A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

15. Books I Have Not Read

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Here’s what you should understand when you come asking me for advice on kinky books to read:

I haven’t read it.

Really. Whatever it is, I probably haven’t read more than three pages. Unless it is the Kushiel series or something written by Stephen Elliot. Or a scattered handful of Jay Wiseman books. So if you have been getting the impression that I know something about kinky erotica, consider this the unveiling.
I don’t read kinky books.

There are several reasons for this.

The first is that I didn’t learn about kink by reading instructional books; I learned about kink by going to Conversio Virium, seeing educational presentations, and learning through experience. I’m not knocking this learning style one way or the other. My exposure was simply a twist of advantage and geography.

And I still tend to not learn by reading; I always prefer to learn by watching, doing, fucking up, and trying again.

The second reason is that I am chronically resistant to instructional, self-help, or disseminated psychology books. I suspect this is a hold-over from my upbringing in a do-it-yourself, anti-therapy attitude. So I didn’t read the books that “explain” kink. I have a copy of Bound To Be Free…somewhere. I never got around to reading it. While it might have helped me at some point in my life, right now it simply doesn’t seem relevant.

As you may have noticed, I am perpetually self-analyzing. I usually see reading as a break from self-analysis. Books are my vacation.

The third reason is that I don’t read erotic fiction as literary fiction. So I have not read The Story of O. I have not read Tipping the Velvet. I have not read the Marketplace series. I have not read Venus in Furs. I don’t like to pay for it, I would never carry it around with me, and I’ve seen no compelling evidence, from the few pages of each of these texts that I’ve skimmed through, that I cannot find material just as good or better, for free, online.

I spend my money on kinky photography books. They are prettier to look at and deliver much more long-term satisfaction.

I used to think I owed it to the kinky community and myself to read these books, because they were so obviously an integral part of kink culture. Eventually I decided that this was a bad reason to read books, unless a day came that I was genuinely interested in their historical impact. That interest has not yet surfaced. Perhaps someday it will.

In the end, I prefer literary fiction. I don’t put my energy into long erotic fiction, because it is never, ever as fulfilling as reading good standard fiction. I prefer dense, classic epics; I read a lot of Hugo, Dumas, Austen, Rushdie, Marquez, Allende, Clavell. I went and bought a few new books recently: Eco, Borges, Kundera. And when I want a popcorn book, I reach for the sci-fi: Bradbury, Stephenson, Heinlein, Asimov.

The erotic fiction just doesn’t do it for me. The day someone writes a kinky erotic epic with the scale and scope of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I will die happy. I simply don’t see that day coming.

So I’ve been asked many, many times for my advice on kinky books. I will keep recommending
Elliot, because I respect his writing and appreciate the balance of erotic/non-erotic narrative in his work. But other than that, I’m at a loss. I’m not the right person to ask.

If you want to talk non-kinky books, I’d love to. Literature is one of the very few fields in which I genuinely identify as a geek.

But lest you think I know the specific reference behind the Story-of-O ring, let me set that record straight. I have absorbed the reference through cultural exposure. I have never read the book.

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.

Blogging For LGBT Families Day

Monday, June 2, 2008

This post is inspired by two things.

Thing the first: June 2nd is Blogging for LGBT Families Day, and as I happen to think “family” is an idea we each define on an individual basis, I’d say that raising awareness of the existing alternatives to the culturally traditional family structure qualifies as a good thing.

However, I am fried and ill and sneezing all over my computer screen. I’ve assured myself that this is wildly attractive. It is not, however, conducive to coherent thought.

Hence, thing the second: I wrote in the corner of a ratty black notebook this morning “Do something different and brave today.” Why did I write this? I am not in the habit of giving myself little inspirational notes. But in the spirit of that odd moment, here is something a little brave and a little different; a quick visit to another kind of writing. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. A poem. Feel free to cue instrumental music at your leisure.

This is a piece I’m working on for a chapbook-length collection of poetry on the idea of “Family.”

