Xan West's Blog, page 10

Links of the Week 4/20/16

I’m going to try sharing a short list of links to things I’ve found on the internet that I think are particularly worth reading. Stories and blog posts about the things I often write about here: kink, trauma, writing, polyamory, representation of marginalized folks, oppression, disability, queerness, fat activism, trans and non-binary daily life. I will try to see if I can do this on a weekly basis. I share links all the time, as I find them, on twitter and more thematically on tumblr, but I thought it might be good to draw particular attention to things here as well. (Partly because I love making lists, and sharing them.) They won’t all be recent; sometimes I find or remember and reread awesome stuff that’s been around a while.

Elsa Henry gives some concrete tips for Writing Blind Characters

“Yes, that last sentence was to see if you can stomach reading about eyeball trauma. If you can’t maybe stick to nontragic narratives around disability. Frankly, more blindness narratives that aren’t about how HORRIBLE being blind is would be super awesome.”

Ella Dawson talks about Daddy play and the aftermath of abuse in BDSM in Good Girl

“He is a dominant and I confess there are kinks I used to like but had taken from me, words ruined outside of play. Being called a whore stops being fun when someone you love means it. He apologizes for what a boy he’ll never meet did, not even knowing what he’s apologizing for.”

Lace Dagger on racism and competitiveness in queer spaces.

“I have heard numerous anecdotes from other women of colour about similar treatment from white women who held themselves in competition with these women of colour in one way or another, but almost none of my white women friends have experienced this particular expression of contempt from would-be competitors.

I have begun to recognise that this is a specifically racialised phenomenon that is especially prevalent in communities of queer women.”

Kris Ripper’s erotica story “Seen”. Genderqueer bottom has a rough break up after zir limits get violated and seeks solace in a scene with a stranger. This gorgeous gut-punch of a story was inspired by my recent collection “Show Yourself To Me” & I am incredibly honored by that.

“He walks forward and I go very still until his boots are in my line of sight. ‘Adrian. You told her your limit and she ignored it.’

‘They’re just words.’

I think he shakes his head, but I can’t tell. There’s a disturbance in the air. Then his hand, still hot, touches my neck, where my pulse beats against it. And oh god, now, now I want him. Now I want everything, in the space between one second and the next. I want him looming over me, and hurting me, and taking me.

I desperately want him to see me, but there’s no way of telling.”

This discussion on Disability and Kidlit about writing characters with mental illness

“I would love to see more books that are about the teens that have already sought help. The teens living with mental illness and dealing with it. Obviously, that’s not a plot. But I think it would be good to see more of that in our books.”

Annabeth Leong on her new BDSM fiction project that centers friendship instead of romance and engages openly with abuse in BDSM relationships. I am so excited about this project!

“A lot of this writing is about me engaging with BDSM as I’ve experienced it in life, which does not reflect the problem-free fantasy I often encounter in books.”

This long list of pronouns posted on destroythecistem. Arranged by theme!

Kameron Hurley on writing books non-chronologically.

“When it comes time to put all the scenes together, it’s a bit like patching together a quilt – or, more accurately – a complex puzzle. You find that not all the pieces fit, and that you have to create new pieces to bind the existing together.”

Janani Balasubramanian on strategies for non-oppressive polyamory.

“Polyamory doesn’t get a free pass at being radical without an analysis of power in our interactions.  It doesn’t stop with being open and communicative with multiple friends, partners, lovers, etc. We’ve got to situate those relationships in broader systems of domination, and recognize ways that dating and engaging people (multiple or not) can do harm within those systems.”

Zetta Elliot on Decolonizing the Imagination.

“It is no coincidence that the portal in my first young adult novel opens in a garden; though I have consciously worked to decolonize my imagination, the influence of (and my affection for) those early narratives persist.”

And for folks looking for my work, here’s my recent post at the ERWA blog, on planning BDSM scenes in life and in fiction.

“As a top, when I’m planning a BDSM scene, I’m attempting to create a similar kind of cohesion. I want the play to feel connected, not like a series of disjointed activities. I want the play to be an expression of who I am as a top. I want the play to be specific to the bottom, and specific to this particular moment with the bottom. It needs to be about both (or all) of us.”

Tagged: abuse, abusive BDSM relationships, BDSM, competition, Daddy, Daddy play, decolonization, disability, disability representation, erotica, friendship, genderqueer, kink, mental health, mental illness, neopronouns, non-binary, oppression, polyamory, pronouns, queer communities, racism, trauma, writing, writing erotica, writing the other

Noticing Oppressive Ways of Thinking

I have spent much of my life working to unpack and address the legacies of abusive power, colonization, and oppression that I have internalized. It is life-long work. Work I find essential to being the person I want to be and doing the work I need to do in the world. Work that helps me to manage risks and discern abusive power in my life. Work that is a central piece of how I endeavor to make my BDSM practice a conscious, consensual, and intentional use of power.

Internalized oppression and colonization are inside you, and that often makes it difficult to recognize, and takes a lot of work to disrupt and unpack. One of the things that helps me is to really take a hard look at how I am thinking, as well as what I am doing. So that’s what this post is about.

One of the core pieces of cognitive therapies for a range of mental health issues is about recognizing and interrupting destructive patterns of thinking. This is very hard work, requires a lot of practice and a deep commitment to metacognition—thinking about how you are thinking. Not an easy task, particularly when managing mental health symptoms. Folks I know sometimes talk about what their “badbrain” is telling them, as a way to identify these thinking patterns as not what they truly believe, but what they feel stuck in.

I find lists of thinking patterns really useful. (Partly because I generally find lists useful!) Lists like this one of black and white thinking patterns are a treasure to me, give me something concrete to look for when examining my own thinking patterns.

I am sharing my own list with you. A list of oppressive thinking patterns that I have personally identified and am working on noticing in my own thinking. It may not surprise you to notice that there is some overlap with the list I linked to in the previous paragraph.

Note: This is a work in progress, not a final or complete list. I would be very interested in hearing about oppressive thinking patterns that I have left out. The nature of this list is that it names internalized judgments and frameworks. That likely may make it difficult to read, and especially to read all at once.

