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/ Wintersong / Leave a comment

No, being a trans* child is in fact NOTHING like wanting to grow up to be an astronaut, and the fabulous Michelle from Michellelianna breaks down exactly why.

michellelianna's avatarMichellelianna

Astronaut-Girl

Don’t you just love it when people pull this little analogy out when the topic of transgender children comes up? “Hell, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, so this is the same thing. He has boy chromosomes, so he’s a boy. That is a FACT!” Yeah, I’ll get to the chromosome thing in a later post because that requires a little more thought to declare it bunk and I’m tired this morning. Let’s look at the astronaut argument for now while I sip on some delicious Scottish Orange Pekoe tea (thank you again, Becky!).

I shouldn’t have to really explain this to the trans crowd, but if you came around to support and someone ever hits you with this little gem of a logical fallacy, it’s fairly simple. First off, wanting to be an astronaut is a future dream, and probably a pipe one at that…

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/ Wintersong / Leave a comment

I *loved* Del’s breakdown on the use of the word “godphone,” and as someone else who was there when it was coming into use, I can confirm that none of us were trying to craft new language for the broader community. We were all just trying to find accessible ways to express our own experience of communication with the divine. Also: we were a pretty snarky bunch of mostly queer folk, so that may have shaped things a bit too 🙂

Del's avatarSex, Gods, and Rock Stars

A discussion on Facebook inspired this post. Someone felt that the term “godphone” was misleading, and a little disrespectful, and called for people to stop using it. I can see what their point is, but I want to write a bit about where the term came from, what it originally meant, and why I don’t think I’ll stop using it (although I may temper how often I use it, and with whom).

I can’t say for certain that I was there when the word was first coined, but I can say that I know from whence it came. A certain clique of spirit workers, shamans, and other spiritually minded folk were trying to explain the different ways divine communication can occur with humans. We were not at an academic conference or high-brow conference call, trying to codify something meant for Merriam Webster; we were a bunch of goofball spooky-foo folk…

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The Problem With Projecting Our Experience Onto Others

/ Wintersong / 1 Comment

Note: This essay was originally posted on The Bilerico Project on 3/11/13

After two tries with two significantly different meds, it looks like SSRIs and I simply don’t get along when it comes to being able to motivate and think well enough to get work done. As a person with moderate Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, this is rather aggravating. My OCD waxes and wanes much like my Tourette, and has been worse in the last few months than it had been for quite a while. In mentioning this conundrum to several people over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed something interesting, and new to my own experience.

When I have raised the topic of having OCD (a common comorbidity with Tourette), multiple people have reacted with total dismissal, typically saying something to the effect of “well everyone is a little OCD.”

In the past, while I might occasionally have had to explain what OCD was, the average person was far more likely to be accepting of its existence than they were of my Tourette Syndrome. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder being easier for many people to comprehend than the involuntary movements and sounds found in TS was often an annoyance to me, being someone who’s tics were often far more disruptive than the symptoms of OCD were.

This sort of dismissal isn’t an entirely unfamiliar phenomena to me though. As the profile of Tourette Syndrome was raised in the public consciousness, particularly in the wake of HBO’s well-made documentary on the topic of youth with the disorder, I found myself being met with a new form of disbelief when I attempted to explain my symptoms. One woman summed up the Catch 22 of having a suddenly high-profile condition, when she angrily responded to my explanation of why I was barking like a small terrier with “yeah I watch TV too; shut the fuck up.”

Perhaps with cultural artifacts like USA Network’s multiple-award-winning series Monk, a related phenomena has occurred with OCD. Of course, unlike with TS there is some truth to the statement that many people have transient obsessions or compulsions, which I imagine makes it easier to dismiss in other people.

In this one respect, the situation is not unlike some of the resistance LGBT people encounter from people who can relate just a little bit to our experiences. After all, homosexual experimentation has traditionally been a common element of childhood, even among people who grow up to identify as heterosexual. Besides, it isn’t that unusual to hear straight people ruminate on who they’d “go gay for” once they’ve got some alcohol in their system.

It hardly seems a great stretch to imagine that a person’s related, but distinctly different experience from being gay or bisexual, could contribute to the widespread and generally erroneous belief that sexual orientation is a “lifestyle choice.”

Perhaps in the back of some people’s minds when the topic of gay and bisexual people comes up, they think back to those late nights during sleepovers with Jim/Jane, or that one reoccurring dream they had in high school that made them feel so funny. Because we naturally project our own experiences onto other people, and they are heterosexual (regardless of their youthful exploration), the idea that gay people have “chosen” to pursue relationships and sex with people of the same gender, is to them a logical conclusion.

