Another great post, this one on sex positivity.
I just re-read Shame Affirmative, Redux and... damn, do I love it.
It's old, and I'm sure I've linked it before, because it's amazing. But I re-read it, and -- amazing, amazing. Best thing I can think of to demonstrate why "sex positive" is a valid label and not a mere reactionary insult to anti-porners.
One thing that really resonates with me is this:
It was through the sex wars of the 80s that I learned to be a feminist on the ground. I learned the sex wars as seen through the prism of class warfare. There were people telling me and my kind - we’d be called an interracial community of genderqueers today - that we were disgusting embarrassments to the movement. Our sex and behavior were not right. We weren’t women. We weren’t “proper”. This is code for: you aren’t middle class, white, and properly behaved about your sexuality; you’re not women. Some of us were already aware of this growing up. If you are poor and working class, you quickly learn that you are the kind of ‘trash’ with whom certain men will do their thing, the thing they wouldn’t do with ‘their kind’.
I'm not lower-class myself, but I came into BDSM in a college town in the country. There was a little bit of something similar: the educated, know-it-all, rich-y kids attending the really good school, and the townies, who most of us made fun of.
When I came into SM, it was a group in town. I hung with the townies. And there were some real class differences between my daily life at school and the people I hung out with, learned from, and beat because it's hot. Talking to other kinky folks I often hear that most perverts are high class: we can afford floggers and very expensive leather clothes, corsets, etc.
But the people I knew were not those people. They were rural folk, some of whom had never heard much at all about highfalutin stuff like feminism. I remember being a little scared of them and quite a bit classist -- "what the fuck is wrong with their teeth?" most notably. When my parents later met the guy I ended up dating, who was quite poor compared to most of us attending school on our parents' dimes, many years my senior, and a townie -- oh, the teeth thing. "That person must be someone who can't take care of himself if his teeth look like that. Isn't it gross to kiss him? How disgusting."
"Dental care is expensive. I never realized how much until now."
"EUUUURGH!"
etc. etc.
Yes, you can kiss someone with decayed or stained teeth and not catch the Poor Folks' Cooties Disease O' Evil. Really.
Anyhoo. Pervy townies.
Quite a few were good country girls and boys who'd never questioned that women submit to men, and discovered that could be made into a shitload of fun if you bought yourself a couple paddles for cheapish from the local guy who makes 'em.
And learned by meeting the rest of us that some people are gay, some people are poly, some straight or bi women dominate their men.
Their minds got opened by being involved in the alternative lifestyle, not by theory or by sudden understandings of social oppression. They went to the meetings, met someone nice, discovered he kisses and fucks other boys and went "oh hell, we're all weird motherfuckers here," and moved on with a more open mind.
So for me... eh. I feel like I'm overstepping if I say I know all about the class dynamics of it. I don't -- I wasn't a townie. I did most of my kink out in the country when I wasn't at home with my lover -- rural Virginia or West Virginia. But I wasn't them.
But they were my friends, my leather community, my tribe. Going back to town and hearing the younger, richer, more feminist women tell me that the screen savers they filled up with porn and looped when they threw play parties was a problem... never felt right. That was a country-boy Master's idea of fun. Maybe it wasn't great -- I have some thoughts both about porn and the porn the person I have in mind picked -- but it sure as hell wasn't about sending messages. It was about how nice it is that in a room full of perverts you can proudly display what you like, not keep it hidden and stashed away -- and some of them might like it, too.
Going back to school and hearing the other women scold me for getting used to the porn, for liking some of it -- well, in addition to "Noneya biz!" it also felt like here we are in an ivory tower deciding what other people's lives should look like. That what they consider manners are sexist, even when they're friendly and loving to dominant woman me. That their friendliness and openness and the fact that at least one of my best friends went from being raised strict Baptist to being kinda fundie but bi and kinky and open to just about anyone else's way of life (and a top!)... wasn't enough.
And for me? Fuck that, yes it was. It was people who discovered through living and through fucking and through talking about it the things we all need to know.
I still know kinky rural people. Good old boy Southern whites, more than a few. I myself am from the 'burbs, but this is Virginia. You can't be a perv here and not interact with people like that unless you hole yourself up in DC and never come out.
And when I hear other over-educated women pissing and moaning about the things we all do, I not only feel insulted but also keep seeing in my mind that "We're better than the townies, we're good and proper" attitude -- that means ignoring what manners mean to friends of mine who were raised very differently.
