Yes, I did suggest the film to him. Yes, I did suggest it because of the promise of hot onscreen sex. And yes, it was sexy.

It was also infuriating. Gripping my seat, digging my nails into May’s arm, biting my lip and scowling ferociously infuriating. But it’s Woody Allen. Maybe I should have expected that?

I really have a hard time watching people fuck relationships up. I realize this ruins me for about half of cinema. And I have a particularly hard time watching people fuck up polyamorous non-traditional relationships that are literally idyllic. What? We couldn’t have walked away with one mainstream representation of polyamory that didn’t involve mass marriage and teen pregnancy? That was too much to ask? Obviously, yes.

I have been writing short stories (and hopefully long stories) about non-traditional relationships and kink, of late. I find myself reluctant to add drama to these stories, because I want so badly for there to be good stories about my kind of sex and relationship that don’t end in emotional meltdown or fiery death. I want stories about kink in which the protagonists are not intrinsically fucked in the head, and stories about poly in which the relationship is not inevitably doomed. 

But those stories, though lovely, are narratively boring. There’s a trick to writing them, somewhere. I’m still sorting it out.

We pay attention, and we talk a lot. We identify issues and do the work we think is best to solve them. And really, I think that’s it.

There is an idea that having a healthy relationship depends, in some way, upon finding the “right person,” but I’m not sure that’s true. I have had many healthy relationships in the past, and have many at the moment. I have even had relationships end in healthy ways. In every case, they were the right person for me at that time, for whatever it was we were doing.

And then, every relationship I’ve ever been in that was hurtful or unhealthy had issues stemming from problems in communication. Perhaps that’s why I’m so obsessed. And, perhaps that’s why I’m so neurotic, and why the self-awareness tag in this blog keeps growing.

And as for whether Maymay is the “right” person for me, right now, he is. And he continues to be, in a way I’ve never seen before. We are suited to each other in the long term, which is why we’re pushing four years together and we’re still talking, every single day.

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.

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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.

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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?

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Eileen, um, you’re a top. You don’t have safewords.

Yes, I fucking do.

There is this consistent, repetitive argument that I hear all the time from people who want to pick into the nitty-gritty of power exchange. You must have heard it. It goes like this: Bottoms actually have the power in scenes, because they have safewords and can stop the scene any time they want to.

This line of thinking indicates two things to me. Thing the first: There are some serious misconceptions about what a safeword is intended for. And thing the second: there are some serious misconceptions regarding the well-being of tops.

Safewords are not a way to guide a scene. They are a last resort for people who don’t feel comfortable not having a last resort. Plenty of people don’t have them. More often, as in the case of May and myself, we have them and never use them. We forget about them, most of the time. More on this later.

This idea that bottoms have the power because they have this one magic word that protects them from the badness is an incredibly strange all-or-nothing idea. Power shifts and flows; control has levels, variations. It’s sexy to some to think of giving it all up, every iota of control or power. The reality of the matter is that such things don’t work in consensual relationships. I’m sorry to burst that bubble. Get over it. Your fantasy is not reality. It’s simply very hot fantasy.

Perhaps this misconception comes about because people picture bottoms clinging to their safewords, like, hit me just the right way, I can stop this any second, you don’t want to make me pull out now, do you?

This is utter bullshit. If you do this as a bottom, you need to stop and consider how degrading and manipulative this is. And you need to consider what might happen when you play with a top who won’t stand for being degraded or manipulated. It’s a game people like to play, but it shouldn’t be played with safewords.

Safewords are not a sexy toy to play with. They are not sexy. If you think they’re sexy, I think you’ve missed the point.

I have seen people try to play around the idea that the goal of the scene is to safeword. I have seen people try to do battle in scenes, daring one another to safeword first. This never ends well. Sexualizing safewords is an insidious, dangerous, stupid way of getting off on non-consensual play. Safewords are not a fantasy. Safewords are reality.

A safeword is a way to communicate out of role. (I am not going to write about the intersection of role and real today.) A safeword does not indicate that someone’s won some stupid, imaginary prize. A safeword does not indicate a need to guide a scene. It indicates a need to stop. A safeword brings a scene to a jarring, screeching halt that is in no way arousing, in no way fun, but entirely necessary. It is a very handy thing to have around.

I take safewords to mean a person saying to a partner, “I need this to stop right the fuck now.”This is often followed by, “Because I’m hitting an emotional place I can’t deal with.” Or alternately, “Because I think you need to take me to the hospital.”

Safewords are almost never used before something goes wrong. That’s not what they’re designed for; they’re designed to indicate when something has gone wrong already. Someone is already hurt. Someone has passed their consensual limit.

Following from this, the misconception that tops do not have safewords is entirely fucked. It indicates a breakdown in the idea of consensual relationships. Do you know what you imply when you talk about only bottoms having safewords?

You imply that tops cannot be hurt.

I did not consent to a relationship or a role wherein I am expected to never be hurt.

You think I can’t get hurt if I’m on the handle end of the whip? What if I hit myself in the eye? (From personal experience, I can assure you this hurts. A lot.)

You think I can’t get freaked if I’m the perpetrator of an emotional trauma?

You think I don’t sometimes find myself in scenes that aren’t going the way I want them to? That I can’t have my needs derailed? That I don’t have emotional buttons like the rest of the world?

You think that I don’t have to consent?

I used to wig the fuck out when people touched my throat. I still squirm a little when people touch my hair. Once I wrestled with this guy at a party; through a crap communication session I didn’t establish this limit. He put a hand to the side of my throat, I got royally pissed off, and I lost my connection with the scene. I did not, however, safeword. I probably should have. It did not occur to me. I had not yet learned I could.

A common idea is that tops don’t have to safeword because they’re in control of how the scene progresses; that it stops and starts solely at their discretion. If you’ve ever topped a deeply intricate scene, an incredibly intense scene, a long-term scene, or hell, any scene at all, you know this isn’t always true. Scenes take on lives of their own. They grow organically, they establish rhythms and pathways that both partners follow. There will sometimes be moments when your head clears, you look again, and someone you love is sobbing and hurting because you made them sob and hurt. And it’s bad.

When this happens, you can’t just walk away. Call me crazy, but pulling abruptly out of a scene without explaining to my bottom that I’m having a problem, abandoning them in a sobbing, hurting mess, is irresponsible. It means I’ll freak them out, and I won’t get the care I need. And neither will they.Tops are not always the strong guiding forces that confidently lead bottoms to scarier and darker places. Sometimes the places we go are just as scary to us as they are to our partners.

I wrote earlier that May and I have safewords, but never use them. Sometimes they’re not available; sometimes May is gagged or I’m in the middle of a sixteen needle penetration that I can’t simply unravel. But in reality, we’ve never used them because we never need them. This is simply our style; a telling characteristic of how rabidly we demand constant communication. Of how much we trust. Of our mutual consent.

May doesn’t trust that I won’t hurt him more than he can stand. Sometimes I will hurt him more than he can stand. I don’t trust him to never ask for more than I can give. Sometimes he will ask.

We trust each other that no matter how one of us is hurt, or both of us are hurt, we’ll work it out. I can gag him and beat him six ways from Sunday and stage scenes of lust upon his body and mind, and in the end, we will be okay. We are too dedicated to each other and ourselves to accept scenarios in which we fail to work things out.

If he needs to, he can safeword.

And so can I.

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