Life Lessons I Learned From Kink

1)      If you don’t ask for what you want, you’ll never get it. No one else can read your mind, understand your desires, or negotiate your salary unless you fucking speak up. I’ve learned this the hard way. I didn’t know how to tell my potential supervisor what my expectations are for a job in an interview. I didn’t know how to tell my partner that I really want Mexican food, even though I knew she had her heart set on Thai. But I’ve been reminded, time and time again, that if I want a spanking, I have to ask for it. Bouncing my ass in the air is not a clear enough signal. I think if we were all taught to express our needs and desires in bed – and outside of bed – the world would run smoother.  You might not get what you ask for, but if you don’t ask, you’re definitely not going to get it.

2)     Negotiation is a vital part of any relationship. I remember, clearly, the first time someone actually sat me down before we had sex and asked me what I liked, what I was up for, what I wasn’t interested in. It was a groundbreaking moment for me. Now I’ve come to expect this kind of negotiation before sex. Negotiation in bed requires the same skill set as negotiation in a board room, in a marriage, or in any other sort of relationship. If you aren’t having these conversations, you should be. If you’re too scared to initiate these conversations, then it’s time to take a good, hard look at how that is negatively affecting your life. I’ve been notorious for much of my life for waxing and waning when someone asks me what I want. Kink has drastically helped me navigate these conversations. I’ve learned to categorize what I absolutely will do, what I’m flexible about, and what I absolutely won’t do. Ask someone from the State Department what they do, and they’ll tell you the same thing – communicate and negotiate. Life skills, baby.

3)      Get and give consent. I cannot stress this enough. Consent is a pervasive act in my life; it does not end or begin with my bedroom door. I ask for consent when releasing medical information, consent when asking highly personal questions, consent when engaging in any sex act. I think agency is incredibly powerful, and yet, we often take it for granted. We run through other people’s boundaries – social, emotional, physical, sexual – either without regard or without recognizing our recklessness. We tell children “because I said so.” We enforce social rules and expectations on each other. We don’t actively teach people in our culture how to ask for consent, nor how to give it. I find my relationships with clients, with friends, and with lovers are deeper and more heartfelt when I ask for consent, verbally or nonverbally. For example, I’ll ask a client, “Are you comfortable discussing this (very personal traumatic) event with me?” instead of assuming I can jump right in. I’ll run my hands over a lover’s body in the morning, waiting for them to make a move to signal that they do want to get it on before breakfast. If the answer is no or the response is clearly not inviting, then I walk away. It’s really that simple.

4)     Know your boundaries. In the kink world, we have a brilliant, simple signal for tapping out – safewords. Unfortunately, there isn’t always an easy exit button in real life. When my boss is pushing me to take a task I can’t handle, when I’m crying in a corner because  my mother is insane, or when I’m so overwhelmed I can’t even function… well, there’s no safeword to save me. What I’m finding is, in kink, I use my safeword when I’m absolutely pushed to the point of not being able to take any more. In real life, that’s almost too late. What I can do, though, is set some boundaries. I know my mother upsets me, so I set a limit on how much time I will spend with her on the phone. I know I overcommit myself to advocacy work, so I set a clear “no” when I know I have exactly enough on my plate. Before you find a lover (or anything and anyone else) is pushing you too close to the edge, let them know what the edge is. Let yourself know what the edge is.

5)      Be able to say no, and don’t play with someone who can’t do the same. I’m horrible at saying no. I am such a “yes” person. Yes, I’ll make cupcakes for the class. Yes, I’ll take a meeting an hour after I’m supposed to get off work. Yes, I’ll show up at your event, help you plan your advocacy project, help you write your thesis, and pick you up from the middle of nowhere at 2am. Except…. I find myself wanting to say no. Dreaming about saying no. Saying “yes” and meaning “no” is not acceptable. It negates the whole point of consent and agency. A few months ago, I was playing with someone who had probably never used a safeword. I wasn’t sure, but she has a hardass attitude, and I had a feeling she felt she had a lot to prove to me – and to herself. So, I put her in a situation – with her consent – and then I pushed her to use her safeword, to break that unspoken expectation that she wouldn’t need it. Safewords are useless if you aren’t comfortable with using them. I don’t want to wait to cross your boundaries – or seriously hurt you – simply because you don’t feel comfortable using a safeword. Learning to say “no” is empowering. It ties in almost everything in this list – negotiation, knowing your boundaries, etc. Just like with asking for what you want, if you don’t say what you don’t want, well, you’ll get a heaping pile of it. I practice this skill often lately. “No, I can’t be at every single event this week. No, I can’t babysit your kid for free. No, I can’t want to use bacon-flavored lube.” See, try it.

