On the power of naming a thing (first part)
I was listening to a new podcast the other day – CBC’s Spark, hosted by Nora Young – and this particular episode featured a long interview with Ethan Zuckerman, talking about his ideas around xenophiles and bridge figures. For Zuckerman, who spent many years living, studying and working in Ghana as a youth, xenophiles can be defined as “…people who are fascinated by the whole world, by things other than their ordinary experience.” He then talks about bridge figures, those people who not only walk in two radically different cultures, but who are able to form a bridge of sorts, between those cultures, to hopefully develop a sort of understanding and connection between them.
Listening to this podcast, I started thinking about my life over the past few years, how much has changed in me. What I’ve discovered about myself, the dark nooks and red crannies of my mind and body. I thought about how important and essential and just damned RIGHT this all is for me – the playing with power, the focusing of pain for pleasure, of pleasure for pain, getting lost in the beauty of the intricacy of rope, or the simplicity of a cane strike – and then I look at the people around me who share the same focus, the same drives that I do. I realize how much I’ve separated, in a way, from the culture that preceded this one for me – of all things, theatre. Art. I can draw connections between them, for myself, see how much attention I pay to the aesthetics of certain choices, how focused I become on capturing images, how delightful I find sending my partner home with my hand on her skin in broken vessels. How much the kind of control I wielded, as a stage manager, translates SO easily into the control enthusiasm that plays such a major role in my life, my love, my living. How much being that quiet figure of solidity in the background of a rehearsal hall affects the way I take control from someone, when offered to me, today, in a moment’s glance.
Then I thought about WHY I separated from that culture. Or, more specifically, what drove – or pulled – me into the culture I find myself embroiled in now, both in my immediate vicinity, and off into the world. Yes, the internet of course plays a major role. I can connect with people I’d not usually get a chance to meet in person, with the hopes that someday such a meeting will happen. My attendance at international conferences such as Shibaricon has not only made those connections happen, in real life, but allowed them to continue past those conferences, bringing the people I meet, the people in this new tribe of mine, to where I am, and through them to connect with even more people of like minds. I thought about starting this website, and – although there are gaps in the posting, like for instance between the last one, and this one – how focused and attentive I have been to it, how it makes me want to write and connect and share more than any other similar thing I’ve tried. This is a focus, no question. This is a major one.
The idea of the bridge figure pulls me. But it’s not a new idea – and it’s not exactly a cultural one, either. Connecting subcultures more than anything else.It happens a lot now, as it is. I have those conversations, between varying facets of my life. I read somewhere once about the idea that if you’re a kinky person, the best way to date is to go to where the kinky people are, find the person you’re attracted to, and date them. That’s just never worked for me. I find the people in the world who I’m attracted do, hopefully get to date them, and then let them know how lucky they are, ‘cos look how kinky I am! Those conversations, the out-kink to not-out-kink, work towards bridging that gap, making those connections, and sometimes forming an understanding between two radically (or sometimes not so radically) different mindsets.
It also made me think about those people, in the kink community, who make a point of blogging constantly, and with thought, and clarity, and insight. Who are working, whether they’re aware of it or not, to bring all forms of BDSM/kink out of the unsavoury places we’ve been relegated to, and more into a space of conversation and (and this is key) transparency. It’s hard for anyone to keep imagining all sorts of deep dark horrible things happening in those dungeons they’ve heard of when we’re laying it all out, from both sides of the power exchange. It’s hard to write us all off as miscreant deviants (although most PoK I know would probably wear the title with pride) when we’re not only writing about what it is that we do, but questioning what it is that we do. We’re not just accepting it as a fait accompli – we’re having discussions, and dialogue over notions of consent, of abuse, of ethics and deceit. We’re becoming more and more of a self-policing community because we know what sort of behaviour we’re willing to accept as ours, and what sort we’re absolutely not. Everyone has their own hard and soft limits, and, as they say, Your Kink Is Not My Kink. But one thing that we do (and the discussion boards on FetLife can attest to this, if nothing else), one thing that we LOVE to do… is talk about Kink.
For the longest time, I’ve been thinking about this, and what it means to have the conversations I have, and keep the website I do, and engage in the kind of wonderful, heart-wrenching, happymaking, joyous exchanges with the people in my life, to whom I give so much and who give me so much more in return. I’ve been thinking about transparency, and the remarkable degree of privilege I enjoy in my life. I’ve been thinking of the power behind naming a thing, especially in an environment like this one where a name, once said, is always present.
More, as always, to come.