Binary thinking : Either/or, good/bad, all/nothing, always/never
Body/mind split : thinking/talking about your body as separate from you, seeing bodies as separate from minds, seeing bodies as the enemy, mind over matter.
Supremacy of the mind/logic : seeing the mind/thinking/logic as more valuable/important/better than the body or the emotions. Valuing thinking over feeling or bodily knowledge/experience.
Fracturing : Breaking bodies/people into parts, thinking of and evaluating them separately.
Perfectionism : Not allowing for mistakes, wanting to always get it right, prioritizing being right/perfect, measuring against an image/ideal of perfection.
Reducing people/bodies to objects : Viewing people as objects, without full complex lives and stories and their own needs, values and choices. Reducing people to stereotypes, what you want them to be, simple ideas, there to give you what you need. Not seeing people (including yourself) as whole human beings.
Reducing people/bodies to utility/labor/ability : Valuing/viewing people and bodies in terms of their use, their potential utility, the labor they can do, their monetary value. Devaluing bodies that do not produce money or particular kinds of labor. Devaluing people/bodies based on their inability to work.
Evaluating people based on normality . Judging things/actions/people based on whether they are normal.
Supremacy of nature . Judging things/acts/people/identities based on whether they are natural, genetic, scientifically accepted, occur in the animal world, accepted as being rooted in instinct and evolution.
Competition over scarcity : Seeing others as the enemy because they are endangering your potential resources. Viewing the world as a zero-sum-game, a pie that is carved up, and you will never get as much as you need. Assuming that certain identities/groups should be operating from an idea of scarcity, that scarcity is permanent and not something they have agency in, and those folks should therefore take whatever crumbs they can get and be happy with that.
Entitlement : Seeing space as something to own, to conquer, something you deserve, something you are in competition over. Seeing bodies as there for you to touch, claim, own. Thinking you have the right/obligation to intervene/fix/save “problematic” bodies/people. Seeing culture/people/land as there for the taking.
Body negativity : Thinking of bodies as bad, shameful, problems. Valuing only certain kinds of bodies, or certain areas of bodies. Seeing only certain kinds of bodies as worthy, desirable, good, normal. Seeing physical pleasure as bad, or trivial, or a slippery slope to bad things (e.g. drugs, too much food or sex, etc.). Trivializing the importance of bodies, physical capacity and ability, bodily experience of the world, embodiment.
Sex negativity : Thinking of sex and desire as bad, wrong, shameful, dirty. Valuing only certain kinds of sex, seeing only certain kinds of people as sexual or worthy of desire, seeing certain kinds of sex/desire as wrong/shameful/ bad. Seeing BDSM as inherently shameful/fucked up/crazy/bad. Seeing sex as ok only if you can validate or justify it (love, marriage, pro-creation, heterosexuality, normality, not perverted, orgasmic, etc.). Thinking that if we allow certain kinds of sex/relationships, it’s a slippery slope to rubberstamping all sex/relationships (including those seen as bad). Trivializing the importance/power of sex and pleasure.
Supremacy of health : Viewing/valuing bodies, people and behaviors as good/bad based on their physical/psychological health. Devaluing sick or disabled bodies, and devaluing mentally ill people. Valuing bodies based on mobility. Valuing people based on mental health. Assuming normal=healthy. Assuming that abnormal=unhealthy or abnormal=crazy. Assuming health is something easily measurable, visible, and in individual control. Blaming people for having bodies/psyches/desires that are seen as unhealthy. Justifying people’s bodies/actions on the basis of health.

Note about using this list as a tool for reflection: I have found it useful to focus on one item (or maybe just one of the examples within a bullet point), and just try noticing where it crops up in my thinking over a period of time (say a week, or a month). It has sometimes helped me to first try to notice that pattern of thinking outside myself before turning that same noticing inward. I have first tried to notice a pattern of thinking in books or movies or things people say around me on the job. Then I might try to notice that pattern in my journal writing, or my non-fiction writing, or my own stories. Then I might try noticing how it crops up in how I’m thinking about something, or the things I say to myself.

Final Note: If you look at an item on this list, and are perplexed at how it might be an example of oppressive ways of thinking, I encourage you to puzzle it over for a while and see if you can figure it out.  (I often find those things especially useful avenues for thought.) If after some thought,  you want to hear my own thought process on that particular item, feel free to ask me in the comments, shoot me an email (PraxisProductions at Gmail dot com), or put an anon ask in my tumblr inbox. I may not answer in a particularly timely manner, but I will attempt to answer.

(cross posted on tumblr)

Tagged: decolonization, frameworks, kink, metacognition, oppression, self reflection, unpacking internalized oppression, ways of thinking

The Queer and Trans Love Stories I Need

(Some notes about content: this post speaks openly about queer and trans oppression and the ways those things are embedded in queer and trans representations in fiction, which includes multiple brief references to violence, murder, suicide, self loathing, and the death and tragedy of queer characters. It also tells a fairly detailed story about my own experiences of internalized queer and trans oppression as a kid. This story mentions, but does not share details about, a queer hating therapist. This personal story references, but does not share details about suicide, addiction, bullying, trauma, and eating disorders. If you want to avoid reading the personal story, skip down to the fifth paragraph.)

The first book I remember reading that had a queer character was Sandra Scoppetone’s Happy Endings Are All Alike. It was a love story about two teenage lesbians, a young adult novel published in 1978. So you may guess that it ended in tragedy. In this case, the tragedy was sexual assault in the context of a violent queer bashing. I also immediately read her other queer YA novel, this one published in 1974. Trying Hard to Hear You ends with the young gay couple getting violently assaulted, and then dying soon afterwards. I read these books over and over again as a young person, starting around age 10. Several times a year, I would reread them again. They upset me deeply, each time. Very deeply. Sobbing for several hours deeply. My mother was puzzled: why did I keep reading them if they upset me so much? Should she take them away from me as they clearly seemed to be causing me harm? When she mentioned this, I begged her not to take them away. I begged her to let me continue to have access to the only queer stories I knew, even though they hurt.

I think back on this now, and it feels so clear: I was attempting to reconcile myself to a likely future of violence, trauma, isolation, and death.

When I first started thinking I might be queer at the age of 17, I asked my therapist about it. She assured me that I was not. What a relief. Queer futures seemed incredibly perilous. The one out queer person at my high school got bullied horrifically. My closeted queer friends were drowning in self-loathing, unrequited secret crushes, suicidality, eating disorders, trauma, and addiction. I was afraid they wouldn’t survive til the end of high school.

I was already struggling to survive, to claw my way out and escape violence and trauma. I didn’t want to be queer on top of that, didn’t want to claim what felt like an inevitable future of more pain, violence, trauma, and isolation, and that was the only queer future I could imagine. A future that was predicted, again and again as I read and reread books and watched and rewatched movies where queer and trans characters died, where queer and trans stories ended in violence, in suicide, in ostracization, where queer and trans people were depicted as monsters, and “justifiably” targeted by violence and murder. It took a few more years before I came out as queer. It took me much longer to come out as trans, because the future seemed so damned bleak if I let myself be trans.

Stories make a difference. Perhaps especially for those who are already marginalized, isolated, afraid, and traumatized. Stories teach us who we might be, what might be possible, what happens to people like us. Stories are important.

