Mistress Matisse's Journal

I have a new column in The Stranger about a topic I'm frequently asked for help with: handling intense jealousy.

Labels: column, schedule

It is Thomas Cromwell’s fault I have a bunch of new books.

What? Yes, I know he’s been dead for almost 500 years. Cromwell being the sort of guy he probably was, I’m sure he’d be pleased to know he was still influencing people. Especially a woman like me.

It happened because I wanted to read Wolf Hall, a novel about Thomas Cromwell by Hilary Mantel. So I went to That Big Electronic Bookseller and found it. Easy, right? I should have been gone in sixty seconds. But no. On the same page was this:

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles.
“A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation—in fact, as T. J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today.”

I am a total sucker for biographies. Not quite as bad as I am about “The History Of…” books, but close. So okay, into the cart. But you know how it goes. The crack dealers then showed me this one:

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
“Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.”

Well, hell, if you’re going to read about Vanderbilt, you have to read about Rockefeller, right? Click. Oh, look, on the same page: business books!

Selling in Tough Times: Secrets to Selling When No One Is Buying by Tom Hopkins
Hopkins lobbies for a return to basics to maximize sales in an economic downturn. The first step is to save existing business by going the extra mile, making human contact, and initiating loyalty-building campaigns. Hopkins shows how to quickly tell if a client is right for you, reduce sales resistance, woo clients from the competition, and cut costs while continuing to appear successful.

Yep, that’s my dirty little secret. I don’t read a lot of BDSM porn. I read sales-technique manuals, and they make me kinda… hot. Look, don’t judge me, okay?

But that one led me to: Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod and then Fascinate by Sally Hogshead. I did not ignore. I was fascinated. And it is very dangerous for me to have a Kindle and a credit card.

Labels: books

Mistress Matisse’s Tips For Happy Polyamory, #17

Thou Shalt Not Oust The Incumbent Partner from his/her living space so you can have a date with the mutual lover. This is a violation of important poly tenets Root For The Home Team and (the self-explanatory) Be Very, Very Nice To The Primary.

I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons my poly life runs rather smoothly is that we have physical space to spread out in. The Big House is, as you may have inferred, fairly big. And I have my own domain as well. (Don’t think for a minute having space for my poly adventures didn’t figure strongly into my choice of workspaces.)

Because nothing creates disgruntlement like a situation where Partner A wants to come home from a long day at work, flop on the couch, eat pizza, and play video games, and Partner B is running around lighting candles and putting on sexy music because they have a date – with someone else. Partner A may very well be able to go over to a buddy’s house and flop/eat/game over there, but there’s probably going to be some resentment about that.

And resentment is what kills relationships. People think it’s the big things, but it’s not. You can forgive your lover One Big Mistake a lot more easily than you’ll forgive ten thousand niggling little irritations.

For one thing, petty resentment is what erodes the sex in relationships. (Any romantic relationships, not just poly ones.) It’s because it’s the easiest thing to deny a partner without actually having to cop to there being something wrong. Most of the time, people don’t consciously think, “Oh, fine – make me wash your dirty dishes again? Turn the TV up to eardrum-shattering levels even though I asked you not to again? See if you get laid tonight.” But the resentment takes root, and it is subtly poisonous.

Everyone annoys his/her partner sometimes. But if you want to be happily poly, you should strive not to let your other involvements impinge on your sweetie’s preferences and comfort, and that starts with not denying them the simple creature comforts of home.

If you're the non-domestic partner, make sure this isn't happening. You do not want the resident partner to be feeling resentful about something as easily fixed as physical space/privacy and start associating that feeling with polyamory in general and you in particular.

Therefore, if you want to have a hot date with someone who lives with a partner, have the date elsewhere.

Labels: advice, polyamory

It's time for a new podcast!

Show notes: First of all, I was not playing with my nipple while we were recording, all right? Let the record show. The bomb shelter we’re doing these things in is freezing cold, so I was actually wearing a leather jacket. A motorcycle-style jacket, so that’s two layers of leather over my chest. You could not have found my nipple with a sonogram. That’s just Monk being silly.

Our first question is a letter from someone who asks what to do when you’re caught in a sexy, kinky situation and you want to do bondage, but you have no rope? Monk and I free associate about improvised bondage equipment. (We did not use the microphone cables for bondage, though. The sound guys frown on that.)

