, and partly because, as a sex nerd, I like to listen to other sex nerds.

On his most recent podcast, a caller asked about whether power exchange was at the core of all fetishes, and remarked that he saw, under the wide umbrella of what we call deviance or kink or BDSM, common themes of power exchange, control, etc. I'm inclined to agree with him (and even to take it a step further: to say that sex, even the most obviously non-kinky sex, has elements of power exchange somewhere in there), although that's not exactly what I wanted to write about here.

Savage invites an author and researcher on the program to talk about the caller's question, one Jesse Bering. And the conversation didn't go the way I expected. Here's some of it, transcribed:

Bering: He's referring to sadomasochism essentially. I wouldn't say that sadomasochism is a common feature of all the fetishes or all the paraphilias. I think it's a... it's a subtype in itself. 

Savage: Don't you think that so many fetishes are, at bottom, about power and control and dominance? I mean, even a foot fetishist -   

B: Not really. 

S: No? 

B: I mean, I think the argument would have to made. I think there are foot fetishists that are also sadomasochistic, but I don't think they necessarily have to go together. 

[conversation veers into fetish as a term, etc., and how defining between "fetish" as a term is important]

B: But something that happens to sort of turn you on or makes your arousal more exacerbated is very distinct, very different from having sort of a clinically diagnosable paraphilia or fetish. Umm, so the terminology is slippery, but I think it's important as well. 

S: Okay, so if not all paraphilias and fetishes involve power, why is it that so many people's fetishes and kinks do involve power? 

B: Well I do think that the sadomasochistic component is a very strong one, and it does underly a lot of human sexuality, um, you know, typically, you wouldn't consider someone to be a sadist unless they're really sort of genuinely causing harm and distress to somebody who's not giving consent. I mean, they really take the pleasure in the fact that they're causing somebody else pain and suffering. But most people who are sadomasochistic, the sort of S&M, BDSM community, you know, they're sort of what John Money, a psychologist, called "velvet dragons." They're sort of playing with simulated pain. Very few people are sort of genuinely committed to the role of being a Sadist. Or, you know, they have limits to the extent to which they're agreeable to being the masochist in the interaction. Um, you know, a woman who's sort of biting into her husbands rear end and calling him a sissy little bitch or something like that, that's not really a sadist, that's sort of playful -  

S: But that's sort of an arousing power game, and so many people's kinks and paraphilias sort of tap into that, those arousing power games. Does that have something to do with the fact that we're just monkeys in shoes, or that ...[something I couldn't decipher]... we're deeply hierarchical primates,and playing with hierarchies, and flipping roles and inverting power dynamics is inherently arousing, gets the blood going? 

B: I do think that, I mean clearly what these types of interactions suggest is the eroticization of power differential, and you can change roles in the bedroom where it's... not as easy to do that, in your everyday life. So, I do think it's striking at some core feature of human sexuality, and getting into some animalistic aspects of our underlying psychology. And you know, you do find all sorts of variants of power differentials like this all across different societies and human cultures.

So first, I need to point out that Bering is using the term "sadomasochistic" in both a confusing and vaguely old-school fashion. As in the first printing of The Bottoming Book (of which I'm a proud owner) and many early books about kink, the term "S&M" or "sadomasochism" is used to refer to all things kinky; power exchange, playing with pain, sissy play, puppy play, whatever you want to put in that category. Now a days, with the coining of terms like "kink" and "BDSM," "sadomasochism" has, from what I can tell, returned to it's original meaning: namely, referring to sadism and masochism. Referring to pain. And while I think the history is probably where Bering got the use of his term, it's confusing when he conflates sadomasochism with power exchange, or general kink, over and over. He's not exactly wrong, so much as vague, and from someone who goes on to point out how important it is to define our terms, I find that sort of funny. Especially if when that someone is a sex researcher speaking as a guest on a show about sex.

Second, there's a polarization that happens in Bering's language, and it's pretty disappointing to hear it, especially from someone who's writing books about perverts. It's when Bering starts to talk about who's really a sadist, and characterizes the S&M that happens in the BDSM communities as "playing with simulated pain."

What he's trying to do, I think, isn't really so bad. Differentiating kinksters from scary sociopaths is great, and I understand that, in our current society, it's still a necessary distinction to make (to say nothing of the fact that it's true, we're not). But what happens, when Bering tries to say this, is that kink (the kink that's risk-aware, that's consensual) gets characterized as sort of meaningless. Bering uses words and phrases like "simulated," "[not] genuinely committed," "not a real sadist," (and I'll leave a rant about what makes a sadist "real" to the side, for now, although I think it's mostly that Bering's using a different definition of "sadist" than most sadists I know. Again, define your terms). I think there's a phrase pretty early on in the conversation that sums up an often unnoticed, prevalent attitude in so, so much of the mainstream view of kink.

"But something that happens to sort of turn you on or makes your arousal more exacerbated is very distinct, very different from having sort of a clinically diagnosable paraphilia or fetish."

Throughout the conversation, these are the two options that Bering offers: you can have a silly little fetish that "exacerbates" (as if sexuality some kind of rash) your arousal, or you can be clinically ill. If you choose the first, your interest in kink/a fetish item/power exchange can't really be taken seriously, or isn't really important, or is just playing and look at the goofy little kinkster. Choose the second, and you're ill, and there's something wrong with you, and you need help.

And this is the option given, if you've got kinky proclivities, by much of the world. I don't think Bering really meant anything by it, and it was great that Savage pushed him to explain why, then, power exchange is such a big part of human sexuality (or, in his own way, challenging Bering on his de-legitimizing language and attitudes). But I don't think that excuses pointing out the lack of a third option here, the option that I and many lovely perverts I know tend to choose.

