A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

Live And Let Die

Thursday, November 1, 2007

It’s been a bad week. A lot of real-life people have been telling me what to do in ways I don’t appreciate, and that gets me edgy. And then, I’ve become short-tempered with a large portion of the folly of the kinky Internet. People keep dictating, making snide remarks, giving orders. Breaking the rule of no imposition. The Golden Rule, for you Heinlein fans.

This drives me mad. Mad, I tell you. It makes me want to do silly things, like stab my screen with a pen.

There is a common bad habit of dismissing people’s opinions precisely because they are specified as opinions. Apparently our personal opinions are so much dandelion fluff, as though to express an opinion is to express a weakness, an imaginary concoction lacking rhyme, reason, logic and fact.

And yet, when it comes to how I should live my life, there is nothing more important than my opinion.

It is my opinion that no one’s sexuality should have to die for mine to live, and vice versa.

It is my opinion that I should live my life the way I see fit, have a space to call my own, and fuck the way I want to fuck.

It is my opinion that you should do the same. Heck, I even think it’s your right to do the same. I’ll stand up and fight for your right to fuck any way you want to, and I hope you realize how essential it is for you to fight for mine.

Give me my space, and I’ll give you yours. Do me this courtesy, and the world might miraculously become a well-mannered place.

Don’t put me in generalized superior or inferior groups. Don’t tell how my partner should address me. Don’t tell me what my orientation is. Don’t invade my autonomy. Don’t touch me without my consent.

We’ve drawn trenches in a battlefield of sexuality. We fight bitterly over a hundred different versions of the One True Way. We go around telling each other what’s wrong with the words we use, that we choose the wrong genders, that strap-ons degrade women and paying a girl for sex in Toronto causes earthquakes in Arizona.

I don’t understand this instinct to destroy spaces rather than making spaces. Is this an artist thing? Is it naivety? I’m guessing a big part of it is willful stubbornness.

Sexuality’s spaces are not a zero-sum game, folks. We can always make more, and we always do. We exist in a naturally occurring and (thanks largely to the Internet) virtually unlimited state of cultural pluralism.

The only ideas I choose to genuinely attack are ideas that invade my space. The day I choose to attack someone or something on any other terms, call me out. I’m begging you, call me on it. Do me that courtesy too.

May has been remarking in the past few days that he doesn’t think people really understood his recent post on Halloween. He’s been accused of being judgmental, trying to pass his opinions off on others. I pointed out to him that his tone implied this, although his words did not. His words said, very simply, that it is sad that there’s only one day a year when people are allowed the freedoms they are allowed on Halloween. We’re so used to having our personal spaces encroached, at this point, that we see attacks where there are none. We take it as a given that everyone’s out to tell everyone else how to live.

Okay, Eileen. Take a deep breath, step away from the keyboard.

There is a very fine line between expressing our opinions and dictating the actions of others. Sometimes I suspect that line is irretrievably blurred. I suspect that many of us no longer know where it is. This, to me, is heart-wrenching.

Writing this entry made me cry.

Pleasing By Delicacy Or Grace

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

This post is for the pretty men.

Now, when I say pretty, I don’t mean broad shoulders, rippling muscles, carrying power tools and towering over me. I don’t mean that genre of men, though god knows I’m a fan. I am a happy member of the cheering section.

I mean the men with soft skin, full lips, femme clothing. Men with skinny limbs and long hair. Men who like to wear satin and velvet. Men who like to feel pretty.

Pretty (adjective): pleasing by delicacy or grace.

You know who you are. This one’s for you.

There is some serious fuckupery concerning how body image issues are presented. Take a minute and think about who talks about body image. Think about the last time you had a discussion about body image. Think about the language you used.

Nine times out of ten, I’d bet that language was gendered. I’d bet you were talking to a woman. Woman’s issues. Woman’s weight. Women’s bodies. We’re teaching women how to accept cultural stereotypes, and how to fight them. Women’s body issues are vocalized.

Does it not seem a little fucked up that men’s body issues are not? When body image is considered a women’s only issue, we continue to strengthen the idea that only women are judged by their bodies. In a twisted kind of way, we continue to objectify ourselves while we fight not to be objectified. Following from this, we pigeonhole men into the role of the objectifier while simultaneously ignoring them as possible victims of cultural stereotypes.

