The Yellow Wood

I was thinking about this before I read Dver's post on Choice, but I think I have it articulable now.

People talk about the price that comes of doing intense spirit-work, the obligations and taboos that accrue if one pursues that as a lifework.  And it gets talked about because there are people who will treat their community's medium as a public service, who are enraged that the local witch needs to pay the electric bill, who are consumed by fits of jealousy and want to know why someone else can pierce the veils between worlds and bring back messages and not them.

And a while back when people were talking about god-slavery as a practice/calling, there was one coming in with a great deal of, "Well clearly my gods do this much more seriously than yours," as if there is only one way to do it, and only a particular set and flavor of framework for devotion (one tending towards the ascetic, the henotheistic, the heavily taboo-bound) was relevant.  (I was a touch nonplussed by running into subbier-than-thou-by-proxy, but such is the nature of religion at times?)

But everywhere is a complicated network of choices, and I can trace back through mine, and see each decision, each angle, even at times when there was no choice possible, no other option: to do otherwise would be a betrayal of myself or my vows or some other principle I held dear.

I recall a night looking Neb.y in the eye and seeing before me the grand fork, one way towards Little Foot and family and the life I was urgently trying to build and had been seeking for a long time, the other towards ecstasy and transformation and vast unknowable deeps on the far side of the dark.

I reached into the future and put my arms around my child, and I said, "You cannot have this."

And the god laughed at me, a long and hearty laugh, and He said, "Prove it."

So I did.

And that has made all the difference.

A is for Apotheosis

Your purification is the purification of Heru

Your purification is the purification of Set
Your purification is the purification of Djehwty
Your purification is the purification of Dwn-Anwy
Your purification is the purification of your ka
Your purification is the purification of your purification
and this purification of yours also
Is among your brethren, the gods.
- Pyramid Text 36

Your brethren, the gods.

What kinship is there between the human and the divine?

Well, there's the ka, of course, as explicitly mentioned - which is fundamentally the many-divided and multiply-intertwined ka of the Creator, differentiated unto millions.  But the ka is a different sort of identity than is addressed with "you", most times, so that is at best only an incomplete suggestion of an answer.

The word for 'god' in Egyptian can be translated with, I feel, more nuance, as 'divine power'.  And I would suggest from that that there is a gradation there: one can have divine power, and one can also be a divine power.  Certainly, there are cases in Egyptian lore of a human accumulating sufficient netjer to become netjer - Imhotep being a primary example of such a person (who was not previously a bearer of the Kingly Ka, which complicates the whole divinity question a touch).

Heka - the most commonly discussed power of magic - was a gift granted to humans in order to "ward off events", or something rather like that.  It is a divine power.  (It also means 'activation of the ka', and thus resonates with that deep divinity.)  Akhu, another magical word, is also the word for "ancestors", and indeed the ancestors are commonly thought of as closer to the gods in some ways than the living.

But there is the inner truth, the personal netjer, that ideal and aspirational being, the personal power within.  That which you are the only one who can achieve it is bound up with that personal divinity, that personal place.  The intimate and most individual of powers, the purification of which is also the purification of your brethren, the gods.

Who is this flower above me

And what is the work of this god?
I would know myself in all my parts.
- "The Flower Prayer"

X is for X______________

Okay, yeah, whatever, that's excessively meta.

But that's where you sign your name on the dotted line.  Put down your mark, all of that stuff.

It's worth thinking about what you put your name to, where you put your commitments.  And this isn't just a "which god do you swear to" (or by, or at) sort of thing.

Because your commitments are a part of how you build your worth, your personal authority: the point of pride that is your personal law.  Your discipline, the spine of your practice.

This is the root of magic, among other things: being able to stick to your intention.  Whether your magic is based in word or will or some other thing, you need to bloody well follow through.

It seems like a simple thing, but it really rather isn't.  Everything slips, everything loosens up at times.  Meaning to do it isn't doing it.  (And that's what Yoda was on about, right?  Don't intend, act.)  This is one of those Witch's Pyramid points, to will, to put creation in motion in the forms you demand of it.

This point of pride, of action, these things make up how your identity is defined: what you follow through on, what you affiliate with, what you allow to shine.


(I meant what I said and I said what I meant, an elephant's faithful one hundred percent.)

S is for Sovereignty

It is all well and good to talk about sovereignty, about personal sovereignty, about sovereignty goddesses, and all that stuff, but it is not as easy to do that work.

The trick to self-rule is knowing how big you are.  Which is an interesting thing, in a world that wants to simultaneously crush and inflate people, now, isn't it?  It's almost as though there are people who would benefit from most folks not knowing how to own themselves.

Having permeable boundaries and an inability to defend them, so that minor offenses can escalate into major ones without causing a hassle.

Having no sense of responsibility or consequences for actions, and thus being able to blame The Bad Parenting or The Culture of Violence or The Difficulty Being a Whatever These Days or Falling In Love Makes Everyone Stupid or whatever other handy-dandy get out of jail free is being pawned off here.

But go back to the beginning.  To govern yourself you need to know who you are.  Not what other people want you to be, not what the little voices suggest, not what a history of glamour or pain would like to bind you to.  To know your actual strengths, your actual weaknesses, the actual steps you need to take to reach your actual goals.

Working on that will keep you busy for a few years.  It is not simple work to find yourself in among the coils of everything else - there's a lot of clutter in the average mind, after all.

And of course, then there's the doing it.  And accepting the consequences of each of the parts of it.  Because the thing about sovereignty is that - even if one chooses to do a job, or take a service role, or become a priest of a god, or anything else - one bears the burden of that work.  "So and so told me to do it" is no more a free pass than "I had a troubled childhood."

The thing about troubled childhoods is, okay, it sucks to have one.  Much like it sucks to have triggers.  But - much like the damn triggers - it's a thing where, okay, at some point "Mama never loved her much and daddy never keeps in touch and that's why she shies away from human affection" or whatever the sad story is, it's nothing other than a tether: hold on to that to have a reason not to do otherwise.

Actual liberty is hard work.  It does not allow for excuses.  It is the singing octave of power, that vibration of the self acting as itself, moving to its own music.

To own oneself fully is a freedom that is difficult to bear, because the responsibility of it can be overwhelming.  This is the call of sovereignty.  This is the seat of power, and the heart of governance.  The sacred path to the holy kingdom is the apple of your I.


In order to say "yes" you must also be able to say "no".  And in order to say "no", you must also be able to say "yes".  There is no escaping the nature of meaningful choice.

And bear the responsibility for either choice.

X is for Xeper

Like a lot of folks who hang with Set (at least the ones who aren't twitchy about Satanists), I'm vaguely familiar with the existence of the Temple of Set.

And one of the things that the Temple of Set talks a lot about is this concept: "xeper".  This is the word commonly transliterated "kheper" by Kemetics, which can be found in the name of Khepri, the One Who Comes Into Being, and the closing word of many prayers, "kheperu", may it become.

So it's an interesting thing.

I've been known to refer to Big Red as the Lord of Initiations.  That power of transformation, that which destroys the life that was before in order for there to be a new one, the new revelation.  (This is narrower than my usual framework of initiations, but Neb.y is not exactly a gentle fella, and he comes with the big guns.)  This concept is not entirely unconnected with the sort of self-realisation and quest for enlightenment that a lot of Satanist organisations put forward.

This idea - xeper - becoming - demands transformation, change, an evolution towards the fullest self.

It's not a bad idea.

Who do you want to become?

And why aren't you doing it yet?

T is for the Tree Goddess

One of the things about gods is that they have theophanies, particular appearances and mysteries tied to that appearance.  (I know several people for whom the question "Which Brighid do you get?" is a sensical question.)

And life can get interesting when multiple gods have the same theophany.

So consider the Tree Goddess.  She appears in a number of mortuary texts as a shelter for the dead and source of food for the spirit.  Sometimes she turns up in vignettes as a tree with a woman's head and breasts (and the sycamore fig, the relevant tree, produced sap referred to as milk, so those breasts are rather more literal a figurative than many).  She was a manifestation of the only large tree that grew in pharaonic Egypt, a source of food and shelter and timber.  The gate of dawn was a pair of sycamore figs made of precious turquoise, and the sun passed out between them in the morning.