This can equally apply to gender identity. Half the people I know at some point or another has wondered or fantasized about being another gender. Personally I went through a period as a child where I really wished I had a vagina because I thought it’d be awesome to be the receptive parter for sex (I was beyond thrilled to learn a few years later that a vagina was not a strict requirement), and I know plenty of straight men who played dress-up as children, and straight women who were tomboys. Of course, none of that is the same as having a gender identity different from that which you were assigned at birth.

But again, I can see how someone who doesn’t, and doesn’t want to understand what it means to be trans*, could look to their own casual experience of questioning or playing with gender, and falsely extrapolate their experience in a way that leads them to believe that trans* people are simply “confused.”

It is not my intent to excuse people who project their own experiences onto us to justify their opposition to LGBT equality.

Rather, I simply believe that by striving to put our own experiences aside sometimes and try to understand where other people are coming from, we can be more compassionate people, better advocates for equality, and of course, avoid being that asshole from time to time.

Re-Framing The Discussion Around STIs

/ Wintersong / 2 Comments

This post originally ran on Bilerico.com on 12/30/12

As a sex & BDSM educator I spend a lot of time talking about sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Over time, I’ve noticed that how we talk about some STIs can be deeply problematic, and in ways that have serious consequences for public health.

Before I dig into that topic though, I’d like you to stop for a moment and try to guess what the most common illness transmitted by sexual activity is.

I’ll wait…

If you guessed Gonorrhea you’re not in the ballpark.

HSV1 & 2? You’re getting closer, but still not there.

HIV? Go to the back of the class.

No, the most common STI by a long shot would have to be the Rhinovirus, also known as the cause of the common cold.

Before you call “bullshit,” take a mental step back from the cultural box we usually put sexually transmitted illnesses in. Instead, think about the kinds of erotic encounters you personally enjoy (assuming that you enjoy erotic activity). Surely you can see how easy it is to catch a cold from a lover. In fact, I’d wager that the majority of you have at some point contracted or infected someone else with a Rhinovirus during a night of romance or lovemaking.

However, I’ll also wager that you didn’t think of the cold as an STI, which only goes to show that there’s something off in how we think about sexually transmitted infections.

That isn’t to say that you wouldn’t have every right to be mightily pissed off if a lover knowingly had sex with you without disclosing that they were getting over the flu.

It’s hardly news that in the LGBT community, and especially among gay men, there’s a ton of baggage when it comes to STIs. A lot of that has to do with the AIDS crisis of course. At the same time however, LGBT people also have a long history of being identified by society as sick, damaged or dangerous to the general public, a perception that the AIDS crisis unfortunately fed into perfectly. After all, before AIDS there was GRID, and frankly in the back of many people’s minds, in and out of the LGBT community, the stigma of GRID never really went away. Our enemies have not been quiet in their belief that HIV/AIDS is our “punishment” for being queer/LGBT, a belief that some of us struggle to put aside even after years or decades of living authentic gay lives.

Keeping that baggage in mind, I believe that there are two distinct, yet interconnected issues we as a community must work through.

First and foremost, we have to uncouple shame from the medical reality of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. This shame can spring from many places, including internalized homophobia, puritanical views of sex, and even the feeling of having “failed” at remaining STI negative. I recognize that this view is not universal within our community. After all, some people reason, if contracting an STI is seen as a shameful thing, surely that would encourage safe practices.

I’d argue instead however, that the air of shame around the topic of STIs can make reasonable conversations around risk and prevention more difficult than they should be. I cannot count how many young people I’ve talked to who’ve chosen to have unprotected sex out of a fear that their partner(s) would be offended by the (perceived) implications inherent in wanting to use protection. Likewise, all to often I hear variations on “I wouldn’t be involved with one of those sorts of people,” as an explanation for why protection or precautions simply aren’t necessary. When we build up a mythical image of the “kind” of person who contracts a sexually transmitted infection, it becomes easy to believe that the only precaution we need is to avoid being intimate with the “wrong” type.

Of course this cultural meme causes terrible harm to people who do have some form of STI. Even the language our community tends to use: “clean” for someone who is STI negative, with the implied antonym of “dirty” for someone who is positive, can be incredibly destructive. Moreover, we don’t tend to impose these same sorts of moral filters onto other illnesses, contagious or otherwise.

Which brings me to the second issue I wanted to address.

