Purveyor of Pleasure

Pleasure is my business, my life, my joy, my purpose.

Identity Musings – Part 3

By

On October 16, 2008

In Adipose, Gender Galaxy

A follow-up post to Identity Musings – Part 1 and – Part 2, I highly recommend you reading those two first.

For a long time I wondered if I was just trying to make up an identity that isn’t necessary. If I was so transphilic maybe I was just making up an identity so that I wouldn’t be cisgendered. Is that the case? I still wonder that, but reading through Pomosexuals has helped me realize that I’m not the only female-assigned person to have this conflict inside of me, I’m not even the only female-assigned bi-/pan-sexual/queer person to love queer men and women and to have a boi personae as well as a femme personae, as also evidenced by The Leather Daddy and the Femme.

Still, that nagging fear that I’m just trying to not be cisgendered (not that there’s anything wrong with being cisgendered, but as I mentioned, I’m rather transphilic so it’s not as much a conscious desire not to be cisgendered, but one I wonder if I have internalized), that I’m trying to make more of something that’s inside of me and not exactly being true to it, that fear makes me doubt and question, and I hate it. I’m not sure how to prove to myself that this is the case, except to examine it, embrace it, and see how it feels.

I’ve said for years that my embraced drag queen identity was not just about all gender being drag, but also because I identify with a type of femininity that can not exactly be expressed by female-assigned people. It’s a queer over-the-top femininity that I love and identify with, it’s similar to femme but it’s not quite the same. Part of that identification, I think, is being “larger than life” or, larger than society tells women we are allowed to be. My fatness allows me to inhabit a space that non-fat women can’t (pun intended).

In addition to just being fat I’m also tall, about 5’10”, and have always been tall. I was 5’8″ by 7th grade, I’ve worn size 11 shoes also since 7th grade. I remember being proud of that, proud to wear my freak label, proud to be taller than most of the boys in my class, proud to be large and queer and strange and a freak. It was difficult at times, but I embraced and owned my queerness from an early age, because I knew that there wasn’t another way for me to be.

I identify with drag queens, but I also identify with femmes. It’s two different yet similar kinds of fem(me)ininity, and I try to inhabit them both at different times, perhaps that’s another personae I need to adopt a name for, to adequately seperate the differences so that I can analyze them easier, so that I can understand her better.

The truth is I have multiple personas within me, each with hir own voice, each needing recognition, and so I’m trying to recognize all of them, but it’s a long and dubious process. I’m not sure I’ll ever know all of them fully, but I have to try, otherwise I will be out of touch with myself. Each personae has different desires, and I fully intend to figure them all out.

The first step to analyzation is to recognize that which you are analyzing, right? Otherwise you aren’t able to analyze something you don’t know about. These “Identity Musings” posts have been about just that, going back to track the expansion and development of these identities in a new way, so that I am able to recognize these different aspects of myself and therefore come to a greater understanding of them. I have a more specifically queer related one on the way (since these have dealt mostly with gender).

Home Sweet Heartache (HNT)

By

On October 16, 2008

In Introspection

     
Click each image for the larger version.

So there’s not really too much naked about this picture, except my face, really, and that can be some kind of naked. These images are ones that were taken at a lookout point on Mount Roberts, after taking the tram up, taken by my mother. Mostly it’s actually Douglas in the background, as opposed to Juneau, the bridge you can see in one of them is the Juneau-Douglas bridge. I’m not sure why I like the one with me looking down, but I do, so I’m sharing two with you. Normally I would make one “hidden” but today I say: fuck that.

I feel like I’ve had a lot of changes happening lately, with my gender, my sexuality, the way I relate to my body in general, and so on. This isn’t bad per se, but it has put a strain on both my brain and my relationship, and is something we’re working through.

While I was up in Juneau and on the vacation in general I thought a lot about my identities (not as if that is a rare occurrence), and though I’ve come far, I still feel like I have a far way to go.

What does all this have to do with my HNT? Maybe because this is just one of the ways I look, just one of the ways I present myself, and I’m not sure if it’s accurate anymore.