Then a BDSM newcomer asks: explain to me why exactly I should get involved with the BDSM community? The short answer is: they’ll teach you things you might not otherwise know, and they’ll be support for you when things are tough.

Lastly, a sex worker asks a question about emotional relationships with clients. It’s a nuanced issue, and I get sort of uncharacteristically woo-woo about my feeeeeeeeelings in this one, so don't say you weren't warned.

Enjoy!

Labels: podcast

Today I'm observing the 6th anniversary of this blog. Yep, I've been writing here steadily for six years. That's practically forever, in blogger time.

When I started doing it, I had no idea how popular this blog would get, and how much it would change my life. In my cranky moods, I often compare this blog to the alien, blood-sucking plant in Little Shop Of Horrors: constantly demanding my precious time and energy.

And blogging is not the shiny cool new thing it was when I started writing here. The constant work of it, combined with the general decline of blogger-chic, has thinned the blogging ranks. I have observed other sex bloggers fall by the wayside over time - including several who were once loud in their disdain for me. Naturally I would never lower myself to publicly sniping with such people. I simply recalled to myself a line from the novel Gone With The Wind, where Rhett Butler remarks to Scarlet O'Hara, "Nothing annoys the godly so much as seeing the ungodly flourish like the green bay tree."

But as much trouble as it is, my little blood-sucking pet here has me brought me many amazing people and fabulous experiences that I would not have had otherwise. And equally valuable, it’s given me a place to examine and organize my thoughts on those things, which is good for my personal growth.

Starting the Stranger column, nine years ago, was also a hugely pivotal point for me. I love being part of The Stranger, and I believe being published in a print publication granted me much local popularity, as well as some real-writer credibility in certain circles.

However, I would have to say, while I don't get anywhere near as many hits as the Stranger site does, this blog seems to have disseminated more widely than the column. I base that only on the number of people I've spoken to who know about the blog, but are surprised to learn of the column. It may be that I just don't talk to as many folks for whom the reverse is true.

But it gets around, this blog. People from all over the world send me the sweetest, kindest, most touching letters imaginable, telling me how much they like reading it, and what they’ve learned from it and especially enjoyed about it. Those little notes mean a lot to me. I can’t always respond personally to each one, but I read them all, and they make me smile. So thank you all for that.

Another year. I’m still here, and I’m still flourishing.

Labels: writer's life

Art Imitates Life



Or is the other way around? I can never remember. But I was thinking about it last night, when Monk and I did our second appearance at the Peg-Ass-Us show. That photo? I brought that very harness and dildo with me to the show and displayed it to the audience. Everyone seemed to enjoy seeing it, although no one volunteered to let me actually demo anything on them. Too bad.

The show is fun and sexy and educational and simply delightful in so many ways. And John and Sophie are the cutest, sweetest, most winsome pair of sexual outlaws in the world, you just want to pet them and cuddle them and take them home and... do evil things to them.

But I digress. We went out for drinks after the Sunday show with John and Sophie, and I got to talk to them about how they handled putting their very real, intimate lives out on a stage for everyone to see. Because as I was watching the show, I was thinking that in some ways, Monk and I do a written version of this on our blogs and podcasts.

Obviously for us the topics are different. We do reveal a lot, though, and sometimes that gets uncomfortable. Particularly because we are not anonymous bloggers. We put our faces are on our blogs. Our professional names and reputations on riding on this. The stakes are high for us.

But we don't want to be too safe, because that's boring. So it's a continuous dance on the edge between regrettable TMI and the same-old, tame-old stuff. And I for one think Monk has nothing to apologize for, because when it comes to busting out of the stereotypes about straight male tops, he will go there. Even when there is right up onto a stage to talk to an audience full of people about pegging.

The reason people like to read us, and like to see shows like Peg-Ass-Us, is because it is real. We're just talking about things lots of people either really do, or really want to do. That blurry, low-rez camera-phone snapshot of mine? Almost seventeen thousand views since I put it up less than a year ago. (And that's just on Flickr, God only knows how many people have it posted on a website somewhere.) I'm quite clear that many of even the straightest of straight male tops are not utterly uninterested in having a woman touch their ass. You've still got two nights to catch the show, guys. Go there.

