I have been thinking about where I want this blog to go. But first, I’d like to talk about where it started.

Bloody Laughter didn’t start here. It started, in point of fact, with an open diary I had back with my first kinky boyfriend, where I wrote him love notes and jumped whenever I realized someone else was reading. That blog, before I deleted it, was called Your Sadism Is Showing. When I started dating Maymay I decided I needed somewhere to store ideas my family couldn’t read, and I started a LiveJournal, titled Sweet Steel. (It was that LiveJournal, incidentally, that eventually allowed my family member to connect this blog to me and subsequently confront me over my chosen topics.)

Just as I like to think that in his time with me May’s understanding and appreciation of art, literature and fashion have matured, I know that in my time with him my technical capabilities and opinions have matured. Hence, Livejournal moved to Blogger and eventually to my own site with Wordpress, newly titled A Place To Draw Blood Laughing. I have in the past year hesitated over my choice of name, blunt and potentially disturbing as it is, but I kept it because I think it is poetic, and accurate.

At first blush, this was just a space I’d made where I could talk about how I have sex, and be sure (wrongfully sure, admittedly) that my nearest and dearest were not reading, or reading only with invitation and sympathy. It’s a theme here that I over analyze, that I am extremely body-conscious, that I am sensually driven and sex-positive and in some ways deeply strange. So it made sense to write about my strangeness, and to make a place for the dark parts of me to breathe.

And then there was a merry rush in the form of a golden summer of kink, of working on Floating World and digging out my strong opinions in words for the first time. Then there was the death-defying tailspin of being attacked over what I’ve said in this space, and my somewhat pathetic attempts to crawl my way out of the wreckage.

I limped along, for a while. I moved to Australia. I widened my scope.

I said when I started this blog that I would never apologize to myself if I didn’t want to update it. That was my little way of being clever, keeping myself free of the thing. In the end, though, that’s a stupid plan for a blog. Blogs should update. It is unfair of me to not update and still call this thing a blog, and want to make it thrive.

Maybe you have seen where this is going. Maybe you knew months ago, as I knew. As I’ve said before, I make decisions quickly and then come around to them slowly. The truth is I knew in the middle of last year that I would lay this blog to rest.

This is the end. A Place To Draw Blood Laughing is now closed.

I’ll give you two of my reasons. The first is creative.

At the height of this blog I was writing two posts a day and chronicling my sex life with lust and eager glee. I was also not writing anything but blog posts. My stories stagnated, my fiction trailed off and was eventually nothing. It seems I do not have the focus and energy to write here and also maintain my other creative pursuits.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m writing a manuscript, a long and meaty thing. In doing so, I have become jealous of my own words. I don’t want them here. I want them there, in the pages that are growing.

I pour letters out in the shape of sex, of Maymay’s hips and the wispy curls on his soft neck, of hot mornings alone in my bed with my hand between my thighs, of a blond Australian man who moves my hand to his throat when he comes and smiles in his own aftermath.

I pour them out and want to keep them for the book, this thing I’m trying to write that keeps growing into my creative spaces when I’ve looked the other way, so all of my drawings turn up pornography and all on my blog posts are sucked clean-dry.

The reality is I can’t figure out how to write about sex and blog about sex at the same time. I want to write this book more than I want to blog my current adventures; I want it to be finished so badly, the thought makes my chest ache.

The second reason I’m ending my time here is because I’d like to learn to speak for myself, openly, with my real name and my real voice.

I wrote once:

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office…

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I have become increasingly skeptical of anonymity, or pseudo-anonymity, in my case. I’m certainly not saying we all need step from the shadows and reveal ourselves. I think our identities within our community are always our own, to do with as we like. But for me, keeping up the anonymous show seems increasingly pointless.

Most of the reasons I had to keep this journal separated from my real name vanished the day I sat down with my family member over Thanksgiving weekend and found my life suddenly ripped in tiny shreds. I clung stubbornly to the other reasons for a little while; the future jobs, the rest of the family, the possible consequences, the blinding, sneaky fear.

I find it very unfortunate and a little shameful that I feel the want to censor myself more fully now than I did when this blog began. Perhaps you could say that I’ve learned, or grown. You could say I’ve become more frightened, which is also true.

But in a wider sense, the real take-away is that my goals have changed. I am not content to speak from a pseudonym any longer. I have, in fact, soured radically upon the concept of not claiming my own ideas. But I recognize that speaking from my real name and voice will require a different perspective, and will have a different audience.

