A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

In Giving Gifts, Attitude > Activity

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

There’s a new post over on Axe’s blog that has pulled out some immediate, visceral, negative reactions. I suggest you read his post in order to put mine in context, but as a brief overview, he relates a story about a dominant woman who expected him to take her shopping, and assumed he would pay for her. The comments condemn this woman as an asshat, a dishonest prat, and a whore.

Okay. I think this deserves another look. I want to talk about the giving and receiving of gifts.

What’s the issue in Axe’s scenario? Is it that she wanted him to buy her presents? Because I have to admit, I love being bought presents. I have expensive tastes, sensual obsessions, and gifts give me the warm fuzzies. In the right context, gifts turn me on. The idea of tribute turns me on. The idea of making Maymay pay for his orgasms definitely turns me on.

Don’t worry, I will not be offended if my blog stats have halved when I wake up tomorrow.

But is that really the issue? Or is it that she assumed he would buy her presents, bullied him and attempted to coerce him?

Let’s be absolutely clear. I don’t think there’s an intrinsic problem with giving presents as a form of submission, or receiving them as a form of domination (or tribute). And making the logical jump, I don’t think there is an intrinsic problem with financial domination, when done responsibly. I do think, however, that the attitudes surrounding these kinks are far too complicated to leave it at that.

Sometimes I make Maymay buy me things. It gets me off. I think it gets him off as well. It also causes me a welter of confusion, guilt, worry and self-doubt, the likes of which not even sadism can rival. Seriously. There is no other kink I claim that can make me feel like shit.

I suspect that giving money to fiercely independent women is a recipe for disaster. It’s certainly provoked some personal shipwrecks for me. Being paid for, given gifts, or being financially spoiled makes me feel weak. And ashamed, and dirty. And all sorts of other crap that I don’t think I should have to deal with. I know that I am not these things: weak, shameful, unclean.

I also love giving gifts, but I have never stopped to consider that giving Maymay a gift might make him feel bad. There are some deeply gendered issues in that statement. And I have managed to ply arrogance from its negative connotations and embrace it as a tool and a perspective, but I cannot seem to do the same with being spoiled. I can’t get through the issues to find the guilt-free good.

When we talk about financial domination, or the giving of gifts, there seems to be a feeling of general distaste. There is talk of advantages taken, and services exchanged, and it’s all layered over with the still-lingering residue of the dirt that has been culturally ingrained into the concept of prostitution. Money is too dirty an issue for us all to play nice.

We can talk about the exchange of power, and of control, and of pain. But we can’t have a conversation about the exchange of money without that knee-jerk distaste. And where does that leave women like me? The stigma of money has influenced my life in so many directions that I can barely speak about financial exchanges coherently.

And frankly, that pisses me off. Not only because it messes with my potential enjoyment of a kink, but because it messes with my future as a professional in any field of business.

What if, in some possible future, I quit my job and am financially supported by my partner? Should I feel ashamed? The way I am right now, I couldn’t bring myself to be supported willingly by someone else. And I think that’s a pretty crap attitude, on my part. I don’t like that my intrinsic worth as a person is so wrapped up in how much money I can make, or my ability to pay off my debts. I find the perspective short-sighted, and self-damaging.

Let me bring this back on track. I will say spoil me. That’s right. Buy me gifts. I love gifts. (If you can manage to spoil me and not make me feel like shit, you’re probably a miracle worker. Or Maymay.)

But I will never, ever expect that of anyone. I can barely accept gifts as it is. I have worked very hard to be gracious when people give me things, and honestly, I’m not very good at it. Gifts make me feel indebted, because for me, feeling indebted is safer than feeling spoiled. Feeling indebted and uncomfortable is a better place for me than feeling like a silver-spoon, rich-kid brat.

This says realms about me, and my relationship with money, and my relationship with myself. This is a terrific example of how my personal problems fuck with my sexuality. It’s probably the best example I have, because it is the most irrational trigger.

Taking money from others makes me feel like a bad person. It makes me afraid I will turn into the woman Axe wrote about.

