It’s not as if I haven’t gone a month without posting before…but this time I have a good reason: National Novel-Writing Month! This is going to be a huge challenge for me — not so much the challenge of writing at least 1,666 words per day to reach the 50,000-word goal, but the challenge of plotting out a novel-length story, creating characters, and so forth. (Fiction has never been my strong suit.)

At any rate, I’ll be back in December. Have a good month.

Here, then, we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. A second characteristic is closely connected with this, namely, that play is not “ordinary” or “real” life. It is rather a stepping out of “real” life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own . . . . Nevertheless . . . the consciousness of play being “only a pretend” does not by any means prevent it from proceeding with the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into rapture and, temporarily at least, completely abolishes that troublesome “only” feeling. Any game can at any time wholly run away with the players. The contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid. The inferiority of play is continually being offset by the corresponding superiority of its seriousness. Play turns to seriousness and seriousness to play. Play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness far beneath.

—Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture

Folks in the Bay Area: I’m facilitating a workshop next Thursday (10/29) on anarchism and BDSM. It’s in Berkeley, it’s free, and there will be cupcakes.

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This month, we’ll have a facilitated discussion of what it means to practice BDSM as an anarchist. On the one hand, we have anti-BDSM arguments proclaiming that any type of BDSM play gives legitimacy to domination and submission as models for human relationships, and on the other, we have BDSM players who assert that anything they do and say is absolved by the fact that it turns them on. Some celebrate BDSM as a way to play with power, turning it on its head and perverting it for our own pleasure; other kinky folk are staunchly opposed to the idea of BDSM as merely “play,” and see “dominance” or “submission” as deep, constant aspects of their personality. If we are anti-hierarchical, can we also engage in (or support) relationships that are rooted in hierarchical models? Where do we draw the lines, if there are any to be drawn? We’ll look at a bit of BDSM and leather history, touch on the second-wave feminist backlash against BDSM in the 1980s, and identify specifically anarchist arguments against BDSM as a practice and as a subculture—and we’ll round it out with a discussion of concepts like “consent” and “play,” to see how these elements might help us make sense of What It Is That We Do.

Thursday, October 29
8-10pm
at the Long Haul Infoshop
3124 Shattuck Avenue / Woolsey in Berkeley (2 blocks from Ashby BART)
The space is wheelchair accessible and there is an accessible, gender-neutral bathroom.

I’ve been trying and failing to write something on this for weeks, now. I guess I’m just tired of pointing my finger and yelling “sexism!” every time I see it. There’s just so much of it around me, every day, that I can’t bring myself to get pissed off any more. I keep thinking of that self-righteous bumper sticker, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!” But I’ve been “paying attention” to this shit since I was, oh, ten years old, and I find it harder and harder to become outraged by it — not because I’ve come to accept things as they are but because once you realize how institutionalized sexism is and how deeply fucked up our entire civilization is, nothing really shocks you anymore.

To get to the point, the issue at hand is an episode of “This Week in Kink”, a podcast put on by the folks that run FetLife. On this episode, which aired over two months ago, one of the guests invited on the show said the following:

I firmly and strongly believe that it is a woman’s role to be submissive to a man. . . . I think that women in the past couple of hundred years have gotten entirely too high on their own power and eventually need to be slapped in the fucking head and put in their place.

A couple of years ago, I would have crusaded against this man and against the people who run the podcast. (How dare they allow such a thing to be broadcast.) I’d have demanded an apology and a retraction. Today, my reaction is a sigh and a shake of the head. What an asshole. I browse the comments on their page and leave one of my own. And I’m done. Next.

I did a bit of link-hopping and read Maymay’s take on the issue, in a post called “Don’t You Fret, Sexism Is Alive and Well in BDSM.” His post addressed a lot of stuff I’ve also written about — basically, making the point that while anti-BDSM feminists are wrong in their assessment of “BDSM = patriarchy,” we should acknowledge that there is a lot of sexism in BDSM as a culture and in how a lot of people practice it.

