ABCs Of Kink

Disjointed and Fragmented I March Along

July 31, 2019 by ABCs Of Kink

Today is the last day of July. Last Saturday was my 41st birthday. It’s been a tumultuous year so far. We’re more than halfway through 2019. Soon to be: 2020.

My bandwidth is off. I’m irritated by requests from people who don’t clearly state their business first, or who ask the labor of guessing from me. I’m feeling disconnected from individuals I’ve loved a long time. I’m suspicious of people I’d usually accept with open arms. I’ve been struggling with my health, physical and emotional. I am not my best self right now.

This year was supposed to be a year of building. Well, it is a year of building, however it’s also been a year of tearing down. Not all of the tearing has been constructive. Necessary dismantlement of that which had been built up over time is coming apart under the examination and direction of tireless fingers and an older, wisened heart. Unnecessary stings to my flesh and mind have been rampant from the political front for a time. This country is becoming more overtly racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, and transphobic. Even liberal politics are seemingly headed closer to the conservative side of town in the name of a centrism which doesn’t exist anywhere near an actual middle ground. Reacting to Trump’s country/bad behavior by dulling our feathers and dreams cannot be the way we save ourselves from horrific repeats of history. The many-faceted fight for equality cannot be abandoned as bigots and Nazis scream ever louder and more publicly. That is not how one ends a fight with bullies.

Yes this is about poverty, about bigotry, about longtime excesses of privilege leading to a willful defiance and pettiness/greed in humanity. Yes this is about everything going on in the news, and yes it is very intimately also about me. I exist on this planet, a pion of meaninglessness except within my own story, yet I also am pushed (to the limit too frequently as of late) by all that surrounds me. My feelings of meaninglessness are only as honest as the connections I strive to keep.

There is a melancholy settled in the far corners of my internal body, and a slowness governing the pace and rhythm of my heart. These bits of darkness are presided over by an unfit Judge daring to speak out in some small central location of my brain. He’s stronger these days than he’s been since my high school and college years (which catalogued an onslaught of very dark days and nights). So, it’s been a long while since the negative voices resounded so loudly inside.

This judge tells me I’m a terrible person and better off released from the grind of having a day to day. He recounts each mistake I fear I’ve made, and rants at length about how those I count as loved ones care nothing for me in return.

I can’t remember the last time I struggled with my health so completely—physically, reproductively, emotionally, and mentally. I’ve been a wreck for longer than I care to admit.

In the end, admitting might be my worst weakness. Synonymous with the ideal of strength (a vision of togetherness), I don’t know how to face friends who are struggling and ask them if I can tell them my struggles too. I hold on to a longtime belief that there’s no room in the world for my needs. I help those who come to me, I don’t need their help in return. My use is to hold up and support, not require soothing hands for my own heart. My place is in serving others, not asking for luxuries myself… I know this is wrong. I look at the page as I type and call bullshit. Yet the persistent story remains, rooted in the grey matter of my brain. I want it out, this poison from my psyche.

I’m grateful for friends who come sit with me, call for a chat, or check-in with some regularity; those I work with, especially my regulars and sweet devoted trainee; my cat keeps me whole and grounded day to day; my family is there, especially when I’m very dark and can’t seem to see anyone close to me. I’m grateful for acts of kindness. I’m grateful for those who tell me I’ve touched them, helped them, inspired them on their own journeys. I’m grateful for lunch and drinks and dates to go swimming… I’m grateful knowing I’m not alone in my struggles to remain breathing.

These days it’s dawning that I require more casual connections. I need adventure partners, to find and participate in local communities in order to be healthy. I’ve been hunkered down alone, attending to my inner world out of necessity in the midst of real changes and growth for too long. I jab at myself, enunciating for a chuckle that I’m antisocial, but it isn’t honest. These are behaviors born of fear. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be right now. Like my clothing, nothing seems to fit right. I’ve lost delight in little things. My mind wanders to oblivion more frequently than it should.

