Okay. Excedingly quick post (”post”) specifically to link you to the online/blog incarnation of “Venus in Scorpio”, an erotic poetry zine which published my poem!
As you can tell, I am utterly giddy.
The poem is “Territory”, and you can follow the link to read it. 
Okay. So. Harriet J, over at Fugitivus – the genius behind such posts as Another Post About Rape – has a new post up: There Is Nothing About Sex That Is Uncomplicated. It’s about sex work. And sex work versus human trafficking. And similar stuff like that there.
Being someone who shares her life with one current and one previous girlfriend, both of whom are sex workers, and being someone who takes her clothes off for money, and being someone who, y’know, utterly despises the way our media tends to say “sex” when they actually mean rape, and the way our culture espouses attitudes like “you can’t rape a hooker ‘cause she’s just mad she didn’t get paid” as if those attitudes weren’t utterly dehumanizing actual people and utterly dismissing/accepting actual torture as “okay” as long as it’s only being done to the people-who-aren’t-really-people… Being someone who is all of those things, the subject of sex workers’ rights is one that is very dear to my heart and to my life.
So I wanted to do a response/follow-up post to the one Harriet J put up on her blog today, because I think it’s really important to talk about this stuff, and to have as many people talking about it as possible.
Before I get started: In this post I am not getting into the intersectionality of oppressions that lead to a high population of street workers (the ones who are in the most danger both from clients and from cops) being trans and/or of-colour. I’ll probably do a post on that down the road, though. I think it needs to be addressed.
Anyway. Onwards.
I think the first thing I want to do is differentiate between “legalization” and “decriminalization”, which are two terms that you hear thrown around a lot in sex workers’ rights debates/circles/etc, and I think there are a whole lot of people who don’t really know what the difference is.
Now, full disclosure, I’m seriously in favour of decriminalization. For reasons I’ll be getting into further down the post. But, just so you know, decrim is something I’m actively (rallies and letters, yo) rooting for.
Decriminalization basically means that there is no regulatory body/system pertaining to sex work, and you can’t get a criminal record for doing it. It’s basically like being a freelance consultant. You do your job, you bill your client, and you do your taxes like everybody else.
Legalization means that there is a regulatory body/system pertaining to sex work (designated locations where it’s okay to work[1], licensing fees[2], mandatory, out-of-pocket STI tests[3], and similar) and you can’t get a criminal record for doing it – as long as you’re following all the laws governing sex work. If you’re not following those laws, you are in trouble.
Actually, this is probably the right time to point out that, in Canada, actual prostitution? Is legal.
But using the money you make doing it in order to get groceries or pay bills? That’s illegal. Negotiating services to be rendered and a fair wage for those services? That’s illegal, too. The laws[4] outlined in the Canadian criminal code aren’t making prostitution illegal, they’re just making it really damn difficult to practice in any kind of a safe way. (Also: Decriminalizing sex work? All it would take is the removal of those four laws from the criminal code. Nothing more than that).
So. Having done all that, moving right along.
Okay. So you know I’m in favour of decriminalizing sex work. Now I’m going to talk about why.
See, in Harriet’s post, she talked about this girl, this girl who is still young enough to be thought of as a “girl” even though she’s got a child of her own now. She talked about this girl who, a year or two ago, was classified as “a victim” but now, entirely because of her age (because her actual situation hasn’t changed) she is classified as “a criminal”.
And that, right there, is the problem I have with how things stand.
See, right now? The laws on the criminal code mean that if you are a person who needs help:
If you are an immigrant whose visa has been stolen by someone who threatens you with deportation and/or jail if you don’t keep turning tricks.
If you are running away from an abusive situation and you’re too young to get hired at McDonalds and they don’t pay enough to cover even the worst room in a rooming house anyway.
If you’re options are “get beaten up” or “do another blowjob” and you know that if you go to the cops about the abuser making money off your mouth, you’re going to end up in the same situation you’re in now, but with strangers and cops on-site who think you deserve it.
If you just got raped by a client.
If you just got beaten up by a client.
If you are regularly targeted by a cop who rapes you and takes your money.
If you have been raped, period, and have a record as a sex-worker meaning that your rape will be taken even less seriously than it would be normally…
If you are a person who needs help, and whose involvement in the sex trade is tangled up with why you need help, or that you need help, YOU CAN NOT GET THAT HELP because you will be put in jail or otherwise penalized instead.
Whereas, if you are not automatically a criminal for paying your rent in $20s that you got as an escort/rent boy/street-hustler/freelance masseuse/pro-domme/whatever, then you CAN get help if you need it. And, as an added bonus, if you are like my girlfriend and my exgirlfriend, or Harriet’s friend Robin, and you don’t need help, not being criminalized for a job you enjoy and chose voluntarily? Can only make things easier, both in terms of doing your chosen job in safety (because being able to adequately check out your clients before meeting with them, being able to negotiate in advance everything that is going to go down during your session, and being able to actually press some freaking charges if things go to hell in hand basket), and in terms of transitioning to a different career, should you decide to do so, down the road.
And, yeah, I know. It’s way more complicated than just taking those laws off the books.
As much as I wish I could wave my magic wand and make the nasty social attitudes (the baddirtywrong brush that Harriet was talking about) disappear along with those laws, I know I can’t. That bit’s up to us, talking about it and normalizing it and respecting sex workers until that respect and casual acceptance become the dominant social discourse.
But a big part of that, a big part of that normalization is taking it off the criminal code (sort of like how making “gay” not illegal was a big first step in making “gay” really damn normal, y’know?).
And that, my dears, is why I am in favour of the decriminalization of sex work.
FYI: My local sex workers’ rights group is POWER.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Such as the red light districts in Germany and the Netherlands, or the non-urban-area brothels in Nevada, U.S.
[2] Such as the fees required in Ontario to operate an erotic massage parlour – the fees are set prohibitively high, so most of the folks offering it are doing so unlicensed and, therefore, illegally.
[3] Nevada, again. By the way, if you want more information on this stuff, I can point you towards Wendy McElroy’s book XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography.
