Coming In and Getting Out
Feb. 15th, 2024 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: We've been reading Dorothy Allison's Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature, from 1994, and oh MAN is this book exactly what we need right now. Dorothy Allison is a lesbian who fought hard to be a kinky femme Southern lesbian from a poor background, despite the heated sex wars that judged her as "misguided, damaged by incest and childhood physical abuse, or deliberately indulging in hateful and retrograde sexual practices out of a selfish concentration on my own sexual satisfaction" (24). ("Retrograde" seems to have been their version of "problematic." Ditto "male-identified" which means something hilariously different now, at least in my circles.)
She talks about the contempt other lesbians showered her with, how real loves and desires were twisted, shamed, and ignored so as to fit the feminist theory of the time. She talks about how shitty it feels, getting that from your own people over totally harmless desires. This thirty-year-old book still feels so relevant to the sexual purity politics of today, just with the vocabulary terms switched out.
As someone who just got kinkshamed out of my housing (yes, that is why we moved, I'm willing to say that publicly now that I'm safely out), this book is a comfort to me. It's perversely reassuring to know that for my whole life, queers have been sexually judging each other so intensely for the smallest, dumbest things that don't actually hurt anyone. Allison was called a tool of the patriarchy, a shill for pornographers. I was called a child molester. Same song, different verse.
Coming In or Staying Out had languished in the layouts stage since before the pandemic, mired in my own self-consciousness. (Making mostly-autobio PORNO? About fucking my headmate???? Fainting couch!) But being called a child molester inspired such spite in me, such outrage, that I was suddenly inspired to finish that filthy porno and make me some fuckbucks. How dare some sanctimonious little shit treat me like a monster, judging me for my consensual adult activities? At immense personal and professional cost, I'd devoted years of my sweat and blood to trying to protect people from sexual violence, to bring pleasure and information into their lives, and none of that work mattered a whit because I liked to call my husband Daddy in bed.
Possibly the most infuriating part of it was: this roommate was far from singular. Too many times, someone on tumblr would follow me, only for me to see on their profile "DNI if you're a pedo or DD/LG," often phrased in much ruder terms. It was just that this time, the consequences were way worse than "someone on the Internet made me feel bad." I'm likely going to be out a couple thousand dollars due to this, never mind the stress of living with someone who saw me as a monster and having to pack my bag and just BOLT.
I had tried (failed) to be quiet and private and respectable, and look where it'd gotten me. It was time to kick out the door and just be the filthy pervert that people clearly thought/knew I was anyway. And so, to psychologically survive the interval between Christmas and Arisia, I did CISO.
I had discussed sex in my work before (Alter Boys In Love, Multi Orgasmic) but I had always had the fig leaf, however flimsy, of, "well, I'm teaching a Noble Political Lesson." CISO did not. Its goal was to make a little money and also get me and Biff off. It succeeded on both counts; a core part of the process of making it was me and Biff regularly consulting, every time we got stuck, asking ourselves and each other, "What would be the hottest way to us to do this?"
It was so hard to overcome the conditioning to let my politics dictate the porn, rather than make what we actually found hot. Biff had to put his foot down and insist that (A) we fuck and (B) I show my dick, even though most would consider that the most basic requirements of a stroke book! Every act we depicted required a lot of realizing just how much shame we had showing the nuts and bolts of what we do in bed, rather than just politically posturing to prove "them" wrong. (Whoever "they" are.)
Sex and desire have been a huge part of my multi experience--and so has shame about it. I've been public about my marriage to Mac since 2010... and my wedding led my parents to spring an intervention, trying to persuade me to institutionalize myself. It also led to me getting ridiculed by my fellow multiples, even ones I considered close friends. How dare I treat my marriage, my desire as queer? As deserving? How dare I steal from the REAL queers? I will never forget the moment of utter validation I got from reading a gay comic where a gay male couple were accused of just using each other for masturbation: it was exactly what I'd been accused of! (If you want to learn more about the historical framing of queerness as mental illness, try Cartier's Baby, You Are My Religion.)
I wasn't a fool. I knew full well how my relationships were perceived by others--multi and singlet, queer and straight alike. I knew all the Rosie Palms jokes, the patronizing, "Aw, poor abuse victim, needs to feel safe with imaginary men," the contempt and pity and disgust. I knew because I'd already dumped all of it on myself, and over the years, as I grew less afraid/ashamed of myself, I grew less willing to accept such nonsense from others.