That this way of expressing ourselves can, all at once, be deeply felt, serious, playful, emotional, honest, vulnerable, and healthy. That the presence of consent doesn't make the pain any less real (I mean, has Bering ever seen someone take a long, hard, consensual beating? There's nothing simulated about it), and that the "deviant" nature of this kind of sex doesn't make it any less than other kinds of sex.

Basically, that I can say: masochism and submission are essential parts of my sexuality, and that doesn't make me sick. Yes, I need this to really get off (chosen intentionally: need); yes, this is the most true way I can express myself sexually; and no, that isn't a problem.

As in a recent post (where I go more in-depth about silly vs. serious sex and kink) I'm not trying to say that any sex (much less all kinky sex) needs to be super duper serious all the time. I'm just saying that people who pontificate about how it can't be serious, or if it is, it must be a diagnosable pathology, need to shut up already. Because, as the abbreviations used above denote (and to go with the ever-present acronym tendency of the kinky world), that's a bunch of BS.

The Only Kind of Porn That's (almost) Impossible To Find

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Kink in The NYT

Oh man! Guys guys guys guys guys!

There's an article about BDSM in the New York Times!

The New York Fucking Times!

And it doesn't totally suck! Yes, they sound like people talking about some strange breed of believed-extinct animal at certain points, and they mention That Book far too often, but still!

Plus, they've got comments in from Lee Harrington, which is just... icing on the cake.

The drippy, sweaty, perverted little cake.

(That's the second cake metaphor today... Maybe I need to bake more).

Anyway. Check it out, have opinions, but mostly, I think, just it's existence is pretty huge. We're not in Kansas anymore, kiddos. And fuck, what a big wide delicious world it is.

Sex as Sacred Union

In a Venn diagram of people in theater, kinksters, and poly folk, there's considerable overlap. I'm not sure if it's as remarkable as the geeky vs. kinky graph, but it's close. Something about subcultures and niche social groups and other-than-mainstream beliefs, probably. Or that it's a self-perpetuating feedback loop of friends having interests spreading to friends, etc etc.

Regardless of why, I've got a fellow stage manager friend, who's also poly, and we bumped into each other the other night. As expected, it was late at night, in a mostly empty theater. She was doing paperwork after a rehearsal, I was helping a friend tape out a floor (for those of you not in theater, taping out a floor is when you mark out the set, in tape, in the rehearsal space, so the actors can practice on it. It's actually one of my favorite bits of stage management). We were all tired and a little fried, but again, as expected, got to talking. In this business, with it's strange hours and ridiculous time commitments and insular subject matter, we all take the social time where we can get it, which mostly means theater people are friends with other theater people

She got to talking about a lover of hers (her word, not mine; "lover," always ends up sounding too much like shag carpet and shiny shirts with gold chains, to me) who, after much discussion, she'd finally found a balance with. He wasn't interested much in her theater friends, or that community, and she wasn't much interested in his kinky proclivities. But they'd found a happy medium, a good level of investment and commitment for both of them, and she felt like they were, after a year, finally hitting a happy pace and frequency for each other. Especially considering how into the kink scene he'd gotten lately, she said, which just wasn't her thing.

"Yeah, whips and chains and pain, it's not for me. I'm about sex as sacred union, and if that's not you, then no thank you."

And I'm sure she didn't mean it as anything, because for her, kinky sex obviously can't be sacred, or deep, or... whatever it is that she needs sex to be. But it was interesting, hearing those words come out of her mouth, how much it stung. As usual, the sting got me thinking, and as usual, I have thoughts from that thinking.

Much of the world, it seems, especially with the recent media frenzy around That Book That Shall Not Be Named, has become aware of the kink in a way they weren't before. And sure, there are all kinds of ways this perspective (the perspective that's offered by the media, that's offered by The Book, that most of people, when I talk to them, have about kink) is pretty screwed up. But this friend of mine, a woman I know and like and who's sex positive and open and loving, she doesn't really fit into that category. She knows more, and doesn't, from what I can tell, have these biases. She's not a person I would peg (punny, punny) to assume much, if anything, about other people's sex lives. So it was surprising to me, and enlightening, to see this tiny piece of the perspective on kink that, regardless of where you get your representations of kink from, or sex positive or poly you are, might be much more prevalent than I realized.

Different than the idea that being kinky is deviant, or a sickness, or exists only in the sex industry, or is something that dirty, fringe people do in dark hotel rooms, there's this idea that kinky sex is funny, or silly, or, in some fashion, trivial. That it doesn't run as deep as sex without pain, without overt power exchange, without role playing or costumes or implements.

That kinky sex is, inherently, less than non-kinky sex.

This might not be a revelation to many people, but it was for me. I thought back on conversations I've had with friends and acquaintances, and started to wonder what kind of weight they gave the words I use, how the meaning behind those words and ideas shifted from the moment they came out of my mouth, to the moment they landed in the brains of those friends. Do they imagine it as a game? As goofy? As trivial or, worse still, as just a mechanism by which I get turned on, as a tool by which I get to the actual, meaningful part: the sex?

Taking kink too seriously has it's own issues, and I'm not trying to advocate that kink = meaning any more so than any "non-kinky" sex must be imbued with meaning. That's entirely up to the practitioners of that given sex, at that given instance of sex. One of my favorite blogs is Happy BDSM, and it serves as a delightful reminder that this is fun, that this is play, that joy comes in smiles and laughter as much with BDSM as without.

The other side of that coin, though, is this reaction I'm having to my friend's comment, the thing that I think so many people don't understand about kink, or don't maybe better said: the thing that they don't even think to consider. That yes, the joy comes with D/s, with role play and bondage, but that it comes because of it as well.