Labels: events, kinky life, Monk, writer's life

Primary/Secondary, BDSM Scene Interruptions, and Kink Celebrities

A fresh new podcast! By popular request, we’ve gone to a slightly longer format for this one, it’s about eighteen minutes.

In this episode, TwistedMonk and I answer a variety of your questions. The first one is about primary/secondary partners in polyamory – can one person in a relationship be a primary partner and the other person be a secondary?

The second question is about dealing with unexpected interruptions during a BDSM scene.

The last question: how do you introduce yourself to a kink celebrity (perhaps like me or Monk, but definitely not limited to us), and other general social tips for BDSM culture.

Not at all safe for work!

Labels: Monk, podcast

A new Stranger column about the way to your lover's heart: fear!

In the column, I make mention of the fact that I'm appearing at the Annex Theatre this Sunday, February 14th, and Monday February 15th, as a guest expert for a show entitled "Peg-Ass-Us." What's the show about? Well, here's a video clip...

(From their website) "John Leo and Sophie Nimmannit, a real-life couple, have crafted perhaps the silliest, most heartfelt romantic comedy about strap-on anal sex ever. Their beginner's guide to “pegging” (as coined by Savage Love readers) - complete with sing-a-longs, how-to’s, puppets and soul-baring striptease - offers a hilariously penetrating look at queer sex for straight folks. But as the lesson probes deeper, it devolves into a lover's quarrel that tickles qualms, exposes scruples, liberates desire and comes to a climax where everyone gets off!"

Monk is appearing with me, so it should be highly entertaining. See you there!

Labels: events, kinky life, kinky stuff in popular culture, seattle places

Station Identification

I used to have a separate page on this blog for the regular cast of characters here. Then things changed, and I took it down to update it, and never got around to re-doing it. But it’s come to my attention that people are confused about who is who, in my life. It’s understandable; there are a lot of people who interlock in varying ways. I keep thinking I should make a flowchart, the kind with the little boxes and arrows. I like those. But for now, here’s the text version of people I'm most likely to refer to…

There’s me, obviously. I live with my darling partner, a guy named Max – we’ve lived together for just over ten years now. He doesn’t blog, although I haven’t quite given up hope on getting him to Twitter someday. He’s very active in the BDSM community, teaches classes at the CSPC a lot, and if you looked around on Fetlife you could find him there pretty easily.

My other partner of about six years is Monk, of TwistedMonk.com fame. Monk and I don’t live together, but we don’t really use words like primary and secondary much anymore. You might say he’s my non-domestic partner. (Non-domesticated?) When Monk and I were first dating, we felt a little shy about naming names, so I nicknamed him “Roman” on this blog and he called me “Dancer” on his. But after a while we officially dropped that.

By the way, when Monk mentions “his wife, Tambo” - that’s not me. No, no. Whole different person. Monk and Tammy have been living together, very happily married, for a long time. But since she is actually Keyser Soze, she prefers not to be talked about too-too much. We abide by that so she doesn’t put on her Mexican hat and staple us.

Puck – who has a couple of different aliases, depending on where you look – is Max’s non-domestic partner/submissive of (I think) four years. She’s delightful and I’m quite fond of her. We aren’t lovers, though, and we don’t have a D/s relationship. (Although we sometimes co-top.) We’re simply friends.

(Max has other people who are special to him as well. But while I have clear and specific permission to write about Puck, I don't for the other people, so I'm quitting while I'm ahead.)

Miss K is my best friend of fifteen years.

Jae is also a beloved friend. It was with Jae that I had my longest-term dominant/submissive relationship, although that was some years ago and we don't function in that dynamic now.

I have other lovely, kinky men in my life, who I also write about sometimes, but who have a subtler narrative. Although that's always subject to change. In my life as Mistress Matisse, I have a lot of relationships with people that are quite charming, but which are very limited in time and space. That’s fine. In fact, that can even be part of their charm.

But if I click with someone in a certain way, and if his life permits it, I will blend him into my other world. That’s not what women like me usually do, but I am blessed with people who love me and accept me just as I am, so I came to realize there was no need to maintain boundaries that weren’t natural to the various relationships. So every relationship is a little different, but I let them evolve organically and go where they go....

