The Fosters will melt your heart! (a review)

Last month my partner and I started watch The Fosters on netflix.

It has some problematic elements (like siding with the cops, sappy lingering on teenage romance, and comically flat portrayals of poverty/non-middle-class people) but if you're a sucker for Very Special Episodes then you should definitely watch this show. Every episode is very special. Just like all seven of the principle characters. The Fosters addresses many real life issues that other light hearted family shows are unwilling to associate themselves with.

I was particularly impressed with this show's portrayal of rape and the social aftermath and personal trauma that it causes. I've also been impressed with the way that it portrays the subtlety with which most bullying and exclusion happens. While it is still made more obvious for the show, its presentation is more subtle than I have seen before. It's much closer to the realities of discrimination.

All that said, it's an incredibly schmaltzy show that knows how to stick its tear-jerking claws into your heart strings. The writers are masters at making you think the worst is coming and then softening the dramatic blow so you feel sweet sweet relief (in fact I suspect one of the cliffhangers of the most recent midseason finale will pan out this way). The turn of events can also surprise with very dramatic stuff that seems to come out of nowhere and hit you in the guts.

Just based on the amount of principal characters and the vast array of diverse and subversive topics it covers, The Fosters could have been an awful mess of cute faces and progressive Hallmark moments. Diversity Soup if you will. And I'm not gonna lie, it feels a bit like that in the beginning. But by the 5th episode you are fully in love with every character and you physically twitch when they make the wrong choice for loving reasons. Which is basically what drives the plot of this show.

You watch it for the characters. Because you love them, pretend they are your friends, and want them to be happy. The characters and their motivations all ring pretty true and the actors work exceptionally well together. The way they avoid, sublimate, and misread their stresses and anxieties is painfully realistic. Some of the "drama" of the show is definitely played up in a way that is unrealistic, but that's not really what you watch the show for right?

Also for a show that centers around a lesbian couple and their family, we see a whole lot more of the teens doing sex things than we do the moms. I think that what The Fosters need the most is more sexy lesbian mom sex. This is my biggest critique of the show. Not enough gay sex.

I guess my point here is, if you liked watching Boy Meets world and My So-Called Life and if you get tired of every LGBTQ show out there being "gritty" and "edgy" then this is the show for you. It doesn't turn away from tougher issues but still leaves you feeling good about the world. Enjoy!

PS: I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum in this review but if you want to read more about the show and don't mind spoilers Autostraddle has some amazing posts about it.

A critique of transphobic supposedly unbiased rhetoric

So this afternoon I read Michelle Goldberg's What Is A Woman: the dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.

Not pictured: all of the fucks I tried not to give but ended up surrendering anyway

It absolutely reminded me of reading Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs two years ago.

Both styles of writing employ the self same "subtle" tactics that make their biases seem more legitimate/natural without actually stating those biases. As a fan of bias-disclosure this bugs me.

For instance, Goldberg gives specific visual and physical detail to the majority of the radical feminists she quotes or shortly profiles. The trans advocates who's voices she leans on are afforded little of these humanizing characteristics. The only trans people who get detailed descriptions are either throwing their support behind radical feminist or have decided to de-transition.

This schism in representation is particularly clear when she profiles the rightfully identified "Abusive posts [proliferated] on Twitter and Tumblr" made by allegedly trans activists. None of those "trans activists" are humanized with physical description. Goldberg mentions a photographic threat but chooses to focus on the knife in the photo rather than the person holding it.

In the very next sentences we're given a friendly amount of context about Lierre Keith. She has a name, an outfit, a well described hairdo, and we get to know what she does for a living. Only after all of that personal information does Goldberg obfuscatingly say that the activist group Keith is a part of: "D.G.R. is defiantly militant, refusing to condemn the use of violence in the service of its goals."

Consider the visceral difference a you as a reader feel when reading an actual threat in contrast to the feeling you get form reading the distanced language with which Goldberg describes the unspecified "violence" condoned by D.G.R. For me this exposes a bias in the writer's own notions. It shows me who she is willing to grant leeway and give the benefit of her doubt. It shows me that she considers some violence to be worse than others. Now I don't know if this bias in her language is done intentionally or not (though with Levy I assumed it was unintentional).

But in the craft of fiction this is how you set your readers up for a polarization. It's how you create  Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Good Guys get detailed and compassionate descriptions and yes, sometimes do vague sorts of violence to the Bad Guys for the "greater good". The Bad Guys are usually only shown in the graphic throes of committing violence with no additional context.