The moment of obeying a command, the seconds between hearing it out of Jamie's mouth and fulfilling the action, the frantic, visceral, immediate compliance: this is sacred to me. The warmth that spreads from my face to my shoulders to the very edges of my skin when I know I've done what's been asked, when I know he's happy with me, proud of me, when I know I've been good, really good, whatever I've overcome to get there: that is sacred to me. The sound of a cane through the air; the sharp shock of as it flicks across my ass, upturned in the air, although it's frightening, difficult, shameful for me to keep there, but he wants me to keep it there, so I do; the pain changing in the seconds after the strike, spreading, ebbing from sting to pressure to a sweet and steady burn; the residual warmth of the line as he winds up for another, and another, layered in succession until I'm screaming: this is sacred to me. Running the tips of my fingers up to my neck, feeling the wide band of black leather there, knowing that it is only a thing, but my, what meaning we have put in it, what incredible heights such a simple, ritual object can carry us to: this is sacred to me.

So yes, kink is sometimes silly: sex, in any of it's permutations, should be able to be silly. But frivolous? Or employed for some other, better purpose, by definition? Or lesser in some way than other kinds of sex? No way.

because isn't that the face of the radically ecstatic?

And I know that most people reading this are with me on it; I know I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise, really. But I think a lot of my passion about this comes from how incredible it's been for me to discover this; how basically excellent it's been to find. I'm invested and passionate about this part of myself. Wanting to scream from the rooftops: "Look! Yes! Look! This is how I am! I've found what I want and I get to have it! Isn't it amazing? Isn't it just fucking unbelievable?"

A few dictionary definitions of scared pretty much sum it up: "dedicated to some person, purpose, or object; regarded with reverence." In those moments, I revere him; there isn't a better word. I am dedicated; I am a dedication, dripping wet, prostrate, ass welted and panting through open lips. This is my church; this is one of the ways I find myself most joyous in the world.

So yes, Sir, yes Sir this is my sacred union. This is the way I butter my bread. And not as an appetizer, not simply to fill my stomach, but because this bread and this butter are my first choice.

Kink Documentary (and James Franco)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Corset Time!

I really like corsetry. Like, I'd go so far as to say it's a fetish (as far as you can say anything that's linked to sex already is fetishizable). Here, then, are three of my favorite corsets. I have a few more, but they're cheapo-type things, not made with any real... staying power. Har har!

Sir* helped me out with this (both the lacing and the photos - because although I can lace myself in, it's not fun, and it's never quite right). And although they're mainly about the corsets, I am, in fact, putting suggestive photos of myself on the internet, so it also might be a little bit about... whatever that is. Will it come back to bite me (and not in the fun way)? Maybe. But, risk-aware, I'm doing it anyway.

First, red and black leather:

front

side

back

It came from kinkfest, so it has a bunch of memories wrapped up in it. It's the only real underbust I have, and for that reason, and also because it's leather, I think it's my favorite. It looks a little small on me from the back, but we didn't really take the time to get me into it properly (lace, let it rest, lace, let it rest, lace, etc). So usually, it closes a fair bit tighter than that.

Next: the one I made that's not really a corset yet!

side/back

This one is a work in progress. I'm not sure why we didn't get a front photo (or maybe I lost it?), but I haven't put the boning in yet. It's made from my first pair of backstage blacks - carharrts that I'd patched through a couple times, and finally had the idea to turn into something else. It's underbust, but over-the-shoulder (and you can kind of see... where my boob juts out at the weird angle there? Yeah, that's the underbust part. I thought it looked super funny, in the photo - hello boob! - but that's sort of how my boobs look when they're... well, when I'm bent over, as such, for any number of nefarious purposes).

Anyway. I've got boning for it, I'm just trying to find the time to put it in...

And finally, my first ever corset, and probably a shy second to the red and black leather:

back

front (with bruises :)

This was a present to myself after I'd quit smoking for three months, when I was nineteen. The quitting didn't take, but the corset did. It's black satin. It's missing one hook in the front. I was wearing it the first (and only) time I was ever suspended. Depending on where it sits, it can either give me serious cleavage, or (more like this picture), make my nipples just visible (and playable with) over the top. Okay, maybe this one's my favorite. More likely, they're all my favorite.

So, that's the news from Corsetry Land, where all the women are strong, all the men are feminists, and all the children are yet-to-be thanks to modern methods of birth control.

*Asterix from the top: I think my partner needs a name, like a real name, on here. I mean, he has a name (sh'duh), but I don't want to use his real one, and "Sir" is sort of... formal. And I like that it's formal. In fact, that's part of the reason why he needs another one, in this context, for me: I want to keep it formal.

Options I'm thinking of include: Jamie, and that's as far as I've gotten. Suggestions welcome!

I Have Herpes, part deux

I first cried about having herpes before I'd seen a doctor, and before I had any test results back. I was on a farm, a little ways outside of Dublin, Ireland, laying with my partner on our bed. I'd be uncomfortable the last couple of days, and it was a different kind of uncomfortable than I'd previously experienced with vulvovaginal distress. My clitoris hurt, and it hurt to pee, and I had painful, sort of itchy spots on my outer left labia. I hadn't looked in a mirror, because I hadn't brought one on the trip. I probably could have found one, but I'm not sure I wanted to look in a mirror.

I was scared, because it hurt differently. I was scared, because I was fed up and tired of having this part of my body be in such grief all the time. I was scared that my partner would think I'd broken the boundaries of our relationship, or even more, that I'd think he'd broken the boundaries of our relationship. I was scared because I thought I might have an STD.

We lay in bed, and he asked, in lieu of a mirror, if I'd like him to look.

This is something I have incredible difficulty with, even in the best of times. Want to touch me? Great. Oral? Awesome, let's dim the lights. Want to blind fold me and put me in a spreader bar? Sweet, I can deal with that (because clearly, this is something I don't have control over - one of my personal advantages in power play, among many). But actually looking, per my request, at my vulva/vagina? Why would you do that? Why would I ever ask you to do that?

