Oglaf Nails It (again)

Oglaf is often great, but this one was particularly relevant to my own personal current events. The "kinkier than thou" attitude has come up a few times in the last week, but mostly, I've just seen it closer than usual. I've seen it do more damage than usual. I've seen how much it's just complete bullshit.

I'm really pulling for an occasion to use that sentence in real life. Stamping my feet and balling my fists and scream "Just because I'm not into your stupid pain cake doesn't mean I'm a blushing virgin!" Although, I am pretty into the pain cake, so... maybe that won't work so well.

Up next: Kink from the Frozen Tundra; an expedition.

Everyday Feminism: A Rant

triple irony points. not, i do not know where you can get one; yes, I made it.

More sexytime stories soon to come. But for now, a tirade. Really and truly. Consider yourself primed.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm going through a second adolescence. It's not the butterfly stomach about my man or the weird unpredictable body - although these things are also hilariously reminiscent of my more heavily poxed days. Nope, it's that sometimes, these days, I find myself embarrassed, and it's a flavor of embarrassed I haven't felt since those greasy days of yore.

It's the shame that comes with enthusiastic, almost zealous conviction. It's the moment of realizing exactly how loud I've been yelling, and for exactly how long, and that maybe it's a little louder and little bit longer that is deemed entirely appropriate for that particular situation. The level of passion reminds me of the way I used to feel about my future, about my parents, about my school and what I was learning and what I was planning on doing with my life. There's a desperation in this kind of security, a zealous knowledge that yes, this is really is so important, can't you see? It's a grasping, a pushing to the edges of what is acceptable emotional fervor behind a concept. But it's okay. I was a teenager. It was understandable that I would hate (instead of dislike) things, that I would cry (instead of be a little upset). That I would yell. A lot.

(I would also sing and dance and generally, bodily, try to get the volume of feeling out through me anyway I could).

And I've noticed, in the last year or so, that I'm doing many of these things again. And, like when I was a teenager, I'm getting embarrassed about them again. Although more so now, because I'm a damned adult, so these "outbursts" are... less acceptable than they were. By some arbitrary terms of some arbitrary set of societal niceties that tell us what is and isn't appropriate. Grrrrrr.

Feminism. Passionate feminism, gender awareness. Violent conversational smashing-of-patriarchy. These are the things that boil my blood. And these are the things that, in moments of rage or passion or exasperation or, yes, righteous indignation, I get embarrassed about. I wonder if I'm seeing it everywhere. I wonder if I'm reading into things. I wonder if I'm giving people too hard a time, I wonder if I'm not enjoying my life as much because I can't un-see the misogyny, the entrenched stereotypes, the language.*

(*for more on this, read: How to Like Problematic Things. Warning: it doesn't have magical answers to solve your problems. I know, I hoped it would too. But nonetheless, it's well written and informative).

Mostly, though, I wonder, even if all these things are true, if I would just shut up about it, then everything would be better. People tag me when they take pictures of feminist buttons on bags. A friend of a friend asked, at a party, if he could play me a song he'd written and if I could tell him whether or not it was sexist (the strangeness of this question is... another story). I come to be known, due to my own loudness, as the feminist. And this embarrasses me.

Here are maybe some reasons wherefore the shame:

- I wonder if people think it's stupid.

- I wonder if my friends are quietly disagreeing with what I have to say, but not wanting to make a stink about it.

- I wonder if it's just... well, if it's annoying. If I have become annoying.

- I wonder if I'm that feminist, a social justice friend, who my "regular" (whatever that means) friends just tolerate.

- I wonder if my adamancy for this idea isn't allowing room for other people, or I wonder if they're all just sick of hearing about it, and fed up with my zero tolerance policy for shittyness.

Wait. Hold on. Pause.

This is all bullshit.

You know who else was annoying and adamant? You know who else everybody pointed to, scoffed, rolled their eyes, and said "would you just shut up already?" The fucking suffragettes. Simone de Beauvoir. bell hooks. Margaret Atwood. The abolitionists, and the LGBT rights movement, and the fucking civil rights marchers, motherfucker.

Every fucking progressive revolutionary ever.

