B003B0W1QC EBOK (11 page)
Authors: Dossie Easton,Catherine A. Liszt
Our point here is that kinky people live in an underground community that is rich and productive, generating art and discourse of its own and exerting a major influence on art and philosophy outside of the boundaries of the sexual minority’s ghetto: our voices carry very far “beyond the pale.” The three largest public events in California, where we live, are the Rose Bowl, the San Francisco Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/ Transgendered Freedom Day Pride Parade, and the Folsom Street Fair. This last, which attracts a couple of hundred thousand attendees every year, takes place in San Francisco’s South of Market “Miracle Mile,” home of leather bars, sex clubs, art galleries and performance spaces serving the sexual underground. (The mainstream newspapers here in San Francisco usually give the Fair a couple of column inches of space.)
Indeed, so complete a community and culture exists within our pale that many of us have very little contact with the mainstream world. Those of us who live in the sexual underground have entire social and extended family networks ready to take care of all of our needs; businesses, places of employment, neighborhoods where nobody stares when we walk by no matter what we are wearing. One publisher in our community maintains a list of Kink Aware Professionals, listing therapists, doctors and dentists who are “S/M friendly” in many cities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the Far East.
We even have our own museum: Chicago’s Leather Archives and Museum now houses valuable historical documents and displays from our community’s past and present.
Why we feel safer in a ghetto.
Because nobody will offer us a hard time. Many kinky people feel safer within the boundaries of our subculture, and more free to expand and refine our understanding and expression of our sexuality and our selves. There is very little space for our exploration in the mainstream culture.
Because nobody will offer us a hard time. Many kinky people feel safer within the boundaries of our subculture, and more free to expand and refine our understanding and expression of our sexuality and our selves. There is very little space for our exploration in the mainstream culture.
This can be hard to understand, so let’s look at an example. Dossie writes and performs poetry with intense erotic and philosophical themes, and she has no desire to perform in the larger culture, even though she might make more money. The difference is about being understood. Audiences in the underground understand what she is saying, and are able to listen and respond with enthusiasm. A mainstream audience would be (and, on occasion, has been) so shocked by her content that they wouldn’t really hear her, and certainly would not be able to respond with enthusiasm. So inside the ghetto, she can develop her art and get feedback from those who read and hear her. Outside, she is regarded as an embarrassing freak.
The more we live in our community, the less we know about what is mainstream. We become a strange kind of foreigner, ostracized from the larger culture in which we live, encapsulated. Dossie has never lived in the mainstream as an adult, which is one reason why she seems old-fashioned when she tries: the “straight” culture she remembers living in was in the fifties. Some of us become “disculturated,” unfamiliar with the “regular” way, which means that when we visit you, our friends and family who are not of the sexual underground, we wind up feeling like a fish out of water, not knowing how to act or understanding the underlying meaning of interactions around us. How forbidden is it to be gay these days? Are lesbians more widely accepted than they used to be? Is it okay to joke about things like spanking and bondage? We don’t know.
If you visit in our culture, come perhaps to one of our art openings or theater performances, or the Folsom Street Fair, you too will feel like a fish out of water. Surrounded by people wearing odd bits of leather and chains, sporting tattoos and piercings and scarifications, or perhaps exquisitely tailored military uniforms, you might feel shocked, frightened, awkward and unsure of yourself.
A few years ago, Catherine’s mother was kind and brave enough to join Catherine for a panel discussion at a San Francisco S/M club on the topic of “S/M and Families.” As she followed Catherine around San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, past the leather stores and bars, past the men in leathers and the women in crew cuts, her eyes got bigger and bigger. The program itself was held in a gay men’s sex club that the support group had rented for the evening, an industrial space featuring individual booths for sexual activity, bondage equipment, rafters strung with discarded boots, and large safer-sex posters featuring muscular and erect young men stroking their latex-clad genitals. Mom - who handled the program like the pro she is, and was invited by several less fortunate kinkyfolk to come be
their
mother too - had a chance to learn firsthand what it feels like to be in an environment so very different from her own, and has had a whole new appreciation for the gap between sexual cultures since then.
their
mother too - had a chance to learn firsthand what it feels like to be in an environment so very different from her own, and has had a whole new appreciation for the gap between sexual cultures since then.
Put yourself in that position, and remember: that’s how we feel when we visit the mainstream culture that you take for granted: we feel frightened, awkward and unsure.
8
Coming To Terms
How do you, how does anyone, come to terms with your friend’s sexual experience when it is way beyond the boundaries of anything you ever expected to find near you - nothing you ever expected you would have any need whatsoever to deal with, to learn about, to accept? Most of us have been taught that any sex, much less kinkiness, is embarrassing and disgusting. But now we are faced with someone - a friend, a lover, a member of the family - that we know and love, and we don’t want to hurt him, or lose his friendship.
This section will help you in deciding what your own feelings are about the kink of your friend or relative, and in clarifying your own boundaries.
Permission.
Start by giving yourself permission to not like, not want, not feel erotic about anything that you may be hearing from your kinky friend that is shocking and difficult for you. It’s not your job to like every single fantasy or role-play or sexual behavior that you hear about. All that is asked of you is that you find a neutral position.
Start by giving yourself permission to not like, not want, not feel erotic about anything that you may be hearing from your kinky friend that is shocking and difficult for you. It’s not your job to like every single fantasy or role-play or sexual behavior that you hear about. All that is asked of you is that you find a neutral position.
Now might be a good time to turn back to Chapter Two, if you need to. Take a few minutes to breathe, relax, and remember the wonderful things about your kinky friend or relative.
