=AtG=
Hello interwebs,
Brief preamble: This is a short piece of erotica featuring one of my favourite kinks written by yours truly!
Probably NSFW. Ads disabled even though there’s no sexy images (can’t be too careful with puritans).
Stay hot & bothered lovelies,
-Shiv
=AtG=
Hello interwebs!
Over in the Glorious Commune of Canuckistan, there’s a bit of a shuffle going on around one of our political parties–actually, two of our political parties. They share the same name and colour, but they’re different, I promise you.
That would be the New Democratic Party (of Canada) and the New Democratic Party (of Alberta). For anyone not in the know, Alberta is a province and its government would be vaguely comparable to a State-level government, but other than sharing a name and flag and colour, the Albertan NDP are not by any means accountable to the Canadian NDP. They are separate elections covering different levels of government, and they have platforms that highlight their disagreements. Despite the differences between the two parties, they are both stereotyped to being the “Socialist” party of Canada. As a Socialist, I disagree, but right now that’s not important.
In the past provincial election, the Albertan NDP won a crushing majority in the Legislature and busted a 44 year winning streak from the “Progressive” Conservatives (bearing in mind that the Albertan PCs were still further to the political left than American Democrats). In the last federal election, the Canadian NDP were reduced to third party status down from official opposition, and now the Canadian NDP are fighting over the carcass of their unsuccessful campaign. There’s a leadership election calling for its current leader, Mulcair, to step down–but there’s also a bit of a thrash occurring over something called the “Leap Manifesto.”
Why yes, intelligent commentators, I agree: Be immediately suspicious of anything called a “manifesto.” In short, it’s an announcement of to-be-debated policy points, some of which are left-wing economic issues and some of which are environmentalist (i.e. anti-heavy industry [oilsand]) issues. An intelligent person might assess the manifesto point by point rather than reflexively convulsing at the thought of objection to building more pipelines through First Nation land but whatever, you do you, Notley. You are representing the Texas of Canada, after all.
Anyway, I don’t know why the fuck the media is having a heyday over this. Two levels of government disagree on policy? Oh my goodness! Say it ain’t so! A shattered third-party political group thinks it needs to rebrand following its devastating losses? Fucking radical!
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what the Canadian NDP decide what their platform is going to be for the next election, as long as they figure it out before it starts. I see no reason why the Albertan NDP can’t look at federal policy and disagree. I mean, Alberta has a long history of bitching about its treatment by Eastern Canada (sometimes fairly, other times not so much), regardless of which federal party held power, why would that change simply because we voted in a new government? The new federal government still budgeted under the assumption that Alberta would be the rest of Canada’s sugardaddy too.
I for one appreciate that the two parties are arguing openly. It speaks to me of a much healthier democracy that the fiefdom Our Glorious Infallible Overlord former Prime Minister Stephen Harper ran. At least this way we can actually assess what our delegates are doing for us.
Stay sexy & informed lovelies,
-Shiv
Queer Pop Mafia put up a kickstarter for The Gay Agenda:
THE FINAL CREATION
An elegant, thoughtful, and practical personal planner spanning a full calendar year; 52 weeks minimum, maybe more. In addition to standard features, the distinguishing aspect with this annual agenda is a beautiful presentation of people, events, and ideas that we find appropriate for the first-ever, official Gay Agenda.
Important ideas, vocabulary, and history will be highlighted, figures we admire and respect will be introduced, and relevant issues will be mapped out in ways that motivate a critical mass towards a society with equal rights for all. Nothing less. And perhaps a whole lot more.
As you can imagine, publishing is very expensive. The vast majority of our fundraising goal is dedicated to the production, printing, binding, and distribution of The Gay Agenda.
26 original ink drawings of LGBTQ figures and allies from present and past, each accompanied with a biographical narrative. We call these the “People pages.” Here is an example…
Hopefully it doesn’t drown out trans voices, as gay-centric projects tend to do. I suggested Janet Mock. Consider the likes of Sandy Stone or Laverne Cox! Then it might be accused of being a trans agenda. A transgenda, if you will.
(Why yes I did just shamelessly recycle a pun I made elsewhere on FtB)
-Shiv
A Baldur’s Gate expansion features a side character with no real significance to the plot, who has an optional bit of dialogue in which they reveal the origin of their name–they constructed it out of necessity because they transitioned. GamerGate responds predictably, so predictably you could punch out a bigot bingo card:
I’m sure you’re emotionally devastated right now.
Content Notice — transphobia, misogyny, hate speech, nasty slurs, NotAllMen, etc. etc.
Our first vacuous timewasters meaningful contributors are two Steam user reviews–as far as I know, these can only be accessed if you also have Steam. They are quothed thusly:
Look, I have no problems with LGBTQ. None.
But please keep your ideology out of a classic game. Don’t force us to buy into controversial topics. We are trying to escape that crap.
Look, guys, he can’t be a bigot. HE SAID HE WASN’T A BIGOT, ERGO PROPTER HOC. Or something like that. That’s how logic works, right?
=AtG=
Hello interwebs,
It shouldn’t be surprising, being the imperfect person that I am, that I had no idea Transgender Day of Visibility was even thing. It was apparently celebrated on March 31st as a response to the fact that the only other established “trans day” thing was the Trans Day of Remembrance, in which it was observed that the rate at which trans folk are murdered is alarmingly high–especially if they were black and/or sex workers.