The Five Year Fix

An Irish girl and a bitter ex-Jewish young man move in together.
The first night their new phone rings,
and over the cracking snap of the bad connection
her brother paints a death threat on the young man’s face.
She’s got a family that doesn’t quit
and doesn’t want him around.
He’s got a great black hollow shaped like a childhood,
and another, smaller blue one shaped like a father.
They start hanging thick cocoon curtains that weekend.
She’s thinking marriage,
but it’s only the first week.

Two years later their electric coffee pot melts down,
And they go out for a late night cup.
She’s won something he was supposed to win,
and he pouts a bit over his dinner.
She gives him those deep Irish dimples and says
“At least it’s come into our family.”
He stops, puts his coffee cup down, and says,
“Oh.”
Breathy, like he’s had his heart vein flicked
by her fingernail.

Three years after that she’s back in school and he’s working.
Every night when his key rattles the door
she braces herself against the tile of the kitchen wall and thinks
Tonight’s the night he’ll leave me.
One Thursday he brings groceries home and kisses her cheek.
He says, “Hello,
Love of my life!
I forgot the smoked salmon, I’m sorry.”
And drops the bags on the floor to clench her tight, startled,
as she gulps, gasps, begins to cry.
She leaves a wet patch on his shoulder.
He strokes her hair softly, whispers he’s sorry, love,
please don’t cry, it’s only fish, we’ll be all right.

Six Months Later

Sunday, April 13, 2008

It is almost six months since the day I fought with a family member and this blog eventually went dark. I wrote for two months on that story, and then stopped. It would be nice to think that the issue also stopped, that by refusing to write more about it I essentially exorcised it from my life. But by now we should all know better.

It is time now to revisit. It is, in fact, insistently necessary.

Many of the comments I recieved during the initial shock commented on my strength, or my rationality, or the capability demonstrated by my reaction. I remain grateful for the support and kindness, although at the time a part of me thought this was all a bit odd. I just did what I had to do, I thought. I did what I needed to do to survive and still be able to look myself in the face at the end of the day.

I commented recently on Under The Boot that although I have more issues than I can shake a stick at, most of them don’t make it to this forum. Most of them sit in a wasteland of stubbed text documents in a folder on my desktop, abandoned. What I didn’t mention in the comment is that even these stubs are an achievement for me. I keep them around long after they become just bits of digital clutter.

My family member and I eventually decided to leave our argument alone, brush it under the rug and go on with our lives, so to speak. Here’s what you have to understand for the rest of this to make sense: this is exactly the way I’ve dealt with every pyschological issue since I was ten years old. It has taken me years, tears, and a lot of wincing at my own stupidity to get me to acknowledge and address issues head on, to write down my musings, to practice self-awareness. Even now I’m not very good at it. I often approach problems sideways, wending my way like a crab.

I moved to Australia, I essentially erased my life and started over, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought to myself, Damn it, I have dealt with this. Enough is enough. This pain is firmly locked away in a dark part of my mind, if not exorcised completely.

Of course I was lying to myself. Of course that was complete bullshit. Of course it still hurts. Probing the wound is as easy as reading my archives.

I still, occasionally, cry until I’m exhausted enough to sleep. I still find my self-confidence weakened. And I still sometimes want to scream whenever my family member comes to the phone, flush with that initial childish anger:

I turned 25 last month. I’m just a kid. I’m not supposed to hurt this much.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Why did you do this to me?

And because I am brilliantly twisted enough to make even this into a completely personal guilt trip (instead of a partially personal one), I can’t help but think that if I were really as strong as I appear to be, things would be better by now.

This blog has slowed to a trickle, and if the truth be told, it’s not just because I uprooted my life and lost my Internet access. It is also because this forum has undeniably changed, and it’s becoming clearer to me as time passes that the changes are not for the better.

One of the reasons I like blogging is that I like to go back and read what I’ve written. I like to mine my old words for new ideas. I have not read back in several months, because when I try to I cannot get my family member’s face out of my head: their thoughts when they read my words, their concern and outrage. The red carpet of our living room that I stared at while they yelled at me over Thanksgiving weekend. I begin to think that I should just change the blog’s background to a picture of that damned carpet, and give up any hope of ever separating msyelf from that pain again.