Due in no small part to a pervasive shame around the whole topic of STIs; rumors, misconceptions, and assumptions about the risks and spectrum of sexually transmitted infections remain rampant in and out of the LGBT community. Here is a short list of myths I find myself addressing at least four or five times a month:

  • The idea that sero-discordant people cannot safely have sex.
  • The belief that if someone contracts or develops symptoms of HSV1 or HSV2 it means that they have been promiscuous, unsafe, and duplicitous.
  • Even more disturbing: the belief that HSV posses a serious and potentially life-threatening/ending risk to an otherwise healthy person.
  • All sexually transmitted infections are incurable.
  • One can’t contract a sexually transmitted infection if it’s their first time being sexually active.
  • Condoms are ineffective at preventing the spread of HIV (thank George W. Bush and his friends for this one)
  • Receptive anal sex is the only way to contract HIV
  • HIV is only transmitted through homosexual sex (yes, people still really believe this)
  • For the sake of brevity, I’ll leaving out all the BDSM-related STI myths that I also encounter, but they are extensive

I’ve come to realize that as part of the Challenger generation, I was born into a narrow window during which there was good information and a will to educate youth about HIV, but before the doctrine of abstinence-only-education become pervasive.

This, combined with coming out young, while HIV was only really beginning to be tamed by modern drug cocktails, gave me advantages over the generations that followed mine both in terms of knowledge and particularly in openness of dialog. Of course, talking about sex for a living doesn’t hurt either.

Many young people have only the barest knowledge of HIV, and none at all of other STIs. In the lack of proper knowledge, half-truths and assumptions get taken as fact, as they always have.

For instance, as far as I can tell, the belief that HSV can kill an otherwise healthy person exists solely because the virus is often transmitted sexually, and people have been taught that sex kills. This rather than being provided with detailed information on the spectrum of risk and how to have a healthy sexual life as safely as possible.

Of course, nothing I’m saying here is new. But therein lies the issue facing our community: we’ve been having these conversations for so long, it’s hard to imagine that we still need to.

The fact that we do should be a sign that we’re doing something wrong.

Please don’t imagine that I’m suggesting that we take a laissez-faire attitude towards STIs or safe sex. The reality is that sexually transmitted infections range from the annoying to the seriously life-threatening, and with the growth of anti-biotic resistant strains of familiar illnesses, our level of care and concern should only be increasing.

At the same time, the risk of contracting an illness cannot continue to be a wedge with which an attitude of shame around our sexual desires are driven home. For very understandable reasons, the HIV/AIDS crisis fostered an element of sexual puritanism within the gay community that does not universally serve us well. After all, sexual promiscuity and adventurism is a natural facet of the human condition. We must find better ways to educate people about STI realities, and engage in productive dialogs about informed and risk-aware sexual behavior.

To get there though, we first have to shift how we think about and discuss sexually transmitted infections back foremost into the medical realm, hence the earlier thought exercise around the Rhinovirus.

There should be no more shame in contracting HSV, HPV, HIV, Gonorrhea, etc, than there is in any other preventable medical condition. I’m not saying we should remove the concept of personal responsibility, but when a smoker develops lung cancer we don’t call them dirty; and when a skier breaks their arm we may tsk at them, after all skiing carries the risk of injury, but we don’t assail their character, tell them they deserved what happened, or imply that their skiing injury reflects poorly on their worth as a person.

Especially not if we’re out on the slopes every weekend too.

Surrendering to Desire

/ Wintersong / 2 Comments

Note: this is an adaptation and expansion of a post of mine that originally appeared at Bilerico.com on 11/2/12. I’ve made quite a lot of additions that would not have been suitable for the Bilerico audience

The word “Surrender” has been on my mind a lot lately. Firstly I suppose, because it’s the name of Dark Odyssey’s newest event, which is coming up in scarcely a week, so I’ve been saying it an awful lot lately. But also, because “surrender” is something I’ve not been getting enough of in my life lately.

That may seem a bit strange as sentiments go. The whole idea of surrendering is very much not something that we are taught in modern American culture to embrace. Above all, our society embraces and rewards strength, supremacy, and yes: dominance.

Certainly I live a life where those are required assets for survival. Foremost there’s my disability, which is at times highly visible, socially problematic, and requires me to be a strong advocate for myself – often with quite hostile strangers. Then there’s my career as a public speaker, BDSM educator, and as programing coordinator/assistant producer for a BDSM event company. Sexual and relationship dynamics aside, that work requires one to be the embodiment of assertive and in control. As a spirit worker, pagan, and magician, I’m seen by people as a spiritual authority, and while submission to my gods is understood to an extent within the community, there are also expectation of mastery that can seem to many to be absolutely intertwined with an aura of strength and invulnerability. And finally, there’s my work as an LGBT/GSRM advocate, activist, and blogger, where if you show even a moment’s vulnerability, the wolves of intolerance, both from without and within the community, will descend and tear you apart.