But I nodded, because as always, I felt very safe with him. I was still horrified and nervous and full of shame about it, but how safe I felt with him let me do this anyway. I opened my legs, and he looked around. His hands were very tender, pressed very gently, because he knew it hurt. He came back up to me, and looked me in the face.

"It looks like a bump." He said. And I started to cry. He explained that it could be anything, and he was right; it could have been any number of things. We flew back to the states, and I could barely look at him. He had seen that part of me, sore and red and angry and in full light. He held my hand the whole way.

I shook a lot when I went to the doctor. I was hot, and we didn't have a car, so I walked a couple of miles to the nearest Zoomcare, which with your first herpes outbreak in full swing, let me tell you, is no picnic. I was flushed and trying to hold back tears. We waited for test results for a few days, and when they came back, I really fell apart.

I saw an e-mail from Zoomcare on my phone, and stopped mid-sentence talking to my roommate to go to computer and read it. I sat on my bed. My partner sat on the bed next to me. It was the slowest an e-mail has ever loaded in my life, and then is was loaded, and then I was reading, and then there it was, positive. A big fat positive. I closed the computer. It took everything for me not to throw it across the room. I sobbed, and told him, choking on my own crying, that he needed to leave, that we were finished, that he needed to forget about me and go.

No, he didn't, and no, that wasn't the most mature reaction I've ever had to bad news. But he knew that, and he held me, like he always does. He held me while I pushed against him (this is a thing we do sometimes - it's negotiated, and we both like it, just to be clear). He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and I pushed and pushed against his chest. We ended up half on the bed, none of my words making sense, him holding on, and rocking me like a child.

It got slowly, slowly better from there. And I write all this not to be dramatic, and not (I hope) for my own creative indulgence. I write all this to say to whoever reads this (and I'm not sure it's anyone, but): I've come a long, long way. I was convinced, at the outset, that I was a dirty, infected, horrible person. That there was no way I could maintain the confidence or self-worth needed to be in a relationship, let alone ask anyone to be in that relationship with me. I was convinced my current relationship would buckle under the pressure of me dealing with herpes, and that after that, I'd never have sex again, because I wouldn't ever be able to ask anyone to do that. If my relationship survived, I was convinced any kind of poly lifestyle was totally closed to me, and I was convinced that I would never be able to have sex with my partner without thinking about herpes, my herpes, the sores or potential sores on my genitals, the virus that was going to live, always, at the base of my spine.

I was also convinced that I would always feel that way. That there was no light at the end of the herpes tunnel.

If this blog post, the previous, or the next, are any indication, I think I was wrong.

Next up: How I feel currently about herpes, and stupid slut-shaming doctors. Damn the Man! Save the Empire!

Happily bruised as always,

The Good Girl

New Sidebar Links

Hello, small squandron of people who maybe read this blog!

I'm linking a couple of new things in the sidebar of this blog, wanted to give a heads up about them.

The Masocast is an entertaining, informative (and often very funny) podcast out of New York. Check it out.

Because of my recent frustrations with the reddit kinky communities, I started my own. It's very small yet (but so is this place, so it seems fitting), and there's a zero tolerance policy for anything bigoted, creepy, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, or otherwise shitty. I'm excited.

Bruised and happy as always,

The Good Girl

Imagery of Kink

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I work in theater, and that I'm currently ASMing on a play that is very much up my alley, re: feminism, consent, kink, etc.

Because it's a new play (and because the rehearsals/reading are all under a workshop umbrella), I can't talk about specifics. But there is something that comes up in the play that... really challenged my riteoughness about kink and consent, I think. Or not challenged; maybe, put in perspective. Maybe.


There's an arc in the play involving a woman, in the attic of the house they live in. She's gagged, but not tied up, and debatably drugged. The details aren't important, but the debate we're having in rehearsals is, basically, whether or not it's consensual. And how that affects... a lot of things in the play. Choices characters make, what kind of people they are, what the play says as a whole.

The debate about whether the woman is there consensually (or if that's even possible, with the debatable drugs involved) isn't one I can tackle here. I mean, I could, but I don't think it's appropriate to go into the details of the play, as it's still a play in workshop. But the dramaturgy happening in the room; that is simple, and that is fascinating.

Dramaturges are the literary and research department of the development of the production (for more info, see the above link).  For a play in workshop/reading (which is what this is), they're another analytical voice in the room, as sometimes (as with our play), they bring a smattering of visuals pulled from the text of the play. For this play, those images include frat boys, frat houses, the anatomy of a cell, a pair of slippers, images of strippers and strip clubs, and, of course, images of bound women.

They're all pulled from metaphorical images, or actual events in the play.

We refer to it as our "wall of porn."

I didn't think much of it until a few days ago, when I was moving it between rehearsal spaces, and actually looked at the images of the bound women. There are two.

The first is a highly styalized photo, maybe even from a photoshoot with a professional model. The woman has a blindfold over her eyes, and a band of fabric around her nipples, pressing her breasts in so they bludge above and below. The shot cuts off just above her brow line, and just below her breasts. Both the blindfold and the band of fabric are muddied, but in a professional photoshoot kind of way. Her collar bones are promiment, her lips are full. We can't see her eyes.

The second is less professional looking. It's a full body shot of a woman in normal underwear, cuffed at the wrists and ankles, with chain running from the cuffs to the wall behind her. She's spread eagled, but standing, sort of almost smiling. It looks like it was taken for an instructional manual of some kind, like "this is a woman in leather and chain bondage, see illustration 2.43." It's well lit and simple.