He linked to a blogger named Delilah, who writes that what troubles her the most about this is not that it was said — there will always be bigoted, ignorant jerks in the world — but that “in the BDSM world, where we’re meant to be playing with power, subverting some traditional norms and amplifying others to erotic effect, there are people who still truly believe this kind of outright nonsense. Even worse, that someone with such opinions is such a strong voice in the community.”

To me, what this says is not that there is a troubling streak of misogyny or at least sexism in the BDSM scene, but that (as I’ve written before) the values of the BDSM scene are fairly mainstream. Rob may be more outspoken and brash about his sexism, and it comes coated with d/s-specific language, but I strongly sense that the root of what he’s saying here is actually what the majority of men and women think — that there are biological differences between men and women, that these differences create “natural” inequalities between the sexes in some ways, and that the feminist demand for equality goes against woman’s natural role in the world.

Of course, none of this means that I’m throwing up my hands and saying, “Well, if the rest of the world thinks I should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, I guess I’ll start taking off my shoes.” I’m still angry. I still argue. But I’m not outraged; I don’t feel like I should expect the world to not be sexist, and that this individual person has just violated that unspoken agreement. I go out into the world expecting that most people I meet will have, on some level, an understanding of gender and gender roles that I do not share and that I feel is harmful to me in some way. I expect exactly the same thing when I encounter people in the BDSM scene. (The unfortunate difference, of course, is that within the world of BDSM, “this is my kink” can be used to justify stereotypes and prejudice, and thus people like Rob can speak a little louder than they would, perhaps, on the street.)

Perhaps I’m just having a very cynical day. But perhaps not.

An experimental post. I’ll be trying my hand at writing a novel, come November, so I’ve decided to start working on a more creative, fiction-y voice. Fiction has always felt extremely awkward and unwieldy to me, so this should be an interesting challenge!

My breath came in clumsy gasps as I stumbled up the stairs to my apartment, a burning in the back of my throat from the cold air I’d been gulping down. I had pushed myself home on my bicycle as fast as I could, pedaling blindly through dark residential streets and swerving my way around cars on the major roads. My face was sticky and wet with tears.

Slamming the door behind me, I suddenly froze, listening for signs of movement elsewhere in the house. Good, I thought. Nobody home.

I dropped my bag on the kitchen table and headed straight to my room, where, despite my own assurances that I was alone, I closed and locked the door. Truly alone now, I expected that my throat would loosen and that great, heaving sobs would come spilling out, a release of emotion, of anger and grief and humiliation. I prepared myself, and waited, but nothing came — I felt numb with tension; I couldn’t relax enough to cry.

She had smiled at me. She had smiled, nervously, as she walked past me, and I had put up an awkward hand to wave “hello.” “Hello,” I wanted that little wave to say, “I really like you, and I can’t be in the same room with you without thinking of you fucking my boyfriend, which is what you were doing three nights ago sometime between eleven at night and two in the morning. I think you’re an awfully nice person, honestly, and I want to walk over and punch you in the face.” And she had passed by without saying a word, and I had quickly, discreetly, fled the party as soon as she’d left the room.

What had she been thinking? What had her smile meant? What had mine meant to her?

Images flooded my brain. Her mouth on his cock. His finger pushing slowly inside her as she moans. His eyes watching her face as she comes. Stop. Her head on his bare chest as they curl up together in her bed. Stop!

I suddenly became very aware of the silence in my room, in the empty house. Sirens blared as a cop car sped past my window, somehow enhancing the feeling of isolation and solitude. I sat down on the floor, legs crossed. The anger had been unexpected. The anger was what had disturbed me so much. And what intensified that anger even more was the fact that it was totally, completely unjustified. This was what I had consented to. This was what I wanted.

Her mouth…his hands..their bodies…

My own body twinged as I thought of him, and I wished he could be there with me. That the images in my head would become real, with her mouth replaced with mine, her body, her desire becoming my own.

No.

No, that isn’t what I want, I thought. Not really. If he were here right now with me, the sex would be tense, and I would kiss him and not be able to keep myself from thinking of her. And then I would break down, unable to continue, and we’d both be miserable. No, that isn’t it, at all.