Beautiful visions remain in my mind, but when I chuck them at a wall nothing seems to stick. Perhaps it’s just this oppressive Summer humidity, though the chill of Winter’s cold does it too, so perhaps it really is just me… I can’t continue to fail and fail and fail, day in and day out. Responding to that statement, I check in—am I failing? Really? It does feel that way, as though I’m slipping away.

There’s no time or money for learning. I find myself at the bottom of creative mountains I’m not sure I’m equipped to handle. My brain brings me to the impossible places I haven’t figured out yet. My mind does not dwell nearly as often in space I know well or find comfort in.

This will pass. I must remember that it always has. I will place one foot in front of the other. I will prevail in time. It will take longer than I want, but succeed at something I must, in order to survive.

Perhaps this is the burden of being alive: imagination and reality so often collide. Perhaps instead, it’s that too often they don’t seem to meet where they might.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
Please help me pay rent: join Patreon, offer Support or email me directly. Thank you

Filed Under: Brain on Download Blog Tagged With: centrist politics, conservatism, depression, effects of poverty, the effect of bigotry on minorities

B is for BDSM CHECKLISTS

July 26, 2019 by ABCs Of Kink

A helpful tool I frequently use with new subs and trainees is the BDSM checklist. You can find a bunch of them online, and over the years I’ve found examples which work more or less to my satisfaction.

Sometimes I get annoyed that a checklist’s language is different from what I’m used to, or the list comes off as too heteronormative or less than gender inclusive. There are some I find to be too complicated, and others too simplistic. Certainly it’s impossible to develop an exhaustive list of things to try, but even still some lists cater more towards styles of play I enjoy, and some are far from useful to me specifically.

Today I’m sharing a BDSM checklist that I’ve put together. I know I’ll be refining it as long as I use it. That’s just the nature of this ever-evolving beast. I’ll try to update the file link when I think of it in the future.

My list is based off a few I’ve used in the past, with various bits taken off, added on, recategorized, redefined, and with slightly different options than I’ve found on some. It’s not an exhaustive list in the least bit, but I think it’s a pretty good start and it works for me rather well. Feel free to download, edit, update, change, and utilize the list for yourself:

BDSM Checklist CreatureSir Download

How to use a BDSM checklist: At the top of most comprehensive checklists you’ll find definitions about what words mean and instructions about how to fill the pages out. This is so the person filling it out can do so as clearly as possible, and the person reading it can interpret their answers relatively accurately. It’s important to remember though that people interpret different terms differently, and one person’s idea of what “medium masochism” is might be wholly different than another’s.

Alongside the long list of activities to be rated, there are often a few ways each activity can be rated. In my checklist I ask people to rate each activity in a number of different ways in order to get a more comprehensive idea about how my sub actually experiences each activity. I ask them to rate: by experience level—never tried, tried but not enough to fully evaluate, or experienced; by how much they enjoy the activity—0-5; by whether or not the activity is a limit, a curiosity of theirs, or a valued part of play for them; to let me know if the activity is a fetish or something they feel they want to be “forced” to do in order to get over their nerves to try; and finally I offer space for notes and questions.

All of this information gives me a much clearer picture of how my partner feels about an activity, than if they’d simply said, “I rate such-and-such activity as a 3”. It helps me know where they’re at—are they new to the activity, do they have notes about whether it’s something they only do with people they have particular chemistry with… you get the idea. The combination of answers I’m presented with gives me better questions to ask when it comes time to negotiate.

You’ll notice on my checklist that there’s a pretty wide variety of activities represented. In part this is because I have a wide range of interests and skills, but this is not the only reason. There are definitely a number of items on the checklist that I do not offer at all, or that I do not engage in with everyone. The reason for this is an important one. I want my sub to feel comfortable telling me about them, not what they think I want to hear. By offering a more comprehensive list of activities, I offer my new partners an opportunity to answer questions they may never have been asked before. I want that. I want my partners telling me more about their interests and experiences rather than less. I want them to feel safe sharing “darker” fantasies or more taboo interests without fearing that I’m judging them. If it’s on the form, it’s an opportunity to let me know their thoughts. If I don’t give that opportunity to my partners, there’s a lot about them I’ll never get insight into.

