I was engaged for the evening of election night in a BDSM threesome with lovely perverted friends of mine. It was the best way I could think of to spend my time amidst the forest fires circling our cities in the South, deep within a local culture whose persistent war over this country’s social progress is regressive. A mere hours after voting, I found myself striped down and on my knees on a wrestling matt, zip-tied by the wrists and ankles, blindfolded with a huge American flag draped over my head, fingers clutching a flag-on-a-stick and red, white, and blue pinwheel, with marching band music filling the room in a never ending swell of patriotic pride! As the nation waited to find out exactly how bad it was going to be, my General and their Lieutenant quizzed me on knowledge of all things American, and for every question I got wrong I was beat with a thick strap of leather — and oh how I got the things wrong! I am terrible at fact regurgitation, and the test for the evening was to list the first 10 amendments of the constitution, handle some constitutional trivia, and name all of the Presidents… Let’s just say I got a couple right, and did a lot of counting lashes as they fell upon my posterior while my superiors gleefully switched off punishing duties. It was a glorious and sublime distraction from the events of Election Tuesday 2016.
Throughout the night each dismal check online for current election results was answered with more kissing, more biting, more fucking, and more beatings until we all just fell asleep in a heap of cuddles before the official call was made.
Breakfast the next morning was quiet and slow and solemn. Naturally we talked politics and activism and how fucked our community was about to become, and agreed that as we’re all in this mess now we might as well have been enjoying ourselves as the mess was revealed — election party win, as the country was to lose.
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HB2’s Legacy as I see it: Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately: HB2 and how the rest of the nation has fallen behind on their bathroom signage. Does that sound strange? Well, I think some of the fallout from that bill’s passage is an interesting case to study. I hope the USA, with Trump and Pence and a whole lotta other bigots joining the ranks of “in charge”, will take notes on how one deals with regressive and endangering politics from (at least) Asheville’s response to the now notorious House Bill 2. When HB2 passed in North Carolina not only did the city council of Asheville unanimously (and completely to no legal end, but the action was beautiful and appreciated) repeal HB2 for the city of Asheville, but all over the city and much of the state one suddenly found themselves faced with gender neutral bathroom signs when having to empty the pipes publicly.
From restaurants to libraries, Universities to toy stores, much of NC became a place with more gender free restroom signs than I’ve seen in my entire life. Some bars even gender freed the rooms with stalls, urinals, and multiple seats! It became normal. You just went to the room with a toilet in it when you needed to. It didn’t matter who else was around — if the head was free, your ass was invited to use it. The presence or absence of gender neutral signage became a measure of whether you respected an establishment or clicked your tongue and judged the owners upon relieving yourself. It became so normal to me that I noticed when I went on a cross-country tour and was again surrounded by men’s and women’s restroom designations (even single stall ones, what? Oh my!), that I felt offended and in danger and shamed about my gender in a way I hadn’t felt in decades.
So, the “Men’s” room is empty but I’m supposed to wait around in the hallway like a puppy on the leash of it’s errand-running human for who knows how long while others get to come and go as they please because I have the wrong birth certificate sex designation to use the room that has a urinal next to the shitter, rather than a diaper changing station? Fuck No!
It pissed me off more than my entire lifetime of looking at bathroom signs ever had. It felt so wrong and so regressive, so quaint, stupid, born of ignorance, bullyish, endangering, and demeaning that I actually feel relief now in much of the heart of the South, in a state which consistently votes against the very progress it inseminates itself with in reaction to its own conservative restrictiveness…
Which is to say, in short: push me, and I’m gonna get creative and actually action back. As the Government gets more restrictive and outrageously domineering, the people will have no choice but to do what people are genius at doing: being creative. And the creations of a people who are majoritively discomfited are inevitably what moves humanity itself along the path to progress. Where there is a need, we are inventive! So… the arguable “comfortable” and “lazy” years of the Obama Presidency — where legislation vastly improved the lives of the poor, working class, and marginalized people of this country — allowed for a certain amount of “we’ll deal with it” attitude from the people, a certain amount of undesirable “norm” suffered and accepted. Introduce a bunch of backwards legislation though, stripping people of their rights and freedoms, and off our asses with the fire of creation and new norm setting actions we come! I wish this for us. Yes.
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Samhain recently passed. The themes of sex and death are ripe in the air as November grows daily colder. Celebration of what our bodies are capable of in the midst of a political freeze on progressive growth — nay a rolling back of liberties and safe streets — seems appropo if not direly needed. My summation of this blog today is a message of the inevitable cycle of life’s beginnings and endings. We are put on this planet to LIVE! Rage on! Make something! BE fully! Holiday family time looms over the heads of liberals and conservatives alike, and what we need now more than anything is to burst the bubbles which signal our collective demise. I challenge all of the people reading this to remind themselves what discomfort feels like — how the pain of working out is an ultimate reminder that you are growing stronger:
Masturbate until you see the connection in everything! Fuck! Be Queer! Have experiences! Try something new! Get tied up! Ask for what you truly want! Practice a new skill! Learn! Dare to try! Accept rejection! Celebrate with the people around you! See the similarities between yourself and all the other sentient beings on Earth! Reject social pressures! Speak up when you feel moved! Remember that your Grandparents and their Grandparents had sex in some ways so you could be born generations later — that we all cling to a story written in DNA dependant on fornication or the mess of cuming for the future of the world to live on! Lay on your stomach and watch spiders spin their webs — those creatures are no different than you! Learn from watching and remaining silent! Slow down and FEEL things!… Your intake of information is so much more diverse and deeply informative than the single-type intelligence impressed upon us as “correct” within society. Judge not, instead struggle to understand…
Only together do we move forward meaningfully.
To Breath and Being,
~ Karin
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