The other side of this same coin is important to note here. Since our culture has stereotyped kinky people as self-destructive sickos, it can be a startling revelation to discover that a person that you love and respect and know to be a healthy and worthwhile human being is into kinky sex. Dossie recalls what a shock it was to meet Cynthia Slater, co-founder of the Society of Janus, twenty-five years ago:
“I had always been aware of fantasies about bondage and kidnapping, but had thought them to be about an unhealthy, not-yet-reconstructed part of my pre-feminist self. Cynthia was a woman with whom I had a great deal in common: she was intelligent, outspoken and outrageous. So here was this woman whom I liked and respected (and found extremely attractive) who was actually doing all those forbidden things that were in my fantasies! I had a revelation. Maybe I, too, could try out some of those forbidden sexualities from my dreams and still be a strong and healthy person. And so I did, and so I am.”
You may find that you need to give yourself permission to acknowledge kinky themes in your own fantasies or your desires. Once again, give yourself permission to feel how you feel, and be who you are. You may never act on such fantasies, or you may try them out at some other time - there is no rush. Coming to terms with your friend’s kink does not mean you have to join him, and if you find yourself with some desire to do so, you can give yourself all the time you like to think about that, gather information, and make up your own mind for yourself. And if you decide, as many do quite happily, to keep your kink in fantasy only, then perhaps this book, or what you hear from your kinky friend, may enrich your fantasy life, and we think this is a good thing too.
Continue to give yourself permission to have your feelings - give your gut responses some respectful attention, and be kind to yourself. You can safely own your feelings and learn from them as long as you don’t blame yourself or anyone else for those feelings being there inside you. They are simply your feelings, part of you and your unique character and history.
Setting limits.
Another important thing to know about coming to terms with information about your kinky person’s alternative sexual behaviors is that
you get to set your own limits
.
Another important thing to know about coming to terms with information about your kinky person’s alternative sexual behaviors is that
you get to set your own limits
.
For example, you might find that you’re perfectly OK with hearing that your daughter likes bondage - but that hearing the details of exactly how she likes to get tied up and what happens next is simply too much, that it feels too intimate or too scary to hear that information. We think it’s extremely important that you communicate your discomfort to her, and set clear limits about what information you want and don’t want to be given.
Many kinkyfolk talk among themselves in a very forthright and uninhibited manner, and it’s easy for us to forget that the rest of the world may not feel comfortable with such frank talk. Please, if your kinky person is telling you more than you want to know, or using language that feels uncomfortable to you, say so. Be as clear as you can about exactly what it is that’s bothering you and how she can avoid it in the future. If you can, make it clear that it isn’t her kinky behavior that’s upsetting you, it’s that she’s giving you more information than you’re ready to hear right now. We think she’d much rather have you state your limits clearly than have you simply stop communicating at all because you’re feeling overwhelmed.
You may also discover that what worries you is not so much that
you’re
upset by how your kinky person is talking, but what other people might think - especially if those other people are important in your life, your neighbors or co-workers or parents. This may be a special concern if your kinky person is very “out” and public in his desires (“Wasn’t that your son Tim I saw at the Folsom Street Fair on the news last night?”)
you’re
upset by how your kinky person is talking, but what other people might think - especially if those other people are important in your life, your neighbors or co-workers or parents. This may be a special concern if your kinky person is very “out” and public in his desires (“Wasn’t that your son Tim I saw at the Folsom Street Fair on the news last night?”)
You may never choose to hear the details, and that’s okay too. Your friend or family member needs to know that you still care for and respect him as a human being, not that you ardently desire an instant education in the joys of perversion. Even if your kinky person is your lover, spouse, mate or partner, which we will discuss in detail soon... even in this difficult case... you still get to choose how much you feel you can take in at any given time. It probably took your kinky friend some period of time to get comfortable enough to speak easily about what she does. You can reassure yourself by asking your friend about his learning process: “Didn’t you have a hard time with this the first time you heard it?” Chances are he did - sexual sophisticates are made, not born.
Pay attention to your own reactions. What shocks you the most? What your friend does? That he is not ashamed? That she talks about it in language that you’ve never heard before except as an insult? That your friend is out of the closet and lots of people know about his lifestyle, and what will the neighbors think if your kinky person shows up at your house for dinner in leather and studs? Knowing specifically what’s bothering you today makes it easier to set limits: “I’d like to invite you to dinner, but I’m embarrassed and I feel distant from you if you come in costume, and I worry about what the neighbors will say to me.”
You can be an open-minded person and still have a right to protection about your own feelings, and to set limits like, perhaps, “Could we please not discuss this over the dinner table?” When Dossie’s daughter was in junior high and high school, they agreed to keep the house in such a way that neither Dossie’s kink nor her lesbian relationship were visible to her daughter’s friends who came to visit. Dossie figured her daughter had a right to a home she could bring her friends to without having to admit how different her family was.
One issue that many people have concerns about personal appearance and dress codes. Kinky people often like to celebrate their sexuality by wearing clothes, tattoos and body jewelry that make their lifestyle preferences all too obvious to the observer; we take a lot of pride in the creative ways we have found to express ourselves and our accomplishments through our appearance. What this means to you, is that to ask a kinky person to wear ordinary clothing can amount to asking us to pretend to be somebody else. Many butch or androgynous women have similar problems: for them, wearing a dress and stockings and heels may feel excruciatingly uncomfortable and embarrassing - just as embarrassing as it would be for a non-crossdressing man to have to dress this way. To be obliged to wear ordinary clothes may constitute a denial of their identity, a stark message that “the way you are is not acceptable.”
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