The Difference Between BDSM and Abuse is Not Just Consent

My partner mentioning this book, triggered the fuck out of me.

And the reason I was triggered by it was because for half my childhood, and most of my life as a young adult, I associated my desires and fantasies with abuse. Only abusers want to hit other people, only abusers want to control people, only abusers want to make people cry and scream. I had ample examples around me, from my own genocidal and colonialist ancestors, to those who had scarred the people I loved. Making someone do what you want sexually, overriding what they want is always bad. Beating someone so they are covered with blue and black and green is always bad. Everyone knows this.

I never said a word. I was the one my friends would come to to tell what had been done to them. And I never said a word about the scenes playing in my head. And I thought, I am a monster. I am betraying the people I love by my very existence.

I have struggled with that shame constantly, even after I came out to myself, even as I chanted in my mind, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, other people are like me too, it doesn’t have to be bad, it’s fine.’ A month has not gone by, sometimes not a week, or a day, that I have not doubted myself, wondered if I was just making it all up, rationalizing it so I did not have to feel the wretchedness of this shame.

When I was triggered by the mere mention of that book, suddenly I had been shot back to age fourteen (ten, fifteen, eighteen, eleven). I was disgusting, evil, sick, and I would hold my friends, listen to them, support them, but oh god I could never. Say. Anything. It consumed me.

The other week I realized I needed to read that book, that I needed to let go of this imagined connection. It has no place in my life.

I did read it, and I was filled with relief, as I often have been when hearing similar stories, that I did not identify with the horrors perpetrated. The relief was not as immense as it has been in the past. I have managed to let go of some of that shame. Other times what filled me was fear, loathing when I would have sexual reaction to an act in an abusive context.

I’m remembering the radical feminist/BDSM kerfuffles that were going on a few months ago. The radfems screamed that BDSM is abuse, and the battle cry of the pro-BDSM camp was “Consent, consent, consent! What we do is not abuse because there is consent!”

Somehow that never felt solid for me, and I never really understood why until I after I set that book down and thought.

Consent is a factor, not to be trivialized, but is not the defining factor.

The declare consent the defining factor between abuse and BDSM relationships is to say that abuse is the exact same thing as dominance, submission, bondage and sadomasochism, only without consent. And it is to say the reverse: That BDSM is the exact same thing as abuse, only with consent.

And it’s not.

There is a fundamental difference between doing something out of pyschological torment, rage, terror, desolation, hate, and doing something out of joy, connection, fun, affection, love. That the logistics of giving and obeying an order, of binding and being bound, of an object hitting flesh might superficially resemble each other, is irrelevant.

Procreation

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share this, but I think I will.

Recently, I experienced five days and a morning of very seriously contemplating the possibility that I was pregnant. I knew the exact day of the possible insemination, but it was on a day where it was highly unlikely that I was ovulating (as in, day 28), and my cervical mucus was not what I associate with fertility.

But I haven’t been sleeping. And the previous fitful night, I had a dream where I was at least six months pregnant.

I remember leaning over my swollen belly, being watched by the people around me, and saying, “This is… heavier… than I thought.”

And thus it occurred to me that a microscopic human might have implanted on the wall of my uterus.

I was headed to a shindig with several people, and I had my items rolled up into a sarong which I would tie around my waist like a fannypack. As I got out of the internal combustion engine conveyance, partner’s partner teased, “Hey, you got a baby in there?”

Which gave me a really nasty jolt through the stomach.

“Wow, that was kind of a shock because I was just contemplating that I might be pregnant.” And tears fell down my cheeks, because it felt so big.

That day, I felt the edges of angles of being pregnant I didn’t even know existed. I felt excitement, and fear, and mostly just intensity. And I realized, with a sense of strength and joy, that if I was pregnant, whether or not I chose to give birth, that this would be an amazing experience.

Me having a child outside of a tight knit community is out of the question. Human spawn are incredibly demanding, don’t reach any level of subsistence sufficiency for years, and are in general slow-developing. The idea that two parents is sufficient human-power raise a human child is ludicrous to me. Two-parent (not to mention one-parent) families burn out so frequently for a reason. Because they don’t have support to be able to get enough sleep, much less take time off from subsistence activities to nurture the spawn.

I have no expectation of partner performing the role of parent, and I am living in an intimate community where communal child-rearing is the norm, so for a few hours I dove into imagining what it would be like to experience pregnancy and give birth in that environment. And it was rather empowering to realize that I could be a young, ’single’ mother and it wouldn’t be a disaster. Which led to other thoughts such as that I needed to make sure I didn’t choose to give birth for reasons such as: right of passage; making concrete my divorce from blood-kin in terms of my life decisions; using it as motivation to live healthier; using it as motivation to figure out my psycho-emotional shit. I need to do all those things for myself, not for someone else.

