Here's my newest column in The Stranger. It's a review of a book called "Whip Smart" by Melissa Febos.

Before you go read, hear me say this: it's a critique of the book. It is not a critique of the author as a person. There's been a fair amount of negative reaction in the BDSM community to the book, and to some of things Ms. Febos said in her recent NPR interview. I myself thought Terry Gross was condescending and ill-informed in that interview, although I've never been a fan of hers anyway.

Ms. Febos had been scheduled to appear at the Center For Sex Positive Culture, but that appearance was canceled by the author/her publicist. I have not been told first-hand the reason for that, but what I have heard is that Ms. Febos was upset by some comments made on Fetlife about that interview, by people who are presumed to be CSPC members, and thus declined to read there.

Now, I understand why all this is happening. BDSM people are a marginalized subculture, and thus we are naturally sensitive to being unflatteringly characterized. We also dislike it when people seem to be claiming to represent us when we did not elect them, so to speak.

However, Ms. Febos has not, that I know of, explicitly claimed to be a spokesperson for the BDSM community. Popular media likes to label people. For the moment, Ms. Febos has been assigned the label of The Dominatrix, and it's been implied that her experience is The Experience Of All Kinky People and also of All Sex Workers. But I have not heard her say that herself - not exactly, anyway.

My criticisms of her book aside, I have some sympathy for her in this matter, since, on a smaller scale, I get the same sort of thing myself. People read something I wrote about my life and think that I'm saying something about them, or they read carelessly and respond to something I never said at all. It's very frustrating.

But at least for me, those criticisms have happened over time, in small bites, and I can take any useful ideas and use them to tailor future pieces. A book is not a dynamic thing, it's just there. And my own little measure of fame has also grown slowly. I have had time to get used to moving gracefully in each stage of it, whereas Ms. Febos has been rather suddenly thrust into a larger arena.

As luck would have it, Ms. Febos is reading her book at Elliot Bay this weekend, and I have scheduled an interview with her for Saturday afternoon. I'm going to let that be her opportunity to clarify her feelings about the BDSM community, and on this aspect of publishing her story. I would bet this will be the only author-interview she'll do with someone who is also a dominatrix, who also writes about her life. Ms. Febos is now a writing teacher, but I hope she'll find it refreshing to not have to teach another interviewer Pro Domme 101.

Time for another podcast! In this one, Monk reads an original poem – or at least, we hope it is original – sent to him by a reader. And he reads it in the voice of William Shatner, because the William Shatner-voice makes everything better.

Moving on, we read a letter from a kinky person asking how to keep a pleasant sexual tension alive in a long-term relationship. This is a type of question that we get a lot, so we both have plenty to say about it. As a man who’s been happily married for over twenty years, Monk waxes particularly eloquent. High point: he compares BDSM to Pokemon. I’m serious.

About fourteen minutes.

Back in Seattle, and busy catching up on my life. Because of all my travel recently, I had to regretfully turn down far too many charming invitations from intimate friends. If you're one of those people, drop me a note and we'll talk about a rendezvous.

And if you're a local fan of foot worship, you should know about this party. Seattle Footnight! April 1st, from 8pm-midnight. These are fun events, I've gone to several of them before. I'll be at this one, and so will my lovely friend Lady Lydia, as well as other beautiful women. Check out the site and register for the party!

A new Stranger column is up - this one about that very annoying "You're Kinky? You Must Have Been Abused As A Child" myth... Enjoy!

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If you’re a sex worker who likes her career, and if you talk about it and read other people’s thoughts about it at all, there comes a point when you realize you’ve heard all the standard anti-sex work arguments before. The trouble is the people making them think they’re new ideas, and trot them out to you as though you hadn’t already answered them 3,458 times.

I have toyed with the idea of making a quick reference, flow-chartish sort of handout to give people. It would list all the usual lines of attack and all the answers to those lines. But I doubt that anyone who’s going to say these things would pay any heed to that.

However, FurryGirl had the charming idea to create Bingo cards with all the standard anti-sex work talking points on them. (And so did Renegade Evolution.) I have certainly sat through many, many meetings and lectures and panel discussions where one could have gotten to Bingo! very quickly with one of these.
























See the larger version in the original blog post by Furrygirl.

