Heartbreak Nymphomania

rkb:

It’s very possible next year I will need an intern. Don’t email me now, but a heads up. It’d be paid but I’d need someone familiar with the world of sex-positive writing and whip smart. How much do I wish I had that person RIGHT NOW?? Sooooo much. But no time. Maybe that’s the secret: don’t think, just do.

would it be possible to do this remotely? :|

comablood:

If we want to look at the dictionary definition, a slut is someone who is sexually promiscuous or has loose sexual morals (whatever that means). But, in a society where the objectification of women is so rampant and the word slut is not only restricted to sex, but to any other behavior deemed “unnatural” for a woman it’s easy to get lost in the rhetoric of slut-shaming. And just so there is no confusion whatsoever, slut-shaming is when a woman is policed and labeled a slut based on her sexual promiscuity.

Research has been done to show the effects on objectification of women in the media and the results are disturbing. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says, ”Depression, appearance anxiety, body shame, sexual dysfunction, and eating disorders are only a few among the growing list of repercussions.” Contrary to what the dictionary has to say about the word, I have been labeled a slut because I wouldn’t shut up, discussed sex freely, and also had sex (lots of it). As a young woman, I found out being a slut didn’t mean you only had sex; it meant you talked about it, you were opinionated, and you defended yourself. It was the quickest jab to my reputation even at the young age of fifteen.

Anyone can be called a slut, even men. A slut for being assertive. A slut for speaking out. There’s even a Facebook page titled, “Shut Up, You Stupid Slut!” (You can type in the word Slut on Facebook and come up with many pages that are similar) The word slut has been so loosely used in past years that the societal definition has become confusing. But “slut” isn’t alone – there are other words that are being used as a way to weaken a woman’s “good” reputation. Words like, “cunt”, “dyke”, and “whore” are tossed around synonymously with “slut”. I hear it all the time when I’m out in public and men comment on what a woman is wearing by saying, “Oh wow, what a slutty cunt.” Or, “Look at that dress she’s wearing, she looks like such a dyke whore.”

So, am I a slut? I enjoy sex and not necessarily monogamous sex. I am opinionated and will defend myself when I need to. I identify as a queer woman, so when I talk about how I am turned on by those of the same sex, am I also a slut then? Yes and no. By society’s definition, I am most definitely characterized as a “slutty woman.” I like short dresses and skirts. I like to show off cleavage. It’s my choice to do so after all. But, I am also not a slut because sluts do not exist. Sluts are a figment of the patriarchal imagination and in that imagination they are not only sexually active women, they are also thinking, working, productive women who strive to be the best they can be. Again, I say sluts do not exist.

Sluts are a myth.

They myth of “the slut” is that women who like to have a lot of sex are sex-hungry, blindly fucking monsters from hell. Essentially, this idea stems from insecurity from other women and men who are afraid of female sexuality, for whatever reason that may be. It is also scary to a society that values a “good girl” image from all women, from the time a young girl reaches adolescence until the day she dies. The myth of the slut is used to control women so they will sit down, shut up and keep their legs closed. As for men, they are seen as sexually promiscuous by nature.

Herein lies the double standard. Women are sluts. Men are studs. Women are filthy. Men are clean. Jessica Valenti puts it perfectly in He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards A Woman Should Know, when she says “Men who have a lot of sexual partners are studs, Casanovas, pimps, and players. Never sluts.” And even when a man is called a slut, it’s never just slut. It’s either man-slut or man-whore. It’s always derived from the feminine and there is never an original derogatory term for men who have promiscuous sex.

Now, I recently got into a debate with a young woman on my blog. This is what she had to say about “sluts” and my view on them:

“I don’t even think YOU should refer to women who choose to screw whom they please as sluts (the majority of people have that word registered in their brains as something dirty, wrong, disgusting…) but, I can’t prohibit you to stop using any word at that. “Slutting” is -for the most part- quite degrading when done without a single thought. Women who fuck just because they can, without a thought, without evening questioning if the person they’re screwing even has respect for them or sees them as just a whore, concubine, harlot, jezebel… is wrong. I don’t have respect for girls who fuck without thinking a single thought before the deed is done. Who don’t think for themselves; for their own damn good! I’ve seen guys laugh and talk shit about girls they’ve fucked, because no respect was established whatsoever… And, I’ve witnessed sluts hit on my boyfriend, them being fully aware that he’s taken, it makes me sick. No respect for self nor fellow females and couples overall! My point being, know what you’re supporting, every single tiny spec of it.