In my personal erotic/romantic life, I’ve long identified as a “switch.” That is, someone who enjoys the exploration of dynamics of dominance and/or sadism, as well as those of submission and/or masochism. However, for many years I’ve been unable to find partners and opportunities in which to give free rein to my submissive and masochistic desires.

My aforementioned roles in the BDSM community surely have played a part in those troubles. Of the people who express an erotic or kinky interest in me, the overwhelming majority see me more as a set of skills that they can learn or enjoy, rather than as a holistic person made up of needs and wants. I don’t want to come across as complaining though, it’s a known part of the job I do, and I accept that. More often than not it still leads to mutually enjoyable experiences as well.

The people who have expressed an interest in topping me over the last few years have tended to do so in ways that made me deeply uncomfortable. Several potential play partners have expressed a reluctance to honor my hard limits, with one person saying

come on, I could be the guy who made Wintersong Tashlin ‘red,’ how could I pass that up?

For the record, it’s not hard at all to make me call ‘red,’ (a standard dungeon safe-word), I have a list of clear hard limits, and I am also not nearly as hard a masochist as I am brutal in my sadism. 

But not bottoming for BDSM play has been about far more than not wanting to interfere with people’s perception of my “image,” or the difficulty finding suitable play partners. After all, some of the kinksters I have the most respect for are very public about their own submission, including my boss at Dark Odyssey, and people like fellow BDSM educator Mollena Williams.

What I have come to realize is that for all that I talk frequently in my education work, and deeply believe in. the inherent equality of submissives and dominants, somewhere along the line I internalized those societal messages I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. I fell into the trap of believing that to be “strong” I had to maintain constant control in my mundane, spiritual, and professional life. That it was somehow a mark of failure or weakness to allow myself to let go and surrender to the other side of my nature.

ImageAnd then, last weekend, something remarkable happened. For the first time in years, I permitted myself to relinquish control and indulge the submissive/masochistic side of my desires. I’ve been heavily overworking myself between the push to get everything ready for Dark Odyssey Surrender, an Oct/Nov touring schedule that somehow got insanely full, trying to remain active as an editor and blogger for Bilerico.com, and some complicated issues in my family and spiritual lives.

In a fine hotel room, where I was staying for a conference on gender and sexuality, two truly fabulous men that I’m lucky to have in my life spent a good number of hours beating, pinching, biting, and in other ways tormenting my body, in a way that let my mind be free in a way that I desperately needed. I didn’t go into the situation expecting things to go there, but I was with people who I could trust, and to be honest, I simply didn’t have the emotional resources in that time and space to be a good top. I needed to not be “on,” to be vulnerable, which isn’t something I feel I can be with anyone in my life right now (the topic for another post I suppose).

Of course now is the point where I suppose that I need to specify that yes there were safewords between us, and in the few occasions where I needed to use my “slow down” command it was instantly respected. Likewise, when I said that I had legitimately had enough, the scene ended.

But while it lasted, I was totally consumed with both the sensations in my body, and the consensual illusion of having my life under someone else’s control for a while, yet having that person be someone who didn’t want anything from me, unlike the Lady, Var, or the other gods and spirits I work with in a submissive context.

I could totally forget about planning a huge event in a new city, being a professional BDSM educator, my spirit work, or even the convoluted and anxiety-inducing twists and turns of the 2012 election season. It was glorious, intimate, and amazingly restful, even if parts of my body are still sore nearly a week later. Given how stressful my life has been of late, it’s not hyperbole to say that this scene happened right when I needed it to, in order keep going without a serious breakdown.

Now, obviously BDSM is not for everyone! That I personally found deep meaning in the experience I’ve described doesn’t mean that I think getting consensually beaten is a universal cure-all for the pressures of our lives. But, in a roundabout way, it is.

I believe that we all need to find our “thing,” some part of ourselves that we can surrender to for a while. Maybe it’s being beaten hard by two hot Boston queer boys. But then again, maybe it’s a hobby, a form of entertainment, a deeply held desire to try something different – perhaps even something out of character. It could be something you think you should have outgrown, or something you feel too young for. You could be held back by the pressing needs of your life, fear, or concerns over how people might react, or something else entirely.

Whatever it is, I encourage you to find and embrace that part of yourself. Surrender to your need to escape the everyday realities of your existence, and let yourself go for a short while. An important way to respect yourself is by acknowledging and respecting all your needs, even those that make you a bit uncomfortable.

We can’t be “on” all the time, and if we’re going to be effective when we are, we have to have the down periods too. That’s the only way to keep fighting on in whatever struggles and roles your life is throwing at you.