This is helpful in other ways too. If a partner really loves an activity I don’t personally engage in, knowing that could be an opportunity for me to help them find someone who does offer it. There’s also the possibility that in time I might change my mind and decide an activity I’ve previously not been interested in is something I’d like to bring to the table in that relationship.

Similarly to this line of thinking, offering more options instead of less to a sub with limited experiences helps their own imagination about what’s possible expand. It encourages partners with limited imaginations consider opportunities they’d never thought of before. (If I’m anything, I’m absolutely an instigator at heart.)

Why use a checklist? I like checklists. I see them as a general snapshot of the terrain I’m working with when I begin a relationship. Checklist answers will, of course, change in time as people evolve and gain more experiences or as the relationship grows. While a checklist should not be considered consent, it is a great way to become inspired.

One of the first things I look at is what areas of play we seem compatible in. Next I spend some time musing on the things they like. Even if we don’t share all of the same interests, I can decide to incorporate elements of certain types of play into other things that I do. For example, maybe I have no interest in getting super into pet training with a sub who really likes that. Knowing they’re really into that might encourage me to use a leash more frequently, hand mits, offer them more time in a cage than I’d usually consider, or have them eat off the floor. These lists and their answers are not mandates, they’re simply prompts into possibility.

What I do not use a checklist for: I never use a checklist to replace conversation and proper negotiation. First of all, someone writing down that they love to be beaten with a cane, is not consent for me to beat them with a cane. It’s great to know I can probably offer my cane to them and gain approval, however maybe my sub only loves being beaten by canes made of thick rattan (softer and more thuddy as canes go), but I’m only packing a thin acrylic (very hard and stingy) one. Perhaps the only cane Top they’ve played with in the past was very gentle and spent a long time warming them up, but they’ve never experienced a mean caning and don’t realize that’s even a thing. From this checklist I’ll still have no idea if they like to be caned wherever on their body, or if they only like being hit on a very specific body part. You can see how the checklist get’s me into a ballpark for conversation, but we’re still not completely set up for play.

Another problem I’ve come across with many checklists is that the directions on how to fill them out aren’t very clear. Sometimes the definition of what a soft limit vs. a hard limit is isn’t spelled out (or doesn’t resonate with my use of those terms). Sometimes rating methods are super complicated, and halfway through filling the form out I realize I’ve been inconsistent with my answers. Sometimes I’ve not known what an activity really means, and by page 8 I’ve lost track of all the questions I wanted to ask. BDSM checklists are a way to amass a large amount of general and personal information, not extract detailed meaning. Because of this I think of checklists as “inspiration” rather than anything remotely resembling “facts”.

All in all, BDSM checklists are a great tool. Like any tool they can be incredibly helpful or extremely limited depending on what you want accomplished. Remember that the answers you receive only apply to the person who filled it out at the moment they filled it out. Emotional and mood changes, growing interests, updated relationship aspirations (or tensions), and new experiences take their toll on any checklist’s accuracy. They are certainly not a replacement for conversation or ongoing check-ins.

If some time has passed, consider having your partner fill a checklist out again. It can be fun to notice how many more activities they’re familiar with or have new and different opinions about from the first round, when you were just getting to know one another.

Here’s the link again—a downloadable pdf of Creature Sir’s BDSM Checklist. I hope you enjoy it, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
Please help me pay rent: join Patreon, offer Support or email me directly. Thank you

Filed Under: ABCs Blog Tagged With: BDSM checklist, get to know your sub, help negotiating kink, test your submissive

Transition and Friends

July 22, 2019 by ABCs Of Kink

From “NO SHAME”, my character Rico, at the beginning of his gender-switching striptease. Photo by Jennifer Bennett

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who’s also nonbinary transgender. We’re both strong, resilient people who teach in our communities. Since beginning our “transition” processes, we’ve shared the experience of it becoming harder to know where to turn in moments we feel deep internal struggle. It seems people we’ve always been close with are further away, less involved, or not understanding of our current lives. It’s not clear anymore who will be safe and accepting when the need to let go and find emotional support comes around.