Identity Musings – Part 2

By

On October 15, 2008

In Gender Galaxy

Continued from the post yesterday, Identity Musings – Part 1 I encourage you to read that first if you have not.

I started leaning back toward femme the last year of high school. I didn’t have any serious relationships during high school, the few queer girls I knew either had boyfriends, didn’t seem interested, or I didn’t know them, and I wasn’t attracted to boys in my high school with the exception of very few. I lost my virginity at 16, the day it was legal for me to fuck someone over 18, to a man I didn’t really know. I don’t regret it, mostly I just wanted to get that whole virginity thing out of the way, but I do sometimes forget it happened.

I’m not sure what leaned me back toward femme, and, really, in some ways I had never left it. I was a wonderful mixture of butch and femme: keeping my hair short but wearing wigs when desired, wearing any manner of clothing I felt like, skirts, dresses, pants, capris, suits. I wore a suit to my junior prom: black coat, shirt, and pants with pink tie, socks, and hair to match my date’s dress. I look back on that time and realize in some ways I had my own gender figured out better than I do now.

I had this intense desire to grow my hair out, partially so that I would actually start attracting anyone. I didn’t think I was terribly attractive, but I looked back at myself with long hair and thought maybe that was the issue. I don’t believe that’s the case, but it was one of those non-logical I-really-want-to-get-laid-or-at-least-have-some-sort-of-sexual-encounter-with-someone-to-sate-my-skin-hunger type of things, so I started growing it out.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my long hair, but I miss it being short. I definitely had this “boy phase” from middle school to near the end of high school, what I thought was a butch phase, but I really do think it was a bit more than that. I wouldn’t play female roles in plays for a few years (and I was in a lot of plays), and the first one I did rather reluctantly.

I embraced that genderqueer boi inside of me so wholly, and I really was more of a boy than anything, but I was often a cross-dressing boy.

When I have expressed my confusion regarding my gender, my need to have both of these in me, I’ve had people not quite understand what the issue is, why I can’t just be “in the middle”, why I can’t be both, where the confusion is coming from. There are also people who express their own blend of masculinity and femininity when I mention it, they say that they don’t feel that pull, that they exist with a little of both and don’t understand that pull either.

If I feel like a femme, why hasn’t that been enough? If I feel butch, why hasn’t that been enough? I’ve thought multiple times that because I could be butch I should be, because we need more butches around. But then I know that wouldn’t be honest with myself.

In some ways I feel like a transsexual femme, that I used to be a boy and now I am femme. Looking back I really do see the gender trends of my life rather clearly.

I feel like I started as a boy who liked girls things, but who was a boy, we’ll call him Sebastian. I was a queer boy who liked boys and girls, even though I looked like a girl I was still a boy. I grew up to be a boy, and then I decided to change and become a femme. Then I was a femme, I embraced that femme and she felt good, we’ll call her Scarlet. Now I’m realizing that while Scarlet is as perfect as I first thought her to be, that she fits me just like she originally did when I first had that femme-epiphany-moment, that she is not enough for me. I miss Sebastian, but I don’t want to give up Scarlet, I want to be both.

The thing is I’m both boi and femme, both male and female, both masculine and feminine, both Sebastian and Scarlet, and I always will be. I’m also not a mixture of the two. I’m not somewhere in between boi and femme, I don’t have my own planet that is a mixture of the two that I orbit around, no, I am a boi and I am a femme, sometimes completely separately and sometimes at the same time, but they are always to distinct identities. I have two different planets that I orbit around, and sometimes I orbit around both and sometimes I orbit around neither.

I have suppressed Sebastian for quite a while, but he is coming back with the realization that I need both of them to be whole. I am working on regaining that. And, who knows, maybe I’ll find another personae hidden in there as well, someone completely different than Scarlet or Sebastian.