[4] FYI: I’m writing in Canada, so what you read about here is going to be talking about Canadian situations. Harriet’s in the states, so her set of legal situations is going to be different, though a fair number of the social situations will be the same, or at least similar enough to easily work with.
So, go figure, I read something on the internet today.
Specifically, it was this article at Yes Means Yes, which links to this article at The Sexist, talking about some anti-porn feminist’s theory about how (get this): “The more pornography women[1] use, the more likely they are to be victims of non-consensual sex”.
(‘Cause, y’know, rapists totally decide to rape people based on their DVD collections. Yeah).
So, yeah.
While I personally figure this particular anti-porn individual got her theory straight from her own ass[2], the statement itself did get me thinking. What if her theory was based on some kind of actual statistics? A survey sample she’d taken or something.
See… If I’m a woman who is into porn (oh, wait…), I am probably a woman who is more comfortable with myself as a sexual being, as a person with sexual agency. I am probably less likely to be ashamed of myself as a Person Who Likes/Has Sex and, as such, am probably less likely to buy into the bullshit cultural narrative that says things like “Women are sexual objects, not sexual subjects” and “Women are for men to fuck” and “Women are supposed to be the sexual gate-keepers because, fyi, Men Just Can’t Control Themselves” and all that other garbage.
As such, I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, women who are comfortable watching a lot of porn, and who are comfortable enough to say as much[3], are perhaps more likely to not be shamed into silence if they are raped and, as such, are maybe, just maybe, more likely to talk about their rape histories publically[3] enough for some anti-porn feminist to get ahold of them.
Just a thought.
See, a statement like “Women who watch porn get raped!” is obviously utterly stupid
BUT
A statement like “Women who act as agents of their own sexual pleasure and who don’t buy into the idea that “good girls don’t”, are more likely to kick up a damn storm about it when some asshole decides to violate their sexual/physical autonomy by raping them”? That actually makes a lot of sense to me.
So… yeah. I just wanted to put that out there.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Yep. Woman. ‘Cause obviously porn would rob women of their sexual agency, when it clearly robs men of their ability to choose not to commit rape. Girls and Boys being wired 100% differently and all that. 
[2] “The story never mentions that rape thing again. It doesn’t offer up any evidence or statistics in its defence.” (From the article linked, above, at The Sexist).
[3] Because we don’t actually know anything about the porn-viewing tendencies OR rape histories of anyone who isn’t up for talking about either/both of those two different subjects.
I miss having a garden.
Part of this, of course, is that it’s summer. Everything is coming up in fruit and flowers. Everywhere I look I see cherry trees (CHERRY TREES for goodness sake! I was barely aware that they could even grow here, and now I find there are three in my own neighbourhood, one of which is just down the street! And a plum (by the looks of it) that I only discovered on my way home today!) and tomatoes and summer squash and beans! And I want to be a part of that.
Another part is that I’m falling in LOVE, complete with all the dreaming-of-putting-down-roots that comes along with that (it doesn’t hurt that my sweetie wants to try her hand at bee keeping, I don’t mind telling you).
A third part is… I miss the magic.
(Part of this, I know, is brought on by reading my friend’s blog, Charmed I’m Sure, and part of it is due to the ritual I was at last night and the upcoming KG festival that I won’t be attending, but still).
I’m sure I’ll lose a tonne of kitchen witch points (such as I have them at all) for this, but: I don’t do much magic OR much ritual (I offer boiled water once a day to the various gods/spirits/ancestors who hang out in my house and keep an eye on me[1], but that’s about it).
And I miss it. I miss the daily interaction with the land that gardening requires.
And, having tried both balcony-based container gardening AND community-garden-plot gardening, I know that I’m a horrible, horrible gardener unless the garden in question is (A) immediately outside of my residence, and (B) planted in the actual *ground*. I am a frankly murderous container gardener (I can just about keep a philodendron alive, but only just), and I am Not Good at showing up at the community garden every other day to talk to the plants, make sure they’re watered, and all the rest of it.
Plus I tend to get discouraged easily. <*looks guilty*> I honestly have no idea why my garden at my old house grew so well when every other garden I’ve tried to put my hands to has been hungry and lean and withering on the vine. (Maybe I just lucked out with the soil quality in that one place?)
But, anyway.
My own, personal GardenFail aside, I wanted to talk some more about why gardening matters to me.
See, I wrote an earlier post about how making food from scratch was a feminist action, how voluntarily choosing to perform these tasks that are traditionally assigned to women (and then ignored by the assigners) is a way of saying “I value this. I value the skill this takes, the time and the work and the talent required to do this stuff” (and “this stuff” can be everything from making dinner from scratch to baking your own bread to making yoghurt or pickles or cheese or wine, to making candles or soap, to spinning, knitting, weaving, crocheting, sewing…)
But there’s another side of it for me, and it’s one that I often lose sight of, lapsed pagan that I am. And I wanted to talk about that.
I’m pagan.
You’d think in a blog about sex, sexuality, feminism, erotica, and gender, I would be writing about the sex-magic end of the spiritual spectrum that falls under the umbrella-heading of “Paganism”: The spiritual hedonism of western-style tantra, the heteronormative gender crap that clogs up[2] some sects of Wicca, the queering of certain myths by numerous goddess spiritualists and Radical Faeries, that kind of thing[3]. And yet, here I am, wanting to talk about missing my garden.
But see, the two are related.
You can’t have food-plants without sex[4]. Those bee-girls humming in the blossoms, carrying pollen from the boy-flowers to the girl-flowers on any given vine, the wind causing the flower-heads of corn and millet to brush and caress each other, the seriously lascivious way that sap has of oozing to get where it wants to go. Stand in a flowering garden and you’re standing in the middle of an orgy, which is hard to forget when you’re right in there with the bees, velvet-tipped fingers making sure the squash gets pollinated, the beans twine around each other appropriately. 
