I’ve been having a hard week. I feel like every part of who I am is under attack, and I can’t figure out how to get out from underneath. I feel heavy. I feel like my opportunities are limited. I feel like my communities are at odds with one another at times, afraid to align at others, or aren’t interested in speaking up or “doing” anything to make change because there’s a lack of understanding about how the things going on in our country right now affect us all. I feel I am at the edge of an abyss, as though I could fall backwards into it and no one would notice. This is depression, yes. Let me tell you a little bit more about why I am feeling this stranglehold. You may know or guess some of my story, but I want to make some wider connections for you here too. Bear with me on this journey which must start somewhere in order to circle back again… As a warning, the following two paragraphs are the most graphic in content and address sexual coercion.

My first sexual experience happened when I was 3 or 4 years old. Of course it was coercive, how could that not be the case? The boy was 6, soon to turn 7. I remember that because we went to his 7th birthday party shortly after this experience and he ignored me at the party. I remember feeling a lot of complex feelings and spending most of my time focusing on the candy necklace I’d been given as a party favor to distract me before it was time to go… But back to that day. I liked this boy and I remember feeling turned on, probably for the first time in my life, when we played. We had been playing house in the closet before bedtime and I remember feeling that spark of attraction and energy between us and a physical urge to be close to him. At bedtime he stayed in my parent’s room as our moms and dads enjoyed their dinner together. The boy would knock on the wall and I would come into his room to keep talking and hanging out. We got in trouble repeatedly. Finally the warning sounded letting us know that if either of us was caught out of bed one more time there would be punishment. A knock on the wall came again, and tiptoeing to my parent’s room I approached for the final time. Standing in the doorway I whispered that I couldn’t come play. He then told me I was going to get in trouble for being out of bed unless I did everything he wanted me to do. He explained sexual intercourse to me. I did not want to do what he said. It frightened me, but I was also afraid of being caught out of bed and punished. He told me he’d tell on me if I didn’t come over and do it, so I negotiated something less sexual, and he agreed. I lay naked on this boy (I don’t remember all the details), and then he, against our negotiation took his pants down, threatening me again, trying to make me stay. I broke away from his arms and ran back to my room. One of my parents was already in there waiting. They had no idea what had just happened, what I had escaped from, but I was at fault and I was punished. I repressed that memory until I was nine, when a similar thing happened to me again.

Jumping forward through a lot of shitty and opportunistic coming of age terrors. The second person I ever had sex with coerced me too. I was stranded at his house where he had been hosting a party. I was new to the big city of Boston, a college freshman from rural Maine. I had been promised a ride home by someone but they had left without me. It was late, public transport had stopped running, I didn’t have money for a cab and I had no idea where I was — nowhere near my dorm room, I knew that. This was before cell phones and lyft drivers, there was no Google Maps, I didn’t even have a personal computer at that time in my life. He told me his roommate could bring me home in the morning, but if I was going to spend the night I’d have to have sex with him. It was a choice between wandering the streets in Boston lost in a city I didn’t yet know, or have sex with someone I’d been flirting with but had no interest in fucking. I chose safety, of one kind, and remained. It was not pleasurable, it was over quickly, I didn’t sleep well (or maybe at all) that night, and I felt horrible in the morning… I had an agreement with my ex-boyfriend from High School that once either of us had sex with someone else we’d tell the other. So, I told him. A couple of weeks later I received an angry accusatory letter about how I was a slut and that I should be ashamed of myself for giving myself to whoever wanted me. He wrote that I was nothing to him anymore and that it had been me who had taught him that sex should be between people who cared for one another and was a sacred bond, and he didn’t even know who I was anymore.

These are only two of a number of stories I could write about sexual situations I wish I’d never been in, or people who I wish I’d never been exposed to. The point of these stories is not to ask for sympathy or to rehash the details of past abuses, they are moments in a larger picture I am weaving. This is a tale about meaning making, our civilization, opportunities, and autonomy.

Sexual coercion and punishment.

The danger of liking someone.