What this means is that every time I open a new post and begin to write, the words feel ungainly and weighted. Everything is filtered through the lense of potential pain. The headline flashes: Who Might Be Reading This Time?

I wrote that I would continue to speak out because I recognize that speaking out helps people. I still believe that. I refused to move this blog, find a new place, go to ground and drop from the radar. I figured that doing so would be useless, the damage done.

But I didn’t manage to throw off the hurt and worry and blithely continue. Not just here, but in my entire life, things changed. My fantasies changed. My kinks shifted. Even the way I kiss my boy changed, for a little while. I tried to keep writing, keep teaching, keep fucking and playing, while it became increasingly clear that every time I wrote, taught, fucked, played, I was committing a political act.

I wanted desperately to retreat, to be safe again, to just sweep it all under the rug and get on with things, maybe in a different way, maybe the same. But I didn’t, because politically and personally I don’t believe I should have to retreat and disappear to make things better.

It is cloyingly noble, and it makes me a bit embarrassed. Especially with this next part thrown in.

I have to admit something, and doing so is painful in itself. I was not prepared for how exhausting it is when the only thing that keeps me writing is the uncanny idea that if I don’t keep writing, the sexual terrorists will win.

The initial explosion didn’t kill me, but the little everyday grinding reminders might yet finish me off.

Perhaps this entire thought process bespeaks of lack of “closure”, but I’m not so sure. I have been told many times over the years that I need to “have it out” with my family member. Have it out over what, I ask, and why? I remain convinced that it is not in my or my family’s interest to force a fight to death or disownment. I think that if I’m going to move forward, I’m going to have to do it on my own.

In the meantime, I don’t know what to do about this blog. Maintaining it is both satisfying and upsetting. I have to work hard to get the joy out, like the whole thing is a vat of olives pressed one too many times.

Much of this sounds melodramatic and adolescent. I’ve tried to avoid that. It’s hard not to sound adolescent when all you want to do is whine that life is shit and it isn’t fucking fair. But it seems necessary to acknowledge this thing that is still happening to me, six months later.

The truth is, I feel damaged. I am terrified that the damage may be irreparable.

At the time I was devastated, yet confident. Now I’m just tired. I’m fed up with politics and censorship and bad writing and family drama. I’ve had enough, and I’m pissed that this pain keeps hanging around and making me cry on warm nights.

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.

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?

Educator

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The fourth and final word is educator.

I went back to Pleasure Salon this past Thursday, drank bourbon cosmos (strange invention) and put some faces to some names. And I was asked a handful of times, “How do you feel, having photos of your face on your blog?” I was surprised by this, in all honesty. It had occurred to me only in passing that I might not want to put a face to my pseudonym.

But then, let’s review. I’m 24 years old. I work a job I enjoy, but I don’t intend to make it a career. I have always intended to work primarily for myself. I’m out to all of my friends. I’m out to my parents. Who, then, would I be outing myself to? My situation is dramatically different than the majority of my readers and fellow partners in kink.

And as I am rapidly realizing since this past Sunday morning, I don’t ever want to live a life that means I have to stop talking about sex.

In addition to Kate Bornstein, I also saw Susan Wright (founder of The National Coalition For Sexual Freedom) speak this past weekend. I am developing mild hero crushes on both of them. And if you must know, my friends, hero crushes are not generally my style. Most of my heros are writers who died several decades ago.

You will laugh at me, but I’m not really a political person. (See? I knew you’d laugh.) So I take it as an indication of something significant that I am passionately interested in the political and social ramifications of sex. I take it as something significant that this blog is 60 posts long and I feel like I haven’t even touched most of what I want to talk about. And that I have managed to create a space where education, discussion, sex and writing (i.e. almost everything I get excited about) have come together.

I have many creative skills. I can paint, draw, sculpt, weld, write prose, write poetry, blow glass, throw pots, tile floors, make stone walls . . . you get the picture. My trouble has never been having a skill set; it’s been having material. When I was picking up oils for the first time and sending photos of my work to my dad, he’d write me back and say, “You do an awful lot of naked people. Why do you do so much with naked people?” Or, “How about a nice landscape or two? You know, they’d sell better.”

