princess-poophead:

Omg there is so much conflict in the #rolequeer tag and it’s bringing me downn because I don’t super agree with the person who popularized the term (I also really don’t like them because they like threaten violence in a douchey and like kind of over-the-top corny dorky way?) but I also don’t agree with the people who are like omg stay away from rolequeers they are abusive!!!

Like nah maymay just has intense reactions to people other than their like accepted inner sanctum discussing the idea of rolequeerness. I kind of get it because they don’t want it co-opted but the white, het, male-dominated bdsm monolith but as @nibbles-and-licks pointed out there’s a lot of people within the bdsm community who do work against the shit that rolequeerness rejects, like a lack of critical engagement and understanding of what bdsm plays with, doms who abuse, the idea of consent as a contract or consent as a legal thing instead of consent as a felt sense.

Hi.

All the conflict gets me down, too. It won’t last forever, though. I do want to point something out in what you said above that is half-right, so thank you for understanding part of it. I hope I can clarify the rest.

I do have intense reactions to people discussing rolequeerness, but it has nothing to do with whether those people are in my “accepted inner sanctum.” It has to do with how those people engage with the idea, how and if they talk about my personal life, who those people are, what our previous interactions were like, and that, in totality, informs how safe or threatened they make me feel.

For instance, I don’t know anything about whitehorsegirl and have never interacted with that person before, but they have gotten no “intense reactions” from me (which I interpret to mean from you as “too angry” in the form rolequeer wonderfully described here) because they have to this point been only incredibly supportive and kind to everyone involved in the discussion and, to me, seem to be coming from a very genuine place. Nevertheless, note that my polite and kind interactions with whitehorsegirl seems conveniently excluded from the ominous warnings you are probably hearing about me. In other words, it is demonstrably false that I am vicious to everyone and it is also not true that the only people I am not vicious to are already in my “accepted inner sanctum.”

The other thing that’s conveniently omitted by the people who make these warnings is any mention (or even the barest acknowledgement of) why my viciousness is directed only to certain people and not to others. I’m just gonna quote unquietpirate and use her words here:

There are stories here that are not mine to tell, and so I won’t tell them. What I will say is that Crosswords, for whatever other critiques I may have of them, is not stupid. It has always surprised me that for all the flailing BDSMers do about how Maymay’s uncompromising hatred of Dominants and their defenders makes them such a monster, it never occurs to them to turn to any of the people who actually Dominated Maymay and say, “Holy shit. What did you do?”

But of course they don’t. No, they strike up friendly conversations with them on Twitter and invite them to join book groups! Because BDSMers are rape-apologizing, abuse-denying, oppression-loving, victim-blaming pieces of self-deluding shit. And birds of a goddamn feather flock together.

Yes, of course I am vicious to people. But if you think that is the whole story, you are either ignorant or not paying attention. Ignorance is not some sin. Willful ignorance is another matter.

This conflict largely began when, again, to repeat unquietpirate’s words in case you missed them:

On this episode, Crosswords compares Maymay to pedophiles and racists for having the temerity to say mean things on the Internet about people who violated their consent — and to yell at those peoples’ friends and supporters when they try to shoehorn their way into our conversations about consent and identity so they can tell us how wrong we are and then play “trendy rolequeer dress-up” back at the BDSM club.

Crosswords, meanwhile, decided it was a good idea to start a discussion group in which to dissect, discuss, and debate the ideas in work such as Consent as a Felt Sense, which had come directly out of months and months of Maymay and I helping each other process trauma and grief related to past abusive relationships and having our consent violated by people and in communities that told us we weren’t being abused. Crosswords made it very clear that Maymay was not welcome to participate in this academic discussion of their own rape (‘cause, y’know, they’re too angry about it), but DID very publicly invite Maymay’s former Dominant partner to join in the fun!

So again, the point here is not to say that I do not behave viciously to some people. I do. The point is that I behave viciously to some people—and it is your responsibility as readers, not mine as the writer, to do your own work putting my actions in whatever context you wish to draw meaning from them.

I don’t have any objections to being called vicious, or an abuser, or disagreed with. I have an objection to seeing Crosswords and others who have been victim blaming me for my own rapes for years using the work that has come directly out of my own painful, personal healing work with UnquietPirate for ill-informed reformist wedge politics and for armoring their own reputation while at the same time comparing me to pedophiles as they do it. And if that doesn’t seem like a reasonable objection to you, then you are a threat to me and I will be vicious to you. For me, it is that simple.

After all, I am Submissive. And I am rolequeer; I am malevolent when dominanted.

Next, I want to address your very valid concerns about rolequeer discussions and their awareness of racism and intersectionality, but I will do that in its own post so that you do not need to engage with this part of the conflict, which is about me and not rolequeerness and so I would really like if other people stopped using in the #rolequeer tag for that now please thank you (and I will be unsurprised if they don’t, because they are bullies), when you engage with the other ideas.

So anyway, yeah, thanks for listening.