I’d like to invite you to come and visit us at Kink.com. I have a great deal of respect for you [sic.] position regarding the content we create and would like your direct input on potential improvements, both in the nature of the content we create, and the process by which it is created. When you have a chance please get back to me. Thanks.

Within the half-hour, I responded:

I’d like to invite you to come and visit us at Kink.com.

No, thank you. Let’s meet at a café first. There are many inexpensive ones where we can talk more freely.

I have a great deal of respect for you position regarding the content we create and would like your direct input on potential improvements, both in the nature of the content we create, and the process by which it is created.

Can you clarify: what do you mean “respect for you position”?

When you have a chance please get back to me. Thanks.

Well, I’ll email you this reply, so you can either write back in email and opt for a private discussion or you can simply reply to this comment for a more public one. Either’s good by me.

I figured that if this commenter really was from Kink, Inc., and if they really were interested in my feedback, they may feel more comfortable with a private dialogue than a public one. So, as promised, I emailed them:

From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:46:25 -0800
To: chrisk@kink.com
[…irrelevant email headers clipped…]

Hi Chris,

You wrote:[0]

I’d like to invite you to come and visit us at Kink.com. I have a great deal of respect for you position regarding the content we create and would like your direct input on potential improvements, both in the nature of the content we create, and the process by which it is created. When you have a chance please get back to me. Thanks.

My reply:[1]

No, thank you. Let’s meet at a café first. There are many inexpensive ones where we can talk more freely.

Can you clarify: what do you mean “respect for you position”?

Well, I’ll email you this reply, so you can either write back in email and opt for a private discussion or you can simply reply to this comment for a more public one. Either’s good by me.

Cheers,
-maymay
Blog: http://maybemaimed.com
Talk show: http://KinkOnTap.com
Community: http://KinkForAll.org

EXTERNAL REFERENCES:

[0] http://maybemaimed.com/2011/01/13/what-porn-companies-can-learn-from-the-giffords-shooting/#comment-101221
[1] http://maybemaimed.com/2011/01/13/what-porn-companies-can-learn-from-the-giffords-shooting/#comment-101222

What followed was a conversation that left me feeling more confident that Kink, Inc. is actually interested in contrived placation, not community outreach. (In the spirit of transparency, I’m publishing primary sources for the entire conversation below.)

After I made numerous suggestions of a meeting place and time, Chris and I planned to meet at a café. However, we missed one another. I arrived several minutes late and emailed ahead of time to alert Chris of this. Chris said they waited for 15 minutes but left without seeing me.

I scoured the café looking for them when I arrived (and when both our accounts indicate we were at the same place at the same time), then waited for 40 minutes. Ultimately I had other things to do, so I left the café and followed up with another email and another suggestion for a meeting place and time the next week. It’s been almost three weeks since my last communiqué to Chris with no response, and seeing how Chris dragged their feet through the entire process the first time, I’m left feeling rather lead around by the nose.

I can respect that Chris is probably a busy person. But so am I. If Kink, Inc. genuinely cared about my “position,” if they genuinely cared about my “input,” they would simply make communicating with me promptly and directly a priority. That is not so challenging. But I don’t think they actually care about this because I have never—and probably will never—contribute even one cent to their coffers. What meeting with me was probably about was delaying or quelling any followup posts (like this one) I might’ve written.

Well, just as I refused to be appeased by a visit to the Armory, I am not above calling them out on disingenuous PR efforts. Too many people are too easily lulled by the promise of fantasy realized. To borrow Mistress Matisse’s words, I suspected that Perhaps it’s simply a clever manipulation of the blogosphere. And Kink, Inc. is masterful at manipulating BDSM-identified sex blogger sentiment, which really isn’t that hard when you think about it—who among us wouldn’t love to have access to the equipment and play spaces the Kink, Inc. Armory provides?

It’s fair to say staying on the “good side” of Kink, Inc. employees is a prerequisite for models, but a luxury for bloggers like me—and I can do without such luxuries. There’s only one other company of analogous size whose PR efforts are as skillful, and I was not above publishing email correspondence with them, either: EdenFantasys.

Let me be clear. It is not Kink, Inc.’s responsibility to listen to me about anything, nor are they obliged to talk with me. But when they publicly say that they would like to engage in a dialogue, but privately stall for as long as they can until they feel safe finally ignoring me, then that is simply correspondent incompetence in the best case or deliberate malfeasance in the worst.

In other words, if you don’t want to hear from me, Chris, that’s fine, but don’t publicly say that you do; that just makes you look two-faced.

For what it’s worth, I’m still very happy to engage in a dialogue with Kink, Inc. (or anyone else) about my positions regarding their press release, the “nature of the content [they] create, and the process by which it is created.” However, I will no longer accept private correspondence from Kink, Inc. as a viable means of conversation. Clearly, they are much more amiable when dragged into the public square. (And, for whatever it’s worth, the more I write about Kink, Inc., the more negative stories I’m being told about them from former employees in private discussions.)

Lest you think I’m done with this topic, I’ll also publish a 1 hour long audio recording of a very interesting conversation I had with a fellow sex blogger who also wrote about Kink, Inc.’s press release. Our conversation was rife with some debate, and tried tackling a number of difficult questions regarding the role of commercial entities in the sex-positive community. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Meanwhile, here’s the primary sources I promised of my conversation with Chris K. from Kink, Inc. The following reproduces the conversation I had with Chris K. across several media in chronological order, omitting certain personal information as well as quoted sections for readability purposes, starting with Chris’s reply to my email, above.

From: Chris K[. …last name redacted…] <chrisk@kink.com>
To: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:19:25 -0800
Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting

Maymay,

Sorry for the delay. A café meeting sounds fine. If you have one in mind let’s set up a time to meet. By respect for your position I mean I respect your desire to ensure that sexual exploration of any kind includes a clear ethical standard for all involved. Hope to talk with you soon.

Chris K[. …last name redacted…]

Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting
From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:53:44 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Hi Chris,

No worries on the delay. I figured you had a schedule full of other things, too.

I was totally booked Monday, but I have Tuesday (today) free all day. Ideally we could meet in the afternoon, say, around 4 or 5? There’s a nice café called Cup-A-Joe in my neighborhood[0] that offers both food and drinks. Alternatively, if you want to meet closer to the Armory, there’s a Blue Bottle Coffee Kiosk we can hit up on Linden Street.[1]

I realize this might be too short notice, so I can also make time for a meeting later in the week (perhaps a late lunch on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday?).

Thanks again for your interest in meeting with me. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
-maymay
[…]

EXTERNAL REFERENCES:

[0] http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Cup-A-Joe+Coffee+House,+San+Francisco,+CA&sll=37.776236,-122.423294&sspn=0.006716,0.008819&dirflg=w&ie=UTF8&hq=Cup-A-Joe+Coffee+House,&hnear=San+Francisco,+California&ll=37.788285,-122.415097&spn=0.003358,0.00441&z=18&iwloc=A
[1] http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Blue+Bottle+Coffee+Kiosk,+315+Linden+Street,+San+Francisco,+CA+94102&sll=37.776346,-122.423079&sspn=0.013076,0.017638&dirflg=w&ie=UTF8&hq=Blue+Bottle+Coffee+Kiosk,&hnear=315+Linden+St,+San+Francisco,+California+94102&ll=37.776236,-122.423294&spn=0.006716,0.008819&z=17&iwloc=near

From: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>
To: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:18:19 -0800
Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting

Maymay,

Again apologies for the delay. If you’re available next Monday for lunch that would be ideal. Perhaps we meet halfway at a lunch spot?

Thanks,

Chris K[…]

Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting
From: maymay >bitetheappleback@gmail.com<
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:29:39 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Hi Chris,

How about Monday, January 24 at 2 PM at DeLessio Market?[0]

Cheers,
-maymay
[…]

EXTERNAL REFERENCES:

[0] http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=13358702853062691708&q=Delessio+Market+%26+Bakery,+Market+Street,+San+Francisco,+CA&hl=en&dtab=0&sll=37.773281,-122.42978&sspn=0.006295,0.022335&ie=UTF8&ll=37.783808,-122.448893&spn=0,0&z=15

From: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>
To: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:10:40 -0800
Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting

I’m tied up at 2PM, how about 12PM that day?

CK

Subject: Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting
From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:18:20 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Sure, I *think* I can make it to Delessio Market at noon on Monday, January 24 . :) May I ask for a mobile number so I can send you a text message if I’m running a bit late? Mine’s […redacted…].

Cheers,
-maymay

In the above email, I asked for a mobile phone number from Chris. I never got a response to that email. In the below email, I write to Chris on the day of our meeting stating that I’m running a few minutes behind schedule. I’d ordinarily have called or sent a text message but, well, I had no phone number.

From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Subject: Running a few minutes late; on my way
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:47:45 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Hi Chris,

I’m heading to Delessio but am running a few minutes late. Please accept my apologies for the short delay.

Here’s what I look like so you can spot me when I arrive:

http://maybemaimed.com/about/

Cheers,
-maymay

Shortly after sending this email I arrived at our rendezvous point but, as noted above, failed to connect with Chris K. I travelled elsewhere in the city to continue with my day. A couple of hours later, I sent the following email to Chris asking him to proactively select a new meeting place and time:

Subject: Missed you at DeLessio Market today? (was Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting)
From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:49:04 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Hi Chris,

I’m sorry to have missed you at DeLessio Market today. I showed up at about 12:10, a little delayed from our scheduled meeting at 12:00 PM. I apologize for my tardiness.

Sadly, although I waited until 12:50 PM, I did not find you. I ate breakfast and, having other things on my plate today, I decided to go. If you’d still like to meet with me, please suggest an alternate time to do so. I’m disappointed that we were not able to discuss things, especially considering your initial invitation to converse with me.

Cheers,
-maymay

Chris responded the following day, conspicuously lacking any effort to make another meeting arrangement:

From: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>
To: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:50:14 -0800
Subject: Re: Missed you at DeLessio Market today? (was Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting)

Maymay,

I’m sorry we missed each other. I’d already left the office by the time I received your first message. I grabbed a sandwich and coffee and gave it about fifteen minutes then waited outside for a bit. Again, sorry I missed you. I need to get rid of my prehistoric phone and get something that receives e-mails etc.

CK

Noting the lack of any forward motion, I (finally) became annoyed:

Subject: Re: Missed you at DeLessio Market today? (was Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting)
From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:26:48 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

I’ve been very forward with information for you. I provided my cell phone number and requested yours for precisely this reason; you declined to so much as acknowledge that I had made that request.

I emailed you while heading out since I didn’t have your mobile phone number. I arrived only several minutes late (somewhere like 12:07, or with rounding, no more than 10, as stated below.) I can appreciate you are a busy guy, but so am I. You say you waited 15 minutes, which would have given us a cross-over of at least 5 minutes. When I entered, I scoured the establishment, even notifying the cashier that I was waiting for someone, but I recall seeing no one eating alone. Then I waited not for 15 minutes, but 40.