6)      Don’t make assumptions. I had a friend and lover once who was built like a linebacker. He was roughly 5’11 and a very muscular 200+ pounds. His gaze could pierce a brick wall. He looked like he could dominate anything and anyone who came his way. But he was the most sweet, gentle, playful slave. I also had a boss once, a skinny toothpick of a gay man, who worked for a non-profit serving people with disabilities. He was the most homophobic, sexist, disablist asshole I’ve ever met. If you aren’t rolling your eyes yet, you should be. Appearance is definitely not an indicator of identity, beliefs, or desires, and yet, we make these assumptions every day. I do it, you do it, we all fail miserably at this lesson. Tops and bottoms, doms and subs, slaves and masters don’t have defining physical characteristics. (Neither do sexists and disablists. Assholes come in all shapes and sizes, and, apparently, all professions.) As an ex of mine used to say, “When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.” Heh. Smartass she was.

Baby, Baby, the Stars Are Shining For You

"I want to get her a toy. What kind of toys does she have?" Megan gestures toward the baby I'm rocking. 


"She doesn't have any yet," the baby's mother, Kat, answers. 


Kat reminds me of a Tegan-and-Sara-look-alike. She's around 5'4, average size, cropped dark hair, with plugs in her ears and swim trunks with a basketball jersey. She doesn't look like she just had a child, and it takes me a minute to put the pieces together. 


"Are you her mother?" I ask.


"Yep. My first and only kid." She laughs. "And she looks nothing like her father or me." I don't know her background or her partner, nor do I want to pry. Considering this crowd, it would be easy to assume she's a lesbian by looks alone, but that's clearly a mistaken assumption. 


"Oh, Oh, I want to buy her first Barbie doll!" Megan pulls her towel around her white bikini bottoms and redirects the conversation. We're at a pool party for a friend, and almost everyone present is queer- or lesbian-identified. Megan is a stereotypically pretty girl, thin and petite with waist-length dark hair. 


Kat looks slightly averse to this suggestion. "No, she doesn't need Barbies. She'll have legos and boys' toys. They're much more fun." 


I'm holding everything in to keep from laughing at the shock on Megan's face. Aside from the fact that a six-week-old child doesn't need any toy with tiny plastic parts, I can't keep my big mouth shut. I glance up from the sleeping infant toward Kat. "I don't blame you for not wanting to give her gendered toys."


"But she needs a Barbie doll. Why can't she have one?" Megan's response comes out almost indignant.


"Needs one for what? She can have legos and fischer price toys and dump trucks and all the cool toys I had as a kid."


"But every little girl needs Barbies!"


"I didn't play with Barbies, and I turned out fine. I was a normal American kid." I'm caught off-guard by her statement. I like the idea of the average American child playing with all kinds and types of activities and toys. But, as I rolled through the McDonald's drive thru earlier that day, I can attest to the fact that the most popular restaurant in America still sells toys based on a gender dichotomy: pink Strawberry Shortcake dolls for girls and light sabers and Star Wars action figures for boys. As does Walmart, Target, and every other retailer catering to the "average American child."


Megan's butch girlfriend wanders up, and Megan turns to her, almost pouting. "Kat won't let me buy her daughter a Barbie. She has no toys! She needs a Barbie doll." Megan's girlfriend takes a sip of her beer, barely registering Megan's concern. "Ok, baby." 