Continue the musings with part 3…

Identity Musings – Part 1

By

On October 14, 2008

In Gender Galaxy

I’ve been reading Pomosexuals for the last week or so, and loving it immensely. I read it while I’m on the elliptical at the gym, and I end up thinking about all these wonderful things that I would like to post about while I’m nowhere near my computer, or even paper to write ideas down with. This post has been swimming around in my head for days, thinking about how I got to the identities I embrace now.

Since gender, I think, is difficult to disentangle with sex and sexuality, I will be talking about all of those in this. It will be as much my general identity progression as it will be my gender identity progression, just focused a little more heavily on gender. Also, since this is turning out very long, it will be in two parts.

Any or all of these memories may not be entirely as they happened, as with all memories, but they are as I remember them.

I remember being younger–pre-school age, so 3 or 4–and taking a bath with my then-best-friend who was a boy, I remember us doing the “that’s weird” thing regarding each others genitals, wondering about the differences. I recall knowing the terms vagina and penis, though that may be that my brain at some point added them, and I remember remarking that my clitoris (I didn’t know what it was called at that point) was like a little penis. It’s not that I expected my clitoris to turn into a penis, or thinking that I was a boy, but I didn’t think there was much of a difference between them. Of course, I know now that they come from the same tissue, but that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking at the moment.

I remember growing up and liking dresses, while my (very 2nd wave feminist) mother did not like me liking dresses. She didn’t discourage me from wearing them exactly, but she would suggest that I did not wear them. The same goes with pink. Pink was never my favorite color (that elusive childhood obsession of a “favorite color” which changed nearly weekly), but I always have loved purple, and I think I would have liked pink sooner if it wasn’t for my mothers “yuck” reaction to it.

I remember my best friend M had a cinderella dress, and I coveted it. I remember liking to wear satiny nightgowns and have sleepovers with friends where we would play by rubbing our mounds together. I remember pretending to get married, and I would always be the preacher, rarely the bride or the groom.

I remember being girly, and I remember loving it. I was a femme, until I hit puberty, but I never “felt” female, I’m not even sure what that means. I think I mean that I didn’t really identify with being female or being a woman, though I did like girly things. I remember having “crushes” on boy celebrities that I wasn’t really attracted to, but that my friends A and T both did, and I was trying to fit in.

I remember hitting middle school and starting to wear all black when I used to wear all sorts of other colors. I came out to my then-best-friend W on the school bus before school in seventh grade, saying “I think I’m bisexual.” We talked about it, and he was cool with it, I’m not sure he quite knew what that meant. I remember having that spread around without my wishes, and then my own firm desire to spread it around.

I was sexual since sixth grade, or earlier maybe, but sixth was the first time I really started thinking about it, I had my first in fifth (October 10th–my best friend’s birthday party, it was a swimming party and I remember having to use a tampon for the first time that very first time I bled). I used to read romance novels, I read over sixty of them (I labeled them with numbers in my own OCD way), I was enamored with penetration, but lusted after the girls more than the guys. I masturbated… a lot.

When I was fourteen (though I certainly didn’t look fourteen) my older sister took me to Babeland (then Toys in Babeland) and bought me my first sex toy, a glow-in-the-dark bullet that I loved until it died (from overuse?).

I cut my hair short (about two inches) freshman year of high school. I started wearing pants more than skirts, though I still wore skirts because I’ve always loved them. I was very much a goth/punk butch fagette. I dyed my hair just about every shade of every color you can think of (ROYGBIV and more), and had all sorts of combinations, including pink with blue tips, yellow with green tips, pink and purple mixed around, red and purple, purple and white, and a very cool looking rainbow.

I was very out. I started the Gay/Straight Alliance at my High School my Junior year, and was the president that year and the next. I organized both high-school and community wide events. I worked with PFLAG and went to some of their meetings. Most people thought I was a lesbian, some of the people in my hometown still do, even though I was very out as bisexual. A friend’s lesbian mothers were surprised when she told them I was with a man.

I’ve been told that I was an inspiration to those around me, that I have helped them discover themselves and not be afraid of doing what they wanted or wearing what they wanted, because I was there to be a little more bizarre so they could go to their own personal extreme.