You’ve done little beyond commenting on my blog publicly to give me any significant indication that you’re actually interested in speaking with me. As such, I’m extremely reticent to continue any private conversation with you. You seem so much more amiable when interacting where your customers can see you.

That said, I’d be interested in trying to meet you again, and I’d ask you to forgive my skepticism, except that I continually find my stance towards your employer rather justified, and you’ve shown little reason why I should treat you separately from your employer. Case in point: your most recent reply does NOT actually suggest an alternate time to meet as requested below, and while your email is polite, it shows no effort whatsoever to move us towards a conversation you claimed *publicly* you wanted to have, but have been dragging your feet on in private.

The ball is in your court.

Cheers,
-maymay

After this email, I received a voicemail. Here’s audio of the voicemail, with Chris’s last name and mobile phone number silenced in the audio, and here’s a redacted transcript:

Hi this is, this is Chris K[…]. Just wanted to try to touch base with you again, uh, from Kink dot com. Do apologize that, uh, I missed our meeting. I received your email today and am trying to reach you now. Um, I do have a cell number. My number is [REDACTED] for fuck’s sake, let me look it up. Sorry. I’ve got a cold I’m getting over, so…. It’s [REDACTED]. Um, give me a ring when you can. My apologies again for, for, uh, having missed our appointment. Thanks.

While I appreciated Chris’s voicemail, I didn’t have the free time to give him a call back right as I received the message, so I chose to reply with another email:

Subject: Re: Missed you at DeLessio Market today? (was Re: What porn companies can learn from the Giffords shooting)
From: maymay <bitetheappleback@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:00:27 -0800
To: Chris K[…] <chrisk@kink.com>

Hi Chris,

I received your voicemail message a little earlier today. Thanks for following up with your number. I’m sorry to hear you’re fighting off a cold, seems like everyone’s catching something.

You said you wanted to “touch base with you again,” but I’m unsure what that means seeing as how we’ve yet to touch base a first time. :) Were you interested in trying to meet again? If so, I’m available this upcoming Monday, January 31 at 12 PM, same as last week. We could even try again at DeLessio Market. Let me know how you feel about that.

Cheers,
-maymay

Monday, January 31^st came and went, and I’ve received no further correspondence from Chris. The email above was the final correspondence I’ve had with Chris, almost 3 weeks ago now. If there’s any further correspondence, it will be public, so you’ll surely be able to follow along if you’re interested.

I pored over my words countless times, agonizing about the various interpretations I knew people would have to what I had to say, struggling to make sure my intent would be communicated to others with the highest probability of success. And I think I did a decent job of that, actually, because when I had something to say I always had reason and evidence to go along with it. But no matter what I said, there were always some people who did not hear what I meant, either because they would choose not to or because they could not hear it. And I believed—and still, in some cases, believe—that when I felt like others didn’t understand what I was saying, it wasn’t their fault, it was my fault.

Or if not my fault, my responsibility. Want to be heard? Communicate better, damnit. I don’t get to control what other people hear; I only get to control what I say. But to some, no amount of reason or evidence, no style of communication, no conceivable expression of facts or emotions—or at least, not one I can manifest—is one that will penetrate their filters. If what I have to say doesn’t already fit some aspect of their worldview, then to them it’s just not worth hearing. And since so much of what I have to say is so “radical,” so unfamiliar, so foreign, or so deeply challenging, I often felt like no matter what I said or how I said it, I just wasn’t being heard at all.

And then things reached a head, because despite the fact that working against injustices (be they big or small) does, indeed, make the world better writ large, that work does have a personal cost. That cost isn’t necessarily financial—in fact, I feel like I’ve done more Good Work in just a few years with less money in relative comparison to what most others often do in a lifetime—and it isn’t necessarily social, although both of those are areas where many on whose shoulders I stand have paid a terribly dear price. Sometimes the cost is personal.

And while I do feel it’s important to be public about both my work and how I do my work, I am a remarkably private person. My demands for transparency are not in conflict with my demands for privacy. I am—and you are—allowed to have your life be your own, you are allowed the right to privacy, even if I feel the work you do—and the work I do—absolutely must be accessible to others and for which we need to be fully accountable on principle and in practice for that work to have the value we are so eager to claim that it does. Because the road to a just future is not paved with good intentions, it is paved with good deeds—and I view that standard as entirely non-negotiable.

So, after taking the absolutely fucking terrifying step of making my personal life far more public than it has been in years through my comments on Kink On Tap last night, comments underwritten with subtext I’ve been discussing for years and yet felt unable to articulate well in relation to my personal experiences, I’m heartened to know that a lot of you are feeling sympathetic to, and in some cases even protective of, me.

We don’t really know one another, but I still appreciate feeling made-protective-of by others, because it offers a mental comfort aligned with how I want to feel: taken care of, because I still need that. And I don’t care if that makes me sound like a baby, or even if it makes me a baby. I’m lonely, and I’m scared, and I’m hurting, and I’m angry and if that gets interpreted as a childish tantrum, then I will take that to mean somewhere deep within me the wonder of youthful possibility has not, in fact, been killed. We all have a right to be weak, as well as strong.

And if there is one thing I hope people take away from my meta-remarks on Kink On Tap yesterday, it’s this: the most powerful thing in the world is personal integrity. Be you—all of you; the good parts, the bad parts, the nice parts, the mean parts. Because there is more good in you than there is evil and if you embrace all of what you are in everything that you do you will prove to others that living wholly and authentically can be done.

Many people—myself included at times—struggle to do this for fear of the costs they are sure they will pay. And, yes, if you take this advice, you’re going to face them. And I can tell you, they’re going to hurt you. A lot. But I believe you’re stronger than that, because I am stronger than that and we are not so different, you and I, and although you shouldn’t fucking have to be stronger than that, you are, and since you are, you might as well make it possible for future generations to live in a world where they don’t have to be as strong as you are merely to survive.

When it comes to personal strength, I don’t think the opposite of strong is weak or vulnerable. The opposite of strong is corrupt. Show me a generation raised this way and I’ll show you a less lonely planet.

So, I guess I wanted to say thank you (again) to everyone who has engaged with me. Many of you have offered to help, and I wanted to make clear that if I knew what to ask each of you for individually, specifically, that would help me, believe me when I tell you I would have done so already. As I said, a lot of the subtext of my personal remarks was a rejection of the advice I’ve been getting over the past year and, coupled with that, the pain of feeling in-my-own-way-different than others and of feeling lost because of it. I really don’t feel like I have many role models (particularly when it comes to sex and relationships), and being deemed a role model for others makes the lack of role models I feel I can look up to even more poignantly painful.

Some of you wrote me emails, which have been really helpful. I didn’t always respond, and I’m sorry about that. Many of the emails are like this one from Sam, which I thought was…really nice, and thus worth sharing here. (And although I consider unencrypted email fair game for public consumption, it’s probably worth noting that I got Sam’s permission to publish this here before I posted it, anyway.)

Dear Maymay,

To be honest, I’m not really sure why I’m writing to you. Maybe just to say hi.

I’ve been reading maybemaimed for a long time as well as listening to KinkOnTap, right-click-saving most of malesubmissionart and generally thinking that you’re awesome. I never bothered to let you know that because, well, I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. And you look like someone who is very busy, so why would you want to waste your time reading emails from strangers? So I’ve been pretty much admiring what you were doing in silence and thinking that you’re somewhat of a hero to me.

But then I started reading Maybe Days and realized that my hero wasn’t actually living happily ever after. I’m so sorry to hear that. It literally makes me want to cry, because I think you’re amazing.

I still don’t feel like I actually have anything to say, but reading and hearing you say that the difference you make is what keeps you alive made me think ‘maybe I should tell him that he’s a hero to me’.

So there you go. Feel free not to send a reply. I wouldn’t know what to do with an email like this either. :p

I don’t know how to explain (in short) to you that you’ve changed my life, given me strength and understanding, and encouraged me to become a sexual freedom activist (one step at a time). I don’t know how to explain all that. I just wanted you to know that you have changed my life, so much. If I could do anything in the world to make you feel a little better, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I’m afraid I’m oceans away and running out of words quickly. I guess what I want to say it, thank you. thank you. thank you.

I will throw a party in your honour the day your life gets better.

All the best,
Sam

It took me a little while, but here’s what I wrote back:

Sam, this was one of the most awesome emails I’ve ever gotten my whole life.

The day you sent it to me, I read it as I was just waking up and I smiled so wide. And then I got to the part where you say you are oceans away and I cried so hard. (But don’t worry, that’s nothing you have any reason to feel bad about.) And like you, I didn’t know what to say, so I marked the email unread and dared not look at it again for several days for fear of feeling unfit to answer in whatever mood I was in.

I am so glad that your life is better because I’ve been talking about mine. And I guess, although I haven’t many words either, I have enough to let you know that the few words you sent me last week were read, and appreciated, and matter very much to me.

Thank you.

With love,
-maymay

Now, as ever, not all the feedback I see is positive. Some is quite fairly critical, some is simply negative, some is downright hateful. And when it comes to my person, rather than my work, the same pattern holds. Here, for instance, is what Kendra Holliday (aka TBK or The Beautiful Kind), a former Kink On Tap panelist, had to say:

Not surprised KinkonTap is coming to an end. That’s what happens when you burn bridges. Nowhere left to go.

And, for the record, here’s what I had to say in response:

@TBK365 Your misunderstanding of my situation is epic & predictable and “Burn bridges” describes your roadmap even more fittingly than mine.

And rather than say much more about that, I’ll simply point out this: I use the fact that Kendra felt it suitable to erase my words from her website to judge her motivations for what she does as patently deficient to manifest the value needed for the better future I think we all want. I hold my work to different standards, ones that mean I won’t erase her (quite valuable) words from Kink On Tap shows.

Anyway, all this variation in response to what I put out there in the world brings me back to my core belief. That the only things in my life that are really about me are the things intrinsic to my own life. That this other work I do is not for me, can’t be for me, shouldn’t be for me. Because the fact is I don’t get to partake in what I make in the same way that others do. But it’s still good work, and it still needs doing, and I’m still going to do some of it (when I feel like I can).

Of course, none of this is new, or different. I’m still sad, and lonely, and angry. But this is me, here, now. And I just wanted you to know.

Maymay has this blog post that’s been sticking with me recently called “How not to fuck up a D/s relationship.” In it, he correctly points out that successful relationships are not a monolithic mass but are actually made up of multiple layers (like onions or, perhaps, parfaits), each building upon the last.

There’s this concept of layers, or more technically a stack, that is fundamental to the construction of many things in our world today. The basic idea is that one layer builds upon the things it receives from the layer beneath it and provides things to build upon to the layer above it. In this way, a robust and reliable system can be developed—and maintained—by segmenting different pieces of the system.