I closed my eyes and focused on the silence and my breath, centering myself and regaining perspective, clarity, focus. That is what I want. Focus. Being here. Being okay with being alone.

And then I opened my toy drawer, pulling out boxes of needles, a sharps container, disinfectant, and paper towels, methodically spreading them all out before me. I stripped my shirt off, cleaned off a patch of skin, and then pulled out a handful of needles, choosing a variety of sizes and colored tips.

This is my time. My body, my pleasure. It doesn’t matter that he’s fucking someone else; it doesn’t even matter if he were fucking someone else right this minute. What matters is that I’m here, now…

I pushed in the first needle.

What a roller coaster the past few weeks have been: a constant swinging between giddy optimism and completely crushing feelings of defeat. When the thought of my partner with “the other woman” isn’t invading my consciousness, I’ve been completely happy, both in our relationship and in the rest of my life: in my projects, in my relationships with others. When I’m suddenly, for whatever reason, reminded of her existence, I completely shut down, lose all interest in everything I’d been working on, and feel like withdrawing from all of my social circles. These changes can happen within a matter of minutes, from one mood to the other and then back again. It’s really wearing me down.

I’ve realized that the reason I have felt so profoundly hurt by my partner’s having sex with someone else is that my sexuality is an incredibly sensitive and deeply intimate part of my identity — which isn’t the case for him. It’s taken many years for me to be okay with not only my sexual identity as a submissive but just with the idea of myself as a sexual being at all; for most of my life, sex was something big and terrifying that I engaged in somewhat reluctantly and while holding a lot of myself back. In my family, sex was probably mentioned all of two or three times throughout my adolescence, and then only in combination with the words “don’t” and “be careful.” My memories of these brief conversations with my mother are marked by feelings of extreme discomfort, embarrassment, and fear — both on her part and my own. In fact, this could be said about any of my conversations with my parents around personal issues or problems. And as I got older, I mirrored this in my relationships with friends and others — avoiding discussions of serious issues; minimizing and dismissing emotional problems; lying about my scars during phases of self-injury; hiding the fact that I was at times unable to function because of depression, anxiety, and overwhelm; and never, ever talking about sex. In large part, this is still true today. Even with my trusted partner of four years, I often lapse into a headspace in which I can’t bring myself to actually voice the thoughts in my head, or sometimes even speak at all, when having conversations about difficult or highly personal issues.

All of which brings me to a paper on non-monogamy and identity that I recently read; it’s very academic, and I strongly disagree with parts of it, but it brings up some interesting points. Most significantly, the author writes that many (if not most) women in our society are taught to define ourselves in terms of our relationships with others, and specifically in terms of our (monogamous) sexual relationships. Because of this fusing of a monogamous person’s identity with that of her sexual partner, when the partner chooses to have a sexual relationship with someone else, the person feels that her identity is being changed in a way that she didn’t choose for herself. The author writes, “When the monogamous person says, of her lover, ‘I’m selfish; I don’t want to share,’ she may not necessarily be thinking of her lover as a child thinks of a toy or a bag of candy. She may rather be saying that she does not choose to share herself, to extend herself to include this new person, who is not a chosen part of her self-assumed identity.” It is a sort of “forced relating.” And as long as a person defines herself in part or exclusively in terms of her sexual partner, this sort of pain and vulnerability will continue. The real problem, the author argues, is neither monogamy nor non-monogamy but the idea that real emotional intimacy and identity can only be tied to the person or people you’re fucking; both monogamous and polyamorous people may feel that “sexual coupling defines and is the hallmark of closeness between human beings; that being sexual is being intimate; and that sex is almost the only route to warm physical contact between adults.”

And this leads to the big revelatory conclusion: The real solution to my issues with non-monogamy is not to just start dating other people myself (which I’ve considered), nor is it to cut myself off completely and regress to the hyper-independent ideal that I used to aspire to (which I’ve noticed myself already doing). The solution, or at least a large part of it, is to actually form intimate relationships with people I’m not having sex with. To let myself cry in front of my friends. To talk to people in person about the things I currently write about anonymously online. To learn how to touch other people without feeling awkward and uncomfortable. To not allow my sexual relationship to be the only outlet I have to get the love and affection and reassurance I need. I can’t stress how difficult these things are for me. But I’ve already begun testing the waters — and it’s not quite as hard as I thought it would be.