Still, I have to say I like the idea of creating a drinking game with them even better. I don’t know what one would win as a prize in such a Bingo game, but I’m certain doing shots of something strong would make the experiences of listening to offensive drivel like this much more enjoyable. Perhaps some sort of board game - that included drinking. A roll-and-move style of game, not unlike Monopoly. Some of the squares would say things like, “You Got A Book Contract! Collect Two Hundred Dollars.” Other would say “Your Strip Club Got Raided! Lose A Turn.”

It’s certainly far more entertaining than arguing with anti-sex work people…

I’m excited about what’s happening in my dungeon today: I’m getting the carpet swapped out! No, that's not some bit of sexual slang, I mean carpet. Kinky, huh?

Okay, maybe it's not sexy to you. But I’m very happy with my place. Buying my own house was an extremely big deal to me, and I’m still pleased and proud of it. I love having a place I own to play in, it makes me feel way more private and secure than I ever did in rented spaces. I have a strong sense of “mine!” about my house. It’s an extension of who I am.

That being the case, I’m constantly seeking to improve it. Last year, I renovated the whole first floor, and part of that was removing a wall between two rooms to make them into one bigger one. The main playspace has thick black carpet, blood-red walls, and a black ceiling. I actually brought the black paint down around the top edge of the wall, to a picture-rail style of molding that’s about six inches from the ceiling, and the result is that the room seems taller than it is. It all looks very sharp, and nicely finished.

Except that one-third of the newly-redone space was still carpeted in the same deep gold carpet as the rest of the house. Can you say clash? It’s been driving me crazy, looking at it. But, as remodeling always does, the whole extravaganza cost me more than I’d projected. So I gritted my teeth and waited until I could afford to pull up the gold carpet and put in the black without feeling guilty about a not-absolutely-necessary expense. Which would be – now!

I have other plans as well, but my other projects are all on the main floor. First is getting my terrible crumbly popcorn ceiling sheet-rocked over. (It’s less mess than scraping it off, I assure you.) Hopefully I can have my unbelievably big, ugly, 70’s faux-river-stone horror of a fireplace mantle taken out at the same time, and the boys can sheetrock that, too. And some new lighting fixtures, some new sliding doors, and a new coat of paint – and I think that’ll probably be most of my remodeling budget for the year!

The stage-by-stage remodeling will probably be going on for a couple more years – I still have two more really dated-looking bathrooms (think: avocado green cabinets and glittery metallic-bronze tub surrounds) and a kitchen that’s pretty beat up. But that’s all right. I’m connected to this space, in a way that I haven’t been to any other. I love my house, and it loves me right back. I’ll give it anything it wants.

Another podcast, and another riff from Monk about how I’m playing with my nipple. Even though I’m not.

Then, letters: the first is from a listener asking about jealousy and threesome sex/BDSM. Threesomes are fraught with peril, in my opinion. The best threesome experiences I have had were in situations with three previously-uninvolved people.* The emotional stakes are considerably lower when no one has ever slept with anyone else before. An established couple plus one? That’s a very tricky situation. But it's a common fantasy, so Monk and I step through some of the ways it could happen.

Next, a request for guidance from a BDSM person who’s wondering about how to answer her friend’s question: “Am I cut out to be a slave?”

The last letter asks, “Is it fair for a people in a polyamory group to veto the partners of other partners?” Monk and I both have some opinions about the term “veto” and making rules that create the illusion of control over other people. I predict they will not be universally agreed-with, but what would be the point of listening if you already agreed with everything we said?

About twenty minutes.


*I did have a three-way romp not long ago that was quite, quite lovely, and it was with two people who were - let us say they were previously involved, if not precisely a couple. But - they are both exceptional people.

I love this fun and informative graphic about men's sperm. I have only one thing to add: pineapple. For men and women, pineapple makes all your body fluids - and trust me, I mean all of them* - taste sweeter. I love fruit, and I eat a lot of it, and I think pineapple has a much more noticeable effect than any other fruit. So if you want to taste better, eat pineapple, or at least drink the juice.

(*Okay, I guess I don't know about the taste of one's blood. But sweat, spit, girl secretions, and piss? Absolutely. I also have a theory that drinking lots of diet pop makes one's piss sweeter - all that aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame potassium coursing through one's system. That's based only on remarks made to me about my particular flavor though, so I have no real evidence whatsoever to support this idea. However, if some scientist wants to do a controlled study, I can certainly supply taste-testers.)



View this image full-size, in a new window, here on the OnlineSchools site.

Link via The Sexademic

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

***

And a calendar note: I'm out of town from March 15th to March 22nd. I'm going somewhere warm for a few days, which should be lovely. And then I'm going to Kinkfest!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.