Whence the good M/f porn?

As I have stated here in the past, I am a switch. This means many things to many people, but for me it means I can play both the traditional binary D/s or top/bottom roles, and enjoy them both. If anything, I tend to be more comfortable in the submissive role, and get a ton out of it, particularly with male dominants. And this, as I have discussed ad nauseam in this space, can be problematic in all kinds of ways.

It’s been a long time since I’ve found those desires problematic for myself in particular; I’m pretty well settled on the fact that being dominated by a (right) man in particular ways is one of the most loving and fulfilling ways I experience sex, and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable with my identity or doubt my power or agency as a woman. But I do notice this one annoying thing:

Where the hell is all the good porn at?

My longtime girlfriend and I were discussing the magnificant John Preston (RIP) the other night, as I had just recently finished I Once Had A Master (which I’d started years ago) and gone on to the gay leather classic, Mr. Benson. We were sharing our undying love for gay leather porn, how unapologetic it is, how raw, how rich in enthusiastic consent and unabashed, rough desire. Preston’s work paints a generation of gay life that literally no longer exists: the magnificent black knights of Folsom Street and Christopher Street, the Mine Shaft, the sex clubs that saw the wildest nights of an era passed by gruff men in boots and harnesses, worshipping and fisting and pissing on and fucking each other in acts of such profound intimacy and freedom that the earmarks of their slavery were worn as marks of pride. All of it wiped out, vaguely reflected today in a leather culture that is straighter, narrower, smaller.

And we realized together that the thing we both so love about this stuff is the ease of it all: the removal of the need to describe every negotiation in painstaking detail, the way the straightforward maleness of it all takes questions of patriarchy out of the power dynamics, the way two characters in this world can come together and be absolutely clear that they both want to be there, more than they want anything else in the world.

Which is not to say that Preston’s characters never experience self-doubt. Hell, the hottest and sweetest stories always involve someone feeling unsure, scared that they’ll scare the bottom away, or that they won’t be good enough, or any of a number of poignant human moments that make the encounters that much more real.

But rarely in gay leather porn do you find, say, an elaborately constructed fantasy in which the submissive must be captured, groomed, and “tamed” (read: raped) in order to become a “true slave.” Or stories in which a dominant man is the way he is because of his abuse history and must ultimately be “saved” by the submissive. Or in which the dominant likes beating up and treating submissives badly because he has some other axe to grind – or worse, because the author does.

My girlfriend points out that much writing about and for submissive women who like dominant men – Anne Rice’s extremely silly Beauty books come to mind – has built into it a component of nonconsent because women feel they need some excuse to surrender. And I get this, I do: it’s really hard to deliberately give over power to a man in a society that still demads that we do so in every other way, which simultaneously telling us that we must under no circumstances do that. When it comes to stroke fiction, it’s not surprising to me that many women need an “out” in order to safely explore their desires.

But my gods, is it exhausting. Also, to me at least, super not-hot. I would much rather read a negotiation, complete with nervousness and all the little things a dominant can do to make a negotiation hotter, than read a story in which the scene happens because of kidnapping, abuse, rape, or Stockholm syndrome.

Still more than that, though, I’d like to read a scene like some of the ones in Preston’s work, where two people see each other across the bar and then the dominant tests to see if the sub is what he wants that night. Those squeezes and looks, orders and countermands, the dance of seduction – it’s hot, and it’s a lost art, sacrificed to rape culture. And that fucking sucks.

If anyone knows of any male dom / female sub porn that actually makes this work in a way that is both pantsfeelings-inducing and clearly consensual, please send it my way. Until then, I’ll be in the bathtub with Mr. Benson.

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Seeking.

All right folks, so here’s the deal:

As you know Bob, I stopped doing professional domination work some time back. I’m mostly on to other things.

However. Lately I’ve been having 1. a hankering, and 2. a bit of a financial squeeze. So I’m looking to potentially start seeing some people again.

Here’s the catch: Because this is no longer my primary source of income, I’m going to be limiting my practice to people I really want to see, who want to do the things I want to do. The flip side of this is that I’ll be lowering my tribute to well below the usual market.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know a bit about who and how I am: I’m basically a smart, sensual, empathic top who likes to play with responsive people. Which is to say: I’m less interested in your stoic ability to take a hard beating than I am in hearing you gasp, moan and squeal as you take it. I like men with easy subspace triggers, but I also like a bit of a power struggle.