It’s not just my personal hang-ups that keep me from embracing this kink. It’s that we rarely take the time to acknowledge the distinction between taking money as a kink and being a spoiled bitch, or a whore. Because if you go play in the comments over on Axe’s post, you’ll notice that no one explicitly condemned that woman for trying to pull a non-consensual scene. They condemned her for expecting to be bought gifts. Those are two different things. The first one is the real problem. The money clouds the issue.

I find it critical that we draw a perspective between the kink and the attitude. Attutide is greater than activity. I kink on gifts. I do not feel entitled to gifts. I consider inappropriate entitlement to be shameful, and non-consensual scenes to be wrong.

Only my attitude excuses me. Only my attitude separates me from her.

It hurts me that because of her, and people like her, and because of my issues regarding money, and because of the way the scene treats money, I can’t claim this kink in good conscience. It hurts me to have to say that a part of my sexuality makes me feel ashamed. That my work to act responsibly, consensually, and wisely is not enough to break that prejudice down in my bedroom, and in my mind.

10. Vanilla

Sunday, June 15, 2008

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.

Out

Monday, December 10, 2007

Now that I was dealing more solidly with the reality that life can go on after heartache, I started chipping away at the second issue I had outlined that night at Burgers and Cupcakes.

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.

When “No” Is Not A Safeword

Friday, October 12, 2007

I wasn’t going to write this post yet. I wasn’t going to write it ever, actually. You know. The post about having rape fantasies.

I read a post by Calico this morning that is full of righteous anger. If you’re taking recommendations for reading material today, put this one on your list.

I have seen that righteous anger before, wrapped up around a subject so touchy that even skirting its boundaries causes flares in the firestorm. I had thought to not write about my fantasies and rape play scenes, out of what I thought was respect but I realize now is simply my dislike of confrontation. I commented to May recently that I am simply not controversial enough to make for riveting reading material.

So this is not quite the post about having rape fantasies. This is the post about why I’m going to talk about having them.

It is argued that involving rape in our fantasy life or acting out mock parodies of it in our bed trivializes the tragedy. It is said that my fantasy is disrespectful, and I should shut the hell up.

This argument is based on rage and pain, and it is false.

Saying that having or acting out rape fantasies trivializes the crime of rape assumes many wrong things:

It assumes that everyone involved, the fantasizer, the arguer, and the audience, is incapable or unwilling to distinguish fantasy from reality. It furthers the misconception that thought is deed.

Thought is neither intent, nor deed. Think about the myriad logical problems of equating thought and deed; if thought were deed we’d all be dead. Pulverized. Space dust.

This distinction needs to be made. Not just in BDSM; everywhere, to everyone. Teach a child that having a fantasy does not mean they’ve consented to the reality, and maybe that child will grow up able to recognize rape.

It also, in a related point, assumes that the fantasizer doesn’t understand or respect what rape is.

I have never been raped. In a world where the right to speak out is gained through suffering, I have no right to speak. But I understand what rape is.

Rape: a girl sitting in the vinyl booth of a restaurant explained to me with a smile on her face that she’s sexually frigid because she was abused by a family friend when she was a toddler.

Rape: a young woman crying on my shoulder, telling me the story of her date the night before. He fingered her, she said no, but she was too drunk to stop him.

Rape: a lover who wouldn’t let me feel his anus with my fingertip, because he was gang raped as a teenager and the reconstructive surgery left scars he thinks are ugly.

Rape is not what I do in my bedroom on Saturday nights.

I have spent hours discussing what consent is. I have an awareness of the concept of consent that is not echoed in the public consciousness. The existence and purpose of safewords, the very first thing any good BDSM educator teaches, crystalizes the concept of consent into a recognizable, vocalized issue.

Why don’t we teach all children and adults what safewords mean? We ignore the issue of consent, assuming that our children will grow up knowing their own rights and the rights of others. We assume that “no” is a safeword, when almost any kinky person will tell you that you cannot assume your safewords.

We ignore or eliminate everything about sex and expect people to just figure it out. Tab A into Slot B, how hard can it be, really?

I am consistently amazed that BDSM organizations do not teach sex education. Perhaps the argument is that we’re not the right place to be teaching about sex, as a specialized culture with specialized skills. There are other venues for sex education. Where? I have to ask. Where are those other venues? How many kinky folks can swing a flogger, but don’t know how to use a dental dam? How many kinky people get regular STD tests?