I used to go out into my riotous garden, stand barefoot on the patio stones, wielding my hose in one hand and singing as I watered the plants. I used to pour my menstrual blood into my compost (I used to compost in my back yard, whereas now I do it in the freezer and take the biodegradable bags out to the green bins every couple of weeks).
Heck. I used to use my compost heap as an altar – that’s an “altar” not a “shrine”. A place where one makes offerings and/or sacrifices – and offer up grain, wine, juice, milk, butter, oil, honey, and blood (what a heady mix that is, eh? when summer came around. Harvesting my squash was a mindful and ceremonial activity, as was cooking with the food I brought in.
I didn’t do a lot of magic. But I felt like a witch. I felt like a pagan: Someone with a real, tangible connection to the land that sustained her.
That my garden withered and grew bitter at the same rate that my marriage/sex-life/sense-of-self-worth did was telling.
I often wonder what kind of glorious work I could do now that I’m out of the abusive relationship (and into a loving and fulfilling one, no less) and feeling much, much more sure of myself.
My Ghost, who is in the process of moving from my neck of the woods to another old neighbourhood “next door”, has offered me gardening space at her new place. I am both gleeful at this prospect and somewhat nervous about it, given my track-record of not-at-my-door gardening disasters (well, okay, there was only one. But still). I would like the opportunity to coax food-plants out of the ground, to talk to them, to feed them sardines and tuna fish and milk and menstrual blood so that they’ll grow, to sing their praises, to work with the bees who come for the nectar in the flowers, to mark the movement of the seasons by what is blooming and what is ripe[5], to eat food that was born in part by my labour, my love, my body. This is something that means the world to me.
I miss it.
I want to do it again.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] <3 
[2] What, me? Oh, no, I’m not even a little bit biased…
[3] Well, maybe I will. Give me time.
[4] With a couple of possible exceptions, like bananas. I think… :-\
[5] Victoria-Day Weekend up to the beginning of june is Planting Season. June is growing and waiting (ye gods, the waiting). July is flowering (and sometimes fruiting), the August Long Weekend marks the beginning of the harvest season, which will keep you in beans and berries, cucumbers, tomatoes, all the way until Hallowe’en, when you take in the winter squash and the last of everything else.
So there’s a website called Figureworks up in town that is all about local figure-drawing. The gal who runs the site is running figure-drawing competitions and has a meet-the-models section up so that the figure-drawing artists can connect with us more easily.
I got a note in my email that I might want to check it out, and get my profile up there.
So I got in touch with the Mod and ended up doing an interview with her at a local coffee shop wherein I got to wax philosophical about figure modeling, what I get out of it, why I like doing it, and so on. I think one of her questions was particularly relevant to this blog, so I decided to go into some details here.
The question was: What do you think of the erotic component of figure-modeling?
Which is kind of a sticky point, I guess.
See, I don’t personally think of figure-modeling as erotic. I’m sure it can be. Dr. Sketchy has a field day with flirty/imaginative figure-drawing classes that include elements of burlesque and role-play. And it’s not like erotic models only work for/with photographers. (Ha. Case in point).
However, in my case, my figure-modeling is probably the least erotic of my gigs. I work for schools (as in: with minors), I choose poses that are more angular/acrobatic/yoga-tastic/foetal/etc than erotic every time I work. I can tell my mother about this job (unlike, say, the shoots where I’m wearing clothing – admittedly, not very much – but I know that my job is to be Sexy, as opposed to A Body).
So… I guess I feel kind of weird about it. That there are people participating in figure-drawing groups who are looking at me (or whoever) and thinking “We are having an erotic experience together”.
‘Cause it’s like, “Oh, honey, no.”
And – in this context, that being the one where the model is a woman being subject to The Gaze[1] – it kinda reeks of that cultural assumption: That my (female) body, being visible, is available for (male, sexual) consumption.
Which pisses me the hell off.
HOWEVER. Because I know that (A) not all of the classes I model for are heavy on the dudes, and also that not all of the models for any given class are women, I know that the figure-modeling situation kind of flips The Gaze, and all of its related cultural assumptions, on its head. Because, often as not, it’s a guy working on the platform, being the object of the class’ collective, mixed-gender, sexual-orientations-undisclosed Gaze.
And that kind of makes me smile.
Granted, it also makes me wonder: Who-all are thinking “this is an erotic exchange”? How many of the models are going into this thinking “Sweet! This is gonna be so hawt![2]” How many of those are women? Men? Genderqueer? Likewise, how many of the drawers/painters are going into this with that thought? And what is their gender break-down?
So, there’s that.
There’s also, of course, the super-broad-spectrum angle you can take wherein Art = Creation = Erotic. Which is also true. (I’m a bit of a fangirl of Audre Lorde, so I’m totally pushing you towards that essay).
And this is a nice way of looking at it. It makes my little, pagan heart go pitter-pat.
Unfortunately, it also does this convenient thing of taking the sex out of the erotic. Or at least allowing people (all sorts of people. People who draw Big, Hard Core, Value-Based Distinctions between “porn” and “erotica”, people who don’t want to think of me working it sexual situations –e.g.: My Mom, people who think that, as a society, we’re really hurting ourselves by limiting our collective definition of “erotic” to the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane) to do so if they’re uncomfortable, or unsatisfied, with the overtly/narrowly sexual definition.
And I think I’d be a lot more okay with that, a lot more okay with people going “well, the erotic is totally not limited to (/the same as), just sex” if it weren’t for this other side of the coin.
And there is another side to that particular coin, which ties into The Gaze, and into the whole vilification/denigration of sex and women in The West.
My interviewer related something that someone had said to her about figure modeling, or possibly figure models, which is this:
“You take your clothes off for money”.
A statement made with all the nasty, slut-shaming, distain you can imagine.
And that makes me sad.
It makes me sad, hell, it makes me angry, because it’s like every other damn thing that uses our sexuality against us.
It’s like every other damn thing that says a woman’s body is, by default, a sexual body, that a woman’s visible body is a sexually available/engaged body, that being ten years old and having c-cups already means she must be a slut. It’s like every other damn thing that says you can be smart OR pretty, but not both, every other damn thing that says pretty girls get by on sex-appeal but don’t have any skills of their own.