The Lady of the Sycamore, Hetheru, can be assumed to have the fig as one of her theophanies.  And she brings herself to sweep through that filter: the lady of joy and wealth, perhaps her intoxication coming in the form of a fig wine, the stately lady who is Queen of Heaven.  She comes as the healer of Heru's wounded eyes, and she comes as the Lady of the West who shelters and welcomes the spirits of those who go forth upon their mooring day.  The Tree Goddess is therefore filled with regenerating life, the magnetic draw towards joy that characterises being and creation.

Nut also appears as the Tree Goddess, as lady of the coffin and womb of the dreaming dead, extending her shelter and protection to those beneath her branches as well as those she conceals within her body.  She comes as starry heaven, mother of all things manifest including her grandfather the sun, and perhaps those twin sycamores from which he emerges at dawn are her thighs as she births him.  The Tree Goddess is therefore filled with the power of manifestation and eternity, the light of the unwearying stars, and the birth of reality.

And also, the Tree Goddess is Aset, whose shapeshifting might shall not be limited to merely animal forms.  She comes as the lady of the throne, the one who establishes and nurtures power, whose standards are high and whose glory is great.  She comes great of magic, whose words are underlaid with the ultimate power of the name of the Creator.  She comes as the mourner of the dead, who throws open the coffin and pleads with eternity for the return of temporality.  The Tree Goddess is therefore filled with power and dedication, with yearning and with continuity, the power that takes what is ancestral and makes it live in the now.

Here she is, the great tree: her roots sink deep into the earth, twining with her (Nut's) husband Geb in eternal aching, separated save for this touch at the horizon.  Here she is, the great tree: branches embracing heaven, reaching to mingle with her (Hetharu's) husband Heru in eternal celebration, a house great enough to hold him.  Here she is, the great tree, cradling each star as she cradles her (Aset's) husband Wesir in his eternal reign in the lands of twilight and dawn, standing at the boundary between worlds.  Here she is, the great tree, offering food and drink, offering shelter and healing, her strength an eternity and her trunk reaching across even the horizons between all worlds.

W is for White Elephants

(Yeah, I am totally bouncing around in this thing and not getting a damn thing done on time.  Life exploded in the summer and I'm still putting together the pieces.  Here's one I'm gonna pretend is on time, ish, rather than spur-of-the-moment topical!)

A number of years ago, my aunt gave me a pair of porcelain elephants for Christmas.  I was never entirely certain what to make of this, to be honest - my family is certainly down with the snarky jokes - but I've moved the white elephants around with me because that is, of course, what one does with white elephants.  Never quite sure what to do with them.

Take that as a little frame story.  I'll get back to the elephants in a little bit.

A couple of weekends ago, I was at a religious retreat.  I'm not going to go into a whole hell of a lot of detail about this, but suffice it to say that I had a major life-transforming experience and have been spending the last few weeks figuring out how to put the pieces back together.

And one of the things that I've been working on is figuring out how to better actually deal with the whole self-respect dealie, which (between various things well-chronicled in the archives) is not one of my better skills.  And it's an important thing to do, and to actually make space for, and it's something that will reliably slip out of my grasp as soon as I have any stress in my life at all, at least going by my track record.

Now, one of the topics we discussed at retreat was time, and having a healthy relationship with time.  And the idea was raised: build an altar or shrine to time, make offerings, make prayers, deal with this Power as any other god or godling and see if being polite to it helps.

And while I have issues with time, they are nothing at all compared to my issues with self.

So I - while putting my room back together after the various crises that made me have to take it apart - decided to put up a me shrine.  Partly recognising what I have, in fact, done, partly aspirational.  I'm riffing on some chaos magic that my liege and I talked about years ago, the idea of writing up a character sheet for now and figuring out where to spend the points and how to get to the skillset that one wants to have on one's character sheet, and so on.  Make a space for it.

So I dedicated a shelf on the bookcase I was shelving tonight to this little project.  I unrolled a scroll of Ma'at that I'd never had a home for (indicative of something, for sure) and set it up so the shelves themselves hold Her in place.  Some tools I use for magical self-maintenance can go up there, sure; all the books I contributed to (or wrote) on one side of the shelf to remind me of real accomplishment; the weird black heart a friend gave me; my Lilith icon, since She's certainly one for demanding a bit of fucking self-respect ... and I propped the corners of it all with those two white elephants.

You see, white elephants, they have a bit of a troubled reputation, because they're those things you can't get rid of.  That's the idiom - nobody wants them, they kick around as tchotchkes forever, what have you.

But back it up a little.  The white elephant is particularly sacred and holy.  Being given a white elephant is an extreme honor, being given the caretaking of something so precious and rare.

Yes, it's high-maintenance taking care of a me.  But it's nonetheless a sacred trust.

H is for Handholding and Headpatting

Every so often, some little kerfluffle goes around, about how the poor fragile newbies really need to be coddled and condescended to so that they will not flee from the big scary pagan world, and how people who are more established in their religion have some kind of obligation to provide education to others solely because they are more established.

Back to being the dancing monkey and listening to people sound like they got their social cues out of Derailing for Dummies.

When I am in various pagan communities, I am there to hang out with other people with religious perspective kind of like mine.  That doesn't make me a resource you can mooch off of, your own personal pagan-oriented search engine.  You cannot plug search terms into me and get the secrets of the universe.  I have other things to do with my life, even when I'm talking to other pagans.

I am not in the mollycoddling business.  And, too often, I hear people talk about how newbies need to be mollycoddled, wrapped up in cotton wool and never, ever questioned, jostled, bumped, or unsettled, lest they flee for more welcoming environments that will not correct their errors, contain substantial conversations about significant matters, or treat them like adults.

Apparently we are supposed to hearken back to when we were new and terrified of all this ookyspooky religion stuff, much like in order to do other basic tasks in our lives we are supposed to hearken back to when we were hot pink badgers with an unfortunate skin condition and a desire to sing Gilbert and Sullivan.  (Remember: learning things is horribly, horribly dangerous and should totally provoke an adrenaline reaction at all times.  That is why they shoot off cannon at irregular intervals on school grounds.)  We are supposed to remember all those kind and patient elders who took us under their wings, guided us to our true destiny, and informed us about everything we wanted to know, until they vanished in a cloud of rainbows and butterflies and released us into the world with the fading cry, "Now, pay it forward!  It doesn't matter if they do the work!"

Be nice, they say.  Because being mousy and inoffensive is a virtue, after all.  None of us have moral codes that value courage and discipline, or truth, or pride in oneself. Nothing should ever be questioned, fact-checked, confronted, or discarded.  It is all about who has the nicest little china tea sets with petits fours.  (I do not knock petits fours.  I love petits fours.  But I am looking for more than children's tea parties in my religion.)


So a few things to straighten matters out.

I was not put on this planet to make your life easier.

If you are seeking out religious services in particular, it would be contrary to my duties and obligations to make your life easier.  In the short term, at least.  If you want my services as a priest, then expect to have your ass kicked, because that is the service that I offer in that role.  I do not do confession and absolution.  I do not offer warm blanket snuggles and affirmations as to your special place in the universe.

I am also not going to pat you on the head and feed you babyfood because you have decided that you're not up for interacting as a functional adult.  I have kids.  You are not one of them.  If you cannot actually interact from a framework of basic competence, if you insist that you aren't worthy of my time and attention, I am going to give you the basic respect of agreeing with you and not investing in you before you are worthy.

I was not spoonfed.  I did the same damn thing you did - I got books, I read them, I tried things, I played around with what did and didn't work, I stumbled across people who had some stuff in common with me, I did things with them, sometimes I hit something that really resonated, I worked from there.  You want your next step?  Here are mine:  I found organisations that did instruction at some point, and I did their coursework - and critiqued it.  I started to do independent research.  I broadened my field of study.  I read poetry.  I started to cross-reference things I knew with other things.  I thought about what I needed in order to get what I had to have.  I found individuals who were offering training, and I made agreements with them because I met their standards as a student, and I did their work.  Go, and do likewise.

I am not doing universalist religion.  I do not care whether or not you put your name on the dotted line. I am not a pimp for the Divine, nor am I a door-to-door theology salesman.  It is up to you to decide whether or not you buy, and what terms you're willing to put in that contract.  I really, genuinely, completely do not give a flying fuck at a rolling donut whether or not you think that I am too mean for you to join one of my religions.

I am not your teacher.  I am not anyone's teacher right now.  That isn't to say that you can't learn anything from talking with me, given that I know a bunch of Stuff, but I do not have any obligation to give you any of that Stuff.  I certainly don't have an obligation to give you the particular thing you're asking for - and being your teacher wouldn't give me that obligation either, given that if you're asking for something that I know to be useless or counterproductive I'm not going to bloody well encourage you.