When my partner and I began making plans to open our relationship, we came to an agreement I thought was quite sensible: he’d give me two months, during which time I’d make an effort to start putting more work into my relationships with other friends, to start spending more time outside the house and with other people, and to start seriously investing myself in my own projects, again. I felt that all of this would enormously help me in being okay with the idea of my partner being with someone else; I need to first be okay with spending less time with my partner, and then be okay with him using that extra time to be with someone else.

A month has passed since then, and I think I’ve done pretty well. I’ve been feeling pretty confident about the two-month mark, a trip my partner was planning that would include visiting a girl he’s interested in. I felt this would be a good first step — someone I didn’t know, someone I didn’t have to interact with socially, someone I knew wasn’t in any way a threat to our relationship, because she lives halfway across the country. I felt like I was ready for that.

Then my partner decided he wasn’t going on that trip. And I realized that I was tired of trying to ease my way into things, trying to take baby steps that were getting us virtually nowhere. I was actually looking forward to his traveling to visit this girl, because I’ve been anxious to see what it’s going to really feel like, anxious to figure out whether or not I can actually handle this kind of relationship. So last week, I told my partner that I didn’t want to put off the inevitable, and said that I wanted to just “officially” declare our relationship open.

For the past few days I’ve been teetering between “doing really well, considering,” and “fucking miserable.” On Saturday night, at a show, he ended up making out with a girl we’d both met relatively recently — he’d previously told me that he thought there was a mutual attraction there, so it wasn’t all that unexpected. He did everything right: he made sure I knew, before he went to the show, that this girl was going to be there; he gave me lots of affection and reassurance; he didn’t let things progress too quickly with the other girl, and made sure to talk to her about me and about our relationship; he let her know that this was a new thing for us, and that it might be difficult for me to deal with at first. He called me from the show to let me know exactly what had happened, and said we could talk it all over when he got home. And we did talk, and we both cried and held each other, and then we played a few games of Boggle. (Which actually made me feel far better and more normal than any amount of talking had been able to accomplish…)

The next day, the girl was over at our house for a regular Sunday-night event that we host; she’s been coming regularly for a few months, which is how we met her, and it would have felt strange to me if she hadn’t just shown up as normal. But I couldn’t look at her, when she came in — not because I was upset with her, but because I just had no idea how I was supposed to behave. Should I take her aside to talk to her? Should I just say hello, smile at her to let her know that we’re cool, and leave it at that? Should I act like nothing’s happened? And how do I behave around her friends and roommates, who probably have some idea of what’s going on?

I was expecting to feel jealous, isolated, left out. But that’s not entirely what I’m feeling. More than anything else, I’m feeling awkward, unsure of myself, and worried about what other people are feeling and thinking. Instead of feeling abandoned by my partner, I’m finding myself feeling worried that this other girl will feel left out and hurt when my partner is affectionate with me in public but not with her. At the same time, I’m afraid of people knowing how painful this is for me, watching me to see if I’m doing okay when we’re all in the same room, asking me how I’m feeling. I think that to most people, I come across as an extremely together, sensible, healthy person. That’s the face I’ve cultivated my entire life, because I’ve always been reluctant to show anything I consider to be weakness or vulnerability. And right now, at a time when I’m feeling pretty fucking vulnerable, my first concern is to keep up that protection, keep people from seeing what I’m feeling — even when I don’t exactly know, yet, what it even is that I’m feeling. Even worse, because this particular girl is a part of my social circle, I’m afraid of showing or talking about how much this is hurting because I don’t want to alienate her or make people feel like she (or my partner) is doing anything wrong. I don’t want to make mutual friends feel awkward for being in the middle. Yet I also really don’t want to keep pretending that I’m doing okay.