"If you want to buy her something pink, then she can have pink legos." Kat responds to Megan, though clearly, Megan's comments were not meant for her. 


"Pink legos! Why are legos so exciting?" Megan turns back to wrap her arms around her girlfriend. "But don't you think every little girl needs a Barbie doll?"


Megan's girlfriend smiles down on the tiny child, wrapped up in a blanket and sucking on a pacifier. "She's got a great mohawk." 


Kat laughs. "My mother makes fun of her for having such short hair. She keeps telling me she looks like a boy. The other day she goes, 'I just know she's going to be a lesbian with hair like that.' I can't believe she said that! I was like, 'Mom. She's six weeks old. She doesn't look like anything but a baby.'" 


We all laugh, but there's a register of shock in the laughter. I don't even know how to respond. I can't help but think that if this sweet child, like most American children, can't escape the confines and pressures of the gender binary at six weeks old -- along with the assumption that gender non-conformity is a label for sexuality -- I can't imagine what an uphill battle she has ahead. 








*(I have to admit that I didn't write in a description of their bodies and clothes to color their ideas of gender, but simply because that was the reality I witnessed.)

I've Had Just Enough Time

I can tell getting off birth control is fucking with me emotionally. I never realized how large of a role my hormones play in my emotional and mental health until I got on birth control at 18; it was a massive difference. It's not as bad as it was then, thankfully, but still a mess. In the last three weeks, I can cry at the drop of a hat. There's this song that comes on the radio every once in awhile (as if I need more reasons to hate the radio) about dying young, and every time I hear it, I think of Will and turn into a messy puddle. I second guess myself, constantly, and find that I'm struggling to talk about my feelings even more than usual, which means I don't. At all. I'm spending way, way too much time in my head lately, and not in a good way.

I find I spiral out often, letting conversations that made me upset or hurt or angry come back up, having the same debates in my head, even though I know I need to let it go. I find myself asking philosophical questions that put me nowhere but in a hole with a shovel, looking for answers I can't find. I held a focus group last week, that along with a culmination of other factors, left me in such an upset and angry state that I couldn't talk about it for two days. I find I still have some of that anger balled up. I realize some of it is very justified -- the anger isn't just me, it's a response to a lot of bullshit from my old job, frustration with the situation we're working with and my own concerns about the people involved -- but any time my anger becomes this powerful, I have to walk away. I have to step away and shut down and realize that my response is not productive, and at the end of the day, it's not hurting anyone but me. I find myself doing this a lot lately. Mentally checking out of conversations, putting up a wall around myself, censoring a lot of what I want to say. It must be a form of hell to be around. I hate how short-sighted and insular I can become. It's not a fun experience for anyone.

I'm taking a lot of this as a sign that I need to walk away from some of the LGBT work I've been doing in the past two years in NOLA. I do this. I wander away, let go and disappear underground for awhile, then when I feel called back, I return. Lately it's become overwhelming to realize I'm dating and playing and working in the same circles. Everyone's got an opinion on what queer activism and society and social responses should look like, because we're all personally invested. I get it. I find myself getting wedged often between my beliefs and convictions, the convictions of my closest friends, powerful institutions and organizations, and the often biting opinions of people I work with -- all at the expense of either a) myself and my mental health or b) the very people we're all working to help, who are often the most disenfranchised in the community. Eh. It's exhausting. I get tired of having to constantly justify who I work for, what I believe, what I'm doing to make things better, how I'm walking a thin line between opposing viewpoints... and realizing that, when I come home and go out with friends and just want to turn off, I can't. Because those issues are still very present for them, and it comes up often. I find I can't leave my frustrations and anger at work, because my work is my life. I find that I'm having to constantly justify my personal queer identity to strangers as a way of making my work legitimate to people who take one look at me and assume I'm not queer. It's a lot of fighting, at the end of the day, and it comes home with me. I need a break from it.

I'll come back. Queer advocacy and sexual health is my heart and soul, always will be, and I'm like a moth to the flame.