Then I contemplated what it would be like to welcome that life into the world, and then usher it back out because now was not the right time. And that was beautiful too.

The next day I forgot all about this due to participation in a medical emergency. And the next day I woke up feeling like shit.

I didn’t know why. I just felt like shit. I was unconsciously frowning the entire day. It was like my own personal metaphorical cloud hanging over me. I thought it might be related to the possibility of pregnancy, but it didn’t seem to fit. Nonetheless, I kept wondering, ‘What if an herbal abortion doesn’t work? What if I have to have a surgical abortion? Oh my god, I am young, without a child-rearing partner, pregnant from my first sexual partnership. Good fucking god what a stereotype.’

That night, serendipitously (a word which I do not use lightly), the story of the unintentional conception of one of the children I live with was retold. And the mother said something about her and her partner that stuck with me.

“And you know, our relationship was really young. Less than a year.”

And I realized that I am living in a community, but my relationship with that community is very young. Seven months old. These are the people who would be helping me raise a child. I’m happy to be where I am right now, but I don’t know if I’ll want to be here in another nine months, much less years.

I didn’t bring it up to everyone until the next day. And within ten minutes of describing all of this, I have in my hands a guide to herbal implantation inhibitors (prevents baby from implanting on uterine wall), emmenagogues (induces menstruation), and abortifacients (induces abortion).

It was too soon to take a test, and I had been planning to wait to see if I bled (I was imminently due), but someone suggested that if I even thought there was a possibility I was pregnant, to decide now whether or not I wanted to abort, and if I did to start taking things to induce my period like parsley and ginger, because aborting is easier sooner than later. I was at almost exactly four weeks since the insemination.

I realized that I already knew what I wanted. Now isn’t the time. I don’t have the psycho-emotional wholeness, or the community relationships to want to bear a child. There was parsley and ginger in the fridge, I had recipes.

For 3 days I drank 2-6 cups/day of:

• 2 oz of fresh parsley infused for 20 minutes in 2 cups of boiling water

For 2 days I drank 2-4/cups a day of:

• 1 oz grated fresh ginger infused for 4 hours in 2 cups of boiling water

I spent some time talking to the possible baby within me, and visualizing shedding the blood lining in my uterus. I could feel my uterus responding after the first day. Sharp pangs and aching completely unlike my menstruation cramps. I did some research on effective combinations of herbal abortifacients, and I took the first opportunity to go and get a couple of pregnancy tests. I waited until the next morning to test so I could test with morning urine, which is supposed to have the highest concentration of pregnancy hormone.

I thought the herbs I would need would be semi-illegal, hard to get on short notice, or something I would have to gather and process myself. Turns out you can get almost everything you need at a health food store. I’ve heard stories from people who have watched women herbally abort, and that it can be incredibly hard on the body. But I still wanted to try that first rather than have a medical or clinical abortion. I found this site to be incredibly helpful in the breadth and detail of information. The person who compiled the information also made up a questionnaire to give out to women who have experienced herbal abortion. And I read several to get an idea of what I could be in for.

This was the combination I decided on, with a clinical abortion appointment for back-up in case of an incomplete abortion:

• Emenogogue: Parsley and Ginger as described above
• Progesterone blocker: Vitamin C
• Uterine contractor: Dong Quai
• Possibly a Black Cohosh regimen because it was available

The next morning, I peed in a jar, and dipped the tests in. My hands were actually shaking, so that it was hard to put the caps on the tests. I set them down and walked away.

When I came back, they each showed one pink line.

Even though I knew that if I didn’t bleed soon I would need to test again to be sure, the release of that intensity was immense. Rushing out of me in one big gush. I cried, and went and sat down.

When a couple of people came in and I gave them the news, an older woman I live with hugged me.

“Eres una mujer.”

You are a woman.

I can imagine that being construed as patronizing, but it wasn’t. In a culture with no meaningful rites of passage, for me this was one.

Three days after I took the test and stopped taking parsley and ginger, I bled, dark and sticky. I woke up from the pain of the cramps, and I haven’t had severe menstrual pain for months. I ran into every object I could in the dark to get a hot pack, which I wore all the next day which eased the pain. I had decided to stop using my menstrual cup because the suction didn’t feel good to my cervix, and to make a consistent effort to return my blood to the land rather than pouring it down a drain, so I had a bunch of absorbent moss dried and ready to be packaged in a cloth pad. I rediscovered the joys of pubic hair matted with blood. I bled less than I usually do.