I’m sick of being afraid. I don’t want it any more. When it comes to emotional turmoil, I only really know how to bury things or confront them head on. I’m not sure which I’m doing right now.

The reality is that this is not an anonymous blog. Anyone with half a brain can find out who I am from here; Twitter was the last step that fell in place and clinched it. Any pretense we all may have made to my anonymity has been out of mutual respect and politeness. The sex community builds itself upon these fragile understandings, thin as sugar sticks. You support me, I support you. You trust me. I trust you.

I am out, but not unified. I’ve decided I’d like to feel unified, for once. I’d like to have a space on the web that can contain all of myself. Right now I have two sites and neither of them do what I what them to do. Both are limited, this site by its very narrow scope and my professional & personal site by its attempt to be clean. I would like a site that can be a little naughty, be professional, host my writing and my job hunt alongside my queer politics and community work. I don’t work well when I’m not fully integrated.

I’ve decided that I’d like to speak as myself, and that I can no longer accept the fragile, imagined protection of using other names and putting on a great pretending show. I am not a conjurer in that way. I am forthright, and know no other way to be.

My name is Sara.

I’d like to thank you for reading me as Eileen these past two years. I don’t mind if you keep calling me that; I answer to it now anyway.

I’ve found amazing support, dear friends and ever-expanding opportunities through this blog and the queer and kink scenes. I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay open, stay active, and keep writing. I’m going to make new spaces, run new events, spread new ideas. Perhaps I will return in a few years to this same ground, swept clean.

For those of you interested in the nitty gritty: the archives will remain active. I will continue to accept and respond to password requests. I may try to find a mental space that allows me to open those posts again; I’m not sure yet. The site may be slightly rearranged, but the content will not change dramatically, or be erased. The BloodyLaughter Twitter account will be suspended, as I’ve switched to SaraEileen.

In the meantime, you are invited to visit my personal site, where in the tradition of most blogs I am writing my way through being young, confused, and complicated. SaraEileen.com is a somewhat different website; it connects to my resume. It has my real name. It is not just about this part of my life, but also about writing, job-hunting, creativity and business. It will be a different blog, and I will not be offended if it doesn’t strike your fancy. Of course, I would love to see you there. As I said, I trust you.

It seems silly to just say thank you, but I will anyway.

Thank you for helping me take the big issues seriously and the little ones lightly.

Thank you for keeping me truthful, growing and proud in return for my words and affection.

It’s been raucous and wild. These things will continue. I’ll be seeing you, good people. I’m always around.

With love,
Sara

Tonight I saw an incredibly weird play about the first feminist queen of Lapland. When I came home, I closed my CollarMe account. Strangely, these things do have something to do with one another. In the play, the queen is called “swashbuckling”. I had forgotten how much I love that word, swashbuckling. I realized there was a part of me that used to ache to inhabit such a word, and that the ache is still there.

And when I came home and signed online, looking at the messages in my inbox and the words coming up on the screen, I also realized that there is no place for swashbuckling women on CollarMe. There is some potential there, but most of it is buried and I don’t care enough to go digging. There is too much shit in the way.

When I clicked the button to close my account, this is the message that appeared, letter for letter:

http://collarme.com
Perminantly close your account?

Really, that about sums it up. And I would laugh, if it wasn’t just so fucking pathetic.

For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.

Let me break one factor of this change down. Hopefully with some delicacy. I want to talk about money.

Even though I should know it by now, it consistently shocks me how expensive it is to be kinky. Money is one way in which much of the public scene is privileged; there is literally a bar to entry open to a selected few. (Not to mention all the other ways in which much of the scene caters to a particular privilege: age, time, location, race, gender, orientation, able-bodied, to name a few. With a nexus of overlying, unspoken requirements, it’s no wonder the public scene is comparatively tiny.)

Now, I’ve come to realize that the Australian relationship with money as I currently see it is a little different than I’m used to. Namely, they spend more on their pleasures. It’s not just that Sydney is an expensive city, especially with food prices skyrocketed. NYC is also an expensive city; I’m used to this.

Rather, it seems a regular occurrence for the people I hang out with to drop $100 on alcohol in a single night. A weeknight. On a weekend? An American girl I met the other day told me, in hushed tones, that an Australian guy she knows spent $600 last Saturday, between clubs, cabs, and drinks. We stared at each other with our mouths open. $600 is my rent for a month.

