Excellent news for the DSM-V – with reservations

After a great deal of work by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has agreed to change its criteria for its Paraphilias section, which up until this moment has listed Exhibitionism, Fetishism, Sexual Sadism, Sexual Masochism, Frotteurism, Pedophilia, Transvestic Fetishism, and Voyeurism as mental disorders in and of themselves. The proposed revisions would finally differentiate between these desires, which can be experienced healthily (pedophilia being possibly an exception), and the unhealthy expression of these desires, i.e. examples in which these desires inhibit day to day functioning, are exercised on non-consenting parties, or otherwise cause harm to self and/or others.

The manual will now include such things as Exhibitionistic Disorder, Sexual Masochism Disorder, and so on, and would require not just that the person exhibit the desires, but that said desires adversely affect the patient’s functioning or that they cause harm to others, such as unsuspecting strangers to which the exhibitionist exposes himself.

I will admit that I am a little concerned that pedophilia is included among these other so-called disorders: I believe that a person can have a fetish for shoes, for example, without it impinging upon his or her life or harming self or others. It’s difficult to imagine, however, someone having a strong sexual attraction to kids without it eventually becoming problematic – or even without it initially seeming sick in some way. It makes me wonder where and how we draw the line between just kinky and really actually kinda sick. Is there a way to have sexual attraction to kids and have that not be sick?

I mean, I suppose if you don’t act on it, it never actually causes harm. But I’m still not crazy about it being included with the other paraphilias, as I think that there are ways to enact the other paraphilias without causing anyone harm. I guess you could dress up someone of age as a kid. But…ugh. Seriously. Somebody help me out here. I really think that a line should be drawn between someone who gets off on hurting people – because they consent to it and like it – and someone who gets off on having sex with kids, who by definition are unable to consent. There are sadists who are truly sick, who want to hurt people who don’t want to be hurt. But are there pedophiles who aren’t truly sick? Somehow I can’t see it.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Read Full Post »

Support MayMay and FollowsTheSun!

Signal-boosting here, for a grant application that Maymay and Emma have out. They’re planning a great project seeking to highlight that sex education comes from everywhere, not just high school health class, and to spread the word about the importance of accurate and reliable sex ed.

A bit from their page:

Our vision of lasting change is to create a world in which accurate information about sexual health and freedoms reaches more students and young people than suffer from misinformation or a knowledge deficit. By engaging young people in the creation and distribution of knowledge, we hope to help them recognize their power to enact social justice in their local communities. This would be a world in which women and young people are aware of their sexual and reproductive rights from an early age, and are empowered to make informed decisions for themselves and educate those around them.

Awesome as usual, Maymay. To boost their vote count, click here!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Read Full Post »

Poor Ray Gosling

I was listening to my local NPR station in the car the other day and was overcome with sadness when I heard this short news story: Ray Gosling, a longtime BBC presenter, confessed on-air to killing his lover more than 20 years ago – smothering him with a pillow when the pain from AIDS had become too much. The lovers had an agreement, and the assisted suicide was a total success – until now. Gosling has been arrested and is undergoing questioning.

What killed me was the audio NPR took from this video, of Gosling’s confession:

I found myself deeply touched by his confession, and I’m deeply sad both that our current society does not allow for this kind of mercy killing, and that he confessed it this way, on air – and at a time when there’s no way to prove what really happened. I’m terribly afraid that this will wind up with him going to jail for a long, long time.

In media news surrounding the issue, I’m not at all surprised that that homophobes and conservative Christians are jumping all over this. But I’m more disappointed that Vanity Fair is treating it like a light gossip piece with all the cynicism that implies.

Here’s a somewhat longer piece in which Gosling talks about it afterwards.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Read Full Post »

Don’t screw with my nine-toed friends.

There must be more I can do to advance the cause of healthy feminist kink, but, as Trinity knows, it’s impossible to ignore the incredible vitriol and anti-kink rhetoric coming from radical feminists like Nine Deuce. I never go to those pages on my own, but I’ve gotten back to the blogrolls lately, and there have been more links to that space on Let Them Eat… It becomes impossible to ignore after a while, like a train wreck you can’t look away from. It’s relatively easy for me to ignore the insane right wing – not because I don’t think they have influence: they have a terrible amount of influence in this country. But they’re big and they’re a constant target of their polar opposites on the left as well as of reasonable people throughout the land, and I don’t feel much of a personal responsibility to battle them on a daily basis.

Feminists, though…well, they’re supposed to be on my side, right? I’m a woman, I’m a feminist, I see and experience oppression under the same patriarchal systems of power that they do, yes? Yet it seems to be the job of these particular wingnuts to invalidate kinky women’s experiences, undermine our sense of agency, silence us and rail against any type of education that might give us some other perspective than “BDSM is bad. Reallllly baaaaad.”

We know all this. I know all this. And it may be a sign of my own masochism that I keep feeling the need to dip my toes into these discussions and wait for them to get torn off by crocodiles. It’s probably long since time for me to quit it, since I’m increasingly surrounded by 8- and 9-toed peers who keep braving the waters as well.

But as anyone who knows me well knows, if you want me to shut up and leave you alone, there is one damn thing you don’t do. And that’s attack people I care about.