In this article acts of violence are associated with both radical feminists and with trans activists. However the polarizing presentation of that information drastically changes the way the reader will receive and process that information. This article is not designed to humanize trans people or trans activists. And it's more than just the polarizing way she (refuses to) characterize/s trans activists. In the third paragraph of her article she makes the misstep that dooms any possibility of trans people and their experiences being validated by her writing.

She states: "Trans women say that they are women because they feel female--that, as some put it, they have women's brains in men's bodies."

Not only is this an excruciatingly basic reduction of the experience most trans people have, it's erases trans women before the piece has really begun. This erasure may not seem entirely evident to non-language nerds.

Let me show you what I mean:
Trans women don't "feel like women". They ARE women. Reducing someone else's explicitly stated experience as what they "feel like" shows a huge distrust of that person's reality.

Think about it this way:
Say you had a headache or a medical condition, and you said to a friend who you were supposed to meet for lunch that you couldn't make it because of the uncomfortable reality of your health was preventing you from attending. And then imagine this friend, instead of trusting that the pain you felt is real simply said "I guess if that is how you feel." and hung up.

Instead of just nodding and accepting it as true when a trans person tells her, Goldberg responds condescendingly with "well if that's the way you feel". It's rude. It shows that Goldberg does not trust even the explicitly stated experiences of trans people.

Yes it acknowledges those experiences. But it degrades them categorically. It marks those experiences as impossible to exist as a shared reality. Because if it's a feeling someone else has, then you don't have to accept it or feel it too I guess.

This distrust and assumed falseness is echoed in Goldberg's use of the world "transgenderism" throughout the entire piece. As if the identities of entire swathes of people under the trans* umbrella were just some -ism. Ism, which google delightfully defines as "a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement." In other words a lifestyle.

Being transgender is not a fucking "lifestyle". Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it common 20 years ago to hear homophobic people talk disparagingly about lesbianISM and the "gay
lifestyle" (okay okay I know people still do this but I live in a queer Mecca). To me reducing transgender folks and there experiences to the realm of an -ism is really just an echo of the rhetoric that straight people use(d) to ostracized and delegitimize gay and lesbian people.

Much as I would love to I won't go into refuting the many and mostly flawed or anecdotal points Goldberg tries to pass off as evidence that TERFs are in fact being persecuted by trans people. Others have done so already. And I believe my views on the exclusion of trans women from radical feminist spaces has been clearly stated (summary: it's complicatedly wrong).

This post was an examination of how Goldberg's biases seeped (or perhaps were intentionally leaked) into the craft and style elements of this article.

Reclaiming the F word: one (trans*) fag's ethics of language reclamation

So I'm a genderqueer poet and a blogger who covers activist issues. It should go with out saying that I think about language at lot. But I said it anyway. That's the kind of person I am.

Full disclosure here: my being genderqueer means that I experience a range of genders from day to day (sometimes hour to hour) and sometimes I feel I have no gender at all. I feel the need for a decent variety of terms to describe my identity.

As a trans* masculine person who is attracted to other masculine individuals I occasionally identify myself with the word fag (along with words like "sissy"). I recognize that “fag” has a history of being used violently and oppressively, and is very much so still being used that way by many. But I hope that fag can be reclaimed and used as an accurate identifier of people's gender/sexual identities.

The problem of hateful epithets is never with the words themselves (just like the physics that make them work are not responsible for the damage caused by nuclear bombs). The problem is the stigma, violence, and hate aimed at the behaviors and identities those words represent. In this case it's hate for the effeminate identities and behaviors of (purportedly)  men.

I take on fag as an effeminate guy who's attracted to men, but also because, as someone who has the privilege of not being oppressively coerced into (hetero) masculinity (like most cis men are) I can self identify with the word fag without personal consequence. If I'm mindful can use my this privilege to to change the conversation around “fag”, and hopefully to ameliorate some of its negative associations. That is exactly what I am trying to do.

I do this because I am proud of being an effeminate guy who likes other guys and I want to be recognized as such. I also think that the negative view of other effeminate masculinities needs to end. Bottom shaming needs to end. The negative use of the word fag needs to end. For me that starts with behaving as if there is nothing wrong with a word that means "effeminate gay man" and that instead there is something wrong with the people who would use "fag" with distaste, fear, and hate.