I read queer and trans love stories written by cis and heterosexual people with a certain kind of terrified hope. I want these characters to make it, and I’m afraid that they won’t. I want them to survive til the end of the story. I want their love to feel hopeful and happy all the way til the end of the story. I want to read stories that show queer and trans people who are not isolated, who are not constantly targeted by violence, who are not mired in shame and self-loathing, who do not die. I want to read queer and trans stories that are not tragic. I want to read queer and trans stories that have deliciously slow burns and bursting flames of desire, swoony romances and deeply satisfying character arcs where we are rooting for these queers to be together all the way through.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about queer and trans people writing whatever damn queer and trans stories they need and want to. Let characters grapple with internalized queer hatred, let them be worn down by transmisogyny, let them feel bleak and terrified in their closets, let their queer love stories get eaten away by the waves of shame they are struggling under. Let them experience violence and trauma, let them grapple with addiction, let them die if we need to go there. We write these stories because we need our realities reflected, need houses for our deepest fears and the terrifying and awful experiences of queer and trans oppression. I would love it for there to be such an abundance of stories written by queer and trans writers that the tragedies hurt less and just feel like part of the real truth we grapple with, because they are balanced by everything else, all the queer kids go to space and trans kids get to be in plays and queer elders fall in love again and trans superheroes claim their power and queer schoolteachers get kids fired up about injustice and trans people falling for each other and and and. Let there be a huge and tremendous abundance of all the stories we need to write and ache to read, written by and for us.

These stories mean something different when straight people write them. These stories mean something different when cis people write them. As I said in a recent blog post:

“trans writers choosing to engage with trans oppression enacted by cis people that we know so intimately from having been targeted by it in so many ways and internalizing it in so many ways…we are going to engage with it differently. We bring a different lens, the complexity of our personal history, an on-the-ground analysis of oppression that comes from being targeted by it relentlessly. We tell different stories about it, because we are writing from deeper lived experience, because we have different reasons for telling them, and are often writing for different audiences.”

When cis people write trans and non-binary characters, when heterosexual people write queer characters, please leave those kinds of stories alone. Let us write them ourselves, for us. Please don’t write us as tragedy or monster, please don’t reduce us to our queerness and transness, please don’t center our internalized self-hatred, please don’t target us with violence, and don’t, just don’t, kill us off. There is no reason good enough to kill us. I don’t care if your plot hinges on it, if it is the central thing that will help all your other characters grow, if you kill other characters too, if it is there to teach the reader something you think is important, if you are writing a genre that has a lot of killing in it. Just stop killing us off. We are saturated with those stories, and they hurt too damn much.

You know what else hurts? Seeing queer love stories written by cis and heterosexual writers constantly have plots and character arcs that center on internalized queer hatred and misogyny. Yes, even when it is supposedly healed by love. In fact, especially when it is healed by love. I’ve read far too many of these, especially m/m romances where one of the love interests is masc or butch and the other one is femme. These stories are incredibly painful to me as a queer and trans reader, and I’m not alone.

When I started talking about this on Twitter a while ago, many people shared similar experiences with the genre (and also recommended romances that don’t do this, so check out the storify for those as well).  Currently, queer and trans writers in m/m romance are talking about feeling pushed out of the genre by heterosexual writers who take up so much space in the genre, and the current increase of gay romance that centers straight men falling for each other (often called GFY meaning “gay for you”, sometimes called “out for you” or “open orientation gay romance”). (The last sentence is full of links to things said by queer and trans writers on the subject, some of them with personal stories about their experiences of queer and trans oppression and misogyny. This is a recent post written in defense of GFY. It is full of queer hatred and is a direct dismissal of queer voices.)  GFY is built on a bedrock of queer and trans oppression and misogyny, and also often includes characters who have a lot of internalized queer hatred and internalized misogyny.

Cis and heterosexual writers, please don’t write us queer romance where the central character arc is about internalized self-loathing, internalized queer hatred, or internalized misogyny. Even when that’s facilitated by falling in love. Especially when those stories center straight men getting together. Please don’t write us trans love stories that focus on transition, or on a cis person learning to accept us, or love us, or treat us decently. Please don’t write us queer and trans love stories that treat the possibility that someone might love or desire us as a rare miracle in a tragic and pitiful life that we must snatch up immediately before it goes away without even considering whether we might love or desire them.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years writing stories about queer (and particularly trans) people doing kink with each other, often with a lot of romance involved, but firmly in the erotica genre. (The best of them are collected here.) A good portion of what I’ve written has been gay erotica (often with trans characters). That said, I’ve consistently refused to write gay erotica centering straight men, because those stories are not what I care about. I care about queer and trans readers. I care about queer and trans desire. I care about queer and trans love, not just romantic love, but our love for ourselves, and love within queer communities.

I write stories that center queer and trans kink, for queer and trans kinky readers, because I am queer, trans, and kinky, and want stories like that to read. I write insider stories, stories that document queer kink lives for other kinky queers like me. I write trans and genderqueer stories from my own trans and genderqueer perspective for trans and genderqueer readers. I write disabled and sick queer stories from my own disabled and sick queer perspective for disabled and sick queer readers. These are stories for us, first. Stories to feed us, to act as mirrors, to give us hope.

I write these stories because I need them. Because they are a balm on all of the hurt that comes from being inundated with stories that give us tragic endings and call us monsters and erase us and center straight and cis people and focus on queer self-hatred and center the desires of straight and cis readers. Because I need to remind myself, and other queer and trans people, that our desire is important, our love is beautiful. That’s why I’m so excited to be writing Shocking Violet, a deeply queer and trans polyamorous kinky erotic romance, as my first novel, after years of short form erotic fiction. Because I need to read stories like that. Stories that envision a different kind of possible future for queers and trans people, a bright and glittery future that feels full of all the hope I could not even imagine as a young queer kid looking for queers in fiction.

Tagged: erotica, love, queer, queer oppression, representation, romance, trans, trans oppression, trauma, writing

A Selection of Poetry by LGBTQ Women, for International Women’s Day

So I thought I would gather some beloved poems by LGBTQ women writers, to honor International Women’s Day 2016. These poems are dear to me, and just a small taste of what these amazing poets have to offer. They kicked my ass, or made me cry, or held my heart gently, or met me exactly where I was in the right moment.

Who Said it Was Simple, by Audre Lorde

New York Girls, by Cheryl B

Instructions for a Body by Marty McConnell

Wolves, by Lilith Latini

Do The Math, by Meliza Bañales

Dear Mr. Sunflower Butch, by Elaina Ellis

The Seam of Skin and Scales, by Elena Rose

La Divina, by Fran Varian

Madivenez, by Lenelle Moise

To Live in The Borderlands, by Gloria Anzaldua

For the White Person Who Wants to Know How To Be My Friend, by Pat Parker

All The Trans Girls Say, by Cat Fitzpatrick

I Walk In the History of My People, by Chrystos

Peeling Potatoes, by Crystal Azul

Diving Into The Wreck, by Adrienne Rich

When to Chill, by Barbara Ruth

The Ritz, by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Submissive, by Lauren Zuniga

Femme to Femme by Jewelle Gomez

INTIFADA INCANTATION: POEM #8 FOR b.b.L., by June Jordan

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha performs in Sins Invalid 2009 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. Part 1 of 3.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha performs in Sins Invalid 2009 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. Part 2 of 3.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha performs in Sins Invalid 2009 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. Part 3 of 3.

