Admitting Fantasies

December 30, 2017 by

Photo by Rudy Aguilar

When you know what you want it’s infinitely more easy to get. Sometimes it’s hard figuring out what you want though. It’s even harder admitting some things out loud. These days I want games and fun. Imaginative interactions. Fantasies to come alive for me, and I want this colorful vibrant sexual world to not involve me having sex — piv/oral/anal… Winter marigniates me, fantasy rich and stir crazy, and even though I know there are a lot of people out there who probably would love these things too there’s a voice in my head that tells me I don’t deserve them. “Who would bother getting down with me if not for the end goal of sex?” However, if I can push past those fears and say exactly what I want out loud, I can start looking for it rather than either not getting my needs met at all or settling for something which will feel compromising and possibly unhealthy.

Talking about fantasies can help. When I can talk about my fantasies with others, it feels great and our conversations go places they wouldn’t if we just talk about what we “want”. It’s hard to say the words “I want” at all for many people, and even harder to say things that seem abnormal or vulnerable to judgement, sometimes especially to loved ones. If we can talk about our fantasies though, we can share these ideas a little more safely with one another. When we notice we’re curious about a partner’s fantasy we can ask, “is that something you’d actually like to experience sometime?”, and we might even finding ourselves admitting that yes, we’d like to actually try a certain fantasy out. Of course, fantasies are fantasies and some are meant to remain that way, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

We live in a world that judges everything. Developing one’s “personal brand” is an effort so many people get tripped up over, and it’s natural that one should trip up on it. Branding is an aesthetic and a set of rules. Life, desire, sexuality, curiosity, hormones, impulses, growth, staying alive: these things are very complex, full of mistakes and ugliness, ofttimes messy. Perhaps this is why we like branding, it makes things which are not easy seem to be, which in turn makes them more saleable.

We learn to judge ourselves too deeply too early. We learn very early on that “someone’s going to think I’m fucked up for wanting this thing or that”, and our child’s mind clings to black and white meaning making, sorting ideas into “right” and “wrong”. As we grow, if we do not shed these early impressions and allow our thoughts to become more complex, our thoughts translate into things like “this person I love will get mad/grossed out/worried/stop loving me if I talk about this fucked up (wrong) thing I want”. And so unnecessary repression fills our bodies. We ache for things which we will not let ourselves have. Self-repression will always find a way to come out sideways though. Instead of sharing our intimate desires with our partners we end up blowing up in their faces when they’re in the middle of something which has nothing to do with us. We end up picking fights instead of rewinding back to that moment of impulse to say, “hey, you know what I really want tonight?”. Self-repression makes hearing the answer “no” hard for a lot of people too. However, it is the responsibility of each of us to fulfill our own destinies. It is no one else’s job to take care of your feelings after you blow up or engage in underhanded behaviors such as passive aggressiveness, withholding, manipulation, being untrustworthy, threatening, controlling, etc. Without learning to trust and love our own desires and speak about them, and instead of saying “can you help me?” or “who can help me?”, negative and abusive behaviors have become normalized and run rampant in our society.

Working at a sex store and teaching toy parties for a number of years, I found it fascinating to observe how people would talk about various sex or kink acts, games, toys, and body parts with objectification, disgust, denial, or dismissal. Usually the people who reacted the strongest to any of these conversations secretly desired to know more about them and were judging themselves for their curiosity, so felt a need to appear outwardly oppressive about whatever it was.

Curiosity, sex, sensuality, experimentation, and finding pleasure are what humans do though! We have these bodies exactly so that we can explore them as we desire. This sack of flesh and blood and bacteria is the only thing we have real control over in our years between birth and death. It is our means, our toolbag, and our primary universe for discovery.

Anal sex, pegging, male on male sexual play, degradation, threesomes, gangbangs, rape fantasy, ageplay, cuckolding (the list in inexhaustive)… All EXTREMELY common fantasies and forms of adult play. Yet these are the fantasies I’ve heard most people whisper about and confide to their affair partners and friends instead of their “monogamous” or even “open” lovers, if they speak them outloud to anyone at all. Until we stop whispering and start taking about our curiosities and desires openly easily fulfilled, normal, wonderful fantasies will continue to eat away at our senses of worth.

What if we could hear the word “no” and be excited and grateful someone else’s boundary was being bravely put forth? What if we could see our jealousies as information indicating we are not taking care of ourselves adequately, or that we need to find something for ourselves we have let slide, or that our boundaries are asking to be reevaluated? What if being attracted to someone outside of a relationship was cause for celebration and feelings of joy because finding someone attractive feels great and doesn’t always need action attached to it? What if we could appreciate one another sexually and sensually and not make unmet demands to have those fantasies fulfilled by treating the object of our interest as an object, but instead resiliently find those who share our interests or are game to play along?