Men are praised for their attractiveness in totally different ways. They are held to totally different, strictly gendered, strictly masculine standards. These standards, by the way, are almost never standards of beauty. They’re standards of wealth, of skill, of strength, of ownership and possession. May’s attraction is judged by how hot his girlfriend is. Most people look at me. Only rarely do they look at him.

Even the uprise of the metrosexual fashion movement in urban areas perpetuates the dichotomy separating modes of attraction. Metrosexual men can be in touch with their feminine side, can “reject macho stereotypes”, can use expensive hair care products and wear aesthetically pleasing clothes. But god help them if they decide to wear a satin nightie to bed.

This blindness leaves a vast, gaping hole that pretty men keep falling down.

Men aren’t the attracting partner. Men don’t get pursued. Men aren’t androgynous. Men aren’t bisexual. Men don’t want to be pretty. Men don’t want what women have. The most damaging of all? Shut up and take it. Be a man.

Ladies, hate to break it to you. Our bodies are pushed and shoved and stereotyped to within an inch of our lives. And yet, the freedom we’re allowed in breaking gendered stereotypes of attraction is epic, compared with our fellow men.

Why are we so much more okay with women in men’s clothing than we are with men in women’s clothing? I wear boy-cut jeans and a ratty button-down, and I don’t get a second glance, and I’m not necessarily a lesbian. But May wears girl-cut jeans and a ringer tee that I gave him, and he gets looks on the street, and he must be gay. Never mind he’s holding hands with a chick.

We bitch and yell when men want to dress up as women to be humiliated. (I bitch and yell with the best of them.) What about the men who’ve been told, over and over, that a man who wants to be a woman is supposed to feel humiliated?

What about men who just want to be pretty in the only way they’ve been taught is possible: by being more like women?

There is no middle space where “real men” can feel pretty. If you’re a man who wears women’s clothing or makeup, either you’re gay, you’re just getting off on being humiliated like a weak woman, or you’re three steps away from a gender transition and you just haven’t gotten there yet. And it’s such bullshit.

There needs to be some gender fluidity, and it needs to flow both ways.

If a woman opens up and says she’s feeling unattractive in comparison with cultural standards, the common mode is to support her in a sensitive, relatively ungendered way. We’ll talk about her mind, or her ideas. But if a man opens up and says he feels unattractive in comparison with cultural standards, we tell him he’s strong. Bad logic, damnit, bad logic!

But never mind. A real man would never say that in the first place.

Eureka!

Thursday, July 26, 2007

I have a theory. Newly discovered. It’s a bit revolutionary, I know, but I think that if you stop and contemplate it with me, just for a little while, you will agree that it is an obvious, necessary endpoint of our biological and cultural origins. Here’s my theory:

All men are bisexual.

Women are the natural aggressor in sexual activity. We’re dominant, horny, think about sex four times a minute. Biology endows us with the ability to devour our partners. (Vagina dentata, no?) Culture confirms and validates us. Men, in their passive roles, devote themselves to attracting us. Seducing us. Worshipping us. Deep seated instinct demands our dominance as a gender. (You know, don’t you, that gender equals power?)

And as sexual aggressors, women are always wanting more. Two mouths on my body are better than one. Four hands on my skin are better than two. We’re devoted to the conquest, the chase, the sating of our pleasure in the most extravagant ways through the mouths and bodies and cocks of our willing prey.

And men are willing. Everything men do, you see, is designed to attract women. As the passive partners in the sexual act they choose to seduce us by making themselves increasingly attractive, offering us everything we desire.

Women live for sexual conquest; as many men as possible, as many possible ways. Devotion to a single partner is laughable for us, unnecessary. We’re independent, self-fulfilled. We support men. Their devotion is unquestioned, and complete.

Any man who tells a woman he’s bisexual is hoping to pick that woman up. We know, of course, that men only say they’re bisexual to get more women. The male-to-male attraction is a pale comparison to the passion and devotion that men feel for women. (Don’t give me this piffle on the definition of “bisexual.” Men love the pussy above all.)