I think that a D/s relationship could benefit from a construction similar to this. It’s the way I think about my relationship with Eileen. I am at once her friend, her lover, her boyfriend, and her slave. Indeed, I am her slave because I am her boyfriend, and I am her boyfriend because I am her lover, and I am her lover because I am her friend.

I was reminded of this because, for the past two weeks or so, there’s been a kind of dissonance between Belle and I that’s taken the wind out of the sail for the sexual part of our relationship. […But o]nce the issue with the lower stack was resolved, the issue with the higher one was, too.

Now, Thumper’s blog is perhaps the only “sex blog” actually about the sex its author has that I don’t outright dislike for that fact. I hate most sex blogs, and even the ones that aren’t total bullshit (either because they are fiction or because they’re just flat-out terrible) give me pause since reading about someone else’s sex life while you have none of which to speak feels kind of like banging your forehead into a concrete wall over and over again. (Which, if it’s not obvious to you, is not my kink thankyouverymuch.) But I keep coming back to read Thumper’s blog because his ability to share his experiences with such sanguine simplicity while using marvelously empathic language leaves me feeling like I’m living vicariously through him.

And, for the record, there’s simply no other sex blogger whose sex life I want more than Thumper’s. Except possibly Tom’s. Sure, Thumper’s innately emotional phraseology can sometimes trigger downright rantings from me, but if you want to read about the sex life I wish I had, just read Thumper’s blog.

Anyway, beyond the fact that Thumper’s post was really life-affirming (literally) to read, it sparked a few comments that develop the D/s relationship layers (or stacks) idea further in a very valuable way. Mykey very keenly noted:

I might add though that the layers feed back to each other. I’m a better sub because [my partner Sandy and I] are in love. But I fall more in love when I see my submission is appreciate and valued. That is, a higher stack feeds back and strengthens the lower one as well.

Absolutely. And in the case of a sexual relationship, abso-fucking-lutely. This is true, techies like me will note, of many other systems whose architecture makes fundamental use of the layers concept. The Internet’s TCP/IP stack (which provides loads of sexual inspiration, if you’re looking), has an entire process for sending messages up and down its neighboring layers. So, too, must human relationships.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is a relationship that begins when two lovers’ eyes meet across a crowded room, suddenly feeling lustful for one another. (Doubly true if this is a sex party.) These weren’t “friends first” situations, which means the initial spark for the relationship happened, in this parlance, on a higher stack, the lover layer. So the sex can beget friendship and, like a tree, the relationship grows both roots heading downwards and branches heading skyward.

In Thumper’s case, as he puts it:

I think in Belle’s mind my chastity has stopped being just a game we play. It’s been elevated over time to be a fairly significant commitment I’ve made to her. A sign of my devotion. A permanent part of our relationship. And for some reason, I played right into that by equating my chastity to her [far "lesser"] commitment. So, I guess, what this boiled down to was a conversation about our commitments to each other and how we need to keep them. And a tacit implication that I will probably be chastised for the rest of my life.

[…]

Before, I had developed a kind of begrudged resignation toward the device and had more or less lost my interest in being sexual with or even touching Belle. Last night, though, I was all over her and fell asleep clutching her body, my hands up under bedclothes. Her hand was down around the device and she stroked my balls as she fell asleep and I just about melted. On the way into work this morning, I sensed the tube on my body and the stirring of the cock inside and a warm, excited fluttering was in my chest.

In other words, as Mykey observes, Belle considers chastity to be a foundation layer now. And that not only makes sense, it’s an absolutely critical thing for anyone—straight or not, vanilla or not—to appreciate.

We’re so often told sex, or fetishes, destroys relationships. But for many people, it’s one of the strongest ways to maintain and even strengthen one healthily.

Those who oppose our most basic rights are not, as many would have the public believe, just well-meaning, ordinary citizens. They are calculating opportunists who operate at the highest levels of academia and government, influencing policy and opinion to the advancement of their personal and political agendas—at our expense.

The cost of inaction is your sexual freedom, the ability to exercise your rights to love whom and how you choose, to control not only your own life but how you make life. That freedom is stolen by a threat used against anyone who dares say something that opposes or exposes sex-negative interests for the shame they are, as former US Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders and countless others can testify. That threat, in the hands of the sex-negative and the hateful, goes something like this: “If you question us, then you’re a child molester, a sexual predator, a rapist, and/or an enabler of those horrors.”

These people have two primary weapons, fear and obfuscation, which they use to pass unjust laws and attack political opponents. And they wield these weapons masterfully. As Melissa Ditmore, Ph.D., wrote (in 2008!) of the worrisome increase in panic-driven legislation, in this case legislation addressing sex work:

Sex law is often a front for ideology that constrains rather than liberates women. What most appalls me about the recent conflation of trafficking and sex work in law and policy is that some feminists support the confusion. These women would normally never dream of telling other women how to behave, because they have fought against imposed constraints in their own lives. Yet they seem to think it is acceptable to tell sex workers what is best for them, and they are prepared to use dubious political alliances to advance their moral agenda.

Only when the whole truth and nothing but the truth is laid bare, evidence reveals these “concerned citizens” as the hypocritical ideologues they are. Even the recent ruling overturning “Proposition Hate” explicitly recognizes this: The Protect Marriage campaign advertisements ensured California voters had these previous fear-inducing messages in mind. The evidence at trial shows those fears to be completely unfounded. (Emphasis mine.)

So watch the media closely, and critically. Your freedoms and your future need you now. As Driftglass said on Kink On Tap 52, First of all, a robust and powerful investigative media is necessary to a democracy. And secondly, citizens have to take responsibility for knowing shit and getting angry about shit and then taking action about it.

That’s why I’ve been reading FBI complaints, government press releases, news archives, and a host of other documents in order to learn all I can about how hateful people with political influence operate. And if I don’t share what I know, fewer people will be equipped to take action. So, very soon, I will share, because as Jacob Applebaum said, People in the United States of America have the ability to democratically change this situation if they are unhappy with the truth; they now have information that will assist them in having a clearer picture. Perhaps they will demand more transparency and more accountability.

And y’know what? That’s not so terrible. Here’s why.

The Internet is like a giant game of telephone

While misunderstandings and hurt feelings aren’t fun, they’re not the only thing that can result from a game of telephone. Similarly, while misunderstandings and hurt feelings sadly abound in response to Iranian Cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi’s claim that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes (not to mention Pat Robertson’s equally bigoted claim that gay people cause hurricanes)¹, a lot of real good did come from Boobquake. As Lissy observed:

watching my facebook statuses I noticed something… boobquake worked for a lot of people who I know don’t spend much time thinking about feminism at all. My very capable and hardworking sister Ginger, takes no shit from anyone but would never be described as a feminist activist[…]. But boobquake? She was onto that, spewing on her facebook status about sexist pigs in a way that made me a proud older sister… she listened to me ranting, all that time I thought she wasn’t listening as a teenager she was!

Of course, baring cleavage in the name of women’s liberation is itself controversial. In short order, Boobquake received criticism from feminists who felt “saddened” by this response. A counter-event, categorized as a “Protest” on Facebook named Brainquake, soon sprung into being. What’s most interesting of all, Brainquake creators Negar Mottahedeh and Golbarg Bashi say that they’ve been in touch with Boobquake instigator Jennifer McCreight, and McCreight says she’s been in touch with the Brainquake creators, and that there’s little (if any) animosity between the three of them.

Responding to factional feminism

Nevertheless, while hanging out on Twitter on Sunday, I saw a seemingly endless stream of negativity about Boobquake from Brainquake supporters. It was being described as “anti-feminist,” and while I personally don’t find boobquake that appealing (although it is funny), I found the negativity spewed Jennifer’s way even less appealing. That’s when I decided I’d break the binary and came up with Femquake. As I wrote when I introduced the idea:

Both breasts and brains are good for humanity and deserve our respect. Don’t coerce women into being proud of one over the other, or feeling ashamed of either! YES WE CAN all get along.

[…]

The core ideal is not a woman’s body or her mind, but her humanity. Decrying women who are proud of their bodies is as oppressive as forcing the ones who aren’t to cover them up. Hailing intellectualism over physical value is as insensitively demonizing as nonconsensual sexualization.

It’s time for women, men, and everyone else to empower one another to live the lives we want to live, free of coercion and abuse, whether modestly dressed or not.

It’s time for a FEMQUAKE!

Jumping on the “b*quake” bandwagon had its benefits. Within hours, the Femquake Facebook page had hundreds of fans—and an equal number of detractors. It seems that you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. And, statistically speaking, that’s precisely the problem with Boobquake, too, as Phil Plait from Discover Magazine wrote:

there are very few huge quakes, and a lot of little ones. We expect to rack up maybe one quake more powerful than magnitude 8 in a year, but on average we get one in the magnitude 6 – 6.9 range every couple of days somewhere in the world, and one in the 5 – 5.9 range something like three to five times every day. That’s every few hours!

And there’s the weakness in the Boobquake plan. […W]ithout defining the time period, the earthquake size, and the region in advance, this can actually reinforce the cleric’s claims! Given the huge tracts of land involved, no matter when women of the world unveil their decolletage, there is bound to be a magnitude 5 quake within an hour or so of the event, and a mag 6 quake within a day.

Jennifer McCreight, Negar Mottahedeh and Golbarg Bashi, and myself have all received criticism for supporting gender justice in our own ways, and the criticism is as diverse as ever. That’s no surprise, and again, I think it’s actually a beautiful thing. Having this diversity empowers people to choose the form of activism that’s right for them.

And if you don’t see what you like, you can self-empower yourself to go make it.

Feminism is about gender equality, and equality requires self-empowerment

That message of self-empowerment is, in my view, what my response to the factionalism over the “*quake” events is all about: Don’t let ideological feminists shame you into covering yourself up, or pressure you into exposing yourself, I wrote. Your body is YOURS. It is yours to show off however you like, whether physically, intellectually, or otherwise.

On that note, let me share with you some of the criticism I’ve received over Femquake. I think the negativity can be illustrative and can offer a wonderful opportunity to practice empowering positivity. If all this hullaballoo over boobquake has shown me one thing, it’s that we all need to practice assuming good faith and responding to offense nonviolenty.

@Custard_Socks says “fuck off with your titpics”

I followed conversation about #Femquake on Twitter. Here’s what @Custard_Socks had to say:

Femquake? Brains and boobs? My sister’s a flat chested idiot but she’s done damn well in a male dominated job, so fuck off with your titpics

(They said it here.)

I responded:

@Custard_Socks #Femquake is feminist solidarity—the idea is that #sexuality is too often divisive. Why be so negative when we could empower?

In answering honestly (I believe), @Custard_Socks said:

@maymaym From the participants on the Femquake Facebook page, feminism means you can brag about your high IQ & big tits. Solidarity, my arse

@maymaym Boasting is empowerment for the selfish.

(They said it here and here.)