In the event that I do, in the future, become your teacher, you do not set the lesson plan.  I will know what I am attempting to convey, and what you get from me will be angled toward conveying that, not whatever shiny shit you are chasing around because you think that the right goddamn crystal will solve your personal problems.  If you don't like what I teach, in that case, you are 100% welcome to find a compatible teacher, because I am not going to change the instruction just to satisfy your neuroses.  If you don't want the lessons I'm actually offering, you don't want me to be teaching you.

I am not going to express contempt for you by assuming that you're incapable of participating in a conversation among equals as an equal.  I don't care if you're new; I probably don't notice if you're new, being not privy to your life story and unlikely to read your engaging and detailed personal introduction (and if I do, I'm quite unlikely to remember that engaging and detailed personal introduction was you, specifically, as opposed to 'some random person on the internet somewhere').  If you want someone to treat you as a little child who isn't capable of knowing any better or hearing the truth, you want someone else.

Monster of Mothers

I am the monster under the bed.

(Apparently under the big bed, the one that holds 'all of you'.)

I am off the edge of your map, and I am prowling. You make noise and flash lights as if I might be driven into the imaginary by your denial, you pretend I am not there, and by that pretending you cast my shadow large and misshapen, huge and slavering and consuming things you thought you knew.

I come in the night and seduce away what you thought was yours, what would live by the rules of civilised climes, the way you thought things should be. I am nothing but a shadow, not a creature of substance; what you know of me matters not against what I mean. Perhaps I am the shadow of a real evil, nothing but the hound of a cult trailing along in the footsteps of other unreality. Perhaps I am the demoness herself, spiked and sorcerous.

But - I tell you this - never forget that in the shadow that you made there is a child.

Because there is where you will meet the real beast.

Do not forget my daughter, treat her as an irrelevance, dismiss her. Do not attempt to use her as a leverage point to peel away one or another of her parents. Do not attempt to wail and claw at the horror of a child cradled in such darkness as mine, because I will want to introduce you to darkness then, I will want to and I will hold back because her innocence will not be stained with blood so unworthy.

I will hold back a while. I will wait you out, I may try to laugh because the fairy tales are so comically twisted and unreal. I will let you tell your stories if they help you sleep at night. I will swallow up my own pain at being driven away and warped into shadows, my reality ignored because you must have your stories and hold them up over what is real. I will bleed for you, you who live in the light and order of civilised lands and must have tidiness and hold the borders of your world strong, and believe me, I bleed every moment my humanity is less important to you than your fictions and your "It's just wrong, I can't tell you why." I will let you fucking flay me alive with your weapons of annihilation, without denying that that is what you are doing to me.

I will do this for you.

So long as you leave my child alone, cradled within the arms of her family.


I am the monster of mothers, and you who live in Heorot should leave us be.

And Now The Angry Post

Now, I was thinking of writing a moderately cranky post about the way Susie Bright's otherwise neat post of June 2006 goes right off the fucking rails where she says that she's decided to no longer believe in the existence of women whose sexual reactions to pregnancy aren't basically rooted in the same experience as she had, but at this point I'm just going to sum it up with "Fuck off, I exist, neener neener neener so there" and take apart something that annoyed me.

If you want the reasonably rational and sane response to the annoyance, you will want to go over to SM-Feminists and read there, because this ain't gonna be it. Trin has a couple of followups over there too.

Now, it's not the post I linked to that's the annoyance. Nor even the first few comments. But eventually, the inevitable happens, and the creepiness starts to crawl out. Particularly enraging is the way the creepiness focuses around someone who claimed to be interested in listening to women's stories and understanding kinksters, who has since become rabid. Possibly because (before she triggered the everliving fuck out of me) I asked her to stop posting rape apologia to SM-F, and other people asked her to cite her statistics.

The actual post is an interesting exploration and comparison of roller coaster rides with BDSM, which is a functional and useful analogy that a lot of people seemed to find illuminating, at least in the first round of comments. Just another attempt by a kinkster to go to the work of translating the kink experience into terms that might be more accessible and understandable to people who aren't into that sort of thing.

I will link general subthreads, not individual posts, because otherwise this will take me four hours to write and cranky pregnant lady is cranky.

So. Someone posting under the name 'Brad', who I will therefore presume is probably male, says: "Your post does a fantastic job highlighting rape vs. consensual sex and voluntary vs. forced roles. I will remember this example for a long time."

The immediate response to that was deleted; however, one can extrapolate something about the followup from becstar's later "When someone admits to their desire to hurt women I am not going to sit by and say nothing. I am also not going to agree with the postmodern BS that "consent" makes everything okay." Setting aside what must be a fascinating definition of 'postmodern' (presuming, that is, it means something in this context other than "that bad thing I don't agree with", which is probably excessively generous), there is a level of projection here that approaches an artform.

(I am not going to compare this to surrealist art, even though, given the 'postmodern' comment, it's really tempting to point out that the random interjection of "violence!" "rape culture!" and "patriarchy!" into otherwise productive conversations bears some resemblance to the inspiration for "How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?*")

The conversation goes on with "If they were to seperate themselves from such sexualised violence on a daily basis though and worked on their self-esteem then consenting to such things wouldn't seem like such a great idea after all."

(I think here is where Belle would say, "I'm every woman! It's all in me!" Because we're dealing here with someone who has repeatedly claimed to have her primary experience with BDSM being in an abusive relationship that she continued with due to lack of self-esteem. Who, further, continues to suggest that she is being pressured into kink by her current partner and appears to have a fatalistic attitude towards his inevitable victory on the matter. So of course that's what everyone bloody else is dealing with.)

But, y'know, that whole 'try really hard not to be kinky because being kinky is bad'? Been there. Done that. Burned the T-shirt. Got the flashbacks, too. Dealt with the self-esteem issues that told me that I was the wrong kind of sexual, some kind of defective, someone who shouldn't ever be allowed out in public; unfortunately for Teh Theory, that's when I started defining myself rather strongly as a submissive, because it was due to crippled self-esteem that I wasn't able to be that self-determining.

Someone named Kate replies to this with "Stop it. You are not discussing theory, you are implying that anyone who enjoys BDSM has low self esteem and isn't thinking critically because that was true in your case. Pro tip: We're not all like you," to which bectar replies, "I'll stop when other people stop legitimising sexual violence, okay?"

Given that she triggered the hell out of me with rape apologia, I'm ... glad I didn't take my irony meter out of its sealed box for this trip down Aggravation Lane.

Next up, someone asks if consensual sex legitimises rape under Teh Theory here. And certainly, some people are of that opinion. No, BDSM is different and magical somehow, treating women more as sex objects than sex does, due to ... magic.

It's magic! It doesn't have to be explained!

Oh, and it legitimises the widespread view that women want violent sex that I've never encountered in my life, so probably I was living on another planet at the time. As opposed to, y'know, the flowers and chocolates tedium in most every damn romantic flick ever released, including the ones where the Spunky Independent Woman really just needs the right flowers and chocolates to fall in lurve with Our Hero, generally played by some version of the Tediously Not Actually Attractive Actor For This Decade. All of the cultural harping on how women like soft girly things and foreplay and cuddling so much more than actual sex, totally illusory. And there are no people out there arguing about how women need to be persuaded or tricked into being sexual like the pickup artist crowd, or that women are intrinsically asexual lesbians like certain radical separatists with their clear-eyed gazes, or anything like that. I made them up right now.

Next thread. One raq says, "Sexual fetishes are incredibly hard to ignore and change, and why should you engage in that type of self-loathing?"

becstar again: "Actually its not that hard at all. Remove yourself from as much of society's misogyny as you can and you'll find that your submissive tendencies will fade."

And once again! I'm every woman! It's all in me!

And over in my rational post on SM-F I commented that the thing that encourages what I understand as "rape culture" is the bit where people -- and women are hit with this harder than men in most cases -- aren't given the space to define their own sexuality. So here comes little miss I'm-so-wise, making sure that everyone knows she thinks that she understands their sexuality better than they do. My snake oil will work for you!

(Why on earth aren't there more people on the feminist clean up crew? Because damn, are there a lot of snake oil hawkers sometimes.)