Loving in the War Years, by Cherríe Moraga

A Song of Someplace Yet To Fall, by Ryka Aoki

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

Tagged: bisexual, gay, International Women's Day, lesbian, lgbtq, poetry, queer, trans, women

One Trans Response to “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds”

 

About content: this post speaks openly (and in some detail) about trans oppression in queer communities (with a focus on the ways trans men are targeted), gender border wars, purging, and gender-based coercion and abuse in relationships. Most of that discussion is in the first section, so if you want to avoid it, skip to the section titled My Response to Grandmother-nei-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds.

 

My Own Context for Reading Rose Lemberg’s Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds

I remember the hardness of the chairs in the auditorium. I remember the buzz of the fluorescent lights. I remember trembling in my seat, my stomach in knots. I remember the energy in the room feeling dangerous to me, like if I moved I might get noticed, get hit by the violent storm.

I don’t remember what exactly people said at that queer town hall meeting. I have tried, today, as I write this, to recall those kinds of details. But I can’t access them. I don’t know how I ended up in that room. I don’t know who I came with.

It was 1996, probably. I think. Twenty years ago. And it was the first time I heard queer cis women speaking openly about the reality that some of their partners, some folks in queer women’s community, were transitioning.

I say speaking openly, but that is too measured a description, and a bit too kind. Because what they actually were doing was debating. Debating whether to allow this. Whether to purge these men from their lives and their community. Whether they could possibly bring themselves to ever date someone trans. Articulating their feelings of betrayal. Naming the ways they felt hurt and victimized that lesbians were disappearing. Describing the ways they felt trans men were erasing their queer cis womanhood, making them even more invisible than they already were. The ways their identity and community felt so intensely threatened by the existence of trans men.

They told proud stories about how they tried to convince, manipulate, and coerce their partners into not transitioning. They offered advice to each other, describing the emotional blackmail that was most effective in preventing their partner from discussing transition. They had this intense righteousness in talking about dumping long-time partners who pursued medical transition options. They consistently named the trans men they talked about as women, as lesbians, using she/her pronouns the entire time.

I knew purges well. Knew how this could turn in an instant from venting to something even more ominous. Recognized the danger electric in the air. Held the clear knowledge in my body that my ability to dance carefully on the margins of queer women’s communities could twist into a brick wall in my face. That really it was just a matter of time before that happened. I held very very still, sick and trembling, and waited for it to be over.

It wasn’t over when I left that night. Instead, it got worse. These conversations were everywhere, and sparked like flash fires any time I was in queer women’s spaces. There was no escaping them. They didn’t stay in those spaces either. Groups of cis lesbians would show up at the tiny trickle of trans men’s events that began to happen, in order to stand up and demand the conversation center on them and the ways that trans men’s existence hurt them.

I quietly attended a trans men’s open support group (one that welcomed allies), month after month after month, not telling anyone in my life that I was going. I never said a word in the group. Continued to present as and be read as a femme cis dyke. The men in the group all thought I was an ally. They were confused why I kept going. No one else went that wasn’t openly trans, even though they were technically welcome. At least not after accompanying their trans partner the first time. I didn’t have a trans partner, had not begun talking about my own gender with anyone. At the time, I didn’t even really know why I was going. My experience of gender did not match the experiences described in that room. But it was urgent inside me. I needed to go. It hurt to miss a meeting.

That time, those memories, are intertwined with my first moments of recognition of my own transness. That feeling of being deeply afraid, stuck still and trembling, dreading being recognized. That feeling of sickness in my stomach and shards in my throat as I listened to people I thought were my community, and even people I thought were my friends and family, debate my welcome and the welcome of people like me. That certainty, yet again, that who I was meant that I would be rejected, would not find love or sex or wholeness in relationship.

I was a late queer (and trans) bloomer, was part of queer community and doing queer activism without dating pretty much at all (after one terrible disaster). I had never had a romantic relationship with anyone, had pretty much only had casual sex with cis straight men (and one queer man). I identified as bisexual, but hadn’t had sex in a few years at that point. I’d spent most of my out queer life having unrequited unspoken crushes on cis women friends and friends who were queer cis men. This realization that letting myself be trans meant accepting that I would lose community, lose friends, lose my queer family, be treated like an enemy, and never find a partner, was a central part of my sense of myself as a trans person, from pretty much the beginning.

It seemed inevitable, that I could not be trans and be loved or even welcomed by queer cis women. That they would see me as the enemy, if they thought of my transness as real. That if they did love me, or welcome me, it was because they didn’t actually think my gender was real. Those were my choices, my only options as far as it went with queer cis women. To be rejected as enemy or accepted and loved not as myself. I literally could not imagine anything else outside of that framework. It seemed like nobody could, that we were all stuck and spinning and hurting with no way out.

It took several years before I could step enough outside my own trans reality and pain to recognize the ways trans women were (and still are) erased in queer women’s community. The ways transmisogyny was operating in those conversations. The ways that as women, to be rejected and erased from women’s communities was (and still is) an intensely harmful act of cissexism and transmisogyny.

It took many more years before I considered pursuing any sort of medical transition options. At one point, I was asked by my primary partner to promise that I would never go on testosterone. And I agreed.

It took longer before I recognized that attempting to coerce, convince, or manipulate your partner into making particular decisions about their gender or attempting to limit your partner’s gender expression is abusive behavior.

From pretty much the beginning, I imagined not letting myself be trans. Hiding, so I could stay in dyke community, so I could keep relationships, so I might possibly be able to find a girlfriend someday. It took a long time for me to choose something else. It felt like such a huge risk to do so, a leap into a future I could barely imagine as anything but bleak and lonely.

My Personal Response to Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds

I brought this personal history to my reading of Rose Lemberg’s Nebula nominated Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds.

Quite literally. After reading it, I relived the visceral memory of what it felt like to be in that room at that town hall meeting twenty years ago, lay in bed frozen and trembling. That feeling rolling round and round in my head, of stuckness, of being caught, of deep fear at being recognized. I saw myself, a future I could have lived, almost did live, in Bashri.

It hurt to read a story from the point of view of a cis woman who sounded so much like those women in that meeting, who struggled so much to hold the reality of her grandparent’s transness, and her sibling’s non binary identity.

It hurt, and it healed at the same time.

This story felt like such an emphatic clear answer to the framework that had taken me about a decade to think my way out of. Not an easy answer, not a simple answer, but such an insistent one.

My first cogent reaction to this story was: I wish I’d read this 20 years ago. I needed this story when I was first coming into my transness and trying to imagine my own future and what it could be.

This story, written by a trans writer, that centers two trans characters with very different genders. This story that works against a cis gaze even as it is told from the point of view of a cis woman. This story that broke open old wounds and helped them breathe. This story that insists on the reality that our transness cannot be muted without cost, and will need to be faced eventually. This story that offers a vision of queer family that cannot hold stubbornly tight to rejection of trans family, that instead needs to figure out how to hold us, perhaps a bit more loosely than before.

Considering Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds as a Trans Writer

When trans authors write trans characters in a complex nuanced way, there are folks who won’t get it. Especially cis folks.

It won’t fit the prescribed form that cis people are told they need to follow in order not to be fucked up in their representation. It will be more complicated than that.

