|
When it is worth it. [Or, why I wont be *debating* on race play.]
|
Jun 3, 2009 1:35 pm
1168 Views
|
Since it is the elephant of color in the room, so to speak, here is why you won't see me responding tit-for-tat to those who criticize my motives, on all levels, for sharing my views on a particular approach to one aspect of BDSM play in which I occasionally participate with a handful of friends.
I have no interest in debate.
Not that I don't wish to have opposing views. Far from it.
When I do presentations on playing with race I spend a SUBSTANTIAL amount of time sharing the oppositional viewpoint. To the point where some people take away that they are even more firmly convinced this type of play isn't for them.
So when I further expose myself to ridicule and character slashings, up to and including from people with whom I have sat and broken bread, it isn't a self-aggrandizing attention grab. Believe it or not, a real person with real feelings is writing this stuff and putting it out there. I certainly have no joy added to my life when people trash my character and spirit and talk shit about me.
But the thing is this.
For every person who threatens violence, for every person who has a knee jerk reaction, for every person who paints ME with their PERSONAL revulsion at WIITID, there are many, many more people who hear what I have to say.
Even those who are in disagreement with me.
My personal blog has much of my writings on this subject and I was moved to tears last night when a reader wrote a response to me that, in all sincerity, washed away weeks or pain and shit that I let impact me. Something I said changed her thinking. This isnt something people hear every day. But I hear it more and more when I talk about the hard stuff. What submission is. How play can be risky. What it is to be a minority, what it is to be fat.
I hear it more and more.
When I was in Chicago for Shibaricon, I had several people walk up to me and say similar things. This is a strange and exhilarating and humbling experience.
Something I was moved to share changed someones life. Their way of thinking. How they see themselves. For the better.
Just
wow.
Because of that, I carry on.
I won't back down from who I am. I will not be made to feel like I am "wrong" or that I should hide in the closet for what I do.
Each and every person on this site is here because they identify as kinky.
For kinky people to turn their rancor on others for reasons of difference in life-experience, sexual preferences and desire is sad, but no longer shocks me. These same people wont blink an eye when a local dungeon holds a Slave Auction. These same people use tools of oppression, of torture, with a gleam in their eye but feel free to trash me because they have decided that I have gone to far.
And I know from my own personal experience that some of my more vehement violent critics are those who play in the dark recesses of the mind and heart when it comes to racial politics in and out of the bedroom, but their own issues provoke them to lash out at me, who dare drag this beast to the light.
I've read post after post where people make tangential arguments and specific examples of why I am wrong to do this type of play. SO many of these people were drawing from NON-CONSENSUAL origins of race based violence.
Go ahead and skip over the fact that we in the BDSM community are basing ALL OF OUR INTERSECTIONS ON CONSENT if you wish. But I see the flaw in your criticism.
We are all about consent. Nothing I do can ever "trivialize" the sacrifices and horrors of what my family went through in the past.
Nothing.
So for you to give ME the power to MITIGATE HISTORY is pretty fucking flattering!
But you know what else it is?
Wrong.
Wrong and specious.
I travel all over the U.S. to Leather Conventions. I am invited all over the country to share, lecture, teach and present on MANY topics. And I have done the class on Race play perhaps a dozen times. Every time it is nerve-wracking for me, because people come in with chips on their shoulders.
But they listen, and we talk.
Thing about the online medium, it allows you anonymity and distance to say shit you would probably re-think if you were afforded the opportunity to look me in the eye and actually talk to me about these issues. Therefore, I allow for some of the language to roll off of my back. But not all of it. Because it is important for me to remember how tough this is, and how real. And that is part of the reason I carry on. Because shirking away from it won't make it go away.
To those who have negative things to say about race play: believe me, I know, more than you who have NEVER DONE IT, what it bloody means.
And for those who wave the flag of "More oppressed than thou:" assume nothing. That is the road to ruin when it comes to truly understanding one another. You. Dont. Know. My. Heart. Not all of it.
I respect your humanity and your right to not do what I do. I regret you fail to reciprocate that respect.
So no, I won't debate. The point if a debate is to persuade people to your POV. I have no desire or inclination to do that. My desire and inclination is to suggest ways to open yourself to discussion, dialogue, new and different thoughts.
Because that is my job, actually, when you think about it.
|
|
|
12
Comments
|
|