I also get a kick, in the dark and sardonic way, out of someone saying, "Stop being submissive. Just do as I tell you." The misogyny there is subtle, and limited: directed at kinky women, rather than women in general, but the same sort of basic infantilising and attempts at humiliation that all forms of misogyny come up with. And it either contains the basic presumption that the submissive is simply there to take orders -- or a remarkable lack of grasp of ironic subtext.

The thread then degenerates into the standard dominant-women-aren't, submissive-men-are-freeloading-off-female-sexuality, and everyone-is-straight fails that I can't even begin to prod at humorously because they're so pathetic.

"A woman is in control when she isn't buying into the exact ideology which keeps her subjagated in the first place."

The snarky bit of me wants to respond to this with "Yep. That's why I left feminism. This would not be helpful. But really, nothing I could possibly say would ever be helpful to this sort of discussion. If I said "I'd rather get kicked in the head" I'd get mocked for being a self-abusing masochist rather than being sane enough to avoid both getting kicked in the head and avoiding places that are abusive. Not that I'm doing so well with the avoid at the moment, since I'm going through this comment thread in detail bitching about it. At least I'm doing it here.

"Where is your proof that hitting a woman with her consent is any different to hitting a woman without consent?"

Um, sweetie, you've defined two situations: "hitting a woman with her consent" and "hitting a woman without consent". They're explicitly stated as different situations. Therefore, that they are different is tautological.

(And aside from that, stop equating BDSM with "hitting a woman". I'm pretty damn sure one of these discussions we went around and around and you had the clueboat arrive on "submissive" and "masochist" not being synonymous. Though you're demonstrating yourself not capable of grasping that "submissive" and "female" aren't synonymous, so maybe I'm too optimistic about your capacities.)

"Well continue to consent to your own abuse then." Don't you love the personal attack victim-blaming of not-actual-victims? That's so feminist, you know. Especially directed at someone who has not commented on their sexual preferences that I'm aware of, so we've got a 'failed to medal in the polevault to conclusions' in here too.

"When people have low self-esteem they participate in their own abuse because they don't believe they deserve any better." Maybe that's why I'm still reading this thread. Clearly I need to develop enough self-esteem to not feel compelled to dissect the incompetent arguments of frothing assholes for purposes of public mockery.

I think this may be the same subthread, but I'm not sure, and I'm pulling it out because we have a New Contestant.

EGhead, come on down!

"What I'm concerned with is that it doesn't address the legitimate critiques of BDSM, those questioning the possible negative influence of power politics and gender roles on sexual practices."

... oh gods. A theory junkie. Theory theory verbiage theory theory critique theory theory.

"The ethical question, for me anyway, is how BDSM affects ourselves, our partners, and society at large."

Myself: Actual satisfaction of my personal sexual and spiritual needs, treatment of myself as a whole being rather than an emotional cripple, and a generalised improvement in my health, sanity, personal esteem, and generalised emotional balance.

My partners: Well, I seem to be vigorously driving my liege into fits of self-improvement in between other things, though some of that is complicated. My [legal] husband, it's a wee sticking point in our relationship sometimes because we kink in directions that don't actually have much chemistry for me and thus there's very little of that in our relationship. My dear competitor is amused by the stories.

Society at large: I didn't invite any creepy voyeurs into my bedroom; I'll thank EGhead not to do so either. In general, the major effect I've seen from the alt-sex communities of whatever sort I've had much observation on has been the introduction of concepts of overt negotiation into a culture in which "But women like lingerie, what's wrong with my girlfriend that she isn't thrilled by my gift?" is normal.

And I'm reminded of the story of the little girl who was not having much luck convincing the adults to stop tickling her until she snapped "SAFEWORD!" at them. (Many people have trouble respecting the boundaries of children. I remember this from when I was one, and I'm kind of concerned about it on behalf of my current inhabitant.) Tools for self-defense good.

And then dear becstar returns with: "But BDSM *is* real abuse and cruelty. If you admit that it has its basis in the patriarchy which uses it as way to legally hurt women, then how does it differ from any other form of abuse?"

Why should I or anyone else admit something that isn't true? I mean, there are all kinds of things out there that people believe that have no actual basis in reality, so this one isn't all that special, but I'm not responsible for other people's wacky nonsense and I'm not gonna cop to it.

I will take a brief interlude from this rant to declare that this comment completely and totally rocks and draw people's specific attention to it. It's too long to quote here, and I'm not gonna rant about it so it's off-topic anyway.

Back to the ranting, in a subthread about Dworkin or something:

becstar: "But you said it yourself, they are against sex that degrades women, not all sex, ever."

I've been told all kinds of things are degrading. I wrote about language and degradation once, in response to one of those things I've been told. I wrote about embarassment and humiliation, too, and about not being into that sort of thing, because I kink on being whole and becoming larger and more and powerful and just, well, not getting it. And because I don't get it, I don't do that sort of thing, like I don't do roleplay because I'm kind of scarred and battered about being treated as a sexual other and not myself.

And this sort of thing hits my buttons: the whole examine-and-elide-your-kink thing is being treated as a sexual other, not myself, an object to be corrected. This is the particular 'patriarchy'-trauma that most affected my sexuality, the idea that it was something that needed to conform to the desires of others, and I ... kind of twitch whenever I see people doing it in the name of feminism. I wrote about that, too, the humiliation-and-degradation-sexplay intrinsic to this nonconsensual white knight gig. Knock the gal down and be the one to pick her up again and take the credit for getting her off her knees.

It's creepy, okay? And it's creepy in a way that reminds me of being sexually harassed and assaulted, because I'm just the object that gets scored with. So many notches on the bedpost, so many souls redeemed for feminism, whatever. In many ways, I find the bedpost-notchers less creepy; they're easier to protect myself from than the ones who pretend to care about me as a human being (while not actually going to the effort to do so).

Becstar again:

"If pro-BDSM people cared so much about safety why encourage someone to participate in it when they obviously have problems with it? That isn't caring about the person, that's caring about your precious sex."

I don't know, becstar, why is that?

(From that link:)

becstar: I still think that I will never be able to participate in it as a sub because of this (although if my partner has his way I will). I definitely don't use it as a way to try to cover my desire for it up. Its more like a way to try and actually like it so I can just do it and get it over with without it destroying me.

Trinity: I really think you should leave your boyfriend if you can. He's trying to push you into something that really upsets and triggers you and doesn't seem to care about your boundaries. That's just not acceptable.

Me: This, right here: get out. Get out yesterday. That you keep having these moments of "But he keeps pushing for this even though I've said I don't want to, and I may give in"? Is making space for you to be raped again. Please, protect yourself. Please.

SnowdropExplodes: This guy has ALREADY crossed the line into coercive behaviour and that pressure is in my mind an element of an abusive relationship developing.

EthylBenzene: Fourthing Trin, Dw3t, and SD. Becstar, I hope you realize what your boyfriend seems to be coercing you to do is not what we on this site are advocating. Take care of yourself and let us know if you need anything.

SunflowerP: I'm jumping on the bandwagon, too, Becstar. This is the same-old same-old routine, with the idea being that you'll get tired of saying "no" and do what he wants just so you don't have to deal with the whining - that's coerced consent (and thus not really consent at all), whether the guy is someone you just met, or someone you're in a relationship with. DTMFA!!

Yep. We're all just encouraging people who have problems with BDSM to get involved. See all that encouragement? Why, it's positively overwhelming.

More from Feministing: "This entire thread and other places which debate it are about shaming people about not liking BDSM. People who don't like BDSM are always called "sex-negative", "ashamed", "repressed" and its all simply not true."

She tried to pull this one on SM-F too, by the way. I replied. I'm not saying I haven't seen people call certain positions "anti-sex", but, y'know, given that she mentioned this and had a couple of, "Er, no, actually, not," responses that she replied to, or at least had the opportunity to read before going for the Golden Flouncearama, a little intellectual honesty might be nice.

(And part of being the clean-up crew, as previously linked, is calling out people who pull that sort of unwarranted shit. But remember, that post never happened!)

"As long as you're okay with BDSM you're a wonderful person in their eyes." She doesn't actually pay much attention to BDSM discussions, does she? Man, the number of people I've seen categorised as "Yeah, s/he's kinky, but such a goddamn jackass. Don't deal with them if you can avoid it" is ... large.

"The minute anyone dares to critique it they are verbally abused and harrasses - not exactly proving how non-abusive and accepting they are." I think the 'verbal abuse' came in on SM-F when people asked her to provide citations for her statistics. Big meanie-pants.

Another subthread. Someone's a wee bit chatty, eh?