Because the prescribed form is written in a simplified way, that assumes that cis people have less nuanced analysis of and experience with trans oppression, transmisogyny, cissexism, dysphoria, and internalized trans oppression.

Because trans writers choosing to engage with the trans oppression of cis people that we know so intimately from having been targeted by it in so many ways and internalizing it in so many ways…we are going to engage with it differently. We bring a different lens, the complexity of our personal history, an on-the-ground analysis of oppression that comes from being targeted by it relentlessly. We tell different stories about it, because we are writing from deeper lived experience, because we have different reasons for telling them, and are often writing for different audiences.

Lemberg discusses this in their recent post about this story:

 “The viewpoint of Aviya was difficult for me. It is a viewpoint that begins from a place of both love and at the same time rejection of our truest selves, which is so familiar and so incredibly hurtful for many of us with cis and/or straight family members. When I am writing a viewpoint of a cisgender family member who is loving, but only conditionally accepting I am both writing the other, and writing from a perspective which is excruciatingly and deeply familiar to me. Like many trans people, I have been pressured to learn this perspective, to internalize it, to center it before my own.”

This is a story that lives in the tension of holding firm in trans perspective and reality, and engaging and connecting with the internality of a cis perspective that deeply struggles to honor and accept trans reality. Connecting with cis perspective is something that is a common experience for trans people, as Lemberg points out. To engage with it while holding firm on a trans lens for the story itself is a nuanced balancing act that trans writers are much better placed to do. We have a lot more practice.

If this story were written by a cis person, it wouldn’t work.

I would never advise a cis person to write a story about trans people and tell it from a cis character’s point of view. I would especially advise cis writers not to describe the ways cis characters struggle to accept and love and be decent to trans people in their lives. Those stories mean something really different when told by cis people. Those stories are told in really different ways when they are written by cis people.

In Cheryl Morgan’s article for cis writers, on “Writing Better Trans Characters,” she talks about the cis gaze:

“There is such a thing as “cis gaze”; that is, a book can be written because cis people are fascinated by trans people. They want to see us doing those weird trans things that they think we do. Or they want to see us as victims that they can feel sorry for and rescue.”

That is what cis gaze does in a story. It sets trans people up as Other, as objects, as “fascinating”, “interesting”, “strange”, sources of learning. It sets us up as objects of pity and rescue and study, far from the assumed cis readership. It does that in the structure of the story. This isn’t about the POV character’s gender, but about what the story does, how it frames the trans characters, what information it decides to share about the trans characters, what language it uses, what questions it grapples with.

This is about stories that turn trans people into objects for cis people to learn from, pity, manipulate, and use. Where trans characters are empty vehicles, not complex nuanced people.

It is important to distinguish the cis gaze in a story from the POV of the story. They are different things. You can write a story that is deeply entrenched in a cis gaze from the POV of a trans character. I’ve read a lot of those. You can also write a story from the POV of a cis character that is not written from a cis gaze.

Of course, it is possible for trans people to write stories from a cis gaze, because we can internalize it.

But it is also possible for trans writers (like Lemberg) to write stories from a cis character’s POV that do something else, something different. Stories that do not come from a cis gaze. In my read of this story, it does something different, and powerful. Something that felt deeply needed for me personally as a trans reader.

This story is told from the POV of a cis person mired in the same framework I described in the first section, a framework that can’t imagine how to do relationship with trans people, can’t conceive how she as a lesbian might grapple with a trans man partner, or how to hold the trans and non-binary realities of her family members. Aviya is stuck in that framework I knew so well twenty years ago, a framework that purges trans people from queer women’s lives because it cannot figure out how to hold onto relationship with them. She is stuck in her own ableism and cannot fathom honoring the non-binary identity of her autistic sibling.

But the story is told from a different framework. A trans and non-binary framework. A framework that holds trans and non-binary realities in their complexities. That insists that Aviya recognize her love for her family and partner is critically important and worth struggling to hold onto, even when she is freaking out and can’t figure out how. That textually challenges trans oppression and cissexism. That illuminates the ways language structures can be hugely important barriers for trans and non-binary people. That insists on honoring the trans reality of a non-verbal autistic character.

This story engages actively with internalized trans oppression, ableism and misogyny. It does that in a way I found quite deft and careful. These things are textually challenged, again and again. It doesn’t use unnecessary hurtful language. It works to slowly shift perspective over time. It’s not overly blatant or didactic. That’s part of what makes it work.

This story shows how stuck all these characters are in trans oppression, ableism and misogyny, both interpersonally and especially structurally. It shows the pain of trans oppression, from the POV of someone who realizes that she has been hurting her loved ones.

It’s a hard story.

And, I think, a critically important one.

Final Thoughts

“Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” has been nominated for a Nebula, and I find that to be a very good thing.

I am awed by the fact that a story centering a queer family, focused on queer love (both familial and romantic), is honored in this way. I am awed by the fact that a story grappling with the limitations of gender and language, told by a trans author, is honored in this way. I am awed by the fact that a story which insists that the reader hold the complex realities of trans and nonbinary characters is honored in this way. I am awed by the fact that a story by an autistic trans author centering an autistic trans character with powerful and beautiful magic is honored in this way.

“Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” has so much in it that moves me, so much that feels important and necessary and full of the kind of respite that I ache for.

I urge you to read it. To let this story in. To hold it in its complexity and nuance. To consider what it has to say.

Read Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” for free.

(cross posted on WordPress, Tumblr & LiveJournal)

Tagged: ableism, abuse, catharsis, cis gaze, Grandmother-nei-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, internalized oppression, purging, queer communities, queerness, Rose Lemberg, trans, trans exclusion, Trans non-binary, trans oppression, transmasculine, trauma

Books By Trans and Non-Binary Authors

It’s World Book Day, so I thought I’d share some recommendations of books by trans and non-binary authors.  Please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments!

Novels

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

Yemaya’s Daughters by Dane Figueroa Edidi (also try Brew)

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

He Mele A Hilo by Ryka Aoki

I’ve Got a Time Bomb by Sybil Lamb

Roving Pack by Sassafras Lowrey

 

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Geometries of Belonging by Rose Lemberg (also try the Nebula nominated Grandmother-nei-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds)

At Land by Morgan M. Page

Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey

Three Partitions by Bogi Takács

All The Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

 

Short Fiction:

A Safe Girl To Love by Casey Plett

The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard ed by Tom Leger and Riley McLeod

Missed Her by Ivan Coyote

Look Who’s Morphing by Tom Cho

Seasonal Velocities by Ryka Aoki

 

Children’s & YA

The Adventures of Tulip the Birthday Fairy by S. Bear Bergman

Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws by Kate Bornstein

George by Alex Gino

I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings (also try Being Jazz)

Zero Dad’s Club by Angel Adeyoha

Princess of Great Daring by Tobi Hill-Meyer

 