I don't know if it's right to blame my frustration and my sadness all on the birth control. Some of it is probably burn out from my last job. My new job is going fantastic, by the way, and I really believe it was the leap of faith I needed. It's unreal to step off a sinking ship, and turn around, only to find out it was sinking a lot faster than I realized. I didn't understand how much stress I felt from that job until I changed jobs and found that -- wow -- it's such a drastic difference. I actually enjoy going to work, the people I work with, and what I'm doing. I've been busier than ever, working 40 hour weeks and finishing this research contract and going to school and trying to fit a social life in there, too. It's not bad, but I'm guessing the stress of thirteen hour days -- I had four in a row last week, not counting going out on Tuesday and thursday night until 1am -- isn't really aiding anything. Eh. Self-care never was my specialty. It's no wonder I have high blood pressure.

I can blame it on the weather or on my birth control. I can blame it on stress or missing friends. I can blame it on a lack of sleep or living alone or the back pain that makes everything a little more difficult lately. I can say it's the pendulum effect of being so up and on from the last few months or maybe I have inherited bipolarity, though that one I'm doubtful of. But the truth is, I don't really know what it is. I just know I feel haunted, in a way I can't seem to wake up from, and I'm ready for it to end. I'd compare it to going through life under a veil, but that's just a little too close to the bell jar metaphor for me to really feel comfortable about saying that. It's probably the truth. But I'm scared to admit it. I keep telling myself that this will pass, that maybe after a month things will flatten out. I kind of hope so, because this kind of emotional intensity is absolutely exhausting. I imagine sensory integration sensitivity feels like this. My emotions are a little too raw, a little too exposed and easily overstimulated, always on. All the time.

I'll get back to writing about sex soon, I hope. I want to. I've got stories in my head that I need to let out, but unfortunately, they keep getting pushed to the back of the burner lately. I don't want this blog to feel like work, when so much of everything else in my life does. So I'll come back to it. I always do.

Pretty Is as Pretty Does

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend, Jamie, at a birthday party. (I have to set the stage a bit for this story to make sense.) The party was a mix of people -- around 10 queer women and the birthday girl's family, including her sister, cousins, parents, nieces and nephews, and others. Jamie and I were sitting on a swing in the back yard, overseeing a game of beer pong and shooting the shit over some beers. Jamie is thin, about 5'4, and more androgynous than me. I don't know if she identifies as butch, but she'd definitely be masculine-of-center. That day she had on jeans and a t-shirt, nothing fancy. I was dressed up for the St. Patrick's parade that morning, wearing a low-cut pastel green cotton dress and green eyeshadow, and I had beads from the parade around my neck and a green silk flower in my hair.

We were talking about having children and our own families when a young girl, around six-years-old or so, walked up to us. She had a t-shirt and shorts on, and her long hair pulled into a side pony tail. She sat down between us, looked at Jamie, then looked at me. She turned back to Jamie and asked, "Are you a boy or a girl?"

Jamie didn't hesitate. She replied quickly, "I'm a girl."

"But you look like a boy," the child insisted.

I don't remember Jamie's response, but I don't think she had one. The child got up, ran off, and found someone else more interesting to play with. Jamie turned back to me and began to talk about how much she hated when children asked her that question. "Can't they see that I have breasts?" she asked me, and then she got up to find another beer.

A minute or two later, the child returned. I invited her to sit down next to me on the swing, which she did. I gifted her some of the beads I wore from the parade, and she reached out to touch the flower in my hair.

"You're really pretty," she said.

I found myself choking. I wanted to say a thousand things. I wanted to rewind her gender education. I wanted to offer her an answer that didn't replicate the binary she had so succinctly recognized between her interactions with Jamie and I. I wanted to show her that I appreciated the compliment, but at the same time, offer her a space that didn't equate beauty with femininity. I wanted her to know that "pretty" isn't what she should aspire to, and that worshiping femininity as an ideal for beauty is dangerous and masochistic. I wanted her to know that my gender expression isn't the only valid one.