Any man who tells a woman he’s bisexual is offering a threesome with another man. He won’t be particularly picky on who the other man is, because they’ll both be too busy devoting themselves to the woman’s pleasure. His best friend? Sure! His twin brother? Brilliant! Friendships be damned, incest is a lark, as long as the lady’s happy in the end.

Following logically from the above point, all bisexual men are also polyamorous or dedicated to open relationships. Or if not, then they’re just sluts. (And since all men are bisexual, all men are also sluts. Logical, no?)

Gay men are all secretly bisexual, just waiting for the right woman to take them in hand and show them the glory of pussy. We all just love wanking off to the thought of gay men. So sexy! Look at all the pretty men just waiting to be shown the light; they’re like pussy virgins! And god, do we love virgins.

Any man who insists that he’s straight is just shy.

And then, when it comes to sex everybody likes pretty things. Men are by far the more beautiful gender. Just look at all the pretty, pretty, pretty men. So it makes sense that men should be attracted to themselves in a purely sexual sense. It’s a matter of aesthetics.

But of course in the end all bisexual men will eventually choose long term female partners, because although men are pretty, there’s just no denyin’ that women make more valuble partners. We’re the independent ones, after all, earning a living, guiding sexual encounters, making decisions. A man couldn’t function without a woman around to support him. Eventually all bisexual men outgrown their attractions to other men and prefer to devote themselves to a single woman. Only then can they truly be happy, or experience love.

I haven’t thought, really, about women who like other women. I don’t think women can be bisexual, actually. I mean, it seems strange that a woman who could have her pick of the most attractive partners of either gender would choose to sleep with women. Didn’t we just get through saying that men more attractive? And fit logically into the necessary power structure that women deserve in their sexual encounters?

But I guess that women who like other women might secretly think of themselves as men. Then they’d only want women. So I guess all bisexual women are secretly gay. Or degenerates. I don’t really care. I’m not one of those.

As long as men can come out and just embrace that they’re all secretly bisexual, I’ll be a happy girl.

And if you have the contact information for the leaders of any overpopulated, impoverished countries, could you send it along to me? I have a killer recipe for roast baby rump in lemon herb sauce.

You mother fucking assholes.

Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies

Monday, July 23, 2007

Kink journal? What, what?

People are talking about beauty. That’s got me thinking. What a surprise, really, that something would get me thinking. Here’s where my consciousness went wandering.

I have this friend. She’s kind of a new friend, because not only am I (as previously mentioned) practically crippled at getting to know people, she is also exceedingly pretty, and exceedingly pretty people are a titchy bit tough for me. I am by far my harshest critic and can easily convince myself that such and such a person is simply too cool for me. I did this with Blaise when we first met. We laugh about it now; such a ridiculous concept, that we wouldn’t like each other.

But I’m glad I know her, because she is charming, and also kind of wonderfully smart.

She and I and a few others had a interesting conversation a bit ago, in which she mentioned that she sometimes feels uncomfortable in scene spaces because of her beauty. Other people will sometimes react negatively to her body, as though her presence is a critique upon themselves.

There’s that insidious, damaging us-versus-them mentality creeping up again. In the issue of physical beauty more than anything else, people seem to be incapable of assessing themselves on a non-comparative basis. Obviously this is because we feel that we have to be judged against some kind of standard, which is only moderately less fucked up than declaring we must be judged at all. But it’s very, very different to judge oneself against an idealist idiom with no physical manifestation and to judge oneself against a real live person, standing in front of you. You’ve drawn the other person unwittingly and unfairly into your process of judgement.

And although I found that to be rather horrendous, even I am guilty of the smaller sin of dismissing the body issues of other people. I sometimes brush off the concerns of my friends. I think I’m a bit plump ’round the edges. I lost a bunch of weight, then gained some of it back, and now bounce around from day to day. I have bad-ish skin and ugly feet. For the longest time I was convinced something was wrong with my face, with my features too small for my flesh. But I self-deprecate and other people react with incredulity, and sometimes bitterness as well. Like hell you’re fat, you’re skinnier than me! You’re not ugly, you’re beautiful, I’m the one who’s ugly. How dare you have body image issues? How dare you?