Everyone has the right to pork whom they please, no problem there but when you’re fucking just anyone without really knowing what kind of a person they are don’t get pissy when they call you names or treat you a certain way; it’s your own fault. Set them straight before it’s too late.

I hope I’m not misunderstood.”

I try to keep my mind open at all times, especially when young women start slut-shaming. I attempt to understand 1) Why are they slut-shaming? 2) What are their experiences? And 3) How can I talk to them about what they are saying and why it is wrong? In this case the first two have been understood, but the third was the hardest to address. While I can’t and won’t link you to the full-on discussion I had with her, I will address how problematic her statement is and how it really does affect young girls and women.

She seems to project this idea of “the slut” which is a mind numbing, blindly fucking monster from hell who wants nothing more than to make every girl’s worst nightmare of stealing their partner come to life. It’s an idea made up in most women’s minds because of insecurities not dealt with head on. She also assumes that because a woman is having sex with more than one person within a short period of time that that woman is somehow not respecting herself. This is straight up offensive to women around the world who have multiple sexual partners, but it is not an unusual stance on the matter. Friends of the past have told me, “Nicole, why don’t you have more self-respect?” But the thing is, I do! I have a lot of it! I have enough self-respect to stick up for my opinions in a public domain, don’t I? And a lot of young women are faced with this argument; that somehow if you have a lot of sex and enjoy it you can’t respect yourself. It’s a lie.

“Everyone has the right to pork whom they please, no problem there but when you’re fucking just anyone without really knowing what kind of a person they are don’t get pissy when they call you names or treat you a certain way; it’s your own fault.”

What really got my blood boiling out of all that she said, was the “it’s your own fault” card. Victim blaming, anyone? This is the epitome of rape culture and the phrase used the most in order to demonize young women according to their sexuality. The really interesting part of the sentence is the fact that she contradicts herself completely by saying everyone has the right to have sex with whom they please, but don’t come crying when you get harassed or called names! She doesn’t explicitly say the word “rape” in there, but it is definitely implied with the rest of what she is saying.

Comments like the one up above are what contributes to a rape culture that is set on limiting a woman’s sexuality. That is not okay with me, as a rape survivor, and other young women like me who aren’t ashamed of their sexuality. Slut is a term that is archaic and needs to be taken back from the community it has so often been used against.

The slut debate has been ignited mostly by the recent Slutwalks taking place all over the country and world. Whether you think it’s a joke, empowering, or you don’t care, the discussion is happening and people are talking about “sluts.” There needs to be a greater emphasis on the double standard between female and male sexuality, and if being a slut means having a lot of sex and enjoying it, then I’m a damned slut.

Slut & proud.

rachelrabbitwhite:

This is from a thread on the comments section of on my piece on male sexuality.

Tomio Black comments:

“I think male submission is much more common than anyone even starts to believe.

As a sexually submissive man, I have to deal with gender [masculinity] issues simply because submissiveness is equated with femininity. 

Where I have had trouble is my submissive nature needs a woman’s permission to advance beyond flirting. So if she wants me to kiss her, she has to take the lead. It just doesn’t work for me otherwise.

I haven’t actually noticed any actual submissive men in pop culture, unless one counts the stereotypical ‘yes, dear’ hen-pecked husband – which is as much a stereotype as anything else out there. There are often shy men depicted culturally, but shyness is not submissiveness – shyness often disappears with growing intimacy.

It is also necessary to separate submissiveness from ‘being comfortable with showing emotion.’ I was socialized as much as any other Western male and I still struggle with my emotions.”

Read more / Join the discussion on male sexuality here

Photo: Mona Kuhn

Comment is edited for flow.

creatrixtiara:

We can’t just rely on “tell rapists not to rape”. Not when we don’t recognise our own actions as abusive, not when we excuse the actions of others as “well they didn’t mean it that way” because we know them. Not when we only notice big-scale attacks and don’t recognise smaller acts of consent-breaking.

We can’t just rely on telling people to watch their drinks or not walk out alone at nights. Not when they don’t neatly correlate to safety numbers. Not when you can do everything perfect and still be attacked, or do everything OK and still be fine.

We can’t just focus on the victim and the perpetrator, not when there’s all the rest of society that intersects with both areas, sometimes both at once, and perpetuates behaviours and attitudes that allow these sorts of attacks to continue.

We all need to be responsible for each other.