"You must have a strange view of what is safe if you think being hurt is safe." Dude, I have a tattoo. (Don't have any piercings. Piercings are for the most part over my line of acceptable perception of safety. By the way: when I've mentioned I don't have pierced ears, I've had people "jokingly" suggest that they can correct that, up to and including insinuating restraint and coercion. And yet somehow I don't go around railing about how people with pierced ears are victims of teh patriarchee who aren't capable of recognising violence due to their internalisation of defective values.)

"By encouraging BDSM in someone you are encouraging them towards accepting violence towards women. Exactly why would someone who respected women want to hurt them? The answer is, they wouldn't. Similarly, a woman who honestly believed she was worth something as a human being would not want to be hurt."

And we return not only to "BDSM is about hitting women", but some deeply wacked-out perspectives on worth and desire. I mean, one can bring up marathon runners, people in service jobs, or, hell, the original point about people who like roller coasters (in case anyone remembers the topic of the original post at this point), but it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

I continue to think that respecting a woman means listening to her preferences and desires and not overwriting them with one's own opinions, but I'm just kind of radical that way.

Gotta link this comment directly, it's just that special. It starts "Actually I have just returned from doing a lot of research about BDSM." Like this conversation she had with Hope. Or the several threads in which a huge number of people provided her with informational links, some of which are in previous entries in the blog.

No, what snapped her into "Then the longer I stayed there the more creepy their conversations got" appears to be that people wouldn't accept her statistics blindly and asked her to stop putting responsibility for rape on porn rather than rapists. Oh noes.

Skipping some other stuff that mostly just makes me go "buh" to get to a new thread with our star becstar.

"There is nothing sane about wanting to be beat up. It only shows how far the patriarchy has gone in making women internalise self-hatred simply for being born in a certain body." I've heard, though I haven't read, that she was in a different thread (that one on trans issues) on Feministing recently saying how any self-respecting woman would hate having breasts because they're just there for male ogleage and nobody would really want to be a woman if they had a choice. But enough with consistency.

ggg_girl pointed out quite reasonably that becstar would be better off not assuming that kinky people "want to be beat up", and got a response of "I know plenty about the people who practice it." But not enough to, y'know, actually know anything.

"(humiliation in this case meaning any relationship where you are not considered as an equal)"

So, for me, a strictly vanilla relationship, then. Good to know you're willing to support me in that, becstar.

(Ha. Ha ha ha.)

Oh hey, since I last scanned the comments this cool one went up, which is much the same as one of my old posts linked above. Neat.

Meanwhile, return of EGhead with:

"I try to make my critiques as impersonal and thoughtful as possible. In doing so, I don't see myself as shaming anyone, just having an important philosophical debate."

Have a nice philosophy.

Forgive me if I value my life more than your important philosophical debates.

And over here we have more EGhead, to wind the whole thing up:

"I agree that condemning fantasies is harfmful, but condemning actual sexual practices that may cause harm is ok. I suppose we disagree what what harm BDSM may cause. Either way, I don't want to shame individuals, but the sex practices themselves."

How very ... special.

"Love the sinner, hate the sin", eh?

And if the 'sin' is an intrinsic part of who the 'sinner' is, something that they consider important and value, something that's a part of their foundation on the world, well, they just shouldn't take it so fucking personally. It's not about them, it's just this thing they're doing.

I hate theorywonkage. Or theorywankage. Whatever. If the theory doesn't acknowledge me as real, it can bugger right off.


Oh, anyone who wanders over from that clusterfuck and wants to argue with me about why I'm kinky or tell me that I'm only pissed off because I'm improperly examined or whatever else is required to demonstrate that they have read this post before I can be arsed engaging with them, because I've already answered your fucking question and I am too busy having that life I value more than your philosophical dribblings to be your dancing monkey. Listen a little, use your brain, and don't treat me as your one-stop shopping resource for a submissive to shame or a sympathetic ear to take advantage of and maybe we can have a conversation.

If you'd rather not do that, of course, you remain free to write me off as a cranky bitch and one of those horrible anti-feminist harpies who's a sekrit pillar of the patriarchy if you find it easier than crawling out from under your rock. I will remain one of the more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Your irrelevance to me (and other kinky people) as anything other than a gadfly to swat occasionally will only grow the more you cradle your theories and prejudices close and love them more than you actually care about real women.

And I am just fucking fine with that, too.


* Answer: "A fish."

Not One Of Your Holiday Games

One of Ren's prompts for this next round of the Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy was on the importance of women naming their own sexuality. And I've been thinking about that one for a while.

And after a lot of contemplation, I'm left with the feeling that it boils down to "If I don't do it, someone else will." If I want to leave it inchoate, unnamed, mysterious, I have to keep it entirely secret, because any sign that I have a hint of sexuality somewhere will be dragged out and assigned meaning by someone else. Even the category of being unsexed can be sexualised in some cases.

I have to make my own meanings, hold to them, define myself, or someone else will try to override me.

I am a cissexual woman. If I don't work on what, if anything, that means then I can get swept away in all of the cultural meanings of 'woman' and buffeted between them. Trapped between madonna and whore, career woman and brainwashed housewife, all the dichotamous piles of what 'woman' means. Whether it means I'm perceived as a set of penetratable holes and some boobs, or a little child in need of paternalistic protection, or both simultaneously, or one of the other godawful forms of womanness that floats around and tries to latch onto people like a facehugger out of Aliens and infest them with parasitic larvae doesn't matter: if I don't have a strong enough narrative of myself to refute these things, I can get infected and corrupted by these things. I am someone with these body parts and no dysphoria about them; it has no ontology, no deeper truth.

I am heterosexual. I am not in denial of my true and intrinsic bisexuality; I am not compelled into unsatisfying relationships by a heteronormative culture; I do not experience my orientation as fluid and malleable because I am a woman; I do not project my sexuality into images of women in the media; I do not consider my attractions to be oppression. I like looking at certain men, because I find them attractive, and I am just fine with that, thanks.

I am a sexual assault survivor. I am not a victim for revictimising, an object of pity, someone whose entire life and reality orbits around a golden afternoon in 1992 that left its marks in my mind. I will not be truncated and boxed into no more than helplessness and damage. I will not accept the myths, that I have a perpetually defective sexuality because of my experiences, that I just need to loosen up and get laid more to get over my trauma, that my kink or my polyamory or my anything else is a result of being warped, that my flashbacks or fears are a sign that I am a defective. All of which I have heard. I am a person who had a horrible experience; I have suffered, and I have worked to heal.

I am polyamorous. I am not looking for a quick lay, I am not available to just anyone, I am not too damaged to commit, I am not incapable of real love, I am not any of these other stereotypes or condemnations. I was not abandoned by my father, nor was I sexually abused. I am a person with two wonderful, committed, loving partners to spend my life with and another person of whom I am quite fond indeed.

I am kinky. My kink was not created by assault, manufactured by patriarchy, adapted from a need to seek abuse and disparagement, born of a sense of inferiority, a sign that I am a pathetic doormat, an invitation to treat me like a victim, or a signpost to deeper psychological defects. It is what it is, and I have invited commentary on neither the legitimacy of how I choose to conduct my relationships nor the progress of my spiritual development.

I am pregnant. This is not a validation of traditional barefoot-in-the-kitchen mores, a sign that I am more interested in baybees than my own autonomy, ownership by a man, a betrayal of women's freedom, a perpetuation of patriarchy, a sign that I am the right kind of woman with correct values, an embodiment of The Goddess [tm], or whatever other crazed myths that come up about motherhood. It is a part of the process of mammalian reproduction, which is not unrelated to sexuality.

Also: I am an emotional abuse survivor. I have my stories. If you want to define my reality for me, to override who I am and where I came from, to erase my stories, you are just like the one who abused me. I will exist in defiance of you and your fantasies about who I am, and I will not be quiet because you find me inconvenient. I don't care what your agenda is, whether it is important to you as a feminist or a traditionalist or a whatever else that people like me not exist and not be heard: you are the enemy of my personhood and my souls, and I deny you the power to name me.

I am many, many things, multitudinous beyond listing, and I. Am. Not. Yours.

I don't want other people's stories about me. I have my own.

If you want to have stories about me, listen - or, as a friend put it once, refrain from copulation and discorporate.

The Eternal Subject Again

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

laughingrat:

"domination and submission--the brutalization of one person or group of persons".