In my case, as with all language reclamation, privilege is the primary fuel. I receive support from my community when I name my identity and when I defend it. People will have my back if I decided to shout back at the haters: "You know what? I AM a queer/fag/slut/bitch and there's nothing wrong with that."

I recognize and love me. I know that my friends and family recognize and love me. Changing the meaning of words relies on the privilege of recognition, on the fact that at least some people will listen to the speaker, legitimize their words, and offer them leeway on their intentions. Community support and recognition is an essential ingredient to the reclamation of slurs.

This is exactly how words like “pervert”, “slut”, and “crip” have been reclaimed. And this community fueled privilege is exactly why language reclamation is so prone to becoming problematic when it goes viral.

Though these words have gone through a significant and largely effective reclamation, they aren't all accurate representations of everyone's identity. Unfortunately, some overzealous reclaimers attempt to ascribe their reclaimed slur to everyone wholesale. As if the oppression they faced though a particular word is the same and carries the same significance for everyone. This happened most flagrantly with the reclamation of word “slut” and was met with well worded and very warranted resistance:

What becomes an issue is those white women and liberal feminist women of color who argue that “slut” is a universal category of female experience, irrespective of race. -Crunk Feminist Collective

The messy reclamation of “slut” assumed that everyone would be able to find the same power and recognition with the new definition. There's a lesson to be learned here for those of us making efforts  to reclaim slurs.

In order to avoid erasing or minimizing other marginalized individuals we the need to keep our expectations localized to our own lexicons. We need to realize that we can't magically change people's hearts, minds, and histories with our shiny new intentions. We can't expect even some of our political allies to use or accept language in the way we envision. Because, whether we acknowledge it or not, trying to get others that others think of words in the way that we do it is an enforcement of cultural supremacy.

Some reclamation efforts have been too impatient, demanding that people immediately see a particular word differently than they have their whole lives. We need to respect the problematic nature of the words we choose to reclaim. Impatient language reclamation not only ignores both the lived cultural contexts others may have for a word, it also completely ignores the subtle nature of language itself.

Language and culture affect each other. Both are fluid and change, seemingly imperceptibly from year to year. Language and the cultural consciousness are generally slow to shift. I believe that a conscious, minimal, but consistent resistance to the problematic way in which some words are currently used can have some harm-reducing effect. But I try not to get too specific with my vision of "what this word should mean".

Language reclamation isn't about changing people's minds suddenly with a logical argument. It's not an activist effort you can "win" at. There are no significant victory points to be claimed. Your goal should never be for people to think exactly like you, only that they begin to think differently about the way a particular piece of language is used.

What we can do is ask to be recognized with the words we deem the most appropriate. Doing anything more than this runs the risk of erasing or minimizing other communities' history and current culture surrounding those words.

I don't want people who have painful histories and associations with "fag" to give those up. Those histories and associations belong to them. What I do want is to build a future where the word "fag" and the effeminate/nontraditional masculinities it represents are talked about without shame and hatred.

Don't call me lady (pt.2)

I REALLY want this shirt. (despite it's problematic use of "crazy")

Last year right around this time I wrote about my relationship with the word "lady". Since then more of that relationship has unfolded. Consider this a part two of that post.

In that post I cite the confining femininity and class status of the term as my reasons for no longer using it. There's more to that story now but first I have to disclose & summarize:

I don't think it is always a classist term, nor do I think ladylike femininity is a bad thing in and of itself. But much of the the ladylike femininity I've often experienced or witnessed is a femininity the I have little preference to be involved in. I recognize that there can be power in claiming the term lady. But that power is not for me.

Writing about this is scarier and closer to my identity than writing my post about "lady" last year. It's harder because I have personal stake, because it's not just my politics. It's because of my gender(s).

I am genderfuild. My gender is both an adventure and an open ended question. I rarely know what gender(s) I will be when I wake up in the morning. Some days I don't even figure it out what I am. But I am lucky in that there are a few things I am certain I am not.

One of the things I am NOT is a lady. When I am feeling like a woman or a girl, I am always a weird one. (If weird where a gender I might claim it). I'm closer to a a crone or maybe, tomboy, or something that has no name yet. I'm always too messy for lady, too frank to be demure, and the way I flirt (no matter what gender) often resembles that of a 15 year old boy.

