Fingers and trolls

It would be nice if sex, be it “vanilla” or “kinky” could just be called sex, without any modifiers. But for that there would need to be a massive overhaul in the way sex is viewed by society, I guess.

Myoo – Some kinky activities aren’t sex, though. I’ve gotten beaten up by lots of people I had no genital contact with and neither one of us would consider it sex.

I spose you could label that just “consensual recreational beating” and leave it at that, in a post-normal-vs-abnormal society? Hm.

I like “kink” better than “BDSM” because to me BDSM doesn’t include fetishes like foot fetishes (unless there’s also power dynamics involved), but I, personally, don’t classify fetishes as being part of vanilla sex. I realize this is probably idiosyncratic. 🙂

I use vanilla sex because it’s a commonly understood term and the options other than vanilla are seriously problematic. “Unkinky sex” works the same way “non-trans people” does*, in terms of centering kinky sex as this Weird Thing That Those People Over There Like, instead of another variation in the great fabric of life. And once you get beyond “unkinky sex” you end up getting a lot of suggestions like “normal sex” which are just NO.

I am really unfond of the idea that in the hypothetical sex-positive utopia we wouldn’t have a word for kink. (Assuming for the sake of argument that human sexuality does not radically change in the hypothetical sex-positive utopia, which is probably untrue.) Because the fact of the matter is that sadist/masochist, dominant/submissive, “likes bondage,” and “has fetishes” cluster enough together that it is a meaningful category. And referring to it as just sex erases kink (because most people will not assume that you mean the sort of sex most people don’t have) and leaves one without a vocabulary to discuss it (since you wouldn’t have a way to say “I’m kinky” without listing out all your fetishes).

I did inform one of my partners he was a queer heterosexual once when he said that he’d still want to fuck me if I got top surgery.

*Not to say that transness and kink are at all similar oppressions… It is just an analogy!

There are some awesome illustrations linked from this blogger’s post: http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/its-my-body-its-my-pussy/

Just FYI 🙂

In theory, there is the concept of homonormative (used to describe gay discourses which are all “we are just like you, want to marry our true love, settle into the suburbs, and have 2.5 children) that MIGHT be considered similar to “gay vanilla” — though, again, this is not just about what genitals are in contact.

Reality is always a lot more complex than the language we have–and as a queer rural person (who is awfully tired of the idea that queer, gay, lesbian, etc. must incorporate an urban lifestyle, and that small town/rural Amerika is all straight), I know there’s a need for more and varied language choices in the categories of sex (activity); sexual identity; gender, sexuality, etc.

Tofu is delicious! I’d totally have tofu sex.

I don’t agree with the concept of a a “queer heterosexual”, I find it appropriating and erasing as hell. Not to say that there aren’t people who have rights to claim queer identity who might appear to outsiders to be hetero, or who are similar to others who consider themselves hetero, but claiming queer identity necessitates rejection of cisnormative hetero identity.

Also, vanilla people don’t like being called vanilla, smallest violin in the world over here. Vanilla implies boring and normal? Guess what, that’s contrasted to the already deeply embedded stereotype of kink as deviant and abnormal. So don’t pretend like the stereotypes against the non-dominant group being read into/slipping into terms of the non-dominant group for the dominant group is some sort of big fucking deal.

I found Noah’s post over at NSWATM problematic on a number of grounds. First, the issue of criticizing religion, because, esp. in the context of discussing queerness, you can’t fucking pretend like there isn’t reason to challenge harmful beliefs and notions that overlap/derive from religious ones (saying I have to respect certain religious opinions is de facto saying I have to respect opinions that I am an evil unworthy person deserving of torture and death). Also, as someone who has studied and written academically about the histories and discourses around the “born gay” notion, his claims there are not accurate or helpful either. In addition, his claims regarding conditions with known origins are very erasing of the experiences and theories of people with disabilities. He’s endorsing the use of bullshit medical models as a defense against bullshit moral models, which he also backhandedly endorses. No criticizing and dismantling cisnormative heterosexism around here, nope, just using bad science as a means of begging for a bit of pity.

Holly: Tofu is good when it’s cooked right, and NO ONE knows how to cook it right. It’s tragic.

