On The Antioch Review's choice to publish and promote transphobic content

Content warning: transphobia, sexism, cultural supremacy (esp in the first link, click with caution!)

In its Winter 2016 Issue the literary magazine The Antioch Review published Daniel Harris’s essay titled “The Sacred Androgen: The TransgenderDebate.” At the beginning of his essay Harris brings up the topic of the transgender experience as one might broach a topic at a fancy dinner party. He nervously presents a few nonspecific facts (eg: high rates of depression and suicide among transfolks).

He presents these facts like he’s testing the room. He wants you, the reader, to know he’s hip, that he reads the news. Citing the facts seems neutral enough. But, as many oppressed individuals know, the facts are never neutral. By pre-empting his views with a three sentence patina of cold hard facts about the suffering of others, he wants to show you he’s objective, that he has no skin in the game, that his perspective is fully formed and informed.

I don’t have that luxury. As a transgender author and active member of the literary community, my skin is always being dragged into the game Harris wants to deny he is even playing. My conception of transgender experiences is constantly being informed and re-formed. And I can’t write about the experience of transgender people objectively. The facts hurt me too much. I can’t write this from the perspective of society, only from myself.

I'm a transgender poet, nonfiction writer, and graduate student in Antioch University's MFA program. I also work as a peer writing consultant at Antioch University Seattle. Although Antioch College (the source of the publication in question) and Antioch University are no longer officially affiliated, they share names and a lot of history. Even though these institutions are not longer connected, I am ashamed that the university I currently attend shares so much with an institution that now supports such bigoted views. Harris's words threaten my very existence, as well as to the work I do in validating and archiving transgender voices and narratives in the literary landscape.

The essay itself made me physically sick to read. It was sometimes so blatantly wrong the only thing I could do was laugh. (Did Harris do ANY research?) The way he uses people's bodies and the choices they make about those bodies to prop up his bigotry was absolutely horrifying. The way he shames women and trans people for making surgical changes to their bodies combines both sexism and transphobia into one revolting sour note of supremacy.

Yet beyond the reductive misinformation Harris espouses, the patronizing tone of the essay itself was deeply upsetting to me. As someone who writes nonfiction, I simply can't understand writing something like that and not realizing it's so condescending that it borders on parody. It's not just bad politics. It's bad essay writing.

I'm offended by his words and also by the way he uses words. 

No, not offended. I am actively harmed by the form and content of those words.

I am, however, more hurt by The Antioch Review. I know views like Harris’s and the people who hold them exist. I am reminded all the time. I am disappointed and appalled that The Antioch Review gave Harris a platform. Not just because his polemic is obviously bigoted, but because I can think of at least 10 transgender writers (myself included) who could've offered a more accurate, more engaging, and much better written. Yet it's vocally transgender transgender writers whose work is labeled "divisive." It transgender writers whose work about their lives and culture, that get rejected or excluded from so many literary spaces. Or those pieces don't get sent out from fear. Or because cisgender publishers neglected to solicit the opinions of trans people.

The Antioch Review’s promotion of the words in Harris’s essay, more so than any of those words, is an enforcement and harsh reminder of the fact that literary culture isn’t safe for transgender people, that is doesn’t want our voices and our stories. It signals a tacit agreement with Harris, that when transgender people ask to be recognized accurately, that we are asking too much:

TGs [transgender individuals] have ambushed the debate and entangled us in a snare of such trivialities as the proper pronouns with which to address them, protocol as Byzantine and patronizing as the etiquette for addressing royalty

The words of the essay itself also generalize about transgender experiences in a way that erases my identity as a trans masculine genderqueer person. It ignores anybody with a non-binary gender and assumes all trans people want to undergo or have gone through gender affirmation surgery. It’s from this reductive assumption, that Harris claims trans people are enforcing gender norms and that we are "running away" from homophobia, that we, en masse, are trying to assimilate into heterosexual culture. 

(this was one of the parts where I had to laugh)

Harris’s framing of himself and his cisgender gay peers as valiantly resistant to assimilation, and also as victims of purported bullying at the hands of transgender activists who just want to be recognized as who they are, is downright disgraceful. It's disgusting, self aggrandizing, and disrespectful. It’s a naked moment of pushing someone else down to raise yourself up. Harris's need to see himself as more right and more persecuted (aka noble) than trans people has cost me my sense of security in the literary community and has blocked his worldview off from the rich wisdoms, truths, and stories of transgender people.

