Capacity for Pleasure

February 19, 2017 by

My morning thoughts today: Sooo tired, bone achingly so, but happy and calm. My skin feels less and less like my own as I grow older, even as my body’s shape and weight fluctuations, firmness, and space-taking strength becomes more comfortable. It’s taken me decades to look in a mirror and not see an enemy staring back…

I love the struggle of my day: a head that wants, and a spirit who sits still to listen for what the self is actually saying. My brain is too tired to write for the lack of sleep I am currently enduring, and my body wants all of the things, experiences and connections, too quickly for digestion. I volley back and forth in my head about fantasies I am too afraid to ask for in person, yet I turn around and enact these very things in a room full of strangers who come by at the agreed upon time, sit and wait to see and hear what I’ve been keeping so quiet and protected…

I am my own safety, infrequently lent to singles except in moments of inspiration or the random rare chemical desire… Oh, to fall into a of cozy and careful touch, as I do those painful and challenging tests of my endurance. I might fall pieces to pieces for a sweet kindness on my skin, a spirit bigger than my own carving out time for my release. It is easier, my feral self says, to fight, bite, trust in pressure against my body than succumb to the potential trap of a caress.

My ex would throw their back out every time they got a massage. I feel that instability in my heart. To love the everything which I am made of, embodied in you and you and you is righteous and divine! To spend an elongated moment focused specifically on my pleasure for pleasure’s sake is galling, insipid, a fear with teeth and walls, a shadow I cannot find the end of. I know these things are one and the same, a microcosm and a macrocosm spiraling in and out, the never-changing parts of what makes life for the living… Still though, I find pleasure terrifying. I find it insurmountable, untrustable, a thing I want to rage at, an end. Losing myself in something I won’t need to heal from? I think implosion might be self love. I’m not so afraid of death being pain, I am afeared that unfolding into pleasure might take me first.

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and support me. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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Adult Playground

February 3, 2017 by

Still from “NO SHAME”. Photo by Jennifer Bennett

I’m in the middle of an East Coast tour performing my solo show, NO SHAME, I’m appearing in a few other shows, and teaching workshops along the way to help pay for food, gas and expenses. Like this blog, my message across mediums is about finding and owning one’s self. NO SHAME is a shapeshifting half-hour event where I tackle stereotypes, the metamorphosis of one’s character and identity over time, what it’s like to be institutionally afraid to be out in the world, and the intersection of these experiences with the power of thought and the force one’s words. The piece is essentially about the will to be.

Today more than any time in my life I think, the words that we dare to use, artist’s messages from all over, having conversations about taboo subjects, and the willingness of individuals to claim their space and speak up against oppression, against repression, and against the narrowing of ideas into boxes easily manipulated and controlled by the elite (political and/or wealthy), are enormously important. We must feed ourselves, as we would be further starved by the system. Continuing to gather reliable and objective intelligence, community building through acknowledgement of need and actioning to provide, choosing observation and action over despair or overwhelm, cultivating openness to new and different POVs, and the use of questioning instead of attack: these are tools for change, vital in this historical moment we are sinking into like the swamp of sadness… We must move our blood. We must speak, exercise, be!

I am teaching workshops in kink skills — a smattering of rope classes, my “Radical Gender Theater” curriculum, and an intro to various types of kink play pertaining to sensation manipulation. I’ve had the pleasure of teaching groups as well as privates; the classes are meant to empower people to better communicate with one another, and help navigate through the vulnerability that desire requires through fun, curiosity, challenge, and skilled playfulness. This “adult playground” we have matured into having control over (our bodies, emotions, and minds), is a gift we get only one chance to live well within.

Human animals are capable of far more than we recognise or are taught. Having been enculturated as a female person, and eventually finding kink — rough body play, needles, bites, whip marks, and scratches — has proven to me over and over again that my body is resilient and capable of processing pain and healing from damaging activity in a way my perceived gender is institutionally protected from finding or knowing. Having been surrounded by the sensitivities and open expression of emotions, pains, fears, and lostness of those enculturated within the masculine lie proves to me too that us animals are whole underneath. It is the powers that be, not the world which would have us be lesser than our true potential strengths and understandings.

I love my art. I love my audience and my students. When I act out or speak up, I learn so much about what people see and feel in response. I want to be an affecting force. I want to help people reach their inner truths and desires against the powers that be. I want to exercise this animal body, this universal intellect, this natural heart to their purposes while I live.