I posted the details of the abortion plan I was going to take here for a reason, even though I didn’t experience it. I can’t recommend what to use, or if it will work for anybody else, both because I’ve never done it and because everyone’s body is different. But I didn’t know just how easily available this option was to me, and it makes me wonder if other people don’t either. The materials are commonly available, comparatively inexpensive, and one has the opportunity to work with one’s own body rather than being dependent on a medical institution. One of the questionairres I read really hit me. One woman had had a clinical abortion previously, and couldn’t stand to do it again. The herbal abortion was incredibly hard on her. She repeatedly wrote that she felt like she was poisoning herself.

And she said it was still a better experience than a clinical abortion. She recovered in one week as opposed to seven.

I don’t think an herbal abortion, or any radical self-medication, is a decision to take lightly. I also think that for most people, just taking herbs isn’t going to do it. Most of the women who filled out questionnaires talked about how they only felt results when they were working with their body, with the child, rather than against them. For me it had to be working with the child. Considering how strongly my body reacted to parsley and ginger, two fairly common cooking ingredients, and my strong reaction to herbs in general (I have gotten stoned on chamomile tea) I’m pretty sure I would have been strongly affected by taking megadoses of these herbs.

It wasn’t a matter of not loving the hypothetical baby. For five days, I did love that baby, even thought it might not have been there at that particular intersection of time and space. I used to believe that from the moment of conception a baby was human and alive, and because of that, abortion was murder. After a while I came to realize that these were the thoughts of a culture obsessed with immortality, terrified of death despite its own self-destructiveness. I still believe that from the moment of conception a baby is human and alive, just like the sperm and the egg are human and alive. But death is integral to life. It is just as meaningful as life. And at this point, for me it is a more loving act to usher that life respectfully out than to bring it into unprepared, unstable circumstances.

I want to talk about the concept of the “pregnancy scare.” Everyone around me was incredibly supportive, giving me information, their time, and their herbs. And they all used the term “pregnancy scare.” This concept seems to pervade our culture: The terror of an unintentional pregnancy and the ordeal of bearing a child unprepared, or getting an abortion. Not being able to get an abortion legally, or going through the stigma of having one in this culture.

I don’t like this term. It is based in fear. I experienced fear. Totally. But fear was not the defining factor of my experience. I also experienced excitement, joy, sadness, growth, knowing. I am incredibly grateful I experienced this. I know more about my body, I am inspired to keep more systematic track of my ovulation, I know how I will react inducing my period. And as glad as I am that I did not have to abort, I also think that would have been just as valuable and –cherishable, I can’t think of a better word– an experience.

Reading over this as I edit it, I keep thinking that this is too serious, that I am putting too much of myself into this, too much of what I actually feel and believe compared to the isolated, fragmentary parts of me I usually write here. But death is serious, and so is life, and I know no other way to share this.

KinkForAll Washington DC

Okay, Maymay asked me to pimp the upcoming KinkForAll Washington DC (November 21st, tomorrow!), and I just got the email this morning and I’m about to rush off into the wide blue yonder, so I’m going to cheat and crosspost. The first KinkForAll, which I attended, was an amazing experience, and if you happen to read this before tomorrow and are in the DC area, see if you can make it. This is one of the ways we can create our own spaces, spaces that meet our needs and where we can explore who we are. Tis the awesome.

***

KinkForAll is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people of all persuasions to share and learn in an open environment. It is a fast-paced event with discussions, presentations, and interaction from all participants. (It is inspired by the BarCamp community.)

ANYONE WITH SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE OR WITH THE DESIRE TO LEARN IS WELCOME AND INVITED TO JOIN. When you attend, be prepared to share with others. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

A KinkForAll is a special kind of gathering because there are no spectators, only participants. Attendees must give a talk or a presentation, help with one, or otherwise contribute in some way to support the event. This is called sharing and we like it. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen—there are no pre-scheduled presentations or keynote addresses. The people present at the event will select the presentations they want to see.

Anyone can lead a session, on any topic related to sexuality. You do not necessarily have to teach a new skill or idea. You might share an experience, facilitate a discussion, or read a poem. The goal is to start a conversation, make connections (and maybe even friends), and exchange knowledge. Presentations promoting specific commercial products or companies are discouraged.

Learn more about what to expect at
http://wiki.kinkforall.org/WhatToExpect

Learn more about the event guidelines at
http://wiki.kinkforall.org/TheRulesOfKinkForAll

This activity is not sponsored by, associated with, or endorsed by Montgomery County Public Schools or Montgomery County Government.

Get Involved
============

We need your help in spreading the word. Please help by participating.

Here’s how:

1. Get excited by reading fellow participants’ topic ideas on
http://wiki.kinkforall.org/KinkForAllWashingtonDC
2. Add your name or handle to the list of participants
3. Join the mailing list and introduce yourself by emailing
kinkforall@googlegroups.com
4. Show up!