I fear for myself and my peers because of what he's said. And I pity him. Because, through his own denial, he'll never know or want to understand the beautiful and complex cultures, stories, and possibilities that trans people create. And we create them daily dammit!

Shame on The Antioch Review. Pity for Daniel Harris.

Please sign this petition denouncing the Antioch Review’s promotion of transphobic content.

Gender as Negative Space: A Quick Response to Kat Blaque asking "What Defines Gender?"

To me, as a nonbinary trans masculine poet, I think about the rightness or definition of my gender in a similar way to how I think about a poem that resonates deep down into my soul. Sure, I can point to concrete details big, small, and structural as to why that poem works for me, but that will never be the whole story of why it's so meaningful, why it feels perfect. It's a kind of magic. Which I know sounds hokey, but whatever.

I know that I like slick images, em dashes, and enjambment, but that doesn't mean a poem with all these components will work for me. I know I like getting sweaty, wearing a binder, painting my nails, fixing my bike, and being called "sir," but all of those things don't necessarily add up to my gender.
My gender, just like the meaning in poems, is too big/complicated to be defined just by the currently available language of words and physical/visual concepts (like fashion). Yes, gender is in these words and symbols, but gender is also in the negative space, the implied universe beyond definition. Gender exists in ways we don't have language or symbols for yet. But like a poem we don't wholly understand, yet moves us deeply, gender affects our lives. 

from Kim Addonizio's poetry manual Ordinary Genius

I choose to believe this. It's a belief that keeps me alive and in my body. I hold on to it. Without this faith, I wouldn't have the courage to call myself a trans person or a poet. I know because I spent a long, dark, disconnected time not calling myself either because I didn't believe in the power of the unsayable. I wasn't closeted or hiding (yet). I was closed off to the possibility of being something currently undefined. Now I'm open.

And now that I'm out in this open/negative space, it's a bit scary and kind of lonely. People in a hurry sometime get angry that the words on the page are confusing and tend not to consider the negative space (aka the rest of my identity). Sometimes it hurts to be overlooked but honestly, I'm much happier this way. I don't feel so small. And, though it's sometimes lonely, I don't think I'm alone. Out here in the negative space is, I think, where we can all be our most complex and human.

So, friend, come with me into the ample life-giving void. Let's boldly go where no words have gone before.

<3 Wryly

PS Watch all of Kat Blaque's videos because they are SO amazing.

No More Transphobic Hand Wringing

A friend dropped this article this article onto my facebook wall this afternoon, and while it came with a bit of a disclaimer from the person who posted it, I clicked right on through. I was interested because what little I've skimmed about Bad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's oldest biological child has excited my gender politics. Also it's exciting to see a famous (tiny) transmasculine person. But my oh my, was I ever disappointed by what I clicked into.

My skin first began to prickle when this Jazz Shaw character put quotation marks around the words "identifies as male" and "gender assigned". The quotation marks display the fact that this writer is either being sarcastic or clearly does not want their* readers to believe they think John (or anyone) identifying as such is legit. But then my skin went into full on curdle at the predictable repulsive gem "politically correct". The only people who use that term seriously do so in effort to deride others for being considerate to other humans and as a means to dissuade others from seeking ways to reduce the harm they do with their language/actions. Seriously, whenever I hear/read those words I automatically assume this author is going to be an oppressive asshole to someone and has chosen this moment to refuse to apologize for it in advance.

So yeah, this writer has a serious problem, and NO it's not the problem they refer to at the end of their article. Which I guess is the problem of confusing our children with the complexities of gender or something? “children around the world are looking at [John] and thinking, “I wonder if that’s who I am too?” This is not a solution. It’s a problem.”

UGH! Just NO. No. No.

By Shaw's decree all parents should be saving their children from the dangerous corruption of anything outside cisgender and cissexual experiences. This is troubling in 3 very distinct ways:

1. It is deeply transphobic. It assumes that there is something bad or damaging not just about being trans, but also that just knowing that gender and sex can mean more than just man/woman and male/female is somehow harmful. (hey almost like how some idiots used to think all gay men are pedophiles huh?)

2. It disrespects the agency of one child in particular and all children in general. Assuming that a child doesn't know what they need and that the adults know better. Just because it is a child's decision to look, act, or speak in a particular doesn't mean that that decision is less valid or real. Which leads me nicely into

3. It's hurtful to non-binary people like me who DO go through radical changes in our desires to express our genders. It tells anyone with a gender that is too complex to fit into a tidy spot on a narrow spectrum all of the fucking time that our experiences are too confusing, and inappropriate for children. It erases us. It calls us obscene.