So we start out by equating power to brutalisation, and this doesn't even get noticed or questioned -- it's just taken as a given, a default. And I think of Trin's regular comments about parents, about teachers, and I think of coming off my spectacular training weekend where we talked explicitly about the heirarchy between master and pupil. No, this is 'brutalisation'.

"fetishizing torture of the body or spirit in the bedroom".

This post is tagged 'BDSM', by the way. I don't expect you to get it. I don't expect you to understand it. If you don't find it comprehensible, that's okay, it's not for you.

If you don't fucking admit that it exists, if you don't acknowledge me, if you don't give a damn about my power, you have no business trying to talk about what I do.

I don't consider an argument predicated on erasing me 'feminist'; hell, I don't consider an argument predicated on erasing me anything other than my enemy. If you are hostile to my existence, you don't get me playing nice.

"do not tell fairy tales about it".

Ah yes, the ever popular Appeal To Delusion.

My reality is just a fantasy, you know. Not anything that has anything to do with the world that I actually live in; I'm delusional. In fact, I'm posting this from the psych ward in a straitjacket! I'm typing with my nose!

Just ... get real, okay? When you're willing to actually listen to my life rather than your pretty little fantasies about my life - because that's all they are, fantasies - and stop vanishing me away into theoryland, I'll still be here, writing away.

"Without patriarchy, the so-called "submissive side" of our personality, taken for granted as being natural because we can't currently imagine the possibility of life without domination and submission, would simply go away."

What's this one, Appeal To Utopia?

I love it following the 'fairy tale' snark. "In my fantasy world where everything conforms to what I want, people like you just won't happen! Because my imaginator makes it true! Take that, fictional people!"

becstar:

"Given the influence of the patriarchy it is not all surprising that the majority of submissives of female because we are brought up to believe that that is our proper role."

As I have written about more than once, I was brought up to believe that my proper role was to be one of the movers and shakers of the world, challenging the glass ceiling, curing cancer, running for President, and so on, and anything less than that was a betrayal of women in general.

What you mean, we?

danielle:

"Yet no one is saying that-we're try to have a discussion, not tell people what they're doing is wrong and shameful."

Well, that'd be a first.

Given some of the other comments, I'm back to 'What you mean, we?', though.

becstar:

"It amazes me that people who consider themselves feminists don't question where these submissive fantasies are coming from."

Setting aside the whole 'question' thing ("challenge the accuracy, probity, or propriety of", but that's not meant to indicate wrongness or shame, remember that, calling into doubt one's truthfulness, integrity, or correctness doesn't mean anything negative), it amazes me that people keep saying this.

danielle:

"When people respond emotionally and defensively and cut off arguments? That's when I can't stand feminists."

Oh, you women, you're so emotional. Come back when you can have a rational conversation. Not that you can, of course, that's what's wrong with women.

Nerdisms:

"(I capitalized the S to make it more empowering, you guyz!!!)"

I think capitalisation games are childish. When I talk about d/s, I talk about d/s. Well, sometimes I talk about D/S, but that's more effort to type, so mostly I don't. I do say "D/s" at the beginning of sentences, because I was oppressed by a culture that capitalises the initial letters of sentences and have not thrown off my conditioning yet.

EGhead:

"laughingrat's original dissenting post was in no was disrespectful".

... the post that called people brutal, torturing, suggested that people were delusional, and in magic feminist utopia they wouldn't exist was in no way disrespectful?

... or did I miss one?

EGhead:

"I think it would be beneficial for people to stop their BDSM practices; not necessarily beneficial for them, but beneficial for society as a whole. I think refusing to engage in any kind of abusive interactions-- even if they're consensual or 'role-play'-- can positively affect society."

"Equating BDSM categorically with abuse ... BINGO! I have BINGO!"

Oh look, and I should stop doing things that are good for me for the sake of society. I guess that's because that's women's job, to sacrifice their selfhood for the ungrateful.

SarahMC:

"Yeah, yeah, go on with your bad selves, choosing your choices and telling other feminists to STFU. You're all very empowerful and stuff."

Oooooh, empowerful. I loves the empowerblizing!

(Actually, I thought that it was a common response to the overprivileged to say, "Just shut up and listen for once, okay?")

"This thread is just a bunch of defensive rationalizations."

Hm. People who have been called brutal, torturing, delusional, that they should stop being themselves for the good of others, overemotional, and so on and so forth should ... just let themselves be hit rather than responding with refutations.

They like to be hit, after all, don't they? Why are they objecting?

Nerdisms:

"In fact, the majority of the world thinks you should submit, so it's not like that person questioning you has some ridiculous amount of social power over you. It's just someone thinking."

This one just exhausts me. I mean, setting aside the fact that the majority of the world that I have encountered thinks that submission is utterly contemptible, and demonstrates this (among other things) by paying support roles a fraction of what they're worth and figuring people who take them are just not as good as Type-A people and deserve the shit they get, I ...

... live in an environment full of "just people thinking" out loud about things. And a lot of those people are thinking that I'm scum, and want to make sure I know it. It's hard to climb out of the slime, and making one person stop thinking these things won't make that much of a difference, but maybe if enough one people stop thinking these things dealing with society will start stinking less.

danielle:

"Yea, that radical feminist viewpoint damages so much. That would be the viewpoint that demanded equal pay for equal work, women's right to be able to even work, and birth control."

"I think we who work full-time in the movement tend to become very narrow. What is happening now is that when non-movement women disagree with us, we assume it's because they are "apolitical," not because there might be something wrong with our thinking."
- Carol Hanisch, "The Personal is Political"

Nerdisms:

"You see, this kind of reflection is personal. While we'd maybe have different opinions on, on a larger scale of where these things get influenced from, I really can't tell you about yourself or whether or not this examination on your own childhood/experiences/arousal patterns is accurate."

And what else am I supposed to talk about? I'm only qualified to examine my own shit, I don't even have access to anyone else's.

joyfuldinosaur:

"I'm going to put BDSM into the "ethically bad" category along with pornography and always trying to be ethically good."

Okay, so this one figures that I'm doing The Wrong Thing, but eh, everyone does Bad Things anyway, so who cares? I'm just supposed to accept that I'm bad and let go of the judgementalism of it because it doesn't matter.

It matters. And what I do is not ethically bad.

I'm pretty sure someone in there was on about egalitarian and inegalitarian relationships, but I didn't find the quote. I'll just link this anyway, because I find the whole 'egalitarianism' thing a red herring.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Sufferin' Succotash

Kicking around in my head for a while has been a comment on Trin's recent "examination" post, in which an anon commenter said, "It hurts to be beautiful? Damn, I'm glad I wasn't raised a woman."

The version I heard was "You have to suffer to be beautiful." I went and googled it the other day, after being reminded of it by Belle's post about bras, and found dozens of hits on that phrase -- and all of them were attributed to women. Mothers. Sisters. Aunts.

Beauty is a thing that women are obligated to, need to police their bodies over, denied to those who were not the chosen ones, a messy tangle of stuff abstracted into checkout-counter magazines and movie stars, sucked out of the rest of us and injected into the chosen ones with a little airbrushing.

No.

Beauty is your birthright.

How vulnerable are we to the people who say they see our beauty? How much is that vulnerability preserved by the sense that beauty is rare, a hard to come by commodity, something for which we must suffer? And how much suffering is ensured by this artificial scarcity?

How much do we have to chase after the secret codes, the tricks, the way to find beauty, rather than actually claiming our birthright and our power? Why do we excuse the uncomfortable and inconvenient with the notion that suffering is the price for what we have already?

What the hell?

Inauguration Day

My patchwork heritage
Of Puritan blood on thieved land
New York millers
German soldiers
Migrant Irish workers
Polish woman driven from her heritage by hate
Painters and poets and patriots
Ministers and madmen
Scientists and subversives
Buried in Arlington
Stones and bones and old silver
Alcohol and backroom deals
Hardworking union workers
Ivory-tower elitists
Sewn-together pieces of history
Quilted by this land
Extending from then into now and beyond
And with the child resting beneath my heart
Conceived the fourth of November
We've all come to look for America.

Getting Real

Trin at SM-F linked to this post with a comment about "What is this equation of BDSM stuff and roleplaying, and where is the renfaire notion coming from again?"

I can't even say I wish I knew, because combining "roleplaying" and "sex" creeps me out so much that I don't even like reading discussions of it. It's probably not the biggest squick I have, but it's the biggest one I can see right at the moment (and I desperately need a nap, so I'm more myopic than usual, but hey).