I like my feet worshipped well, and my boots also.
I like using floggers, singletails, canes and crops, and other hitty things.
I use rope, but I’m not a huge rope top. I’m more interested in functional bondage.
I like contact: slapping, punching, pinching, squeezing, kicking, and some smothering.
I like menacing you with knives.
I like authentic interaction, like, a whole lot.

I don’t care for piss, enemas, or anything else that potentially makes a big smelly mess.
I still don’t want to do forced feminization scenes.
However, all gender presentations are welcome, and if you want to play with gender in a respectful way, that definitely turns my crank.

There’s plenty more, of course, but it all depends on who you are and what you bring. If you have interests I didn’t mention here, please, let me know, and it’s possible I’ll be into it.

Email me directly if this is of interest to you!

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Don’t throw out the bullwhip with the bathwater

I recently did something I should have done ages ago, which is turn on Google alerts and make it tell me whenever certain key words or phrases are mentioned in the news. Doing this for “BDSM” has garnered some interesting results, not the least of which is a continuation of the trend that Bitchy has noticed of a rift between professional dominatrices (as she likes to say) and more ordinary folks doing kink. Her main beef was that the professionals seem to be creating the world of female dominance as it is seen by most people, and it is a world that she reviles. But another question is arising from my own reading: a question of elitism, of experience versus education, and the potential de-fanging of kink.

The story starts with Lera Gavin, a young dominatrix in Miami who writes a column called “Ask a Domme.” In an August 11 article called How to Enjoy Extreme Smothering Without Fatally Suffocating Your Boyfriend, she advises a man who would like for his girlfriend to try smothering with him to “con her” if she doesn’t agree at first:

You also said you’re unsure how to approach your girlfriend. There are two ways you can handle this matter: You can ask her or con her. If she says no to your request, don’t frown, just trick her into it. But start easy. You want her to be relaxed. The best way to get a woman into smothering is by worshipping her body, especially her ass.

So next time you see your beloved chickadee naked, compliment her gorgeous bottom. Most women go gaga for praise. Call her a goddess and then ask if you can admire her hot ass. She won’t be able to say no.

No question, this is phenomenally bad advice. Not just because breathplay can be extremely dangerous and should only be done with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved, but because dude, consent! Trick her into it? “She won’t be able to say no”? Welcome to rape culture; here’s your complementary beer bong.

Theresa Ikard of Carnal Nation responded to this moron with some dismay. The angle she took, however, struck me as a bit oblique.

Her piece is titled Why It’s Important for Dommes to Go to Dominatrix School, and while it briefly addresses the consent and safety issues, in larger part I think it misses the point and comes off as condescending. In pertinent part:

BDSM is way more a mental game than a physical one. What I mean is that “hard skills” like flogging, caning, cock and ball torture, rope bondage, etc. are easier to learn than the “soft skills” like communication, awareness and responsibility for interpersonal dynamics, and respect for the power of their craft…

The only way to master these skills is to be educated properly and practice consistently. Just like a young therapist or doctor in training, a fresh Domme needs mentoring and feedback. The author of this article has a bio online in the form of a feature article and I gather from what she has written that her training to become a Domme centered primarily around financially driven motives. Now, don’t get me wrong: the business end of sex work training is essential, but is hardly sufficient knowledge or motivation in itself and it certainly does not foster development in either soft skills or hard skills.

Now granted. Lera Gavin is 21 years old, and in said feature article she says things like, “The mistress explained the client was a sad, older man still mourning his recently deceased wife. I knew it was a difficult time for him and that seeing a mistress was a way for him to cope with pain and loss. Of course, I put all of that out of my head. Sensitivity isn’t part of the job.” [emphasis mine] I would no sooner put myself in her hands than I would let my dog use the stove.

But suggesting that because this woman has for some reason been given an column in which to propogate bad kink advice that she should have gone to “dominatrix school” is a little off the mark. Suggesting, too, that experience as a pro domme does not foster the skills needed to be a good dominatrix is simple madness. When I was going into the business, I trained by reading books, throwing whips at willing stunt bottoms, playing with people I liked and watching others play. I barely knew anything when I had my first paying client except for how not to actually damage him. I was lucky to have some natural ability in the “soft skills” and a background in theatre and in healing, but I had to learn nearly everything on the job – how to use my voice and what words to choose, how to read a client’s reactions, how to establish rhythm and pace for maximum effect, and once, how to get a guy out of standing bondage when he’s fainted.