So it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, in this culture, for me to say that something is simply too expensive.

I have spent a lot of money on the weapons and gear of my sexuality of choice. I have spent a lot of money on events like Floating World and Black Rose. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars that I, and others in my economic situation, cannot technically count as disposable income. And as half of a couple who travel together and split our expenses, for every dollar I spend, Maymay spends one too.

If we shall speak very technically, it is not too expensive for me to spend $40 to go to a play party. I do have $40 in my bank account, and it could potentially go toward such a thing. So let me be a little more honest.

Unfortunately for the good people I’ve met here in the scene, some of whom host simply gorgeous parties, I have a hard time getting myself out and putting down cash at the door. This, I should clarify, is not through the fault of their parties. This is because, as I mentioned, the things I want from the scene have changed:

Where I used to consider the possibility of pick-up play, I now play only with established partners and long-term friends.

Where I used to feed from the energy in kinky spaces, I now feel awkward and exposed.

Where I used to be willing to manage the social minefield of not knowing anyone on the room, I now feel more comfortable around at least a few people I’m close to.

And where I used to be able to make friends with people solely upon the common ground of shared sexualities, I now find myself unable to do so. This has unfortunately knocked munches off my list, as well as parties.

So the events are not at fault. But the events are no longer right for me. And the Sydney scene appears to be structured in such a way that these kinds of events are the first point of entry.

So when I say that something is too expensive, I am being a little unfair. What I should say is that I’m not, at this point in my life, willing to pay an entry fee in order to be exposed to a number of kinky people with whom I have a slight chance of becoming friends. Because that’s what these parties have become for me; the vapor of a possibility that one of the other attendees might be someone I want to make friends with.

In the end, having complementary sexualities has almost no value for me in forging new friendships. It comes below a laundry list of other factors that must first align: our humor, our interests, our intellectual inquiries, our attitudes toward society and life and ourselves.

Complementary sexualities become a real factor in maintaining a relationship once sex itself becomes a factor of that relationship. To say that I am more likely to find friends among the kinky is similar to saying that if I were hetero, I would be more likely to find friends among men. Largely illogical, consistently untrue.

I have been reassessing the return on my investments, so to speak. Unfortunately, if I go to a play party that does not yield me any kind of good feeling, friendship, or conversation, I don’t just shrug it off. I get upset at myself, a little depressed. And where I get a little upset, Maymay becomes angrily vicious and bitter. It is not uncommon for us to leave play parties that are unsuccessful (by our standards), go home, fight, and end up miserable and crying. So in many ways, an entry fee is not just an entry fee; it’s a gamble.

And as what I’m looking for diverges further and further from what play parties are designed to deliver, the gamble becomes increasingly bad.

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.

But, all things pass.

I’ve recently started reading Axe’s blog, ever since I got a few chances to chat with him in person. Axe is a sweet, smart submissive guy here in New York, who writes primarily about his search for a relationship with a dominant woman. I get the impression that his search has morphed into something of an epic quest at this point, spanning several years and causing him to move from the midwest to New York City.

As is often the case for those of us with experientially based learning styles, for me recognizing a thing is not the same as knowing a thing. As such, I often come to long foregone conclusions in my own way, and in my own time. Getting to know Axe has really driven some issues home for me, issues that Maymay and others have been writing about for ages.

Where the hell are all the dominant women? Where are the women like me?

The supposed scarcity of dominant women is bemoaned, condemned, dismissed and mistrusted. And yet, my experiential evidence within the New York scene confirms this scarcity.

And, a less-recognized issue but one that I find personally just as relevant: Where are the other couples in relationships like mine?

I think I’ve remained so persistently blind to this imbalance because addressing this issue demands that I acknowledge exactly how rare I am. I have no real sense of personal rarity in my life; it consistently surprises me that other people are not like me.

Obviously there are multiple issues at work here, which play against one another. The scarcity of dominant women in the scene says many (predominantly negative) things about how scene space welcomes women, and how the dominant sexual orientation is portrayed and understood. The scarcity of femdom/malesub couples speaks to the scarcity of desirable, sane, smart male submissives, which in turn illuminates how the scene marginalizes that brand of sexuality.

Honestly, folks, there’s too much at work here for a single entry, or even a single blog. Here’s my suggestion: for more insight on how scene space “welcomes” dominant women, I refer you to the brilliant, bitter Bitchy Jones. For more insight on how submissive men are marginalized, see Maymay’s entire blog.