I was particularly pained by Shaw's mournful cry of "What is to become of this little girl". And their trying to explain away young Pitt-Jolie's behavior as temporary. As if temporary-ness of someone's explicitly stated expression or identity is reason enough to ignore and invalidate them. My family members pull this shit with me sometimes. And when they mourn my decision to not have children and the beauty I coulda been or whatever and it hurts in a way that sticks with me. It's just a change dammit not a fucking funeral. Seriously, people respect it when names are changed for marriage, even though about half of those things end up being pretty temporary.

I don't mind the above being faulted as unnecessarily venomous. I can risk being called that today because this morning my twitter stream was filled with necessary discomfort of confronting suicide within the trans community. Specifically the suicide of transgender youth. It's why I found Shaw's disrespectful article so particularly revolting. Because it espouses the exact attitudes that prevent adults from providing trans kids with access to life saving resources.

No. Not on a day like today**. I just can't let a thing like that stand. No more transphobic hand wringing. I've had enough.

PS:

Now that I've verily skewered Shaw,  I do want to say that there's one point on which we probably agree (but for differing reasons). And this is a hard thing for me to fess up to because boy do I ever want me an adorable transmasculine spokesperson who goes by the pronouns I prefer, but dammit, John is 8 years old. They're not an actor or someone who's chosen public life. Their gender or gender expression should not be something we're morbidly interested in. But we are, because part of celebrity culture is about obsessing over and criticizing the family and parenting decisions of famous people. Which is weird and creepy. Let's not do that.

*I very intentionally chose to refer to Jazz Shaw by "they/them/theirs" in this article. Yes, I neglected to the research Shaw's preferred pronoun. In this case alone I'm proud to return the misgendering fire. For John, my dapper little sibling in arms.

**Today is only special because I am hearing about the loss of one of my trans siblings. These losses happen all the time. On Transgender Day of Remembrance, we read a list naming the people we've lost to violence and suicide. These lists are so long that you can't make it to through them without ending up numb, checked out, or chocked up, with your face in your hands. All slippery hot from the accumulation of ache and fury.

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.

Why I Demand Trans Feminism

Trigger warning: transphobic shit to follow.

This exchange occurred after tweeting about my complete belief in the future of feminism including, supporting, & validating trans feminism.

It's taken me a month to boil down, suss through, & address all of the messy assumptions in this exchange.

Firstly imbuing any body part (like a phallus or say large breasts) with inherently threatening or dangerous qualities places people's bodies and body parts into a hierarchy. It makes some bodies and body parts "more okay" than others and hence more deserving of our support validation and defense. A person's body should never be the grounds for deciding what levels of solidarity they deserve.

Insinuating that a penis or penis haver is inherently threatening is as fraught as insinuating that too much cleavage is dangerous or say causes earthquakes.

The idea that a phallus or phallus haver is inherently threatening to a vagina or vagina haver uses the same broken logic as is used when blaming women's bodies and "sluttyness" for the actions or motivations of an assaulter/harasser. Assumptions that the size, dress, race, and shape of a woman indicates her sexuality run rampant. So too does the assumption that expressions and qualities we deem  masculine are inherently violent. Both of these assumptions are of the same type and are damaging. They serve only to offer security by separating people from one another. Which is not a form of security I believe in. It comes from a place of personal fear for survival/not getting hurt.

This tweet objectifies and ultimately limits the potential motivation of both groups of people indicated. They are either penile (threatening) or vaginal (deserving of protection). It's a well accepted and wise rule of the queer world and trans world that we accept that someone's identity and humanity are bigger than their body or what we can perceive about their bodies. Reducing people and their possible motivations and ways of being to their body parts is straight up oppressive objectification. It tells them that they are indeed just their body parts.

If the focus on penis vs. vagina is removed, the tweet above merely becomes someone saying that one person's concerns are more important than another's just because they have differing body parts. This tweet’s emphasis on the concerns of a particular group being more important than another’s requires that we believe there is a scarcity of concern and a hierarchy for compassion. Anyone with half a hope for intersectional politics knows that this idea is broken.

I understand that some folks have have traumatic associations with certain body parts, but personal trauma does not justify censoring or excluding the people whose body parts are associated with that trauma. I've been assaulted by two redheads, this doesn't mean I have a right to assume that all gingers are dangerous/threatening to me.