What’s wrong with this whip-wielding youngster is not that she didn’t go to dominatrix school – nor even that she didn’t receive mentoring. She seems to have had an older domme as a boss and guide; mentoring is no guarantee, especially in the less populated parts of the country. What’s wrong is that she never learned that the first rule of kink is consent, and without it, there can be no ethical BDSM play, or in fact sex play of any kind. What’s wrong is that she doesn’t seem to have learned that actually, sensitivity is 95% of the job; whipping and tying and torturing and having your feet worshipped is the rest.

She responded to Ms. Ikard’s article with a vicious and infantile rant full of ad hominem venom in which she calls Ikard “some humorless lipstick feminist,” refers to Carnal Nation as “an obscure online magazine about ‘sexuality,'” and derides the opinion of “a lowly bottom,” as if submissives were allowed no dignity or opinions even when they leave the dungeon. (She makes a further fool of herself by fluttering “Midori who?” when someone mentions Midori in the comments. At least do your homework.) Then she tries to back away from the criticism by suggesting that her column is meant to be humorous and the advice shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Yet later in the article she does raise an interesting point. “The true art of BDSM is all about power, fear, and suffering,” she writes, adding:

Scary? Well, it’s supposed to be. No professional dominatrix wants to seriously harm a client, but if you don’t see at least a hint of real fear in your submissive’s eyes, you’re not doing your job right. In a way, old school feminists were right, S&M does eroticize power and violence, and all the PC jargon such as “sex positive,” “personal empowerment,” and “energy exchange” are just a way of avoiding this inconvenient truth.

Don’t get me wrong; I still think she’s mostly talking out of the wrong end of her corset. Claiming that sex-positivity is simply PC jargon is wildly ignorant, and BDSM play isn’t always about fear. But what are we doing, exactly, when we seek to take the teeth out of kink by making it a subject of academic study? How are we bullshitting ourselves and our clients when we claim to be healers, priestesses or therapists rather than sex workers? I specifically took up training as a type of therapist and began seeing clients in a counseling capacity because I felt that the work I was doing was not healing work but bandaging work.

BDSM is dark – it has its ugly sides and its deranged desires. These things need to be acknowledged, not just because they are true but because our desire is so intimately linked to our freedom. Read Pat Califia’s introduction to Macho Sluts sometime, if you want an excellent breakdown of this topic, but the point is: we want what we want, and sometimes, it’s not pretty.

None of this, of course, removes from Ms. Gavin the responsibility to stop telling people to do nonconsensual BDSM with their partners. Like it or not, she is something of an authority, even at her age and level of experience, by virtue of having such a strong interest in this work and having a column in which to share her supposed expertise. Part of her ongoing education, hopefully, will be recognizing that she has a responsibility for the community she represents, and that passing off her column as humor after the fact is buck-passing of the cheapest sort.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the continuing marriage of intellect and heat that seems to be churning over at Carnal; pieces like this one on a potential parents-of-kinky-kids support group, and this thoughtful piece by Clarisse Thorn give me all kinds of hope.

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I’m really a gay leather boy

Through Orlando’s Tumblr page, which is already hot enough to keep me distracted, I’ve stumbled across the Leathermen Tumblr page, which might be enough to destroy my productivity forever. Particularly distracting thus far are this image of a top wringing a washcloth (presumably full of his own sweat) over the bound and bruised body of his boy, who looks out at the camera with the most glorious expression of mingled humiliation and challenge; this prototypical image of a couple in an alley in full leathers, where the top’s expression is rough with power and pleasure and doesn’t seem to be for the camera; and this shot of a man in uniform, casually enjoying a cigarette while he rests his booted feet on a boy who’s worshipping his leathers.

What can I say, I’m an old fashioned kind of gal.

Still other images I love for their simplicity and beauty in what they evoke, like this one of a leather pantleg, hand, and boot on some stairs, or this sweet one of a Daddy cutting his boy’s hair.

