For those who haven’t been reading my blog every day (which is totally cool! I know you all have other stuff to do), for the last week I scheduled a (usually short) post every day about something completely unrelated to kink.

Here’s a quick set of links if you want to catch up:

Cis is not a slur
Space!
Bel Dame Apocrypha
Removing vegetable oil stains (yes, some of these posts got pretty random)
The “friend-zone” doesn’t exist
Sunless Sea!

The reason I did that was because I’m incredibly pissed off by the idea that I am nothing more than my kink. It shouldn’t be any sort of surprise to hear that I’m a human fucking being with more than one interest, but apparently there are a lot of idiots in the world. One of my goals when I first started this blog was to help humanize female doms, and honestly I don’t think I’ve done a great job of that one. Saying that I’m more than my kink is all well and good, but I think it’s much more meaningful to show people I’m more than my kink by talking about non-kinky things I’m interested in. And it seems like people responded to spite week, so I’m thinking I’ll add the occasional extra post about something unrelated to kink.

Speaking of which, is there anything in particular you’d like to hear about? No promises any given question will make it into a post, but I’m open to suggestions.

Finally, the last post in spite week. Today, I’m going to talk about one of my favourite albums, Heligoland by Massive Attack.

You might know Massive Attack from one of their better known songs, Teardrop. My most vivid memory of that song is September 11th, 2001. Much Music, the major Canadian music channel, scrapped everything that was planned for that day and instead played all the calming music they had. I was nowhere near the twin towers that day, I had no loved ones in danger, and I’m not going to pretend I was anywhere remotely near as badly affected as others, but it meant something to me that in the midst of that horror people were using everything they had to make things better, even if all they had was some music videos.

To this day, Massive Attack is where I go when I need a fucking break. When I’m angry and I’m in a headspace where I can use that as fuel, I listen to things like Nine Inch Nails, or Drowning Pool or Dope. When I’m exhausted and I’m sick of wanting to set things on fire, I go to Heligoland.

Specifically, I listen to Paradise Circus. If you feel terrible and you need a break from feeling terrible, try that song. Try the whole album. To me the rest of it isn’t quite as amazing as Paradise Circus, but it’s still pretty fucking good. I can’t explain what it is about that song and that album that’s so good, you just have to listen to it.

 

Even more spite week! Sunless Sea is an indie game that I’m really enjoying, so I’m going to chatter about it today.

Sunless Sea is a spin off of Fallen London, which is what you would get if you made an entire game out of weird and morbid flavour text. To quote the main Fallen London page:

One city. A thousand choices. Discover a dark and hilarious Gothic underworld where all your actions have consequences. And did we mention it’s free? Welcome. Delicious friend.

In Fallen London you explore a strange and unsettling version of London which has been stolen and hidden underground by mysterious creatures known as the Masters. It’s kind of steampunk, kink of urban fantasy, and entirely engaging.

Sunless Sea allows you to explore beyond Fallen London’s shores. If you’ve ever wanted to visit the Tomb Colonies, or Polythreme, or the New Khanate, this is the game for you. Even if you’ve never played Fallen London or couldn’t get into it, you might still like Sunless Sea if you enjoy exploration, sea monsters, or the possibility of losing your mind and eating your crew. No seriously, the tag line for the game is “LOSE YOUR MIND. EAT YOUR CREW.” What’s not cool about that?

Sunless Sea is slower paced than other games, and the permadeath default irritates the shit out of me (if you’re not into permadeath, remember to save whenever you make port), but it’s also utterly unlike any mainstream game you’ve played. The price on Steam is not fantastic right now, but put it on your wishlist and give it a shot.

Even more spite week! Today I’m talking about how utterly fucking ridiculous it is to think that any supposed “friend zone” is a real phenomenon.

Some people really seem to believe women have a mental category called “the friend zone”, and once you’ve been sentenced to it, you can never escape and claim the sex you so clearly deserve for going through the motions of being her friend while secretly waiting for her to put out already.

