A(n erotic) poem from the oppressor inside me

I really hate the writing advice "write what you know". I sincerely do. It stops so many people from exploring their thoughts about stuff they aren't experts in. Now I'm not saying that writing about stuff you don't know and haven't researched is going to be publishable, but it will teach you some pretty important stuff.

It will reveal all of the assumptions and bits of knowledge you already do have (but might not know that you know). Chances are that thing you're interested in learning/writing about is something
you probably have at least a few facts and assumptions about. And it's probably a good thing for any writer is to get to take stock of the knowledge base they already have (regardless of how skewed).

For instance last week I was prompted to "write a celebration of the opposite sex". I have no idea when "opposite sex" even is to me as a person who identifies as both bisexual and genderqueer. I experience a bristle of discomfort whenever I'm asked to distinguish between (two) sexes/genders.

My gender and sexual identities are in many ways inherently against that sort of defining. But some parts of are still attached to those separations. Even though they aren't the parts of me I choose to express most of the time they still exist inside of me.

So I chose to explore what I knew the least about, how my masculinity relates to the supposedly opposite feminine folks. This is what came out when I gave that space to speak:


I don't want to be just one more guy writing creepy sonnets about Women

So it's a good thing I'm awful
at sonnets, because the slow-quick,
then whiplash that any small impact
dances through breast to nipple
makes my iambs incredibly tense.

As my heart double-dactyls I
imagine our chests pressed together
the way her nipples might drag
all their implications across my storyline,
until their hard milklessness tattoos
hunger through rib to lung to liver.
The lust in me she pricked
drops sudden into hip sockets
and opens the honest horror of its being:

I love women because overwhelm is what they're used to.
I love being cast as the stimuli that she will react to.
I get off on her ceding to my protagonism,

The sashay of her ponytail's enough to
set off my engine. Her eyelids
flick faster than any lip could
transmute the notion "come and get me.
I am aching to be got."She yields
and I develop my character all over her.

The lines I wrote are both earnest and satirical. I do enjoy embodying the sort of masculinity that requires femininity to be ancillary. But I also at the very same time I recognize how very damaging, fucked up, and prevalent this dynamic is. I see how it ruins lives.

As erotic as I find these assumptions they are false. "Real women have curves" the same way real women are all reactive, submissive, and only interested in cuddling after sex. In the way that one person's experiences doesn't fit into/reflect all the stereotypes associated with their cultural group.

As damaging and confining as these roles are to people of all genders, I still enjoy them. In the same way that I cannot consciously stop my self from having a panic attack, I cannot consciously or instantly change my own desires. And I refuse to apologize for my thoughts and fantasies.

Now this whole "heart wants what is wants" bit is absolutely not an excuse/free pass to behave in ways that hurt or dehumanize others. We all experience complex and often baffling desires and we all decide how to actualize or not actualize them. I have decided to try not to dehumanize others, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in playing out dehumanizing roles with other consenting adults.

Acknowledging that contradiction is scary. And often takes some time (and some uninhibiting substances). While writing the above poem my body and pen resisted (there's another 3 stanzas I wrote before and during drafting it that critiqued/resisted the voice I was writing from).

We like to see ourselves as Good Guys always fighting the good fight with all our thoughts and desires. But none of us really is. In this sense the revolution starts with honest self-reflection; with realizing and recognizing one's own monstrous and dehumanizing impulses.

If we let go of needing ourselves to be Good we can stop denying our problematic impulses and desires. What's revealed in this process are the deeply ingrained biases and assumptions that live in our minds.

For me, seeing this disturbing information has shown me which parts of myself I choose to share universally and which impulses I chose to be more careful about expressing/exploring. Reading the words of my more vulgar impulses is important to me on several levels.

It lets me know that my desires are participating in and benefiting from the male gaze.  It also lets me know that I am not above the tantalizing effects of a power imbalance I'm on the luckier side of. It reminds me that parts of me enjoy and pine after being the oppressor.

Entitled to the Internal Tangle: how working through want makes us human

Part I: Intentional Background

For the last five days I've been reading Anne Leckie's fantastic Ancillary Justice. It's been blowing my mind in all types of lovely philosophical and fictional ways. Seriously that book is an intellectual back-bending inversion and we need that kind of upending fiction. Read it!

But this afternoon it brushed against a nerve whose sensations I've been trying to work through for the past month or so:

For a month I've been trying to write a post that sums up my feelings about desire/thought/intent and how they don't matter or at the very least how they are ancillary to the real world action and behaviors we choose to take.

In January 2010 Kinsey Hope made a satirical post about intent being "magic". The follwoing year Melissa McEwan at Shakesville put up the first post in a two part series about how seeing intent as magic can cause communication to be harmful. (I'm wildly paraphrasing here). Since then so many radical corners of the internet has been touched by the powerful words implied in these posts:

Intent is not magic.

It does not absolve the doer of damage and it does absolutely nothing to resolve, heal, or otherwise take accountability for the effects of the resulting harm. Reconciliation can never start from "I didn't mean it". Because as an adult human person you are expected to do the hard, but deeply human work of navigating how to respect your own desire/wants/thoughts while maintaining respect for others.

