Buckle in: this is a long one. Content note: contains talk about racism, sexism, femmephobia, misogyny. ... There's a logical fallacy dubbed informally the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, otherwise known as an appeal to purity. It's often employed by folks wanting to protect a group they identify with or belong to; insisting that no "true" …
So, I live with a fun combination of maladies who often compete to see who can give me the most dramatic brain-fog, and which can give me the murkiest, least-effective sense of motivation. That overwhelming sensation of difficulty in crossing the threshold from "should do it" to "am doing it"? It's also known as: executive …
Continue reading "living with executive dysfunction: some habit-making strategies"
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of conflating “femme” and “female”. I get the vibe that most people doing this are making an attempt to be (if a bit ham-handedly) inclusive. And that’s cool! But, this isn’t accurate. Femme is an explicitly queer identity that refers to a person who identifies and performs in a …
The following account is not my story and I did not have this experience. The following story is reposted with permission from a private Facebook group of which I am a part. I am sharing it here because this account is incredibly important, and emblematic of greater problems at large. "I was walking home (NYC) …
Continue reading "Helping, Not Harming: Against “Personal Responsibility”"
lately there's been a rumor. there's been a whisper around. it's not new, but it's been news, just whispered in my ear through matte and glittered lips. it's arrested me like a manicured hand circled around my wrist. it's gotten me stuck like honey, and woven into her webs. i catch it in glimmerings in …
I've always been suspicious of the idea of the "old guard". While we may all root from separate but connected groups of post-WWII kinky gay men, there really is no codified "way it used to be" that completely holds true when you ask everyonein the leather or BDSM community. There is no singular "old way." There …
Continue reading "The Digital Age And the Fracturing of Leather’s “Old Guard”."
CW: discussion of r*pe, sexual assault --- I'm a bisexual woman. I'm also kinky, and polyamorous. Those second two are important parts of my identity, but the first one is what I'd like to talk about today. I want to talk today about some pretty basic shit: assumptions. So, here's a sobering statistic: 61% (!!) …
I got a message on OKCupid from a man today. It wasn't a copy-paste job (huzzah!) and he indicated in a few points that he'd actually read my profile! Off to a decent start. Then, this: "I am quite intrigued about the kink/polyamourous portions [of my profile] as well. I wouldn't mind an introduction. It's always something …
Continue reading "No, I’m Sorry, But I Won’t Be Your Kinky Tour Guide"
When I was young & lacked nuanced understanding of gender, "bisexual" was first word that made sense to me to describe how I felt. I liked boys, but was irrepressibly drawn to girls. I liked, as I understood, both. I learned that "bi" implied "two", so I adopted it, at least internally. Sometime around the …
eudaemonia: jewelweed says 