At this point, it occurred to me that there probably wasn’t anything I could say to convince this person of Femquake’s intent. I simply don’t know how else to describe Femquake than the way I did on the Femquake Facebook event page:

On Femquake Day, honor a feminist who inspires compassion among different groups of people and who celebrates the value inherent in the diversity of human sexuality. In other words, HONOR FEMINISTS WHO ROCK YOUR WORLD!

Or, just smile at a stranger. It’s good for them, for you, and for our planet. :)

If honoring feminists who rock my world amounts to “brag[gin]” about their high IQ and big tits, well, fuck, I’m in! If smiling at strangers is “boasting” and “selfish,” fuck it, slap my ass and call me narcissistic! Smiling is healthy, and so is being proud of who you are.

Anyway, taking my own advice, my conversation with @Custard_Socks continued with my reply, which I intended just as genuinely as I believe they intended their earlier reply to me:

@Custard_Socks :) I hope you have a fantastic day today and brighten someone’s day. It’d be wonderful if you were able to do that.

But a moment of insight hit me when @Custard_Socks answered back with, @maymaym Are you saying I’m more than likely not capable of that?

“Oh,” I thought to myself, “is that the concern?” Does @Custard_Socks feel so disempowered to bring joy to others that they are so ready to jump to the false belief that others find them incapable of it? Obviously, only @Custard_Socks can answer that, but regardless of this person’s situation, it occurred to me that countless people probably do feel exactly that.

Maybe some of what the knee-jerk negativity in feminist debates needs is someone to say, “Hey, I support you, and I think you can bring this world joy!” (You can read the rest of my conversation with @Custard_Socks here, here, and here.)

Melliferax says, “someone else who is ostensibly on the same side has to go off whining about it? Grumble.”

Femquake got blogged about right alongside Boobquake and Brainquake, just as I’d hoped it would. Of course, not everyone was so enthused. In a comment on one such blog post, Melliferax said:

Femquake… had a very quick look and it just seems like the usual call for equality? How’s that different from, y’know, feminism or good ole humanism? Why is it that every time someone comes up with an idea, like arresting the pope or showing some cleavage, someone else who is ostensibly on the same side has to go off whining about it? Grumble.

Femquake was born out of my unhappiness with the unhappiness many Brainquakers felt towards Boobquakers. So yeah, I guess you could say I was “whining about it.” But is that so terrible?

I mean, if a “call for equality” can come from unhappiness, is saying that the people who advocate for that equality are “whining” really going to help matters? I don’t think so, but I’m not going to belittle you for thinking differently.

If calls for equality stem from whining, then maybe what we need are more people whining! What I think we don’t need, however, is negativity directed at calls for equality. Since you get to choose how you respond, why choose something negative when you could choose something positively empowering?

Millerax says that Femquake “just seems like the usual call for equality,” but as the billions of female-assigned, intersex, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, kinky, and queer people will attest, calls for equality is anything but “usual” in far too many parts of the world. I think the absence of more calls to equality in places like Iran is seriously whacked, yo. Don’t you?

Anonymous says, “awesome. a man is leading the femquake charge. […I]t means a little less to me now.”

As I’ve been saying for years, one of the beautiful things about the Internet is that it enables us to let our ideas, words, and actions speak for themselves, without judgements based on age, race, gender, or other characteristics. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a insert-your-feared-identity-here. However, identity really matters to some people.

In a comment on Feminist Mom in Montreal’s Femquake blog post, someone who prefers to remain anonymous said:

awesome. a man is leading the femquake charge. That’s all great and lovely, but I guess I was hoping that it was a woman. If that makes me sexist, well, I guess maybe I am.

Not gonna lie, it means a little less to me now.

The point is still there and the point is a good one, but meh…some dude on the internet leading the charge on us uniting our boobs and our brains is just, IDK, ironic.

Thanks for the help, though.

First, Anonymous, you’re very welcome! :D I’m glad to help bring about a world where gender justice is a reality!

That being said, I have to wonder why my being a man means that Femquake loses some measure of respect in your eyes. As a man, I know that it’s very difficult for men—including myself, at times—to stand up for the rights of women. Y’see, I could choose not to. I could go about my life content in the knowledge that because no one questions me when I check “M” when replying to Facebook’s “Gender” question,² I have privileges that someone who checks “F” may never have.

And y’know what? That’s a pretty sweet deal for me and the other “M”‘s, and a pretty crappy one for all the “F”‘s.

That’s why it’s absolutely baffling to me that when men stand up for gender equality, it somehow means less than when women do it. The reality is that no matter who is standing up for gender equality, it means the same thing: that we are all working towards the same goal of equality and opportunity for all souls on this planet, regardless of what body those souls inhabit.

So, while Anonymous may find it “ironic” that a man like me came up with Femquake, I find it equally ironic that someone who wants to support gender equality would devalue an effort to support gender justice due to the gender of that effort’s founder.

Strengthen love, not shame

There are, of course, plenty of other negative and positive responses to Femquake, and I’m thrilled to see that the Femquake page is still getting fans. After all, communication is inherently imperfect because otherwise we wouldn’t need it. And so I think, in the end, all this diversity is beautiful—it’s a reflection of the diversity inherent in all of you!

Ultimately, regardless of whether someone supports me or tries to put me down, I’m going to work on just being happy. I want to spread joy in the world. :) I know it can be hard, and I struggle to smile sometimes but, with your help, I’m learning how.

Thank you for all the criticism, the support, the encouragement, the denigration, and responses. Thank you for keeping the conversation going, and for talking to one another, and to me! Thank you for turning a sexist comment by an Iranian religious leader and a boob joke by a young feminist into an opportunity to promote peace and happiness and understanding and unity and self-empowerment and beauty and intelligence!

Now go and enjoy life, because working towards bringing pleasure and joy and equality and opportunity to everyone—everyone—is what feminism is all about!

1. I think Pat is wrong about the whole hurricane thing. I think Teh Gehys actually cause volcanos. Don’t you remember the recent Icelandic volcano that halted air travel in Europe? I mean, those Frenchies are all sexual deviants! I say we need a #Gaycano experiment! Go, Internet, go!
2. Facebook really ought to change that label to “Sex,” not “Gender,” since those two words are not actually interchangeable. See also: Gender and Technology.

This interesting image via SlaveBoy.Tumblr.com.

One of the things that has seriously bugged me for a very long time is how lots of people think about submissiveness, particularly but not necessarily as it relates to male sexuality. It bugs me because for all the lip service paid to respecting submission, very little about the way it’s discussed actually seems to be respectful of submissive desires.

I, unlike many submissive young men in their teens, surrounded myself with the culture and ritual of dominant/submissive relationships through the very fortunate circumstances in which I found myself. Yet, despite my incredible access to such resources, it was indescribably difficult (not to mention painful) for me to get to a point where I felt like I can enjoy my sexual submission as a valid part of my masculinity.

Why was it so hard for to me feel validated in my submission? Why does it continue to be a struggle for many people, as the overwhelming response to my subversive writings at MaleSubmissionArt.com show? This question, at once both simple and unspeakably intricate, is what I want to address in this post.

Imagine for a moment you’re a young guy (or a guy of any age, really) trying to understand your sexual desires. You know you want a relationship with (in the name of simplicity) a woman who will “take charge in the bedroom,” but you don’t really know what that looks like. You come across porn and sex blogs and, like a second (or third, or fourth) erotic awakening, all sorts of fantasy imagery involving either getting butt-fucked or not being allowed to orgasm, or both of those, starts bubbling in your brain, since—let’s face it—that’s most of the erotic material out there for such guys. You finally get a girlfriend and, remarkably, she’s good, giving and game, so you get butt-fucked and she doesn’t let you come. “Wonderful,” you’re likely to think, “now I’ve been submissive.”

If you’re lucky, maybe it was really wonderful. More power to you. But what if it’s not? Moreover, and I suspect this is most common, what if that wonderfulness is just the tip of the iceberg? What if the new experience was amazing and novel but you want more? What is that “more” that you want? More butt-fucking? More bondage? More sexual service? More orgasm denial? What are you yearning for, really?

This, sadly, is where many of us get stuck. I’ve read countless words from hundreds if not thousands of men, all of whom seem to be trying to answer these very questions. I’m one of these men, trying to figure out what the fuck all this desiring is, trying to make it “more” and “better” as though I’m following some kind of primal programming. I want to be more passionate. More intimate. More connected. More devoted. More focused. More meaningful. More submissive.

Obviously, this is a very big topic, and I often feel overwhelmed just thinking about how submission relates to my life, influences my relationships, or shapes my desires. As I often struggle with articulating these thoughts, I figured that even if I don’t get it quite right, it’s worth sharing some of where I’ve gotten to because I no longer enjoy sex despite being a submissive man. I finally enjoy sex because I am—and want to be—a sexually submissive man.

Hopefully, I’ll clarify the imprecise language we currently have available to explore gendered power and submissive masculinity in particular, and I’ll address how such feeble language may cause egregious ambiguity in communication as well as misconceptions about fundamental desires that hamper our understanding of consensual sexual submission.

Hot or not? Submission isn’t arousal.

This submission stuff is hard, and I’m not the only one who’s struggled, or is struggling, with it. One reason it’s so goddamn hard is because the way I so often see it conceptualized feels polluted by imprecision, absolutism, and sexism.

Most of the time, I ignore a great deal of the polluted chatter because it comes from people I don’t hold in high regard to begin with. Recently, however, some of the men who blog that I respect a lot have hit some of the same notes while singing submissive masculinity’s tunes as the people I ignore, and that is something I cannot ignore.

More specifically, Thumper, whose blog I read almost religiously, inspired a debate between MyKey and myself. In a comment on one of Thumper’s posts, MyKey said:

The denial after [lots of orgasms] is much harder and much sweeter for it, and the submission deeper and more fun. Of course during those periods [after orgasm] its hard to be as submissive[…].

Although I’ve read this opinion expressed in about a bazillion different ways, it’s a sentiment I’ve never felt completely comfortable with. Indeed, the more I dissect my own submissiveness and explore what submission means to me, the more upset I get by its prevalence. I get even more upset when bloggers perpetuate this, because they are currently the most influential source of education about submissive masculinity.

But before I get too far into what I find so upsetting about the way this is framed, let’s make one thing clear: what I’m about to say has nothing to do with espousing a submissive ideology, a One True Way® for being a “real submissive.” It’s irrational to, for instance, call a self-identified switch “a submissive” when that person is feeling submissive by sole virtue of their feelings; they are no more or less “a submissive” than they say they are, despite how desirous of submissive feelings they are at any given time. Insofar as identity politics are involved, they stop at the point of acknowledging that your identity is a part in your personal experience of the world.