These are hardwired problems for me, synapses laid down at a very early age, and rewritten over and over again, making that groove deeper and more ingrained in my responses. Sex does not come naturally to me. I don’t orgasm easily or often, and almost never unless I’m masturbating. Only twice(?) have I come from someone else’s touch. I am not sexually attracted to most people. When I am sexually attracted to or curious about someone I usually suffer a lot of (often sexually debilitating) anxiety.

This may be a reason kink plays such a profound role in my life. There’s something inherently safe in kink’s intentional negotiations before play, the asking after and acknowledgment of boundaries, the understanding that not everyone plays sexually, the option to be in control of the whole thing, and the inherent understanding that our kinks may be incompatible so we’ll limit our play accordingly. Painful sensuality is often an orgasmic opportunity my body knows how to process into pleasure. It is a myth that sex is inherently pleasurable. I’ve often found sex to be uncomfortable, disappointing, boring, too brief, too gentle or too rough to find full pleasure in. But still, I like it when I am relaxed enough to enjoy my body and a partner’s in that way.

Over the years I grew from being a kid profoundly confused about what attraction and sexiness is supposed to feel like and how to act when I felt those feelings (or what to expect from others), to a young adult working in a sex shop and becoming a sexuality educator, to years down the road becoming a BDSM teacher, and eventually a professional Dominant. Through it all, in this lifetime, I have been pursuing answers to the same question: When is it safe to be me and act on my innermost feelings without punishment?

Because I was born female I was told how to dress at a very young age, and that I would suffer consequences such as rape, molestation, or worse if I didn’t obey. I wasn’t interested in wearing a shirt in summer, shaving anything, or learning to perfect my make-up. I wanted a beard like my father’s, to be a unicorn, and always to be naked in the sun. I loved wearing dresses because they feel more like wearing nothing than pants do and they’re easier to creature around in. Later in life I learned to wear dresses because people liked me better when I wore them. How I was treated was palpably different, even by some partners of mine who, cis male, trans, or lesbian, seemed to feel more comfortable with me in a dress and so treated me more nicely when I was femmed up publicly. I’ve been treated as an object or a trophy by many. The “or else” hovers ghostly around my nonbinary expressions daily.

I am an artist. I am a political and queer person. I am a radical in many of the circles I entertain. I talk about sex openly and with exuberance, even the hard shitty parts of sexuality. I’ve been studying it my whole life in one way or another as a method of survival. I function really poorly at 9-5 office jobs; I can’t stomach red tape, social norms, or the repression-culture fed to workers for group comfort and the maintenance of an alien (to me) status quo. I get angry when I’m in places like these for any length of time. In general I’m bitter at the world for treating me like a woman instead of the non-binary trans femmeboy I happen to be inside, for treating me as lesser than for being queer or colorful or calling out judgemental behaviors. I’m somewhat bitter about always being poor but making great art and supporting others emotionally, professionally, and helping provide safety for little to nothing in return. I am tired of being queer and having to decide if I want to fight with people who say stupid hurtful things, or let it go and beat myself up inside for being weak. I am furious that I live in a world which acts as though racism is somehow a tolerable factory setting, and that I have to worry about my family members and my friends who are not white — which isn’t even a fraction of the anxiety I would live with if I were not white too. I am so heavily disappointed that the state of our era is such that even liberals often think people who say who they are outloud, if it doesn’t line up with a male/female false sex dichotomy, should be subject to all types of judgement, abuse, and physical subjugation under fear of legal molestation and/or arrest. I feel powerless in the face of mounting policies which continue to deteriorate safe spaces for people who are immigrants, women, abuse survivors, people of color, trans people, queer people, pregnant people, and the poor.

How is it not explicitly evident to us all that taking away a person’s access to communication with their peers online, by way of threatening internet platform providers, is a deeply unethical and absolutely tyrannical move? The bills being passed in our government right now are scary propositions which, sex worker allie or not, every person should be fighting against tooth and nail, as we would fight for our very lives.