Us versus them. Me versus you. I get that the instinct to rank people according to appearance is partially biological, but we’re in the 21st century and I’d like to believe we’ve grown beyond the grunting of our lizard brains. I get that it’s deeply cultural, but I’d like to think we’re aware enough to use culture as a common language rather than a common standard.

Many people believe that confidence is directly linked to physical appearence. It seems logical that if we’d feel better if we wore a size four, then the people who already wear a size four must feel fan-fucking-tastic all the time. We make no allowances for genetics. We cut ourselves no slack.

Why don’t we have an us versus them mentality on intelligence, I wonder? People are much less likely to look at some briliant philosopher and say to themselves, “Damn, I’m so not as smart as that guy. I suck.” But young girls look at models all the time and think their lives will be over if they don’t make themelves that skinny. This is the crisis of body image. Anorexia, bulimia, plain old every day angst, the desparate need to become prettier. There are no damaging psychological or physical diseases based upon the desperate need to become smarter.

When did it come about that our culture contentedly accepts intelligence as a natural, innate gift of genetics, yet deprecates and criminalizes physical appearance as completely under a person’s control? Unfortunate if you’re stupid, lucky if you’re smart. Valuable if you’re skinny, worthless if you’re not.

Has no one caught on to the idea that you can make yourself smarter? That intelligence demands to be worked at, that it is far more insistent and just as hard and just as worth doing?

And has no one caught on that there will always be someone prettier, smarter, better on the sliding judgment scale? And that sometimes a game in which you cannot win is not a game worth playing?

I’ve no intention of writing a philosophical treatise on the advantages of Objectivism in this blog. But it has been to my advantage to allow myself the luxury of isolated judgment. To deliberately, consciously set my own standards and determine my own value. I am no less driven for trying to step outside a competitive mentality, and in fact hold myself to standards that are upon occasion ridiculous. But they’re my own. And of course I fail sometimes, and of course I judge sometimes and get occasionally bitter, but I’m always swinging back to my own definitions.

It should be noted, however, that attempting to take oneself outside of a competitive mode when dealing with one’s own value does not prevent one from evaluating others. We can’t help evaluating people; we do it unconsciously. It makes the difference between choosing our partners based on our personal inclinations and choosing them at random.

I have zero intention of claiming that I don’t hold my partners to standards. Of course I hold my partners to standards; the people I chose to involve myself with both affect and reflect my life. I won’t invite just anyone into my home or my bed.

And although it might just be politically incorrect to say so, some of my standards are mental, and some are physical. It is a very common (and I think more positive than the alternative) attitude to become frustrated with strictly physical expectations, and to as a result adhere to a strictly mental system of standards, wherein partners are judged only by their personalities, characters, and intelligence. (With the thing where bad logic is reversed again. We just love doing that, don’t we?)

In the case of my friends, mental standards are the only standards I believe are appropriate. (An advantage of the blogosphere.) I may worry that my friend Paul is rapidly pushing 350 lbs and is giving himself health problems, but he’s a genuinely terrific man whom I’m glad to have as a friend.

But when it comes to the people I sleep with, the people I play with, physical appearance is a factor. May is playful, clever, funny and devilishly smart. He is also attractive, and smells good. Would I still sleep with him if he wasn’t attractive and smelled bad? Probably; he’s pretty damned brilliant and the physical doesn’t make or break my decisions. But it helps. Of course it helps.

When it comes to physical appearance, all I really expect is an attempt at health, by whatever definition works for that person. A bit of consciousness, an acknowledgment that neither of us is contained entirely within a mental realm and our bodies don’t exist just to lug around the hardware. I don’t mind what age you are, I don’t mind how your genes arranged your facial structure. Will it help if you happen to have a body that’s artistically interesting, aesthetically balanced? Will it help if I think you’re hot as hell? Sure. Of course it will. But I like playing with people, not inflatable skins.

Because I hold myself to physical as well as mental standards, I expect a certain awareness in both aspects from my partners. I expect them to deserve me.

Watch it now. Think about what that means; no writing it off as standard femdom propaganda. I am smart, self aware, sometimes funny, mentally engaged, personally demanding, have very high goals, and am aware of my body. I’m also arrogant, neurotic, guilt-ridden, awkward, eat like crap, don’t exercise enough and am more than a little fucked up and strange. I expect my partners to deserve me.