The two photos couldn't be more different, but they have a couple of similarities that make them both problematic for the play.

1). They scream consensual.
2). They scream organized kink.

Scenario one is that, from a dramaturgical point of view, the woman in the play is there consensually, and there's some kind of kinky shit going on. If this were the case, then the play assumes a few things about kink: 1) that it's sort of like abuse, or is abuse, and 2) that it's okay to leave a bound person (or gagged person - it's never specified if she's bound or not) alone in a room for extended periods of time (or, at all, really).

Scenario two is that, from a dramaturgical point of view, the women in the play *isn't* there consensually, which brings us around to an even more problematic, albeit similar point. Namely, that consent doesn't matter in kink, and that the women in these pictures actually are representative of the woman in the play; that there is no difference between being tied up with consent, and being tied up without.

To put this all in perspective, I know that there was probably .02 seconds of thought put into these pictures, and that our wall of porn is mostly for comedic affect. The work of dramaturgy is not clip-art. But in a room where the subject of women, consent, gender relationships, and feminism are at the heart of what we're discussing, I think it's fascinating that we have obviously consenting, styalized women tacked up to a pin board in order to represent a woman who may or may not be stashed in an attic against her will. I think it says a lot about the split second assumptions we make about kinky imagery.

But I am, as always, an ASM. So I sit in the corner and keep my mouth shut. Would you like irony rare, or medium?

Ex; why? (or, I tried to talk to my former boyfriend about kink. It didn't go well).

I've had isolated kink negative moments over the years. It happens in much the same way that misogynist moments happen, most of the time. Almost unnoticeable, almost too subtle to point out in the moment. The sneaky nature of these moments are part of what makes them the most frustrating. When they're obvious, I feel totally fine speaking up, and can point out clearly and discuss with someone - that's the easy one. But when I speak up at the sneakier bastards, I end up feeling like an oversensitive whistleblower. Sometimes it's because I get painted that way directly, sometimes it just worms it's way in.

I sometimes imagine the subtler moments, the ones where I don't speak up (because yeah, sometimes, I don't), collecting in a reservoir somewhere. Like every time I push them under the rug... well, the bulge in the rug gets bigger. So big that, eventually, I trip over it (har har). And it creates a tension that comes out at inappropriate moments. I wonder if I read into things too much, or if I'm becoming actually oversensitive. It's a self-perpetuating problem, really.

All this theory comes in the context of an exchange I had with an ex-boyfriend. We've been trying to be friends again, and I had asked how much, in our e-mail exchanges, he wanted to hear about my romantic life, trying to gage how comfortable he was. Not even trying to gage; I actually asked, flat out, how much he wanted to hear about my romantic life. And he said "Tell me whatever you want to tell me, it's okay." And so I did. I told him a little bit about my current partner, but mostly, I told him about discovering kink for myself, in a way I never had before. I told him about kink fest. I told him about being glad, excited, revelatory in exploring this thing I'd wanted to explore for so long.

And he flipped.

To be clear, the e-mail I wrote him was about all kinds of things: photography, books we'd both read, the college we both attended, Chicago, Portland, etc. There was lots in there, including a few sentences in the middle about kink, and going to kink fest. I mentioned the lectures and the vendors, and mentioned that the play party in the nighttime had been intimidating.

When I got his response, it was all about kink, sex, and how insensitive I'd been in talking about it. It was angry and hurt, and that's okay, and I feel bad about that (even though I'd really, really tried to avoid that by asking in the first place). I was pretty pissed off, though, because parts of his response were borderline misogynist, and just sort of... asshole-ish. Which was surprising to me, having known this man fairly well and thought him to be a pretty decent person. So I wrote him a fairly scathing e-mail back.

And then I went back and re-read his e-mail, a few days ago, and I'm not sure if I was reading in more than I'd thought. Below are the most offensive parts of his e-mail, and at the moment, they don't seem that bad. Or maybe I'm apologizing for myself. Who knows.

"In fact, from my perspective, a lot of our most intense sexual experiences together involved me opening myself up (or trying, at any rate) to being the kind of dominant figure that turned you on.  Do you really---I mean, really---think that I want to hear about how effectively this guy is getting you off?  I'm not sure what's intended by a "totally overwhelming playtime at night..." but I'm pretty sure nobody that was there needs me to know about it."

I really appreciated what you did, accepting my kink, telling me so, trying to expand your own horizons. And that was awesome in it's own right, and isn't threatened (I promise) by what's going on in my life now. And no, I don't think you want to hear about that. WHICH IS WHY THAT'S NOT THAT I TALKED ABOUT.

And like anybody there would care what you knew about their sex life. That woman was paddling her eighty year old boyfriend under his pink frilly tutu! She DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU.

"I don't need to be reminded of our sex life, (such as it was) in the context of your new, better sex life.  I don't need that kind of emotional... noise." 

I didn't really even know how to respond to this. I thought, when Edward (let's call him Edward, shall we?) and I were together, our sex life was alright. I mean, we did the weird long distance thing, and it was really tame, but other than that, I didn't have any complaints. And yeah, my sex life is better now, but I wasn't talking about that. Oy.

" I mean, on what planet is it normal to email a guy whose heart you broke eight months ago to tell him just how sexually satisfied you are in your new relationship?"

Okay, 1) I didn't talk about sexually satisfied I was. Ever. And 2) Welcome to Planet We Are Adults. We here at WAA try to respect each others boundaries and speak to each other in mature and emotionally aware ways. And when someone doesn't, we call the WAAmbulance, and they're escorted back to earth.

"...you are either unwilling or unable to recognize that that sort of shit can really stay between you and your man."