Poetry

Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul by Ryka Aoki

Improvise Girl, Improvise by Lilith Latini

Wanting In Arabic by Trish Salah

Marginalia to Stone Bird by Rose Lemberg

Never Coming Home by Tyler Vile

Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, ed by TC Tolbert & Trace Peterson

 

Romance and Erotica:

Nearly Roadkill by Kate Bornstein

Blood and Silver by Patrick Califia

Defying Convention by Cecil Wilde (Also try A Boy Called Cin)

And finally, there is my own book: Show Yourself To Me by Xan West

 

Memoir

Trauma Queen by Lovemme Corazon

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

The End of San Francisco by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green

Cooking in Heels by Ceyenne Doroshow

 

Non-Fiction

Exile and Pride by Eli Clare

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, ed by S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Law by Dean Spade

 

Tagged: book recommendations, genderqueer, non-binary, trans

elust 79

Welcome to Elust #79 –

The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #80? Start with the rules, come back March 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

 

~ This Month’s Top Three Posts ~

The Joy of Sucking Cock

Making Porn

My Valentine

~ Featured Post (Molly’s Picks) ~

The One

Midweek Fantasizing – The Portrait

~ Readers Choice from Sexbytes ~

*You really should consider adding your popular posts here too*

Marionette

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

 

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

A kiss is just a kiss

Turning Corners

Another Day, Another Planned Parenthood Visit

My first vanilla date

Want, Need the Power of your Masculinity!

I don’t know how to date.

Erotic Fiction

Soft Lips

The Introduction

Erotic Fiction: “Words”

Darkness and the Rose

Taste

The Session That Went Wrong

Be Careful What You Wish For

Motivation

porn

The Tube

Erotic Non-Fiction

For You, It’s Always Yes

Gawan: Intro to Flogging

The Talker: An Introduction

My wildest fantasy: Ship slut

Marionette

Time for something quick…

Spread Legs and Open Mouth

My Girl in Havana

Let’s Watch some Porn

Sex News, Opinion, Interviews, Politics & Humor

An Artist’s Story: Tails and Portholes

Sleeping With Our Future President

To Dude Who Was Offended By Lack of Escort

Try Love, Not Anger

Risky Sex

Why Cosmo is the worst (again!)

Writing about Writing

Condoms: fictional contraceptive of choice

Writing Fat Characters In Erotica

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

Masochistic Mastermind

Take me to where I need to be.

 

Tagged: elust

A Valentines Day excerpt from Shocking Violet

One of the joys of writing Shocking Violet is getting to spend time in the quiet daily moments of access intimacy between disabled characters. To sit in the struggle of our need for taking care of ourselves, our need for care from others, and our need to care for others, the ways those things are intertwined and fraught and beautiful. To show how love and care and connection can look between people who are building interdependence with each other. This is the kind of love I treasure in my own life, the kind of love that makes me feel seen and supported in the wholeness of myself.

Here is an excerpt from the current draft, showing the moment you first meet Liliana, Violet’s girl, as Violet comes home from her first date with Jax. You also meet Violet’s cat Sweet Pea (pictured above) for the first time in this excerpt. As a heads up, it has elements of power exchange threaded through it. If you want to read earlier excerpts, they are collected here.

Liliana was waiting for Violet to come home. Waiting for a long time, that’s how it felt. She needed her Ma’am tonight, needed the connection of their ritual, needed to ground. She’d smoothed out some, but tonight that felt harder to do on her own. She didn’t like that, didn’t want to need Violet, didn’t want to need anyone. Ok.

She could do it on her own, you know. She could get herself in a place where sleep was possible. She didn’t need Violet, not really.

Her hands were itching to move, to do something. She put the kettle on, arranged the tea on a plate. Then she gave in to what she really needed, sat down at the table, and let herself rock. Ok. Rocking helped, it always did. Her eyes caught the bright red bowl on the table, sank into the rich darkness of the color, let herself float on it as she rocked.

It was good to be home alone, to be able to just let herself be where she was, do what needed doing, without thinking about who was watching or how they might try to help. Alone was good. The color was perfect, radiating in layers, exactly what she needed to ground. It had been a miracle when she’d spotted it that day at Goodwill, cupped it in her hands for the first time, held that glorious color in her hands and let it reach into her heart. Worth so much more than the few bucks she’d scrounged from the bottom of her bag to take it home with her.

Violet had wanted to buy it for her. But she’d needed to get it for herself, hadn’t wanted anyone else to have a piece of it. It was hers and hers alone, and that was the way it should be. Ok. She’d smoothed out on her own, just as she’d known she could. It was better not to need Violet, or their ritual, for that. To bring herself fresh to it without all that scraping desperation inside her. To tend to herself first.

Ok, there was the sound of the elevator, and then, unmistakably, Violet’s particular gait, her boots on the hallway tile as she approached. Liliana scanned her face as she entered. There was something in her eyes, a vulnerability…but she was measured in her movements, and relatively calm in her breathing. Something had knocked her off kilter, but it didn’t seem like it was the walk home.

Violet shrugged off her coat, peeling off her sweater, and Liliana took in a sharp breath at the sight of her legs in the short skirt, the line of her cleavage in that slip she often wore as a shirt. She smiled up at her, then rose and poured hot water into a mug (Mae West this time), setting it on Violet’s favorite tray (the one made from a Funny Girl album cover), adding the plate of tea, the bowl of sugar, the pitcher of cream. She put the tin of rescue remedy there in case Violet needed it.

Liliana put the tray on the cart. She loved this cart. Liliana had tried a bunch of different systems for moving things from one room to the next in this apartment while she was using her cane. The cart had been a present from Violet, and was her favorite method, painted black, covered with her favorite stickers. She ran her hands over them, soothing herself, lingering on Patti Smith and then Candy Darling.

She loved the way the cart sounded on the hardwood floors as she slowly wheeled it to the couch, loved the incongruence of such an elegant thing decorated in her personal style, loved the way it made it easier for her to do the ritual.

Violet made her way over, slipping out of her skirt before she sat down, so all she had on were her boots, her slip, and her checkerboard tights. Her hair was down. Liliana breathed in the sight of Violet for a moment, before she sat on a stool to unlace her top’s boots, removing them carefully. Ma’am was smiling down at her in that way she had, her face full of exhausted pleasure, with just a hint of something else in her eyes. Liliana’s hands weren’t what hurt right now, so she pulled Violet’s feet onto her own lap, and began to rub them. She loved this part of the ritual, the silent part, where she helped Violet arrive, set aside some of the armor she needed to move through the world, and settle into the cocoon they created together.

Her back was starting to ache, so she gently placed Violet’s feet on the ground and made her way onto the couch next to her, laying her head on Violet’s thigh as Ma’am stroked her hair. The scent of rescue remedy was calming. In this position, they both could look at Sweet Pea, who, despite the dinner he’d had not more than 45 minutes ago, was insisting he was starving, and making his regular evening complaints. Violet was crooning at him, and when she patted the couch on the other side of her, he approached. His pupils were huge as he contemplated the height, demanded that she move the pillow out of his way, and after a couple of failed attempts, leaped gracefully, and settled in next to her, laying down with all four paws pressed into the side of her thigh as she pet him. Violet scritched his favorite spot on the back of his neck, and Sweet Pea soon began the familiar wheeze-purr, content with her attention and the security of all of his paws touching her. Liliana knew exactly how he felt.