Labels: polyamory, relationships

Fire Away!

Monk and I are going to record some podcasts tonight. Got lengthy and complex questions about BDSM, polyamory, sex work - or pretty much anything else? Send them in, we'll try to answer them for you. Granted, we will also exercise our sometimes-dubious sense of humor on you, and we do not sugar-coat our responses. But we do also try to give sincere and useful advice about whatever people ask us.

So fire away, Monk @ twistedmonk.com or MistressMatisse @ gmail.com.

Labels: podcast

I had some letters lately about the whole women-only sex party discussion. So I chose this one as an example to use in addressing them.

(edited for length) "I was struck by Kate's assertion that "there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with being gender-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety," as long as the exclusion is not executed in a "mean" way.

The first thing I notice here is the use of "self-perceived" as a modifier for safety. I think if someone's safety truly was at stake, then all possible and reasonable precautions should be taken. While perception of safety is also important, I don't find it as compelling of a notion on which to be exclusionary.

Taken one step farther, I could very easily imagine this statement with some substitutions:
1. "There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with being race/ethnicity-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety."
2. "There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with being sexuality-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety."

In all of these cases, all of the "excluders" have an extremely real perception of their risk; that is, they were not just excluding other groups "for the fun of it," but because they truly believed themselves or something very important to be at risk in the presence of the excluded group. This perception makes the exclusion justifiable, perhaps, but does it make it right?

Just the same, as some women have the perception of risk around individuals with male genitalia (or around all subgroups of transgendered peoples), does this make it OK to exclude them? And is exclusion OK as long as it is delivered in a nice way?

I know that these subjects are very amorphous, which makes it hard to define boundaries. And I know that "slippery slope" arguments are often very slippery.... and yet, I still DO think that it is a slippery slope from saying that "there's nothing morally or ethically wrong with being gender-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety," to saying that "there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with being X-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived Y."

I got several letters with the same basic type of argument: because it’s wrong to exclude a certain kind of person in a certain kind of situation, then it’s always wrong to exclude anyone, ever.

Now just let me say: I think this reader, and the other readers who wrote to me, mean well and are good people who want to be kind and fair. Okay? I acknowledge that. I also support safety, respect, and acceptance for all trans people, however they wish to express their gender.

But let’s just deconstruct this argument, because it’s intellectually lazy, and I cannot abide that. It is a popular one, I’ll give it that. I have certainly heard this line before – oh, so many times - about any sort of “blank-only” space.

And Kate Bornstein has certainly heard it too. There is probably damn little that Kate hasn’t heard of or thought of about gender issues, so even if I didn’t viscerally understand something Kate said, I myself would be inclined just to take it on faith.

That aside, this argument just makes me snort and roll my eyes. To me, this does not even rise to the dubious level of a slippery-slope argument. (Which are by definition, wrong.)

This is just nursery-school thinking. The rationale for this type of argument is: all identities are the same. Race = gender = age = sexuality = nationality = religion. In this worldview, all those statuses are precisely the same weight, the same importance, and they all have exactly the same effect on both the individual who wears them.

And that’s clearly not true. Those identities all have different histories, and they are all different in how they affect us. For one thing, some of those social groups confer certain types of power upon people within them. Others don’t. It is not wrong for a socially less-powerful group to create space for itself and specifically bar the presence of a socially more-dominant group. Especially when in doing so it in no way robs the dominant group of something it has both a need and a basic human right to equally access: education, housing, transportation, medical care, jobs, ect.

Men, as social group, have historically been dominant over women. Obviously there are individual exceptions, and the level of dominance has changed gradually through the course of recorded history, but that’s mostly been true and to some degree still is. Thus, we do not need to protect men from the injustice of not being able to access a certain social gathering.

Here’s what I would ask anyone who thinks that any exclusion of anyone, anytime, is wrong: how come you’re not all upset about public restrooms? Because those are gender-segregated. You ask any trans person, and I predict they will tell you that public restrooms are a difficult issue, and much more pivotal to their day-to-day life than an annual sex party.

So how about it, ladies - are you going to use the men’s room at the mall, or the airport, or the movies? If you’re really opposed to women-only spaces, you would. And you wouldn’t be the least upset about having a man come into a women’s restroom, or a women’s dressing room in a clothing store, or a women’s locker room at a gym. I am willing to bet that some of you would say “But that’s different!” I don’t think it is.