I hate to break it to you all, but there is no such thing as a friend zone. “But Stabbity,” you cry, “what else can it mean when a woman I want to fuck says something like ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship’?”

Here’s a handy translation table:

What she says	What she means
I don’t want to ruin our friendship	I don’t want to fuck you
We’ve been friends for so long, dating you would just be weird	I don’t want to fuck you
You’re such a sweet guy, I’m sure the right woman is out there somewhere	I don’t want to fuck you
You’re like a brother to me	I don’t want to fuck you
I like you too much to go out with you	I don’t want to fuck you

 

Do the translation in your head, and move the fuck on. The so-called “friendzone” is a strictly imaginary place created by the way our society vilifies women for saying no, just like the word “slut” is used to vilify women for saying yes. Yes, that does in fact mean that there is literally no way for women to win. We’re either frigid friend-zoning bitches or dirty sluts.

Guys, it if was safe to just say no, we’d fucking do it. If you want women to be honest about not wanting to date and/or fuck you, make it physically and emotionally safe for us to do so. We only lie about having a boyfriend or an early shift or a parent who’s waiting up for us because you force us to. Disgustingly often, the only way to make some douchebag leave you alone is to tell him you have a boyfriend. Your personal lack of interest doesn’t matter, the other things you need to do don’t matter, the only fucking thing some of these worthless sacks of shit care about is that another man (read, actual person, unlike women) has already laid claim to this life support system for a pussy.

So shut the fuck up about the “friend zone” and stop fucking lying to people who have tits about how you’re so interested in their lives. You’ve the fucking liar, Mr. I’m owed sex because I lied about being her friend, not the person who innocently believed you were actually her friend.

I know, I know, that title totally looks like spam. But spite week continues, and today I’m talking about getting oil stains out of clothing. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why. Also, because I am trying to make it as obvious as possible that I am a human fucking being with normal human being problems like spilling salad dressing on a sweater I like.

So here, have some links about getting oil stains out of clothing. I haven’t actually gotten the stain out of my sweater yet, but I’m hoping those links might help someone else. As well as, you know, reminding people that I have interest that have absolutely fucking nothing whatsoever to do with kink.

More spite week! Today I’m talking about a particularly awesome trilogy by Kameron Hurley called either the God’s War Trilogy or the Bel Dame Apocrypha.

To quote the description of the first book from Amazon.com:

Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference…

On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there’s one thing everybody agrees on–

There’s not a chance in hell of ending it.

Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx’s ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war–but at what price?

The world is about to find out.

And to quote the author:

It really is true that when you have nothing to lose, it’s easier to give yourself permission to do anything. So that’s what I did. Bug magic? Sure. Bisexual heroine? Why not? Matriarchy? Of course! Non-white protagonists? YES! Old-school biblical violence? You betcha! Also… aliens and spaceships and sword fights and organ dealers and boxing, oh my! BECAUSE I’M DYING AND LIFE IS SHIT, PEOPLE, SO WHO THE HELL CARES?

That level of “fuck it, I’m going to write whatever the fuck I want” just does it for me. It’s also pretty fucking awesome that the books are about mostly women, and mostly non-white people at that, who aren’t Christian and who live on another planet in a not remotely North American or Western European climate.

Holy fuck, it’s like it’s possible to write a worthwhile story about a person who isn’t a man! It’s even possible to write a war story that isn’t about men! And about bounty hunters who aren’t men! And magicians who aren’t men!

Kameron also writes essays like as We Have Always Fought, which should make it entirely clear why I think she’s awesome. To quote a small snippet of her essay:

When I sat down with one of my senior professors in Durban, South Africa to talk about my Master’s thesis, he asked me why I wanted to write about women resistance fighters.

“Because women made up twenty percent of the ANC’s militant wing!” I gushed. “Twenty percent! When I found that out I couldn’t believe it. And you know – women have never been part of fighting forces –”

He interrupted me. “Women have always fought,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

Show me someone who says that’s not awesome and important and I’ll show you a lying, woman hating, sack of shit. We have always fought, we have always been worthwhile, we have always been a part of history. Fuck yeah to Kameron Hurley for pointing that out.

