Today I want to talk about lifestyle.
I am having some trouble sorting out changes in my perspective upon the world, and myself. And my New York friends, the lot of them, are trouping off to Floating World this weekend, an instance that has produced a welter of nostalgia as I reflect on the truly marvelous experiences of last year.
I am certainly not cut off from the kinky community. Sydney’s scene continues on around me. My internet connection continues unabated. But as I mentioned in my last post, a shared sexuality does not my community make.
So when we get right down to the nitty gritty, the reality is that I am isolated now that I’ve left New York City. I’m isolated from my kinky friends and my favorite spaces and my comfort zones.
My reaction to this is akin to exhaustion. I ask myself how much effort I want to spend on building a life here in Sydney? Aren’t I just going to pick up and move again? I had never envisioned our move here as being long term, and I know how quickly a year or two can pass. But “in an hour, there are many days.” I have great swaths of time I try to fill with work. I’m writing a novel. I could kick myself for being so cliche.
(As a side note, I have been stalwartly resisting the impulse to turn this into a blog about teaching, understanding, and perfecting one’s writing. I don’t think my readers would appreciate the switch. “What is all this nonsense on teaching styles, Eileen? Remember the kinky sex we come here for? Come on, kinky sex!”)
As a result of this general ennui, my kinky identity has been going through something of a hibernation. I can envision the kinky part of myself, curled adorably in a large fluffy blanket somewhere warm, sucking her thumb and cradling a singletail to her chest. I haven’t stopped having sex, I haven’t stopped thinking about sex in masturbatory ways. But I have stopped thinking about sex in community ways, about the connections in, and advantages of, communicating with others like me.
So, seeing this disconnect in my identity coincide with my withdrawal from public spaces, I ask: How much of my kinky identity is based not around what I do in the bedroom, but what I write and say and do in public?
I don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you?
The kinky community consistently picks words to push back against. We’re cranky like that. Among the list that garners resistance is the word “lifestyle.”
But I don’t buy into that particular resistance. I like the word lifestyle, specifically because it implies that being kinky is not just a matter of freaks in their bedrooms. Being kinky crosses those boundaries; I am kinky all the time. My sexuality is a part of my lifestyle, and affects the decisions I make in multiple contexts, not just when I’m flipping through my porn stash looking for something juicy.
In my observations, one of the best ways in which queer communities have gained acceptance is the acknowledgment of queer identities as being connected to lifestyles. Having gay neighborhoods, gay bars, gay-friendly merchants, gay-friendly medical centers. Acceptance trickles down, slowly but surely, as we begin to insist that we can’t just leave our sexualities at the bedroom door.
So how do I maintain that lifestyle in a healthy way now that I’ve moved away from the community that supported it? And more specifically, how do I do that without spending four hours of my life every day surfing blogs?
4 Comments
I think what rubs me the wrong way about the word “lifestyle” is… “style.” I don’t change my life like I change my hair or clothes. “Lifestyle,” to me, implies artificiality. I’d rather call kinky my life.
But then, of course, the avalanche: Is my life kinky if I don’t wear xxxxx? If I don’t make my partner xxxxx in public? If I blog under a pseudonym?
I guess it’s silly to reject a word over a technicality if my proposed substitution opens Pandora’s Box Of Irksome Perrennial Questions.
The thing about the queer community/”lifestyle” is that it can be desexualized. That’s what’s getting it mainstream acceptance. People who might otherwise be homophobic often change their behavior when they are presented with a notion of LGBT people as people who create families and love each other just like straight people do… not when they are encouraged to consider how LGBT people might have sexual relationships.
That’s the problem with public acknowledgment of a BDSM lifestyle. It’s essentially impossible to divorce sex from BDSM, though god knows I’ve tried sometimes.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on teaching and writing. You’re an excellent writer and that makes for a good blog, regardless of the subject.
Uh, it’s too early in my personal morning for me to comment on this appropriately or intelligently, but I really like it.
The longer I go on the more interested I get in shaking off the societal stuff that says BDSM folks should/must hide. At the same time, I’m not part of a BDSM community where I live most of the time (I am part of one where my long-distance partner is, but . . .) so that mostly ends up meaning “out anonymousely on the internet, with my kinky blogger friends.”
I am sure that made no sense. My point is I feel ya pain. And you are a great advocate, even (?) if mostly virtually.
Oh yeah and write about that other stuff. I always think people won’t want to read it on my blog, but I love reading it when other people write about it. {Thought about sex in the context of a life, which is totally inarticulable.}
I was going to have a rantlet about why I dislike the word “lifestyle”, which is mostly what Maja said, but I might as well link to where I had it last year and save time. ;)
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