My friend mentioned the 2-3 year marker for feeling friend loss, which apparently happens after one starts “transition”*. I hadn’t heard that measure before, but I can say in my experience it feels true.

*I’ll get to the reason for putting quotes around the word transition later.

In this article I’ll share a number of things we spoke about and expound. If you’re trans identified yourself you may or may not resonate with what I write. If you’re an ally you may or may not have considered some of the subjects I discuss. Whether cis, trans, and/or nonbinary we all have a hard time knowing where to turn when we’re feeling down—maybe especially those of us who are good at supporting others in their times of need. I hope my thoughts will generate conversation in useful ways.

“Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other gold…”

Old friends: I learned this song when I was a kid in Girl Scouts. It’s sung in rounds and is quite lovely. There’s nothing quite like the friends you share a long stretch of life with. You’ve logged an accumulation of years together, faced similar struggles, bonded from work passions, maybe even have childhood memories together. These people are not often wholly surprised that you’re coming out as trans, but they may be surprised that you’ve decided to engage in hormone replacement therapy or “actively transition” in some way. These people will often stick by you saying you’ve always been their friend, and identifying in a different way won’t change that. You may also watch these people become more distant in time. The ease you once had in reaching out to them dwindles as they seem to make less time for you, or offer you less opportunities to make time for them.

New friends: it’s important to befriend new people as we grow and change. We all experience this in one way or another. Whether you’ve been diagnosed with a life altering ailment, you’re processing a heavy loss, you come out, sober up, have a child, learn a new vocation… Our lives are full of reasons to make new friends who share our recent interests and experiences. These people help us through change and to learn new things. These new friends may not be people we feel safe enough to bare our souls to in moments of critical need though. The lack of history and few-points-of-connection aspect to the friendship can limit one’s intuition about whether they’d be capable of helping with our burdens when times are tough.

I wish I had more “platinum” friends in my life currently. These would be people I’ve known for a shorter yet solid amount of time and feel comfortable with. They’d be people who’ve seen me through (or been aware of) some of my hardships in that time, and shown me they care. They’d be people who have more intimate knowledge of the current struggles I’m facing as well.

I wish more of my old friends would come along with me on the journey I’m currently on. I wish my old friends still felt as reachable when times are hard. This is one of the hardest parts of going through changes—changes which ultimately make me much happier.

###

Why I put quotations on the word “Transition”: The word transition is a wonderful one. I also have some ongoing issues with what it seems to imply. These things tug at the back of my brain when I hear the word used. A common example is the question, “How long have you been “in transition””. I often feel like retorting, “My whole life?!”.

Honestly that’s not just a snappy comeback. For the entire first part of my life (childhood and onward) I was actively being transitioned away from what felt right to me. Each time I was told I had to wear a shirt outside, all the times I was not invited to wrestle or do anything else with “the boys”, when I was supposed to shave my legs and armpits and genitals to be acceptable, every time someone told me that what I was feeling was because “I was a girl”, every time someone automatically addressed me as miss or lady or anything else girl-gendered, and on and on…

It took me a long time to find myself under the depression instigated by these assorted rules and regulations. Embracing who I was internally kicked off more transition processes. Unlearning those things which make me unhappy is transitory. Figuring out alternatives to remedy my dissatisfaction for how I’m treated, or what ways I’m expected to behave is transitory. What others call “my transition” is simply me taking some medicine which aids in showing them my social dissonance. Testosterone doesn’t feel like transition, it feels like home. Bodily changes are happening all the time, like aging, but no one asks me what it’s like transitioning into older age. Telling people my name and pronouns isn’t transition, it’s just me sharing truths about myself with words which are less compromised than ones I’ve used before. I’ve already done a lot of the work of transition. By detangling and walking away from decades of instilled and practiced untruths that I was afraid I might die/never be loved again/lose everything over if I ceased to participate in was transition. I’m simply asking the world around me to accept what’s real.