Or, “Eileen, all your work is about sex.” Which is slightly unfair. But only slightly.

Because far more unfair is the subtext that sex doesn’t make good material. Socially acceptable, career-like material.

I had always assumed, you see, that eventually I would have to go into hiding.

After Kate’s class was over, May and I wandered off into the depths of Floating World. “Do you want to see the kinky ren faire?” he asked me, wonderful man that he is, and I nodded numbly. I held his hand while he led me down the twisting hallways like a lost four year old. Inside my head all manner of tumultuous things were going on.

Because, you see, that was the first time I’d seen a really good sex educator speak, and care, and make a difference in someone’s life. Namely, in my life. And changing my life? That was not on my radar for last weekend.

There was a little baby seed that got planted the day I started my first kink blog five years ago, and got a little water the night that May and I had our first date, when we started talking and didn’t stop for 36 hours. It wriggled about a bit when I started teaching a class or two, and probably got a good shot of juice the day Bloody Laughter said “Hello, world.” And then, 12:30 on that Sunday afternoon, it sprang up and hit me right across the face.

I stood in that weirdly lit hallway with my forehead on May’s shoulder, hyperventilating fit to pass out and with tears streaming down my cheeks. All around me, big chunks of my life were slamming into place. Pathways that I didn’t know existed were becoming clear.

Because it hadn’t occurred to me until that morning, you see, that I could be a sex educator.

That I could live a life that means I never have to stop talking.

Ally

Friday, August 31, 2007

The third word is ally.

Three months ago I did not know who Kate Bornstein was. Despite what I write here about gender, power, culture, and the like, I have no academic background (or self-educational background) in sociology or gender theory.

So I didn’t know the woman I met at Pleasure Salon all those weeks ago, the woman I bugged for a class description and biography, was famous. But I read her class description when it came, and then people started mentioning her name with that little hitch of awe, and then I started getting excited. And then I realized she was a writer, and that everyone I knew seemed to know her name, and I grew into an awareness of how much I wanted to see her speak. And of how silly I was being, and how awkward I felt, because let’s face it, even if you meet me for the first time and think I’m charming, outgoing, or sweet, the reality is I’m awkward as hell, I dread meeting new people, and I’m simply a very, very good actor.

So when I started plotting my Sunday morning around her class, my thoughts swung between It’ll be crowded and I probably won’t even get to say hello and Christ, woman. You’re going to make a fool of yourself.

And I did make a fool of myself. But of course, it was all right.

I’ve written before about how we, as scene member or simply fellow humans, form tight-knit groups, often around common interests or experience. The groups I frequent are more often than not characterized by being deliberately academic and/or consciously fluid. And such is Kate.

So when I sat down in her class, Survival Tips For Sex and Gender Outlaws, I did not know what to expect. The class was small, ten, maybe twelve of us who’d gotten out of bed early and made it to that space. She got out a big pad of white paper and began drawing Venn diagrams. The intersection of identity, desire, and power.

She talked about oppression and “isms” and politics. She has this remarkable gift of performance; she’s brilliant, and her words resonate. It’s a shock to hear someone say out loud the ideas you haven’t learned to articulate. I won’t regurgitate her research here; go read her books if you’re interested. It’s great stuff.

Then, as the group began to open up, to share experiences and talk, the conversation shifted. She talked about suicide. Her book is subtitled “101 Alternatives To Suicide,” and she talked about compiling that list, throwing in everything she could think of that would encourage people to stay alive. Illegal things, stupid things. The camaraderie in the room built up, threaded through the conversation.

We understand. We went through this. We’re with you, Kate. We struggled too.

And very, very quietly, I started to cry.

I didn’t have that experience. I’m sorry, but if you’re expecting me to eventually, after I’ve been writing here for a while, come out and talk about all the horrible trauma of my childhood years with maybe something touching and dramatic thrown in about kitchen knives or pills, you will be disappointed. Once, in the very young stages of our relationship, May turned to me and said “You’re the only emotionally smart person I know who’s actually healthy.”