Though human existence is messy, it’s also full of fertile information and opportunity. Acknowledging to ourselves and interacting with our desires or fantasies is invitation to knowing what we want. Owning what we want is invitation for growth.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

Filed Under: Perspectives on Kink Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We Are The Creators of New Expectation

November 25, 2017 by

My “Ropes” performance adjusted for a film scene. Photo still from the short film “Legitimate” by Izzy Lee

Unless you’ve been under a very large dense rock for the past month or so, you’re aware of the current conversation about Harvey Weinstein’s history abusing women, the emergence of #MeToo, and the subsequent steady outing of a long list of popular men in the arts and politics as rapists, abusers, sexual predators, and unthinking opportunists. It’s an amazing time to be (or have had the experience of being) a woman. The bedrock concept that “women and minorities should be believed” is having a moment, and it’s striking how many people are absorbing that thought for the first time as a basic step toward building equality. At this same moment we are learning to let go of our desire to support certain celebrities as we take sexual assault and harassment more seriously than before. We are wading through the meaning behind which actions should get someone fired from their job or investigated, strung up by mobs, or lauded for the sincerity of an apology. Amidst these trials I recently read the article “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” by Claire Dederer in The Paris Review. It’s a good article which acknowledges a lot about the corners of current affairs which aren’t being mucked into. While I don’t share her point of view entirely, nor think her assessment of women’s transgressions are as applicable to current events as they could be, I applaud her willingness to stand squarely within a quandary we’re not talking much about and pose the question: what do we do with the things we love when they’ve been sullied.

In reaction to her article and in conversation in general I’ve often heard the sentiment: It’s art. We enjoy it. We also acknowledge that the creators of art leave a lot to be desired as role models.

I don’t think that answer goes far enough. Hearing that makes me pause and wonder if the person relating that perspective is already over the moment we’re having — trying to quickly move past “listen to women and minorities”, and leap all the way over to “we really grew as a society when all that happened”, which I feel is where we get to after we give up on hard conversations and move back into our comfortable old coping mechanisms. We’re in the middle of growing pains right now trying to evolve away from those old coping mechanisms, but without holding out into discomfort and examining our impulses for quite a while they will not change for the long run. I will note here, because I think it’s important to think about, that it is usually a cis male who has uttered this sentiment. In radio interviews, on social media threads, and in articles I hear women and trans people retort, “I hope we keep talking like this. I think we’re far from over, this is just the beginning and I hope we keep having these hard conversations. There is still a lot to uncover and learn”.

There’s a disinfected truth to it: “It’s Art. We enjoy it. We acknowledge that those guys who made it are shitbags…”. I can hear the “but” hanging at the edges of that sentence every time it’s articulated by someone new. “…But I like that movie and don’t want to have to boycott it”, “but that guy was my friend and I don’t want to feel weird getting beers with him”, “but eventually we’ll get to a place I can be comfortable again, right?”

There’s an impatient rush to say “we got better at the thing” and forget about it so we don’t have to examine ourselves or our friends anymore. Isn’t that entirely the point in this whole uprooting to begin with though? We must become comfortable not being comfortable in order to grow and evolve.

What artists wrestle with in the creation of their art is often (always?) intersecting things they wrestle with as human beings. This is especially true of (and often visibly outlined within) artistic careers. I think it must be hard to be great at anything without wrestling — even enjoying the wrestling which comes from — the uneasy factions between your personal instinct and impulses, against a history of professional training and the system of knowledge that’s come before. Assaults and molestations and taking advantages of are about power. Abuse takes in hand opportunity and pushes boundaries in order to one up and push out. Artists and other people of power must daily be opportunistic, manipulative, and transgressive to bring their particular (often unique) point of view to the forefront at work. Yet we know it is entirely possible to make great art without being abusive. How often have we lauded the alcoholic or drug addict as “art genius” in the past, even knowing it’s entirely possible to be sober and great at what you do? Conflation. Storytelling. Romanticism — beware of it.