Still have questions? Read the Frequently Asked Questions at
http://wiki.kinkforall.org/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

or email kinkforall@googlegroups.com for more details.

KinkForAll Online
==============

Participate online before the event at your favorite social networking web site:

Homepage: http://wiki.KinkForAll.org
Google: http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KinkForAll
Identica: http://identi.ca/kinkforall
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/KinkForAll/40066342762
Fetlife: http://fetlife.com/groups/2962

All organizational efforts are coordinated in public via the mailing list. Join for free and help turn ideas into realities!

http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall

Rope Rope Rope

A “Leonardo” rope machine arrived, much to my glee, and I made maybe eight-feet of some two-ply (and each ply was two-ply) rope out of some really rough sisal twine to get a feel for it. The crudeness of the twine was an issue, since all the strands that were sticking out got caught in each other, making the rope twist together prematurely.

Soon, hopefully I can make a trip to a purveyor of cheap hemp rope which I can take apart and remake, or possibly a purveyor of thick hemp beading twine.

I’ve found a tutorial for conditioning hemp rope, and I was wondering if anyone had any other tips or information. The tutorial says to use mineral oil, but I vaguely remember hearing something about jojoba oil working, and I’d rather work with a plant oil.

Over at Twisted Monk, they apparently use French palm-and-needle whipping for the ends. Upon further research palm-and-needle appears to be the longest-lasting form of whipping, and I have tried in vain to find instructions for it. The closest I’ve found is instructions for sailmaker’s whipping, but I’ve also seen some references in books that look exactly like sailmaker’s whipping, but claim to be palm-and-needle.

So does anyone know:

1. If there is a difference between French palm-and-needle and plain old palm-and-needle?
2. If there is a difference between palm-and-needle and sailmaker’s whipping?
3. If there are differences, does anyone know any resources for French palm-and-needle, and palm-and-needle whipping?
4. What the hell is the “palm” in palm-and-needle? Is it some kind of tool?

Pretty, pretty, pretty rope… I keep working the rope machine just to see the hooks spin. Sometimes I am way too easily entertained. And other times I am not easily entertained enough.

My Angst With the Scene

I’ve been saying for a good few weeks now that I was go hunt down some munches and kinky get-togethers to at least try what they were like in this area, for the benefit of being in a room full of people to whom my sexuality is not a mysterious, unknown thing. The people I live with have been amazingly accepting and encouraging. At the same time, it is not the same as being with people who understand because they share similar desires.

I kept saying I was going to look up munches, but I kept not doing it, until finally, I was like, “Dude, get on that.” The webpages I found were all out of date and had broken links, so I turned once again to Fetlife, which proved a very rich resource, but still didn’t shift my ambivalent feelings about the whole enterprise (please please please switch to something other than white on black!).

What I was not expecting was my physical reaction to reading about the groups and figuring out which ones I would like to go to. A couple of times I honestly felt sick, which I took to be some combination of my feelings about my largely disappointing experiences in the City, and my own fears about traveling a minimum of four hours by internal combustion engine technology to another City just to be stuck in the same (I am assuming, possibly erroneously, having never been) taboo-, poisonous-fabric-, title-, hierarchy-loving atmosphere. I don’t know if that’s what it’s like. But I do know that the one group I found for dominant women focused on female-supremacy (*eye roll*), required all “males” to be identify as submissives or slaves, and stated that “switch males will be removed.” Removed. Their word. Switch “females” would be tolerated, as long as they acted in the dominant role. All submissives and slaves were required to be naked at events. Their website suggests they enjoy the excessive use of corsets. It did not set up a good picture for me. An iconoclastic part of me wanted to go just so I could wear my most casual, worn clothing and be like, “Yo.”

The other groups I looked at seemed perfectly average, with no red-flags, but I still got so tight and snappy around the idea. I really dislike traveling by internal combustion engine technology. Both as a physical experience and the fact that it uses gallons of processed fossilized carboniferous period plant matter. And have I ever mentioned that I loathe Cities?

Subversive Sub took the matter by the scruff of the neck and started her own scene. I don’t have the emotional or logistical resources for that. But the mad idea of trying to organize a KinkForAll here has crossed my mind. I don’t know if I have the emotional or logistical resources for that either, but shit’s gotta change here as much as anywhere else, even if in this one tiny way.

I just realized that I have already been setting myself up to be leered at by mandoms, awkwardly approached by mansubs, and in general patronized by anyone who happens to have more revolutions around the sun than I do. Which is really not a good place to come from. Sure, those things might happen, but I don’t need to go into it fortified and armored.

I will go. We will see.