This post, however, is not about your experience of the world. It’s about finding a way to convey your experience in a manner that is reconcilable with the different experiences of others. This is important because, lacking this ability, all conversation about submission starts with “for me,” repeats the caveat, and then ends with “Your Mileage May Vary.” To date, every way I’ve heard anyone talk about submission breaks down when someone else introduces their own, differing, experience, and I’m afraid those conversations are no longer useful for me.

Anyway, the short debate between MyKey and I ultimately lead to a post in which Thumper put forth the following equation:

Denial + arousal = submission.

In the comments—worth reading despite veering into predictably unhelpful tangents at points—Thumper later amended this to read Denial + arousal = submissive energy. That’s better, thanks in part to the focus on “energy” (I think more precisely termed desire) over the intrinsic nature of the outcome. Nevertheless, I want to challenge both statements because I think the premise underlying them is simply not true.

Both statements feed into a dangerous, wide-spread stereotype: the cock-centric notion that if you control a man’s penis, you control the man. Is that true? Of course it’s not. These activities could certainly be an expression of dominance or submission and they might trigger dominant or submissive feelings in oneself or one’s partner(s), but Thumper, MyKey and I already seem to agree that the acts are not, themselves, the root cause of submission or dominance.

To wit, and to Thumper’s credit, one of his next sentences is the following:

That’s not saying I’m in no way submissive when my sexual appetite has been totally sated. I think I would be accepting of domination even then. [And later, in the comments:] I wasn’t trying to suggest it’s just that simple […] but they are strongly related.

Indeed, I can think of no realm less suited to the beautiful simplicity of mathematics than human desire, so it’s obvious that Thumper’s equation is an oversimplification. Since we can all see that things are not “just that simple,” I presume that what Thumper, MyKey, and other submissive men perpetuating this simplistic formulation are trying to get at is that they feel submissive more acutely when the fact of their orgasm denial is at the fore of their thoughts. Thumper says he feels his “sub mojo” lessen after he has come. MyKey calls this sensation “sub drop” and, since I disagree with the premise of their statements, questions whether I’m “wired differently”.

At least in this regard, however, I am not wired differently. I do understand the sudden, often startling change in desires post-orgasm. During relationships with keyholders, the degree with which my interest in, say, getting my penis locked away waned after having an orgasm was (and still is) totally remarkable to me. Nevertheless, similar to the experiences of others, when my keyholder wanted me locked, I got locked. Why? Because that’s hot! It wasn’t quite as hot right then, but it was super-hot shortly thereafter, when I was once again unable to masturbate freely.

This simple after-the-fact observation points to a crucial distinction I fear is missing from the conversation about submission: just because an activity is less pleasant at some moments than it is during others doesn’t mean I won’t do or enjoy those activities. Moreover, the drive to perform those activities independent of one’s immediate motivations is a distinct, separate pleasure, from the pleasure one gets from desiring the activity directly.

I think Tom Allen illustrated this in the sexiest way ever in his erotic story, Ahead of Time. Portions of this story are so apropos to this discussion that I just have to quote it:

“And I want you to come really hard for me. I want you to remember this for a long time.”

“Oooh,” I moaned aloud.

“That’s why I’m going to make you eat my pussy right after you come.”

I gasped. It was like an electric shock to my groin. I’ve long had this fantasy, but could never bring myself to do it. The idea of being forced to clean her, to lick my still-hot come from her, to hear her demanding that I make her clean, to make her come with my tongue… I’ve only mentioned to her a handful of times over the years, but I’ve never been able to ask for this, let alone to try it. She was right, there’s something about the first ten or fifteen minutes after coming that puts all that desire right out of my head. I was excited, but at the same time a bit fearful. I knew that I wouldn’t want to do it afterward…and so did she.

She sensed my hesitation. “I know the idea turns you on,” she said.

Thinking fast, I said “But, I, um, thought that you were satisfied. You told me that you had come enough for tonight.”

“Oh, you’re not going to do it for my pleasure,” she said, “at least, not for my sexual pleasure. You’re going to do it because in a few days, you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to remember this evening as the hottest thing we’ve ever done.”

[…]

I was still partially dazed as she inched her knees alongside my body. When she finally rested her legs over my arms and braced her other hand against the headboard, though, things…changed somehow. Her pussy, which just minutes ago was a beautiful, warm cave, suddenly now seemed like a hairy tube of flesh that was filled with something that I didn’t want. Ugh, how could I ever have asked for this? I pursed my lips, but it was too late—I felt the drips onto my cheeks and chin. Seconds later, her slick lips were pressed tightly against my mouth, and I could hear her encouraging me to clean her, to keep sucking and licking until everything was gone.

(Emphasis mine.)

What Tom’s story and our many similar experiences show us is that not even the men who purport to quantify submission based on sexual arousal or orgasm denial actually do that. Although our awareness of submissive feelings may be intensified by specific, often fetishistic triggers (e.g., being horny and prevented from coming), those two concepts are not causally related.

For men like Thumper and I, who clearly dig orgasm denial pretty hard, it makes sense that this desire is a core aspect of how we want to fuck. But we do ourselves and our readers a terrible disservice by perpetuating the idea that our fetish is the cause of our submissive desire rather than a manifestation of it. Submission does not come about through someone else’s control—that is mere restriction in the best case, and abuse in the worst case—it comes about through our active desire to submit. Consensual submission is not about how someone else controls me, it’s about the opportunities I create for myself to be vulnerable to that person.

When I hear people discussing submission as though it is the result of the thing they want instead of discussing submission itself as the thing they want, it’s like listening to people talk while putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Such an awkward conceptualization of submission is not merely incorrect, it’s very dangerous because it restricts any submissive desire into a necessarily coercive paradigm.

In this instance, with teasing and denial as the addends, it constructs mens’ submission as totally dependent on the myth of male lust (the idea that men are controlled by their penises because they are men). It states that submissive energy is itself induced by a woman (or, more generally, “keyholder”) by accessing that man’s sexual potency in a strictly prescribed, time-release fashion, like a pill.

This is the same misconception that says blowjobs are inherently submissive, or that pain is inherently bad, or even that blogging about sex is inherently submissive (srsly)! Sadly, these ideas are the prevailing view of what “submission” is, and I think they totally miss the point about the validity of submission itself as a core motivation.

Framing submission as a second-class thing, a byproduct of some other, first-class particle, is incorrect. Submission is it’s own distinct facet of sexual desire.

Reductionist Submission Is Dangerous To Your Sex Life

There’s absolutely nothing wrong about getting off on stereotypes. While the reasons for why many submissive men, including myself, fetishize orgasm denial are debatable, that obvious fact does not make orgasm denial a component of submission. Akin to the way desiring anal sex does not make someone gay, abstaining from orgasm does not make someone a submissive. Abstaining longer doesn’t make them “more submissive.”

Sexual “teasing” is really pleasurable and fun for many people, regardless of their interest in submission. For a huge population, that kind of sex is all about improving their orgasms, whether “vanilla” or not; I’ve read of self-identified dominant men who enjoy the practice, too. For other people, like certain religious sects, some portions of asexual populations, and anorgasmic women, living (or trying to live) an orgasm-less existence isn’t even kinky. On the flip side, there are certainly some submissive men who simply aren’t into orgasm denial at all.

In other words, even though sex acts obviously influence one’s mental or physical state at any given moment, conceptually coupling a sexual activity to what an activity means is going to cut you off from the pleasure of diverse sexual experience. Teasing and denial (the “denial+arousal” part of Thumper’s equation) are not ingredients for submission, they’re just toys I play with because I, like many others, enjoy expressing submission with them some of the time. Sometimes we enjoy it more than other times, but sometimes we express that same submission in completely unrelated ways.

Regardless of your personal experience, I’d urge you to avoid linking any sex act to any intention, even “for you,” even if it’s your fetish. The stereotypical view of orgasm denial as requisite for or even directly “enhancing” submission, even for those of us who fetishize it, simply doesn’t account for our own diverse expressions of submission. To assert that it does is fundamentally miscommunicative. It’d be like saying getting flogged is submission and that the harder you get flogged the more submissive you are, and although people often make the “harder=submissivier” false assertion as well, that doesn’t make it sensible, that makes it dangerous!

That definition of submission, coercive at best and abusive at worst, invalidates submission itself as a potential motivation for healthy sex by undermining a submissive person’s power to choose exactly what they do or do not want—a power that’s required to make healthy sexual choices for one’s self, even “as a submissive.” It tricks us into believing all the false dichotomies embedded in hegemonic culture that tell us BDSM is obscene, and that to be submissive is to necessarily be unassertive, passive, self-effacing, receptive, or acquiescent. These are not ambiguous, wishy-washy obstacles to people’s health. For many people, particularly men who are deeply immersed in heteronormative culture, these are real factors that contribute to sexual anxiety and a horrible depreciation of self-image.

Defining the degree of one’s sexual submission as the summation of a period of orgasm denial and current sexual arousal is not only reductionist, I believe it’s actively damaging. The equation perpetuates the myth of male lust and disavows the validity of submission as a sexual self-expression that can be actively chosen, rather than induced coercively.

In the post that spawned all this theorizing, Thumper wrote:

I had cruised all through my adolescence with no inkling I was what I was (though I can see some signs that were there all along).

Like Thumper, I was certainly submissive before I had a dominant partner in my life. So while this rant may sound like meaningless semantics to some, it’s crucial that we amplify these distinctions and move the prevailing understanding of submissive masculinity away from the limiting, misrepresentative, and downright sexist bullshit so often spewed by exploitative pro-dommes and the likes of Elise Sutton (no link because I hate what she says; Google it instead actually, Gloria Brame’s essay on Elise Sutton is totally worth reading). That’s precisely the kind of bullshit that kept “what we are” hidden from men like Thumper and I for so long.

As an adamantly submissive man myself, I’m sure my personal experience is going to be different from, say, a switch’s orgasm denial experience. And that’s the point: submission is not about creating a ruleset of Things To Do To Be Submissive for anyone, yourself least of all. Very simply, it’s about sexual self-expression in order to be happy and healthy.

So please, all of us who blog about such things, stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive. You’re just fooling yourselves, your readers, and arguably worst of all, your lovers.

Best of all, these conversations didn’t just stay within the four walls of our venue among the participants who attended physically, but it also reached out across the Internet thanks to the KinkForAll Providence live video stream, Twitter conversations, and KFAPVD liveblogs. I think the event’s use of the Internet was truly remarkable this time, because we were able to literally invite anyone in the world to literally watch and see and participate in the discussions that we were having, even if they were unable to be physically present, and even if not everyone agreed with what was being said all the time. Most importantly, as I said in my presentation, since we were able to inspire conversation, everyone stayed within the realm of constructive discourse, and that means we were able to create knowledge, even while individuals may have disagreed on some points.

Below is a video of my presentation. As usual, my presentation is “open source” and Creative Commons licensed. Feel free to download it, use it yourself, or share it with anyone you think might find it valuable. If you do, I would greatly appreciate a link back to this page.

On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.