Now it's important for me to give this (poorly sourced) background and my take on it because it's crucial to what I am trying to draw out here. The reason intent is not magic, is because it has little to no direct power over how we act and communicate. For the most part, our conscious (not necessarily logical/sensible!) minds determine how we act and interact. The effects of intent are indirect at best.

Intent isn't magic, and in many contexts straight up doesn't matter. As Leckie's extremely utilitarian  protagonist Berq says "Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing."




Part II: The tangle that makes us human

All actions have consequences. As humans in community with other humans; as socially sophisticated animals, it's our evolutionary imperative to anticipate and strategically reduce the harmful consequences of our own actions.

Every moment of our waking lives (and probably a good portion of dreams), we experience a complex tangle of thoughts, desires, wants, and wishes. We all must weed through this tangle to figure out how to act.

Let me give you an examples of my own navigation of this process:

For me a huge part of being genderfuild is engaging in a process of choosing how to follow up on my many and seemingly conflicting desires to express myself. I consistently have to chose from a tangle of erratic desires. These desires often buck lessons I learned about gender, behavior, and societal expectations. And sometimes I come to the conclusion that things I thought were in conflict are in fact not.

But thing is, the internal process that brings me to act and express, it belongs to me. It is part of what makes me me. In fact, I'm willing to take it even further than that. It's part of what makes me human. Take this process away from me and I am less human. Take this process away from anyone and they are dehumanized.

The processes that we go through, whether conscious or unconscious, swift or slow, to determine which of our wants we are going to actualize and how is a process that belongs to each us individually. Because the simple fact is (barring any drastic nuero-tech advances) nobody else can be in your head deciding which of your thoughts mean action, and which mean nothing.

In defense of friendship

This morning my internet machine lit up with another bunch of articles about nice guys. At first I was excited, and eager to see what new insights were being added to to conversation. But alas, while it is still really fucking good information, none of it seemed groundbreaking or new to me. And so for all you recovering Nice Guys out there, this is something you might not have heard that I think you should know:

Dear Nice Guys,

Ok so, we've already had a nice long chat about what it so categorically sexist, limiting, and awful about what you're doing. But wait, there's more!

You know what my least favorite thing about all this friendzone/nice guy bull shit you pull: it ignores/erases how totally awesome and fulfilling friendship can be.

It operates on the pretense that women and men are incapable of having such friendships because of their desires I guess? Not only does this worldview assume everyone is super straight and indiscriminately heterosexually horny, it reduces them to nothing more than being at the whims of their sexual desires. It implies that they couldn't possibly ever have motivations more/as important as their sexual ones.

Bull fucking shit, man. Look I get that your desires are a part of you and all, but you are totally way more than just your desires. Act like it.

And while I'm at it who's to say that romantic relationships are really better or the "more than" than friendships anyway. Romance/sex is not an upgrade, it just a different kinda relationship.

Friendship is its own awesome and flexible enterprise. Stop tryna knock it and convince me romance is better just cause you're not getting everything you want. In other words: don't let your bitter tantrum of romantic/sexual entitlement yuck my yum for friendship.

Stop staying "just friends" as if it's a life sentence in Bummertown. Outside of the shitty context you've built for it, the word "friendzone" actually sounds like a pretty neat, fun, supportive place to be. Friendship can be a total party. Stop being such a pooper.

Sincerely,
A Fan of Friendship

PS I know you're depressed on account of not getting that sex and romance stuff you wanted, but it's not friendship's fault, or the fault of the girl/person you wanted to have that stuff with. It's nobody's fault. Sometimes we just don't get what we want. It sucks, but it happens. Shitting on friendship, or blaming women is stopping you from accepting your own disappointment/sadness, dealing with it, and moving on.

The long goodbye or 30 days of salt

Tomorrow I'm stepping on a plane, ready to give my former city one last, month-long goodbye kiss.

I plan to ride my bike to the beach, sit on some driftwood, stare out at the Puget Sound and
get lost in conversation until my butt is completely frozen.

I plan to visit my favorite local haunts and stuff folded poems between couch cushions and under the legs of wobbling tables.

I will drink tea.

I will collect more hugs than I can stand. And I will not feel any shame.

I will shiver off my fingers while climbing the vicious of Seattle's hills. I will not give in or give anything away. This month will be about taking it all in. I will live by desire and steep in the fruits of my greed.

I will savor the cold even as it is my reason for leaving. I will not stay inside.
I will catalogue the smells of the people I love.
I will make soup.

I want to bathe in the salty air.
I want to dip my heart into the brine,
I will keep the salt in me as something stronger than memory.

The Puget Sound is in my body and my body is an organism most at piece within its systems. I think I could find comfort and function someplace else, and I am ready for that stretch. But right now, my body is rejoicing in the anticipation of this long goodbye. Its salt will ease the difficulty of building a brand new home out there in the unknown.