Practice Before Preach

Thursday, July 19, 2007

In which I become politically charged through osmosis, because passion inspires passion and I hung out with a bunch of passionate folks last night.

Everyone has heard the phrase I’m starting with today. It’s a maxim of the kink community; it’s practically gospel. Say it with me now, people:

Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay.

Well I’m here to tell you that as of right about now, I think when it comes to this particular maxim, the community is full of shit.

We’re actually excellent at maintaining this structure within our own groups. I hang out with people who do scat and are wigged by needles. We get along just fine. But the idea isn’t intended as a simple guideline between friends; it’s intended to be something much more powerful.

Communities concerned with sex, especially of an alternative variety, share a common interest: Sex! In some way, somehow, we’re wanking differently than our perceived conception of the norm. As such, would it not make sense for us to draw together? To support one another when brought under fire by things like abstinence-only education in American schools?

That’s not “not our problem,” by the way. I don’t particularly care what your political opinions are concerning issues that aren’t sex related, but surely you must see the trickle-down effects of the idea of abstinence-only education? Any initiative that restricts information harms us. Hell, restricting information harms everyone. It’s called censorship.

But in the meantime, the straight scene doesn’t talk to the gay scene, the gay scene doesn’t talk to the trans scene, the kink people don’t talk to the swingers, the poly people don’t talk to the sex positive people. The list goes on. We are not a cohesive unit. We are ten thousand fractured little shards all so wrapped up in making our own kinks okay that nobody stops to think that maybe, possibly, if every queer person in America spoke up at precisely the same time we’d deafen our way to acceptance.

Saying “your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay” should be an open invitation. It should encourage more people to go cross community jumping, to reach out in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise and trust that it’ll turn out all right. I am a cross community jumper. I’m kinky and poly and bisexual too. And every time I show up at an event that’s not kink specific, I have to remind myself that the people I’m with have common interests with me, do not live under bridges and have intelligent things to say.

Maintaining insular communities is the epitome of the phrase “your kink is not okay.” Isn’t there a word for someone who does the very thing they say they don’t do? One of those long fancy words we don’t like hearing in relation with ourselves?

We, when by “we” I mean apparently everyone on the frickin’ planet, are obsessed with us-versus-them mentalities. Gay versus straight. Kinky versus vanilla. Look, if making our communities and our world better is going to be all about carving out a place for ourselves in a grandiose battle for freedom, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna lose. In case you haven’t noticed, we are currently outgunned.

The political and social issues surrounding sex have been pinned with war language, and that just wigs me the fuck out.

I’m trying very, very hard not to make this a fuzzy-wuzzy “Can’t we all just get along?” post. But seriously? Why is it that when I see what’s going on around me, instead of being content to live my life excellently and let others live their lives as they choose, I feel the need to stand up and just start shouting? We keep saying that other people, vanilla people, politicians, whatever, need to accept alternative sexualities as a community, but we suck at accepting each other. We are a laughable joke of a community.

And because we are such a joke, we damage ourselves. The premise of the community’s movement is currently one of having our differences accepted by the population at large. Although within the guidelines of us versus them this appears logical, even rational, we’re too busy not talking to each other to realize the flaw in our current argument.

If they say “You’re different, we’re not,” and we respond with “We’re different, you’re not” we have screwed ourselves. Remember the bit about how bad arguments remain bad no matter what kind of spin you try to put on it?

The idea isn’t to stand up and fight for our particular right to be different. The idea is to stand up and fight for everyone’s right to be different. The day that any person can say “Hey, I do things a little bit differently” with absolutely no fear or trepidation is the day alternative sex communities will have a secure place in the world. Not because we’ll be able to say such things; we already do that. But because everyone will be able to.

In the end, being vanilla is just another way of having sex. It’s not “normal.” Normal is pretty much a useless word. Everyone does things a little differently. The way we’re all going to live without tearing each others throats out is not just by accepting that, but by simply admitting it.
I can’t up and force people to admit that they’re different. It’s easy for us to say “Everyone is different” but very, very hard for us to say “I’m different.” It’s the us-against-them mentality all over again. I’m different. Me against the world.

