Pleasure activism and queerness

[flexibeast]

The main focus of my activist work at the moment involves my attempt to build a community of pleasure activists, mainly through the group Pleasure Activism Australia. One of the motivations behind my founding of the group was to try to start building alliances between sexual communities; i'm pretty much fed up with sexual minorities 'othering' other sexual minorities, so to speak¹: by dissing them, by consciously avoiding associating with them, by implying that they are the real sexual deviants; by representing them as somehow 'inferior'. In a society increasingly run by a small-number of well-organised reactionaries, i feel we don't really have the luxury to engage in such small-minded and divisive behaviour. So it's been encouraging to see a wide variety of people joining PAA: people who identify as lesbian, as queer, as monogamous, as swingers, as heterosexual. One notable absence, however, is the lack of people who identify as gay. What's up with that? Don't gay men have sex anymore? Have beats ceased to exist? Has sex between men become an accepted part of our society? What's going on?

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1. An example of which can be found on the PAA site.

Comments

[porcineflight.livejournal.com]

What a pleasant surprise to see you post.

Sorry I haven't been particularly active on line - computer won't let me reply to posts on list and is particularly frustrating - still 100 in my inbox. I really need to miraculously find money and get a new computer.

Good luck with PAA and hello to S.

Hello!

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Hello! i haven't been using instant messaging much myself lately; i've had a lot of stuff going on in the last couple of weeks, including coming out to my parents as trans . . . . but that sounds like the stuff of a new LJ entry. :-)

Thanks for the wishes; and i'll be certain to pass on your greetings to S. :-)

Re: Hello!

[porcineflight.livejournal.com]

Sounds "interesting". WIll try to get onto messenger now.

[naiyah.livejournal.com]

it's a messy thing. a quick look at groups promoting poly, bdsm, etc. is enough to prove the point. they set their definition of the rules and anyone outside of these boundaries are then criticized and demonized.

and then there's the reactionary response to those actions that can equally as damaging where one has to observe the very semantics of language.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Very well put re. setting of boundaries. But i'm not sure what you mean by your second paragraph; could you elaborate, please?

[naiyah.livejournal.com]

I mean when people react to the initial setting of boundaries and demonizing and just take it too damn far in reverse. thus everything goes over PC and it's just another form of regulation and the slightest misstep and there's accusations of being kinkier/polier/magicker than thou all over the place and it just results in one big mess.

two wrongs don't make a right and all that ;)

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Ah, i see. Yes, i agree with you there too . . . . it reminds me of (amongst other things) the question of who can call themselves 'feminist'. One of my best friends feels that feminists like Jeffries and Dworkin can't call themselves feminist, because they place absolute restrictions on the expression of women's sexuality; whereas my feeling (despite my sympathy with the aforementioned position) is that:

• their intent is to end sexism and women's oppression, and work towards women's liberation - that makes them 'feminist' enough for me;


• arguing over who's really a feminist is probably not as productive as working to build alliances between feminists of different strands whenever there are common causes and/or approaches.