So, yeah, maybe I'm obnoxious. Maybe I'm annoying, or maybe you're sick of stopping conversations or derailing arguments into the sticky, mired swamp of gender relationships and power dynamics in this world. But guess what? I believe in this. I believe that it matters what we say and how we say it; I believe that tiny social interaction can actually change the way we think about gender and power in our daily lives. And those beliefs aren't going anywhere. If you want to be my friend, or my acquaintance, or play me a song, that's the me you're going to get.

Because I don't want to be "that social justice friend." I want everybody to be that social justice friend. There was a time when being comfortable with women's rights, gay rights, race relations: you name it - there was a time when this made you a crazy progressive free-thinking hippie liberal. And now look around you. Have any friends who aren't?

So to all that doubt I've got, and all that teenage embarrassment, I say: fuck off. Good for you, you feminist, for finding something you're so passionate about, it reminds you of a time when your body was coursing with hormones and you had the whole world at your feet. Leave that other shit behind.

There was a great analyses, post-Louis CK/Tosh debacle, about why it is that feminists and comedians are "natural enemies." Amongst other reasons (found in this article, which is... mostly good), there's a history of "smile and shut the fuck up." There's a history of "take the joke that's super misogynist and shitty, and laugh at it." It was one of the first sticking points, way back in the first wave. No, I won't smile. No, I won't keep  my mouth shut. It isn't just that feminists are loud and won't let it go; it's that being loud, and not letting go, are sybmolic acts. They are linked to the history of being a woman in this country, in this world, in your family, with your friends. It is not just that I believe in this, and I want to tell you. It's that the action of telling you is actively supporting my beliefs. It's that I want to show you.

I'll show you my revolution, baby, if you show me yours?

So, on the heels of MLK day and the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I say: fuck no, I'm not shutting up. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, better remember: it's probably gonna knock down your door someday, whether I'm the one doing the knocking or not.

Punchy, over and out.

Hippie Sexual

It's been a hot minute since I posted anything here; real life gets put on hold for the festival I attend every year, and although I do get internet in my tent (right?), there hasn't been much time for it.

I work in the kitchen here, feeding the other crews that set up the festival site. It floods every year, so prep takes about a month and a half. I'm not down here for that long, but I've been here since Tuesday, pulled a thirteen hour day yesterday (which is about average, these days), and I am tired.

Part of the weird hippie-sexual stuff might be because I'm tired. I might be über-sensitive to comments that I wouldn't normally notice, or (because I'm not in my regular super-supportive feminist environment) I might be hyper-aware of what's different from me, and over-reacting accordingly. But that's sort of beside the point. First, this hippie-sexual stuff.

I feel more comfortable with nudity and (until this year) sexuality at the Fair than I do most other places. I shower in co-ed sauna showers, I walk around topless. I even did a (mostly) naked photo shoot in the bakery, with me riding the Hobart (our industrial mixer - I'm a baker) in nothing but my underwear and electrical tape.

But this year, things have felt really different. Like I don't have the space to talk about feminism, like I don't want my body to be sexualized, like I don't want to hear comments or whistles or hollers when I dress pretty. It's especially hard to pin down, in part, because the hippie personality (and the Fair vibe in the general, especially in the kitchen) is so hyper-sexualized; my misogyny-dar is all outta whack.

Let's take yesterday, for example. At the hottest part of the day, it hit 92º in the bakery, and standing in front of the 400º convection oven when it's that hot out, you don't want to be wearing any more clothes than you have to be. So, I stripped down to my boots, my underwear, my bra, and an apron. Okay, maybe I went back to my tent really quick while the dough was rising to change into more awesome underwear and a more awesome bra, but still.

I understand that, in taking my clothes off, I'm revealing more of my body, and that comments and flirtations are probably going to come up.* And I'm also aware that, by changing into underwear that has red ruffles and a big black anarchy A on the butt, I'm probably going to get more comments than had I gone with the more drab granny panty option.

*I don't think I deserve it, or that I'm asking for it, but that's the reality, and I haven't had enough coffee yet to tackle the "should it be this way" questions yet.


And, for the most part, I was comfortable. I danced around had a great time. But I wonder what I would have done in that situation were somebody to come up and make a comment that I was uncomfortable with. How do I say, standing in my underwear, in this place where sexuality and nudity are very prevalent, and very openly discussed, that I'm uncomfortable with how they're treating me?