By then, she had run off. I wondered... who am I to decide what this child should believe about gender? Should I try to influence the way she looks at gender, when she's not my child? I tossed this question around for a few days in my head until I found an answer I was satisfied with.

Yes, we are influenced and educated by our parents. But we're also socialized by friends and family, by strangers, by teachers, by social structures and pervasive beliefs held by the dominant majority. We're educated by TV and the internet, books, movies, music. My thoughts would probably be but a drop in the bucket compared to how much media influences her ideas on beauty and gender. This child could one day be my neighbor, my child's friend, my co-worker... who knows. She'll be a voting citizen who decides if those who don't conform to the gender binary deserve rights and respect. She'll possibly be a parent, a teacher, an influence on another child. She's not yet old enough to truly decide if my opinion -- or anyone's -- is valid. But she's making these decisions every day, accepting and rejecting and buying in to beliefs and opinions. She's affected by those beliefs every day. Any and all influence matters. Her beliefs affect mine, my recognition in this society. So yes, it's a careful and thin road to walk, but I do think I should talk with her.


*******

I remember, as a child, feeling fat. I was five, maybe six, years old, and I would sit on the toilet or in the bathtub, staring at my stomach, and hating it.

I remember my neighbor, Miss Susan, telling my mother that if her daughter, Jessica, didn't fit in a size four dress for homecoming, then she would make her lose weight or she couldn't go to the dance.

I remember the girls at summer camp making fun of me for not plucking my eyebrows when I was in 6th grade.

I remember my high school teacher, Mrs. W, catching me in the hallway and telling me that ladies don't wear clothes that show their shoulders. Instead, she said, I should learn to dress like a lady.

I remember dance class, as a child, when the leotards didn't fit me right and I couldn't move my feet and arms gracefully like the other girls. I was distinctly aware of how everything I did was ungraceful. I remember taking another dance class, at 15, at it was like those years of controlled movement suddenly sunk in all at once -- my body could do things it couldn't, years before. But in my mind, I still didn't have the talent, and sometimes, I still hear my teacher telling me that I'll never be any good at ballet, tap, or jazz.

I didn't do femininity right.

There are a thousand moments in my life that are and have been a lesson in gender. For me, for many women, most of those are negative. Girls shouldn't go barefoot or yell too loudly or wear pants with holes. Girls shouldn't have sex, because that's what sluts do. Girls shouldn't wear low-cut clothing or date boys with piercings or smoke cigarettes. Women shouldn't be single. Women shouldn't be childless. Women shouldn't hold the door for men. Women shouldn't walk alone at night.

That's not to say that men don't get lessons in gender -- of course they do! -- or that lessons for men aren't negative -- some definitely are.

The ideals for girls are extremes of femininity. Models. Princesses. Beauty queens. It's how companies sell make up and clothing, cars, beer, and just about every product on earth -- put a "sexy" woman on an ad, and you'll sell it. Women want to be her, men want to be with her. But what does she want? Does anyone care?

I'm reminded, every day, that I carry a certain privilege due to my gender expression. No matter how carefully I walk that line, no matter what my words and actions and beliefs are, my body is marked by gender cues and clothing, and those cues are read and responded to by people who believe strongly in a gender binary. I'm reminded that I face different risks, but more often than not, my gender identity is unquestioned and therefore, less marked and less risky. I'm reminded that the terms we use as compliments -- pretty, beautiful, charming, handsome, gorgeous, cute -- are gendered in a ways that make me profoundly uncomfortable. (I'm still learning how to create my own language out of what is available and to reject using these terms). I'm reminded constantly of my gender expression in queer bars that question my sexuality, and in heterocentric spaces where I pass but still get sexually harassed or feel extremely tokenized and isolated.

At the base of all of this, my experiences and those of many others I've talked to, I find that there's a very harmful ideal of who/what is feminine and who/what is masculine. No one -- trans or cis, male or female, queer or straight, genderqueer or androgynous -- can live up to a binary system of ideals. No woman will ever be "pretty" enough. Yet so many will do anything to achieve that. No queer community which defines its members as only gender normative (like some of Los Angeles bars) or gender non-normative (like places here where I get static) will provide a safe space for all those who are queer. Yet we define and identify those in our community by using gender cues.

