There are a few things I never mentioned about the discussion I had with my family member last year. At the time they were too irrelevant, or too personal. But one of them’s popped up under my skin in the last few days, like a little irritating blood blister.
They said:
The way you use the word “vanilla” in your blog is bigoted.
At the time I thought, Bigoted? Really? That seems like a harsh choice of vocabulary.
But as you may recall, I did not choose to rise up in righteous indignation after being censored by scallywags. I chose to take on some of the responsibility for what had happened, because I wasn’t defining my language or giving context for my actions.
When I got home that week I searched my entire blog for every time I’d used the word “vanilla.” Not counting the two vanilla gentlemen on my blogroll, it came up about fifteen times. Of those instances, one was a poetic comparison of May’s bum to the silkiness of vanilla ice cream. The majority were times in which I used the word to mean “not-kinky.” One was a bit of an arrogant statement about stupid, male, vanilla movie producers. I figured that the last instance was fair; I was being a bit of a snarky brat in that entry. Which, by the way, is an entry you’ll no longer find here. It’s one of the two that did not survive my great blogging purge and password initiative. The other one was about my mother.
But really, it’s all those tricky “not-kinky” instances that are the sinkholes.
I would argue that saying my use of the word “vanilla” here is bigoted is, frankly, absurd. To be bigoted means essentially to be intolerant of identities which are not my own. I work very hard to be tolerant, because that’s one of the best ways I know to gain tolerance for myself. I have spoken before about sneaky selfish motivations.
Currently the blogosphere has vanilla on the brain. Renegade Evolution has taken on the idea of vanilla privilege, while Trinity over at The Strangest Alchemy has opened up her blog for a discussion on the definition of this very tricky idea.
Also, closer to home and all of a sudden, I have some new readers. (Hello, ladies.) And from their conversations with me, their blogs, and their attitudes, I get the feeling that vanilla just isn’t cool these days, much in the same way Maja once used “het,” hilariously, as a neo-semi-pejorative. That seems a bit unfair to me. Vanilla is unfortunately conflated with sex-negativity in a way that is simply not true.
I was asked several times in my ACON group to define what kinky sex is. I found myself at a bit of a loss. I have spent so long just being kinky that to start defining what kinky means for a broader audience is insanely difficult. Like many other words that must be personally defined before becoming useful, I can only really speak about what kinky means to me.
For me, to be kinky is to enjoy sex or enjoy things I consider to be sexual while maintaining a deliberate power imbalance.
And going from there, to have vanilla sex, as I have had many times in the past, is to enjoy sex or enjoy sexual things without such a deliberate imbalance.
And yes, I know, that is a simply enormous definition. It’s also, you may notice, a definition that relies heavily upon intention and thought, mental perspectives rather than weapons and gear. It’s not what I do, it’s how I do it. That means that a lot of my kinky sex can look very, very vanilla. But it works for me. Maybe it works for you. If it doesn’t, I invite you to redefine.
I think there is such a thing as vanilla privilege, but it’s hard to pin down where my ability to access that privilege begins and ends. Similar to my access to straight privilege, I can pass as vanilla sometimes. Although curiously, it is much easier for me to pass as straight than it is for me to pass as vanilla. May and I still get funny glances when we walk down the street, my hand on his collar and his head bowed, that little-boy grin on his face, that lazy toppish look on mine. People do stare at us in restaurants. They do think we’re strange at parties. But it works, because we are essentially considered eccentric rather than threatening. I think it’s because we look straight.
And there is also a low level of bigotry in some corners of the kink community, as there seem to be in all communities. My new blog readers will probably run into that, unfortunately. Hell knows I have. I just wrote that the clothing I think is sexy looks vanilla. I have been called a vanilla tourist a few times. I have even been asked, by a very large man at the door to Paddles, if I was lost. I wanted to laugh at him. No, I responded, I am definitely not lost.
Attitudes like that are why I try to go places with people, when they’re new. They’re why I still appreciate having people to go with. That reaction is why having a group of kinky friends is an infinitely valuable advantage when trying to find one’s place in a kinky community.
And attitudes like that are why I also have vanilla friendships. Screw this secret-exciting-sex-club mentality. Really, my sex looks spicy from an outside perspective, but it’s just a way of having sex. Vanilla’s just another way of having sex. I’m wired one way. Someone else is wired another. It all works out, in the end.
4 Comments
That is probably the best explanation to be found in the blogosphere: it’s rational and non-defensive, which is what I would expect from you, and which rarely happens in any discussion of the two terms. I take issue, in general, with any definition of kink or vanilla that attempts to set down hard and fast rules, and to make any type of sexuality some exclusive club. I understand that that the knee-jerk defensiveness of kink often comes froma feeling of having been marginalised, and the relief of finding that there are others out there that feel the same, but I am so sick of reading things that seem designed to prove that everyone else’s sexuality is still lacking in some way (”you aren’t kinky/submissive/dominant/gay/whatever enough unless you fulfil these specific criteria… and so by definition you can’t be having such stellar sex as I am, you poor fool”). Labels are valuable in helping us define our sexuality to ourselves and others, but not when a value is put upon them, and not when they are barcoded in such a way that there is no possibility for (ironically) deviation.
We are all wired differently, and vive la difference. I find it fascinating to find out about other people’s preferences and motivation, and I applaud the growing acceptance of difference that is mainly possible due to people articulating their desires. But it’s not necessary to do so by putting everyone else down if they don’t share them.
What I really mean is: thank you, for being you, so wonderfully :)
I think the best general definition of “kinky” I have is “specialised sexual interest”.
Power stuff is a kink. S/M is a kink.
So is … sexy lingerie. That’s just a kink that gets mainstream advertising and popular stores.
Wow, great post.
I remember the first time I got called vanilla by friends, and how threatening it was back in my pre-kink days. By the standards I have today, I was really vanilla, and by that I mean, “less kinky.” By the standards I had back then, I was on the cutting edge of straight, non-BDSM sex, flying blind in a no-fly zone of rimjobs, snowballing, prostate stimulation and videotaped footage of my girl going ass-to-mouth on me. I mean, I was doing stuff you only heard about in Kevin Smith movies, and which would make my religious relatives disown me — that’s not vanilla. Is it? My friends who were so eager to label me as vanilla were just fucking around with latex and handcuffs, how is that kinkier than me? I remember thinking the people who had said that to me were kind of dicks.
I never have achieved a good answer to what is “vanilla.” My definition would change based on when you asked me — my idea of kink at 16, 21, and 35 are all wildly different — and what I perceived the rest of the world doing. And that kind of elastic definition is almost useless, the same kind of useless you get out of words like “intellectual” or “conservative.”
Quick-and-clean response, because I am posting from work (eek!)
Your family member’s comment seems less to do with specific usage as with a general attitude. As both a language geek and a sufferer of a badass-inferiority complex, I understand both views on the comment. I, too, would go looking for whenever I used the word, and then decide that the comment was baseless. But think of what they’re trying to say, not what they said.
Are they worried that you want to veer away from the pursuit of stability for a long time? (For “stability” I almost put a sarcastic “normalcy” and then realized that the word is slightly infuriating given the context.) They seem to have expressed this worry before, about matters non-sexual. In that way, they’re just being who they are. (And I seem to have noticed a trend of them using stronger-than-warranted language in order for their comments to be very! arresting! And it works, sadly. My family uses understatement. So it goes.)
The point is, do not let this swirl you into another existential crisis. Kink is. Not-kink is. Is “vanilla” pejorative? The status of the word may change your language, but I doubt it will change your behavior. Nor should it.
Miss you too, lady!
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