It is true that some people would like to unfairly discriminate against less-powerful social groups. That’s wrong. But that’s not what’s happening here. The fact that women-only sex parties occasionally happen actually does not mean the terrorists have won.

Labels: intellectual laziness, letters, politics

Partial Suspension Bondage Class

My darling Max is teaching one of his most popular workshops this Sunday: Partial Suspension Bondage. It's a great class, and very accessible for people who don't have any previous experience doing suspension bondage. It also tends to be a big class! Lots of people like this one, so it's a fun social experience. But show up early to get good seats!

It's Sunday, February 7th, 2010, 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM, at the Center for Sex Positive Culture (CSPC) in Seattle.

You do NOT have to be a member of the Center for Sex Positive Culture to attend the class.

Read more about the class, what you'll learn, what you'll need, and what it's like to attend one of Max's classes.

My other darling, Monk, will be selling rope for this class. Pre-order your kit, pick it up at the class Sunday, and get a special deal. Or see what TwistedMonk.com has to offer when you arrive. (But he tends to sell out fast!)

And have fun!

Labels: bdsm techniques, events, Max

Advice Regarding TPE

Dear Mistress Matisse,

My boyfriend and I would like to start working towards developing something along the lines of a 24/7 power exchange dynamic within the relationship and I'm unsure about the steps to take towards making this happen.

I don't believe it's possible to turn into an "insta-Mistress" overnight, nor do I think I'm capable of doing so. There's no pressure coming from him to make this happen immediately (in fact, it comes up pretty rarely as we just can't live like that right now), I'm just wondering about how we both can ease ourselves into this. We're very kinky, but we typically keep the top-bottom dynamic (I'm the top, he's the bottom) to the bedroom, reverting back to our "normal," equal roles afterwards. This has been the model of our relationship for 3 years now. We're at university so life is already pretty hectic and added into the equation is the fact that we both live with our respective parents (we will be moving in together in a few months). Nonetheless, both of us are very, very interested in expanding the boundaries of our kinky natures into every day life.

I'm not expecting to master the art of total power exchange in a few months (or even years), I'm just interested in your opinion on making it work slowly and keeping the feeling of a top-bottom dynamic present on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you for the nice letter. You two sound like a charming pair and I wish you both the very best in your exploration of kink.

And now I must confess to you: I am the worst person in the world to ask about this. I am a sadist, I am a flaming kinky pervert, and I am very dominant in my scenes.

But I have no interest or no desire to be dominant with anyone – most especially not with my romantic partner – every single minute of every single day. I have tried that, and it never went well. Never. The idea of being the mistress in a 24/7 power exchange relationship makes me blanch and shudder.

I freely acknowledge that one of the reasons why my 24/7 D/s relationships never went well was because I am temperamentally unsuited to it. I have seen other people do it far better than me. But I’m the one you asked, so I’m going to give you my opinion.

Regardless of what you read online, there are very few people who really do high-level, 24/7 dominant/submissive roles all the time with their romantic partners. I know a few couples who have what I would call a day-to-day D/s overtone to their relationship, and the level is dialed up and down according to the situation. Most people who are kinky do what you and your lover are doing: keep the roles in the scene and revert to a basically equal relationship elsewhere. And I think for most people, that’s best.

(You used the term TPE, which stands for Total Power Exchange, in your subject line. I hate that term. I am not acquainted with anyone who engages in what I would call TPE. I think it’s mainly a myth, and I am unable to imagine a scenario in which I think it would be a healthy and wise choice for both people.)

For one thing, engaging in a high-level D/s all the time is very hard to do. Trying to unlearn what we think of as normal adult behavior and adopt a highly stylized, sexualized, ritualistic set of manners and behaviors for every single day of your life is extremely stressful. Add into that mix that BDSM is a stigmatized identity, so either you keep what you’re doing secret, or you face some level of negative feedback from other people. And since you are also each other’s lovers, you must deal with all that complexity while continuing to meet each other’s non-kinky emotional needs in the manner that you’re both presumably accustomed to. That’s all a very big challenge.