If I haven’t mentioned it in this space before, I’m something of a leather slut. I’m not too excited by the kind of leather female dommes are expected to wear, though I’m happy to wear it because hey, leather. But the gay leather iconography gets me so hot it sometimes feels like I’m one of those fetishists I see from time to time whom I feel sorry for because they can never truly fulfill their fantasies: giantess fetishists, for example, or people into vore.

But from time to time I butch up and treat my girl nice, and from time to time I boy up and get kicked around by my Daddy a bit. And those are times when I feel my gender dissolve into something new and mythical and beautiful. It’s painful, too, though: I know the unreality of it, and I also embrace the femme side of me, and wouldn’t want to change. There’s something terribly poignant about this type of play, and something godlike to me about these images of men doing terrible, wonderful things to each other without shame or doubt.

One time, I got to go to Provincetown with my Daddy, and watch him get picked up, picked over and appraised by a number of men. We went cruising and drinking with these guys, hung out in front of Spiritus after closing, got shown the infamous “dick dock.” I felt like Goldilocks surrounded by all these warm and loving bears, and at the same time I felt like a squealing fangirl, a fag hag, the least interesting person in the room. Still, there was something freeing about it: I didn’t have to perform, only to admire. Only to wish I were one of them.

It was a night when I got to face down my high school demons at last, in a way I never expected. I was in love with a gay boy in high school, and I always thought it was because I wasn’t ready to have a real sexual relationship. My crushes on gay men continued through college – particularly when I didn’t know someone was gay. Later in college I dated a bi man, and would continue to stumble into queer space for a long time to come.

It’s only recently that I’ve come to recognize that fag haggery isn’t part of my sexuality: it’s more that I’m part gay boy. My attraction to gay men and leathermen isn’t entirely unrealizable: my own Daddy proves that, as do my interactions with other amazing bi men who see fit to draw me into their worlds. I’ll never be a real boy; I’m a bit like Pinocchio in all this. But I’m proud to be a part of what seems to be an ever-expanding definition of queer leather.

And still totally distracted by that Tumblr account.

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More thoughts on spankos

I’m still seeing clients here and there, if I meet someone I like and feel that the fantasy is something I can fulfill with integrity and a sense of fun. Plus, the money’s good. What can ya do.

The type of client I seem to keep coming back to is spankos. Not because spanking fantasies are particularly un-problematic to me; if anything, I often find the types of activities that spankos seek somewhat disturbing. But in the interest of being non-judgmental and promoting the sexual health of all individuals, I think I probably keep coming back to it because it’s problematic for me, and the problem inherent is one that is not the fault of the spankos themselves, nor even of the professionals they sometimes visit in order to indulge their fantasies. It’s a tweak I have about the rhetoric that often forms around the spanking roleplay.

The sexy idea of “I’ve been baaaad and need to be punished” is probably as old as time; the kinking of punishment into pleasure isn’t what troubles me (much, more on that later), though it’s not really what I go in for personally. Professionally, though, I’ve often found it to be a hoot to play the strict aunt or headmistress or Victorian lady doling out paddlings and canings to irrepressible “young boys.” It’s a chance to do some acting, to stretch my roleplay capacities and hone my quick responses, and often, it’s hilarious.

But what bugs me is what many of these men are wanting to be punished for. Sometimes it’s sassing an elder, sometimes it’s violating someone’s privacy, usually a girl or woman and usually involving a panty drawer or curtains carelessly left open of a summer evening. But more often than anything else, they want to be punished for masturbating.

As a staunch supporter of masturbation (stand tall and salute!), I find this a troubling trend. I think that the healthy habit of pleasuring yourself is the first step of exploring and loving your body, getting to know what you like, and being able to share a healthy sexuality with others. Granted, there are all kinds of things that people fantasize about and enact that would be horribly unhealthy in “real life,” things that they wouldn’t want to happen: rape fantasies are an excellent example, and many people fantasize about being kept as slaves in a cage in someone’s basement, but would hate it were it to really happen, even in an erotic context.