I have never really identified with the term lady (even when identifying exclusively as a woman). As a teenager I would often make the self deprecating joke of "really I just don't DO dainty". This phrase popped up after I'd spilled 3/4 of my oreo milkshake onto my winter formal gown. I said it first shamefully and as an excuse to my date after apologizing profusely (he had to drive me home for a change).

I used to pine after the idea that I might be a lady someday. If I tried hard enough, if I behaved well enough, if I descended a grand staircase elegantly enough, if I held my body in just the right way, I could be a lady too. I even looked up and mimed charm and etiquette tips. Acting them out felt excruciatingly clumsy and forced.

I wanted to be a lady because I knew that's what I was supposed to be. I knew that was what I must aspire to be. I noticed the people in my life, but specifically the men I dated back then, holding deep admiration for the women we'd identify are "real ladies". And I wanted that admiration an the respect that came along with it.

In the last few years I've been so lucky to find a loving partner and community who support my exploration of my own weird gender. It's taken me a while. But with support, I've figured out (or maybe unlearned) a thing or two.

The respect I garner has very little to do with how I do my woman hood or how well I perform as a lady. I realized, even before I came out as genderqueer, that people  were already seeing the way that I did my gender and respecting me for it. I did not have to subscribe to traditional gender roles to gain the admiration and respect. Some people still admire traditional gender rolls, but I am more interested in people who admire others for being themselves (in this case respect me for being myself). Those who don't respect and admire the way I do my gender are not the people who I'm going to choose to be my long term partners or friends/family.

I want people to respect my weirdness and a lady is very rarely allowed to be weird. There needs to be room in whatever label I choose for me to be the very very strange creature I am. And the constraints of lady, while sometimes fun to visit are never a place I want to put down roots. I respect the choices of others to claim this term and even understand why it might be comfortable to people who're more intrinsically orderly and demure (or really just different!) than I am. But it's not for me anymore. And actually, it never was.

Titles I prefer (most of the time):
dude
buddy
friend
warrior
writer
poet
girl
boi
badass

For more details on my genderfluidity you can buy my chapbook!

Dear Dad*

*I just sent this letter to my dad over facebook after he commented on a picture of my new hair with the words "Too short!"

Hey, I didn't like this comment. I'd like for us to talk about this in person in the near future, but because this is the second time I've felt the need to delete your comments I wanted to let you know why.

I do not appreciate the majority of your comments about my appearance. Especially when your words encourage me to appear "prettier" or more "girly/womanly". I've decided to look the way I look because it feels right to me. I like my hair short. I like my armpits & legs hairy and my belly and thighs a little fatty!

I love these things about myself and would appreciate it if you would comment no further on the choices I make about my own physical appearance. In other words: 

Unless I ask you directly (even if I am asking all of my internet community) I am not soliciting your opinion of my appearance.

When you tell me that I should have longer hair or that I should lose weight I feel afraid that you want me to feel ashamed of or doubt the choices I make in about to my own body. This fear is out of sync with the person I know you to be. You are and have been an incredible father and parent to me. I feel mind-bogglingly lucky to have you in my life. Truly, I love you more than I can say.

I am asking this of you because I trust in the person that you are and I believe in the relationship we share as as adults and friends. As my father & friend, I know that you don't want to hurt my feelings or pressure me to do something that doesn't feel right to me, because I know that you love me (this is never in doubt) and that you want me to love myself (this is the part I am afraid about).

The ways I've chosen to appear and how I treat my own body are the best way I know to love and express myself. It saddens me to think that you dislike the ways I am finding to love myself and my body. But I can live with the dislike. (people who love each other often do things that the other dislikes!) What hurts the most is being asked, cajoled, & hinted to about how I should change or stop doing things that clearly make me happy because of that dislike. 

If you dislike my hair that much then don't look at it. Stop telling me to grow it out. I love you the way you are. It doesn't mean I have to like everything about you. I request the same courtesy from you.

I know that you and I have differing opinions about fashion & appearance. But these are differences of aesthetic opinion. And I would love to discuss these differences with you more in depth when I see you at Christmas. But for now, can we keep our conversations about fashion and appearance general/philosophical & not about me in particular?

Thank you so much for being my Dad! There is no thanks that could be enough for that! I love you so much and can't wait to see you over the holidays. Give my love to Mom!

BIG HUGS! 

Wendy R.M.

This was difficult to write. But important. So glad I did.