The parts that make me most angry still (besides the general... hostility of his tone) is his comment that "that short of shit can really stay between you and your man." We had a few exchanges after this, and I quoted it back to him, except that I mis-quoted, replacing the "can" with a "should." Which of course, sparked a long argument about semantics. Which is pretty irrelevant now, because whether you can or you should, the tone implied is "you should have known better," which is... stupid.

Whether I overreacted or he overreacted, it's pretty clear that we have fundamentally different views of kink. When I wrote to him about kink, I didn't even mention sex, and in his response, it's all he talks about. And I'm not about to try and claim kink as some kind of above-physical-sexuality-über-etherial-hippiewoowoo-force, but, in my life, it's about much more than sex. It's part of identity, a huge part of my sexuality, and intellectually fascinating.

And maybe that's part of what hurt the most. That this person, who I was trying to be friends with again, is someone who I can't share this part of myself with yet. Either because he's not ready for that (which I totally respect), and that un-readiness manifests in focusing entirely on my sex life, or because kink can't ever be about anything other than sex, for him. And that... well, that sucked.

We haven't talked in a couple of months. I wish it were different.

My Mother

...is a psychologist. A very good one. A very well-studied one, as it turns out.

Mom: Hey, is that a new tattoo?
Me: Oh, uh, yeah.
Mom: When did you get it?
Me: In Ireland, in Belfast, actually. [Partner's name] too.
Mom: Huh. Is it... it looks like a DSM-IV number...
Me: Yup.
Mom: Oh! Cool! Oh... which one?
Me: Well...

(crickets...)


Me: You really want to know?
Mom: Yeah. Sure...
Me: It's the code for sexual masochism.

(crickets...).




So. That's done, I guess.

The Hippie Woo-Woo

I finished reading Radical Ecstasy recently, meant to post about it a while ago, and haven't gotten around to it until now. The book deals with ecstatic experiences in BDSM, descriptions of them, some technique advice, and a lot of descriptions of scenes. What "ecstatic experience," means is sort of up for grabs, and the authors spend most of the first part of the book trying to define what it is. Or what it might be. Or how it might apply to you. They are, admittedly, limited by language (which they also talk a lot about), and also by the lack of vocabulary surrounding this sort of thing. It might sound like I'm bullshitting my way through a description, but really, it's a hard book to explain, partly because it's a book that admits it's subject is hard to explain. It's really honest and open and great, like all of Easton and Hardy's books, but it's definitely more... woo-woo than say, The New Bottoming Book. Which was both good for me, and also got me into Super Serious BDSM Mode (see later on below).

On of my favorite things about Easton and Hardy is that their woo-woo is a self-admitted one. From The New Topping Book (also by them, along with The Ethical Slut and The New Bottoming Book and a handful of others):

"...one of Janet's regular partners, a highly intuitive body worker and martial artist, says indignantly, 'I don't do woo-woo shit'). But in our experience, the best tops pretty much universally use these concepts and techniques, whether they do so consciously or not."

They do a great job at the beginning of Radical Ecstasy explaining that, although they use words like "transcendence," and "ecstasy," and "spiritual," they know those words freak some people out, and so they give a long list of other words readers are encouraged to substitute.

I'm a bit of a hippie myself, although my sarcasm and cynicism often outweigh my woo-woo. I was a little surprised with how easy this book was for me, even though it was very.... spiritual (clearly, I can't even use the word without an ellipsis beforehand). Mostly, I just thought of what they were saying in the context of the Forever Place, or feeling close with Sir. There is something that happens in kink, for me, that's more-than-me. Or maybe, it's just an experience of myself that I don't get very often, and that I don't really believe I'm capable of creating with just me, so it seems like there's something "other" going on.

To clarify: I'm not a religious person, or really, a spiritual person. I'm a hippie, I think, because I believe a lot in do-no-harm, because I like and try to practice things like empathy and compassion. I also wear flowy skirts from time to time, had dreadlocks for a couple years, and like to go camping/make bonfires/do illegal substances on occasion/play the guitar, etc. I'm pretty sure that when we die we all turn to dirt, and I think the planet got to where it is by a lot of very complicated scientific and evolutionary phenomena that I don't understand, but that are nonetheless correct. I don't believe the placement of the stars at the time of my birth had anything to do with anything, and I don't have a spirit animal. Although I do like selkies and the mythos around them quite a bit.

But there's a certain magic to kink for me (not all the time, but sometimes) that I think of in the same way that a lot of people think about god, or spirituality (it happens in a real life too, not just in kink, but it's most obvious during kinky times, i think). But my magic (god, I hate hate hate that I can't find a better word for that) doesn't come from anything external. People are so incredibly complex; they have conscious minds and subconscious minds, they have infinitely individual experiences and personalities, and from that, there's a kind of unknown that I really enjoy. This is all sounding pretty new-agey. It's not meant to. Let's try again:

People are fucking complicated. Even me, tiny little me, has so much going on with her feelings and her thinkings that the possibilities of what she'll do or say or feel next are, in any given moment, pretty damn close to infinite. Put a single person, with all that depth, together with another single person, and man, the amount of shit that could go on there is... totally staggering.

This complexity, and the mystery within this complexity, are as close to religion as I come, and I'm pretty sure they're what keep sex (and life) pretty interesting, despite the fact that copulation is something I practice on a very regular basis. They're also what make, I think, the BDSM with me and Sir feel so fucking cool.

Imagine: He's angry, so angry, this malicious, dangerous, cut-throat look in his eyes and his muscle tensing, and he's coming, believe or not, for me. He's got rope in his hands, and the way he moves is methodical, intentional, making whatever is pulsing beneath the surface all that much scarier. I'm whimpering, frightened, but also prized, and wanting to give over to him. He touches me, red rope across my shoulder, hushing under my arms with a flick at the end, a sinlge sting, a fraction of what comes later. I sigh against it, the rope tightening, resting in the binds.