Spite week continues! Ranai reminded me how fucking cool Astronomy Picture of the Day is, so let’s talk about that. In one of my old apartments, I used to have a rasterized version of the first colour image of Mars’ surface over my couch. We sent a fucking robot to another planet and it sent back pictures! Of another planet! There is nothing not awesome about that! We’ve also seen pictures of Titan’s (one of Saturn’s moons) surface, as well as Venus‘ surface and Mercury’s.

Okay, so I’m easily excited. There’s still nothing not cool about seeing pictures of the surface of other planets. We might even send human beings to Mars in my lifetime. Tell me what’s not amazing about that. We even put a lander on a comet! Do you know how carefully the European Space Agency must have had to calculate the path the Rosetta craft and Philae lander had to take?! FYI, comets rotate really fucking quickly. And the lander was a long, long way from Earth when it landed. At it’s worst the communication lag was 50 minutes. To a certain extent the lander could be controlled from the ground, but 50 minutes is an enormous chunk of the approximately seven hours it took Philae to land on 67p/C-G.

As a programmer myself, I can assure you that is a triumph of both programming and planning ahead. If something had gone horribly wrong with the landing on the comet, by the time that signal got to Earth and new instructions got back to the lander it could easily have been far too late to fix anything. Considering how many things could have gone horribly wrong at so many stages of the mission, it is seriously fucking amazing that we put a lander on a fucking comet!

In the spirit of spite, I’ve got a whole lot of shit to say that has nothing to do with kink. So let’s talk about one of my many, many pet peeves. The idea that the term “cis” as in cisgender (which describes people whose gender identity matches the gender they were assumed to be at birth) is a slur is completely fucking ridiculous. I will mostly be talking about trans women and cis women here because I’m a cis woman and I never agreed to be used to make trans women feel shitty about themselves.

The term cis was created, as far as I know, to work around the binary created by calling people with trans histories (that is, people whose gender identity does not match the gender they were assumed to be at birth and who may or may not have taken steps to make their bodies better match their identities) trans women and trans men, but calling cis women and cis men just women and just men. The reason calling trans people trans women and cis women just women is a dick move is because it implies that trans women aren’t really women.

So calling people trans women and cis women puts us on a more even playing field. Using those terms doesn’t imply that I’m normal and trans women are weirdos, it makes it clearer that we’re just women with different histories.

Speaking of histories, the idea that all trans women’s childhoods are somehow vastly different from all cis women’s childhoods is complete and utter bullshit. I will bet you any amount of money that my childhood was more similar to a North American cis boy’s than to a girl, trans or not, who was born in India or China or Thailand or Russia or Korea or Brazil or Nigeria or Egypt. Not to mention the fact that although my parents fucked plenty of things up, they never ever told me or my sister that we couldn’t do something because we were girls. We moved firewood, we mowed the lawn, we helped bleed the brakes when the car needed fresh brake fluid, we played in our sandbox, we built huts in the woods, and we helped build a fucking house. Not to mention neither one of us regularly wore skirts when we were kids or worried much about our hair or obsessed over fashion or whatever. If there really is some sort of shared girlhood that makes all cis women similar, I’ve already failed. Not to mention that both my sister and I have ended up in extremely male dominated fields. I’m a programmer and she’s a construction worker. If you have to be girly as a child to be a woman, neither my sister nor I are actual women.

…It’s obvious that’s ridiculous, right?

Another reason it’s fine and dandy to use the word “cis” to describe me and other cis people is that nobody gets hurt because someone found out they were cis. Slurs like tr***y and n***er are slurs because they are used to remind people that they are considered less than, that people can hurt them without facing any consequences, that they will be denied jobs and housing and medical care and nobody will do a goddamn thing about it. Cis, on the other hand, is nothing more than a reminder that shit is easy for me. I won’t be denied a job because someone found out I was cis. I won’t have a date mysteriously stop returning messages if they find out I’m cis. I won’t have anyone ask massively inappropriate questions about my genitals if they find out I’m cis. I won’t be beaten or raped or murdered if someone finds out I’m cis.  In short, nothing bad happens to me if somebody finds out I’m cis or calls me cis.