Scrap the us-versus-them mentality. Your differences are not my differences, but your differences are okay. Live and let live, and every once and a while, socialize.

Fuck Him

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Hmm. This is going to be interesting. And opinionated, and possibly loud. And this is the kind of post where I feel the need to say beforehand that this is my personal opinion, and this is how I live my personal life. If I could make “whatever floats your boat” into a life motto, I would.

Also? This is essay length. I was going to split it, but I’ve decided against doing so. Read at your leisure.

Strap-ons.

On one of the first posts I made there was some commentary about gendered play. A nice man commented about the nature of his relationship with his dominant female partner, emphasizing his own masculinity, and writing in parentheses: no strap-on dildos here! I added the exclamation point, but you get my drift.

And at the time, that surprised me, but I hadn’t really registered yet that such a comment is totally in line with much of the blogosphere. Hey, whatever works.

But sorry. I’m not a card-carrying member of the No-Strap Ons Club. In fact, I’m a card-carrying member of the Strap-Ons Rock My Socks Off Club. We’ve got jackets.

I love strap-ons. Love them. Love them like I love singletail. I use a strap-on on a man, and I get to glory in every reaction I elicit from him, moans and little fragile cries and all. I enjoy this the way I enjoy whipping a man until he falls to his knees. I want to see what he does. I will push him just to see how he pushes back, or whether he does at all. If he’s never done it before I want to see what happens to his mind once it’s over. I am a reation top; I get off on the reations I inspire in others. Not all tops are like this; lots of doms get off on having their pleasure sated. I do that too. Reactions are my pleasure.

For female dominants who deal strictly in their own pleasure, strap-ons seriously stink. It’s true; I don’t feel anything. It’s detached, like any other toy is detached. It’s not arousing in any kind of physical way. It does not work for everyone, and I wholeheartedly agree with Bitchy when she says it should not be the cum shot of femdom, and we shouldn’t all have to rush out and buy one. It’s all about getting what you want. To get what you want, first you have to understand what you want. Then you can go finding a set of tools that work for you, be it handcuffs or rubber gloves or strap-ons or paddles. Whatever.

Like, what? I can’t be a powerful woman with a strap-on? I can be whatever I want with a strap-on! Pull out of this the only part of the sentence that is actually worth a damn to me: I can be whatever I want.

A lot of femdom throws out the strap-on emphatically because emphatic gestures, even when overly simplistic, are often the easiest way to deal with complex problems. I don’t believe that femdom needs to eradicate the use of the strap-on in order to stop the perpetuation of equating masculinity with power. I think we actually need to restructure our thoughts on a very different, more fundamental level.

We’ve got these two sets of binary ideas: male & female and power & weakness. We have them all wrapped up with each other, entirely interdependent in so many ways. I want to erase this connection. I want to separate the idea of the male & female from the idea of power & weakness.

I’m amazed you’re still reading, by the way.

Male phallus worship has been around for thousands of years. Female power worship has also been around for thousands of years. And you know, I’d call myself a feminist, but that’s not right. I’m more of an equalist, if such a thing existed. I think many equalists become feminists because it seems to be the best way to approach the current situation. The thing is, the current situation is fucked and will not benefit from tinkering. It should be defenestrated. I wish to throw it out the metaphorical window.

We want to change the kink world for the better, yea? The way to change the world is by thinking differently. Step back, take a breath, and redefine. Reexamine your accepted truths.

Culture tells us that penetration equals power, penetration is masculine and therefore masculinity and power are forever linked. Because we’re dealing with two halves of two binary ideas, culture automatically links the other halves together; femininity is weak.

In order to combat this fuckupery we have decided to embrace being penetrated as strong, in order to cause the inevitable chain reaction which concludes by stating that the female gender is the one with the power.

The problem with deciding to turn the idea on its head is that we’ve already demonstrated that the logic behind the idea is faulty; culture came to the conclusion that women are weak, and we disagree. So we take the exact same logical treatment of ideas and arrive at the conclusion that women are strong, which suits us infinitely better but in no way fixes the problem of the faulty logic. This isn’t trying to fix the culture. This is trying to reaarange it to our convenience.

Rather than rehash an old process with new ideas, it serves us better to examine the process itself to figure out what the hell’s going wrong.