And that's just writing the very beginning of the stuff that language allows. There is so much other stuff, and the interaction of that other stuff does, I think, take me outside of myself; there are interactions and responses going on that I don't understand, and that I'm not really in control of. And it is ecstatic, and it is the forever place. I don't think it comes from anything but me and Sir being people and doing this together, but that doesn't make it any less incredible.

One side of affect of Radical Ecstasy turned out to be that I added a sort of weight to kink, as in, The Good Girl Gets Über Serious About Playtime All The Time. Which was cool, when Sir was up for it and when were both genuinely wanting to go to really dark places, and to play with the really heavy stuff. But I sort of forgot, for a while, that playing can also just be playing. That BDSM, for it's hard metal benches and deep scary voices and dungeon-esque emotionally possibility, can also just be fun. Like, Sir can pin me down and I can fight back and cry and yell and then, in a breath between moments, I'm also allowed to smile at him, and we're also allowed to have moments of kissing each other like we would walking down the street.

Fuck, even the language there: "we're allowed." Of course we're allowed! It's our sex life, right?

Anyway. Good book, good authors, good sex scenes, make sure you remember that Easton and Hardy aren't talking about all BDSM when they talk about these ecstatic experiences; this part of BDSM is an awesome one, but remember (because I forgot for a while) that you can still be playful. Read it with your hair in pigtails or your fuzzy kink slippers on or something.

"vanilla"

So, there's sex. There's kinky sex, and vanilla sex. Two kinds, right?

Well, wrong (power dynamics are always going on, many people use all kinds of props and roles and scenes, etc. etc.), but that's beside the point. There's a way that kinky people and kinky communities use the word "vanilla" that really bugs me, like it's some dirty, other-caste, somehow unenlightened. And so I want to talk about that. Harrrrr.

This maybe isn't really going to be very long, because that's basically what it is. Kinky people and/or groups and/or the internet use "vanilla," to mean "less than." Not all the time, not by a long shot all the time, but sometimes. Like, when people talk about their partners, or ex-partners, as "just vanilla," or "I think she's pretty vanilla," etc. I understand that, in some cases, what they might be saying is "she's not kinky," but in some other cases, it really starts to sound like they're saying "he's an up-tight, non sex-positive, distant and removed partner." And all those things are crappy. But all those things have nothing to do with whether or not you're kinky.

It's similar to mono/poly conundrum, and resonates a little with The Pervocracy Geek Social Fallacies (I swear, there's going to be a post where I don't link back to there. Maybe). Members of the "out" or "fringe" sexual identity, whatever that may be, look back at the more mainstream sexual identity and talk about it as if it were less than, as if the people still participating in that identity either hadn't gotten around to being deviant yet, or they just weren't smart enough/adventurous enough/whatever enough to figure it out. And then there's this elitist sex attitude, which is... sort of bullshit. No sex is inherently better than any other sex, as long as said sex is: a) consensual, and b) pleasurable for the parties involved.*

*(... and yes, I mean, "bad" sex can be bad because... well, bad sex happens. And I'd say that sex is sort of... worse than good sex. Bad sex = worse than good sex. Oh, tautology).

So I tried to imagine good vanilla sex, and to be honest, it took a little while (I think that's partly because when I imagine sex, I immediately imagine myself as involved somehow, and that... doesn't really work with vanilla sex. Or rather, I couldn't stop the me-vanilla-sex from just morphing into kinky sex somehow†. I eventually had to imagine other people. Anyway). And that was mostly because what I imagined, off the bat, was silent, stilted, non-communicative, non-negotiated, in-the-dark missionary. And that's what I associate with vanilla sex a lot of time. That or over-the-top, fake orgasm, bro-dude/cheerleader sex. It is, evidently, also always hetero-normative.

† I know that there's not really a line, hard and fast in the sand, like this. I know almost everybody plays with power dynamics, etc. But my sweet vanilla scenes kept turning into school-girl-short-skirt-caning sex, or choked-by-the-throat-rapey sex. Anyway.

So then I started thinking about people having really sweet, communicative, quiet sex. Or sex that was really hot and steamy with roof-busting orgasms, but no pain/power/etc. I imagined ladies and I imagined guys. I imagined multiple partners set-ups. This, too is all vanilla sex.

And while it didn't turn me on, it seemed like a pretty awesome sex life. Certainly no sex life that the participants therein should be pitied for, or condescended to about. (How's that for dangling prepositional daisy chains?) º

º I'M SORRY WINSTON!

Like the poly/mono argument, I think there's a reason why we (and I'm just go to go ahead and say "we," without caveatting who I mean. The people who do this sometimes. I've included myself) associate sort of... shitty sex with non-kinky sex, and the reason why poly folks sometimes get a little... proselytizing about how amazing poly is, and how maybe, just maybe, monogamy isn't the right choice, even if you haven't figured it out yet.

Deviant choices, by definition as deviant, must be chosen. Must be talked about and negotiated, because there is no pre-understood framework for them to happen in. More mainstream choices (like "vanilla" sex and/or monogamy) don't have this (basically required) negotiatory step. Which means that nobody has to talk about it. Which means that nobody *communicates* about it. Which means... well, in partnered activities, lack of communication usually yields a less than excellent time for both partners. In other words: crappy sex.

But I don't think all non-kinky relationships are like this. I might posit that more non-kinky relationships are like this than kinky ones, but even then, who knows.

What I do know is that non-kinky sex doesn't automatically mean bad, unenlightened sex. It can mean great sex. And while I completely understand kinksters going to the internet, full of angst, and asking for advice about their "hopelessly vanilla," partners (I've been there, and felt that frustration), I don't think the implied power dynamic there is a fair one. You don't have "the one true way," while your partner is just "not sexually savvy enough too enjoy it." You're both making choices, you both have preferences, and bummer for you, looks like they don't line up.