Sex positive? Yes, please.
It's old, and I'm sure I've linked it before, because it's amazing. But I re-read it, and -- amazing, amazing. Best thing I can think of to demonstrate why "sex positive" is a valid label and not a mere reactionary insult to anti-porners.
One thing that really resonates with me is this:
It was through the sex wars of the 80s that I learned to be a feminist on the ground. I learned the sex wars as seen through the prism of class warfare. There were people telling me and my kind - we’d be called an interracial community of genderqueers today - that we were disgusting embarrassments to the movement. Our sex and behavior were not right. We weren’t women. We weren’t “proper”. This is code for: you aren’t middle class, white, and properly behaved about your sexuality; you’re not women. Some of us were already aware of this growing up. If you are poor and working class, you quickly learn that you are the kind of ‘trash’ with whom certain men will do their thing, the thing they wouldn’t do with ‘their kind’.
I'm not lower-class myself, but I came into BDSM in a college town in the country. There was a little bit of something similar: the educated, know-it-all, rich-y kids attending the really good school, and the townies, who most of us made fun of.
When I came into SM, it was a group in town. I hung with the townies. And there were some real class differences between my daily life at school and the people I hung out with, learned from, and beat because it's hot. Talking to other kinky folks I often hear that most perverts are high class: we can afford floggers and very expensive leather clothes, corsets, etc.
But the people I knew were not those people. They were rural folk, some of whom had never heard much at all about highfalutin stuff like feminism. I remember being a little scared of them and quite a bit classist -- "what the fuck is wrong with their teeth?" most notably. When my parents later met the guy I ended up dating, who was quite poor compared to most of us attending school on our parents' dimes, many years my senior, and a townie -- oh, the teeth thing. "That person must be someone who can't take care of himself if his teeth look like that. Isn't it gross to kiss him? How disgusting."
"Dental care is expensive. I never realized how much until now."
"EUUUURGH!"
etc. etc.
Yes, you can kiss someone with decayed or stained teeth and not catch the Poor Folks' Cooties Disease O' Evil. Really.
Anyhoo. Pervy townies.
Quite a few were good country girls and boys who'd never questioned that women submit to men, and discovered that could be made into a shitload of fun if you bought yourself a couple paddles for cheapish from the local guy who makes 'em.
And learned by meeting the rest of us that some people are gay, some people are poly, some straight or bi women dominate their men.
Their minds got opened by being involved in the alternative lifestyle, not by theory or by sudden understandings of social oppression. They went to the meetings, met someone nice, discovered he kisses and fucks other boys and went "oh hell, we're all weird motherfuckers here," and moved on with a more open mind.
So for me... eh. I feel like I'm overstepping if I say I know all about the class dynamics of it. I don't -- I wasn't a townie. I did most of my kink out in the country when I wasn't at home with my lover -- rural Virginia or West Virginia. But I wasn't them.
But they were my friends, my leather community, my tribe. Going back to town and hearing the younger, richer, more feminist women tell me that the screen savers they filled up with porn and looped when they threw play parties was a problem... never felt right. That was a country-boy Master's idea of fun. Maybe it wasn't great -- I have some thoughts both about porn and the porn the person I have in mind picked -- but it sure as hell wasn't about sending messages. It was about how nice it is that in a room full of perverts you can proudly display what you like, not keep it hidden and stashed away -- and some of them might like it, too.
Going back to school and hearing the other women scold me for getting used to the porn, for liking some of it -- well, in addition to "Noneya biz!" it also felt like here we are in an ivory tower deciding what other people's lives should look like. That what they consider manners are sexist, even when they're friendly and loving to dominant woman me. That their friendliness and openness and the fact that at least one of my best friends went from being raised strict Baptist to being kinda fundie but bi and kinky and open to just about anyone else's way of life (and a top!)... wasn't enough.
And for me? Fuck that, yes it was. It was people who discovered through living and through fucking and through talking about it the things we all need to know.
I still know kinky rural people. Good old boy Southern whites, more than a few. I myself am from the 'burbs, but this is Virginia. You can't be a perv here and not interact with people like that unless you hole yourself up in DC and never come out.
And when I hear other over-educated women pissing and moaning about the things we all do, I not only feel insulted but also keep seeing in my mind that "We're better than the townies, we're good and proper" attitude -- that means ignoring what manners mean to friends of mine who were raised very differently.
Sex positive? Yes, please.