It’s confusing, I get that. You weren’t there in my mind and my emotional experiences, even if you were in the room all those years.

The word “transition” also indicates that a change process is taking place, but I react to that idea by asking, “what change”? All trans people are not the same. The image the word “transition” evokes is a space existing between two points—a finite beginning and a finite end. I think most cis people (and perhaps some binary identifying trans people) have the idea that if one is “in transition” it means they haven’t reached their ultimate goal yet. The person hasn’t “fully transformed” into the butterfly or swan they will someday be… I find this concept depressing and ultimately useless.

I also find it weighted toward cis-normative values. “Passing” as a marker of “trans success” is probably the most obvious example that comes to mind. Passing is a binary concept which can’t really be detached from cis-straight (and sometimes gay and lesbian) normativity. Passing is not a queer concept, and it has no place on my queer body. Here I’ll challenge my cis-queer readers to consider the concept that queerness itself begs one to fight for (or at least recognize) queerness in all of its forms. If you cannot embrace the queer truth of my existence outside binary notions, are you honestly queer yourself?

Not all trans people care to pass as the “other” sex. “Other” is in quotations because we know that in nature (as studied in science), sex and gender are represented by way of a diverse spectrum of forms and functions. Not even remotely is it true that all examples of an organism found in nature will exist neatly within any binary. Nature loves a spectrum. Nature loves diversity.

Perhaps if people asked me how long I’ve been enjoying my spectrum I could answer more honestly. I would at least be amused instead of wanting to run away.

###

The world is transitioning more than I am: I’ve known who I am for a long time.

Due to socialization and well developed survival techniques, I have a lifelong habit of adapting myself (to some extent) to the seeming expectations of the company I keep. Until I came out as transgender to others, I struggled with the need to vocalize what was important to me. I struggled because I felt it wouldn’t be safe to share who I was with the world. In truth, many of the times I tried to I was shut down, dismissed, laughed at, ignored, broken up with, or point blank told I was wrong. It took a lot of baby steps. By the time I was ready to enunciate gender truths aloud to others while digging my heels in more firmly, I’d already broken with many specific social expectations: make-up, body shaving, playing female parts on stage, and various styles of playacting I’d cultivated in my youth—to name a few. Before coming out fully (even to myself) I’d been immersed in the work of figuring out what slices of life I was attracted to. I started moving toward them, leaving more and more not-queer communities and spaces behind. These breaks with straight and female traditions and expectations were crumbs for my friends and family to follow. Their minds needed to catch up in order to find me where I was at. It was time, and their transitions needed to begin.

More than anything, I think all those steps made up the lion’s share of my transition. Moving from an idea of who I was supposed to be, to outwardly claiming the person that I am, I’ve executed decades of self-examination, experimentation, and behavior modification. Absolutely, will I say that experimentation is a gateway drug. Through lifting the heavy weight of repression by trying new things, one finds actual knowledge—better data. One can only ignore what they know firsthand, they cannot un-know it.

I think what other people link the idea of “my transition” to is: the experience of being on HRT and watching my body change; asking for my pronouns and/or names to be respected; jumping through legal loopholes and red tape; working on my self image and outward presentation. I will state that these are more like the housekeeping of “transition”, than anything remotely structural. At this point my structure has already been planned, framed out, built, and painted. My internal mechanisms have been in place and in play for a while. What the rest of the world sees as “transition” is more equivalent to the redecorating of my dream house—now that it’s built and mine to do with as I please.

I think people who knew me prior to these decorative touches imagine, as they watch me hanging new curtains, that what they’ve witnessed is the loud rumble of a jackhammer opening earth in order to dig a foundation. They don’t realize what my house looks like. They may have been hanging out with me nearby as it was being built, but they were absent from the construction site. To me, hanging curtains can feel a lot like yelling “I’m here! I’m here! Can’t you see me?!”, “Nothing’s really changed!” and, “Is it just that you don’t like the color!?”.