So go the fuck ahead and use cis, it’s not hurting anyone and might conceivably help trans people by helping break down the supposed binary between trans people and non-trans people.

Happy Valentine’s day everyone! Let’s talk about how much love sucks!

More precisely, let’s talk about how much the common definitions of “love” suck. Usually when somebody says “I love you” they mean “I feel a feeling!” That’s nice, I guess? The problem I have with the “I feel a feeling!” definition is that I’m not fucking psychic. How you feel inside your own heart does not affect my life. How you treat me does. If the way you treat me makes me feel loved, I don’t give two shits what label you choose to put on your feelings for me. If the way you treat me makes me miserable, I don’t give two shits what label you choose to put on your feelings for me.

To me, the word love is only meaningful as a verb (not like that, pervs :)). If you can’t treat me in a way that makes me feel loved, you don’t love me in any meaningful sense. I have had entirely too many people say the words “I love you” and then prove that they didn’t. As an aside, if you’re going to come crying to me in the comments about how you can’t prove a negative, fuck all the way off. If someone consistently acts like they don’t give two shits about my happiness, they have proven that they don’t love me. And if someone supposedly loves me but expresses it the way they like instead of the way that actually makes me feel loved, they don’t love me in any meaningful sense. They might feel a feeling, but they can’t care about me very much if they’re not willing to do the stuff that actually makes me feel loved.

Here’s an example: if you love using pet names but you’re partner doesn’t like being called anything but their actual name, either come up with some kind of compromise you can both live with (maybe a non-traditional endearment or a nickname) or just deal and don’t fucking call them things they don’t like being called. If you insist on calling them sweetie or honey or whatever when you know they don’t like it, you’ve made it entirely clear that you don’t care about their feelings.

Sadly, when people say “I love you” my first thought is “stop flapping your lips and prove it.” It’s easy to say you care about someone, and much, much harder to do the work of actually making my life better. Some people seem to think just saying “I love you” means I magically feel loved and they don’t have to make any real effort to treat me well. That is not even remotely how it works, assholes. If you don’t treat me the way I want to be treated your “I love you” is nothing more than a series of mouth noises.

Speaking of actions, grand romantic gestures aren’t fundamentally loving either. They might be loving if your partner enjoys them and you treat them well even when you’re not trying to sweep them off their feet, but if you casually blow them off and disregard their feelings the vast majority of the time (or any of the time, actually), and then suddenly fly across the country to see them, you don’t fucking love them. Skip the plane tickets and spend some time thinking about whether you actually want to be in a relationship with someone you can’t be bothered to act like you care about. It’s consistency and little things that really matter, not how well you can orchestrate some magical moment that has more to do with your love of spectacle than about the person you supposedly love. There is no cheat code to relationships. If you want one, you have to do the fucking work. And if you don’t want to make your partner’s life better, then what the fuck are you even doing with them in the first place?

Another definition of love I have issues with is the idea that infatuation is love. No, infatuation is an intensely pleasurable altered state that has nothing to do with whether the object of your infatuation is actually romantically compatible with you. You might grow into meaningful love with the person you’re infatuated with, but you might also find out that they’re kind of a jerk once the infatuation wears off and you try to have an actual day to day life with them in it.

Love, aside from being a verb, isn’t meaningful if you’re trying to apply it to someone you barely know. How can it be when you have to know what actually makes someone feel loved to love them in any meaningful sense? Infatuation is nice and all, and makes it easier to get to know someone, but it is absolutely not a substitute for learning about someone and caring about what you learn. Infatuation can make it easier to do the work of caring for someone while you’re in the throes of it, but it’s how you act when the infatuation wears off that really counts. Do you still treat your partner well when you’re working extra hours to get a project done? Do you take them to the movie they’ve been looking forward to for months, the one that isn’t really your thing, even after you stop getting butterflies in your tummy every time you see them? Do you make time for them even when the laundry is piling up and you have to spend half your weekend running errands? If you don’t, then don’t fucking kid yourself that you love them.