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and support me. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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

National Abortion Coming Out Day

January 22, 2017 by

I finally figured out what lipstick is for. Photo by Karin Webb

One of the things that contributes to healthy BDSM and Kink is the clear understanding that we own ourselves regardless of what is going on. This primary acknowledgement is what allows us to give control over to others and to take responsibility for our actions. We can consent to being used and to use, to find limits, experiment, and celebrate our flesh and our fantasies together. Without first owning ourselves, we can not give or take back freely and safely; we end up looking to another for permission or to know what is right. It is important and radical to know yourself, to own yourself, to fight for that one thing you were born with: your body. Today I write about a topic I feel deeply about:

HAPPY 44th ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V WADE!!!!! It has been 44 years since the half of the population who can get pregnant has had protected legal access to abortion and to the choice of how to govern their own bodies in the United States of America. Safe and accessible abortion is not, though, easy for much of our population to get to, afford, or feel safe accessing, and every day groups work to take this medical privilege away. In honor of choice and bodily autonomy being preserved, respected, and improved, I move to name today January 22: “National Abortion Coming Out Day”. The idea has been on my mind for a very long time, and I think this is the year that I can no longer put my thoughts off until tomorrow. Today is the day.

National Abortion Coming Out Day is about creating space for people who have had abortions, who have had partners who have had abortions, people who’ve supported someone getting an abortion, or who love and care for people who have had abortions to openly speak their truths. Open discourse about this topic has been suppressed and controlled through fear, violence, abuse, and an ensuing silent void. Take a moment and think about your history with abortion. How has it impacted your life? How has it impacted the lives of people you care for? How does the issue of abortion impact the lives of people less privileged than yourself? What questions do you have about abortion?

Share something about what you find with your community. Be willing and open to have conversations about what it means to own your body and your life. If you want to connect to a community with resources and support, check out the 3 in 1 Campaign, they’re great!

People have been having abortions, inducing miscarriages, and controlling their fertility since the beginning of knowing how to do it. You are not alone or unloved for choosing what to do with your body or your life. If you choose to carry a pregnancy to term, good for you! If you choose to terminate your pregnancy for any reason, congratulations on taking care of yourself, and good for you too! Our options stand on the shoulders of the fertile people and those helping them who have come before us, for thousands of years in study, wisdom, and developing practice. Medical people, Midwives, Doulas, Shamans, Witches, Doctors, Nurses, Veterinarians, Herbalists, Massage Therapists, Acupuncturists, even neighbors, lay people, and activists have had a hand in making abortion accessible and safe.

I had an abortion when I was 17, and I’m really glad I had access to it. I was supported emotionally, materially, familially; and I had the help of a partner with a car, and time to schedule it and heal before getting back to my high school classes. My life would be very different if I had a 21 year old right now, and that’s not the life I chose for myself. I don’t regret having that abortion one tiny little bit, I am grateful for it. It was safely performed in a hospital in Bangor, ME, and I was lucky that there were no complications. Since that time I’ve taken Plan B a couple times when condoms broke and the timing was bad, and I educate myself about aborcienifant herbs, tinctures, my fertility cycle, and natural methods of inducing miscarriage or starting a sluggish menstrual flow. There have been times I’ve taken herbs to jumpstart a late period when I was worried pregnancy was a possibility. I don’t have sex with people who are anti-abortion and anti-bodily-sovereignty. I have a right to my body and my bodily functions. So do we all.

Handsome devil with a uterus at your service… Photo by Karin Webb

So why are you sporting a mustache and binding in the photographs?

  • Shapeshifting to understand myself more deeply is a part of who I am as an individual and as an artist. I perform drag (across many gender constructs); I have since I wrote my first monologue at age 11. I enjoy binding in my daily life and wearing facial hair sometimes. Those are two ways I express myself.
  • I am gender fluid identified and use a few gender labels to explain my identity.
  • I think assumptions about gender in conversations about healthcare further alienate and put in danger people who aren’t men or women. Transmen, Intersex individuals, and people who don’t identify as women get to make choices about their fertility too.
  • I can’t post a photo of my breasts on most social media sites, so binding fits — there are only so many times you can grab yourself on camera to avoid areola exposure and not get bored with the results. It’s also an opportune moment to point out sex-based discrimination.
  • Culturally when we think of “ownership”, we most often associate the concept with masculinity. How has that affected the historical and present conversations about bodily autonomy when we consider fertility and offspring?
  • I think this photo says something about the entire concept of owning one’s body in our society. I had to break a lot of rules to even conceive of it.

Who gets to own bodies? Historically? Religiously? In relationships? In families? In hospitals? In bed? Over time? In prison? In poverty? Out dancing? In different cultures? In resistance? In public? In art? At school? In dangerous situations? At any moment someone else feels uncomfortable? Under the influence of various substances? At work? Within the constructs of privilege? …

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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