Some people are only willing to justify or dignify my desires because of my abuse history. To those people, I give the finger. I do not need to SUFFER to earn the right to fuck. I do not need anyone's pity or a condescending head pat with, "Oh, it's all right, as long as you SUFFERED for it." What happens if I stop suffering correctly... or god forbid, stop suffering at all? Am I expected to divorce my husband, dump my lover, and cry into my beer? Am I expected to be a dancing bear, forever performing suffering for a superior audience?
Multi is intrinsic to my sexuality. I have never been consensually involved with a corporeal person, and I have no desire to be... not because my relationships are in any way superior, but because thoughtleak is such an imperative part of my sexual experience. To be unable to feel my partner's emotional and physical pleasure, to be unable to play with reflecting that back at them, pluck their libidinous heartstrings, stroke their souls... sex without that isn't interesting to me. Being unable to witness my lover's soul in rapture, unable to directly touch it... sure, I could have sex without it, but why?
In his 1827 poem, "The Music of Beauty," James Nack wrote of the special joys that came from being a deaf husband:
"I pity those who think they pity me;
Who drink the tide that gushes from thy lips
Unconscious of its sweets, as if they were
E’en as I am—and turn their marble eyes
Upon thy loveliness, without the thrill
That maddens me with joy’s delirium.
It's been almost two hundred years, and I have no improvements to make on his sentiment.
My relationships with my headmates, sexual and not, romantic and not, have been the most powerful force for good in my life. They've been the foundation I built from that allowed me to build into corporeal community. Through loving my headmates, I learned to love myself and love others. I have become the person I am through the love and desire of my headmates... and that includes the sweat, the jizz, and the sex that doesn't fit into political ideas of what "good" sex, "real" sex is or should be.
TL;DR: maybe, if you're going to make a grand noble stand against "pedos" and "groomers," maybe make sure you're like, ACTUALLY standing up against people who harm children, not people who're already getting kicked by a society that has spent decades painting us as dangers to children.
She talks about the contempt other lesbians showered her with, how real loves and desires were twisted, shamed, and ignored so as to fit the feminist theory of the time. She talks about how shitty it feels, getting that from your own people over totally harmless desires. This thirty-year-old book still feels so relevant to the sexual purity politics of today, just with the vocabulary terms switched out.
As someone who just got kinkshamed out of my housing (yes, that is why we moved, I'm willing to say that publicly now that I'm safely out), this book is a comfort to me. It's perversely reassuring to know that for my whole life, queers have been sexually judging each other so intensely for the smallest, dumbest things that don't actually hurt anyone. Allison was called a tool of the patriarchy, a shill for pornographers. I was called a child molester. Same song, different verse.
Coming In or Staying Out had languished in the layouts stage since before the pandemic, mired in my own self-consciousness. (Making mostly-autobio PORNO? About fucking my headmate???? Fainting couch!) But being called a child molester inspired such spite in me, such outrage, that I was suddenly inspired to finish that filthy porno and make me some fuckbucks. How dare some sanctimonious little shit treat me like a monster, judging me for my consensual adult activities? At immense personal and professional cost, I'd devoted years of my sweat and blood to trying to protect people from sexual violence, to bring pleasure and information into their lives, and none of that work mattered a whit because I liked to call my husband Daddy in bed.
Possibly the most infuriating part of it was: this roommate was far from singular. Too many times, someone on tumblr would follow me, only for me to see on their profile "DNI if you're a pedo or DD/LG," often phrased in much ruder terms. It was just that this time, the consequences were way worse than "someone on the Internet made me feel bad." I'm likely going to be out a couple thousand dollars due to this, never mind the stress of living with someone who saw me as a monster and having to pack my bag and just BOLT.
I had tried (failed) to be quiet and private and respectable, and look where it'd gotten me. It was time to kick out the door and just be the filthy pervert that people clearly thought/knew I was anyway. And so, to psychologically survive the interval between Christmas and Arisia, I did CISO.
I had discussed sex in my work before (Alter Boys In Love, Multi Orgasmic) but I had always had the fig leaf, however flimsy, of, "well, I'm teaching a Noble Political Lesson." CISO did not. Its goal was to make a little money and also get me and Biff off. It succeeded on both counts; a core part of the process of making it was me and Biff regularly consulting, every time we got stuck, asking ourselves and each other, "What would be the hottest way to us to do this?"
It was so hard to overcome the conditioning to let my politics dictate the porn, rather than make what we actually found hot. Biff had to put his foot down and insist that (A) we fuck and (B) I show my dick, even though most would consider that the most basic requirements of a stroke book! Every act we depicted required a lot of realizing just how much shame we had showing the nuts and bolts of what we do in bed, rather than just politically posturing to prove "them" wrong. (Whoever "they" are.)