If it's not real, it's not sexy to me.

And I think part of the reason that this distaste is so deep, visceral, and intense has to do with my experience of sexual harassment and my assault -- this constant barrage of people who wanted not-me sexually. Who had this pinup notion of me in their head, regardless of consent or reality, and made constant reference to it in their interactions with me, never letting me be unaware of this me-shaped blowup doll they were imagining me into.

That sort of thing, the creation of the role, reminds me too much of living in space where my sexuality wasn't mine, was regularly appropriated for other people's entertainment, where I didn't exist as anything other than the vessel for the game.

It burned me out on any notion of pretending to something I'm not where sexuality is involved.

And I'm a hell of a gamer. And in fact I've met probably a majority of the partners I've had in my life in gaming circles of one sort or another - let's see, flirting over Magic: the Gathering, met at a game store, playing Shadowrun (our characters wound up married, too), online roleplaying game, AD&D game, online RPG, at a weekly gaming gathering .... You're not going to get an "OMG the horrible gamers, the weirdos" out of me.

But I don't play games with sex.

I want my sex raw and real and present and accepting of the wholeness of me, without censoring away bits or tidying it all up into some kind of fantasy world that detracts from the genuineness of where and who I am.

It's not a place where I want anything other than reality.

And this is one of the reasons that my liege and I are intermittently working on a more or less formal contract that covers the full scope of our relationship and my service, because the whole of me is not willing to just pretend that I'm only his in the bedroom. The whole of me puts the kettle on when it knows to expect him dropping by; that's not in the bedroom. And it's not a game.

It produces real tea, not a fantasy. I'm not pretending to boil water, the water is actually, realio trulio little pet dragon hot. I'm not roleplaying a waitress or a maid or whatever other little game some people might want to give a thrill to their tea-making; I just make the goddamn tea.

Flames of Incandescent Terror

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Love is radical.

It is time for us to acknowledge that our love is an act of war.

It seems distasteful to say. It feels wrong. Our love, our lives, our nurtured gardens and families, we say, these are not weapons. These are not acts of violence. To us, they are not.

Love is radical.

Love is radical, and I light a candle to shed red-glass light on Lilitu's owl-clawed feet, because today I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will shake the world, fan out like the peacock fan that spreads behind Her and glows in the firelight in honor of strife and compassion.

Love is radical, and its tears will extinguish Hell, but only if we burn with it. It is not enough to love quietly, mousily, in the safe spaces, because love is radically unsafe. Love will throw you through Hell and walk with you on the hike out. Love does not let you hide behind walls, it will slice you open, it will make you bleed.

Love is an act of blood. Love is an act of bone. It is your breath.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will rip up the foundations of the world if need be. It will tear apart your safe spaces. It will not let me be silent. My love is a claimed conspiracy to riot stashed in a jail cell awaiting judgement in Minnesota. My love does not wait for a permit or follow an established route. It is here now there then always not with a whimper but a bang and if your world is ending for it then remember that love will divide your families, set kith against kith and kin against kin, that you were warned and said you believed.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love roars like the hollow wind. My love comes for the children. It does not listen to the doors. My love sees people married without checking their genitalia at the door, without evaluating the colour of their skin, without seeing if they have a hollowness that will be filled with a baby. My love sings and screams and goes to the ballot box dancing with the joy of holiness.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I walk a warrior path of love, and follow the song of my heart. I hold sunlight in my right hand and shadow and storm in my left, and am born of the serpent's dance with the falcon. I have the restored Eye and I offer it to you, that you may live.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I am one of the ones to fear, who goes stealthy through today in my cat-print pyjamas passing for one of you normal ones, the sane ones, the pretty children who went to school and then to the university and got put in boxes and came out all the same. I am the pervert among you, the polytheist, the deviant, the one whose world is wider than you can face, I stand at the open door in the desert from which there is no return.

There is no male or female, no free or slave, no line of race or creed or colour in love. Fear me, for I love you.

In Which She Links Her Previous Posts And Breaks The Labels Feature

Someone at "The F-Word" asks:

While I’m here, can I ask: why are there next to no “sexy” images of men on sex positive* sites, or sites focusing on porn for women etc?

A post to which I reponded:

Well, my 'sex-positive for lack of a better term' blog doesn't have photos of hot men on it because I respect my partners' privacy and anonymity in that forum.

And anyway, it's not their blog.

Belledame of Fetch Me My Axe has written about being a sex-positive lesbian and a short sidebar on slash writing; Caroline at Uncool talks about her use of imagery. When I think about people who are posting images of men (and sometimes women) they find sexy just on my blogroll, I immediately think of E for Eclectic (whose second post from the top as of this writing is titled 'The Beauty of Men'), Natalia Antonova, Aishwarya at Kaleidoglide. There are others, too; that's just a quick sample.

But that's neither here nor there.

I just went and looked at my "beauty" tag. And in there among the anti-poly sizeism post or the one about the gorgeousness of correct taxonomy and recognising the beautiful humanity of a stranger and the politicality of hair and beauty vs. brains and body image stuff I find things like me writing about male beauty and my problems with the mainstream conceptualisations thereof or my recent post about beauty and power dynamic and lust and some theology using male beauty as the central image.

Just to focus on what I know, which is what I've written.

And I think there's something actually insidious about the notion that a sex-positive blog is necessarily a sex blog is necessarily a porn or erotica blog, at all. That the whole thing about being sex-pos is about working to titillate, arouse, or engage sexually with one's audience. Perhaps, that it's all about the 'hawtt titjobbe bisexee suckfuckers', that sex-positive asexuals do not exist.

The sex blog I've been reading longest is Sexeteria, which currently features a herbaceous porn header: the unclothed genitalia of a tulip. (Actually, looking at it again, it's not a tulip, but I don't know what it is, and I can sidetrack myself for hours trying to figure it out to properly improve my one-liner. Thus, moving right along ....)

This is a sex-positive blog.

Note the lack of sexy images of men or women. Not because of any political impulse, but because I'm not interested in sexy images of either, for the most part, and I respect the privacy of the people I do fancy ogling at length.

Note, also, the lack of explicit writing, scene reports, tales of sexual prowess, and similar things. Not because of any political impulse, but because my private sex life is none of your damn business, my assorted readership and stray explorers who got here by Googling "pixie sex" or "nine letter relationship word status" (good luck with your crossword puzzle, whoever you are!). This is not a sex blog.

It is a sex-positive blog. It's here because I'm writing about my personal sexuality, BDSM, the difficulties and damages and risks inflicted by a surrounding culture that is frankly defective about matters sexual. Because I want to write about learning about sexuality and how to have healthily constructed sexual experience. Because I'm concerned about the marginalisation of various people's sexualities, including my own. Because I write about divine ecstasy.

And, you know, I've occasionally considered writing a post about porn, because it's one of those going subjects in the sex-pos blogworld, but I'm not up for writing a post about something I've never seen, participated in, or had any particular interest in. I might write something someday about written stuff I've found hot, or visual stuff I've found hot -- I may have mentioned my reactions to Tigana in passing -- but that's not a particularly compelling subject to me either.

Asserting my claim on my own sexuality is a compelling subject for me, because it's something that I have been wrestling with for twenty years or so, because there are forces that make it very necessary work to do, people who think I should avoid things I find sexually satisfying for political reasons, moral reasons, social reasons. Doing the work to make the world safe for me as a polyamorous kinkster, and as part of that same work to try to make the world safe for all the other people with their varying sexualities and lacks thereof because we are all people, is what makes this a sex-positive blog.

If one is mistaking "sex-positive" for "providing wanking material", one will miss a lot of the work that a lot of people are doing. The internet may be for porn, but this blog isn't.



On a related note, I appear to have missed the fourth carnival of sexual freedom and autonomy just like I missed the third, but just because I don't have anything in it doesn't mean that I don't think people shouldn't go read it if they're so inclined.

Discernment

The reconstructionist paganisms have some hard problems; which problems they have of course depend significantly on the culture-of-origin, but the entire problem of reconstruction is not a simple one.

The core problem is the same across the reconstructions: it is the problem of building a coherent, consistent, and sustainable religion based upon the incomplete and varyingly interpreted surviving information which is adequately adapted to the cultural changes that have happened since that religious structure was supplanted. The specific problems for each one can be rooted in what sort of information is available, where the assumptions of the cultures are clashing, how much effort an individual practitioner has to go to to find something that is functional for them, and so on.

