I *so* wanted the duck girl to be a hoax, but no such luck it would seem.
Author: Wintersong
Trying To Balance Conflicting Identities on National Coming Out Day
Today is National Coming Out Day, and it’s got me thinking about the complex nature of identities and openness. More specifically, I’ve been told that I’m to write a post on that topic as penance for not addressing it the way She wanted me to in today’s What You Need To Know on Bilerico.com. I should really be sleeping, but my tics are so severe that the anti-tic medicine I take at night isn’t doing shit. So while I wait for my sedatives to kick in, here goes:
The subject of identity is probably the most common threat binding Notes From A Barking Shaman’s six year run together. I suppose I’ve hardly ever stopped exploring and dissecting who it is that I am as I move through the world, and yet somehow I feel less sure myself now than at any time I can remember since sitting down to write my first post back in September of ’06.
For the first time in recent memory, I find myself in the incredibly unfamiliar place of being closeted in one way or another across many areas of my life, and to be honest it doesn’t sit well with me.
I move through many different spheres and sub-cultures, and the values they each hold dear are often in direct conflict with one another. It’s a delicate balancing act, and I exist in a state of constant struggle not to be a social and ideological chameleon, but rather to hold on to a solid sense of self-identity.
Perhaps the biggest conflict is between my pagan identity and my work as an LGBT blogger and activist. Although I’ve talked in the vaguest terms about being pagan in my writing for The Bilerico Project, where I am now associate editor, the progressive LGBT movement is overwhelmingly anti-religion and faith. And as a rule, it seems that atheists seem to hold pagans, and in particular practitioners of magic, as one infinitesimal step above radical conservative Christians in terms of disdain-worthiness. The Lady really wanted me to use NCOD as an opportunity to address my pagan identity directly with that audience, but I chickened out in the interest of self-preservation. I could potentially build my LGBT activism and blogging work into a semi-reliable paycheck (in higher paying speaking gigs if nothing else), and I’m reluctant to burn my bridges any faster than I already do by defending faith as a concept, and pro-equality religious people as a whole in my writing there.
Given the LGBT community’s general view on religion, my faith, service to the gods, and place as a magician, is something that I heavily downplay in my feeble attempts at dating as well. Although I suppose that could be part of why I’ve not had good luck lately. I’m open about my paganism on OKCupid, but it’s a conversation topic I steer away from with potential suitors.
But within the pagan community I don’t particularly feel free to be my unbridled self either. First and foremost, the pagan response to my Tourette often makes me incredibly angry, and so I tend to try to suppress my symptoms as much as possible in pagan space. Believe it or not, some people see the TS as a sign of the gods disfavor towards me, and others can’t accept that someone could have the talent and discipline for magic when their body isn’t fully within their control.
Beyond those issues, you’d be amazed how many people want to “fix” my TS. Best case scenario they hound me to let them try, worst case they just try without asking my permission first. I’ve also been told that I should just (insert deity to pray to, wacky diet to try, crystal to carry, position to sleep in, etc), or better yet, just “let go of my negativity” and my TS will be cured.
I could go into a long and very technical magical explanation of the flaw that underpins most of the “cures” people have tried or wanted to try, but I’m just going to say that I’ve worked with some of the finest healers, magicians, and energy workers that I’ve ever had the privilege to know, and while I can use certain magical techniques to manage the symptoms for short periods of time (I can suppress tics far longer than any Touretter I’ve met who wasn’t a fellow magician), “curing” the Tourette is not feasible.
That’s a personal issue in my interactions with the pagan community, but there’s an ideological one as well. I’m a scientist at heart, and technology, science, exploration, and intellectual curiosity are deeply important to me. I’m not going to say too much here, because there’s a whole NFaBS post on this topic coming, but I and many of my friends and colleagues have noticed a growing anti-intellectual thread within the pagan community that seems deeply at odds with our history. I had an argument with someone not all that long ago about the gods-blessed Polio vaccine for Hel’s sake! And I’m going to choose not to delve into some of the “conversations” on economics I’ve heard recently.
All that said, you can imagine that a pagan, much less a spirit worker, doesn’t exactly feel welcome in science-friendly spaces either though. And there’s a popular meme, particularly in the online lay-science community that any religious faith is incompatible with even an interest in scientific thought and advancement.
On a different note, I’m certainly not closeted within kink/BDSM space about being GSRM, but as I’ve discussed before, my sexual orientation doesn’t fit well within the kink/BDSM world that I travel in. Likewise, the gay community can range from very accepting of kink and polyamory, to not remotely. I’ve chosen to build my identity within the world of LGBT blogging and activism from a position that uses my kink experience and status as an asset, although I do recognize that it closes as many doors as it opens.