How do we close that gap, the space between what we can teach about sex and what we can learn about it? There’s knowledge to be had on both sides.

As long as we don’t talk the gap is only going to get bigger.

The reality is that saying we shouldn’t talk about the place rape has in our fantasies and in our lives is a dangerous, damaging fallacy. Calling an issue off limits is ineffective. You cannot stop people from thinking. Saying we shouldn’t talk about rape fantasies is the same as saying we shouldn’t teach teenagers about sex. It’s abstinence only education for the mind, and it does not work.

The Most Subversive Post I Have Ever Written

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

So. It seems to me that outlaw cultures benefit from having the power to speak to and influence more mainstream cultures, said influence then being our defense against attack and our method of creating a space for ourselves.

It seems to me that a group of powerless people people cannot expect to have their rights defended solely from outside sources. Unfortunately, Superman does not fly around the globe defending sexual freedom, although I have to say I’d love to see it if he did.

It seems to me that power comes when people listen.

Why do people listen?

Seriously. Think about that. Who do you listen to? Why do you listen to them? I don’t mean to use the word to imply just hearing another person’s words and then responding, using them as a springboard for your own thoughts. I mean the people you take the time to understand when they present a viewpoint that is not your own.

Who do I listen to? I listen to people I respect. Why do I listen to them? Because they’ve proven to me in the past that they deserve my respect.

Logical problem. Redefine the question: why do I start listening?

I start listening to people I find interesting, or who I see as potentially having characteristics I value. I like people who are articulate, smart, excited. Funny. Wise. I like people who talk about things I care about. Everybody’s got a different list of reasons they might start listening.

It seems to me that commonly (not always, but commonly) I listen to people who are similar to me. It seems to me that most of us do this.

So if I, for example, wanted to say something to people who are incredibly unlike me, how would I get them to start listening?

Why else do I start listening? Well, I start listening to people who already hold some kind of power. Academics come to mind. It seems to me that this is common practice as well. We give more power to the powerful.

Beauty is a kind of power; more attention is paid to beautiful people. Money is a kind of power; more attention is paid to the rich. Mainstream education is a kind of power; more attention is paid to the educated.

Yes, of course it sucks. In fact, that right there might be most of the reason our world is fucked over. A self-perpetuating cycle of power based on class, wherein class is defined by values that we do not agree with.

Eileen, what the hell are you talking about?

You know what sparked this weirdly rambling thought process? Susan Wright, media spokesperson for sexual rights, wore a suit jacket to Floating World, a situation potentially involving the press. That’s it. That’s all it was.

I wrote that I like blogging because it partially protects me from agism. I wrote that I like wearing business clothes because I get better service in stores. What this boils down to is that I like being able to control my appearance because it allows me to affect my own power. I have this one particular way to expand and contract my cultural footprint, the space I take up, the influence I have on others.

(That’s right, sorry. This post is going to end up being about fashion.)

At the beginning of Pirates of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs is trying to get a bank loan. He goes to a bunch of different banks in grubby clothes and long hair, repeatedly failing to get his loan until the day he gets a haircut and wears a suit. Banks don’t like long hair.

As much as it sucks to say it, if I dyed my hair bright blue and started wearing my leather jacket everywhere I went, my mainstream cultural footprint would shrink. This gets handled differently by different people; most members of outlaw cultures choose to say, “Fuck it, lookism is bullshit and I have a right to wear what I want and be respected.” Which is true. Which is why sometimes I do wear my leather jacket, and maybe I will dye my hair blue.

In theory I should have just as much power no matter how I look, because in theory emphatic gestures sweeping aside stupid opinions work perfectly. But practically applied, emphatic gestures just keep failing me.

What I look like says something about me. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is still a proverb because people are still doing it.

If I know I get more respect in a suit jacket, even if I think the reasons behind why the respect is being accorded are false and damaging to my community, do I wear the jacket?

Do I reject culture or subvert culture?

In Giving Gifts, Attitude > Activity

10. Vanilla

Out

When “No” Is Not A Safeword

The Most Subversive Post I Have Ever Written

Public Service Declarations

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