And that's an honest bummer, but it doesn't make anyone's sexual preferences or expression any better than anybody else's.

So, I'm going to try and avoid using the word "vanilla," from now on, I think. I'm going to stick with "non-kinky," until I come up with something better (and really, non-kinky isn't even very good, with it's definition relying on deviance, and being a lack-thereof-definition and everything). Because vanilla, while delicious as a flavor (yup, I really like vanilla. Like, a lot), isn't so much working for me in a connotative vocabulary kind of way.

the subtleties of sexism; who I am not

I read an interesting article this morning. Frustrating in the way it was framed, different in that, instead of trying to sum-up two sides of a topic, it actually presented two different writers making on each side of an argument, and kept track of statistics, via a push-button poll, about how many peoples' minds were changed after reading the debate. Sounds like it's on a good track, right? And for some of it, it comes back to that track. But from the get-go, the article shows unbaised, neutral framing to be anything but.

First, the introduction starts off with 50 Shades of Grey. I've had damn enough of this book, and talking about it, and talking about it in a BDSM context. It's Twighlight fan fiction, and while I know talking about it as a bad representation of BDSM to the overall population of... the world; I know that's important to do. But I'm just so pissed off at that book, and I'm sick of talking about it. So I'll stop. Anyway.

Replacing the 50 Shades reference with a general "now that BDSM has been revealed to the mainstream media vis This Thing That Is Not That Book," the article goes on to ask, basically, if BDSM erotica is okay. More specifically, the introduction says:

"...people are asking themselves whether this is a topic that empowers the modern woman, or is a fantasy which promotes their degradation and exploitation"

And I think that's a fine question. I know exactly what I the answer is (on an intellectual level), but I think it's a fine question to ask. Except that it isn't the question the article actually asks. In what little space the article takes up before presenting two different sides of the argument, it offers the readers a push-button response to what they think before reading (and then, after reading, the same question again). The initial, "control," question, if you would, isn't the one the introduction initially poses. In our "pre-debate poll," we're asked:

Tell us your opinion before the debate starts to set the starting line

Modern women should feel empowered by S&M pornography.

And then we're offered an "agree," a "disagree," or an "I'm on the fence" option.

The arguments given are pretty standard. One is by Erika Lust, and one by Dawn Hawkins, each with credentials on either side of the issue. Lust, true to her namesake, talks about the consent-oriented, all around sex-positivity of BDSM culture, and more so, how women can be happy and empowered in liking their bodies, their porn, their sex lives, whatever those kinds of porn/sex lives might be etc. She talks about feminism in the way that feminists talk about feminism to people who aren't feminists; it's great. Hawkins talks about porn, and how it's bad, and BDSM, and how it degrades women. Lust outshines Hawkins both in argumentative style and concision; she's well-spoken, and her argument goes deeper to the heart of the issue in less time, instead of skimming the surface with generalized factoids about all porn ever, or sensationalized descriptions of BDSM. I'm pretty biased, sure, but I really believe that, politics aside, Lust argues better.

I write a lot about feminism and BDSM, and that part of this blog is from a personal, emotional standpoint. I have misgivings, and I deal with shame, and I deal with a delicately fluctuating confidence with my sexual preferences. But I know, really I do, that those things aren't the real thing; on an intellectual level, on a logical level, and on a political level, I'm a proud, freaky pervert. And sometimes, emotionally, I'm there too. There's just a lot of cultural mumbo jambalaya that gets in the way.

Which why I find the framing of the debate so, so fascinating. They're not asking "do women feel this way," but rather "should women feel this way." That 'should,' just a slight change of tense, implies so much. It's not for women to decide; that it's not for individuals to decide. That, even in grammar, cultural opinion and oppression is pervasive and destructive. Maybe I sound sensationalist now, but on a certain level, I believe that more subtle sexism can be as much, if not more dangerous, and go far more unnoticed (and by extension unbattled) than that oppression that walks in broad daylight. A wolf in a feminist clothing, or something like that.

Lust sums it up pretty well, actually, at the end of her article:

"And if shame is taken out of the equation, there will be no need for women to wonder whether they can be feminists, and enjoy BDSM images, or practices. In utilizing good erotica -- and porn of all varieties -- to further educate and inspire on the subject of female sexuality and its expression, we can only further empower women to enjoy their bodies, and their sex-lives."

As for the statistics at the end of the debate, another push button pole asks whether or not, again, you disagree or agree. As of this morning, the proportions of the pie chart were almost exactly the same as before people read the article; meaning, some of the people who were on the fence jumped off, but they jumped off in equal numbers on both sides. As of tonight, when I'm writing this, slightly more have gone with the anti-porn, anti-BDSM side of things. The statistics don't mean much to me, though, aside from the fact that it's disturbing, either way you press either button, that so many people think women "should" do things one way or the other. Maybe those people don't read into grammar as much as I do. Or maybe they just don't notice.

And again, while I battle with this question a lot on an emotional level, it's articles like this that bring me around to a fire that often missed, and much needed. Framing of this sort stirs up my hackles, and when the armor's on, the substance beneath fills in beneath it; that sexy slippery stuff that transforms me from a worried, self-conscious, nerdy kinkster who's a little unsure of herself, to a feet-stamping, cane-taking, screaming crying hurricane of female sexuality and intellect... that's the stuff I'm made of.

I guess I owe both a fuck off and a thank you to articles like this. Fuck you for perpetuating this kind of thing in the first place, but a small pittance for your existence, thank you for reminding that who I am is not you; that who I am is so decidedly against you, I am reminded that I am for myself.

Here's to the good girls everywhere. Don't let the push buttons get you down.