Bookstores Taunt Me

I carefully stepped into the dingy confines of a used bookstore the other day, and quickly ascertained the location of the sci-fi/fantasy section. The books were facing exclusively spine-out, so I was skimming for any title that caught my eye, rather than cover (you can judge some books by their cover. Cover artists sometimes have niche markets on certain subgenres, and you can guess a lot of how a book will go based on recognizing the style of the artist. Then again, I would never have read Song of Ice and Fire by being inspired by the covers, so it’s double-edged).

I saw something by Dave Duncan, who I was introduced to in early teenage-dom through the King’s Blades trilogies. In which dudes get stabbed through the heart with their own swords to magically bind them with unbreakable loyalty to the wards they protect. Do we notice any familiar themes? Anyway, I saw “A Rose-Red City,” plucked it out of the pile, and was confronted with this cover:

What the hell?

The whims of chance are a fucking tease.

Seriously. Naked dude being subdued by minotaur, being defended by a woman(?) wielding a sparkly energy baton trailing a stream of light like a whip, with an apparent chemical dependency on make-up and hairspray. I read a couple of pages and nothing hooked me, so I put it away.

Skim, skim, skim–

Lady Pain.

What?

Read back cover. Oh. The Pain is bad. Of course. It wants to destroy the world. Of course. Eye roll.

I didn’t stay long to really dig for the jewels I’m sure were there, but I did put a lot of stuff back after reading, “[Name], [title] of [place] has lost [his/her] [symbol of divine right], and must now embark on a perilous journey to regain [his/her] [hereditary tyrannic rulership] from the [bad guys/pirates/communists/even WORSE hereditary tyranic rulership].” With a few exceptions, these days I am little interested in reading about someone’s fucking monarchy.

Hint to the sci-fi/fantasy community: There are other forms of socio-economic organization than democracy or monarchy. There are even, shockingly, societies where no one rules anyone else!!!

There are a lot of superb writers out there, and among them there are even some superb authors, and among them there are people who use cliches as a springboard for some kick-ass storytelling. No denying that. But where does this obsession with monarchies and empires come from? The sword-and-sorcery thing? Believing that those are the only “ancient” forms of socio-economic organization before the advent of Freedom (TM) and Democracy (TM)?

But that is completely random and not what this post was going to be about. I am still debating reading “A Rose-Red City” just because, seriously, that cover. Priceless.

The Frothing, Howling Rush

I keep wanting to express what I’m going through here, and drawing a blank. Possibly because for the first time in my memory I’m not analyzing my process, I’m just feeling what I’m going through. For the past four weeks, I have been a willing tumbleweed in gale-force winds, and it feels amazing, but the past few days it’s been overwhelming.

Throwing down the maximum security walls for partner started a chain reaction of coming out, and having some very in depth, long conversations with people in my community about my sexuality and gender, and specifically about sadism. Which has felt something like a dam crumbling slightly at the top, then suddenly exploding with the force of the river behind it. And I’ve just been going with it, things and feelings that I never even knew about within myself. The response has been a rather shocking level of support and acceptance, which in retrospect seems obvious. Every single day I’ve said something like, “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt his way before,” because every day I feel completely different and new, and it’s happening so damn fast.

I don’t know how to manifest what I feel, present as what I am, or what to do about any of it, except unravel and reweave my baggage as a human being.

I moved to a new sleeping place, and the past week I’ve woken up three or four times a night. My entirely life, I have always slept. Very. Deeply. I have slept through hurricanes and tornadoes (but not earthquakes). The moon is so bright in this new place, and where I slept before was dark. I’ve been having these intense, vivid dreams, of being initiated into a third gender through ceremony, of sharing a lover with my partner’s partner who was not my partner. Even when I don’t remember the dreams in the morning I immediately have this full, potent, overwhelming feeling that I associate with my process.

Last night I never stopped waking up, hovering somewhere between awakening and dreaming, rolling, tossing, moaning, rearranging the blanket, waking up exhausted.  With a headache. (What is that?) And always present is this feeling, right now revolving around my gender, a confluence of– something. I’ve started feeling like a woman again, or maybe more accurately more feminine. But more steadily in this ebbing cycle of exploration I feel like both-neither.

The other night, a woman I wrote about before as not being able to understand said to me over dinner, “You know, today I was watching two of my co-workers, and I watched one of them snap a towel at the other so hard it probably broke the skin. And he was just gleeful, totally enjoying it, and the other guy was like, ‘Oeghhhh!‘” She made a scrunched up face. “They were both laughing so hard, and I suddenly had a flash of what it was like to enjoy that, to enjoy pain, and giving it. And you know, they’ve been doing this for a while, you can always hear them, the snap of the towel –it’s loud– then laughter. They’ve been walking around in shorts with welts on their legs all summer. It was really neat to have that insight.”