The reason I put a focus here on alternative sexuality communities is that firstly: resources are bloody limited. Almost everything’s geared towards the most normative situations - mostly m/f date rape or random male attacker, or in rarer cases gay male rape.

There are even less resources for assault and rape that happens during such situations. What if you were assaulted at a BDSM munch? Raped in a swingers party (like me)? Felt coerced to do something you didn’t want to do at a porn shoot or sex worker appointment? How are you going to find support and assistance when resources aren’t written for you and people make assumptions about how those scenes are so sexually rampant anyway that just being there is “asking for it”, that it’s not possible to be raped or assaulted at a sex party or while working as an escort or stripper, that all BDSM is abuse so why cry?

So as a survivor - and someone fed up to the point of tears and anger - I want to put together a list of community and personal actions, geared towards everyone. Not so much “how to keep yourself safe for yourself”, but how to encourage a culture of safety and support rather than a culture of rape and victim-blaming.

This is only the beginning. Please pass this on, add your ideas, make something of it if you wish (this post is public domain; you don’t even have to credit me).

***

1. Acknowledge that power-based personal violence exists within the community. I’ve noticed such a tendency to fight the mainstream stigma by saying “NO WE DON’T HAVE ABUSE!” that when it does happen no one wants to accept it. It’s as though it’d ruin the party line. But this only serves to alienate and harm the victims further by cutting them off people who they felt may have accepted their weirdness before.

2. Acknowledge that anyone can be an abuser or perpetrator - including respected people, people who have done good, friends & family members, even yourself. No one is exempt from potentially being an abuser, and the sad thing is that because so many of us have had screwed-up education about relationships & sexuality and consent (if ANY) we’re probably being abusive without knowing it. Human beings are complicated, and rapists aren’t a separate species - denial or refutation (“but he can’t be a rapist! he’s an educated man/he runs the community/he created Wikileaks!”) isn’t going to help anybody.

3. Give the benefit of the doubt to the victim/survivor, even if the person being accused is a “good person” or - and especially - it’s someone you know. Yes, people say “but they could be making it up!”. Assuming from the get-go that they’re lying, though, does a disservice to everyone - no one gets heard and only assumptions linger. Work on the temptation to say “but I know them, it can’t happen” - hear them out, get the accused’s perspective if you can (recognising that people tend to retell stories in the way that suits them best), and remember that anyone can commit violence even if they never intended to or wanted to. Separate the action from the person, and it’ll be easier to manage cognitive dissonance.

4. Cease using “attention-seeking” or “drama queen” as an insult or something to look down on. Honestly, this goes in with slut-shaming as one of the big reasons power-based personal violence likely still exists. If anything deserved drama and attention, this would be it! So what if they’re being a harpy, or if they’ve been dramatic in the past over silly stuff? It’s still a serious matter, not something to be brushed off, even if it sounds to you like something trivial. (“He only said hi to her in the elevator!”)

5. Recognise that power-based personal violence can happen in a variety of ways, within various dynamics. It’s not just about a man jumping from the bushes. It’s a Dom expecting the sub to never safeword because that’s “not what subs do”. It’s between two women at a ladies’ only play party. It’s the client that shoves his finger up a stripper’s cunt. It’s the agent that sends their escort out to see a client that is known to be predatory. It’s the burlesque dancer that picks a non-consenting stranger to give a lapdance to, expecting them to enjoy it (this is really problematic, folks, but I know this happens a lot). It’s the newbie porn star pressured by their more experienced peers to do what they’re not comfortable with because it pays more. It’s the teachers yelling at their students whenever the student brings up a problem. It’s between a 40-year-long relationship, or between newlyweds. It’s so many things; things that don’t get discussed or talked about.

6. Respect the choices victims/survivors make with regards to reporting, self-care, or association. Not everyone is comfortable going to the police. Some survivors may choose to maintain personal relationships with their abusers for whatever reason (material survival, a decision to work through the issue together, anything). Some may disassociate from the community entirely. Some may indulge in activities that don’t look “typical” for a grieving survivor, such as partying or going on holiday or doing anything fun. Some may return to life as usual very quickly; some may never get over it. Even if their methods of coping seem idiosyncratic to you, understand that everyone has their own way of dealing, and respect that.