More of the path it took me to get here in part 2…

PG Porn

By

On October 12, 2008

In Sex Blogging

For those of you who haven’t heard about it yet, James Gunn has created a masterpiece with PG Porn. Porn for people who love everything about porn, except the sex. Oh yes, and it’s awesome, not to mention interesting social commentary, but mostly just hilarious. From the website:

How many times have you been watching a great porn film – you’re really enjoying the story, the acting, the cinematography – when, all of the sudden, they ruin everything with PEOPLE HAVING SEX?

A bunch of times, right?

That’s why I, along with my brothers Brian and Sean, have created JAMES GUNN’S PG-PORN. It’s pornography everyone can enjoy, not just perverts. You and your grandmother, for instance, could sit down together and enjoy some nice clean smut. Or your kids could come home from school, and the whole family could gather around the computer and not-jerk-off to some porn deeply embedded with traditional values (like not fucking.)

Without much further ado, the first installment of PG Porn, starring who else but Nathan Fillian (who I absolutely love, and you might know from Firefly, Buffy (Season 7), or Dr. Horrible). From the website: “Watch Nathan Fillion inhabit the role of “CHRIS”, who doesn’t have any sex whatsoever with his boss’s wife, MRS. GRIMES.”


Nailing Your Wife

Bare (HNT)

By

On October 9, 2008

In Introspection

Looking back at my few Half-Nekkid Thursday pics, I realized that most of them didn’t show much (if any) skin. Especially the ones lately. And, since I have been absent from posting my HNT’s for a few weeks, I decided I wanted to come back with a bit of a bang.

While, I know, showing cleavage or even breasts in general is a little cliche for HNT, I did it anyway, mostly because I wanted to show off the new nail polish I got while up in Juneau, it matches my hair and my bedspread rather delightfully and I have dubbed it my ‘femme red’ nail polish. And, what better way to show off nail polish than to do so while cupping some beautiful (if I do say so myself) breasts? Plus, it was just the Boobiethon, and in the spirit of that I bare to you my breasts.

I also painted my toes to match, which may play a feature in next week’s HNT… though perhaps not, we shall just have to wait and see!

Review: Under the Bed Restraints

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On October 8, 2008

In Sex Toy Love

I’ve read a few other reviews of the Under the Bed Restraints which have basically all said the same thing: these are not hardcore leather restraints, so these aren’t for the lover of heavy leather and chains, but they are wonderful for some quick and easy bondage which won’t leave marks for others to see. I couldn’t agree more.

When I first got this restraint system I immediately went upstairs to our bedroom and fitted it under the mattress. It was easy to do (as long as you can lift the mattress). Basically the Under the Bed Restraint system came with four cuffs (for wrists and ankles, of course), and five straps. One middle strap to run up and down under your mattress, and four straps to attach to the middle strap for the cuffs to attach to. I easily clipped all of the straps together and set it under the mattress.

The directions say that you can fashion the straps in two ways under the mattress: so the cuffs come out the sides, or the top and bottom of the bed, or some combination thereof. I set the cuffs up so they were all coming out the sides, at first, but I’ve also moved them around (by lifting the mattress so they’re not snagged underneath) so that the ankle straps are coming out the sides and the wrist ones are coming up the top of the bed, which is a configuration I also enjoy.

I had to wait for Dominus to come home from work before we were able to test these out. I’m quite a squirmy sub and like to struggle and fight when restrained, testing my bonds and seeing if I can escape, and let me say: there was no escape from these. While they are light, as I mentioned above, they are definitely sturdy and do not come apart easily. And I definitely tried to get out of them. The cuffs are a good size, more than big enough for my wrists and ankles, which are both pretty large (big boned fat girl that I am).

One of the nice things about the Under the Bed Restraints is that the cuffs can easily be interchanged with another set. You don’t have to use the cuffs that come in the box, although they are rather nice, but if you have that love of leather or the desire for something heavier you can easily clip a different set of cuffs to the accessible rings. It is as versatile as your toybox, and is such a quick and easy way to immobilize anyone.