I did not have an abusive childhood. I did not overcome a disease. I did not question my gender. I did not have a struggle which forced me to think. I did not attempt to reject my identity. I did not have a difficult time coming out. I had a difficult time growing up, but really, I was, and am, lucky. Overwhelmingly lucky.

And then sometimes, maybe a handful of times, people have seen me hugging May and sneered. God, I hate straight people. Or closed me out with their shoulders when I walk around in makeup and trendy clothes. I can’t stand these vanilla tourists. I can walk down the street and not get a second glance; I can work a corporate job, and get into bars on weekends. I can find partners, and be loved, and have orgasms and sex.

Apparently my luck shines through, and it makes my life look easy.

So this feeling, of having no right in a world where right is gained through suffering, this is a feeling I know very well.

Familiar as I am with being a crazy overthinking crazy person, eventually I calmed myself down. I did some breathing techniques. She continued to speak, drawing on our sense of community and mutual support. Of being allies. And I figured that she, if anyone, could handle this question. So I raised my hand.

“Could you give some ideas on-” and then I started crying again. The minute I open my mouth every time, damnit. Only this time I was really crying. May put his arms around me, Blaise reached back and hugged my knee with his hand. I held up my fingers and took a deep breath while everyone watched me. I laughed and cried at the same time; laughing because I felt so silly and crying because the words were hard.

I got it out eventually. “Could you give some ideas about supporting or being part of a fluid community when you identify with one pole of that community?” And I thought to myself, Well, fuck, that made no sense at all.

Except I watched her process the words, and I watched her understand. “Ohhh,” she said, drawing air in through rounded lips. May hugged me harder.

If you ever meet Kate, you will notice that she has amazing eyes. They are warm; they can make you feel toasty with just a glance. She fixed those amazing eyes on mine. “You have every right to this community, honey. This is your space too.” Other people murmured around me. I gave up on trying not to cry.

After the class was over, my friends started turning around to hug me. “I was getting teary too,” May said in my ear. “So were we!” cried Jen, her arm around Tyler’s waist. Blaise just grinned.

Natasha and Barbara came up and hugged me. Then Kate was kneeling by my chair.

She pulled me in me tight and spoke into my ear. “You are fluid, you know. You tell anyone who gives you shit that Kate Bornstein will come and beat them up. You tell them I said that.” I started laughing helplessly. She gives good hugs.

When the doors to the classroom opened and the rest of the convention started mixing back in, I walked with ragged steps. Tyler, Jen, May and I made a little cluster just outside the door. I had finally stopped sniffling.

Tyler had her big smile on. “I feel like we all just had an emotional orgasm,” she said.

I threw my head back. “Ha! Yes!”

And running through my head, over and over, was the word ally. That’s what I felt like. That’s what I am.

One thing Kate said during the class is still with me clearly, although much of the class itself has sunk in the haze of that emotional orgasm. She gestured at the room, the twelve of us up close in plastic chairs. “In here, this is my family.” She raised her hands to indicate the rest of the convention center, the 700-odd people running through that kinky space. “Out there, that’s my tribe.”

A Grove Of Aspen Trees

Thursday, August 16, 2007

(Alternately titled: “Why would you want to talk about scene politics, Eileen? Don’t you know that scene politics are a sucking vortex? Why would you do this to yourself?)

Occasionally I step back and simply have to marvel at how the New York scene affects my personal development.

Lady Lubyanka wrote a complex post about the theory of inclusion within the scene. In a nutshell, it argued that the scene should be all-inclusive. This, I agree with.

Today I want to talk about misplaced inclusivity.

I want no, claim no, and hold no power over defining who’s kinky and who’s not. Personal identities are precisely that: personal. I will not stand for this bullshit about not being a real this or a proper that. (Although I will encourage the conscious use of words and personal vocabularies to avoid miscommunication.) You want to be kinky? Awesome. Go do that.

But there are plenty of people who want to do things a certain way. Who want to mold the scene, shape it. I’ve got news for you; you cannot mold a scene. You cannot teach a culture. You can only teach people. It happens online, it happens in real life. We fight, we expound, and we attempt to educate.