7. Talk about these things in the community, while respecting privacy, and acknowledge those that open up to you. There were a couple of people in the Brisbane kink scene who had talked about issues of abuse and how the BDSM scene was really close and etc, so I contacted them to share my story and get support. Until now I have not heard anything. Zilch. Nada. Crickets. It was very disheartening and added to my feelings of grief and shame. It takes a lot for people to reveal something so personal and painful to someone else; many go their whole lives without ever revealing such stories. Respect it for the honour that it is and respect any requests they make of you. As for community discussions - I’m not necessarily talking about Name’em and Shame’em, that depends on your individual communities, but definitely have discussions on how to deal with these things together. You may not feel like a community in the traditional sense, but we are all a community of human beings and it’s our responsibility to care for each other anyhoo, even moreso when we have things in common that others may not be able to understand (and so come to you for mutual understanding).

***

These are some of the ones I’ve come up with so far. If you have any other suggestions, stories, feedback, and so on, please comment and share.

maymay:

Posts about abuse in the BDSM Scene are making their way through the blogosphere, and they’re predictably heated thanks to certain facets of domist rape culture present there. The first comment was from a self-identified 28 year old female bottom, who said:

wow…traumatized?? i think [Kitty] likes the attention and its some fetish thing to her

More than 90 comments followed. And then came General Disarray’s mighty smack-down on all these horribly callous sentiments:

We are – it’s inevitable – going to be uniquely attractive as a community to a subset of predators. I don’t think I need to go in to the reasons why - they should be self-evident. Additionally, many people who enter the scene do not do so as fully mature people secure in themselves. For many people, entering the scene will be the start of a voyage of discovery, a road that they start down vulnerable and unsure of themselves. The combination those two factors is bad.

We as a community need to be prepared to aggressively deal with predators, even in (especially in) situations where the people they are preying on are not capable of dealing with predators adequately on their own. If we aren’t, we are failing in a very significant way. I’m not saying that we hold direct responsibility for people who are assaulted, raped, etc - we don’t - but we’re still failing in an absolutely inexcusable way.

I am not worried about my personal safety – since I’m a guy, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be in a situation that I physically cannot escape from, and thanks to my background and support structures I feel comfortable in saying that if anything of this nature does happen to me, I’ll be able to string up my attacker in front of the community, and, if necessary, in front of a judge.

But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect everyone to be able to say the same thing – but that’s frankly besides the point. Even if it were reasonable to expect everyone to do the same thing (and it’s not, but that’s beyond my scope here) from a practical standpoint we have to realize that not everyone is going to do so. As a community (and especially as a community where so many newcomers will be young and just beginning to come in to themselves) we have a moral mandate to, to the greatest extent possible, safeguard our members from predation. It doesn’t matter if those who are preyed upon are often unusually vulnerable members of our community – that’s almost inherent in predation. It certainly doesn’t exculpate us from our responsibility to ensure as best we can that it happens as little as possible.

If you respond to a thread like this with suggestions that [survivors] should have been more self-aware then please, GTFO. I can guarantee that the vast majority of potential victims in the community are painfully aware of that status. If anyone truly isn’t, then it’s unfortunate but that problem can be addressed in a productive way – say, by running a self-defense course, or helping to produce literature that explains options to [survivors], or even literature that explains options to not-yet-victims. Bringing it up on a thread like this is worse than useless. Regardless of whether or not you intend it as victim-blaming, it’ll sure feel like that to anyone wandering by who has been victimized or is vulnerable – your intentionality doesn’t matter two shits.

I’m sure someone somewhere is reading this and thinking “But Disarray, we’re doing all we can do! Now it’s up to victims to speak out and call the cops, etc!” And that’s fucking horseshit. For an easy example of what we could be doing better – why don’t DM’s regularly receive abuse response training? Even when I lived in the middle of buttfuck nowhere in Pennsylvania there were half a dozen organizations that offered, for free, such training within an hour’s drive. I’m sure there are more here – the Bay Area is generally more progressive than Amish country.

For an even easier example take a look at the first reply to this thread. If you were an eighteen year old sub new to the scene that had had a ‘problem’ with a long-established community member, how comfortable do you think you would feel bringing it up after reading a reply like that? This thread after that point should have been a steady stream of people going WTF are you talking about, but it wasn’t. It took nine replies before someone challenged the first reply – and even then, the person doing so was the person who wrote the article in the first place. The fact that there has been an ongoing argument on this thread is emblematic of the problem in the first place.

There is also a practical consideration that I don’t think has been explicitly discussed here that I find worth mentioning – if this is our response when people are victimized, we will continue to be scorned by most of society. And frankly, if this is our first response in incidents like this, we probably deserve it.