“I’m glad she’s home too, buddy,” Liliana told him gruffly, then let herself drift on the sound of his purr, the feel of Violet’s hand in her hair.

Tagged: access intimacy, D/s, interdependence, Liliana, Shocking Violet, Sweet Pea, Violet

Writing Fat Characters In Erotica: Why It Matters To Me

As a heads up, this post contains brief descriptions of sex and detailed descriptions of the ways fat oppression intersects with sexuality.

As an adolescent, most of my peers thought I could not possibly be a viable sexual object, because I was fat. They made it clear that no one would ever want to date me, to fuck me, to touch me. Inherent in my teenage sexual experiences was the feeling of having something to prove. Proving that someone could find me desireable, that I could be a viable sexual object. A jut in my chin proclaimed my defiance as I knelt on bathroom floors in clubs for strangers who did desire me, who wanted my mouth on their cocks.

I could not imagine my own desire. The best I could imagine was that I could maybe, if I was lucky, and packaged myself just right, be desired.

Until I found fat activism. Particularly, until I found the zine FaT GiRL. This zine with the tagline for fat dykes and the women who want them was full of images and stories about fat dykes and their own desire. It was erotic content about claiming sexuality and desire for ourselves, as fat queers, and it was a fundamental force in my process of claiming my own desire as a fat person, of imagining myself as a queer fat sexual subject.

The work of the FaT GiRL Collective taught me how critically important it can be to integrate sexuality into fat activism, and how vital and radical erotic content can be, when it is created by marginalized people for ourselves. That understanding has shaped me for most of my adult life, and is central to my practice of writing erotica and erotic romance.

While FaT GiRL helped me see myself as a sexual subject, not just someone who could be desired but who had a desire of my own, it was Zaftig that helped me to take myself seriously as an erotica writer. I first read Zaftig when I was beginning to write erotica, grabbed it in the store like it was a miracle, right when it first came out. Just the fact of it, that there could be erotica that centered fat people that was not fetishizing, that it could be published, made things seem possible. Made it feel like I could write about fat queers like myself and the folks in my communities, and this genre would be big enough to hold me.

And it has been. For the last fifteen years I’ve been writing BDSM erotica that centers fat queers, and getting it published. I’m proud to say that the best of these stories are now collected in the same volume, instead of scattered far and wide in separate anthologies. So now, you can read a whole book of my fat queer kink erotica.

It’s titled Show Yourself To Me, because the stories are all about that, the vulnerability of being yourself, the glorious feeling of being witnessed and celebrated in BDSM play, the intensity of being met in your desire, because you had the guts to put it out there. They are all about openly being a sexual subject, someone who knows your own desire and is brave enough to seek it, even when it’s scary to reach out that way. (Read a sample story here.)

It started with FaT GiRL, for me. With learning that I didn’t have to fight to be seen and valued, sexually, because other people’s desire didn’t have to be at the center. That as a fat queer person, my own desire was possible, and hot, and that there was a fat activist community that would celebrate it. It started with claiming my own desires, knowing that I could. Realizing that naming what I wanted, seeking it, choosing it for myself, was a core part of my own liberation.

My stories come from that place. And from the kind of sex you can have from that place, the ways it can reach inside you and shake you up and make you feel solid and real and witness you in your power. That is what I work to put on the page, over and over. Fat queers who claim their desires. Who are not mired in the shame that fat oppression attempts to force on us every day. Who know what it’s like to be held and witnessed and met in their desires. Who often fuck and love and play with other fat queers.

These days I’m working on an erotic novel, Shocking Violet, a polyamorous BDSM erotic romance centering disabled fat activist queers, attempting to tell a story that shows us going about our lives, seeking our desires, doing our activism, risking connection with each other. I’m excited to be writing a longer form, to be showing fat people and our desires in the details of our lives. I can’t wait to share it with people. (In fact, you can find excerpts here.) I am particularly excited to center queer fat activists in this novel, to situate them in community, to offer that kind of story to fat readers, a story that more closely mirrors my own, that I’ve never seen outside the pages of FaT GiRL.

Fat representation is pretty rare in erotica and romance. We are mostly just not there. (That’s particularly true for fat cis men, who are often completely missing outside of gay bear stories. And even more true for fat trans and genderqueer folks.) When fat folks are present, it‘s not a story about characters who are politicized around fat oppression, or doing fat activism, or part of fat community. It is not about characters who have years of experience unpacking their internalized fat oppression and seeking their desires.

Instead, if the story is not fetishizing our fatness, it often feels deeply mired in internalized fat oppression. It reminds me of my teenage self, jutting out my chin and insisting that I could be desired, even though I was fat. Fat cis women characters (because representation of fat folks of other genders is extremely rare) learn to accept themselves and stop dieting from a lover who is hot for them (and often not fat). These characters struggle to see themselves as desirable. They are only hot because they fit a certain kind of fat beauty standard. They spend most (or all) of the book trying to figure out how not to be fat (and sometimes succeed in becoming thin, or thinner). They rush to cover up their bodies immediately after they have sex, or push to do it only when the lights are off. In short, the best we can often hope for is that a fat cis woman character will let go of enough of her body shame to believe that someone desires her. These books and stories cannot imagine the sexual subjectivity of fat characters, the most that they can do is imagine that someone could desire them, that they are in fact viable objects of desire. We can do better than this, as a genre.

I assure you, fighting to be perceived as a viable sexual object is a losing battle from the start. Because even if you get there, your sexuality is about someone else, not you. I want us to imagine a more liberatory outcome than this, a hotter, more electric, more intense and beautiful sex life for our fat characters than this. I have been there, have had the kind of sex that comes from being focused on being desirable, and the kind of sex that comes from being met in mutual desire. They are worlds apart, in the slow burn or quick flash of them, inside the flame of them, and in the shaking sweaty glow afterwards.

I care about writing erotica and erotic romance that centers the desires of fat queers because I want to illuminate the possibilities of that kind of sex for fat readers, hold that out in all of its shining sweet succulent promise and say: you can have this too, your desire matters.

I care about situating fat queer characters in the context of queer fat activist community because sexual experiences work differently in a context where we know and celebrate our own hotness and beauty and strength as a community.

I care about writing erotica depicting fat queers claiming their desires because it helps me be more solid in claiming my own.

I care about writing a diversity of fat characters having sex and seeking their desires because we do not need to be a certain kind of fat person in order to be hot and sexual and go after what we want, and it’s really hard to know that when this genre often only makes space for a certain kind of fat body. I especially care about writing stories that center superfat folks and fat disabled folks, because it is incredibly rare to see folks like that represented in this genre at all, and that needs to change.

I care about centering fat characters in my erotica because it is so damn hard to imagine fat sexual subjectivity in the face of fat oppression.