But the fetish for being spanked as a response to natural pubescent impulses troubles me because a lot of the time, it stems from true experience – an experience in which a child was punished for trying to know himself. This fantasy has the tendency to expand, too, into talk about the need for a strong female authority to control men’s wild sexual urges – which in turn recapitulates an irresponsible and misogynist narrative about how men are just beasts who can’t control themselves, and women are the moral, moderating influences who must rein them in, lest they go out and rape every woman they meet. (See also: maybe the way to prevent rape is not to stop women from wearing short skirts and drinking alcohol, but for men to STOP RAPING WOMEN.)

One of my favorite longstanding clients enacts multiple versions of this fantasy with me, and given our relationship and our lunches post-factum, I often have discussed this problem with him. Over time, his detailed fantasy letters began to shift: it wasn’t masturbation he was being punished for, but inappropriate, non-consensual attention to women, or being a cocky, misogynist 17-year-old asshole (one of his more entertaining incarnations), or the classic: going into a female classmate’s room and stealing panties from her drawer. We developed a story over several visits which wound up with the young man masturbating under the caring supervision of a slightly older female intern, which I thought was strangely sweet. In earlier versions of the fantasy, the boy’s ongoing discipline and recidivism ultimately ends in castration. In a later version, over lunch one day, he told me that he imagined that young man finally settling down with one of the imaginary young women we wove into our scenarios, having a healthy, female-led relationship with her. My sessions with him, to a certain extent, mirrored my own attitudes about my work – and, I like to think, began to heal that boy inside him.

I still have trouble with some of these punitive scenarios: for myself, in kink, punishment is a bad thing, so much so that it’s something I don’t really play with as a bottom. Punishment, as in the real world, is something to be avoided. For spankos and some others, the punishment is the kink, is the pleasure. There’s no teasing and denial, no finishing themselves off afterwards. It’s chastisement, smart-mouthing, face-slapping, and butt-reddening with fast, hard strokes meant to cause real pain. It’s something that I don’t fully grok, as it’s not about the pain being transformed into pleasure, or the pain being endured as part of a trial by fire, or even the pain as atonement, though I’m sure that’s part of it. And unlike a lot of kinky activity in the more leather side of the scene, it almost always seems to stem from childhood. As with foot fetishists, it’s something they knew about early and have sought for much of their lives (or began to kink on later in life).

As with the sessions with my old client, with this new client I chose to punish him for looking in his little neighbor girl’s window while she was dressing, rather than for masturbating. I always have this strange need to punish for something I feel is just, rather than for something I want to encourage. I just can’t reinforce that idea that masturbation is bad and sexuality is immoral and wrong – even in the context of a session that’s clearly sexual for the person receiving it!

There is, of course, the possibility, as with some kink, that enacting these scenarios is in part about re-framing and healing the wound. But I just never hear about that from spankos. It just always seems like a somewhat compulsive, likely ultimately harmless, and usually pretty playful thing that got kinked for them at an early age. And probably there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m always bemused by my own reactions to these things.

What are your thoughts?

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It never ceases to amaze me

Saw a wonderful, sweet client today. He was terribly nervous, for all the usual reasons: not wanting to get found out, worrying that his desires were strange, not believing that he could broach the topic with his wife, constantly window-shopping pro domme websites.

It amazes me how needed the services I’m now offering seem to be. I find myself, these days, in this wonderful space of healing: of validating, of normalizing, of bringing people more into themselves.

What kills me, though, is how much I talk to people about stuff that is freely available on the Internet and in books. How little people actually research, and how much time they instead spend looking at porn, or trawling pro-domme websites for gems that only very rarely exist. They’re seeking answers for what they find hot, what keeps drawing them back, in places that are designed to draw them in commercially, take their money, keep the closet door locked and avoid self-analysis.

It’s amazing how many people come to me just because they need someone they can talk to about their fetish, or because they just want to hear someone say that what they’re into is okay.

I’m thrilled to provide this service, don’t get me wrong. And when it’s appropriate, I will still recommend some of these people to particular service providers. After all, I’m not going to get everyone to ask their wives to dress them in women’s underwear and peg them. For some people, it’s just not going to be possible.

But it continues to be my ideal. The thing I strive for: to bring people’s desires out into the light, to offer them a space where it’s even possible to explore those desires with someone they love, instead of with a stranger.

It’s a weird job, but somebody’s got to do it.

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From the “things I never thought I’d enjoy” department…sounds?