(I changed two instances of the word “victims” to “survivor” because when speaking of someone who has experienced assault and is still living, “survivor” seems more apt than “victim.”)

There’s only one more thing I have to add to this, which is the following: I’m signal-boosting/cross-posting this outside of FetLife because stuff like this is important enough to break every self-protective, liability-limiting rule over. And if speaking up means breaking The Rules, let’s fucking break them.

(tw for sexual abuse)

maymay:

Presented without comment:

kittystryker:

Check out the case of John Hauss, who picked up a 24 year old sex worker, who agreed to some light bondage. Instead, he brought her blindfolded to a place where he tied her up, shocked her with a cattle prod, plucked out her pubic hair to see if it hurt, paddled her all over her body, used a catheter to pump her bladder with liquid til she worried it would burst.He ignored her safeword. He refused to listen to her say no. And you know what? He had been a part of the Seattle scene, a wallflower, for a decade. A DECADE.

And how did one member of the Seattle community respond?

When the subject turns to John Hauff, Master Ray’s face hardens. He’s never met the man, he says, pausing to sip from his glass of milk. He knows only what he’s seen on TV and heard on the radio. Because he doesn’t have all the details, Master Ray cautions that making a judgment “would be improper and foolish.” Still, he says, there’s something about the young woman’s story that troubles him. She acknowledges negotiating up front for a certain amount of bondage, Master Ray points out. She got in his car willingly, and they drove to his place. There was no threat of brutality in the car.

“It wasn’t a kidnapping,” Master Ray says. “It was a negotiated sex scene between a hooker and her client. And somewhere along the line, she crossed her own panic line and cried ‘Help!’ “

As for her texting of Hauff’s license-plate number, Master Ray points out that this is standard operating procedure in the fetish community, and doesn’t necessarily mean the young woman was unusually leery of Hauff. “We call that a ‘safe call.’ It’s perfectly legitimate and normal,” he says. Once she’d revealed the text message to Hauff, Ray continues, “What happened next? She got dressed. He took her back where she belonged. He dropped her off. There was no threat. No murder. No ‘Keep quiet or I’ll come get you.’

By the way, sex workers ALSO have safe calls, for just this reason. And catheters do not “light bondage” make.

Kind of horrified? Oh, it gets better, folks, WAY better.

During a bondage session in which the rules have already been agreed upon, a dominant partner’s saying something to arouse a submissive partner is as common as flirting, Master Ray says. If, during a bondage scene, Master Ray were asked by a submissive he didn’t know if he planned to kill her, he would read it as a sign that this type of talk turned her on. “So I’m going to smirk and say something like ‘We’ll see,’ or ‘Maybe later,’ or ‘Only if you’re not pleasing to me, only if you don’t satisfy me,’ ” explains Master Ray. “Call me a smart-ass, but I’m going to say something that is going to elicit a response from her.”

When the prostitute asked Hauff if he was going to kill her, Master Ray says, “We don’t know what tone of voice she used.” Her question, he says, could have been understood as a clue that this form of “danger” was a turn-on for her. “And the worst part of it is that between the time it happened and when she finally decided to report it, her feelings, her thoughts, can change,” Master Ray says. “Shame can set in. And then he gets punished because now she’s feeling bad about it.”

Still, Master Ray acknowledges, Hauff’s alleged use of such techniques as bladder manipulation and electric shock, which are at the outer edges of the bondage-play repertoire, give him pause. “If he did spring this on her, then he crossed a line,” Master Ray says. “That would not be tolerated in the [fetish] community.”

-Will John Hauff’s Gorean Bondage Fetish Set Him Free?, Seattle Weekly

So when you tell me “oh, it couldn’t happen in MY community” or “we don’t tolerate that in my local dungeon” I want you to think about this. Think about why, exactly, it couldn’t or wouldn’t. Here is a perfect example of what I’m talking about- Master Ray blames her for her own assault. And his response is enabling, excusing, and justifying Hauff’s. Read the article further, and see how when these things happen, the community is “devastated” or “crushed”. Waaaaah. Imagine how the people who are raped and abused and broken and left to pick up the pieces feel.

That is unacceptable and I absolutely will not sit back, as a kinkster and a sex worker, and listen without protest.

And don’t you dare try to pass this off on Hauff’s just being a Gorean. Master Ray doesn’t identify as one and he doesn’t seem to think there’s much wrong with what happened. So fuck him too.