TBT: When Kinksters Don’t Want To Risk ANYTHING

Throwback Thursday posts are posts I have previously written on other sites. They are reposted here sometimes on Thursdays. This post was originally posted on Queereka on 8/20/2013.

CN: Transphobia

Recently someone on Fetlife in the Minnesota kink scene posted a proposed draft of advice for how newbies should attend a munch. In the kink world a munch is a casual public gathering of kinky people for conversation and socialization. It usually takes place in a restaurant, coffee shop, or bar. Generally they are open to anyone and are often the first thing new people do when entering the kinky scene because they are fairly non-threatening and have a very low bar of entry.

When discussing the most conservative level of expected attire the proposed advice was the following (emphasis mine):

“Conservative dress that won’t attract unwanted attention from the vanillas. This means no stereotypical fetish or dungeonesque clothing or handcuffs. Any visible collar should pass as jewelry. You can cover a collar with a scarf or perhaps a turtleneck. No Fetishwear. No latex clothing. Some leather clothing may be okay as long as you aren’t covered from head to toe. We don’t also want it to look like a biker convention. No corsets worn on the outside. No littles wear. No ageplay clothing. No visible diapers. No pony play costumes. No puppy play costumes. No furry costumes, etc. No t-shirts with offensive or suggestive slogans. No Ballet Boots. In the case of crossdressers, if you don’t pass, don’t crossdress. Don’t showup in a sequined dress looking like a flamboyant glammed up drag queen. In the case of genderfluid, genderqueer, and transgender people, do your best to pass. The point is for everyone to blend in as best they can. This is NOT the place for social protest.“

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TBT: When Kinksters Don’t Want To Risk ANYTHING
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Queerphobia, and Why We Took Down Our Pride Flag

CN: Homophobia, harassment, and mention of the Orlando shooting.

Yesterday Spouse asked our landlord to come over and look at our broken shower. He arrived in the early afternoon. I was home when he came over, but about to go to bed because I work overnight.

I don’t like our landlord. Our apartment is mostly fine, but our landlord is an overly involved busybody, who regularly tells incredibly sexually inappropriate and sometimes homophobic jokes. He makes me deeply uncomfortable. Spouse is a more forgiving person than I am, and therefore has greater tolerance for his bullshit, but they don’t love the nosiness or inappropriate jokes either.

Just after the shooting at Pulse in Orlando Spouse bought a rainbow pride flag and put it up inside our front window. It has been there since, visible from the street but not extremely obvious during the day. The flag made both of us, but especially them, feel substantially better. Queer visibility is important to us, and sending a message of support and pride is important to us. It has been comforting having those bright colors visible inside and outside of our home.
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Queerphobia, and Why We Took Down Our Pride Flag

Reply All Shows How To Ally

CN: Queer and QPOC erasure.

Reply All is currently my favorite podcast – it is a show about the internet. Since I basically live on the internet, it’s like having a great podcast about my hometown. They wander off topic occasionally, but when they do I still generally find the stories they tell pretty awesome. This week the episode contains one of the best instances of allying I have heard in quite awhile.

One of the segments on Reply All I like best is called “Yes, Yes, No” in which the two internet-fluent hosts explain confusing things (usually tweets) to their less net-savvy boss, Alex Blumberg. If done poorly this could be a painfully boring process, but instead it gives them an opportunity to discuss some of the most interesting parts of internet culture. They have previously used it as an opportunity to explain and condemn Gamergate, and shed light on annotations made through Genius. I love this segment because although I often have some knowledge of the things they discuss, I always learn something new.

Recently they did a Yes, Yes, No segment on a tweet about the Clinton campaign’s social media work. It was one of the less complex versions of this segment, but included a bit that I (along with probably a million other people) noticed as incomplete. They were discussing the phrases “Yas” and “Drag him” as used in that tweet. Their description of the background on the word “Yas” went:
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Reply All Shows How To Ally

Throwback Thursday: Fuck That Comic

Throwback Thursday posts are posts I have previously written on other sites, such as Livejournal, Science Based Sex, Queereka, Skepchick, or Skeptability. They are reposted here sometimes on Thursdays when I think they are applicable to current events. This post was originally posted on Queereka on August 5th, 2013.

Parade

This comic has been turning up on my Facebook page lately, generally by well meaning straight people. I’ve seen it about a half dozen times already. Each time I get a little more angry. Why does this comic piss me off? It’s a celebration of marriage equality, right?
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Throwback Thursday: Fuck That Comic

Grief Is Weird

CN: Pulse shooting, sort of. Pet death. Particularly for my poly family, this is about Jordan.

Grief is fucking weird.

The tears finally came. I’ve “teared up” more times than I can count since Sunday morning. Finally, now I have cried. Sobbed. Certainly not for the last time, but the first comes with some relief.

It was triggered by a fucking commercial for dog food of course. Because although I have not talked about it much, a dog I love enormously passed away in April. Jordan was an incredibly sweet, loving, happy dog who lacked significantly in the brains department. My metamour and I joked that we wished Boyfriend would love us like he loved her. She was a big dog, and insisted on cuddles from Boyfriend by trying to be a lap dog. He never said no, as far as I saw. It filled me with joy to see them together, because it was compersion every time. Beings I loved, loving each other.

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This picture is of Jordan (black) and Bailey (brown). I take shit photographs, and Jordan refused to be in good photos for me, so this is the only one of her I have. My family got a few in the last few days of her life (because then she’d hold still) but they’re too hard for me to look at.

When I slept in Boyfriend’s bed, Jordan slept between my legs, pinning me down very effectively. When I came home to the family house she would greet me with pure joy at my presence, while the other two dogs show more complicated feelings*. She was pure hierarchical polyamory – loving Boyfriend most of all, but happy to share cuddles with any of the rest of us otherwise. I miss her so much.

So now, today, the grief I have been trying to deal with since Sunday morning let loose…. over my grief for Jordan’s death. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her. I miss her so much.

Grief over any one thing brings up our other grief over others. This is normal, I’m told. But today, while heartbroken and angry over a hate crime in Orlando I finally broke down in sobs over the death of my family’s wonderful dog.

*Not that complicated. Bailey is willing to graciously accept my scritches and Babs hates me with every fiber of her being until I have been in the house for at least a half an hour, then she insists on cuddles.

Grief Is Weird

The North Carolina Kink Event Doing It Right

CN: Transphobia, HB2, politics, BDSM, kink. Text only, no images, nothing explicit at all.

Several years ago I called for kink events to start using harassment policies, much like conferences in the SF/F world, the skeptical community, and other communities were at the time. Those policies have become more common since then, and are expected by many to exist at the events they go to.

Unfortunately, the kink community has largely ignored calls for formal and enforceable harassment policies. Instead, many events and clubs have a “If you have a problem come talk to the organizers about it and we’ll maybe do something.” This process doesn’t work, has never worked, and isn’t going to start working any time soon.

However, there are a few events getting this right. For several years one of those events has been Debauchery in North Carolina. It is run by a couple named Sysiphe and Nullmoniker. Full disclosure: They are very good friends of mine, I have spoken at this event before, and I intend to again this year.
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The North Carolina Kink Event Doing It Right