…and this is all the rush of everything happening in a matter of days, and I know that not everything needs to be resolved right away, that these things take time. I’m being buffeted by strange emotions and unexpected feelings, and until I can make some sense of them I expect that I’ll continue to feel this self-consciousness, this not-knowing-how-to-behave. Looking forward to getting to the other side of this.

Had a great conversation a few nights ago with Maymay, who’s now living in my part of the world. (And how awesome to finally meet up in person with someone whose blog I’ve been reading for several years!) The bulk of our discussion was about the problems we both see in mainstream BDSM culture and trying to build alternative spaces, subjects which I’ve written a lot about and which I intend to write more about later. He mentioned having attended a recent event called “Art of Restraint” at Femina Potens, and I later ended up looking up what other people had to say about it. Sex educator and rope bondage expert Midori blogged about her contribution to the event, a performance art piece in which her bondage demonstration was interrupted and broken up by uniformed men. (Read the full story here.) She writes:

Lately I’ve noticed a definite increase in interest for bondage imagery, porn, entertainment and personal play that depict harsh incarceration, kidnapping and interrogation. I am not sure why this is, but it’s happening. Maybe it’s a war-weary culture’s subconscious search for a coping mechanism, maybe it’s over saturation of images and discussions of governing body violence, maybe it’s a desensitized culture seeking stimulation… Maybe it’s just another sexuality trend as they do come and go…I don’t know. I am disturbed, though, that so many who enjoy consuming or acting out fantasy actions of detention and incarcerations don’t seem to think of the reality of where these images come from. We chatter on about bondage is freedom and art and so on, but so often it just feels like lip-service to transgressiveness when we’ve nothing to struggle against. Maybe the fascination in bondage is the side affect of hermetically sealed safe lives in search of some signs of being alive? I just don’t know.

A person hooded, on the floor, naked and cuffed.

If the only context or response that one has to this image is a fun Saturday night of role playing at the local kink party, are we starving our own humanity? I’m not saying that we should not play with our dark fantasies and archetypes, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the real world human events that necessitate these narratives.

The thing that’s so interesting to me about this is how closely it resembles the argument that I’ve heard time and time again from radfems and anti-BDSM folks: we’re playing with imagery that comes from real-world oppression, and we’re not thinking about the implications of that. We are thus in danger of “starving our own humanity” by immersing ourselves in bondage-as-fetish, isolating our minds from the notion that someone bound and gagged could be anything but a person having some kinky fun. The difference, of course, is that where the radfems believe that any engagement with bondage or d/s play desensitizes us and helps support the patriarchy/oppression, Midori argues that we shouldn’t give up playing with “dark fantasies and archetypes” but should instead simply increase our awareness of where those fantasies and archetypes come from, acknowledge that there are deeply disturbing real-world counterparts to what we do for fun.

For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with the idea that exploring bondage fantasies creates an immunity to recognizing real-world oppression — I think that immunity is deliberately cultivated by those institutions that profit from oppression — but it is really refreshing to see someone so immersed in mainstream BDSM culture articulating such a thoughtful critique of that culture. More, please.

…so now I am actually seeking advice. Here’s a question for polyamorous / non-monogamous readers: How do folks deal with the issue of talking about problems in your primary relationship with other people? Specifically, is it okay for you to talk to your other lovers about problems you’re having with your primary partner? What about potential lovers, people you’re attracted to or have flirted with? Why or why not? Does it depend on the nature of the problems?

This is a really tricky issue I’ve been thinking about recently, and I’m torn. On the one hand, it’s devastating to think about my partner talking to someone he’s interested in about problems he’s having with me; on the other, if that person also happens to be a good friend of his, someone he’s specifically gone to because he thinks she can give him good advice, it doesn’t seem fair to deny him that outlet. But can that advice ever really be impartial if the friend is already a lover, or if the attraction is mutual? And how do you draw the line between “friend I’m attracted to” and “potential lover”? That is, I can’t realistically expect my partner to never talk about relationship problems to any female friend he’s attracted to…right?