I’m open to an extent about my spiritual beliefs as a kinkster and in my work as a kink/sexuality educator, but only to a point. The BDSM community wants spiritual programing, classes, and rituals, but stripped of any overtly religious or pagan context. This means that while I’m widely known as a shaman, ritualist, and facilitator of cathartic ordeals and scenes, my actual pagan beliefs are far less known or public.
I don’t know that I have a sense of where my GSRM identity fits within the pagan community, or within my own identity as a pagan person. I’ve only ever been involved with very accepting pagan communities such as Asphodel or FSA, but at the same time, for all their inclusivity, I’ve never felt like I explored the spiritual nature of my sexual orientation or identity. Certainly I’ve never had my sexual orientation and spiritual/magical being working in synergy the way I have with my kink/BDSM identity and my spiritual and magical Work. That’s something I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to explore at some point in the future.
So as I move through the world on National Coming Out Day, I wrestle with how to balance the myriad and sometimes conflicting roles I have to wear and identities I carry:
Gods-slave, Magician, Shaman, Educator, Writer, Activist, Presenter, Event (Assistant) Producer, Photographer, Kinkster, Switch, Touretter, Poly, Disabled Person, Designer, Mechanic, Gay, Queer, Male, Cisgender, Gun Owner, Liberal, and the list could go on.
I feel like an understanding of how to make all these roles/identities work and play well together is just beyond my reach, but that in time I’ll get the hang of it. Maybe some will have to merge, maybe some will have to be let go, and maybe still more will be added to the list, but no matter what, laying them out and giving them acknowledgment on National Coming Out Day is no bad place to start.
My Cis Guy Problem
I’ve got posts I should be working on about actual topics that matter to people, but I have to get this one purged from my brain so I can get some *real* work done. Before I continue I want to get an important point out of the way: it’s relevant to the entire context of this post to know that I’m male identified and was male assigned at birth. Also called “cis gender,” or “cis” for short, it’s the opposite of being transgender or transexual (trans*), and is how most people identify, even if they aren’t familiar with the word(s).
Now on to the post:
I’m in my 32nd year, and I have never been in a relationship with a cisgender guy who was both emotionally invested in me as a person, and attracted to or sexually interested in me.
That’s a really hard thing for me to write about for two reasons:
- Because I don’t know how to write about it without seemingly to dismiss the incredible emotional intimacy and hot sex that I’ve had with the many awesome trans* men in my life.
- It really is something I find terribly painful to say, in part because of what it says about my failed marriage, and in part because of what it says about me as a person.
Let me take on the second point first:
Yes, I was with a cis guy for eight years. And yes, we had a lot of sex (of one form or another) during that time. However, our ex never really hid the fact that he wasn’t attracted to me sexually. Periodically he would go through a phase where he would announce that he’d never actually been sexually attracted to me in the first place, and had been “lying” to save my feelings. Then we’d stop being physically intimate for a period of weeks or months, until he decided he was ready to re-engage with me sexually. It was regular as clockwork (18months) but never stopped being horrible.
He even accused me of sexually assaulting him. Saying that since I knew that he didn’t want to be sexually intimate with me, when he initiated sex I had an obligation to say “no” regardless of how insistent he was that it was what he wanted. That I ignored his “preemptive revoking of consent,” in his mind made me an assailant.
With the physical and emotional distance three years apart has bought me (along with a LOT of therapy), I can see that this behavior could be seen as a kind of emotionally abuse, but it doesn’t actually detract from the driving issue in this post.
Since leaving us, Asrik in fact has for the most part not pursued other men. And while he describes himself as bi/pan-sexual, he isn’t open to relationships with guys (if you’re reading this Asrik, I stumbled onto your OKC profile when researching moving to the PNW, and you were the one who asked me to review your “what I’m looking for” list on Fetlife). He may have used his conflicted sexuality as a weapon, but it’s the conflicted nature of his sexuality that’s actually the relevant point here.
I don’t want to make this sound like it’s all about one guy though, because it isn’t. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first back up to point number one:
I’ve had some amazing experiences, both sexual and emotional, with the trans* men in my life. Some have been lovers or friends with benefits, while others have been partners or boyfriends.
The last thing I want to do is come across as saying that I don’t value the FAAB men in my life, or that I don’t see them as men. Neither are true. My life would be far less rich without the men who are important to me, and some of the most “masculine” and male men I’ve ever known have been trans*. That I have a stupid issue around wanting to be accepted by cis guys is my issue, not theirs, and I hate myself for having it.
That’s not hyperbole either, it’s fair to say that I deeply loath that I care in the slightest whether another cis guy can both emotionally and physically engage with me, particularly when so many men who happen not to be cis, have done both.
I said that this wasn’t an issue about one guy (Asrik), and it’s true.