Sex and desire have been a huge part of my multi experience--and so has shame about it. I've been public about my marriage to Mac since 2010... and my wedding led my parents to spring an intervention, trying to persuade me to institutionalize myself. It also led to me getting ridiculed by my fellow multiples, even ones I considered close friends. How dare I treat my marriage, my desire as queer? As deserving? How dare I steal from the REAL queers? I will never forget the moment of utter validation I got from reading a gay comic where a gay male couple were accused of just using each other for masturbation: it was exactly what I'd been accused of! (If you want to learn more about the historical framing of queerness as mental illness, try Cartier's Baby, You Are My Religion.)
I wasn't a fool. I knew full well how my relationships were perceived by others--multi and singlet, queer and straight alike. I knew all the Rosie Palms jokes, the patronizing, "Aw, poor abuse victim, needs to feel safe with imaginary men," the contempt and pity and disgust. I knew because I'd already dumped all of it on myself, and over the years, as I grew less afraid/ashamed of myself, I grew less willing to accept such nonsense from others.
Some people are only willing to justify or dignify my desires because of my abuse history. To those people, I give the finger. I do not need to SUFFER to earn the right to fuck. I do not need anyone's pity or a condescending head pat with, "Oh, it's all right, as long as you SUFFERED for it." What happens if I stop suffering correctly... or god forbid, stop suffering at all? Am I expected to divorce my husband, dump my lover, and cry into my beer? Am I expected to be a dancing bear, forever performing suffering for a superior audience?
Multi is intrinsic to my sexuality. I have never been consensually involved with a corporeal person, and I have no desire to be... not because my relationships are in any way superior, but because thoughtleak is such an imperative part of my sexual experience. To be unable to feel my partner's emotional and physical pleasure, to be unable to play with reflecting that back at them, pluck their libidinous heartstrings, stroke their souls... sex without that isn't interesting to me. Being unable to witness my lover's soul in rapture, unable to directly touch it... sure, I could have sex without it, but why?
In his 1827 poem, "The Music of Beauty," James Nack wrote of the special joys that came from being a deaf husband:
"I pity those who think they pity me;
Who drink the tide that gushes from thy lips
Unconscious of its sweets, as if they were
E’en as I am—and turn their marble eyes
Upon thy loveliness, without the thrill
That maddens me with joy’s delirium.
It's been almost two hundred years, and I have no improvements to make on his sentiment.
My relationships with my headmates, sexual and not, romantic and not, have been the most powerful force for good in my life. They've been the foundation I built from that allowed me to build into corporeal community. Through loving my headmates, I learned to love myself and love others. I have become the person I am through the love and desire of my headmates... and that includes the sweat, the jizz, and the sex that doesn't fit into political ideas of what "good" sex, "real" sex is or should be.
TL;DR: maybe, if you're going to make a grand noble stand against "pedos" and "groomers," maybe make sure you're like, ACTUALLY standing up against people who harm children, not people who're already getting kicked by a society that has spent decades painting us as dangers to children.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-16 10:17 am (UTC)- Rosen (he/him)
no subject
Date: 2024-02-16 06:14 pm (UTC)I beat myself up over my kink, decided I would try to just stop having it because the desire stirred up such shame and fear in me; the fact that I can now experiment with it responsibly with consenting adults and embrace my desire as morally neutral is healing. More people need to understand that these things aren't indicators of someone's moral scruples.
-Artemis (they/xe)
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:29 pm (UTC)Also, like, people are sneaky! There are ways to hurt folks that just swap out the obvious terms; plenty of jerks will edge right up to the line and find out exactly what they can get away with.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-17 12:18 pm (UTC)but if we don't like what you're doing, we might call you horrible names or imply horrible things about your abuse anyway." What happened with your shitty roommate is just one example of how these attacks can ruin relationships and disrupt lives.I'm cheering for this post, and for you, and I hope that in moments of self-doubt, you can look back on it and be confident that you made the right choice in getting out of that apartment and making the art that you want to make.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-17 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-20 08:04 pm (UTC)It always feels worse when the derision and bigotry comes from inside the house. It feels so much worse to know that your community is fully happy to turn around and sacrifice you for things they personally find icky.
We know a good number of people now who have gotten serious real world attacks and pedojacketing for being into CGL/DDLG/ageplay. People like to claim that kinksters dont experience discrimination, but thats what this is- being attacked for the way you have consensual sexual relations/fantasies.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:32 pm (UTC)