Freedom and the right to speak openly as we know it is being taken cleanly away from US citizens right now, and that affects every single one of us regardless of which shamed and despised class those freedoms are being taken away in the name of (sound familiar?).

The way I began healing from my history of multiple sexual traumas started by finding a kink convention and attending. I met people who had feelings and histories and turn-ons like mine. I negotiated play with people who were great at talking about sex and who listened to and respected my interests as well as my limits regardless of whether they felt the same ways or wanted the same things. I came across a pamphlet about childhood sexual trauma which helped me see my own patterns of behavior from the outside, and I was able to begin the emotional work I needed to to start being curious about sex and my own sexual feelings in a more intentional and healthy way.

I wouldn’t have found this community without the help of Fetlife.

I’ve used Craigslist personals when I’ve been in a new city and wanted to find people to connect with who could show me around. I’ve used this service because I wanted to meet new people to cuddle with, to have an anonymous connection with, to have new sexual or sensual experiences with — because sex with my friends doesn’t feel safe most of the time, and I don’t have sex with my clients. I still need to and want to have sex sometimes, and sex with people I’m not connected to by way of friendship, or artistic or kinky professional networking are better choices for me right now. I’ve used Craigslist personals because I am a trans person and a whole lot of dating apps don’t do a good job of celebrating their trans users or cultivating an environment that’s not incredibly heter-or-homo-normative to downright transphobic, which just feels more and more like swimming upstream and degrading to my personal sense of worth. Craigslist, Grindr, and some other dating sites let me say exactly who I am and what I want out of any given circumstance, but Craigslist specifically let me anonymously (and so relatively safely) weed out the responses I didn’t like or the people I didn’t want knowing anything more than I was initially and generally publicly willing to give:

Your Fantasy, My Desire (ftm4m, ftm4mw, ftm4mm, ftm4w, t4t) (Providence)

body: fit
height: 5’3″ (160cm)

age: 39

FemmeBoy looking for fun. I’m pre-op genderfluid/trans (female parts). I still look very femme/female/tomboyish, I’m on testosterone, so genderfuck sexy like that. Be playful and communicate well. Looking for kinky, imaginative, experimental, and great chemistry. Be good at what you do. Maybe something regular if it works out. I’m creative, fit, sexy, and smart. I like all sorts of people and situations.Things I enjoy: being a unicorn for couples, threesomes in general, role play and fantasy games, D/s, having a Daddy/Mommy, consensual objectification, Dominating, submitting, sissies, foot fetishists, bondage, being served, talking about sex and kink, giving a great lap dance, cuddling, edging, chastity, sensual exploring, BDSM, being seduced with great food and wine, being taken care of, fulfilling fantasies, travel, discretion, trying new things…Put “FemmeBoy” in the subject line. Tell me about yourself and what you like. Send a pic.

There’s this funny feeling I get when I’m talking to a genuine person in response to a dating ad. It’s like the clouds have cleared and for a moment there’s clarity about human connection. There’s an ease which sometimes presents itself, weight off the shoulders for a minute. Desire can be set a little more free, and I relax, enjoying the conversation. This is also what it is like when I find a client I desire to take on, often someone who will become a regular. Connection is the medium from which all things spring, and when the connection is good anything is possible. Life takes on new opportunity.

There is one thing I get to own in my lifetime, and that is my body. My birthright is the meatsack I move through the world in until it gives up and I die. I do not have a right to own any other thing. Consider that for a minute. Consider that and tell me that there’s anything righteous about cutting off a person’s ability to advocate, on their own terms, for their needs with another consenting person.

Now we can talk about sex trafficking. In the name of helping sex trafficking victims FOSTA/SESTA is actually forcing traffickers further underground and away from the eyes of prosecutors. This bill is also creating a much less safe work environment for all willing sex workers. These very facts impact the general population’s sexual health in more than one way:

• These bills are limiting free speech for everyone and driving money into big business and away from person to person platforms which benefit minority people exponentially more than privileged folk making this a class issue, absolutely.
• Until we can talk about sexual repression openly in this country and legally recognize the right of each individual to consent to how, when, and with whom they will share their bodies, in part through decriminalization of sex work, we are legally justifying higher domestic abuse rates (30%), elevated STI infection rates (40%), and a cycle of general sexual abuse and trauma which is perpetuated by shame, violence, and fear leading to identity suppression, depression, and the large scale consequences of such.
• Sexual shame is a sickness which attacks those without privilege to a crippling degree, while allowing those with privilege to escape it’s grasp through the resources of opportunity and privacy.