In defense of Questioning: it's the journey that matters

This post was partly inspired by this piece and a very brave (possibly questioning) daughter.

I know, I know, you, dear reader might be thinking something like “Didn't people stop using that term 1998?”, “Isn't 'questioning' for teenagers?” or “Don't we use 'queer' now?”

Well for starters I'll let you know right off the bat I do identify as queer. But I also identify as questioning. We'll have to go back a few years to show how I got to this identity. So here we go.

I've always had an urge to seek out and admit that which I do not know. I registered for advanced classes high school without taking pre-reqs. I didn't mind being confused or getting a lower grade. I was gaining exposure, asking questions that excited me. In college, while studying education I articulated a long standing thought I'd had about schools. I realized they were training students to fear failure and unknowing. Taking risks, and admitting gaps in knowledge are usually punished and rarely rewarded in traditional American education. This punishment/reward system around certainty/uncertainty has been something I've consistently resisted in my life, in and out of schools; in and out of the bedroom. Sure it's more efficient to know for certain, but I'm not always looking for efficiency.

Recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm actually uncomfortable with certainty. I avoid it. Certainty, as counterintuitive as this sounds, makes me nervous. I find unknowing, confusion, and the ritual of questioning incredibly comforting. My intuition tells me it's okay to be confused.

I often talk about being a “late bloomer” sexually. Lately I've been feeling critical of this language, not because I think it is particularly inaccurate, only that it is incomplete. As a bookish teen, I grew up in a loving, crowded family where my only real privacy was inside my skull or between pages. I remember staying up til 2 am just staring at the ceiling, reading, thinking, and imagining. I thought about things a lot, got in good cahoots with my brain. Less so with my body, I was nervously curious, but I had no space or privacy to explore this budding curiosity. There were always footsteps upstairs and you heard every movement though the thin wall between my brother's and my basement “rooms”. In the world of my family there was no such thing as a knock on the door. But more than my nervousness and lack of privacy, I, as a female teenager was taught that my sexuality was only allowed to exist in relation to men. I didn't even know women could masturbate until I was 17. What went through my head during my sparse teenage sexual experiences was something along the lines of “I guess I'll try that.”“Is this what I want?” I knew I wanted sensations but I had no idea what exactly. I was inarticulately curious.

These days things are a bit less murky. I have learned that being explicit matters not just when I share my sexuality with others but that I can have a sexuality independent of a partner and even without having a physical actualization. While things are less murky, there is so much I still don't know. In a lot of ways I am still in a place of questioning an interrogating my sexuality. And honestly, I hope to never stop that ritual of questioning.

One thing I AM beginning to feel certain about is owning my uncertainty. Regardless of the consequences. I AM still questioning. And I really mean this in the good old fashioned teenage questioning. I'd be willing to bet more people than just me identify at least their adolescent sexuality as including more questioning than they felt allowed to say at the time. But questioning is not recognized as a valid sexual state to be in. It's looked at as being inbetween, less than.

The idea of being “sexually confused” holds such a strongly negative connotation in our culture that it's often used to invalidate the actual certainty of folks expressing not-straight attractions. I find this disgusting on two levels. First of course that it seeks to define and disparage another person's experience, but secondly that “sexual confusion” is seen as a temporary or transitional state. My sexuality confuses me all the fucking time and I welcome it. I don't want that to stop. Opening to it's uncertainty is what feels natural to me.

Now, just because I am happily confused, doesn't mean I don't believe other people are exactly what they say they are. I do. I deeply respect the expressed sexual certainty of others. Hell I occasionally envy it. It takes time and energy to figure myself out all the freaking time, but it works for me. I often end up feeling like I'm behind that I have to catch up with folks more certain than myself. It's not easy to know when to chase after certainty, but like any protagonist knows, it's not the destination (certainty) that really matters, it's the journey. My journeys into that which I do not know (sexually or otherwise) make me feel like me. I am questioning.

Dear Stranger: More Nuance less Sensationalism

This morning when I opened the Stranger's website I was initially delighted to see they had a pull out feature specifically highlighting queer voices on the issue of marriage. I got a tingly hopeful feeling in my belly. I read through them in the order listed. I felt increasingly disappointed with each one (that's a bit of an exaggeration there were a few I liked). I definitely do grok the value of folks sharing their stories and experiences surrounding marriage. But man did I find this series lacking and problematic.