The straps are easily adjusted as well, with a simple tug you can tighten the straps so the bottom is tight against the bed, or loosen them if you want hir to move and kneel in the middle of the bed. They are also easy to tuck away under the mattress if you have other people (or kids) in the house that you don’t want asking questions about the cuffs dangling from beneath the mattress.

Like I said, if you’re looking for something heavy, this isn’t exactly what you’re wanting, though you can always buy some nice expensive cuffs to use with the system. The brilliance and appeal of the Under the Bed Restraint System is that it is super easy to set up, very versatile as far as the ability to interchange cuffs as well as the placement of the straps, and is a quick and easy way to make someone helpless at a moment’s whim: there is no complicated rigging to set up, just set it up once, then velcro someone into place whenever desired. I highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys bondage, whether they are a beginner or advanced bondage connoisseur.

Sex Toys and Vibrator Reviews at VibeReview

Remember: you have less than a month left to take advantage of the Obama for President Coupon from VibeReview, which will give you 10% off any purchase! (Also linked via the image above)

Go PoMo!

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On October 8, 2008

In Discourse

I seriously want a shirt that says “Go PoMo!” now. How I hadn’t seen this video before today is beyond me, but thanks to the PoMoSexual group on FetLife I discovered it today, and will forever be on my list of favorite videos, much like Fagette. It also helped me discover PomoWorld.com, which I am now delving into.

At the end, post-credits: “The makers of this film would like to extend a special thanks to homo sapiens; the breeding oxymorons who lurk this giant mudball floating in this vast abyss we refer to as “The Universe”. Do not deny your human fallability. Without you, Dear Expatriates, this concept wouldn’t have been realized.”

I thought some of you may enjoy this as well. For some background: I do have definitions for both PoMo and PoMoSexual in the lexicon. I recently acquired PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality by the ever delightful Carol Queen, a book I’ve been desiring to get for quite some time, but due to my long list of books to buy I only recently bought it when visiting Powells in Portland on my recent trip. I’ll be sure to post a review once I’m done with it.

Family, Friends, and Identity

By

On October 7, 2008

In Introspection

My trip is long over, I got back to Salt Lake on the 1st of October, though I started writing this before I got back, it’s taken me a while to get to finish it.

I had dinner with Coy Pink one of the nights I was in Seattle, who was absolutely delightful and gorgeous and I felt like we connected. My friends in Juneau are talking about moving to Seattle, and that combined with the possibility of getting to know Coy Pink better, as well as the general draw to the pacific northwest which I have all makes me want to move there. It’s rather probable that Onyx and I will end up in Seattle after we go to San Francisco, but that won’t be for a few years.

The week while in Juneau was nice, and gave me quite a bit of perspective, on a lot of things. The general life insights were pretty basic ones, really, but the identity-based insights were slightly more interesting perhaps… and one of these days I’ll get back to smut writing. A lot of the identity insights were because of the wedding/family reunion I attended the first weekend I was gone, but then there were more through spending time with old friends while in Juneau.

The first weekend of the trip consisted of going to a wedding, an activity that I do not do too often. Nearly all of the relatives of that side of the family were attending, so it was also considered a family reunion, just centering around the wedding. I think being around that much family makes one focus in on whatever it is they think the other people see, specifically I thought a lot about who I used to be, who I am now, and how that is the same/different.

I also felt like I had to squelch all my multiple queer and non-obvious identities and just fill in the family/relative identity. While everyone was interested in getting a little snapshot-idea of my life, it was mostly to figure me out and file me away, not because they actually wanted anything in-depth. I can understand that, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing exactly, but it did make me feel a little invisible. Partially my own obvious identities are the culprit of my invisibility. I have a male partner and present myself as femme most of the time (though I’m sure most of my family didn’t get femme vs. feminine), they didn’t see the queer genderfucker inside of me because I didn’t highlight it.