Just over dinner, with everyone. It was amazing. To have that topic brought up, by someone else, over dinner.

Something came to me the other day. Partner’s partner, after overlooking this blog, said to me, “I really see no indication that you’re attracted to women.” Ever since acknowledging my attraction to other genders and sexes, I’ve felt vaguely guilty when I continue to be more consistently attracted to male people with man genders. Like I have this idea that my attraction has to be equal for all genders or I’m not doing it right. And I realized that in my fantasies, I’m not fantasizing about women per se, but people who are female. I feel more attraction toward other gendered people with female bodies than I feel for women at present. Whatever the hell ‘woman’ actually is. For some reason that factor doesn’t stop me from being consistently attracted to male people with man genders, maybe because I was socialized to. Whatever. When I think of being sexual with the women around me I draw a blank. When I think of their body types, I think hot.

The other night I tallied up very approximate rankings for how often I fantasize about which kind of people and it came out roughly like this:

1. Male people, or male men
2. People with male bodies and female genitals
3. Male people with non-man genders, especially those presenting as culturally feminine, and female people presenting as culturally masculine (I had a couple of years in my late teens where I consistently fantasized about being with transwomen and transmen)
4. Female people who felt distinctly not like women, and people with bodies somewhere on the spectrum between female and male

I am noticing that ‘woman’ is not appearing in my list. So who knows where that will end up.

While I am thinking about it, I want to pimp the book The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture by Walter L. Williams, which documents one of the alternative genders in many indigenous peoples of North America: Male people who dressed and behaved androgynously, mixing men and women’s clothing and work, usually having sex with masculine men, and for many peoples performing esteemed spiritual functions. One of the things I appreciated most was the author’s distinction between a male person being feminine, and being non-masculine, and being androgynous. In later chapters Williams drew parallels to modern urban gay subculture and other male same-sexual institutions in non-tribal societies, but on the whole I thought he did a good job of differentiating cultural identity from sexual acts. Williams wrote this before the popularization of the term Two Spirit among modern North American peoples, so he uses the term ‘berdache’, which was accepted in the anthropological community for many years, and seems to have largely been abandoned since it essentially means ‘catamite.’ He also has an annoying tendency to refer to the person who is around the cock as being the ‘passive’ sexual partner, and the person inside the anus or the mouth as the ‘active’ sexual partner, but I just had to keep reminding myself that he was using the standard terminology of his field.

Back to where I am in my process. Partner has been away for a month now, on a trip of indefinite proportions. It is sad, glad, and exciting. I’m finding myself exploring my sexuality with myself again, and my masochism has wriggled into the forefront for attention. I realized that based on my experiences bottoming I enjoy it, I would do it again, and I really see no conflict with my dominance. I’ve been untangling my fantasies, feeling for the relationship that fulfills me underlying each act and dynamic.

I’ve been wanting to start learning rope again. I was going to buy some hemp, but Zac planted the nefarious idea in my brain at the first KinkForAll that I could make my own, so I got a simple rope machine (waaaaay to lazy and unskilled at the moment to build my own). I’m feeling a lot more open to finding nearby BDSM groups than I was, so I’m going to try to find an active munch and see where it goes. Also a genderqueer group if one is near the munch and I can hit them in one fell swoop.

Because I am fell, goddamnit. Very fell.

Twice

Ever since I was seventeen I have seen a man’s face in my head. Sometimes his body type changes, sometimes he is pale, sometimes he is dark, but his face has always been the same. He became a common partner in my fantasies. I felt so strongly connected to this man that I wondered who he was.

Is he someone I’ll meet? Will he be a friend, a teacher, a brother, a partner? Do I have to find him, or will he find me? Where is he? Why do I keep seeing him, am I obsessed with this facial structure, what if I judge other men’s beauty by him, a figment of dubious origin and purpose? Where is he and why can’t I find him?

Until one day, in the middle of a lecture on permaculture of all things, I realized that maybe he was me.

And in its way, it made so much sense. Past the initial confusion of ancient lunch-ladies calling me ‘young man’ the first time I cut my hair short, I’ve always enjoyed being mistaken for a man, even flattered. I always put it down to the general feeling that the global superpower’s gender roles were extremely silly. And it would explain how compelling I found characters who regularly alternated between the binary sexes and genders when I was an adolescent. Hell, I wrote stories about it. More recently I felt intensely fascinated watching a movie with my mentor about sex-gender switching people (but I also just wanted to have sex with them).

It is bizarre for me how new things keep popping up when I set out to explore my dominant, sadistic sexuality. It’s kind of like, “Again? Really? How could something else possibly be coming up?” Look at paragraphs twelve through fourteen of this post. That is obliviousness.