We’re fascinated by these stories because we feel morally superior to them within the broad strokes, yet we’re also implicated in the details through our consumption and support. Is it a guilty pleasure or form of self flagellation to consume these good arts made by bad men, waving away the implication that we would ever do such things ourselves? We’re still maintaining a certain edge, a bit more raw and verboten, when we say “it’s genius regardless of the person who made it”. What we don’t say (but can be read between the lines of position and behavior) is “and I just keep giving them my money. I just keep giving them my time and attention. I’m not doing research to find the women and minorities and not abusive people who have also created genius things for me to consume”. This is not evolution. This is maintenance of the status quo even after declaring we have moved on and learned society’s current lesson. This is the Patriarchy profiting off of a good mic drop moment because we love a good mic drop, but what happens after the mic is on that floor? We go back to our beers. And pettinesses. And comforting privileged routines. The mic has become highway litter no one feels a personal need to be responsible for. Who picks it back up? The women and minorities. Always.

I believe there is no answer but to struggle. Struggle to invest in the lives of victims rather than perpetrators. Struggle to believe women and minorities and listen to their perspectives on transgressions and their transgressors. We must struggle because through struggle we begin to really know something, and a knowing struggle is what instigates those artistic articulations we believe to be genius in the first place. We (you and I) must remember those who struggle and do not transgress at a predatory level as a result. Nonabusive artists and politicians may not have had the privilege to become lauded heroes of the patriarchy before their fall — yet their existence proves struggle and creation within art/politics/etc. is possible to do with some amount of grace.

Until we can leave behind those who maintain abuse of power during the workings of their genius, and start supporting the geniuses of those who struggle to make without harm, we are only feeding the beast we profess to abhor and starving the healthy ones out. Shitty abusive coping mechanisms don’t change because someone gets slapped on the wrist and then goes back to their regularly scheduled programming. Shitty abusive coping mechanisms change because they are suffocated out when they cease to work anymore. When we empower those who wield power and genius humanely, we create a new standard for getting attention and resources. Only when we leave those with stunted coping mechanisms behind, will those people have to do the work of learning new ways to work and new ways to be.

We must be willing to do our work first. We must find ourselves loving and supporting different people. We must research and find alternatives to what the Patriarchy and white privilege has served up on popular demand for so long. We must demand more from one another. We must get comfortable being uncomfortable, and struggle, and do better. We must always reach for more.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

Filed Under: Brain on Download Blog, Perspectives on Kink Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Safe Space isn’t about Consent

November 7, 2017 by

“Danger Do Not Cross”, a performance of mine from a few years back. Photo by Sarah Paterson

If we intend on creating safe spaces (especially for women and minority people) to explore our sexualities openly, we have a lot of work to do. When I say “we” I mean everyone, but I especially mean all men, people who aren’t minorities, and those who have more privilege within their minority communities than the people they are sharing space with.

Everyone loves sex and kink and parties, right? It feels so good! A room full of oxytocin, adrenaline, and dopamine gets only more intoxicating the more people are added to the mix! And of course you have thought ahead, of course you have considered who to invite and not invite, you’ve written your party rules and sent them out for all to see. Consensual play is one of them, in fact you have it BOLDED in the email sent out to everyone: CONSENT IS SEXY — CONSENT OR GO HOME — CONSENT OR BANISHMENT FROM THE FOLD!!!

But do you mean it?

Do you? Are you willing to put your body and this idea between predators — especially those predators who are people you know well — and the victims and/or survivors who they have harmed?

As mastermind of this environment, as host/co-host/producer/involved friend/moderator/Dungeon Master/partygoer… are you willing to involve yourself (maybe painfully) in the processes of teaching friends, keeping in check, mediating, cutting ties, working towards remediating those people who fuck up, being supportive and attentive to those who’ve been harmed in your space, and choosing between close friends who you’ll completely and unequivocally support? Are you willing to put the notion out there that your group/party/event stands up for and gives resources first and foremost to people who deserved to maintain their autonomy, and consider a violation of that tantamount to violation of the event itself and your own reputation? Are you ready to not only kick out, but detain and question those who have abused your open space and vulnerable friends? Are you willing to be vocal about your commitment to survivors of assault and their needs over the reputation of your event or a perpetrator’s privacy? These questions are ones you should not just kneejerk say “of course” to.

Close your eyes and imagine throwing your best friend out of your house and having to mediate clearly and firmly their ban on your events because they molested someone at the party — someone, perhaps, you don’t even know, or someone who you don’t personally like that much, someone who you think is loud and obnoxious, or overly sensitive in general. Now try again, this time run through your mind what it will be like having to do these things with someone who is very useful to you, someone who is a good client, who has given your community many resources, who owns the property you’re using, who pays your rent, who has some type of power over you in the non-party world. Are you sure you have the stomach to act steadfast in honor of a victim in your safe space still?

