Kinky and Queer

 

Tonight the good folks of Sagacity are hosting their usual Esoteric Exchange and the topic is kinky and queer. It got me to thinking and I decided i would write a post on the subject.

I am queer. I consider myself queer for multiple reasons. The foremost of which, is I’m kinky. Being a submissive masochist slave pet etc. … it means to me being different enough in my sexuality from the average mainstream of western society that I can qualify as queer.

I am also pansexual, in my gender sexual orientation. That's a secondary though, as I consider submissive to be half the equation of my sexual orientation. Its a sort of caveat in that I am attracted to all genders, but not all levels of personality. Specifically I am attracted to and sexually interact with people who have some level of dominance to them, and an appealing personality to them.

That being said, being kinky, or being queer in the traditional sense, are both things that are not easy. Generally because of stigmas and stereotypes of what’s acceptable for sexuality. Having an alternative sexual orientation of any kind usually involves being in one closet or another. The closet sucks. There are people in my closer circles of friends or trusted family that know I'm a “little kinky” but not that I'm pansexual, nor that I’m submissive, and explaining more than they know will somehow hurt their opinion of me or our relationship and that is ridiculous.

My big brother for instance, he is a sweet guy. I love him to bits. But he's a homophobic bigot of idiotic renown and sometimes I’ve wanted to out myself to him just in rebellious irritation. I know that if one day I bring a man home I’m going to really risk my relationship with him though, and so, despite my wondering if he suspects I'm not straight, I let him go on assuming I'm entirely straight. It doesn’t bother me that much, as I generally date women, but I wonder if in fact it’s relationships like this that keep me from taking more effort into getting involved with men more often. On the same token, if I tell him that in my relationships with these “kinky girls” I’m actually the one on the receiving end of things, he would not be so keen to ask me about my last “girlfriend” and in fact be a bit more judgemental.

Frankly I am so sick of this alpha male behaviour box that we beta males get pushed to need to fit into, and more so with the homophobia push still alive and well. I’ll never be that straight alpha male dominant personality, and the moment I realized all that my life got to be a hell of a happier place. I just really wish that all the people close to me that are neither queer nor kinky could accept me for exactly who I am, or at least an intelligible wavelength of it.

That set of stereotype boxes continues in that… people often accept me as being kinky, only once they understand I'm pansexual. I’ve had friends who change their attitudes on my outing myself as kinky, when I then out myself as not heterosexual. they seemed so much more comforted by the fact that I’m not a straight kinky person, because they like the traditional queer culture and community. How does not being straight make it more acceptable to be kinky in peoples minds? I don’t know the answer to this, and it worries me that so many in society can only embrace all of me. The worst part about this stereotype is that I need to use it as a defence mechanism at times. I need to be in the closet as far as kink goes, in regards to my career. I am very out as pansexual however as I work in a lgbt embracing hospitality industry. If I somehow let slip too much about my personal life in a moment of ill judgement, around a judgemental vanilla peer, I’ve caught myself shifting the conversation to queer community subjects and playing it off as part and parcel. It makes me a little ashamed when i think about it, but i suppose that's the danger of the closet in any form. It alienates one from themself to a degree.

Labels are for cans, not people. It shouldn’t matter if I'm heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, bisexual or any sort of sexual, but our society puts so much into it. Just like the kink society puts so much pressure on your label of “slave versus sub” or dominant versus master” or any other sort of label making machine. We should be people first, regardless of our personal life and orientation, and accepted without fear of prejudice. But that’s a dream for another day i suppose.

On the upshot I want to talk about how cool my parents are. My dad is kinky, so he gets it completely and I have had some very nice conversations about the lifestyle with him. It’s really terrific. My mom is vanilla and very straight and has so much trouble adapting to change it makes me worry for her when plot twists happen in films. But bless her heart she's open minded. In the same month i came out to her as kinky and my sister as bisexual. I think she grew half a head of grey hair, just wrapping her head around it, but she accepted and embraced us for being different. The only reason I haven't told her I’m pansexual is fear of messing with her head more without need. I decided a while ago i’d wait till I had a male partner ongoing before I told mom, just so she’d have something tangible to connect with, rather than the concept.

I also want to say for a moment how nice it is that I have both female and male play partners, lovers, dominants, etc to choose from. Being pansexual is a real bonus in kink for widening the field over time. despite all the weird pitfalls of the closet and society on both concepts of kinky and queer, I’d like to think I'm pretty lucky to be exactly who I am. Aren’t you?