It’s like every other gods-damned thing that says if you take your clothes off, you’re a slut, and if you get paid to do it, you’re a whore, and either fucking way you’re supposed to be ashamed about that.
And that makes me really fucking angry.
I date sex-workers, I know that what I do as a model for a figure-drawing class is a damn sight different from what my ex is doing with her regulars in Manhattan or what my sweetie is arranging with her clients on the weekends. But I also know that what I’m doing in those private, paid lingerie/pin-up shoots is, really, only a difference in degree from the gals who are turning up in the pages of Playboy or Hustler or whatever.
So, when I hear a statement like that, dismissive and disdainful, “You take your clothes off for money,” half of me wants to go “Oh, honey, you have no idea.”
The other half of me wants to smack the fucker for dismissing the skills and stamina I need to do my job, and do it well, specifically because I’m doing it, and getting paid to do it, naked.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Most typically, in the non-cegep classes/groups, the gaze of men. That said, I have no earthly notion of the sexual orientation any/every-one in those various groups, SO.
[2] Full disclosure? I’m an exhibitionist. Unexpectedly, this doesn’t crop up for me during figure-modeling gigs.
So I went to my first Toronto Pride. I went with my Ghost. We had a Romantic Adventure together.
We were soppy and lovey-dovey and ate food slowly and did a lot of walking. We stayed in a hotel room of our very own (I should point out, here, that Ghost took me to Pride. She made the travel arrangements, she booked the hotel, and she paid for everything except for, like, a microscopic portion of the food. She spoils me gloriously. I feel like a total princess, and it’s AWESOME. So YAY GHOST, and thanks for treating me so very, very well! )
But, yes. Pride. I’ve been to/in the local Dyke March once (where I hooked up with my previous sweetheart, as it happens) and watched the pride parade a couple of times, years ago. So Toronto was Something Else.
The hotel that we stayed at (on the 37th floor, with a really amazing view of the CN Tower) was also playing host to:
1) A Shriners’ convention
2) The Croation Federation (including a youth choir)
3) At least one of the (six) queer couples getting hitched on a pride float on the Sunday (Brenda and Georgie – more Georgie, really – have a website: http://www.sharingwithlove.com/ Which I’m putting up here for posterity. They’re sweethearts.
Below, because there was so much going on and it’s still all kind of a jumble of sensory experiences and not all that coherent, are lists of what-all happened during My First Time at Toronto Pride.
*~*~*~*~*
The Awesome and Wonderful:
1) Getting our pictures taken about 200 times over the course of Dyke March and Pride Day (’cause who doesn’t want their photo taken with a couple of Glamazons in leather boots, mini skirts, and red umbrellas?) Seriously, if you see any of these floating around, I’d love to get ahold of one. (I’ll have to attempt google images or something and see what I can find).
Hightlights: Getting mobbed-esque by (probably) Japanese[1] tourists and being asked for a picture by a U.S. tourist in a maple-leaf “Eh” pin and a fourth-of-july get-up involving enough sequins to make a drag queen envious. (Seriously. It took us a while to realize why there were so many, um, obvious U.S. tourists around the place. And then we remembered what the date was).
2) Seeing “Someone I love is a sex-worker” on a sign in the pride parade. (I just about cried a few times, and that was one of them).
3) Hearing the cheers that went up for the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid contingent (and seeing the Jewish contingent within that group, might I add).
4) Seeing and hearing support for sex-workers from the crowd watching the Dyke March when Ghost and I walked by with our umbrellas[2]. (We heard one gal shout “Hey! My union!” when we went by. A bear gave me a strong nod and said “Good job”. This made me really happy).
5) Not wearing a shirt (or much in the way of other clothing, for that matter) all around down town Toronto.
6) Getting this moony-eyed, worshipful smile from a baby butch in a bowler hat who seriously looked like she’d just seen God walk by.
7) Having the luxury of sleeping for 14 hours when we needed it (and did we ever need it)
Being disgustingly cute in a variety of ways and getting buckets of encouragment for it
9) Rocking a micro-mini and not feeling awkward or fat[3].
10) Getting to see some friends (and their new residence) and being able to ask them how Married Life is treating them — these two fifty-ish dykes who Never Thought They’d See the Day
11) Seeing the Asexual contingent in the parade (more significant, I think, for Ghost, whose other partner identified as asexual for years)
12) Re-cutting the heart-chakra design into Ghost’s chest before heading out to the dyke march. (We even made a print on a piece of tissue paper. She bleeds so pretty… <*sigh*> )
Bonuses from the trip home:
Stopping at Black River to go skinny dipping (OMG did that ever feel good!) and drink iced coffee.
Stopping at a lakeside rest-stop (I don’t know the name of it) and having a quickie in the car because we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other (and sex by the literal side of the road can be risky business) — Oh, as an added “Woohoo” to this one: Remember Highway Seven? It’s nice to cross something off our to-do list.
Having a Ghost who will rub aloe-vera on my sunburn (more on that shortly) and who will say things like “Let’s pop into Zelda’s a get a cold drink” about three minutes before I’m due to black out from heat exhaustion that I (foolishly) have been pretending isn’t all that bad. She is a good Ghost. I think I’ll keep her.
*~*~*~*~*
The Not-So-Cool:
1) Getting shot at with water guns.
Okay, yes. I gather (from their prevalence, but also from having seen at least one well-saranwrapped camera over the course of the march) that this is par for the course and traditional and all that jazz. I also realize that, given the astonishing heat (38C+) and the closely packed people, there’s a reasonable chance that regular hosing-down of the crowd actually prevented some heat-stroke here and there. None the less, getting sprayed to the point that my Pretty Thing for T&G got wrecked due to water damage (despite being inside an envilope, inside my *purse*) and that’s *with* an umbrella blocking the worst of it… That’s not cool. I’m just glad the cameras didn’t get damaged. :-\
2) Getting disapproving looks and/or snide remarks while walking through the hotel looking normal (as in: not in our pride gear, but in tank tops, knee-length bottoms, and sandals).