Having a traumatic association with a particular body part does not mean those body parts or objects are always to be harbingers of trauma. Past performance of one member of a group does not determine future performance of all members of that group.

The idea that the phallus (or any other male-associated body traits) is inherently threatening actually reinforces paradigms of of violence against women (a la evolutionary psychology so familiar in the rhetoric of rape apologists). It essentializes violence as inexplicably connected to male bodies. Believing that the phallus/masculinity is inherently violent creates a closed loop definition that makes confronting actual instances of violence perpetrated by men defensible because "well having a penis/testosterone just makes you more violent." This is absurd. It casts all those with masculine traits as irredeemably violent and not worth intervention.

Casting the phallus itself or those who have a phallus exclusively as violators who need no support or protection becomes widely and obviously incorrect when you consider the terrifyingly high rates of violence and exclusion trans women experience. Our legal system has already enforced the assumption of trans folks as violent perpetrators. This objectifying assumption actually enables such violence against both women AND trans people. 

It is totally fucked up to say that some folks (those with vaginas) have a right to feel unthreatened while others concerns for safety are disregarded completely (because they're cast as inherently threatening due to their body parts).

When I strap on a phallus I don’t magically become less of a feminist or become more dangerous to vagina havers. A cock is not a gun. It's a tool. One that can be used for violence but it isn't inherently violent any more than it is inherently pleasurable. It is just a body part.

Statistically speaking, having a phallus makes one likelier to have privilege BUT having privilege doesn't in and of itself, make a person violent or entitled. 

I understand that what most trans excluding feminists fear is this stereotype of phallus-related violence & entitlement. But employing body-based stereotypes like this is not only discriminatory but a downright inefficient way of screening for violent behavior.

No person's body or body parts is better or more inherently deserving of concern or protection. As a radical feminist and vagina haver, I personally resent that other folks seem to think myself or my body parts need to be protected from those scary phalluses.

I know that as a person with vagina I'm at higher risk for sexual assault than a cisgender man and that statistically that assault is more likely to be perpetrated by a cis guy. But I have been physically assaulted by cis women with higher frequency than cis men. Based on this history I resent the assumption that I am “safer” around cis women. I want to be allowed to use my own ability to discern who my allies are. I don’t need this arbitrary body-based separation and I certainly don’t approve of it.

My writing this is NOT an effort to tell those with traumatic experiences related to masculinity & the phallus to "get over it". That trauma deserves space and support. But when we work for intersectional politics (which the future of feminism must be) a single narrative of trauma cannot always be the focus of our actions.

I know this seems callous on some level but it is necessary. But as I’ve written before nobody is entitled to the be listened to or to have the attention/protection of the community. No one has a right to feel safe. It is always a privilege. In order to distribute this privilege effectively community members must

1. Acknowledge that others have trauma and that all trauma is valid even if not addressed and processed.
2. Accept that the personal experience of trauma one person has doesn't map onto the experiences others have with their trauma.
3. Accept that no experience of trauma is more or less deserving of our compassion.

Excluding those who have body parts that have been fearfully defined as dangerous robs our feminist communities of solidarity and the imperative discomfort of bearing witness to the trauma of trans folks.

I want demand these experiences be welcomed into my feminist community.

Quick Response to "Newsroom" honesty clip.

I, to be clear, am thrilled that this topic is being outed on TV for folks to have fits and conversations about. I do have a quibble however...

I was loving it until the music got all soft & Jeff Daniel's character got all reminiscent about the "good ol' days" by talking about how america "used to be"? You know, back when oppressed folks (nonwhite/disabled/female) had no visibility at all? Folks who say shit like this forget about them (and appropriately so as they are rarely represented in the history or progress). I refuse to think that the past America was "better" just because the way we counted progress then compared better to other nations during that time. That is not a good enough metric for me. 

I agree that there has been generally less progress in the US (as compared to other nations) but we are (still!) transitioning into a more inclusive definition of progress. In many ways folks already privileged are resisting this (see here the often rage-inspiring, dehumanizing "illegal alien" shitstorm) because it does slow and complicate our traditional definition of progress. But embracing diversity of peoples and ideas really IS how other nations are getting so far "ahead" of us. America is still getting over it's collective narrow & xenophobic definition of progress. Our xenophobia is a costly vestigial block to fully engaging as a nation of the world. Talking about the good ol' days does nothing to move us forward.

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.