I care about centering the desires of fat characters in my erotica because reading erotica like that changed how I saw myself and my sexual future as a fat person in amazing ways.

Tagged: fat activism, fat pride erotica, sexual subjectivity, Shocking Violet, Show Yourself To Me, writing erotica

Why I Care About Writing Fat Characters In Erotica

As a heads up, this post contains brief descriptions of sex and detailed descriptions of the ways fat oppression intersects with sexuality.

As an adolescent, most of my peers thought I could not possibly be a viable sexual object, because I was fat. They made it clear that no one would ever want to date me, to fuck me, to touch me. Inherent in my teenage sexual experiences was the feeling of having something to prove. Proving that someone could find me desireable, that I could be a viable sexual object. A jut in my chin proclaimed my defiance as I knelt on bathroom floors in clubs for strangers who did desire me, who wanted my mouth on their cocks.

I could not imagine my own desire. The best I could imagine was that I could maybe, if I was lucky, and packaged myself just right, be desired.

Until I found fat activism. Particularly, until I found the zine FaT GiRL. This zine with the tagline for fat dykes and the women who want them was full of images and stories about fat dykes and their own desire. It was erotic content about claiming sexuality and desire for ourselves, as fat queers, and it was a fundamental force in my process of claiming my own desire as a fat person, of imagining myself as a queer fat sexual subject.

The work of the FaT GiRL Collective taught me how critically important it can be to integrate sexuality into fat activism, and how vital and radical erotic content can be, when it is created by marginalized people for ourselves. That understanding has shaped me for most of my adult life, and is central to my practice of writing erotica and erotic romance.

While FaT GiRL helped me see myself as a sexual subject, not just someone who could be desired but who had a desire of my own, it was Zaftig that helped me to take myself seriously as an erotica writer. I first read Zaftig when I was beginning to write erotica, grabbed it in the store like it was a miracle, right when it first came out. Just the fact of it, that there could be erotica that centered fat people that was not fetishizing, that it could be published, made things seem possible. Made it feel like I could write about fat queers like myself and the folks in my communities, and this genre would be big enough to hold me.

And it has been. For the last fifteen years I’ve been writing BDSM erotica that centers fat queers, and getting it published. I’m proud to say that the best of these stories are now collected in the same volume, instead of scattered far and wide in separate anthologies. So now, you can read a whole book of my fat queer kink erotica.

It’s titled Show Yourself To Me, because the stories are all about that, the vulnerability of being yourself, the glorious feeling of being witnessed and celebrated in BDSM play, the intensity of being met in your desire, because you had the guts to put it out there. They are all about openly being a sexual subject, someone who knows your own desire and is brave enough to seek it, even when it’s scary to reach out that way. (Read a sample story here.)

It started with FaT GiRL, for me. With learning that I didn’t have to fight to be seen and valued, sexually, because other people’s desire didn’t have to be at the center. That as a fat queer person, my own desire was possible, and hot, and that there was a fat activist community that would celebrate it. It started with claiming my own desires, knowing that I could. Realizing that naming what I wanted, seeking it, choosing it for myself, was a core part of my own liberation.

My stories come from that place. And from the kind of sex you can have from that place, the ways it can reach inside you and shake you up and make you feel solid and real and witness you in your power. That is what I work to put on the page, over and over. Fat queers who claim their desires. Who are not mired in the shame that fat oppression attempts to force on us every day. Who know what it’s like to be held and witnessed and met in their desires. Who often fuck and love and play with other fat queers.

These days I’m working on an erotic novel, Shocking Violet, a polyamorous BDSM erotic romance centering disabled fat activist queers, attempting to tell a story that shows us going about our lives, seeking our desires, doing our activism, risking connection with each other. I’m excited to be writing a longer form, to be showing fat people and our desires in the details of our lives. I can’t wait to share it with people. (In fact, you can find excerpts here.) I am particularly excited to center queer fat activists in this novel, to situate them in community, to offer that kind of story to fat readers, a story that more closely mirrors my own, that I’ve never seen outside the pages of FaT GiRL.

Fat representation is pretty rare in erotica and romance. We are mostly just not there. (That’s particularly true for fat cis men, who are often completely missing outside of gay bear stories. And even more true for fat trans and genderqueer folks.) When fat folks are present, it‘s not a story about characters who are politicized around fat oppression, or doing fat activism, or part of fat community. It is not about characters who have years of experience unpacking their internalized fat oppression and seeking their desires.

Instead, if the story is not fetishizing our fatness, it often feels deeply mired in internalized fat oppression. It reminds me of my teenage self, jutting out my chin and insisting that I could be desired, even though I was fat. Fat cis women characters (because representation of fat folks of other genders is extremely rare) learn to accept themselves and stop dieting from a lover who is hot for them (and often not fat). These characters struggle to see themselves as desirable. They are only hot because they fit a certain kind of fat beauty standard. They spend most (or all) of the book trying to figure out how not to be fat (and sometimes succeed in becoming thin, or thinner). They rush to cover up their bodies immediately after they have sex, or push to do it only when the lights are off. In short, the best we can often hope for is that a fat cis woman character will let go of enough of her body shame to believe that someone desires her. These books and stories cannot imagine the sexual subjectivity of fat characters, the most that they can do is imagine that someone could desire them, that they are in fact viable objects of desire. We can do better than this, as a genre.

I assure you, fighting to be perceived as a viable sexual object is a losing battle from the start. Because even if you get there, your sexuality is about someone else, not you. I want us to imagine a more liberatory outcome than this, a hotter, more electric, more intense and beautiful sex life for our fat characters than this. I have been there, have had the kind of sex that comes from being focused on being desirable, and the kind of sex that comes from being met in mutual desire. They are worlds apart, in the slow burn or quick flash of them, inside the flame of them, and in the shaking sweaty glow afterwards.

I care about writing erotica and erotic romance that centers the desires of fat queers because I want to illuminate the possibilities of that kind of sex for fat readers, hold that out in all of its shining sweet succulent promise and say: you can have this too, your desire matters.

I care about situating fat queer characters in the context of queer fat activist community because sexual experiences work differently in a context where we know and celebrate our own hotness and beauty and strength as a community.

I care about writing erotica depicting fat queers claiming their desires because it helps me be more solid in claiming my own.

I care about writing a diversity of fat characters having sex and seeking their desires because we do not need to be a certain kind of fat person in order to be hot and sexual and go after what we want, and it’s really hard to know that when this genre often only makes space for a certain kind of fat body. I especially care about writing stories that center superfat folks and fat disabled folks, because it is incredibly rare to see folks like that represented in this genre at all, and that needs to change.

I care about centering fat characters in my erotica because it is so damn hard to imagine fat sexual subjectivity in the face of fat oppression.

I care about centering the desires of fat characters in my erotica because reading erotica like that changed how I saw myself and my sexual future as a fat person in amazing ways.

Tagged: fat activism, fat pride erotica, sexual subjectivity, Shocking Violet, Show Yourself To Me, writing erotica