I’ve witnessed fear in many cis people, fear that they’ll: do allyship wrong; offend those they care about; stumble over issues they don’t want to get wrong… Sometimes friends are aware of these fears and can speak to them, which makes getting along much easier. Sometimes fear comes out as a sudden roughness around the edges when I thought our friendship had been mostly fluid before. Sometimes there’s a partial (or complete) withdrawal from seeing one another altogether. Some people, I’m sure, just don’t want to be close with trans people—they love you while you’re passing cis, and don’t know how to shift the narrative to include you when you challenge the sisterhood/brotherhood/cishood standards they’ve always felt safe expecting when you’re around.

I expect those I care for to care for me too. This means that my being out as trans, taking steps to address my dysphoria, and bring my body more in line with my vision of self is an honest attempt at happiness for me. I want my friends to be excited about those things too. The world around me has a bunch to catch-up on, as do many people who are or have been close to me. It hurts feeling as though I’ve created distance between myself and loved ones by offering a more authentic, happier, version of me.

###

Feminist friction: As a trans person who is female (AFAB), I’ve noticed that I feel much safer and happier exploring and enjoying my femininity the more people physically recognize and respond to my masculinity. It feels balancing to me, and I love that. It feels safer to me, and I truly appreciate it. I can somewhat understand the feeling of betrayal some cis women, namely TERFS (Trans Exclusionary Feminist Separatists), get caught up in when they decry trans masculine people (though their treatment of trans women is nothing short of rude, selfish, incredibly short-sighted, and an abomination). I’ve heard people say, “How dare you not identify as a beautiful strong butch—we need them?!”, “Why would you want to join the other team?”, “Why do you want to be “a man”—you’re a feminist and a strong beautiful woman?”… the list goes on.

The fact is I do not want to be “a man”, that is not one of my identities—and if it was, it would be an even more inappropriate and shitty thing to hear someone say. Trans people who are more binary than I am deserve to be recognized as the types of men and women they are also. Period. Just as I deserve to hold down my truth that I am not a butch woman. I am a genderfluid transperson. I am not “switching teams” (as if there were even teams to begin with). I am happily existing in my corner of the vibrant multi-dimensional continuum that gender and sex exist in. I exist. I have a right to not play ball with those who would run over my identity in order to strengthen definitions of their own. (Also I never liked sports.)

Should I grow in time to feel differently than I do now, that will also be a part of my story and developing identity. I am many things, like we all are. Never one.

###

There’s an awkwardness to changing your hormones, your body, and your image that’s not just about rebranding, but forging new and exciting territory. It’s hard to learn how to shop in a different section of the store or find a haircut that feels right and is flattering. It’s all awkward—remember your teenage years? It’s not just the hormones making me feel like an awkward teenager again, it’s also learning the ropes of my body and figuring out how to keep adjusting towards being happy. As a kid I tried new things out all the time. Some of it worked and some of it didn’t. The biggest difference between now and then is that I was trying and failing with everyone else around me, including the somewhat guided support of my family elders. We were all in my development together, and I was far less conspicuous in that crowd (regardless of how I felt at the time).

Being an adult with a wardrobe cultivated from a lifetime of settling for what I could get away with—and I have it easy compared to most trans feminine people!—I find it painful and awkward that the things I own no longer make sense to me. I don’t really know what will work better yet though. I’m breaking down old branding and trying to find what brings me joy and confidence today. It’s as blinding a process as it was to me in puberty.

I’m not cute anymore in the same way I was (ouch). I’m not as handsome or as pretty as everyone’s used to me being (sorry?). I’m not tied up all pretty, having well-executed the acceptable ways to be (oops). I’m mostly on my own these days. I’m figuring out complicated math equations. Often I find it very lonely.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
Please help me pay rent: join Patreon, offer Support or email me directly. Thank you

Filed Under: Brain on Download Blog Tagged With: girl scouts, how important are friends after you come out, how to be friends with trans people, how to reach out to friends, my body is a house, reaching out to friends is hard, trans friend's allies, what is transition, what is transition like