For some reason, maybe spooky, maybe not, I have a life-long history with cis guys who are not able or willing to engage simultaneously on both a physical and emotional level with me. It’s a pattern that dates back to my early adolescence playing with other boys at sleepover parties. The role of the one who wants, but isn’t wanted, is a very familiar one, and maybe that’s why I’ve been so willing to play it so often in my relationships.
Before Asrik, Fire and I briefly dated a different guy who wasn’t all that into men. Since Asrik, I’ve been in one actual *relationship* with a cis guy, but he felt pretty much the same way Asrik did, drawn to me emotionally and able to engage sexually, but not really attracted to me.
I’ve also encountered the exact opposite: men who were open to fooling around, but didn’t want anything beyond the physical. It’s worth noting that I was thirty-one the first time I had a sexual encounter with a cis guy who actually wanted me sexually, and it just a one-time hook-up from Manhunt. It was still enough to teach me the profound difference between grudging and enthusiastic sex. And it cast a whole new light on the “good” sex I’d had with cis guys before.
There’s a third, and related classification of guy that I’ve been involved with, and that’s the “conflicted straight/bi boy.” You could argue that the cis guys I’ve been in relationships with fit this category, but it’s one that can apply as easily to hookups as to relationships.
For some reason they are the one kind of cis guy who seeks me out (other than 60yr old married men on hookup sites). For years, I was happy to “help” these guys explore their feelings, because I found it affirming to have a cis guy need/want me in some way. But doing so has always left me feeling worse about myself in the end. Sex or relationships with someone who feels conflicted about their feelings for you can be devastating for one’s sense of self worth, a lesson you’d think I’d have learned during eight years of marriage to Asrik. It took a guy giving me oral sex while crying in despair over the realization that he liked it, to make me realize that I needed a break from taking conflicted bi guys to bed.
I wish I could tell you why I cared about any of this. For a long time I thought it was just a penis thing. I’m an enormous fan of cis guys’ genitals, and I thought I was just missing having access to a dick or two. But I’ve had hookups at conferences and with guys I met online, and while it’s sort of fun, it doesn’t do anything to help me feel better about this bigger issue.
Intellectually I can understand that I’m not really what gay cis guys are looking for. I’m poly, and cis guys in their 30s are generally looking for “the one.” I’m kinky, but in a way that doesn’t fit within the narrow confines of most gay male BDSM. My faith is another huge issue in the gay dating world, where overwhelmingly it is understood that atheism is the LGBT default. And of course, there’s the Tourette (the “barking” in Notes from a Barking Shaman), which is a dating obstacle to start with, and seems particularly problematic with gay men.
Understanding some of why I’ve been out of the closet for 19 years but have never had a healthy relationship with a cis guy doesn’t really change anything though. In my mind this has become a double edged personal failing, both that I’m undesirable/unable to be with cis guys in that way, and that I give a shit what cis guys think.
I know this is one of the more rambling and pointless posts I’ve made in a while, and I apologize for that. Del and I have a joint NFaBS/SGaR post on the word “shaman” that will be awesome coming up soon, and I’ve got some religion and politics posts that I think you will appreciate. But in keeping with my new commitment to greater openness about who I am and where my internal processes have been, I felt it was important that I share the experience here.
This is a topic that is *very* important in Tashrisketlin’s practices and vreschtik traditions as a whole. Here Del speaks about it clearly and concisely though the lens of his own recent and painful experiences.
At some point in our lives, we find ourselves with energetic and spiritual bonds to people, places, and things that don’t serve us anymore. Maybe we’ve had a breakup, or are moving to a new location, or giving away an item that has a lot of sentimental value.
Sometimes these bonds are even created without our knowledge or consent. If you find yourself thinking about a person, place, or thing on a regular basis, it may be that somehow you’ve formed a bond with it. I find, in working with clients, that sometimes traumatic events that we ruminate over, or items lost in a tragedy (like a house fire), or people that we dislike but spend too much time and energy disliking them, all of these things can lead to an psychic tie merely through repetitive action. I mean, that’s how beneficial ties are formed too – we spend time…
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Del says many of the things I would, except he does it better, because having people not like him doesn’t bother him as much as it does me.
At some point in your teen years, you come to the realization that you want everyone to like you. You might be willing to change your clothes, your interests, the kinds of music you listen to, in hopes that you’ll become more palatable to the peers you’ve decided matter the most to you. For some people, this feeling never goes away, and they spend their lives doing whatever they can to show the peer group they wish to be integrated with that they are already a member – just look at the car they drive, or the hobbies they engage in, or the way they dress.
There are others; there are those who make the harder decision to just stick to whatever they like, and they don’t really care if all the cliques ignore them or make fun of them. In the digital age, it’s likely they can find friends…
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