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.

As an intersectional feminist, I’ll be exploring the meeting point of my various demographics: I am kinky as all hell; I am polyamorous and currently navigating a poly-v-maybe-triad; I am a performer and writer of erotic BDSM art; and I am a trans woman that mostly expresses herself androgynously. Siobhan is a stage name (“Shiv”) and I am Canadian rather than Irish. In the hopefully not-too-distant future, I will be announcing a novel publication, too!

Right now my intention is to follow a publication schedule of roughly one article per week. You can look forward to some of these topics in the near future:

• BDSM dating while trans.
• Labels and their interaction with Queerness in the BDSM community.
• Straw-manning and team labels (think “but x says y” type arguments).
• Dismantling, in detail, inappropriate reactions to a trans person’s transition.
• Descriptive polyamory vs. prescriptive polyamory.
• Alberta’s own “bathroom bill” to which the old stock types are having a heart attack (think the exact opposite of Nevada).

I will also be sharing some of my short erotica stories and linking to my other platforms where I publish some of my visual performance content with my co-star. These posts will be ad-free so as to avoid any persnickety ad purchaser issues just in case, but I’m mostly posting short samples and linking back to less fussy platforms (namely tumblr).

So that’s me, attempting (and failing) to fit my introduction on a single screen!

I hope you all have a lovely week and I look forward to writing with you in the future~ <3

-Shiv

P.S. I’m not a Social Justice Warrior, dammit, I’m a Social Justice Rogue.