I still have no idea how to feel about TDOV. On the one hand, it’s totally rad to spend the day signal boosting your favourite artists, creators, authors, etc. who happen to be trans. On the other, increased visibility does not always translate into securing rights or changing societal attitudes. After all, of the murders committed in the USA that were classified as hate crimes against Gender & Sexual Diverse victims in 2013, 72% of the victims were trans (67% black trans women). As far as I know, that trend has not broken. The numbers are low, if anything, if for no other reason than some trans victims being reported by ignorant media as cross dressing cis folk and therefore being missed in the count for trans stats.
So, I mean, yeah–it’d be nice if I could get some signal boosting when I get my novel published. But I’m honestly a bit more concerned about fundamental things like, you know, not being arrested for going to the washroom. I’m by no means opposed to a day of visibility, but it seems a bit silly, much in the same way that cis gays in America were jumping for joy that they could marry while murder trials are still unironically invoking “trans panic” to get the defendant off hate crime & first degree murder charges.
Let’s celebrate the progress that’s been made, but let’s also do so in a way that acknowledges how much more work still has to be done.
Stay safe & stay sexy lovelies.
-Shiv
=AtG=
Hello lovelies, Shiv here again. I hope you all had a lovely week, what with April Fool’s and something about… Trans Visibility? I’ll write on that later. Ideally you all had a tolerable Easter, too. One can dream. My breakup went from “bad” to “I can’t even,” so I apologize if I’m already slipping on my publication schedule!
Today’s topic is an introduction to BDSM, and what I think needs to be in place for the practice to be considered ethical.
What is BDSM?
BDSM is an initialism that combines Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, and Sadomasochism (or Sadism & Masochism) into an umbrella, catch-all term for “what kinksters do.”
I start this way only so that you know what the initialism literally means, but my actual definition is as follows:
“A series of practices which involve expressing and exploring interests that may be seen as unconventional through a system of rigorous ethics which conscientiously acknowledges and mitigates physical and emotional risks.”
=AtG=
Hi lovelies, Shiv here again. I’ll start with a brief aside: thanks for the supportive messages regarding my last post! Y’all barely know me and you’re offering me those nice messages. It was small, but meant a lot. :)
Without further ado:
Transition Reactions is my series of essays covering the way people respond to my gender transition. It will generally speak exclusively of my experiences as a trans woman but will also inevitably intersect with my various other axes of life. This is not a data intensive series (those will come later) and mostly only speaks to my particular experience.
Content Notice — cissexism
One of the more bewildering reactions I’ve had when attempting to educate people on transgender specific terminology is anger: Why do you need all these extra words? I would think the answer is self evident–“because the existing terminology is not adequate”–but that’s not the question that’s really being asked. What they’re actually saying is, why don’t you just accept the way I’m treating you? Why do you have to be offended by everything? Why should I have to change to accommodate you?
I was invited to attend an erotic massage class as a masseuse. The class was marketed as being “for women,” but the demo was performed on an AFAB cis woman. Here we were learning to manipulate AFAB genitalia–something I do not have–and while I was enjoying the material itself very thoroughly, I couldn’t help but sink on the inside. “Women do this, women do that” coupled with a clitoris, vulva and vagina. What of the women who don’t do that, or that, because they weren’t AFAB?
The instructor, who apparently valued my opinion, asked me for feedback and I told them honestly: I loved learning the material, (I’m sure my AFAB partners will too), but it was categorically excluding me because I do not have AFAB genitals. I told them I couldn’t attend their next class for men because I wouldn’t be able to stomach having them point at a penis and testes and go “men do this men do that.” It was clearly designed to be taught to cisgender people for whom genitals and gender are interchangeable. It was, albeit unintentionally, gender essentialist.
Naturally, the instructor accused me of tilting at windmills. Not their words, but that was the crux of their response. [Read more…]
So I introduced myself as being in a poly-v-kinda-triad in my first post. Now I’ve got good news and bad news.
Bad news first: I guess I’m single now. They both dumped me.
But I guess the silver lining is that I suddenly have a lot more time for blogging! And poly is more of an orientation so it’s not like I can’t write about it just because I’m flying solo.
Anyway, I spent most of last week planning material so there will be stuff coming out soon.
See you again in a few days lovelies, I hope you’re all doing well.
-Shiv, slightly nauseous, definitely broken hearted.
Hello interwebs!
I just finished my tour of the FreeThoughtBlogs lair tower, and boy, my cage office has a fantastic new car smell!
My name’s Siobhan, and this is my introductory post for what will become my blog about the intersection between atheist-kinky-poly-sexworker-trans! We’ll call it “Against the Grain” for now. For those not in the know: New Frontiers is a shared blog and I will not be the only author on this page. “Against the Grain” is simply the working title for my specific project. My posts on this blog will be tagged with AtG to mark them separately from the other participants.
You’ll notice one of the major differences between me and some of the regulars you’re used to at FreeThoughtBlogs: I’m not a former Christian–I had/have much more exposure to New Age woo.
Don’t get me wrong, the Abrahamic religions are mouthy motherfuckers and I’ll get the occasional potshot in too, BUT there’s no shortage of atheists doing that in detail. My specialty within skepticism is going to be exploring woo and the sub-cultures that arise around it, from someone who was and is immersed in it. Minority religions such as paganism/wicca are also occasional subjects of my analysis.