This blog began with that I’m dominant. I could finally admit that. And then that I’m a sadist. It was okay to say that too. Okay, then it became apparent I’m not straight. Oh, and by the way there is a man lurking in my head and he is me. What is this, fucking dominoes? Tip over one and eventually the rest will all fall down? I cannot even comprehend the artistry and subtlety of my self-repression to have so blithely hidden this all from myself for two decades. And I am in awe (terrified awe) of the social system that could have made it seem like a good idea to do so.

I’m don’t feel trans, -sexual or -gendered, I don’t feel queer, I don’t feel androgynous, I don’t feel Two Spirit. Those are not mine to take. I am a woman, and a man, and I feel like I have no right to say any of this. I’ve never had to live with transphobia or gender dysphoria. I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong body, I don’t feel like I’m not a woman. But I am feeling somehow fake. I have lived in straight, cisgendered privilege my entire life, and up pops another gender, demanding his life back.

I cannot even entirely think of this man as myself. He is like a separate person living in my body, with his own personality, experiences, memories. Or lack thereof, because he didn’t get to live like the girl and woman did. I think that can be a blessing. I had to grow up as a girl and a woman in this culture, and that has left its mark. The man never had to grow up in this culture as a boy and a man, which in a way, leaves him freer. On the other hand he took the brunt of much of my self-loathing. But he has so few memories. His mind is blank, and he does not yet know who he is. <– See use of third person. That is almost the only way I can relate to him right now and not feel odd.

I don’t know how to explore this. I don’t know how to manifest this, and I don’t know how to present as a man. As I wrote before, I have a hard time understanding adornment conveying information. I don’t find skirts feminine. I don’t find short hair masculine. I wear many more skirt-like pieces of cloth now than I do pants-like pieces of cloth, and my hair is considered short. I have no desire to subject myself to the discomfort of pants to fit common perceptions of masculinity. I really loathe pants.

I’ve been doing small things among the people I live with specifically reserved for male men, which has caused minor confusion. Also debates with eight-year-olds. Yesterday I brought up gender as a dinner topic, and once the discussion finally got revved up and the silence abandoned, it was a great conversation. But somehow today I just feel weird and confused, and less centered about my experience than I had been.

Hell, I still haven’t figured out how to present as a dominant woman, much less anything else.

What a muddy, mucky, confusing, beautifully diverse world.

Slightly Crumbly

Naturally, once I handed over the key to my personal pandora’s box, my partner –that very night– went and read through half the archives. They did not waste time, oh no. To which my reaction was a kind of stuttering limbo between:

AeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiGHHHHHHH!

and:

‘Okay. Looks like that wasn’t such a big deal.’

“So I’m not so into rape and torture,” they said.

“I’m not necessarily either,” I replied. I did my best to answer their questions, to describe my experiences. I found the description surprisingly hard, as if all the clear-cut word-frames I’d thought of before had flown apart. We discussed the nebulousness of kinky vocabulary and how nobody is using anything the same way. I don’t know where I will go over the tumbled wreckage of the thick, high, camouflaged walls I spent two decades building around these parts of myself. It is. I am freer than I was.

“So, do you feel rejected?” they asked, waggling their eyebrows, warming my ice-block feet between their thighs. I wiggled my toes.

I have given partner’s partner Dev and Dw3t-Hthr’s blog addresses, and told them that if they stumble across me, it’s their call if they want to read.

There are things I missed in my last comma-abusing stream of thought. Such as that I am exploring my other gender. (Being argued with by an eight-year-old about if I am a man: Priceless). That I missed participating in this loosely woven sexuality community, lopsided as it is. To just be able to talk to or read the thoughts of people where it is taken for granted that I am what I am, and that it is normal, without any explaining. To remember that there really are others who share my experience.

I realized yesterday during an unrelated emotionally intense conversation, that I am in approximately eight-million different pieces. I didn’t even know it until I had said it aloud.

I am a dominant and a sadist looking for ways to meet my needs with no idea how. I have just torn down the maximum security fences that I started building when I was three. I am in a new place, beginning a new life, that I don’t know if I will continue or move on from. I am stumbling along trying to learn how to live with the people around me in an intimate and meaningful way. Through various small events and interactions, the line between my old life and my new life has become smudged, and it’s not as comfortable as when there was a clean break. I am a maker longing to make, and I don’t know how to share what I make, and I fear what I make will not be wanted. I do not know my role in a dying world, my responsibilities to the land or my responsibilities to myself. I don’t feel like an emotional wreck, but I am not entirely together either.

Right now it just feels like this vaguely uncomfortable, toe-stubbing stage that I’m bound to go through until all these aspects of my life begin to coalesce again. In the eye in the back of my brain, I see something like jewel-toned stained glass.