2a) Particularly the little snot working the check-in desk for the continental breakfast that came with our hotel room. Apparently long hair, jewellery, tits, a dress, and a girl name are not enough social cues to convince Some People that they’re talking to a chick and should call her “ma’am” not “sir”. For shit’s sake.
(I think it’s worth pointing out that, aside from that one twit, the hotel staff were just fine and, also, when that happened one of the other staff-members came out of the restaurant right quick and said “It’s okay, ladies, go ahead. I recognize you.” I do confess, though, that I’m hoping she gave her co-worker a Talking To as well).
3) Seeing the Queer Jewish contingent at Pride co-opted by the Queer Pro-Isreal contingent. Seriously. Yay for t-shirts that say things like “One in every minyan” and banners on the subject of all-queer seders and shavots. Boo for signs saying things like “fifteen Arab states, one Jewish state” and touting Israel’s “fabulous” human rights track-record. Ghost said she saw one sign that read “It’s still safe to visit Israel” and all she could think was “Not if you come by boat”. 
(See below).
*~*~*~*~*
Which brings me to the other part of this post which is, more or less, a corollery to #3 of the not-so-cool list:
I’ve got a lot of stuff jumbled up in my head about the whole Pride Censorship / Israeli Appartheid / Bringing Your Politics to the Party / Corporate Sponsorships / Is that Political-Party [slash] Big-Corporation float actually being staffed by queer and/or trans members/employees or is this really just a big ol’ advertising op that they’re taking? Thing.
I don’t think that jumble is going to resolve itself neatly into a coherent essay in multi-paragraph form, so I’ve just jotted all my questions down in yet another list. Bear with me, if you will.
The Jumble:
1) Why am I okay with “Queers Against Israeli Appartheid” but not okay with “Queers Who Are Loudly Pro-Isreal” qua marchers in the pride parade (as opposed to qua political view-points, which is a significantly easier question for me to answer)?
2) Why is it that Virgin Mobile (to pick one example among many) has a parade bus emblazoned with “we go both ways” but is totally not decked out in, say, bi-pride flags? Why are the Corporate Sponsors not just getting banners along the route? Why are they getting float time and parade space in an already extremely long parade?
3) While I share the politics of QAIA, I don’t think I would have cared much one way or another if they’d been in the parade or not, had it not been for the ban that explicitely targetted their group.
4) Had the ban not happened – and the resulting support for QAIA not come up loud and clear – it’s possible (maybe even likely?) that the Queer Jewish group would have been a queer Jewish group rather than a block-and-a-half worth of Isreali appologist-propaganda, which would have made it just another queers-of-faith group, rather like the various church groups and that one chick carrying the “This is what a bisexual, kinky, polyamourous MUSLIM looks like” sign, near the beginning of the parade. Which would have been really nice.
5) Why is it that three major political parties (whether or not they’re doing much, if anything, for the Alphabet Soup) have floats/groups in the parade?
6) I’ve got friends and at least one relative who are having significant difficulty reconciling their faith with their politics when it comes to “Judaism” and “Israel” as two separate and distinct yet seriously intertwined things. This sucks.
7) You ever notice how some abuse survivors[4] get to the point in their healing process where they can recognize “That totally shouldn’t have happened to me. I did NOT deserve any of that shit” and yet completely fail to even try to move on to the next point in the process, that being the one where they go “Also, using my own trauma as an excuse to perpetuate abuse on other people? Totally not okay. Let’s NOT do that, shall we?”
You’ve noticed that, have you?
Yeah. So have I.
Where is the line between “Queer and/or Trans People who also happen to be X and are thus affected by Y” and “X People who are affected by Y, some of whom also happen to be Queer and/or Trans”? We live in the land of intersectionality and The Personal Is Political. As a white, pagan queer? I could, if I wanted to, take the option of Not Giving a Shit and deciding that since the Isreal/Palestine Issue doesn’t have anything to do with *me*, it doesn’t have anything to do with any of us. I think this is the wrong option. For the same reason that I think mainstream queers choosing to believe that sex workers’ rights aren’t relevent to the queer community, despite the long history and current reality of femme dykes, queer dudes, and trans women (and, I assume, men) working in the sex industry by both choice and necessity and despite how queer rights and sexworkers’ rights both hinge on the legality of what concenting adults choose to do with each other. (I think this point swings back around to connect with point #1 — how handy. I’ve gone and made a circle).
So, yeah. That’s what’s in my head about that.
Which took up rather more of this post (and about three extra hours of writing) than I had intended.
(Seriously. I meant to just write a lot about how awesome it is to strut around Toronto in next to no clothing, playing Media Darling with your smokin’ hawt sweetie. Honest, I did. )
Right. Perhaps I’ll write about Teh Sex next time I post.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] It was the peace-sign thing that makes me think this is the case.
[2] I feel the need to point out: Due to the splitting of the Dykes into two parades — the Official one and the Take Back the Dyke one — there was only one dyke-on-bike (our friend, Ai Jay) at TBTD, and only five leather dykes (Ghost and I included) and two sex-workers/allies (me and Ghost) at the Official March. While I totally understand why TBTD was organized, and why they kept it separate after the ban was lifted from the phrase “Israeli Appartheid”, I think it would have been seriously awesome to have *all* of that chick power, all of that dyke presence, all of those voices TOGETHER in one march.
[3] For a given value of “fat”. I know.
[4] Like my numerous-years-ago ex-bf, as a for-instance.
So, over in LJ-land, a friend of mine asked me to define “High Femme” for her. I decided to repost my definition here ‘cause, well, I kinda like it.
*~*~*~*~*
If you’ve seen “Bound”, Violet would probably qualify as high femme.
It’s the very, very, very dressed up end of the femme spectrum. Skirts, dresses, not casual, probably fitted/revealing/formal/overtly-sexual all in one. Makeup is a must. (YMMV on this, I know).
It’s femme with the volume turned up to 100, regardless of the situation.