If you “love” someone, love them. Treat them like they matter to you. Do things that make them happy. Make them a priority in your life. Love is great and all, but don’t kid yourself that you love someone when you really don’t give a shit.

This may come as a terrible shock to some of you, but kinky people ARE STILL PEOPLE. We have interests that have nothing to do with our kinks. We have opinions that have nothing to do with our kinks. We have hobbies that have nothing to do with our kinks. We interact with lots of people in ways that have nothing to do with our kinks (pipe down, Lord Captain Sir Domly Dom. You are as polite as everyone else when the cops pull you over).

It just makes me want to throw things when people act like all I am is my kinks. I’m a human fucking being, assholes. I am more than my kinks. I AM MORE THAN MY KINKS. Assuming that everything I have to say, even on this blog, is related to my personal kinks or to the fact that I’m kinky is dehumanizing bullshit. You are literally treating me like I am less than fully human if you act like I have one and only one interest, that I could never possibly have an interest in or something to say about anything that isn’t directly related to kink. Only badly written characters are that one dimensional, literally all actual humans care about more than one thing in their lives. Even the most dedicated activist sometimes just goes for lunch with her sister to catch up on her life. Even the most driven attorney sometimes listens to a comedian’s podcast. Even the most obsessive nerd takes a break from the machine learning code they’re working on and plays a game with a friend. So why the fuck can’t I have more than one interest? Why the fuck don’t I get to be a person too?

It’s not as if I’ve never talked about anything unrelated to kink on this blog. I’ve yelled about blackface, about racist violence, about violent misogyny, about not as violent misogyny, about how ridiculous it is to assume women “aren’t visual” when mainstream porn might as well have been designed specifically to turn us off, about how women should have the right to have sex for money if they damned well want to, about why people who think there should be a straight pride parade are ignorant douchebags, about how much I hate being told that I need to forgive, about people being bad at polyamory in multiple ways, and about how utterly pathetic concern trolls are. I’ve also talked about games, web comics, and how much I miss my kitty. Sure, that’s a small subset of all my posts, but it’s obviously not unusual for me to talk about things other than kink.

So again, why the fuck can’t I have more than one interest? Why the fuck don’t I get to be a person too? How come non-kinky people get to have interests that have nothing to do with the way they like to have sex but I’m treated like a one-dimensional kink bot?

In case you’re still not getting it, here are some more examples. I like wine. I’m a hobbyist wine nerd – I like going to wine tastings and I get excited about fancy multi-course dinners with wine pairings. What the everloving fuck does my interest in wine have to do with me being dominant? What does my love of dry rieslings have to do with me being a sadist? What does my general dislike of lighter reds have to do with my knife kink?

Oh that’s right, NOTHING. Because I’m a human fucking being with more than one interest.

I also like food (I’m sure that’s shocking to hear from someone who likes wine). I like trying new restaurants, I like finding ideas online, I like enabling my husband when he has ideas about delicious things we could make if we got some new equipment, and I just like food a whole lot. What the fuck does my love of sushi have to do with me being dominant? What the fuck does the unreasonable amount of smoked salmon I eat (the smoker was so, so worth it) have to do with me being kinky?

Oh that’s right, NOTHING. Because I’m a human fucking being with more than one interest.

I also like fantasy novels. I love reading about what it would be like if fairies really existed or if magic was actually a thing. I love reading about worlds and about people who are nothing like anything I encounter in my daily life. I love reading about people saving the world, or saving their city, or just saving themselves. What the fuck does any of that have to do with my kinks or my d/s orientation?

Oh that’s right, NOTHING. Because I’m a human fucking being with more than one interest.

Are you all seeing the theme here? Acting like I only have one interest is treating me like I am less than human. If you’re going to do that, fuck all the way off and take your ridiculous dehumanizing bullshit with you.