As an Egyptian recon-leaning pagan, I'm dealing with an origin culture which was urban, heavily agricultural, isolationist (except when it wasn't), ethnically mixed, smug, theocratic, intensely heirarchical (to the point that only one person was technically capable of performing the full rituals to the gods), very local, nationalistic, and collective. I somehow have to make this work in a context of my own urban, post-industrial, isolationist (except when it's not), ethnically mixed, smug, nominally secular, socially egalitarian with submerged privilege heirarchies, global, nationalistic but to a different nation, individualist culture; I have to figure out which of those values and traits are essential to the religion and which are reasonable adaptations to the intervening couple thousand years of history.

There is a straightforward historical model of priesthood in Egypt: these are the servants in the house of the god, granted the power to act for the king (the sole official god-servant). For the majority, it was a part-time job taking a quarter of the year. It was not associated with personal piety; while there were certainly pious priests, there were also those who considered it a happy sinecure that provided food and respect to their families. The temples effectively owned a great deal of land, and the circulation of the agricultural products of that land into the community was a major portion of the local (and national) economy; the influence of the temples helped to support a variety of artisans, in addition to their roles as repositories of knowledge, medical skill, and similar things.

There was no pastoral service. The responsibility was first to the care of the gods; care of the people was a distant secondary concern. Ordinary people were not even permitted into the temples, though there were occasional individuals allowed in for particular festivals. The ordinary people's religion was held in the streets, in their homes, on the outskirts of the temple grounds, at small shrines given the intermittent attention of a priest or tucked into niches along the walls. Sometimes there were rooms in which people could hear a priest speaking through a statue, or the god would give oracles in procession; other times, dream interpreters and beggars with skills at divining the future were granted a corner of the outer temple grounds.

This is obviously not a workable model in the modern world, and not just because of the shortage of prophetic beggars. (This does not stop people from trying.)

We don't run our economy through the temples, or anything remotely like it. We don't have centralised or centralisable worship. Moderns expect some kind of access to the counselling and support of their clerics. The work of sorting out what is a sensical practice and what isn't is not a simple one, nor even approaching complete, especially if one doesn't want to participate in the organised denominations (which give all impression of guarding their research and developments and resenting outsiders using it). We have no populations large enough to have city-wide festivals, nor much in the way of localised groups that will do things like finding the local city celebrations and marking them.

... which is all background stuff to what I'm trying to talk about.

WordK wrote about the problem of discerning a call to the ministry recently, particularly in a context in which men are axiomatically defined as having one and women are axiomatically defined as not having one.

And I'm sitting in a space where "discerning a call to the ministry" means needing to define the entire concept. A different puzzle, but still, discernment is a big word.

There are no temples that need servants; those are worn stone, and tourists and archaeologists peer into the holy of holies without caring that it was forbidden space. There is no king to deputise the priests, even if the temples were full of people. And those temples are in another land, in any case. The old priesthood is defunct and unrevivable; the people who might care are scattered, not a nation.

There is a great need for scholars, people with vision, people who will dig through the knowledge and research and build something live of it. Something accessible to scholars and people who want an ordinary life with the ability to honor their gods and everything between. Something that respects the people who feel the need to do the work of religion and the people who have other work. And maybe that thing will, eventually, have priests, in the ancient sense, but I don't think that's likely; I think the time of priests is done, the kingship they represent long passed. And I know that there are people who disagree with me, and name their leaders 'king' and their deputies priests, who even travel to Egypt to hold coronations, and ...

... some years ago, I was told that to be a whole person I needed something that I couldn't find in this religion, and where to find it. And there is a vital thing there, decentralised, creative, energetic, and I wonder if, to have a whole religion, I need this syncretism, whether the one suggests the other.

... or I dig into the transition from Temple to Diaspora, in the hope of finding some admittedly utterly ironic understanding of what changes that wreaks on a system.

I am no temple servant, by common ways of looking at things. I am a scholar and a theologian and someone people have turned to in time of crisis for support and wisdom. I minister, haphazardly, running on faith alone. And my faith in myself is ... not one of my dominant traits, shall I say.

What is discernment? What is the call? How can this stuff be sorted out into something plausible and workable and real, not just the playacting of scholars and people who put blind trust in the words of scholars?

And the persistent whine of the godbothered, too: Why me?

And then I go back to working on it.

What's In A Name?

I breathe a theology of words.

Language is a holy thing, a thing of power, threaded through with the power of raw creation, the power to speak the name of a thing and bring it into being, evoke it, make it more real.

This is the power that humankind shares with the gods: we have words. By our words, by our ability to draw concept into reality, we make and break the world.

We make and break both large worlds and small.

Sometimes the word is "Mine".

Sometimes my response is, "Your what?"

Because there is the underlying theology of it, the spiritual drive: name me, claim me, speak this real, take up the power of the gods and name, what am I? Which of my kaleidoscopic shapes is forefront in your mind at this moment?

"My lover", sometimes, close and sexual and partnered. "My blanket", a laughing snuggling claim demanding warmth and comfort. My friend, my partner, a pattering of nouns each blowing a little reality into one piece or another of the complicated shape that is what is a relationship.

I breathe words of heirarchy, of mastery, into his ear, just to hear them said. To speak them real. To invite him to speak back, at times; other times to plead for it, to ask to hear myself recognised. Sometimes just to say it, to have it said, breathed out again like the sun breathes out dawn, not changed, but asserted in the real as Re-Horakhty asserts morning.

And here is the deep magic, one of the secret powers: when a thing that is seen, recognised, and named true is a thing that, in another world, cannot be shown, cannot be seen, will be taken as shameful, defective, broken - when that thing can be heard and celebrated and named aloud - that is power.

It is the power to be the thing from the dark.

It is the power of being seen, recognised, named, heard, known.

It is the power of the ringing words that have the power of the gods, the naming of a thing as real.

To recognise power, to name it, to have someone see it and be aware of it and move in the space of the named thing.

There are words that come out of the primal dark places, the places where things are unspeakable - or at least treated as unspeakable, and thus live in the space between denial and absence. There is, sometimes, "my sacred whore", whispered or growled or spoken with dark red undertones of emotion, and with the rich velvet intensity of reality.

There are words spoken then that some people would call degrading.

And I don't understand how that could be.

These are god-words, full of spirit, going bump in the night, speaking of the power of the shadow-things with teeth. It is not degrading to be.

Name me.

Scale to Skin

There is a snake on my leg. A winged snake, coiled to protect an egg.

She is wrought in blood and ink and time, from my initial vision and the skilled hands of an artist who knows how to work flesh.

She is a sacred snake, a royal python, who guards her eggs when she lays them. She is a sacred snake, winged like the uraeus, the guardian of the king (though the uraeus is a cobra).

I was born in her year, the Snake, though just at its transition; my summer boyfriend when I was sixteen, four days younger than I, was born a Horse. When I was a child, we caught a garter snake once, kept it in a jar a while to study it and learn to have no fear, released it in the stump at the bottom of the yard, into which it wriggled and vanished like a mystery.

She is wise, is the snake, a liminal creature. She knows the mysteries of rebirth, shedding her skin to be made anew over and over again, many times in her life. She is a primordial, one of the first gods, guardian of secrets. There were times she bargained with people, to live in their homes and keep them free of vermin, in exchange for the warmth of their hearth, the protection of their children. She gave oracles, sometimes in the dangerous edges of the effects of her venom. Her reputation as a healer is multicultural, touching many worlds, many serpents.

She spreads her green, feathered wings widely, wrapping my leg in a gesture of benediction; green for life, living, birth, rich against her fertile browns. She can freely move in any direction she chooses, and chooses to mantle protectively over one egg, tucked luminous dark into her coils.

The egg she protects is a pisanka, an egg of old, old tradition among certain of my ancestors. An egg now marking and celebrating the mysteries of life and death, the shedding of the skin, being born into salvation. Blue for breath, breath for soul, ruach the colour of sky; the starburst sun in white and gold, pure and joyous and the brightness of the laughter of children.

She is my ancestor mark, my protector always with me. She is my memory of those who came before, my promise to those who come after. She is wrought in flesh and bone and blood and breath, etched under skin, holding close and gentle.

When the healing skin peels away, it will look and feel just like snakeskin.


(As I started writing this, some weeks ago before the work was done, Stephen Bodio's Querencia linked to this post at Atomic Nerds about ink and the shapes and meanings thereof, and what people will see.)