Just right now, just here, I want to talk about what the scarcity of dominant women means to me, as a dominant woman in the public scene.

Axe writes not once but twice that Maymay and I are the only femdom/malesub couple he knows. This confirms my experience; we are the only femdom/malesub couple I know as well. The rare dominant women I do know in passing are usually dating dominant men.

I intend to keep my data on a meatspace level during this entry. Yes, I know other dominant women online who are like me. We make similar choices about our identities and maintain similar relationships. And I have online friendships. But, for me, they’re not the same.

The part of my brain that thinks the world should make sense finds it strange that Axe has not met an appropriate dominant woman. He’s a polite, sane, well spoken submissive man: an attractive rarity. He’s good looking, has great kinks, and a charismatic ‘nilla personality.

But it is ranging on impossible for him to find a partner.

I’ve had three long-term relationships with submissive men, at the age of 24. I’m picky as hell, but I can find partners. On the other side of the coin, I’m the first dominant woman Maymay has dated. Before me, he dated three submissive women.

Believe me, I understand how much the imbalance created by the scarcity of dominant women works in my favor. I see how unfair it is to him when Maymay and I compare our numbers of potential play partners.

I understand how desirable my age, gender and orientation are.

There’s a part of me that deeply distrusts this desirability. After all, it’s not particularly reassuring to know that one is the best choice because one is the only choice.

I suspect we all feel, at times, as though we are unseen. Being a young, sexy, dominant woman gives me privileges in the scene that I don’t earn. I show up, and people give them to me. At the same time, being desired (or respected, in a culture that consistently confuses sexual attraction with respect) because of a particular flux of timing, genetics, and orientation makes me feel like a cardboard cut out.

Of course, from many perspectives I have nothing to complain about. Inherited privilege trumps any kind of card I might play about feeling insecure, or unseen, or unwanted. In a world where rights are gained through suffering, yet again, I have no right.

I wrote after I came back from Floating World that I was wrestling with the difficulties of supporting a fluid culture from a standpoint of relative stasis. This was true then of gender, and it’s true now of power.

I firmly believe that power balances shift, that people are capable of embracing multiple roles and defining themselves as they choose, in as many ways as they choose. In short, I believe in the existence of switches.

Right now, however, I am not a switch. And perhaps because I love fluid people, the overwhelming majority of my friends are switches. Most of remainder of my friends are men who top and women who bottom. Within my circle of friends here in New York, there is not a single dominant woman besides me who does not switch. I know dominant woman as acquaintances, and almost never in couples.

The simple truth of the matter is, I have no friends like me.

Where are the other dominant women? Women my age? Yes, in friendship and the exchange of ideas on related experiences, age does matter.

Women who don’t switch, and are doing their best to incorporate that choice into their lives? In an avidly fluid, changeable culture, and possessing a chameleon-like personality, that choice is sometimes very hard for me to manage.

Women who’re smart, and wise, and local? Where are you? Could we have coffee sometime?

I leafed through the pages of the book on the subway, headed home with Maymay on New Year’s Eve. On the lower right-hand corner of one page, written in blue ink above a snapshot of a couple clapping, were the words I miss when you were just proud of me.

I started sobbing right there on the subway. I had to laugh at myself, I felt so foolish.

I spent eight days visiting family members during the Christmas holidays. I had enormous trouble organizing my thoughts while I was there. Much of my time with my family was nourishing, and content. I enjoyed Christmas. I ate cinnamon rolls and watched my cat pounce on wrapping paper, high on catnip.

I spent some time alone with the family member I shared that painful conversation with back at Thanksgiving. Seeing them was both relieving and difficult.

We did not have the beautiful, moving conversation one might have thought we’d have. I was not expecting us to. There’s a part of me that is amazed we talked at all. We sat in a crowded lunchroom over chili and hot chocolate, and built a small, sparse bridge of words.

“I’ve put passwords on my blog,” I offered, uncomfortably.

“That’s good, I suppose,” they answered. “I know you’ve been writing, but I haven’t read it.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. I turned a spoonful of chili over, contemplating. Eventually I answered. “You don’t have to read what I write, you know.”

“I know that,” they said. “But I’m always going to want to read what you write. You’re a part of me, what you do is going to last.” They paused a moment. “Your dust is going to be my dust too.”

I smiled at that.