Thinking about it for myself, too: any other person I would likely become involved with is going to be first a friend, because that’s just how I like to form my relationships (I’m really not into “dating,” per se). So it just makes sense that if I’m having problems with my partner, if I’m obviously feeling down, this friend might notice and ask me what’s wrong — and then what? After thinking about this a lot, I think an ethical answer (for me) would have to be “I really appreciate your concern, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Here’s why: while I’m sure I would be tempted to confide in this other person, I know that such confidence, especially when it comes to relationship problems, often fuels a particular intimacy. It would thus become more tempting, I think, to talk about problems like these with people I wanted to become intimate with, to consciously or unconsciously choose them as confidants rather than other friends. In past relationships gone sour, I have definitely found myself talking about problems with my partner to other friends I was attracted to, far more often than I talked about those problems to any of my other friends. And I instinctively knew that it was a bad idea, that I was doing it not because those friends could give me better advice than others but because talking about my relationship problems with them would bring us closer. It’s fucked up, but true.

This is why I feel especially jealous when my partner talks to friends he’s attracted to about problems they’re having with their boyfriends, when he consoles a potential lover about a breakup she’s going through — and it’s just worse, somehow, when he’s talking to her about our problems, when he confides in someone he wants to sleep with that we might be breaking up. No matter how sincerely he believes that such conversations occur purely because of friendship and aren’t influenced by his sexual or romantic attraction to her, I can’t make myself believe it, because that hasn’t been my experience.

Of course, there are some aspects of our current relationship problems that are absolutely necessary to talk about with potential lovers — for example, it makes sense that my partner should let the other person know that I’m struggling with all of this, so she’ll know that at least at first, there will have to be a lot of restrictions on what they can do together because of my insecurities around non-monogamy. But then…it still hurts. This is a person I’m already jealous of, a person I already realize embodies certain characteristics my partner desires that I can’t fulfill — identifying as non-monogamous is one of those things. When he tells her that I’m having a hard time with all of this, and she tells him that in her experience, trying to have a relationship with someone who isn’t earnestly interested in being non-monogamous is a bad idea, I can’t help but worry about what that means.

So…what do you think? Can you separate sexual attraction to a friend from conversations with that friend about relationship or romantic problems? Is this a common issue in polyamorous relationships, and can anyone direct me to existing resources discussing it?

Last Thursday, I went to the monthly Anarkink meeting, and was dismayed to find only two other people: one a regular, the other a younger guy who was just visiting the area. I was frustrated at how many people have disappeared from the group, and as the three of us present started talking, I started to wonder why I was even bothering with this. Why try to keep a group going, I thought, if this is all it’s going to be?

Of course, a night like that isn’t what Anarkink isalways like; last month, our cane-making and -using workshop was incredibly fun and pretty well-attended. But there have been a few meetings like this over the past year, in which a few people end up sitting around a table without a lot to really talk about, with no real plan or purpose. It makes me doubt the necessity of the group, makes me think that there’s nothing to be gained by continuing it.

It turns out that the kid who was just visiting had come from Asheville, North Carolina, and he told us that some folks there had recently hosted a flogger-making workshop (using old bike tubes). We talked about different things happening all over the country — the recent anarchist play party that happened in Chicago, and the workshops/parties that folks organized at the Crimethinc convergence in Pittsburgh. As we closed up the infoshop, I apologized for the meeting not being more exciting or interesting; he told me how glad he was that he’d come out for it, to simply be in a space where people were even talking about this sort of thing, to simply know that something like this exists. It seemed that he had never really been public about his interest in BDSM, and had always been afraid, like I had been, like I continue to be, that others would judge and ostracize him (especially due to his involvement in a feminist collective).

And I realized, then, just how important this is — or can be, at least. Talking to him made me remember how I had felt after the first Anarkink meeting — that feeling that I wasn’t alone, the feeling that it was all worth it just to be sitting in a room with other people like me. Sure, it’s more fun when there’s a lot of people there, when we have some exciting workshop or crafty activity or a movie to watch. But sometimes, it’s just about three radical perverts sitting in a room together and knowing we’re not alone.