Download:

• On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me keynote presentation as a ZIP archive.
• On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me keynote presentation as a PDF document.
• On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me keynote presentation as a text transcript.

I am deeply grateful to Emma for helping me with this presentation and also for taking a leading role in unorganizing KinkForAll Providence (so I didn’t actually do so much this time—and I think that’s great!). Similarly, I’m also grateful to Aida Manduley for getting this event sponsored by SHEEC and for being the primary unorganizer for venue-related issues. There were some, but she handled them beautifully and deserves more praise for more reasons than many of you know. Their persistence, professionalism, thoroughness, and ardent support of sexual freedom, freedom of speech, and students’ rights were what made this event possible, even in the face of some very harsh and alarmist criticism.

With that thanks in mind, here’s the entirety of the presentation I gave at KinkForAll Providence as a text transcript:

First of all, let me just say that this is amazing. Look at all of us here at the fifth KinkForAll unconference in the first year of KinkForAll unconferences! KinkForAll Providence is now the 5th KinkForAll event being held in the 1-year history of the event’s conception. That’s one KinkForAll, in 4 different cities so far, about every 2 months or so for a whole year! Wow!

This event is thanks in large part to the amazing work of two women: Emma Gross, and Aida Manduley, who’s Chair of the Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council here at Brown University. They’re responsible for getting us this space and so much more. Let’s give them a huge hand! (APPLAUSE) I like that name: Sexual Health Education and Empowerment Council. Health, education, and empowerment.

I like that name because I think we are actually taught, from a very young age, to see the world in dichotomies, a set of things that are exclusive from an opposing set of things. Dichotomies are necessarily polarizing and, if you’re not careful, they can be paralyzing. Indeed, dichotomies can be DISempowering.

Self-empowerment relies upon our ability to recognize existing dichotomies so that we can utilize them and, if necessary, so that we can break out of them. As Stephen R. Covey, author of the best-selling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” reminds us:

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Dichotomies are genuinely useful, even necessary. We use them all the time to make sense of the world around us. In fact, dichotomies themselves conveniently come in two mutually exclusive varieties! These are: true dichotomies, and false dichotomies.

Unfortunately, many of the dichotomies that contemporary culture teaches us are one kind are actually the other! Specifically, many dichotomies that you might’ve thought were true are actually false! According to Wiktionary, the Wikipedia-like dictionary, a false dichotomy, just so that we’re all on the same page, is:

A situation in which two alternative points of views are presented as the only options, whereas others are available.

How many of the dichotomies that hegemonic culture says are “true” do you think are actually false? I think the answer might surprise you, and that’s what I’m hoping to do in this presentation: I want to help you recognize these dichotomies. In fact, that’s what the entire founding concept behind KinkForAll is about!

KinkForAll’s tag line is:

A serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.

This idea, that sexuality can intersect with all the other things in our lives, seems to be something that a lot of people are really uncomfortable with. Their discomfort highlights several dichotomies, one of which is this one:

• Obscene vs Decent

As it happens, this is one of the many false dichotomies that are societally constructed. How do we know that? Easy! Not everyone is uncomfortable with sexuality intersecting certain aspects of their lives, and some people are only uncomfortable with it intersecting with some parts of their lives, but not with others. This variability is the signature of all false dichotomies. Remember that!

Just to drive the point home, let me tell you a short story. Once upon a time (okay, actually in 1966), in a land far, far away (okay, actually in Kristiansand, Norway), lived a man by the name of Jens Bjørnboe. Jens was a painter and a school teacher, but more than anything else, he was a writer. Jens loved to write, and had already published a book of deeply religious poetry, Poems (Dikt, 1951), and a book that dealt with shortcomings of the school system, Jonas (1955).

Then, Jens wrote a fictional novel about an 18 year old girl named “Lillian” who had to masturbate to have orgasms, called Without a Stitch. According to one review:

Without a Stitch begins with a bit of girl-on-girl frolicking with Lillian and Brita [Lillian's classmate], as well as Lillian’s attempts at having fun with the inexperienced Henry. She can’t get the desired satisfaction when Henry fumbles around, and in reaction becomes a real cock-tease — and eventually she realises she needs some professional help. Thank god Brita refers her to Dr. Peterson.

Now, Dr. Peterson is, “a specialist in the orgasm” and Lillian entrusts herself into his care, with all the desired results. Nice. :) The review continues,

Lillian’s problem seems to be that she worries about what her mother and grandmother might think, causing these inhibitions that hold her back. But Dr. Peterson helps her overcome these, and instructs her in his own moral code — which amounts to that all sex is good (and more is apparently better …), as long as no one is hurt or taken advantage of. It takes a lot of daily sessions — during which she’s not allowed to be with any other man — to get the message across, but finally she’s cured.

All right, so: a woman of legal adulthood who was so concerned about what others might think of her that she can’t have orgasms overcomes that fear under the care of a physician who tells her that all sex is good as long as no one is hurt or taken advantage of. Okay, so there’s some lesbian scenes, but also some really strict monogamy. Doesn’t sound so out-there radical to me, really.

Unfortunately for Jens, it did sound radical to the government of Norway, and Bjørnboe suffered an obscenity conviction for publishing the book as pornography. Interestingly, his fictional porn would arguably pale in comparison to the non-fiction writing I’ve published on my own blog—and that I’ve read from countless other bloggers! Obviously then, we are obscene by some standards but not by others. Indeed, obscenity standards vary with time, place, and a host of other things.

More interestingly, perhaps, is the fact that Jens Bjørnboe went on to publish his most well-known work, The History of Bestiality, and as far as I can tell the Norwegian government didn’t care to prosecute him for publishing pornography in that case. Huh.

Jens was a pretty uncompromising man. He once said,

People speak of ‘sexual morality,’ but that is a misleading expression. There is no special morality for sex. No matter what you do with yourself, whether you go to bed with girls or with boys, and no matter what it occurs to you to do with them or with yourself, no moral rule applies to that sphere of activity other than the principles that govern every aspect of life: honesty, courage, common humanity, consideration.

What Jens understood that I think is so valuable is that people who dichotomize consensual sexual activity into obscene and decent acts also tend to approach morality as a dichotomy; they couple obscene with immoral and decent with moral. Indeed, Jens sees that the failure to recognize one false dichotomy actually blurs one’s view of which other dichotomies are true and which are not. On the other hand, when you begin to see the gradations between things you once simplistically believed were absolutes, you empower yourself to break out of all false dichotomies.

Now, before I go any further, it’s important to mention that false dichotomies are not inherently bad things; they can be useful, as I mentioned, and they can be a lot of fun. Case in point, I think dichotomies of power are really fucking sexy! Specifically, I have always loved (and still love) playing—but not being—powerless. That is, I enjoy being sexually submissive.

Trouble is, I’m a man. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: DUH! Thing is, the fact that I’m a man wasn’t always clear to me. In fact, thanks to this really strong tendency that false dichotomies, when we incorrectly believe they are true, have of reinforcing one another, for the longest time I thought I was actually a woman! Yeah! Let me tell you why.

In mainstream Western society, and indeed in most modern cultures, this dichotomy of power–dominance on one hand and submission on the other–reinforces this other, totally unrelated anywhere but in some people’s minds, false dichotomy: the one of gender, with men on one side, and women on the other. And then, as if that weren’t enough, both of those false dichotomies are also strung together like this, so that dominance and manliness is also coupled with activity, while submission and femininity is also coupled with passivity. The trouble with that, for me, was that I like being active and I like being passive in bed!

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I turned 13, and I put a toothbrush in my butt–and I liked it! So now I discovered this other, additional incorrect coupling: penetration is coupled with being active, which, as we’ve already seen is coupled with manliness, which ostensibly makes it dominant. On the other side, being penetrated is coupled with being passive or “receptive,” which, remember, is coupled with womanliness, which makes it ostensibly submissive. So now my 13 year old self is totally fucking confused and has no idea what the fuck I am–man, woman, top, bottom, active partner, passive partner–except that I knew I really liked getting tied up and I really like my toothbrush in my butt.

But wait, there’s more! One year later, my younger brother made friends with this really cute guy in his class and he started coming over to our place and I got a really big crush on him. And that’s when I learned that contemporary culture said, if I was, in fact, a boy, that I was also gay! Yeah, even though I also also masturbated to thoughts of girls! Because apparently, to fit in with contemporary culture, you can’t be bisexual if you’re a man. You’ve gotta be either straight or gay. And even though I was “only” 14, I knew that if you like your toothbrush in your butt, you’re gay!

So, like, oh my god! Could I be a gay boy who liked girls? Was that possible? Was I just…wrong about everything? Fuck, was there something wrong with me? Maybe there was something wrong with these distinctions. Maybe not all of them were true dichotomies. Hmm….

Thankfully, I had (drum roll please) THE INTERNET! Yes, the Internet. I did some searches. I surfed a bunch of sites. I read a lot of porn. I had some more pretty confused orgasms. And then, I found this: The Kinsey Scale.

What was so interesting about the Kinsey scale was that it introduced me to this idea that there were gradations in sexual orientation. That’s when it clicked: I’m probably some kind of bisexual. So, ignoring for a moment the limitations of this concept, I figured that if there were gradations in sexual orientation, maybe there were gradations in a bunch of those other dichotomies.

Of course, it turns out, yes, there are. There’s a big wide world of queer between the poles of heteronormativity, switches enjoy varying consensual sexual power differentials, and even when it comes to anatomical characteristics there are varying degrees of intersexuality that mix male and female. So, long story short, even though I really liked that toothbrush, I eventually upgraded to a strap-on because I knew that one’s gender identity, such as man or woman, and the enjoyment one gets from a particular sexual activity, such as penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse or receptive buttsex, are in no way directly correlated.

Sure, sometimes I want penetration to be about power, but it never had to be anymore, because now I had the freedom, and the power to decide how anything outside of me would affect me. I found that the better I got at decoupling an activity from a preconceived notion of what it means, the more fun sex became. And even when I do choose to get penetrated submissively, it always has to be about good sex first and foremost, not about some misguided morality or sexist system of beliefs.

Okay, I know this is a talk at a conference about sexuality, but let’s return for a moment to KinkForAll’s tagline:

A serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.

What about the rest of life? Are dichotomies there, too? You betcha! Here’s an obvious one:

• Black vs. White (or, more generally, race)

And here’s how we know that’s a false dichotomy:

• Barack Obama
• halle berry, jordan sparks, tony parker, derek jeter, tyson beckford (he’s jamaican and chinese), slash (the drummer from guns n roses), lisa wu hartwell

Here’s a not-so-obvious dichotomy, but one I bet most people who came to see me speak had to think about at least a little bit before they came here:

• Public / private –> Out / closeted

For those that don’t know, when Sara Eileen and I co-founded KinkForAll, we took some very heavy criticism from people who believed that the essentially open and public nature of KinkForAll events were “recklessly endangering” participants, that we would be “outing” people. I believe this criticism was spawned from a belief in that false dichotomy: that to be public is to be out, that in order to have adequate privacy, people of sexuality minorities must be closeted.