The short version: Orlando dives into the soup, like he does. (I think his toes are still intact, but his whole body’s poked full of holes.) After getting his left brain chewed on for offering facts and studies by women who’d rather he shut up if he can’t provide personal experience, then getting the other cheek slapped for daring to provide the “anecdotal evidence” that their own arguments so often rest on, and other bits of his head ripped off every time he tries to understand and be civil, he finally responds from a place of hurt and exhaustion having spent most of the previous week in the hospital caretaking his wife, who has aggressive cancer. He pours out his soul and implores these people he still considers intellectual peers and reasonable people to have compassion for the real human beings we’re talking about when we talk about this subject.

And they accuse him of using his wife’s cancer as a manipulative ploy to score points on the Internet.

Now, I don’t know Orlando in real life, though I came close to doing so and hope to meet him and his Murre – may she be whole and healthy and strong again – before long. But his voice is one I respect mightily and am wholly moved by regularly, and I’ve come to have a serious affection for him and for Murre both by extension and by direct contact.

In some ways, I have a purer affection for them both than I might if I knew them, as I still know them only as they present themselves online, and not as who they truly are, warts and all. I daresay many of us have similar online relationships, and are similarly protective of them.

And so I just want to give a shout-out to the blogosphere at large and say this:

Do not. Fuck. With people I care about.

To Polly, Nine Deuce, Joan Kelly (a “passive-aggressive liar with a martyr complex”?? Really??), Laurelin, and the rest of you who jumped in to kick someone already in pain in the guts: how dare you. This is not some troll trying to get you in a twist by jumping in with stupid counter-arguments. This is a thoughtful, careful, real human being who is doing his best to give you the respect he somehow continues to assume you deserve even as he is in disagreement with you. This is someone who consistently, throughout the time I’ve been reading him, has made an honest attempt to engage you in discourse and given you ample opportunity to get to know him. And when in his frustration and exhaustion he finally stops beating his head against the brick walls of your own anger and pain and shows you his throat, you don’t hesitate to step up and slit it.

You cruel, twisted fucks. And you dare to say that what consensual kinksters do is evil.

Fuck you. Fuck you right in the ear, until you learn how to think a bit better about who deserves your compassion.

(Sorry, Orlando. I had to.)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Read Full Post »

Tuesday Advice: Marks without pain??

Okay, admittedly, I’ve often heard questions about how to do play without marks. But I’ve rarely received the reverse. But there’s a first time for everything.

Dear Delilah,

I really like it when my partner leaves marks on me that last a few days, so that I can look at them as they fade and reminisce about the fun we had making them. However, my pain threshold isn’t terribly high and often it hurts too much before we get to the point of bruising. Can you recommend hitting equipment that would be more likely to leave marks? So far we’ve been improvising with hands and belts.

Thanks for your help,
N.

Hey, N. Marks are kind of awesome, aren’t they? A lot of us seem to spend a lot of time and energy avoiding getting them for one reason or another: our partners might get upset, the cashier at the grocery story might think we’re getting abused at home; there’s this doctor’s appointment…but the truth is, for some people, marks are exceedingly powerful and enhance and extend the life of our scenes.

But marks are often also a sign we’ve been through some serious pain; I had some cane marks on my thighs from two weekends ago that spread into huge, purply bruises that lasted nearly two weeks, and let me tell you, earning those HURT.

There are ways, though, to get bruises and other marks without enduring too much.

1. Be in a heightened state of arousal. Often, when I’m done with a certain someone, I have these mysterious bruises on my inner thighs, and sometimes a couple of smaller ones on my outer thighs, too. With a bit of thought, I realized that these were coming from my partner holding, pulling and squeezing my thighs while he’s fucking me. Thighs are pretty easily bruised in general, and yet also have a lot of fatty tissue to protect them; they’re also a good place to get bruised if you want to hide your marks from the everyday world. It’s worth noting that I never notice these injuries as I’m receiving them, only the bruises afterward, which make me smile. Other marks may be possible in the throes of passion: you may find you can take harder bites and harder squeezes (the upper arms are a great place for this) when you’re really turned on and in the moment.

2. Biting. Biting can really really hurt, but it can also be one of the easiest ways to leave a mark. If your partner sucks while biting, or squeezes the flesh between the teeth rather than pressing down with the jaw (a good way to bite hard without leaving marks, btw), you can get a nice mark from it without too much pain. If you don’t want to take biting pain at all, hickeys are another great option: just have your partner clamp on and lamprey away.

3. Brief moments of extreme pain. You’re not going to have a lot of luck leaving marks with bare hand slapping: you have to get really really going before bruising or other lasting marks can happen, and by then you’re probably tapped. Here’s some general rules about marks: 1) you’re more likely to get bruises from thuddy things than from stingy things; 2) the thinner the object, the more likely you’ll get surface welts. So if you want marks but find your pain tolerance lacking for a long session, another option is to put up with a lot of pain just once. A hard cane strike hurts like hell but stops hurting in about 30 seconds. You get a beautiful welt that may or may not bruise. A hard punch (in the buttocks, thighs, upper chest or upper back, please), particularly a dirty one with the knuckle out, will probably raise a bruise and will hurt for a similar amount of time, then have a yummy soreness when you press it for a few days.

Hopefully this helps. Let us know! Send pictures!

To ask a question, email me or comment here!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Read Full Post »