It's a hard catch-22, even though it's not. The answer, I know, is that I *should* have the freedom to simply ask somebody not to say or do whatever it is that they're doing. But it's hard when I want to be flirtatious but *not* inherently sexualized by the people around me.

I think part of it is the lack of support around here. And I don't mean personal support, but support for a feminist perspective. Part of that is lack of education (and I mean that with zero condescension). It's just an idea that a lot of people here haven't been exposed to. Another part is the personal vs. the communal. As in, the communal perspective here is very inclusive, very loving, very sexual. I love the communal perspective, but I don't love when individual people hide behind that perspective, or use it to skirt my requests. Like "Oh, you know I don't mean it, it's Fair, I love you," when I've asked them to stop doing or saying whatever they're doing or saying. Like somehow, when you come to this place, you cease to be an individual person with individually responsible affects on other people.

Anyway. Mostly, it's amazing here; this is just a small piece of the pie. It's my other family, my chosen family. But, like family, they're sometimes slow on the modern uptake.
-

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.

The Perils of Cohabitation

Sir and I moved in together! And it's going really great. But the title here is a little misleading; the perils mentioned above actually refer to my roommate, let's call her Cindy, and not my newly co-habitating partner. Dominant. Boyfriend. Sir. (I really like all the names for him).

Cindy and I have lived together before, and she's an up-and-up kind of girl. She knew, before we went apartment searching together, that I was kinky, and that the sex would sound like... well, like kinky sex. I make it a point, whenever I can, to talk to people about this beforehand; it's not a show-off thing; it's a consideration thing. I'd do the same if I were... I don't know, grossly flatulent, and thought my gaseous passages would echo through walls into the sleeping space of a future roommate. It's common decency.

Sir and I haven't been officially "living together" until about a week ago, but he's stayed over a bunch in the months Cindy and I have lived together. And we'd joke about playtime, in the mornings after, and she'd giggle about noises she'd overheard. Our apartment isn't particularly small or particularly poorly built, but it's still an apartment, and a certain amount of noise bleed is unavoidable.

We've tried to be conscientious about playing - like anything that makes noise, we try not to do it late at night when she's home (and she's a bartender, so there are plenty of late nights when she's not home, which works well). We live on the second floor, so the late-at-night thing is also for our downstairs neighbors. Nonetheless, I secretly hope that the bedroom below us is actually a converted office or workroom, simply because sometimes, with all our efforts, I'm sure it would bother someone trying to sleep.

Cindy has never been rude about our sexual preferences, and she is, generally, supportive (although her support comes with sort of backhanded language sometimes - see below). She also has no problem speaking up for herself, a quality I value in a roommate. Which is why I think I'm having some trouble with a conversation we had last night. It went something like this:

Cindy comes home.

Me: Hey! How's your night lady?
Cindy: Good! Good. (snuggles with cat on the floor)
(pause)
Cindy: Hey, so, I love your face a lot, but...
Me: Yeah?
Cindy: Whatever you guys were doing last night, you can't do that when I'm home.
Me: Um, okay.
Cindy: And I mean, it's not even just me. You can't do that when people are home. In the building. I mean, it's not just that it's really horrible to fall asleep to. I was waiting for somebody, or the cops, to come knock on the door, and trying to think about what I would say when I answered.
Me: Hey, it's no problem if it makes you uncomfortable. We can absolutely keep it down when you're home. And you don't ever have to answer the door - I've thought about that a lot, actually, and we'd answer the door together, no problem.
Cindy: Okay, sure. And I mean, I'm totally down with whatever you guys wanna do in there - if it's your thing, go for it, do what you do. But I'm just saying, when [insert Sir's name here] is playing the guitar in the living room, and I can hear it when I go check the mail, that's... noise travels, you know.
Me: Sure. And I've got no problem keeping it down when you're home. Thanks for letting me know.
Cindy: Yeah, and really, do what you do, it's just... you can't do that when people are home. I mean, it was like... sounds of ritual slaughter in there (giggles).