I was disappointed that the Stranger's marriage articles failed to mention legal benefits in any significant way. Marriage benefits were mentioned briefly in a few of the articles but with very little detail or critique and more as a gimmicks or features. There was no reference to the fact that the reason this step toward marriage equality (and yes same sex marriage is only one step in a long journey) is important might be because our government specifically offers legal benefits to certain types of family structures (straight, cisgendered, monogamous) and excludes others with divergent familial configurations (gay, lesbian, genderqueer, non-monogamous, poly). At best in my mind marriage is the ultimate validation of chosen family. And I think everyone deserves to choose who they call family (and receive equal fucking benefits!).

I find nothing inherently romantic about marriage. I see marriage (and really any sort of commitment stated formally or otherwise) as a container for romance and companionship. It sets the stage for love & companionship to happen. It is scaffolding for repeated and sustainable feelings and acts of love and care. Marriage is not love. Just as a stage is not a play. Historically love and marriage were combined in cultural narratives (fairytales) to sugarcoat the financial, status-driven approach to marriage which was the norm in so many cultures worldwide.
The conflation of love and marriage is old and broken. It uses the individually defined (and socially undefined) mantle of "love" to mask the very real legal and societal benefits being married affords certain citizens.

In a addition to the scant mention actual marriage benefits, I also found this series awash in an overabundance of party/drinking/drug culture. The first three articles listed in the pull out directly describe, and even encourage drinking specifically. I'm not opposed to drinking. But it's not something I want to fly up immediately in the minds of straight folks (and yes TONS of straight folks read the Stranger) when they hear the word "queer". I'm not saying that the Stranger is consciously contributing to this misconception of LGBTQ folks, but seriously, fronting this series with boozy articles is not helping.


Two activities described in these boozy articles are particularly out of line with what I'd consider to be ethical/consensual behavior. In one article there is a lack of communication about the author's intent for inviting "everyone we found attractive" to a party that included donut eating; an activity which the author clearly alludes to as sexually arousing. This is using and objectifying folks without their consent or knowledge. Which is pretty fucking shitty. In another article the author describes being flanked and consequently ogled and felt up by a heterosexual couple. Yes non monogamous couples do this. It's rude and even looked down upon in most poly communities (srsly just google the term unicorn hunters).

The article that turned my stomach the most portrayed folks in open relationships so stereotypically I had to put in eyedrops after reading it. Oh the onslaught of eye rolls it inspired. Publicizing partying/orgies as poly culture is old, needlessly sensational news. The article describes not one but two women in open marriages as "very sexual". Folks in open relationships are represented in these articles as doing nothing more than fucking (or wanting to fuck) more than one partner. Now, I have nothing against promiscuity (& I use this term in sex-positively to mean fucking lots of people), far from it in fact. I think it's super that folks with high sex drives, diverse appetites and the capacity to fuck many and often can peruse their desires, but honestly that's just not me! And it's not most of the poly folks I know and love in my community. There are many motivations for having an open/poly relationship. Sex is one among those many. And quite frankly, I don't want folks to think "orgy" or to think I'm always on the prowl when I tell them I'm poly.

Whenever I come out to a friend as polyamorous I have to work against the sensationalized images portrayed in articles like these. I have to make space to give a small lecture about communication, dates, commitment, balance etc.... I then invite what I hope to be a continuous Q&A about poly ("If you have questions about my relationships you are welcome to ask now or at any time!"). I keep this lecture as dry, sexless, and logistical as possible. When people hear words like "polyamory" and "open relationship" they almost always think about polyfidelity (having sex with multiple people which the articles portray fantastically). While this is part how I run of my romantic relationships it is not the most important and especially not what I want to be the most visible aspect of my relationships. I consider my sex life more private than my romantic life. Which is why I find myself resenting it when folks have (or rather think they have) a representative idea of what my sex life looks like before I've even had a chance to talk about what my relationships actually look like. When I tell you I'm polyamorous it does not mean I am telling you about my wild, wasted sexcapades (trust me, you'll know when I'm telling you about those!) I am telling you about my relationships.

PS: This conversation about polygamous marriage fails to address any concerns or wishes polyamorous/non-monogamous folks actually have about wanting to mary multiple people. (link suggestions?)

PPS: Yes, for folks wondering, I am aware that these articles are meant to show how fucked up "traditional" marriage already is. But is that (backward) approach to supporting same-sex marriage REALLY productive? It's both cynical and childish in a "yeah but your shit's fucked up too" kinda way. This is not dialogue or effective critique of "traditional" marriage. It's sensationalism inviting the judgement of the readers.