“It was very painful for me, saying those things to you,” they said.

I teared up a little. “I know it was. I wrote about that.”

“This isn’t a good place to talk about it,” they said.

“I know,” I answered.

Later we drove home together. I watched the trees meld together in blurred shapes as we passed.

I drew a helpless gesture in the air with my hands. “I don’t know if you want to talk about . . . all this, if you want to learn about it or have me explain things to you.”

“I don’t think . . . I’m never going to think that violence is okay,” they answered. “I told you what I think, and I know you’ll do what you want.” They paused, staring at the road ahead. “I’m trying to let you go,” they said.

I thought about that for a little while.

Finally they spoke again. “Is there anything you really want to say?”

I turned the question over in my head. Was there anything I really wanted to say to them? About violence, or kink, or being an adult? About decision making, about work and energy and dedication? About criticism, constructive or otherwise? About Maymay, about how much I love him and how good he is for me?

I’m trying to let you go.

“I really think you could have handled the situation better,” I said at last.

“Maybe,” they answered.

We drove on, for a little while, in silence. Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek on the window.

Is that it?

I don’t know.

I think I’ll always disappoint my family in ways, and there will always be things we just don’t talk about. I think I will always live, as I have always lived, with this undercurrent of criticism and distance, and love.

I think I’ll relish the day I can see in the distance, the day I make decisions without my family.

I think that right now, just in this moment, that’s okay. I think that it will still hurt. I will cry on subway cars sometimes, and then occasionally, and then, hopefully, not at all.

Like I have been every other time my life was broken, in the end I will be okay.

Have I brought this painful span of words and weeks to an end?

Perhaps I have. I don’t know.

I do know that for the first time in weeks, I want to write again.

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I would hate to imply that I have everything all figured out. I don’t. A lot of questions have been raised about exactly how we can use language appropriately and apply context to our actions, and honestly, I don’t have any answers. This experience has not been so revelatory. I have ideas, of course. I suppose you should expect nothing less.

But first, I want to talk about being out.

By “out” I mean openly claiming my sexual orientation. (I realize that “out” doesn’t always apply to sexual orientations, but for the moment we’ll operate under a narrower definition.) It’s such a tricky word, and in my opinion misleading.

It’s clear that this isn’t a binary situation. “Out” implies an open or shut door, but from personal experience most of us realize that such simplifications are hardly helpful when dealing with real life.

So we could try placing “in” and “out” at the ends of a 1 to 10 scale, and shuffling ourselves into places along that scale. But then, that becomes quickly bogged down. How out is out? Am I completely in if I deny my interest in kink even to myself? Or am I completely in if I think about being kinky, but never tell anyone? Am I completely out if I write under a fake name? A real name? Am I completely out if I get a video camera and start streaming every minute of my life to the world?

Like power, like gender, being out is far too complicated to shuffle into numbers.

I’ve said before that I’m out. Among my friends here in the city, I am probably more out than most. What does that mean?

It means that if someone asks me where I’m going if I’m headed to a CV meeting, I’ll tell the truth. But depending on who I’m speaking to, I might filter that truth, leaving details unsaid. If someone asks me what I’m sexually interested in, if I think they’re serious and respectful I’ll tell them that I’m kinky. I took a day off work to attend a kinky event. I told my workplace, when asked, that I was attending a conference on sexual education. How out does that make me, such a devious half-truth?

I said in my first post on being attacked that I felt blindsided. In all honesty, one of the reasons I felt blindsided is because I told my family I was kinky three years ago. At least, I thought I had. Maybe they missed the memo.

More likely is that the casual conversation I had three years ago is a level of “out” that doesn’t compare to the revelations this blog contains.

The main reason I’m more out than the majority of my friends is because of this blog, and Maymay’s blog. Now, Eileen and Maymay are not our real names. However, we’ve shared personal details, plans and agendas, our voices and even photos of ourselves. Anyone who knows me personally could connect me with this blog through independent observation.

When I started writing here, similar to when I started playing in the scene, I did think about what being out would mean for me. At the time, I decided that I wanted to be able to write freely and speak my mind; I decided that this was more important to me than the threat of a future bogey-boss-man come to take my job away.

I did not direct my family to this blog, nor did I hide it from them specifically. As I mentioned, I did not assume that if they were reading they would react explosively. But I assumed a certain amount of context and experience in my writing, and the results of that assumption were indeed explosive.