The stakes are high, too. Heavy D/s relationships are emotionally loaded, for both people. If you too get in deep and it doesn’t go well, the odds of you both recovering from that seamlessly and picking up the old version of the relationship where you left off are slight.

Here’s my advice. Excise, I beg you, the term TPE from your mind. Not just because I loathe it – although I do – but because when people talk admiringly about Total! Power! Exchange! they are buying into the myth that with kink, bigger is better! More is better! The most extreeeeeeeeme level of kink is the best one!

No. Not true. The best type of kinky relationship is one you can sustain and be happy with.

Now, that’s not to say you cannot move into a higher level of D/s at all. I hear you wisely saying you would have to ease into it. Here’s an example from the best D/s top I know – my partner Max, and his submissive-to-him partner, Puck. Max had a chain welded around Puck’s waist as a symbol of her relationship with him. It’s thin and light enough to be invisible under most ordinary clothing. (Although sometimes she wears it outside her clothes, when that’s appropriate.) Max and Puck have a lot of interactions where their D/s dynamic is not hugely apparent. To the naked eye, they look like ordinary partners. But she’s got that chain around her waist, all the time. It’s a nice reminder.

So what about that for you and him? A physical symbol, rather than a set of complex behaviors that you must create, teach him, and enforce, and that he must learn. A necklace or a a bracelet? It doesn't have to be welded on, obviously, but he would wear it all the time.

Two other fairly simple suggestions, also gleaned from watching Max do this. When you move in with him, make a rule that in the living room, he doesn’t sit on the couch (or any other piece of furniture) unless he has specific permission. He sits on the floor. If you’re nice, you can let him have a pillow. And you can certainly give him permission, as often as you want – but he has to ask.

And – when you two sit down to eat together, he doesn’t begin to eat until you give him specific permission. This can be as simple as: he looks at his plate of food, looks at you inquiringly, and you nod to him. Or you can play it out a bit while you eat a few bites, and make him ask prettily.

Just remember, the most important thing is that you love each other and want to be happy together. Explore and find what that means to you, but be careful not to lose sight of love/happy together part in a quest to try to make your life match a seldom-achievable fantasy.

Labels: advice, bdsm techniques, intellectual laziness, letters, relationships

Extended Remix On Women-Only Parties

Oh, I was bad, I did not post this follow-up material to my column on Friday as I said I would. Here’s the rest of what gender activist and completely fabulous person Kate Bornstein had to say about woman-only spaces…

Kate: The notion of women-only events is horribly knotted-up. I think there should be events for women only if that's what makes the women who attend feel safe enough to play. But the wording is critical. The folks holding the party can no longer expect to say "women only" and expect trans women to accept the party-holders' notion that trans women are not women. That might have worked 20 years ago, but it doesn't fly today. And the wording can no longer be "No transgender women allowed." Because there are many trans women who don't consider themselves trans women and who would be within their rights to attend; not to mention the trans men who could attend based on that warning.

Matisse: What is your opinion of women-only sexually-oriented events?
Kate: There's nothing morally or ethically wrong with being gender-exclusionary for the purpose of self-perceived safety.

Matisse: How do you think they should handle the issue of who is permitted to attend them?
Kate: The guideline on handling exclusion boils down to DON'T BE MEAN. It's inexcusable to be cruel in the wording of any exclusion. You can't say "women only" or even "trans women excluded" because then you'd be defining another person's gender for them and expecting them to accept your definition. These days, that doesn't fly. The only wording that might work would be "Cisgender Women Only." That's clear, and not mean at all. Personally, I wouldn't want to attend any sort of party who wouldn't want to include me because of my identity. I don't think I'd like the people there any more than they'd like me.

Matisse: How would one throw a sex party and include transwomen while excluding opportunistic/unethical cismen?
Kate: Back in PowerSurge days*, there was the dick-in-the-drawer rule. The event was for women only. If a woman had a dick, she could attend if she could take her dick out of her pants, put it in a bureau drawer, and then slam the drawer. That's practical, but it's still cruel to pre-op and non-op trans women, so even the dick-in-a-drawer rule won't work any more. How to handle opportunistic cismen? I haven't got a clue.


*A women-only BDSM conference held in Seattle in the 90's.

Labels: advice, kinky life, politics