(I’m don’t intend this post to get down and dirty in the battle lines where fantasy and reality wave their heavy leather flags, trenches built from abandoned sex toys, officers scurrying about in tattered chaps as words and ideas are thrown wildly in the air.

Troops, where are the projectile strap-on launchers? Did no one remember the projectile strap-on launchers!?)

It’s very clear from reading this blog that I have some personal standards about the kinds of kinky people I’m interested in attracting and socializing with. If I put forth ideas in this blog that you feel don’t apply to you, you are free to move on. The Internet is a big place; if you don’t have a personal playroom, go make one. There’s plenty of real estate.

Both online, and in the public scene, the community splits. Online we split into camps of thought. In the public scene we split into cliques and organizations. And people consistently rail against these splits: Why can’t we all accept each other? Why can’t everyone be welcome? Why isn’t the scene inclusive?

Kink is naturally inclusive; all personal identities are naturally inclusive. You print your own membership card. This is obvious.

But if your goal is to do more than simply exist and be kinky, eventually you will have to deal with other people. And other people will form social networks based upon ideas and mutual interests. There is nothing wrong with this. I tried to explain to May a few nights ago that I see exclusivity in the idea of organizations with specified cultures. I kept saying that groups of people practice exclusivity by attracting and encouraging only those people with similar wants and ideas, and May kept saying over and over, “You’re using the word ‘exclusive’ wrong.”

He’s right. I was using it wrong. I’m not being exclusive by arguing my ideas of best practice. If you don’t like my arguments, you can go somewhere else. I’m inclusive, in that all are welcome to come and listen to me. But I’m not going to try and convince you that I am the all-inclusive scene. I’m not.

A group or organization, when putting forth its views and ideas, says it’s trying to educate others. Unfortunately, we have the idea of education all mixed and fucked up with the idea of politics. The personal is political. You think education is the goal?

Education is supposed to be unbiased.

Education is almost never the goal for these groups. Recruitment is the goal.

My experience with the scene is not online. It is in New York City. So let’s talk about that. It’s all interrelated, in the end.

(Cue the sucking vortex.)

So let’s leave aside the people who’re kinky only in the privacy of their homes, the kinky people who choose to structure their lives without seeking out a community of other specifically kinky people. Let’s say you’re new to kink, you’re in New York City, and you want to join the community. The public scene. You want to get some education, maybe meet some interesting people.

Well, you’re fucked.

Or maybe you’re not! Maybe, miraculously, the first meeting you find on Google and get up the courage to go to is perfect and the people are brilliant and you float off into a happy cloud of kinky sex and discussion and life has never been better. But I doubt it.

(Right now, I want to talk about the responsibilities of organizations that wish to educate. May often contributes the excellent point that the responsibility for education is not solely in the hands of the educators. Many people forget this; we assume that educational organizations will do the work for us. Well, as I’m about to spell out, these organizations cannot be trusted with your complete education. You must educate yourself. I would like to see the culture of education around BDSM improve; right now I’m talking on only one side of the issue. While I do this, remember the other side.

You must take responsibility for educating yourself.

Got it? Good. Moving on.)

We, as a community, are suffering under the illusion that we are a single community. We are not. We are a series of organizations with widely varied, self-selecting memberships. We’re all interested in basically the same thing, i.e. pursuing activities, partners or relationships outside the cultural sexual norm. But the attitudes, orientations, and purposes of the organizations are individualized. We exist in a naturally occurring state of cultural pluralism.

(This is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to educate oneself. You can write it on a little index card to look at when you get depressed or feel confused. “Don’t forget cultural pluralism!”)

Almost every single organization in New York advertises itself as absolutely, consciously inclusive of all comers. All, so it’s said, are welcome. But in practice, the implications of these messages of inclusivity are also followed through to convey that each organization is the all-inclusive community.

These organizations suffer under broader political agendas. Being a part of the New York scene is not about learning new things about kink, or meeting new people. It’s about what organization you belong to. This will shape everything about your experience. Being the leadership of a group means how many members you have. How many new fresh faces you can attract. How many parties you throw, how many famous presenters you have speak.

Like kinky people are a limited resource. As if there aren’t more born every fucking day. Like kinky people are a commodity, and everybody’s out for a market share.