For me, “high femme” is something I put on. Femme is a baseline of my identity. I’m femme when I’m in men’s swim trunks and a ratty tank top, femme when I’m weilding a screwdriver, femme when I haven’t washed my hair in week, yada yada yada.
I’m also femme when I’m in wedge heels or ballet flats or fashion boots, wearing tights or a dress or an office-appropriate skirt-and-top.
I’m femme when I’m dressing “high femme”, too (see below).
I’m femme whether I’m blending with all the other feminine-dressing women around me or not.
“High Femme” is what I was last night[1], when I wore a cleavage-bosting bra (that matched my shoes and my lipstick) with a halter-neck dress that went Marilyn Monroe on me when I left my building, plus super-high heels, over-the-top eye-makeup and red, red, RED lipstick. And feathers in my hair. And jewellery.
High Femme, for me, is the hyperbolic, empowered femininity of Femme turned up to the point where it can’t be ignored, can’t be mistaken for “there’s a girl who dresses like girls are supposed to dress[2]“. It’s girly — NO. It’s womanly in a way that, specifically *through* the tropes of femininity defies the social/cultural requirement that The Feminine take a backseat to The Masculine and become invisible.
High Femme is when you make it OBVIOUS, when you make it impossible to ignore, that you are one of the dangerous women, the ones who are too much woman to be handled.
*~*~*~*~*
So there you have it. My personal, off-the-cuff definition of what “High Femme” means to me.
Personally, I also think that author Seanan McGuire got it in one when she said: “[It's] okay to be pink and pretty and also FUCK SHIT UP.” (she was talking about My Little Ponies, but I totally think it applies to Femme as well).
If any Fem(me)s are reading this, I’d love for you to post your own, personal definitions in the comments.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] My sweetie and I went to see Avenue Q. It’s, uhm… problematic in a number of ways. May or may not end up posting about that at a later date.
[2] You know what I mean. The Older Gentlemen who feel a need to voice their approval of our appearances, complete with all the assumptions they’re making about what our dress-sense says about our “character” (het, cis, mono-amourous, mono-theistic, socially conservative, supporting-of/obedient-to the Patriarchy/Kyriarchy, etc)[3].
[3] Those assumptions that, unfortunately are made by subsets of the radical feminist and radical queer communities, too.
So, last night I went to a workshop taught by Andrea Zanin. It was about 24/7 D/s relationships and how to make them work.
I walked in feeling kind of nervous about the whole thing. Most of what I’ve heard about 24/7 that isn’t “normal relationship” stuff – like having good communication skills and a willingness to get therapy (or whatever) when you need it – has been All About Protocol. Which, to me, looked like so much stupidity.
Why the hell would I want to remember which positions I’d told my sub she was allowed to take when sitting at my feet? Whether or not she’s allowed to speak when there are other people around? That sort of thing. To my eyes, it just looked like so much mindless busy work, so much energy that could be spent on something more significant – whether that “something” was doing my laundry or hanging out on the couch developing a personal relationship.
It seemed like nothing more than an ego-boosting power-over-trip for a dom/me who wanted to show off to the other dominant-types in a given public situation.
I was hoping I would leave the workshop with a better understanding of what the term “protocol” actually meant.
I did.
I got a couple of other things, too.
There were three elements of D/s interaction that we talked about at the workshop: Projects, Structure, and Protocol.
I was unfamiliar with the idea of “projects”, although it’s an easy one to sort out: Short-term, specific goals that need to be accomplished by a particular date or time.
“Learn how to do a French Manicure, so that you can do my nails for the wedding at the end of the month” is a project. “You’ve expressed an interest in middle eastern dance. Therefore, I want you to sign up for this eight-week Egyptian Raqs Sharki course near your house” is a project. “Alphabetize my Sci-Fi collection by author and series. I want it done by this evening[1]” is a project.
I feel a bit awkward about assigning projects. Even when my Ghost has offered to take them on. Mostly I feel awkward about this because (A) I don’t want to put too much on her, I know she’s got a tonne of other stuff on her plate including a job that involves a lot of traveling-to-work-sites and a whole other sweetheart besides me. Also (B) I want to use my powers for good, so to speak. I’ve got things I’d like her to take care of. Shoes I’d like repaired, fire-irons I’d like de-rusted, that sort of thing. But she has other things to do and I worry about being *too* selfish and/or burning her out. In my head, I’m weighing the joy I’ll have at seeing my grandmother’s fire-irons restored and asking myself if it will be enough to justify asking her to sit on my balcony for an afternoon de-rusting and re-oiling the cast iron when she could have been having some much-needed Her Time. Y’know?
Structure, on the other hand, is fairly easy. Structure is the baseline of How Things Are. Whether that’s service-based structure like “have my dinner ready for 6pm every night” or “vacuuming gets done on Tuesdays” or personal-structure like “send me a goodnight text message every night at 9pm” or “wear this red bracelet every time we’re together” or “trim your hair every three weeks so it stays within the realm of X acceptable length” or what-have-you.
Structure is easy when the relationship is, in that context, built on Getting Stuff Done.
My Ghost does my dishes twice a week, and does the cleaning – which includes, at minimum, the bathroom and the vacuuming – every Sunday unless otherwise specified.
I like that structure is a baseline. Both in the sense that, if things that are part of the structure are suddenly not getting done, I know that something is Happening that needs to be discussed (it’s a good check-in), and in the sense that, when it comes down to it, I’m SO not a micromanager. I hate it, no matter what end of it I’m on. I like to know that I’ve left a wodge of tasks in competent hands and that they will get done, and done well, whether I’m there to supervise or not.
I mean, maybe I’m just a terribly lazy domme, and the stuff I find easy is the stuff where all I have to do is say “I want X to get done, use your discretion”. Maybe I loathe the idea of having to be a “nag”. But—
Okay, scrap that. I DO loathe the idea of having to be a “nag”. I hate having to harp at people to get stuff done. I hate having to beg and plead and scrape over and over and over just to get something totally BASIC out of the way.
And that’s been my fucking life.