Safe space isn’t about consent, it’s about the shape and resilience of the container itself.

It is unfortunate that to experience our sexualities and sensualities we often need protection and safeguards in place to allow us, for just a moment, to let go of the walls we’ve built up over the years and past abuses. It is only honest to acknowledge that at the moment we do let go we are vulnerable. We are vulnerable to people without boundaries, without socialization surrounding sexual boundaries, without clear thinking, and without respect. Vulnerable to people who drink too much, who are on drugs, who have decided to drug someone else. We are vulnerable to peer pressure, to bullying, to force, to surprise attack. We are vulnerable to grabbing, staring, and invasion of personal space by people who don’t think casual touch is worth asking about. We are vulnerable to a slew of things we haven’t considered possible, much less the ones we knowingly brace ourselves against. If you want to create safe space for this vulnerable and fragile process of letting go, you must also be actively involved in the aftermath when molestation (unfortunately too frequently) occurs.

How do we do this?

Let’s talk about that.

Safe space is about listening. Let’s look at that from the ground up for a minute. It is because we do not listen to our victims that we become predators. Perhaps we have not been listened to ourselves, and so that practice has become a habit we perpetrate on others. Perhaps we aren’t listening because we have blocked our sensibilities with the unbalancing reality of inebriants. Perhaps a million other reasons, it doesn’t matter what they are in the end. It is because there is a dearth of listening that we have gotten to this place of frequent abuse to begin with.

The perpetrator of an assault is not listening to their victim. We, as community and responders to the situation, must first and foremost be willing to listen to victims and survivors. This, of course, means we need to listen to women. We need to listen to black and brown people and others who aren’t white skinned. We must listen to queers, transgender folk, and to sex workers. We must listen to people who are in shock, angry, tearful, overtly emotional, quiet, afraid, reactionary, and confused. We must to listen to them about what they’ve experienced and their needs, and we must learn to action around their words first.

This means we must be quiet. We must be willing to sit in a corner and hear what is being said, and we must learn to untangle our own fears, personal triggers, “yeah, buts”, and agendas from what we’re being told is needed in any given moment. We must not decide that because we’ve been through this before that we know what to do. We can let those experiences inform us, but we must listen to the people in the moment that is happening right now in order to be present enough for responsible action and actual help.

This scratches the surface about how to create a safe space for open sexuality, but it’s the most important tool we can learn to use I think. Also:

  • Have an experienced sober Dungeon Master or two committed to being present where there is play.
  • Have Moderators or Party Officials who are introduced at the beginning of the party and available to be pulled aside at any point to be talked to if someone is feeling uncomfortable or if something that needs to be dealt with happens.
  • Have an opening circle where participants introduce themselves quickly, or at least have the host address everyone and lay out the rules and expectations of the event.
  • Consider having a cut-off time for arrivals. This works great if you have an opening circle as everyone can be expected to participate. Even if you don’t though, closing the door and sealing the space from outsiders, intruders, or people who are coming late and possibly inebriated helps control the space itself.
  • Make your parties sober and commit to throwing out anyone suspected of being under the influence, or have a “If you’re too inebriated to drive, you’re too inebriated to consent” rule.
  • Have “no play” zones where no play is happening (the kitchen or wherever food is is great for this) so that people who are feeling uncomfortable or triggered or needing a time out or to escape someone’s attention in a play space can comfortably exist without question about why they aren’t playing.
  • Have a plan clearly in place about what to do if something happens. Know how the situation will be dealt with, and who is commited to deal with it.
  • Have a buddy system in place where everyone at the party comes with another person, with the understanding that if your buddy gets thrown out you do too no matter what is going on. This helps create accountability in terms of people only inviting people they think will be responsible, but it also ensures that if someone is kicked out for being drunk hopefully their buddy isn’t. Ask that people check in with their buddies throughout the night…
  • Have a committed designated driver or sober crew at the party who can bring people home or to safety or simply be more aware when they see odd behavior.
  • Have people at the party who are trained in how to deal with an assault when one occurs.
  • Have a follow-up plan for victims and perpetrators already in place.

These are only a few suggestions.

Consent can only happen once someone has deigned to ask for it and decided to listen. Consent is a popular word and an important practice which feels like a row of shining stars: THIS PERSON IS SUPER CONSENSUAL, A+++! It is not, however, what creates safe space alone. Of course, we must get positive enthusiastic consent to play. But first we have to ask questions, we have to listen, we have to be willing to accept responsibility for what is happening around us. We must listen to people we aren’t used to listening to. We must learn.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

Filed Under: Perspectives on Kink Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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