My immediate reaction was to take the blog down and rethink exactly how “out” I wanted to be. Of course, as I began rethinking, I realized a very simple truth.

I’ve written here, with personal details and specifics, for nine months. The things I’ve said will probably be attached to me forever. I’ve marched in two Pride parades here in the city. That means that there are photos of me taken by spectators that I have no control over. I have gone and will continue to go to kinky events. I have no method of controlling the information that I am kinky.

The truth is that once out, there’s no going back in.

If I’m attempting to keep a portion of my life anonymous, I face attacks from two well-established fronts. The first is from employers and authorities. The second is from family and friends. These are the people most likely to take an interest in my writing without sharing my knowledge, interest, or arousal in my topics.

Each of us when writing online faces the two sides of the coin: Could someone, starting with my online identity, discover my real name? And could someone, starting with my real name, discover my online identity?

In my case, the answers were yes and yes. Now, the answers are maybe and maybe, but frankly, maybe is the same as yes.

I had not expected attacks from my family or friends. Now that I’ve been attacked, I’m living through it. I’ll keep on living.

I also do not expect attacks from my employers or other authorities. I realize I may be wrong about this. I realize that someday I may be fired from a job I love because of this blog. But I’ve come to the same conclusion I came to the day I started here: that’s okay.

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office.

A part of this is the knowledge that I’m planning a career which will probably not involve people snooping around to try and reveal something scandalous about me, or that if they do, I can always pray the scandal will help my book sales.

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I suspect that some of the essential properties of the Internet are misunderstood. The Internet is not an anonymous playground. The Internet, in fact, is a wealth of identifying information, meticulously cataloged and stored. Even with safeguards and careful planning, all it will take to find out your real identity is someone with better technical skills and more resources than you. It is incredibly hard to disconnect your name from your words.

If keeping your sexuality a secret is essential to a portion of your life, using the Internet to express yourself is a deceptively weak method of practicing information security. Even under a false name, even when writing from a false perspective, there is always the possibility that your words will reconnect with you at an inopportune time. It seems to me that if you absolutely cannot handle the consequences of a specific person reading something you’ve written, you should not be posting online.

On the other hand, we must recognize how blogging and content-production is changing our lives. The Internet is creating undeniable links between our personal and public persona. Again, I hesitate to cite generational influences, but it’s a safe estimate to say that nine out of every ten people I know in my age group keep a blog or maintain an online page. Online footprints are becoming crucial elements in our interpersonal relationships.

As these trends develop, the people responsible for hiring new employees in companies will be forced to change their methods. Eventually the people hiring will be keeping blogs themselves. The economy will have to adapt to a generation of people who share their private lives as a matter of course. Our culture will have to adapt to different methods of sharing information and different expectations in communication.

As I thought about this, I started talking to people about being out. In particular, I spoke with Susan Wright, who can take credit for planting many of the seeds of these ideas in my mind. I began formulating my defenses and tapping the resources and good people of my community.

As I did this, I also realized that I don’t want to go back in.

Although I wince at the cloying humanitarianism, I have to admit that I’m not just out because being out protects me. Nor am I writing this only because the writing has a cathartic benefit. I’m out, and I’m writing, because I recognize that being out, and writing, helps people.

This community supported me from the beginning and can claim a huge portion of the credit for beginning to heal me now. What would I have done without it? Where would I be? Where would any of us be? Probably locked in our bedrooms trying to convince ourselves that we’re not mentally ill.

I wrote once that we should talk about our dark desires and fantasies because not talking about them is the more dangerous alternative. Keeping our thoughts hidden allows us no way to critique our ideas or examine ourselves. Nor does it allow a space for us to learn from others. Our community survives and supports itself only through our individual willingness to keep on talking.

As misty-eyed as the declaration is, this community is valuable to me. I will keep on talking.

Does it mean the blog will go back up completely? No. Although I recognize that I am out, and I will continue to be so, I still intend to edit my blog entires for personal details. I see no reason to throw myself off the cliff simply to see if I survive the fall.

I definitely intend to take my family out of my blog entirely, as they never consented to being written about on a kinky blog, even if they did raise a kinky child.

It would be easy to say that’s that and close the matter, but we all know it’s not so simple. This is a complex resolution, and still tinged through with vulnerability.

I gave a lot to this forum, and I ended up very, very hurt. As valuable as I recognize the giving to be, I’m still not ready to be hurt again.