It’s been years of stupid, abusive relationships wherein, if I just want someone else to do the goddamn dishes for once, I had to deal with anger and resentment and snide remarks and people saying they’ll do something and then totally not doing it, and all the rest of that SHIT.
And, I suspect, this is why I like structure.
Structure means: I ask ONCE and it gets done, and done right, FOR EVAR.
Structure isn’t something that will turn me into a gibbering, terror-stricken idiot, frantic with panic at the thought that I might put a foot wrong (Ahaha. See below).
Structure means all I have to do is smile when things are done right – which I will do whether it’s “instituted” or not. Y’know? All I have to do is act like myself, approve of things I’m going to approve of anyway. Structure feels safe and good, if occasionally overwhelming in that “I am sitting on a horse” sense.
Protocol, though… Protocol is still another matter, in spite of getting some better-than-I-had-before definitions of what it is.
Andrea described “protocol” as the “how” (whereas “structure” – which I love – is the “what”).
This definition was further added-to by one of the submissive folks in attendance who explained that having a set of rules of behaviour in Context A or Context B or whatever meant that it interrupted any potential cycles of doubt and worry one might run up against when one is having to *guess* as to whether or not one is making the tea right or maintaining the right amount of eye-contact (or lack-thereof) or sorting the laundry the way one’s servee would like it sorted, or whatever.
Which I never thought of. I figured stuff like “I take my tea with cream and two sugars” or “cotton underwear goes in the middle drawer, frilly stuff goes on the left” or whatever were all part of “structure” and “protocol” was things like being referred-to as “Ma’am” or making rules like “you will only ever walk two steps behind me” or “in X situation, don’t make eye-contact with me” or what-have-you.
Look. Protocol makes me nervous. As a domme, it leaves me terrified of Doing Something Wrong.
I mean there are specific points of nervousness, such as: “If she is walking two steps behind me, how am I supposed to keep track of where she is? How am I supposed to know how fast I need to be walking in order to give her enough time and space to get ahead of me to open the door?” or, for that matter, “If she’s walking two steps behind me, how am I supposed to STOP the gut reaction of “don’t let this fucker catch up to you” that’s been ingrained over hundreds of nights walking home alone, in order to give her the time and space to get ahead of me to open the door?” (This sort of thing is all about facilitating the “dance” part of D/s interaction. And I’m not a very good lead yet, I’m afraid).
But there’s also a more generalized one. Which is this:
There’s a world of difference for me between “I like it when you do X” and “I require/demand that you do X”.
To take tea as an example.
I like it when my Ghost brings me tea. I like that she remember how I like it. I like that she remembers that I take two organic sugars + cream-not-milk in my Earl Grey tea, and makes a point of making it Just So.
And maybe that’s protocol, itself.
But what I think of as “protocol” is when she brings it to me in both hands and presents it on her knees.
And I can take that or leave that. Being one-handed a cuppa while she flops down on the couch beside me to relax for ten minutes? Also Okay!
Being given my tea two-handed and on her knees is a sweet, sweet gift of her time and her concentration and her devotion.
I feel like if I made that a capital-R Requirement, I would lose that. I would lose the part of that kind of presentation – the part where it’s a voluntary thing she is choosing to do every time she does it – that makes it a way for her, my girlfriend/servant, to show me that I’m special to her. And, call me insecure, but I don’t want to lose that.
So, yes. Wussy Domme is Wussy.
All that being said, what Andrea began the workshop with was this:
There is no Way. You get to make it all up.
And that, at least, is something I can definitely work with.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] It’s not a big collection. I’ve given a lot of stuff away in the past two years.
So. Slow food and organic gardening.
These two subjects are quite the passion of mine. While I currently live in an apartment, I used to have a house with a garden and I quite delighted in growing my own vegetables and (some) herbs. (Okay, so it was mostly a jungle of winter squash, but still).
Last November, I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma bike Michael Pollan and, more recently, I’ve been reading blog posts (at Feministe, I thought, but I can’t seem to re-find them) about how arguments for home-cooking meals and healthy eating are fraught with sexism and classism.
Slow food is a wonderful concept. I love heritage tomatoes and artisan cheeses, love growing my own vegetables and making my own bread and yoghurt. I think that communal eating, the sharing of food but also of time and company, is massively important in terms of building communities and chosen families (or families of origin for that matter). We’re social animals. It’s What We Do.
However, I’m aware that, qua movement, there are perhaps some pitfalls to be found.
Because slow – that is unprocessed, made from scratch – food is a lot of work.
At least it can be.
De-boning a chicken is no picnic, let me tell you. Beans need soaking. Bread requires kneading and rising, and all the rest of it. Hell, whether you’re a harried grad student, a single mom on the corporate ladder, or a parent working three jobs to keep the roof overhead, it can be a challenge just to find the time and energy to chop a bunch of bok choy for a stir-fry.
So the question becomes: Who is expected to take this extra work on?
Given that those numerous “Why are we so unhealthy” news articles tend to have veiled (or not so veiled) references to Women Leaving the Home[1] for the workforce, it’s hard to avoid the impression that it’s women who are supposed to be shouldering the burden of cooking up healthy, from-scratch meals along with the rest of the second shift.
And I wonder about that.
I have a cookbook – an old cookbook, one of the old guard of Hippy Vegetarian cookbooks that came out in the early ‘70s, smack between “Make Love, Not War” and “The Personal Is Political”. I love it to death. I love the descriptions of different vegetables, the recipe for fluffy tea-biscuits that can be anything from dinner rolls to strawberry shortcake depending on what you serve them with, the dissertation on bread as living thing and staff of life. … But the author’s politics leave me angry.
Because, while she’s all for *someone* being a stay-at-home parent, tending the organic garden, balancing the amino acids, and creating home-spun yet work-of-art meals from for-serious scratch (no tinned chickpeas or frozen broccoli here!)… The “someone” in question is *mom*. Never dad. Wife, never husband[2].
BUT.
At the same time as I disparage the implied assumption that it should be women who carry the weight of this, I can also see how it’s a feminist thing to do.