I actually think tofu is pretty good raw.

Re: “queer heterosexual”

I think of myself as straight and call myself that, but if for whatever reason someone who didn’t know me was aware of entire sexual history, chances are they wouldn’t label me as straight. I use “nominally straight” if I have to make it clear, personally.

@DSC

Also, vanilla people don’t like being called vanilla, smallest violin in the world over here. Vanilla implies boring and normal? Guess what, that’s contrasted to the already deeply embedded stereotype of kink as deviant and abnormal.

This. If “vanilla” is a sexual slur, it’s the “honky” or “breeder” of the sex slurs.

I had problems with Noah’s post too, but they had more to do with responsibility – if someone or some group comes up with a discovery that could be used in a bigoted way, I’m pretty sure the responsibility should fall on the bigots to not be arseholes (and on the journalists who cover such things not to be too reductionist) rather than on the information-finders to hide it from bigoted eyes.

I think I also read “be[ing] rude about it” as meaning “in the r/atheism tradition rather than in the PZ Meyers tradition, so that probably coloured my reading). i think I may have interpreted “respect others’ religions” differently too.

as someone who has studied and written academically about the histories and discourses around the “born gay” notion, his claims there are not accurate or helpful either. In addition, his claims regarding conditions with known origins are very erasing of the experiences and theories of people with disabilities. He’s endorsing the use of bullshit medical models as a defense against bullshit moral models, which he also backhandedly endorses.

How aren’t they accurate or helpful? This isn’t my field, (not that I have a field), so it’s not immediately obvious to me what you’re referring to here. I couldn’t even find any claims about conditions with known origins that erased anyone with disabilities or see how any bullshit medical or moral models were being endorsed.

Anyway, had Ozy’s awesome post earlier ITT existed at the time that’s what I would’ve linked to. Far more succinct and directly relevant, and it doesn’t seem to be putting as many people into a tizzy.

To begin with, it is rather a-historical. Fucking Psychopathia Sexualis holds the queerness is biological, that’s always been the dominant biomedical model for queer sexuality within psychology/psychiatry in modern medicine. The notion of queerness as a form of disease created by poor raising, overattachment to the mother, etc. is a Freudian type model. A lot of anti-queer medical experimentation was done historically under the former as well as the latter. It ignores that history. But, it also ignores a history (the same history from which, I believe, LeVay and Hamer intended to draw) of some queer people asserting that queerness is “natural” as a defense against religious claims that it is “unnatural” (this goes back just as far, see for example the idealogical sparring of Karl Heinrichs-Ulrich’s devotees and Richard von Krafft-Ebbing, which actually led to Krafft-Ebbing recanting a lot of his work on queer male sexuality). It also erases the experiences of people who say they do know they chose their sexuality. Wanting to know one’s own origins is not automatically heterosexist, though heterosexism is common in a lot of these discussions and investigations. It fails to deal with the way that some people who have traditionally been labeled as sinners use the certain medical models as a defense against the moral model. At the same time, it erases a long history of creation of alternative moral, social, and epistemological models. Saying we can’t discuss these things erases all of the numerous conversations that queer people have had for centuries about them. Saying we can’t know of have positions about the origins because that’s some sort of grand evil denies that we already have these positions and discussions, it also denies the huge fucking fact that knowing either way would not excuse any of the homophobes fucking bullshit nonsense. Rather than saying that queerness is okay whatever its origin, the tone of that post is that no origin of queerness is okay, so we have to pretend like we cannot discuss or debate those issues without it being a society destroying fucking disaster.

I understand the desire to categorise but the problem is (as always) that people have things the want to marginalise/keep separate from, “the things I like, which are therefore not weird”.

The problem is that without these categories, I have no way to describe myself. And the world is not yet so open-minded that I can say “oh, I’m just a person who has just one of the many beautiful colors of sex” and have that explain why all the parties I go to are over the state line and why I have to plan two weeks in advance of doctor’s visits and why I change in a bathroom stall at the gym.

(Well, there’s a few reasons for that last one. They also don’t have locker rooms for all the beautiful colors of gender and the visible accoutrements thereof. Which is why I’d also resent being told “don’t call yourself genderqueer, you’re just another beautiful color of woman” …which also happens.)