So when I was a pro domme, there were things I simply Would Not Do. Some of them were about legality: I didn’t have legally-defined sex with my clients. Others (and that last one too, in a way) were about my own boundaries: I didn’t have strap-on sex with clients because I liked it too much and found it too intimate. Still others I didn’t do because of a lack of expertise: needleplay falls into this category, though I’d still love to try it. And then there were the things that just squicked me: I would not give enemas, change diapers, do saline injections, deal with poop or sound urethras.

Well.

I still don’t deal with poop, or at least not in a sexy way. And the other things pretty much still stand. But…oh dear. I seem to have found a new kink in urethral sounding.

It started with a conversation about strange sexual things done during childhood…and before I knew it I was playing around with a very clean thermometer, a lube shooter, and one of my favorite cocks…and my oh my. He actually wasn’t sure how he felt about it in terms of sensation, but said he’d do just about anything for the look I had on my face.

Soon he’d sent me an article on the difference between urethral sounds and uterine dilators, then proceeded to order this nifty silicone toy in the shape of a nail from Mr. S, and this set of uterine dilators, which tend to be cheaper, smoother, shorter and straighter than actual sounds. Not to mention getting all those sizes in one pack! Yee!

Last night I got to play with the dilators for the first time, scrubbing up all doctor-like, using surgical lube, then forgetting all the kinky medical details and marveling at the beauty and power of a smooth piece of cold curved steel sliding seamlessly into the end of his cock…watching him shudder and breathe sharp as it dropped all the way down to his balls. It’s one beautiful thing to fuck a man in the ass. It’s quite another to fuck him in the very thing he usually uses to fuck.

Were I still in the business, I think this would go squarely on the “too intimate for clients” list. Wow.

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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.

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Tuesday Advice: Shifting identities

This week’s question is a doozy, and it comes at a time when I’ve been thinking about the topic of identity a lot. A big post is in the offing about shifting identities, switching, genderfuck, orientation, and a whole bunch of other shit that I found myself navigating this past weekend. But now, to the question.

Dear Delilah,

In the kink scene, we tend to get attached to certain identities – top, bottom, dom, switch, sub, master, slave, crossdresser, straight, bi, queer, and on and on. Sometimes these labels start to feel confining over time, though. What advice would you give to someone who is starting to feel that an old label might not be fitting them so well anymore, but isn’t sure they want to embrace a new one? How related are identity and behavior? How do you communicate the right information to the right people?

Boy, did you ask it. A snarky part of me wants to say, “You sure that’s enough? Anything else??” Because jeebus, this is a big question, and it’s probably going to take me several posts to address it with anything approaching completeness.

But I’ll take a first stab at it.

Others might disagree, but I tend to think that identity and behavior are very strongly related. I just happened to listen to an episode of Dan Savage’s podcast today, on which a lesbian called him out for saying that anyone can identify any way they want, even if they are a woman in a relationship with a man who wants to call herself a dyke. The caller said that such a person “doesn’t get” to call herself a dyke. Dan respectfully disagreed and said that yes she does, but the caller of course has the right not to believe her.

I for one think it’s absurd when someone is so attached a particular identity that they insist on hanging onto it for dear life even when their actions indicate a different identity. If it’s an exception to a general rule, that’s one thing: I would never say that a butch who femmes out from time to time shouldn’t call herself butch, or that a straight man who wants to touch someone else’s cock once in a while must identify as bisexual. But I don’t think that a woman who is happily married to a man can really sincerely continue to say that she’s a lesbian. Or rather: she can feel free to do that, I’m just not going to believe her.

On the flip side of this, though, is the closeted gay man who’s married to a woman and has fourteen kids. His actions strongly indicate a straight identity – which, after all, is what he is desperately trying to promote. That doesn’t mean that he is not gay. However, it once again shows the strong relationship between identity and actions.

Identity, after all, is mutable, and it’s a tool. People talk about and use identity as a way of presenting themselves in the world: I have a bisexual identity, you have a black identity, he has a gay identity, she has a Latina identity, and so on. Your identity is a combination of who you are, and how you want to be seen. Some aspects of identity cannot be changed: an African American person is 99% of the time visible as such, and so will be seen as such regardless of how deeply that person decides to embrace and promote that identity. Some racial identities must be more actively constructed: not every Hispanic person “looks” Hispanic, and not every person of Latin American descent identifies as Latino. Sexual orientation can also be immutable, as in some gay people who knew from the time they were five years old. Or it can shift over time, as the bisexual who later realizes she’s functionally a lesbian, or the lesbian who gradually opens to the possibility of male partners.