I’ve heard of women deciding to go vegan out of a desire to withdraw support from the milk-egg-and-honey factories where it’s specifically female animals who are getting worked to death in lousy conditions.
On a more personal level… If I were to take a page from The Omnivore’s Dilemma and cross it with something out of, say, Starhawk’s Earth Path, I would probably end up with something like this:
Kiriarchy is built, and relies, upon: mechanisation, monoculture, assimilation, hierarchy, alienation, the belief that some pigs are more equal than other pigs, instant gratification, profit(!), and petroleum.
So, if you are engaging in any flavour of anti-oppression work (or even if you’re not[3], you might consider incorporating some/more of the following into your life: Barter, consensus, glass and/or metal instead of plastic, pot-lucks, DIY, learning new things, diversity, cloth bags, seasonal/local/organic food, gardening, compost, and second-hand-clothes[4].
It was partially with this in mind that, back in September, I tried an experiment.
Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I have a servant. In the bdsm sense of the word. But, even before Ghost came into my life, I had a deep loathing for doing my dishes, and an equally strong need to get them done.
So I tried an experiment. I made a post on the local craigslist barter board suggesting that I would be delighted to exchange home-cooking for dish-doing with someone who shared my feminist leanings and recognized the value of what is traditionally called “women’s work”.
‘Cause that’s what those afore-mentioned blog articles are critiquing: The idea that cooking (or child-care, or keeping a house clean, or whatever) is *easy*, that it takes no effort or creativity or skill to throw a meal together, and that, as such, it has no value. The idea that they should be left to the wife, the maid, or the microwave while the More Important People go do something that matters.
And I think it *does* matter. As a Pagan, I think that the more food you grow, the more you compost, the more you develop a utually-supportive relationship with the land upon-which you live, the better you are likely to treat it, and the healthier and happier you are likely to be. So I want to do slower food. I want the time to make my own bread, to make my own yoghurt and paneer/cottage cheese, to slow-cook stews and soups, grow my own vegetables, harvest my own fruits, make my own jams and pickles in my kitchen. Feed the people I cherish from the work of my hands and my heart and my mind.
The trick is finding the time, the leisure (there’s an irony), in-which to do it.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] See above re: Classism.
[2] And, yes, it’s very hetero. And, yes, she’s at least aware that some families don’t have the luxury of supporting themselves on a single income.
[3] My sister did this for a year, just to see if she could: 100% organic food, and 100% second-hand *everything else*, with the caveat that if she did buy something not!organic and/or new-made, she had to make an equal donation to a charity. I’m very impressed by this, but am also slightly defensive given that I haven’t done so myself.
[4] I confess, a good chunk of this falls by the way-side for me when I go through long bouts of un(der)employment.
So. A while back, I took a workshop with Andrea Zanin (of Sex Geek fame) and, in passing, she recommended Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas.
I immediately thought of my now-ex-girlfriend (escort, pro-domme, tantrica and performance artist) and decided it would make The Perfect Birthday Present. (Which it totally did, once she finally had a chance to sit down and actually read it).
But I also got a copy for myself and, as of now, I’m about half-way through it.
See, I’m no tantrica. I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to Energy Work. But I can *do* that sort of thing. (If you’re allergic to non-mechanistic worldviews, you might just want to stop now as this entry contains a lot of what is sometimes referred to as “Woo-Woo”).
Right. I can move energy around in a way that isn’t as accepted-as-common-place as, say, blowing out a candle or sending documents through email.
Lots and lots and LOTS of people can do this.
Some of them don’t notice.
Some of them are Very Aware of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
And then there are people like me.
I am, effectively, a Bunker.
I’m told (periodically) that I’m “very tuned in” or that I’m an “instant ground” and stuff like that.
But I’m not particularly aware of it when I’m doing that stuff or, some of the time, I’ll know I’m doing *something* but I won’t really be clear on what it is I’m doing, or how I’m doing it.
So I thought this book would help me figure that out.
And, to some extent, that’s what it’s done.
But, more significantly, it’s done something else. The biggest thing I’ve got out of Urban Tantra so far is that “there is no right way” to do Tantra, to do Bliss. This is something that shows up in sex-positive material (like Carol Queen’s Real Live Nude Girl, for example) and that I, in my fear of Screwing Up, often forget.
Having someone remind me (even in written format) that There Is No Right Way – there are the ways that work for you, personally, and there are the ways that work for you plus your various combinations of partners, but there is no one, single Right Way to sex – is incredibly helpful and very freeing.
As such, I recommend.
As a secondary note: There’s a point in the book where she talks about Someone On The Radio (I don’t remember who) being interviewed about “problems with sex today” who said that a significant problem was putting too much attention on having orgasms. The author, of course, has a fairly broad definition of “orgasm” and so talked about “Why on earth would you not focus on orgasms?” but, if only because her response kind of bugged me, I wanted to talk about about why *not* to.
And, yeah, I’m pretty damn sure this is old, OLD news to most of the people reading this, but: If one’s sexual goal is “get all participants off as quickly as possible”, then one is (A) missing out on a lot of the fun part of “getting there” and, more to the point, (B) putting a hell of a lot of pressure on one’s partner(s) and oneself to cum every time.
I had to deal with “B” a lot in my former marriage. My husband wanted to make sure I got off every time we had sex. Which, at face value, looks like a good and appropriate attitude/desire to have. But the reality – the unwritten parts of that statement, such as “in five to ten minutes, tops” and “I’ll be so disappointed if you don’t” and “I’m not up for varying my technique(s) to facilitate your having an orgasm” made for some really rotten sex. For both of us.
Whereas if you go into sex with the attitude of “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Let’s fool around[1]!” the narrative pressures of kiss-suck-lick-fuck unidirectional sex won’t be nearly so strong and you are way more likely (or so I’ve found, at least) to have *good* sex than when you’re pushing yourselves and each other to reach that Big O ASAP.
Anyway. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] P.S.A.: Gloves, lube, non-porous saran wrap, condoms and (did I mention) lube are your friends. Duh.
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