That falsehood needlessly segregates sexuality apart from the rest of our lives. In reality, no one is ever completely in the closet or out of it. You might be out about some things to some people, but not out to others. By coming to KinkForAll events, people are forced to grapple with the reality that the closet is not a binary.

Here’s another one that KinkForAll events make some people grapple with:

• Academic / non-academic (education)

also known as

• educated / uneducated
• graduate / drop-out

I like this one because I’m a middle-school drop-out. But anyway, after she gave a presentation at the very first KinkForAll in New York City, Emily Rutherford wrote this in her blog about the experience:

I think that a lot of what was exciting about [KinkForAll] is the way that the format combines academic and non-academic modes of talking about sex and sexuality. The “conference” is an academic model in a way that many existing modes of social interaction for sexuality groups aren’t, but this conference didn’t presume any academic background or qualifications. I think that [KinkForAll] bridged gaps between different registers of discussion, taking academese down a peg while applying a theoretical and philosophical level to more casual conversations.

KinkForAll is not really an “organization,” just individuals acting in concert toward a share goal; a collective, maybe. I was urged, numerous times, to trademark KinkForAll and a few people thought it needed to be a registered 501(c)3 organization to really make a difference at all. But that’s just another false dichotomy, because we don’t need to be a 501(c)3 to make a difference.

Indeed, the millennial generation–our generation–is recognizing more and more false dichotomies, and younger people are consistently speaking up to make a difference. That’s what David Jay did in 2001, when he was a 19 year old undergraduate student at Wesleyan University just a few hours from here. David said:

Sexuality is like any other activity. There are people for whom skydiving, chocolate cake and soccer are their world. But some people don’t like skydiving, chocolate cake or soccer. There’s no reason to focus your energy and attention on something you feel no reason to do anything about.

That year, David founded The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the online headquarters for the asexuality movement. David recognized that even sex drive itself is correctly seen by many as coupled to dichotomies; that mens’ drives is necessarily stronger than womens’, for instance. Contrary to popular belief, sex is not a compulsion, and the desire for sex is not a universally shared instinct.

I believe AVEN’s work is enormously important because rape culture will dissipate and victim-blaming will stop only when everyone understands that our sex drives–our feelings of lust–are an independent facet of our sociosexual makeup. Men are no more or less interested in sex because they are men than women are. Perhaps counter-intuitively, asexuality is the keystone that supports a healthily sexual society.

All right, so, let’s review. Dichotomies come in two flavors: true and false. Both kinds are useful, and potentially sexy, but not good to confuse. So don’t let “man” or “woman” jail you. Don’t even let “animal” or “person” jail you! Hell, The Supreme Court isn’t letting the insignificant detail of corporeal existence prevent corporations from being people!

The bottom line is this: don’t wait for permission to do or be something that doesn’t fit into whatever or wherever other people happen to think you are. You don’t need someone’s permission to break out of a false dichotomy, or to become empowered.

You just do it. You can do it. We broke out of restrictive dichotomies just being at KinkForAll Providence! You’re doing it now if you’re watching this video, ‘cuz you’re thinking. So you don’t need to wait for your schools, or parents, or your teachers to fill you with knowledge, or to give you permission to grow in whatever direction you want. You’re doing it already.

You become empowered whenever you do what you can to make our communities places we can be proud of, no matter how small an act it is. Cuz, y’see, your impact, even through small things, like sharing a link to some educational resource like the one I followed to find the Kinsey scale when I was a teenager, are kind of a big deal.

People with destructive goals are usually people who feel personally disempowered. So to be creative, you need to empower everyone to speak up, to have a presence—even people you don’t totally agree with.

And thinking about that, and seeing as how I broached this subject of dichotomies with quotes from a writer, I thought it fitting to end with another quote from another, recently passed writer, Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn said:

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

KinkForAll is one of my small acts. Now it’s your turn. :)

I’m not a traditionally recognized expert about anything. Sure, I have street cred in some cyber-neighborhoods, but I don’t have a single piece of institutionally-backed credibility to offer. I’m not a doctor, a lawyer, a counselor. Heck, since I quit my day job recently, I’m not even any kind of professional anymore.

Now, that doesn’t mean I can’t offer my own opinions or that you shouldn’t find them informed—I do a lot of thinking about the things I write and speak about. What it means is that you should never blindly take what I say to you or what anyone says to you (yes, including doctors and lawyers and counselors) as though it were The Truth™. Knowledge, especially knowledge about yourself, can never be given, it must be grown. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your choices should be based on anything other than your own convictions. If you remain open to embracing your own mistakes as learning experiences, you will never find yourself disempowered.

Now, with that out of the way, I recently received a very thoughtful email asking for further discussion about my two most recent posts regarding youth sexuality (On Youth, Sexuality, Education, and Your Fears and Sexual Adultism). In fact, I’ve received more than one, but this latest email was beautifully representative of the whole lot, so I want to address its contents in general and its author (who shall remain unnamed unless they wish to be associated with it) in specific. In order to respond coherently, I’m going to respond to the email in chunks.

Hello Maymay:

I was wondering if you would mind discussing this issue a little further. I’ve read and reread both your posts regarding adultism and youth sexuality several times over in an attempt to understand your point of view and for the most part, feel like I am failing miserably. I get what you are saying about having a safe place for people to discuss sexuality, but struggle with the assertion that all sexual topics are appropriate for all ages.

Let me start by stating that I’m uncertain where I ever said “all sexual topics are appropriate for all ages.” While I vehemently disagree with much of so-called conventional wisdom about what age-appropriateness entails and how it’s enacted, I do believe the premise of age-appropriateness is, well, common sense. It is just as appropriate for a parent to hold a child’s hands when they cross the street as it is appropriate for a parent to purchase “Where the Wild Things Are” instead of “Girls Gone Wild” for their toddler. The premise of age-appropriateness isn’t what’s at issue here.

What’s at issue here is the idea that age-appropriateness gives people who are older than other people the right to actively create obstacles to that younger person’s growth. That, by the way, is also the definition of adultism, that adults are somehow entitled to act upon young people without their agreement. I find it infuriating that our educational system is founded on the idea you are forced to study as you age, and yet somehow that same system actively barricades organic, natural, healthy sexual learning and growth simply because older people deem such topics “inappropriate.”

To give just one illustration of this very problem and misapplication of age-appropriate thinking, we need merely look to the recent news story of the Menifee County School Board, which banned the Merriam-Webster Dictionary from schools after a parent complained that it contained a reference to the term ‘oral sex,’ as I discussed on last week’s Kink On Tap. The parent’s complaint, that a collegiate dictionary isn’t appropriate for elementary school children, is logical but also damagingly overbearing. This parent who’s surely trying to protect their child, and who I would presume also doesn’t keep a bible in their house because it, too, is arguably rife with far more sexually explicit references than the dictionary, is actually stunting their child’s growth by paternalistically cutting off avenues of natural experience. And, for fuck’s sake, I was in elementary school when then-President Bill Clinton got impeached after getting a blowjob from Monica Lewinksy. It was all over the news, and so I’d like to hear what that Menifee County parent’s response to that would be for their kid.

Regardless of whether you believe that finding a reference to ‘oral sex’ in the dictionary is somehow going to harm an elementary school kid, the problem here is that you take away the child’s ability to practice having any kind of experience at all, good or bad, helped or harmed. I’m sure my parents wanted to protect me from ills, as all loving parents do, but they also thankfully (usually) realized that segregating me from the reality in which we all live would do more harm than good.

That’s the thing at the core of what age-appropriate misapplication is about, and that’s why I strongly disagree with the typical way it is practiced.

My two eldest children are 11 and 9 respectively and while I would be comfortable discussing a wide variety of sexual topics with them (IE homosexuality, transgender issues, polyamorism), the thought of discussing kink/bdsm with them at this point in time stops me dead in my tracks. My honest thought is that they aren’t yet mature enough to handle the majority of the topics contained under the bdsm umbrella. Hell, alot of adults struggle just to understand that bdsm is about consent and not about abuse. If my two eldest are struggling to internalize the concept of “you can’t slug your sister/brother just because she/he annoyed the shit out of you” and struggle to exercise impulse control when temptation rears it’s ugly head, then how in the world would they have the cognitive skills to understand more complex topics/concepts, IE humiliation, knife or needle play just to give a few examples?

I find myself confused by this. If your contention is that it’s due to the fact that “a lot of adults struggle just to understand that BDSM is about consent and not abuse,” why do you distinguish between BDSM and the many other sexuality issues you mention (transsexuality, polyamory, homosexuality, and so on) that billions of adults also struggle to understand in the most basic of terms? Honest question, I’m not just asking you, I’m asking everyone who’s ever made that distinction, because I just don’t get where it comes from.

Now, one distinction I think you should make that I don’t see you making is between sexual activity and sexual identity or desire. When you talk to your children about homosexuality, I presume you’re not telling them which brands of lube you think they should buy for the best anal sex experience. Similarly, why jump to conclusions that discussing BDSM has to be about sterilizing body parts for needle play?

Extrapolating for a moment, if I had a child and they came to me with a question about gay people, I’d probably discuss it in terms of gender attraction. I’d take the opportunity to explain that different people find different bodies attractive. Maybe something like, “Lots of people love people with different bodies than they have, but a lot of other people love people with very similar bodies.”

Similarly, if I was approached by this hypothetical child of mine with a question about BDSM, I’d probably discuss it in terms of power dynamics. Since power is the fundamental property of BDSM sexuality, it also strikes me as a particularly good segue into a discussion of self-empowerment. Perhaps, “Just as different people love people with different bodies, different people love others with different wants. Sometimes, as part of specific kinds of games, people find it fun to play by rules where one person gets to make decisions and the other person, only if they agree to it, will follow the rules.”

The point I’m making here is that talking to very young kids about sexuality—any kind of sexuality—rightfully starts by discussing the fundamentals, the 101s, if you will. Since these are fundamentals, they are widely applicable, and even if they include some explicit references, they never need to be eroticized (because yes, there is a difference between “explicit” and “eroticized”). It frustrates the living daylights out of me that so many people seem to forget this basic principle of growth and learning and start freaking out over whole subjects, rather than specific details, that they project would be “age inappropriate.”

While I’m on the topic about talking to young people about BDSM, I think this excerpt from Laura Goodwin’s short essay is appropriate:

Children kiss dogs, torture bugs, turn kitchen implements and power tools into toys, climb on furniture, mark their skins with ink or self-inflicted hickeys, and invent the most ingenious, nasty, kinky little games to play with each other (as we have seen), but for them that’s considered normal. Adults are supposed to know better.