This is why being kinky is different from being LGBTQI: A response to Natalie Walschots' interview

I’ve been following the recent controversies surrounding Fifty Shades of Grey, as well as Katie Roiphe terrible Newsweek article about it. I have mostly been loving the coverage and the deeply thoughtful responses. Unfortunately, an argument I’d previously only heard by suggestion and in passing, one I find particularly unsettling, has started to gain some serious traction.

In an interview for Feministing Natalie Walschots talks about a bunch of awesome stuff (especially about sexuality being a spectrum and how using extreme examples is useful but not really representative). I was, however, disappointed to read about her view on this point (one she repeats a few times in the interview):

“For some people, just as being gay can be the cornerstone of their sexuality, so BDSM can be the cornerstone of sexuality for many others. Acknowledging kink as a full-fledged sexual orientation is the key to de-stigmatizing it, and writing from that perspective is the most useful, inclusive and healthy.”

So... I have a problem with the rhetorical habit certain kinky folks seem to have, of equating, with utmost certainty, that some kinky folks feel that their identity as submissive/kinkster/dominant is equal to that of those who identify as LGBTQI (believe me this is not the first time this has happened).

As someone who identifies as both queer and kinky, I feel the important need to say, that identifying as kinky is not as pivotal in my life as identifying as queer.  One of the reasons I chose the moniker of “queer” because of its vagueness. I choose it to recognize that my sexual identity is a living force that changes often and often radically. In some ways the label of kinky comfortably fits under the umbrella of “queer”. But this is not the only reason I feel uncomfortable when folks equate kink/BDSM to being LGBTQI.

I don’t believe that kink/BDSM can happen without an education in and preparations/space made for rock solid consent. If any kink/BDSM activities are attempted without these things they are unsafe non-consensual play. At worst such activities turn into assault/rape/violence.  I recognize that this is an optimistic and even exclusive definition of kink/BDSM but I can’t feel ethical extending my definition of kink/BDSM to situations/activities where consent is squishy. What’s important about this definition of kink/BDSM in the conversation of kinky/submissive/dominant as an identity, is that it comes from a place of privilege.

What I mean by “place of privilege” is that folks who engage in kink/BDSM tend to have a well-developed awareness and expression of their sexual preferences. Within the kink/BDSM community folks are generally (and by the intent of most kink) encouraged to be honest about their sexuality. Ideally kinky/BDSM communities offer both physical and social spaces to generate language to communicate about sexual wants/fears/triggers. This practice keeps consent and accountability alive and present in kinky interactions. This is awesome. I am proud to be part of a community where this occurs. However when kinky folks fight to be recognized as healthy, fun-loving folks (which, by majority, they totally are!), they need to remember that part of what they are defending is their incredible, wonderful privilege.

There are many people who are unable (whether it is from external or internalized oppression) to be honest in their sexual expressions & who don't have access to spaces where it is safe to do so. These are folks who, under above definition, are unable to participate in kink/BDSM. Many of these folks come from traditionally oppressed populations; they are often queer, female, trans, genderqueer, people of color, trauma survivors etc... They might someday be into kinky things but at the moment lack the knowledge, safety, and space to choose to explore it. The inspiring thing about kink/BDSM is that, if it is done responsibility, it provides safe space for folks (including those oppressed) to express and explore their sexual identities.

I would love for it to be okay for kinky folks to talk about their preferences with folk in their greater communities; making these spaces more & more available to others. But equating kinky identity/orientation with LGBTQI identities/orientations is not the way to do it. It’s a lazy argument that oversimplifies the struggles of both parties. Sexual orientation exists in a person’s body mind and soul regardless of privilege (you are still gay even if you aren’t able to say it out loud yet!). Kink/BDSM cannot exist without an education and language about consent and safety, (which is a privilege I wish all were afforded). I recognize & respect that some folks do, as Natalie Walschots says, identify being kinky/submissive/dominant as “the absolute keystone of their sexuality and a crucial component of their health, happiness and self-actualization”. But you can’t be (responsibly) kinky without an education in consent and sexual safety. This is why being kinky is different from being LGBTQI, you can be LGBTQI all alone and without a language or freedom to act and speak, but kink needs dialogue at the least and community at best.