If I have a child, I couldn't shield hir from media and strangers, from family members, from all the influences that teach us what gender is and isn't, what's acceptable for hir gender, and how to "properly" express gender. But I know that there are studies showing that adults respond differently to infants depending on their perceived gender. Our ideas of gender start at -- if not before -- birth, and those influences are so very persuasive and strong on young children who can't evaluate and reject opinions and ideas the same way adults can. If I have a child, I would want hir to understand and respect gender expressions of all types. I would want hir to embrace any -- or reject any -- aspect of gender ze wished. I would try my best to make sure ze doesn't feel crushed by a beauty norm ze can't live up to. I would want to offer more than two options, but instead, endless possibilities.

I would want my child to keep having conversations, keep questioning those ideas that we are told to assume.

What I know about gender, my own expression and gender as a social norm, comes from years of experiences and much unlearning. It is an ongoing process. I hope my understand of gender continues to evolve and change as I age, and yet, I hope having these kinds of interactions someday becomes less taxing.

I can imagine a world that doesn't operate within a gender binary. I can. I want to live to see it.

Gender Me Queer

“You should have come with me.” He sits down and takes off his jacket, placing it gingerly across the back of his desk chair.

“Why? Did everything go ok?”

“Because the manager was a lesbian. I didn’t expect that.”

I’m confused. I’m not sure what he’s getting at. “What did you expect?”

“Well, I was walking over there, thinking that when I asked for the manager, I’d probably be talking to a gay man…maybe a straight man? I don’t know. I didn’t expect for it to be a lesbian.”

I don’t miss a beat. “Sounds like you need to examine your gender assumptions.”

The guy in the desk next to me looks up sharply at me and coughs like he’s choking. He’s got a smirk on his face, and his eyes are dancing. I’ve only known him ten minutes, but I think this is a sign he likes me. Or he just finds this conversation fascinating.

I look back to him. I can see the wheels turning. He’s not sure if that was a challenge, a reprimand, or a simple statement.

I break his silence. “You’re sure she was a lesbian?” I’m curious to see how deep his gender assumptions run.

“I think so…” He looks hesitant now. He doesn’t want to get called out again.

“What was she wearing? What did she look like?”

“Short, cropped hair. She was short, I guess. Shorter than me. Had a nose ring.”

“Did she have on a polo?” I smile. I’m sorta fucking with him now.

“Yeah…”

“Probably a dyke.” 

He is not at all sure what to do with my use of that word. “Well, I mean, I think so. At least, that was my first impression…” He trails off, but picks back up quickly. “But I try not to assume. I never can tell down here, because people don’t seem to  fit gay or straight when I think they do, and I just mess it up. New Orleans is so confusing.”

I laugh. I don’t find it so difficult, but I like it when people don’t fit in boxes.

“Like you.” He looks down at his desk. “I mean, I never would have thought you were a lesbian. Or queer, whatever you identify as.” His statement is simple, almost exploratory. It’s not an insult. It’s not personal. I’m not going to shoot him down, because I’ve already challenged his understanding twice – once with my own identity, once by calling him out. This is a form of education, and I want to be careful with the lesson.

“Yeah. I know. I’ve heard that at least three times this week.” Eye roll. “Sometimes I just have to tell them. Ask me in a bar, and I'll get vulgar about it. But that's my life. You know, someone told me once that feminine women are often more vocal because they can't be visible, and butch women will always be more visible, because they don't get an option.”

He looks at me, cocks his head to the right side, thinks about this. “I guess that makes sense.”

I want to add, "But that would change if people would stop conflating gender, sex, and sexuality long enough to realize how you look has little to do with whom you fuck,” but instead, I put my headphones back on, pull up my window with fifteen tabs, and go back to work compiling LGBT resources in Louisiana. Must be nice to be skinny and cute and white and male, where all you have to do is flip a pinky and walk in a gay bar and no one questions the legitimacy of your sexuality.