I’m uncomfortable saying I’m exactly oppressed by being kinky, because it’s so easy to pass for “normal” in most non-sex situations, but it sure as hell presents me with societal obstacles that vanilla people don’t have to face.

So in light of that, I’d like a word for the thing I am. Which means there needs to be a word for the thing I’m not.

“Vanilla” is not the word I would have chosen, but it’s the one that’s entered common use and I don’t have an alternative that doesn’t carry imply “normal.”

I’d rather come up with some neutral word than say “vanilla,” but I’d rather say “vanilla” than not be allowed to express that there’s any difference between me and the people whose sex lives aren’t freaking illegal.

I think the problem with the whole “vanilla” issue is less that “vanilla” is, in and of itself, a particularly insulting term, and more that pretty much any marginalized group will contain some small number of people whose response to being marginalized is to decide that they are better/smarter/more “enlightened” than the non-marginalized group – who, in short, respond to society at large being jerks to them in some way by being jerks themselves. It’s an understandable, if not a particularly nice or helpful response.

When I was in college, my school’s queer student union ended up being split into two separate organizations, because the president of the original organization was kind of an enormous asshole to anyone who wasn’t 100% homosexual. She told bisexual members who dared to date opposite-sex partners that they were “traitors” and “impostors,” and famously stated that all straight people deserved to be raped and beaten (and in case that wasn’t bad enough, she did this specifically in response to a straight student getting sexually assaulted). Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the queer students on campus felt that this sort of thing was horrible, and ended up splintering off to form their own queer student union with an explicit mission statement that all forms of consensual sexuality were equally valid.

Point being, that girl said the word “straight” like it was the dirtiest word you’ve ever heard. It was unambiguous that when she called someone straight, it was meant as an insult. But the thing is, “heterosexual” was also a slur to her. Or “non-gay.” Or “woman who likes having sex with men.” The issue wasn’t the words she chose; it was the underlying attitude. She felt that, having been shit on by various straight people throughout her life for being a lesbian, the proper response was to turn around and shit on all straight people everywhere, and no change of vocabulary would have altered that.

So, as a kinky person, I’m totally okay with finding a word other than “vanilla” for people who don’t identify as kinky. If someone wants to suggest one, I’ll happily use it. I have no attachment to “vanilla” and definitely don’t want to offend people who are bothered by it. I just don’t think it’ll really solve the problem. If we change the term for “people who don’t identify as kinky” to “non-kinky” or “purple” or “squirblegorf,” there will promptly be a small portion of the kink community that will take to giggling at people while saying, “pfft, you’re so squirblegorf.” And those people will be dicks (although they’ll be dicks whose actions should be understood in a larger context in which many squirblegorf people treat them like they are dirty, perverted criminals for having the sex they like, and in which they can quite seriously risk losing their jobs, losing custody of their children, or even being sent to jail for having the sex they like).

Really, I can only see two solutions: have no terms at all (and Holly has already explained the issue with that very well), or address the underlying structure in which people feel the need to pass judgment on other people’s sex lives in the first place. I’d really like to live in a world in which “kinky” and “vanilla” (or “non-kinky,” or “squirblegorf,” or whatever) carry no more moral judgment than “person who thinks baby sloths are cute” and “person who prefers baby seals.” I definitely don’t think anyone needs to “suck it up” if someone uses “vanilla” in that obnoxious “ha ha, you’re so unenlightened, unlike me” way – or indeed, if someone uses it in a way not intended to be offensive, since everyone is allowed to be offended by things whether that’s the intent or not – but I do think the most productive way to deal with that offense in the long term is probably to try to address discrimination against kinksters so that future generations of kinksters are less likely to feel marginalized and thus less likely to feel like they have to put non-marginalized groups down.

(Also, boomboom, for the record, PIV is awesome. I’m a huge fan. I tend to like it extra much following a nice beating, but trust me when I say that I am never ever ever going to suggest that there is anything inferior or uninteresting about good ol’ PIV. 😉 )

(Also also, apologies to all if this was too long or rambly or obvious. I am sleepy and full of painkillers, and I doubt those things do my writing any favors.)