Here are a few ways in which this destructive political struggle plays out:

Point the first: Organizations quickly learn that they cannot rely on other organizations to refer interested members to their meetings. The best (and pretty much only) way to learn about the existence, interests and meetings of organizations is through existing members. Why is it that after four years in the community I only learned that MAsT existed five months ago?

(See the note above about educating oneself. This was partially my own fault.)

Point the second: New people are actively, aggressively, inappropriately recruited to join groups that don’t provide the most ideal atmosphere for exploring their interests. Why did one of the lead members of a predominately M/f group practically fall over himself to offer May and I free memberships?

Point the third: The community accpets the misguided notion that being a member of a single group becomes the whole of one’s public scene identity. You are a TES member. You are a DSF member. You have aligned yourself with this, that or the other political force. Why was May put in the ludicrously awkward position of being “outed” as a TES member when he went to GMSMA?

(As Maymay would comment, it smells a little “One True Way” in here.)

May related to me a brief overview of the “message” he was given at his first novice meeting of TES. “There are a lot of bad kinky people out there,” he was told verbatim, “but we’ll protect you.” Which, in his case, turned out to be a massive, laughable lie. He was attacked, marginalized, and made to feel unwelcome. His ex-girlfriend was welcomed with open arms. (I hate to speak so harshly against one group specifically, but there it is.)

Why was he not given a positive culturally pluralistic message?
Oh, you’re interested in M/s dynamics and like group discussion; have you checked out Masters And slaves Together? Or, hey, your attitude reminds me of this guy I know who’s part of the New York Boys of Leather. Maybe you’d like it there. Seems from your preferences you might enjoy getting to know the folks over at Gay Male SM Activists. Or the Lesbian Sex Mafia. Or maybe Dom/sub Friends is a place you’d feel comfortable in? Or hey, you’re college age; have you ever been to Conversio Virium?

Because each organization is only actively advertised by its own members, because each organization has a political interest vested in keeping new people within its membership, and because each organization views the identity of scene members as essentially singular, there is no one at novice groups saying things like this. There is no avenue to self select out of or into appropriate groups.

The result? A lot of frustrated, stymied, formerly hopeful people who walk away thinking “the community” just isn’t right for them.

The people who never come back after their first meeting are bewailed. Lamented. “How, how can we keep people from leaving so quickly? Why don’t they feel welcome?” Each organization pushes to become more inclusive. More welcoming. The inevitability of self-selection, the reality of differing standards, the essential nature of critical mass in the exchange of ideas, all of these are ignored in the knee-jerk model of misplaced inclusion.

The community is inclusive. A single organization is not the community.

We need to accept that we do not have all the answers. We also need to accpet that not having all the answers is okay, as long as we have an idea of where the answers might be.

Organizations that stress inclusivity do so because they don’t wish to define a certain membership. But a self-selecting group of people is not the same as a group of people who meet predetermined standards. We naturally form social circles and organizations around similar modes. The process is organic. It is also inevitable.

The reality is that not everyone who comes to a CV meeting will be satisfied. If we’re truly an organization that fosters and encourages new members, an organization that educates, we should be able to recognize that. We should be able to encourage people to leave with as much grace as we encouraged them to enter. We should provide routes and resources that lead away from us.

When you live in New York, there is always another place to go. (God, I wish this was the rule and not the exception!)

The reality is that not everyone who reads this blog agrees with me. I did not design this blog with the intention of educating; I designed it with the intention of creating a self-selecting social circle in which to exchange ideas. If within this process I become a resource by which others learn a little something here and there, that’s great.

But if I am the only resource by which you form your ideas, I would like you to stop right the fuck now. Go read some opposing viewpoints. Educate yourself. Consciously self-select your social circle. It might not be mine. I value intelligence above sex appeal. I actively encourage appropriate arrogance. I wear leather pants, hate gender superiority, and like Indian food. Maybe you don’t. Maybe we have bad conversations. I’m fine with that. We’re all still kinky bastards.

There is always an opposing viewpoint. There is always an alternate camp. Don’t forget cultural pluralism.

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