Month: May 2014

An open letter to J.

who wants all the kinksters to stop promoting BDSM on the UU poly feed.  Best of British luck with that, darlin’.

 

letter begins…

I guess it all depends on whether you consider the uu-poly group to be a place to talk about kink.  I do, but it’s for the moderators to decide, if we aren’t a democracy.

I used to take what I thought was a moral stance on the subject of other people’s wacky sex practices, in line with how I was raised, of course, but once I figured out that what ‘paraphilias’ are, is a normal human response to various kinds of stress, plus wiring, plus repetition, I quit thinking it was necessarily a bad thing.  The moral issue is not whether it’s healthy by a narrow definition, but whether there is genuine consent.  Human beings of their nature have long childhoods and are incredibly social, and so experimentation with hierarchy in terms of dominance and submission is not just normal, it’s inevitable. And along with inevitable, we will get extreme. 

Paraphilias have been defined as a trifecta of sexuality that is extreme and dangerous and abnormal.  Funny thing; I think of rape the same way and yet we have a large constituency of people, both men and women, who think rape is part of the normal course of events – and a desirable one too, as it allows rapists to provide tools of social control for the society at large.
If we want to travel down the path of having our sexuality defined by those who will profit by othering us, then we’re getting off the UU train entirely.

In that regard the kink community has been leading the way for a number of years with an emphasis on consent for scenes. Humans contain a multitude of sexual possibilities and as long as all parties are able to give and obtain agreement for activities my opinion on whether those activities are harmful is just wind.
Paraphilias concerning those who cannot by nature give consent (children, animals, unconscious and disabled, as examples) need a better class of scientists and therapists to figure out what’s going on so it can be controlled for the benefit of all, because the people who came up with the DSM have harmed our culture almost irreparably; each successive iteration has been an object lesson in legitimized othering. I could start raving about the drug companies too and how long it took to get queerness out of the DSM but that rant’s been done better elsewhere.
Paraphilias involving consenting adults who play in safe spaces and in a fashion that isn’t a menace to public health are not my concern. Which is why I choose to call THOSE paraphilias kink, and will use the freighted medical term for people who get off forcing their violent imaginations and lust on those weaker than themselves.  Solitary paraphiliacs I just feel sorry for but I always was a softie.
I don’t want to other people.  Draw the circle wide, friends. We all need love and acceptance, and we have to model it, whether we feel like punching each other out occasionally or not, or want the (pick a minority group) – oops, I meant kinksters – to leave the room while we’re talking about our serious matters.
Letter ends
At least I didn’t say tone troll, evoke Hitler or tell her to go fuck herself, so there’s that.  I didn’t have permission to quote her letter, which was a masterpiece of liberal uptightness, srsly.

Pictures of food

There is a long standing tradition of people showing other people food on the internet.  And there’s a long standing tradition of people being bitchy about it.  If you google “people who take pictures of food” you will get an assortment of comments, some going so far as to say that it’s a sign of mental (deep breaths) illness, that it’s selfish, that it’s faux-arty, that it’s a status thing, that it’s a hyped up kind of cluelessness with a side of privilege.  I suppose it could be all of those things, but I like putting the scalpel in past the bone.

I return to my original thesis, which is that every human behaviour has its roots in biology, and that the cultural overlay determines how we express that biology. Nature brings the players and the culture determines the game, so to speak.

From the top; in a state of nature, human beings share food with close family and kin; the traditions of hospitality, of sharing food with strangers, goes back so far that in my view it’s one of the behaviours that allowed humans to differentiate themselves from animals when we became self aware.  Bonobos, who share just under 99 percent of human DNA, share food, trade food and bribe with food among and across troupes.   In a state of nature which includes the internet, we will share virtual food with our virtual friends, most of whom exist in real life and aren’t going to judge the living fuck out of us for wanting to prove that we get to eat yummy food.  The reasons for doing it are the same as we do in real life.  We will share out the yummy stuff, and that is what we prefer to remember.  I don’t see people posting pictures of the power bar that prevented them from passing out from low blood sugar, or the lunch they brought from home; they share pictures of high quality calories and artful tastiness.  Sometimes if they get something gross they will share a picture of it; “I bit into my KFC and lookie here at the special treat they gave me!” because they were disgusted and they know that even total strangers will see the picture and feel the disappointment, disgust and aggravation they felt.

Pictures of food are a completely normal and natural movement of our biology into technological space. You can shame people into doing it less, but you aren’t going to stop them, and even the people who say they never do it or find it really offputting occasionally do it.  Enough with the shame.  We’re sharing food, and IF YOU WERE HERE you could have some. I’d really like you to join me!

Paddy’s wake starts at six on Friday.  Mike and I are going.  It is going to be very tough and probably some fun too, as wakes often are. We must love each other while we can.

Had a lovely long chat with Katie and a briefer one with mOm to catch her up, yesterday.  Now to see if I can get Jeff to watch Costumes of Assholes with me.

 

 

Sorrow

Paddy’s dead; she died last night holding her daughter Steph’s hand.  I was supposed to go visit her but working full time and not having a car – I said – prevented me.  Now I feel very stupid.  Visiting the sick is something you do without feeling sorry for yourself.  I will give some money to an organization that assists young genderqueer people in her honour, and ask for some peace on the subject.

Paddy was my buddy Mike’s former mom in law.