I want to talk about control of women’s bodies. I want to extend that concept to include queer bodies and the bodies of people of color and differently abled bodies and the bodies of the poor. Patriarchy as a structure infects our society with a pervasive attitude of misogyny. We can see it clearly in numbers like the pay gap, the small percentage of high ranked women (or other minorities) in business, etc.. These attitudes are clearly observable to anyone paying attention, and have been for a very long time.

To take away an adult person’s right to choose what they can and can not do with their meatsack when it is not harming other meatsacks is an insidious and calculated power grab which violates the body of the person from whom choice has been taken away. This is the most effective way to create separate classes of people, to cultivate privilege for some and against many, and to create and reinforce modern day slavery.

Now we need to talk about net neutrality. The thing about FOSTA/SESTA which is very important to understand, is that it is an attack on net neutrality. The idea behind net neutrality is that no matter who you are you have the right to speak and share your thoughts over the internet with others. Whether you are a huge corporation or the President or you live mostly off the grid or are homeless and at a library computer, you have the same access to internet platforms with which to learn, communicate, offer goods and services, etc. Without net neutrality individuals and corporations who have influence and money will continue to get richer and have more influence, and people who are not of means will be waiting in longer and longer lines for censored scraps pumped out by big business when the elite are finished.

Let me make this clear: rich and powerful people who negotiate sex acts for money with sex workers, and sex workers who are privileged or are in privileged situations (ie: legal brothels, sex workers who have been working indoors for a long time and have ample rolodexes from which to continue to cull, and indoors operating cis hetersexual white women SWs in general) are not being hit as hard (or even at all, or are actually profiting off the current shutdown of competitive ad services) by FOSTA/SESTA. These people will continue to use their privileges to do as they have always done: engage in the adult practice of exchanging sexual services for money mostly without fear of prosecution. The Johns in this instance are also those who will be able to pay for improved internet services as net neutrality disintegrates. This, of course, ensures they continue to be in privileged situations as everyone else suffers from greater and greater lack of accessibility. It does absolutely nothing to discourage privileged people from sex work, and furthermore pressuring internet companies to shut down ad services does absolutely nothing to locate and prosecute sex traffickers, it merely hides them further underground.

When people are lacking accessibility to the things they need they often turn to work they are not excited about to make ends meet. The jobs which are readily available to minority people, poor people, people who have been incarcerated, or former sex workers are generally low paying grunt work jobs. These jobs, while pulling someone out of immediate danger of losing a home or starvation, do not usually afford people upward mobility which is exacerbated by the depression frequently experienced by those who submit to a livelihood which they do not feel connected to, is excessively physically demanding, that they feel forced into, or stuck within. Here, you see, we have effectively locked in a lower class for the rich to feed off of. I will mention that historically many women and minority people have chosen sex work as a bridge out of a hopeless situation and into a better one. I do not condone sex trafficking, which is profit off of coerced sexual service, and often victimizes children who are underage. Sex traffickers should absolutely be hunted down and prosecuted and the victims be given support and aid. Decriminalization of all adult consensual sex work is a clearer way to separate sex workers from sex trafficking victims though, as allowing sex workers to work in the light means they are better able to advocate for themselves and others in abusive situations without fear of police or other legal retributions.

Increased disparity between the upper and lower classes is what keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. When we attack anything which is shared wholly by society — such as free use of the internet, or agreement about the sanctity of a person’s bodily autonomy — we end opportunity which is the United States’ promise of an “American Dream”. What next will this country stand for? Who will be left standing?

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

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~Thank you.