Anyway, you get the idea. Our back and forth banter about issues (roommate issues) goes sort of like this. She asks something very directly, and then I tell her what I think about it (usually, that it's totally cool - her requests are fairly reasonable), and then she proceeds to explain many times, in many different ways, it's justification and why it's important to her. Which, if we were arguing, might be productive. Except that we rarely disagree, so it just sort of cycles until she runs herself out of things to say.

It's starting to sound like I don't like Cindy, which isn't true. I like her a lot, and she's a great roommate in a lot of ways. She just has very... particular things about her, which most of the time are funny, and in this case, ended up hurting more than I initially thought.

Partly, it's her language. The way she always frames talking about our play in this sort of "I am supportive, of that thing, of that big freaky thing you're doing look I am supportive." As if the staunchness of her support is proportional to how freaky the thing is that she's supporting. But that's never really bothered me much. Her coming home and telling me, first thing, flat out, that I "can't" do something? That's not okay. Again, it's mostly her language, which is why I didn't have a big problem with the conversation at the time. I know that, although she's framing it in a really condescending way, what she's trying to say is "Hey, this thing made me uncomfortable, and made it hard for me to sleep. Think next time you could keep it down a little more?"

But how she said it really stung. In a few different ways. It stung because (and she does this, from time to time) she was trying to tell me what I should do, not based on her experience, but based on the plausible experience of other people. She was trying to tell me, based on the rules of arbitrary propriety of the neighbors, that I should be secretive about what I'm doing. I would have no problem with a neighbor coming to knock on my door, and telling me that either a) we were too loud, or b) that even though we weren't too loud, the kinds of noises we were making were unsettling or uncomfortable for them to hear. I honor that. I honor that sounds of violence and pain aren't everyone's cup of tea, and that many people have very personal reasons for not wanting to hear them. But the way that Cindy said what she said left me feeling very ashamed of what I do in my own bedroom, which is just... a really terrible thing to feel.

What I don't honor is somebody telling me that I should bend to these peoples, up to the point un-stated, preferences. There is nothing I can or cannot do based on someone's opinion who I've seen passing in the hallway; I don't think we're ever louder than a boombox, and I don't think expecting a neighbor to deal with that level of noise, at a reasonable hour, is that unreasonable. But most of all, I don't think Cindy has any place, at all, telling me to change my judgments of a situation based on her own. I think that's rude, oppressive, and smotherly motherly in all the bad ways.

There might be a little bit of masking going on. And I'm not trying to pop-psychologize (although maybe I am trying to make myself feel better about this by casting it in a different light), but I think Cindy might be a little shaky on telling me that noises were disturbing to her, so she's using out neighbors as a front. Or maybe she's a little embarrassed about interacting with our neighbors because she lives with me, and because the sounds also come from her apartment - again, this is totally valid. I have no issues with the motivations that come from Cindy, I just have issues with her prescribing other people's values (that don't actually exist yet) onto me.

To get meta for a minute: I also think part of the problem I have with what happened because of the way I responded. Or rather, the way I feel about the way I responded. I cut Cindy a lot of slack because I know her, and I like her a lot, but at the heart of it, I'm shaken and a little bothered when I don't stand up for myself; when I don't walk the walk, as it were. I've thought about talking to her about it, but I'm just not sure it's worth the heartache, or the cyclical conversation if would yield. So, there's me feeling not only hurt, but a little disappointed with myself.

At the end of the night, it really is just that I'm hurt. Kink is something I'm really proud of, that I really like about myself, but sometimes it's hard when the people closest to me use words like "animal slaughter," in a dismissive tone, with a laugh, to describe something that's a really integral part of my sexuality. Hell, of my identity in general. So, despite all of my strength, and all of my knowledge and reading about this, I end up feeling like a freak.

Sir and I went out for a cigarette before bed, after this happened, and I talked with him about it, which helped. I told him that I have thought about the neighbors, a lot, and about what I would do if someone came to the door. I looked him in the face, into his sleepy eyes (he'd worked something like a fourteen hour day that day), and told him that if someone, cops or otherwise, rang our bell, I'd open the door wearing my collar and holding his hand, and I'd tell them to kindly fuck off. Not in so many words (or maybe, depending), but that's the sentiment. I have to remember to hold onto that; remember that this is part of who I am, a part that I like. Ritual slaughter nay sayers be damned.