The concept titled is not a complex thought, however it’s a perspective not spoken of enough within cishet-normative and queer cultures. I’ve been thinking lately about the tension between who I am, who I want to be, how I’ve been told to exist, and what space is left over in which I not only survive, but thrive. Obviously everyone journeys through life figuring out how much social influence feels ok to them, and in what ways they must press into previously unknown discomforts in order to be the person they want to be/feel they are authentically inside. This struggle is not limited to queers and marginalized people, but it does exponentially speak to those experiences, and vastly complicates the mechanisms for survival within society for those people. Ultimately, better understanding the struggles of other people is inherently tied to an ability to thrive for every individual.
Last month was PRIDE, and as usual people started talking about whether or not kinky people should be included under that celebrated queer banner. I wrote my response here. If it isn’t obvious from my blog, career, and openness concerning my identities, I believe “kinky” is absolutely and on no uncertain terms a sexual orientation for a many people—myself included. Kinky play can also be considered a spicy activity, just as sexually experimenting with same sex individuals, cheating or playing at opening a relationship to some degree, or performative crossdressing might be considered experimental behaviors for people who are not interested in embracing LGBT or non-monogamous identities.
As I consider my experience of being actively (as opposed to casually or experimentally) kinky, I would be remiss not to point out how navigating kinkiness is intricately tied to cishet normative patriarchal expectations. In a clear example of how cishet patriarchal values make their way into kink culture as a persistant “norm”, let’s look at how one even locates compatible play partners. I’ll start by saying this though: my experience of kinky people is that they are individually much more versatile when it comes to the Kinsey scale of acceptable play partners than those who identify as vanilla. However, searching through Fetlife groups to find partners who value various types of queerness can be maddening. Example: for every 50 or so groups designed to bring Male Doms and female subs together (cishet normative and centering), there are might be 25 groups offering a home to Femme Doms and their male subs (also cishet centric at face value, though not normative and maybe slightly more inclusive as these groups will often utilize the term “femme” inclusively), after that one will find a scant few generally unpopular groups specifically designed for lesbian, gay, or gender nonconforming D/s kinksters, which are usually welcoming of cishet allies. By the numbers I’m still much more likely to find a local match combing through groups which cater to the dominant paradigm—even though I also encounter a higher (and often much more hurtful) level of rejection and bigoted responses from within their ranks. Many cishet kinky people who are open to LGBTQIA partners are still more likely to join the larger groups reflecting only the values of dominant culture, than they are to seek out smaller queer-defined inclusive ones. Unless a cishet person is a fetishist specifically looking for that version of queer, or a “chaser”*, or a committed ally, the easiest and most populated groups to find are those which reflect the values of our society’s dominant paradigm. In the end even groups which form in order to create space for marginalized people often end up limited in real life opportunities for connection.
[*Here I will note that unfortunately even with some fetishists and chasers one risks contending with objectification as a member of the marginalized group, rather than finding a connection formed from a desire for meaningful allyship (not always, but this is common).]
Being out about my kinky and queer identities does not allow me to cut out of my life people who hold bigoted views against me, which is largely not the case with bigots who would do so. Vanilla people and those who successfully closet themselves or hide their kinky orientation and activities, maintain privileges I cannot. A good example of this is trying to get a job. My presence on the internet as a kinky queer person and as a sex worker (not to mention female and visibly trans) automatically disqualifies me from a huge percentage of work opportunities offered by individuals and corporate entities who do not understand or value, and who may actively hold bigoted views against these parts of me. My identities, experiences, and history hold no meaningful bearing on my ability to do any of the work I would be applying for, yet the boss who knows who I am outside the realm of the office has the power and opportunity to withhold their proximal privilege from me. If I was a disabled or non-white person the number of people able to look past my identities and see value in my potential for work would fall off even more sharply. This is the reality of all queerness, all marginalization.
Majority culture setting default social values is problematic insomuch as it actively limits and tries to legislate all who are not “like” and in its comprehensive reward system for those who are. These problems compound as they train all people to repress their own questioning and offset desires in order to “pass” or “succeed” as they develop and grow. In a word: repression. The individual journey of each cishet person to understand, accept, and value diversity, coupled with active work to dismantle damaging community-wide preferences is antidote to the oppression of all, especially “other”. Therefore it is largely up to majority identified people to create a world which invites all people to coexist and profit equally. As such, it is the work of marginalized people to educate and to protest. That is all we have in the end at our behest.
Why would a profitable imbalance be rectified through the actions of those profiting? Cishet people may not consciously know that they need people who are not like them (just as white people may not clearly understand their need for people of color), however they deeply and primally do in order to be more whole. Cishet people need queers of all stripes not only because we’re fabulous and bring color and joy to the world, but because we understand at a primal level a lot of issues and subtleties about the workings of society they probably haven’t spent the time to examine or articulate for themselves. Those disparities when understood fully offer a more comprehensive world for everyone, leading to each person’s opportunity to experience and hold more options within their own lives.
Alternately, the queers and I need cishet people because, well: paycheck, food, shelter, healthcare, social services, and not dying. I’m talking about primary resources for staying alive, as those things are largely owned and dispensed by the dominant group vs. more subtle opportunities for joy, self-actualization, emotional growth, increased empathy, and an individual’s more expansive core sense of peace and harmony within the world. We all have work to do. Queer people, women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, etc. hold information (complex knowledge and experiences) which can uplift, educate, and expand options for everyone. Those who have not done the work to find these things within themselves have usually not done so exactly because they have not needed to in order to survive.
When I mention that the usefulness of cishet people is a paycheck, what I mean is not only the obvious, but also comprehensive. Taken literally I’m saying cishet people (and exponentially men who are also white) take home the most disposable income. Those are the people, as a sex worker, artist, and entertainer (jobs I’m able to navigate relatively successfully without asking patriarchally approved employers to accept my resume and very “out” online footprint), from whom my income is mainly derived. I absolutely need cishet and questioning (especially white and often male) people to value and be accepting of trans masculine-ish nonbinary (aka not traditionally femme presenting) queer females in order to make meaningful income. By the numbers this is absolutely true. The more people there are in dominant culture who understand, accept, and become interested in my specific minority categories, the more business opportunities come my way and the opportunity for my very survival increases drastically.
Invisibility = Death.
Visibility within a hostile and bigoted society = Death.
Visibility, understanding, and acceptance = an opportunity to not only survive but also and equally to thrive.
Minorities serve to expand consciousness and advocate the gifts of diversity, whether that minority group is visible within dominant culture or as a subset of a minority culture. There will always be differences between individuals in any community, yet within those differences are opportunities to continue questioning ourselves and grow stronger, more to the light of who we are and who we wish to be. We are all in this together.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
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