Point one: Penetration equals power. Not true. Penetration is a tool to be used in the process of power exchange. Being the giver or taker of a penetrative act in no way necessitates a certain kind of power, as all the lovely women who can top while being fucked have proven. Scratch it. It’s a false assumption. We knew that already; that’s the basic premise of the No Strap-Ons Clubs’ argument.

Point two: Penetration is masculine. Well hey, guess what. I don’t think that’s true either. And I fully realize I’m going against literally hundreds of thousands of years of biology here, with men having penises and women not. But doesn’t it seem that the very invention of the strap on has pretty much made this whole argument bullshit? Not only that, it’s not just a penis one can penetrate with. I can penetrate you with a knife, a needle, my fist, my finger, my teeth. I can penetrate your personal space. I can penetrate you emotionally with my mind. I get as much pleasure out of penetrating you with a strap-on as I do from penetrating you with a needle. I’m a woman with full control over the ability to penetrate people. I’m not taking on a masculine trait. This does not need to be gendered. Seriously, stop gendering things. Really.

With point one and point two pretty much gone, the conclusion just doesn’t hold up now, does it? Masculinity does not equal power. It’s not because masculinity equals powers’ opposite, weakness. It’s because, guess what, you don’t actually need to gender your power exchange in any one particular way. You can if you want to. But you don’t have to.

Especially not when stuck within this rigid bullshit idea that gender and power are binary concepts. Gender and power are fluid concepts. The two scales can play off one another with or without being intertwined. You can treat them any way you’d like.

I believe gender is necessarily fluid, because we’ve stuck ourselves into a binary idea and then have to embrace fluidity in order to account for all of the people, ideas and actions that don’t fit the binary model. I include myself in this fluidity. And I believe that power is fluid for exactly the same reason. I wear boys clothes, I kiss girls, and I don’t always think of myself as totally feminine. And I don’t hold every single solitary kind of ultimate power in my relationships, and don’t want to.

We insist on gendering power exchange because we choose the genders of our partners. It makes so much sense if you’re a submissive man to connect women with power. You want a woman with power. It’s not a far jump from there to wanting women to be powerful, even if they don’t want to be. And from there, to deciding that womankind is powerful. We are so insistent on gendering everything! Look how we name our interests: fem dom, male dom, fem sub, male sub.

If you’re not heterosexual this whole insistence on a binary equation of gender and power just up and fades away. Seriously, the heterosexual scene needs some prolonged exposure from the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans) scenes. Most of them figured out what I’m about to say a long time ago.

They’re *people,* people. We’re humans in the end. Embrace the idea that you are powerful because you are you. You demand power, you work for it, you get it. Embrace the idea that you are vulnerable because you choose to be, not because of how your sexual organs happen to be arranged.

It’s not me being a man, or being masculine. It’s me with a strap-on. It’s all about me. My gender identity informs rather than defines my identity as a whole. I claim power, because I am me. It’s so more elemental than gender.

A strap-on is a tool. Penetration is a tool. Power exchange is mental; power exchange is not about the tools you use but how you how you use them. It’s not about what you do; it’s about how you do it.

This is bad news for every annoyingly clueless femdom who’s ever walked into a play party and demanded that strange men bow down to her. It’s bad news for every male dom who argues that women are naturally the weaker sex. It’s bad news for every male sub who insists he’s worthless, and blissfully perpertuates the idea that all women are to be worshipped. It’s bad news for every man who wants to be fucked up the ass to make himself feel like a weak woman.

Nope. Sorry. Here in my corner of the Internet, I’m going to make you work for it. I will not accord you a place on any power scale according to your gender or a gendered idea of how you want to play. It’s going to be much harder than that, and it’s going to involve understanding the exchange of power as something you have to deal with consciously. Something you have to earn because of who you are as a whole person. What you think, and how you play. I have power because I use the tools I have available in order to gain power.

I’m not saying people can’t go out and gender their power exchange if they want to. Gender is fascinating, and an incredible tool to have available. I’m saying do it consciously. Have strap-on sex, or don’t! Whatever! Give and take as whole people, not arrangements of sexual organs.

But don’t come looking to me for femdom. I’m not a femdom. I’m a dom. Straight up. And I penetrate.

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