I Am Just Woozy Enough From Sneezing My Face of to Step Off the Cliff

Ahoy.

Much has happened of late. I have changed, the world has changed, and everything is changing.

Transitioning into a new part of my life I’ve dropped off contact with some of my friends just because I needed the space, and I’ve been picking up the loose ends as I find myself feeling more settled. My oldest friend is going to war for no reason other than they have no sense of self-worth. I haven’t talked to my mentor in months, and I miss him.

I have met my partner’s former and possible future partner (this is oversimplifying the matter). I also live with my partner’s partner, and work with them every day and am building my own relationship with them. I have begun speaking a language other than English again, and I have gotten sick for the fourth time in six months when I’ve never before gotten sick more than once a year.

I have explored parts of my sexuality in gorgeous, deep ways, and others have been set aside.

My sadism is hungry.

In seeking to relate to my dominance in and of itself, with no submissive mirrors, I actually forgot for a while what it felt like to be dominant in relation to a submissive person. Recently, I found myself stalled by the fact that I didn’t know how to autonomously meet my needs around pain and submission and bondage, and there is no one around me to relate to on those levels of intimacy. I stuck myself in a feed-back loop of terror around sharing the details of this to anyone, including my partner, my partner’s partner, and people who I think would understand even less. These needs, these desires, building, with no way to release them, making me feel like I was coming apart at my edges, like I would burst apart. My hands were almost shaking.

Sharing this, in generalities, with my partner (who found me reading Maymay’s blog and remembered the title as ‘Maybe Harmed– But Not Permanently’), my partner’s partner, and someone who probably wouldn’t have understood at all, but was willing to listen to what little I could bring myself to say aloud. Partner’s partner wants to read stories of peoples lives with dominance and submission, sadism, masochism, and I want to give them Dev’s address, but I am afraid of it leading back to here.

Weeks before that, being triggered and suddenly catapulted into the old, very old, bitter shame and self-loathing and self-punishment I inflicted on myself for having rape fantasies and torture fantasies when so many of the people I loved had been raped and abused. My most secret shame, that I had never told anyone in context, that I thought I never would tell, or at least not for years. Waiting laying beside me, touching me as I shuddered it out in tears and snot, my partner listened as I shared my childhood convictions that I was a sick, evil monstrosity, the most devastating of traitors because I betrayed my friends with my desires. And just being held, and treated very matter of factly, and my partner telling me in amusement that it might be sexist, but I was simply too small and non-threatening to be skeevy. Rarely has that factor worked in my favor so well.

Back to the nearly shaking hands, no knowing how to get the pain I craved, my partner revealing that they suspected I found our sex boring, that if I had all these others desires how could I be satisfied without them. Afraid, emotionally garbled, trying to explain that just because I had needs/desires that weren’t being met didn’t mean I found the ones that were met unsatisfying.

“Not all my eggs are in one basket. Just because one basket hasn’t been satisfied doesn’t mean the other isn’t.

“But why would you want your eggs in different baskets, when you could have more eggs in one basket and make an omelet?”

Then to today, partner’s curiosity about my ’secret blog,’ my desire to share all of myself, my fear of them seeing everything here, uncensored, sometimes idiotic, bitter, uncomplimentary, esoteric, ungrounded. Partner, goading me to share all of myself, not just in halves or parts, but in that way that challenges me to do what I want to do anyway, rather than shrinking away in fear of rejection.

“Maybe if I just tell you now, showing you the blog won’t seem like such a big deal.”

Minutes go by.

“And… scene,” they say.

Working myself up to it.

Telling them things I had already told them before, but in depth, in detail. My desires for sexual control, my love of pain, that what I enjoy as a masochist is different than what I enjoy as a sadist, my fetish for slavery, my love of whips, that I have hurt a man until he wept and it was beautiful, that I have handcuffed and hurt a man until he was so far in an altered state he could not speak, and it was intimate and full of trust. That I have been tied up and flogged and manhandled, and it was one of the most profound experience of my life to have faith in another person that I would not be harmed. Explaining the alternative uses for binder paper clips, that singletails do not necessarily leave scars. And I think, good god, that I am actually going to show them this, what am I thinking.

After we talked they went to spend time with friends, and I do not know all that they are thinking, or feeling, I do not know if I have triggered them, and I think, with some convincing, that it is okay. I know that this is the way I want to live. I want to give all of myself, and doing it is so terrifying.

But it’s going to happen like it’s going to happen, and I would rather do this than not.

Writing this, with no regard to grammar, syntax, conjunctions, or the ethical use of commas, or even fucking tense.

Hey, you.

Here it is.