The Mimah Club

Polish Red Borscht Soup / Wigilijny Barszcz Czerwony (Vegan)

( from @bubblegumgothglados )

Sure. This post was about a few different things, not one issue in particular, but they're all relative. (Also, this isn't an exhaustive post! There's many issues I wasn't able to, or I'm not equipped to, touch on.)

I included citations that I would recommend reading; I did my best to find ones that didn't require institutional log-ins. I can't promise I'll be the best at explaining - this is mostly just me dumping a bunch of info on you rather than an essay - but I hope this helps? :)

How do (trans)misogyny, racism, ableism, etc., intersect with kink?

Maybe bad phrasing on my part. What I meant here is: how do these beliefs, upheld by white supremacy for centuries, inform how you interact with your kink? We are all raised in a white supremacist society due to how pervasive it is; it shaped the world we were born into, and continues shaping it as we live.

From the simple: how do you define "woman"? Do you view penetration as the only form of sex? On your own blog, are the only bodies being celebrated in kink, white and abled?

To how you interact with your kink, being conscious of this is important. I'll use mine as an example: breeding + pregnancy. For ages, society deemed the purpose of women to get pregnant, give birth, rinse and repeat – it was inevitable. It is still considered inevitable and this ideal is attempted to be upheld by legislation meant to bar access to reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming care, and by the criminalization of abortions. It is how politics enact gendered violence. Any deviation from this (i.e, the existence of WOC, intersex, gay, and trans women, and the reclamation of our bodily autonomy) threatens this white supremacist standard.

Think of surrogacy, which is complicated by the exploitation of impoverished women, who are often women of color (1, 2). Think of the enslaved Black women, forced to suffer immense sexual violence, their reproductive health commodified by the slave-owners that sought to use their bodies to garner wealth; all the while, these same women were forced to care for the slave-owner's own white children (3, 4). Even the forceful sterilization of women of color and disabled women is a part of this; their reproductive autonomy is taken away to uphold white supremacy, one way or another. (Citation 3 is a link to an introduction to an issue; I would recommend reading the articles mentioned in this introduction for more in-depth information.)

Can you interact with breeding or pregnancy fetish content without being aware of how breeding and pregnancy (and even lactation, as in the case of wet nurses) have been used to abuse power? Of enacting control unto the powerless?

It's exactly what @spiderbitesandvampirevenom pointed out:

No, you can't. Not ethically. If you don't recognize how systems of power weaponized sexuality, then you're at risk of perpetuating these very same systems of power in kink circles. And if you're not conscious of this, you're at risk of inviting people who hold the belief that these systems of power are good and necessary, into the community. Thus, making them unsafe for the marginalized.

How does the lack of sex positivity and neutrality correlate with disenfranchisement of communities?

There's a few things here. In the US (+ the global west in general), sexuality is something that's confined to a small box. Even mainstream sexuality (think Playboy) is geared towards the cishet white man's standard.

That's basic knowledge, right? But it also relates to how our society navigates talks of reproductive rights and autonomy, of access to gender-affirming care and prophylactics, of sex education for adolescents and adults alike.

And it especially can be related to capitalism - which is an entire social order, and labeling it as "just" economics would be grossly incorrect.

A bourgeois white family will have no trouble getting birth control, or an abortion, for their own, while funding political groups and voting for legislation to criminalize reproductive healthcare... to criminalize institutions such as Planned Parenthood, which I'll use as an example, here.

PP, which makes birth control, prophylactics, abortions, and gender-affirming care affordable for the general public. What happens to the marginalized who can't fall back on wealth, when they're in need of an abortion, or HRT, or birth control, and the US still has privatized insurance and healthcare? All of these are life-saving care, but they divert from the traditional social order.

I've mentioned how sexuality has been weaponized by white supremacist institutions in my last point, but I want to bring that back around because of how pervasive and relevant it is. Bourgeois white sexuality is celebrated. It is dubbed as the norm. We are expected to uphold the norm. People of color are exploited by these systems of power, which includes using their sexuality as a means of persecuting them, anywhere from what I previously mentioned, to what @spiderbitesandvampirevenom mentioned.

How does kink, sex positivity, and sex neutrality intersect with this?

They allow us to discuss "taboo" topics. It opens the doors for us to educate ourselves AND others on sexuality. Sexuality is inherently neutral, as are genitals. Neither are perverse, or inherently evil, or inherently capable of enacting violence or exerting control.

Instead, the systems of power pathologize sexuality as something violent and dangerous, all the while ignoring how it has weaponized sexuality and reproductive autonomy to exert control over disenfranchised communities for centuries.

Being able to platform sex neutrality? To talk about our kinks and be protected for it by race, gender, and/or sexuality? It's a privilege we need to be conscious of. One we need to make the conscious effort to fight against.

If you've never found yourself as the victim of a cult, or sexual assault, or abuse, the only thing separating you from people who have been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse is circumstance. That's it. Sheer luck. Luck over what family you were born into. Luck over who you were surrounded by when you were emotionally compromised or in any way vulnerable. Ect.

You are not better than people who have been victimized. They didn't do anything wrong to ask to be victimized. Anyone can be victimized by these situations given the perfect storm of circumstances. You are not better than people who have been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse.

You need to understand that if you are lucky enough to have never been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse, it's very little to do with how smart or strong you are or you doing all the "right" things. Someone can be smart and strong and do all the right things and still find themselves a victim given the perfect storm of bad circumstances.

Spiny mushroom comb-footed spider, Phoroncidia sp., Theridiidae

Photographed in Malaysia by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

we paid off the $3,138 amount to not get evicted. then we were told it was actually $3,200, because of late fees. the total we owed before we paid off was $4,204. so, as of the ledger we'd requested (posted under the readmore), we still owe $1,066 as of june 1st. it's now the 9th so we have an additional $10 late fee. our lease is changing to a month to month, and as is common in this city, rent increases with every renewal to the maximum allowed percentage, so our new monthly rent is going to be $1,097.

still on the sisyphean treadmill of owed rent, while being overwhelmed with other bills, and still jobless. any help to keep us from being immediately thrust back into the eviction danger zone again would be a life saver.

ppal | vm | ca | ko-fi

みそラーメン

チャーシュー追加

Harbinger of Spring

Quero-quero/Southern Lapwing