There is no such thing as a vanilla child, but somehow we should mysteriously emerge from the teen years like a butterfly from a chrysalis, utterly transformed. A person is supposed to outgrow that stuff, not go and make a career out of it. Nobody told us that, though, because “we don’t talk about those things”. Sex is instinct: you are supposed to ~just know~ what to do.

Sugar Gak Cereal can sponsor “children’s television entertainment” that features bondage, funny costumes, and dominance themes, and that’s OK. Kids can play games that feature bondage, funny costumes, and dominance themes, and that’s OK, but if Mommy and Daddy play games that feature bondage, funny costumes, and dominance themes, that’s not OK. Excuse me?

Another prudent point to make right about now is this: I don’t think you have to, and arguably I would go so far as to say you shouldn’t bring up any specific sexual topic with your children out of the blue. If your child never asks about BDSM, or transgender issues, you don’t have to talk about it! But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t remain open to being approached about the subject, and prepared for the eventuality should it come to pass. The objective is to avoid cutting off avenues of learning just because you decided ahead of time that they’re damaging your kid instead of giving them an opportunity to grow healthily.

Back to the email:

This is where I believe the parents have to step in and based upon their knowledge of both the topic AND their children, provide some guidance and ultimately make the final decision as to what topics are age appropriate. Touchy subject, I know. […] Ultimately, someone has to make the difficult and often unpopular decisions and given that we have so much more life experience to draw upon than my children, I feel that my spouse and I should be the final authority because I believe we are better qualified to realize all the possible ramifications of some of the decisions they might want to make. This is not to say that our kids aren’t allowed to voice their opinions or their disagreement with the decisions we make, and we DO listen to them, try to take their feelings into account and try to explain to the best of our ability the reasons behind the decisions we make. But often they want to do what they want to do and no amount of reasoning seems to satisfy the answer as to why we won’t allow whatever it is they want to do.

Sure, your life experiences may be more quantitive, but can you in good conscious say they are more qualitative than your children’s are, especially when it comes to their experiences? I don’t disagree with the reasoning here, I just disagree with the framing. Specifically, I think it is a missed opportunity.

I would never presume to tell you how to be a parent, but since you asked for my opinions, I would offer the suggestion that each of these “putting your foot down” situations is an opportunity to explore an improved model of household governance. Parents often act like dictators in their own homes; the axiom “my way or the highway” will be familiar to anyone who experienced this as a young person. Instead, when there is a disagreement, why not use a collaborative decision-making model and reach decisions that way, so that you’re not only “listening” to your children but actually inviting them to offer their own solutions to your objections?

Such models of governance are, in fact, being experimented with for whole societies, so I imagine that some of their lessons could be applied here. For more about this topic, you might find the MetaGovernment project’s article about Synthesis interesting.

Anyway, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter. Even though I’m finding it difficult to agree with you, your posts did make me pause and examine my parenting practices to see if there are areas where I can improve.

It’s really encouraging to hear that I got you thinking. I don’t have any solutions for parents—I’m not a parent, I don’t want to be a parent anytime soon, and I don’t have any experience with adolescents (and that includes when I was an adolescent, since I was a real loner). That said, we were all children at some point, and I so often hear laments about sad childhoods that I simply know in my gut that it’s gotta be possible to make a future where all childhoods are safe, healthy and happy ones.

I sincerely appreciate the thought that you, and the several others who have written to me about this topic, put into your correspondence. That tells me that you, like me, reject the falsehood that to keep children safe, they must be censored. On behalf of future children everywhere, we thank you for that.

a monthly social media discussion workshop in San Francisco for queers, sex nerds, artists, and other rebels. We dig into best practices and strategies for using tools like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, and email lists to make our lives more awesome.

Well, it’s certainly been an awesome year. As I wrote recently at MaleSubmissionArt.com:

For me, 2009 was a year of massive personal upheaval, as though a wildfire swept through my life and left me fresh and raw. It hurt, but like all natural processes, it also provided an incredible opportunity for rejuvenation.

Increasingly, one of those opportunities I want to pursue is continuing to develop the MaleSubmissionArt.com project. It began at the start of this year because there was a depressing lack of respectful erotic imagery of submissive masculinity. Today, it broke into the top 3,000 Tumblr blogs in the United States, and the top 6,000 in the world (according to Tumblr’s “Tumblarity” thing). If that weren’t cool enough, because it’s not, (as of this writing) it’s the top Google result for many variations of search phrases that are obviously about finding pictures of submissive men. Positive feedback has been pouring in, and I’m only now beginning to archive some of the praise for MaleSubmissionArt.com.

One month after starting MaleSubmissionArt, which took all of 2 hours (literally), I introduced the concept of KinkForAll, an ad-hoc sexuality “unconference” with the potential to greatly empower sex-positive advocacy and drastically improve sex education as we know it today. In a matter of mere months, less than one year later, 4 KinkForAll unconferences have produced an astonishing amount of free video, audio, and other content that’s continuing to snowball to this day. In fact, the video of my presentation at KinkForAll Washington DC has—in only 2 months time—received over 1,500 views, and is steadily spreading at the pace of about 25 plays per day (according to Vimeo’s public statistics).

And, most recently, I revitalized the Kink On Tap podcasts from way back in 2007, bringing interactivity and participation to a whole new level for sexuality netcasts. In only 3 months, and for an infinitesimal budget of a mere several hundred dollars raised purely from continuing donations, the weekly live broadcasts bring together a growing group of anywhere from 30 to 50 very animated individuals to the chat room, and several dozen more downloading and listening to the recorded Kink On Tap audio podcast available from iTunes. The show’s attracting superb guests, like Suraya Singh of Filament Magazine and Ms. SF Leather 2009 Mollena Williams, among a plethora of fantastic panelists who are excitedly sharing what they know and love about sexuality with our listeners.

None of this would’ve been possible without the incredible opportunities that the Internet brings with it. But none of this is enough—not even close. It’s wonderful that I’ve been doing so much, so inexpensively, and with such impact. But I’m not satisfied merely doing things. Underlying all of these projects is a much, much bigger goal: empowering you.

So I’m setting out for 2010 with the intention that this is the year that what I do with my time focuses not merely on educating, advocating, or informing, but also empowering the people with whom I interact. There’s a saying I recently learned that’s prevalent in software development communities: “Improve the improvers.” In other words, make it possible for passionate people to participate in your project immediately.

With renewed commitment to this goal, I quit my day job this past Friday. I have no clear idea about how I’m going to make a living, but I’m less concerned about that than I am about succeeding in my other goals. I feel like, if I do a good job with that (no pun intended), then a living will find me, somehow.

In the mean time, I’m eagerly preparing for this upcoming Tuesday evening at the CSC, where Sarah and I would love to see you for the January 2010 Deviants Online workshop. Or if you can’t make it for any reason at all, then perhaps someone you know—or someone who knows of you—can come, so please help spread the word to anyone you think would find this event helpful. :)

Here’s the entirety of Sarah’s announcement post about Tuesday’s event:

The first workshop was amazing – great conversation & lots of amazing ideas and concepts were brought up. We’re looking forward to doing it all over again in January – so here’s the information for you to add to your calendar, pimp out to your friends, and note in your holiday cards as you send them out. We hope you can join us – and bring along a buddy!

Meitar "maymay" Moscovitz

Deviants Online
hosted by Sarah Dopp
with special guest Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz

Tuesday, January 12th, 6 – 8pm
Center for Sex & Culture, 1519 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
Cost: $10-20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds

Deviants Online explores the ever-changing “best practices” for social media: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, flickr, blogging, email, websites, and everything else. How can we shine spotlights on what we care about without annoying our friends? What are smart ways to strengthen our relationships and broaden our networks? And how exactly do we get our (many) personal sides to co-exist with our professional life on the same Internet?

As queers, creatives, sex nerds, and other rebels, our lives depend heavily on our friends and extended communities. Whether we’re looking for work opportunities, an audience, or an army of allies, we can all benefit from having a broader network built on trust and appreciation.

In this open-ended discussion workshop, we’ll explore what works and what doesn’t when it comes to representing ourselves online. The material will include a balanced mix of “how to think about it” and “how to do it,” and we’ll have plenty of time for questions. Whether you’ve just signed up for Facebook or have been blogging for years, you’ll leave this workshop full of ideas on what you want to try next.

Deviants Online is hosted by Sarah Dopp, social media educator and founder of http://genderfork.com. It will also have a special guest co-facilitator, maymay!

Why maymay is Awesome
Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz is a “technology geek, sexual freedom and community activist, prickly blogger, and general free spirit.” He makes his living as an Internet technology professional, providing web development, social media consulting, and other technology services. He is the co-author of Foundation Website Creation and AdvancED CSS,and a semi-regular blogger at SitePoint.com. He has lead sessions at conferences such as Sex 2.0, often speaks on the intersection of technology and sexuality, and is a co-founder of the BarCamp-style sexuality unconference series KinkForAll. He also curates the photoblog “Male Submission Art“, co-hosts the webcast KinkOnTap, and has dozens of other projects in various stages of creation.

***Please note: Portions of this event will be recorded and posted online. If you don’t want your voice, name, or image to be included in the recording, you can still come — we’ll give you easy ways to stay off camera. There will also be a stretch of time in the middle that’s completely off-the-record.

One month after that, I introduced the concept of KinkForAll, an ad-hoc sexuality “unconference” with the potential to radically transform sexuality education and community building as we know it today. In 10 months, a driven core of participants and I have put on 3 separate unconferences in two major metropolitan areas, creating an ever-increasing amount of freely available videos, which have collectively gotten well over 1,000 total views, and audio recordings that feature sexuality-related information and education efforts. What’s more, we’re working to put together a fourth event, KinkForAll Washington DC, which will be held on November 21^st at Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School that will continue to push for and support sexuality and civil rights advocacy. (Here’s the press release.)

Today, I’m pleased to announce that my latest effort, the reincarnation of Kink On Tap from what it was 2 years ago, is once again pushing the envelope for sexuality community building in a totally new way. This time, partnering with Emma from FollowsTheSun.com, I’m pushing sexuality podcasting away from static broadcasts and towards an interactive experience by recording them in front of a live Internet audience. With a chat room, a Twitter backchannel, collaboratively created show notes, and—as you hopefully expect by now—complete transparency with regards to our topics and future guest plans, I think Kink On Tap is a bold new step in reaching across community boundaries and connecting people in a way that empowers them to learn about and participate in making the world a better place for us all.

As the Kink On Tap about page reads:

Kink On Tap is more than just a netcast about sexuality; it’s also a community of people for whom intelligent conversations about sexuality and how sexuality relates to other aspects of their lives is a motivating force for Doing Good. If this sounds like you, then jump right into our community wiki, chat room, or live stream to join the conversation! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook, of course!

So, as Tom said, What are you doing here? Why aren’t you listening to […] the latest Kink On Tap podcast? Emma and I have had a blast each time so far, and we’d simply love to see you in the chat room on Sundays at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific time. :)