It’s also difficult for me to get out of the role I was in for the first eighteen years of my life, that of the baby, the daughter, the sister, or even to escape the role that my extended family knows me in: the baby, the cousin/niece/etc., the one who will always be twelve in their minds (or some other number, but I actually had that one said to me). I’m so much more than that now, and it’s difficult to get rid of that. I have grown quieter, though, less social, and that hindered me throughout the weekend. I found myself “family-d out” quite a few times, and wishing I had more time alone rather than being with my dad at nearly every moment. I stole privacy whenever possible, but I was still a little overwhelmed.

While there are many in my family who are larger, I was one of the largest at most events (or, at least, that’s how it felt to me). I’ve been focused on my weight for a while, I’m the largest and heaviest I’ve ever been right now, and I want to change that, mostly for health reasons. I was reminded multiple times on this trip that I am at risk for diabetes. I doubt I will ever be “skinny” or even not plus-sized, and I actually like that, my build doesn’t lend itself to a size 4 or even a size 8, and I’m okay with that, in fact, I like that.

Once I got up to Juneau I was able to focus a little more on myself, though not a lot. I feel like I didn’t have much time to myself up there as well, which wasn’t actually that bad. I spent a lot of time with friends, which gave me a little perspective on how I’d changed and how much they knew and yet didn’t know me, which is to be expected as I’ve not been around too much in the last four years, and I’ve changed quite a bit. They have changed as well, of course, but we still fit together, which was very nice.

One of my friends mentioned that I’m one of the last people our age who still dyes her hair crazy colors, and that made me question my motives for doing so. It came down to the same reason I’ve always had for dying my hair or dressing the way I do: it’s not for other people, or even personal expression exactly, it’s just me being me. I’m not making some statement I’m just doing what I want. Granted, there is a statement made, but I can’t control how people take it, really, but I can control what they see.

Since coming back home I’ve been a mixture of all sorts of things, including feeling rather unsexual, which is highly unusual for me. I’ve been depressed and unsure of just about everything, as all the things I was depending on have fallen out from under me (read: money sources). I’ll turn it around, as I always do, but I’ve been feeling stuck for quite some time. I’m hoping to change that, though.

September in a Glance

By

On October 1, 2008

In Site Specific

I’m doing this post round-up both for you my readers and for myself, it helps me to categorize what I have done and written, to see what areas I talk about most, what things I may want to talk about next month, and where my relationship(s) have been and how they have developed over the last month.

So, this is rather late, but I’m back-dating it to October 1st. I’ve just not been on my game as far as quick and often posting, which is both good and bad in some ways. I have been focusing on other things, such as my new photography website Deviant Decadence, but I have also not been posting as much or even what I have been wanting to.

September was somewhat cut short, due to my trip to Seattle-area and Juneau, in addition, most of the posts were about gender, sex toys, or something other than this site and personal stuff. I had a lot of things going on in September as far as personal issues, Onyx and I had a few hills in our normally somewhat rocky relationship, but we got through them and are stronger for them, I believe.

Gender and sex toy reviews were really the strongest categories this month, and gender is something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately, something I’m trying to figure out, to fit into. I have a lot more thinking to do, so expect a lot more posts on gender in the future. I didn’t talk a lot about kinky issues this month, mostly because I wasn’t feeling terribly sexual, and Onyx and I were not relating as usual, but also because I was gone for half of it.

feminist

sex-positive

fat

femme/fagette

  • I mused quite a bit about labels again this month, talking extensively about my label fetish, what that means, and how it manifests.
  • I really went back and explored some of my butch leanings earlier in my life, with two of my HNT’s focusing around older pics (partially because my card reader was broken, so I delved into my archives for them) when I was much more butch than femme: The Butch in Me and Baby Dyke.
  • A post of Sinclair’s over at Sugarbutch inspired me to delve into my own semantic usage of bio- and cis-.

queer poly

  • A post with info regarding the Queer Psychotherapy Conference in San Francisco, and as a queer with a Psychology degree I was instantly intrigued and desired to go, so I thought I would share.

kinky switch

all else

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