And so on. But another part of identity is decided upon by the individual. That visible African American may grow up in an immediate culture that is mostly white, and grow up queer and kinky. That person may feel more resonance with a queer kinky identity than he does with his black identity. This doesn’t mean he stops being African American (and dealing with all that that brings in this culture); just that it’s not the part of his makeup that he emphasizes. That closeted man from the example above may finally come out, at which point he had traded his straight identity for a gay one.

One of the dangers of shifting identities within the kink scene, of course, is that people will just think you’re flaky. If you’ve been in the scene as a straight female submissive for like five years, and suddenly you demand to be addressed as Mistress McToppyDomme by all the women you’re hoping to fuck, that can cause some spinning heads, and like Dan Savage’s caller, you might not be believed. But one of the advantages of the kink scene is that you can enact those aspects of your identity you want known in public, so that over time, people who may have seen you one way will begin to see other possibilities.

Which brings me (finally) to my advice: if you’re tired of a given label, if you feel your identity is shifting, then simply act on it. Be the change you want to see in yourself, to paraphrase. If you want people to know that you’re not just that one thing that everyone thinks you are, then do other things in front of those people. Even better: suggest that you might like to do those other things with those people. Start with people you already trust, who know you well and will have your back. And if you don’t feel the need to take on a new label, but simply to softly shed one you’ve outgrown…then go naked for a while. Humans are great at labeling – too good, in fact – and if you need a new one, I’ve no doubt it will appear.

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Identity management

Sorry for the long hiatus; holidays, Martian death flu, and all manner of other drama have kept me from this page. Hoping to remedy that and crank out more regular material.

Ages ago, a friend asked me how I manage privacy online. See, I have a few online identities. Some things I write are public, some aren’t. Some are under my real name, and some under this one. Some I write in a place where anyone can see it, unless I lock the post so only friends can see it. But what made this question interesting for my questioner was the fact that sometimes, I write under my real name about the same topics I cover here.

So what’s the deal? How do I decide which parts of me are public and which aren’t?

It’s probably telling that I received this question in October and still haven’t answered it.

Recently, I kind of figured out the short answer to this: as my real name, I write about topics pertaining to sexuality and relationships; as Delilah, I write about topics pertaining to my sexuality and relationships. There’s a third problem, too: there are aspects of my relationships that I consider so private and precious that I don’t even write about them here – particularly because I know that so many of my readers know me in real life. I’ve therefore published erotica under still another name, and blog in total secrecy (nobody knows the username but me) about the deepest stuff.

It’s probably also telling that I feel the need to have all of this material out there, even if nobody ever reads it or knows that it’s me writing it. What can I say: I’ve been a journaler and a maker of stories for as long as I can remember, and when I don’t write down what’s happened to me, the intensity of my experiences (which often, surprise surprise, are in the sexual realm) slip from my consciousness quickly. It’s long been important to me to have a narrative of my life, something to look back on so I can see where I’ve been and remember what’s happened to me.

My friend asked whether it ever gets weird when worlds collide: like if people I know socially start buying videos from my site, or people who have seen my writing assume things about me before meeting me. The answer to this is “sort of.” This has actually occurred a couple of times just in the past weeks. Someone who knows me socially contacted me in my capacity as Delilah for some kink consultation in person. And someone who found my writing under my real identity contacted me and seems to be assuming, because I’m poly, that I would want to meet him.

Neither of these things is “weird,” per se, but it has been and continues to be a kind of tightrope walk, figuring out what I want the whole damn world to know and what I really would rather only my friends know and what I need to write about so that someone will read it, but nobody needs to know that it’s me writing it.

I’m a great admirer of Maymay in this regard (as in many other regards), in that he has the flaming gonads to be completely out online and in every other area of his life. But even he remarks that he doesn’t write very much about the literal ins and outs of his own sex life. He’s about half a generation behind me in age, and I’m sincerely hoping that his bravery and forthrightness is a sign of things to come. For my part, though, I still can’t deal with the idea of my family finding out that I was a sex worker. I’m not sure what that says about me.

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