Plugging the holes in our defenses
you may be wondering about the question in the title of this post and why I am putting a Manning The Barricades post up when there is no major attack on the community, at the moment. The first question will be answered in the next section of the post. The second is because there is a little lull in the struggle for our rights at the moment (at least in the developed world) and it is at such times that we must take a little look at ourselves, put our own houses in order and be prepared for the next attack and hopefully, for that distant day when we go on the offensive and get our rights enshrined in law. That is why I am making this post now.
"Are we mentally ill?"
A strange question, you may think but note the quotation marks. This is a quote from a long term gay rights campaigner from the UK. Back in the late 1950s, when the UK courts had turned away from automatically handing out punitive sentences for those found guilty of committing homosexual acts and started offering "therapeutic" courses, that varied from counseling right through to inappropriate prescription drug courses, instead of the usual prison sentence. "Are we mentally ill?" was a question that gay rights campaigners, of that time, often asked themselves. Time has provided the answer that "No they are not", homosexuality is just normal for some people. But we are at about the same point in the fight for our rights as the gay community was back in the late 1950s and the, so called, experts very often take the easy rout and say that we like giving or receiving pain, with other consenting adults, because we are Ga Ga.I have recently read another answer to a dear Aunty Sex advice letter, where DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD, tells me that myself and other spankees like me indulge in our activities because,
"These people have often had a difficult childhood, lack self-esteem and feel unworthy. In later life they want to be beaten, smacked, humiliated, bound, urinated or defecated on, treated as an animal or child."
Well I didn't have a difficult childhood, I don't lack self-esteem and I don't feel unworthy. Obviously there are those in the community who did have difficult childhoods etc but if you look at any group, football (soccer) fans for example, you will find some who have the backgrounds that the, so called, expert above defined. Are they football fans because they had difficult childhoods, lack self-esteem and feel unworthy or do they just enjoy watching football?
A possible answer to this problem - This leaves me feeling guilty because I neither have the time and more importantly, the organizational skills to do this myself. But if there is someone out there that has both of these resources, perhaps they might be interested in forming an internet group, which I would happily join, for people who had normal childhoods and do not suffer from the usual blamed "causes" of our way of life, who can email and comment on mass to the people who are using these easy excuses, and point out the idiocy of their reasoning.
A possible answer to this problem - This leaves me feeling guilty because I neither have the time and more importantly, the organizational skills to do this myself. But if there is someone out there that has both of these resources, perhaps they might be interested in forming an internet group, which I would happily join, for people who had normal childhoods and do not suffer from the usual blamed "causes" of our way of life, who can email and comment on mass to the people who are using these easy excuses, and point out the idiocy of their reasoning.
Presenting a unified defense
As Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Well IMHO the laughter is dying away and the fight is on. It was early in my career and I had nothing to do with anything on an organizational level but I have eyes and ears and pride myself on having the ability to look, listen and learn, when I worked for an environmental agency (paid employee, not a volunteer). What I did observe is that the different groups, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, conservationist groups, etc very often had different takes on the same issues but wherever possible, discussions and disagreements between the groups happened in house, so that to the outsiders a unified face could be presented. I was just a foot soldier in that fight and I am just a foot soldier in the fight for kinksters rights but I think that, that experience taught me that we foot soldiers would rather have the arguments and discussions happening in house so that we can face the vanillas on a unified front. This does not mean that one group should just say and every one else has to follow, issues have to be hammered out and mutual agreements reached. This has to happen between ourselves though, to the rest of the world we have to show our unity.Elephant(s) in the room
And there are Elephants in the room. We are not perfect and in our world, as in any group of the world, there are bad guys hiding away and bad practices going on. We are asking the vanillas to change the status quo, we have no right to do this if we are not prepared to change our status quo, in an effort to eject the bad guys from our world. My own little effort is directed at the scum F/m companies who do not pay their subs/bottoms, as you can read about in these posts Sexism in F/m Video Production - A Damn Good Rant and F/m producers, naming and shaming two. And if necessary I will be annoying and irritating to those involved with these companies, better that they get peeved with me than at the rant rag headlines, that are inevitable, if we cannot correct this stupidity ourselves. This is not the only issue though, there are others and if we cannot do something to regulate injustices in our own world, then that makes the bad vanillas right and we are just a bunch of unthinking, unfeeling perverts who should be persecuted by law. I think that we are better than that though, it is time to stop living with the bad sides of the kink world, just because that is the way that it has worked in the past, staying conveniently ignorant and putting up with things is no longer good enough, we have to be prepared to change our world, if we expect the vanillas to change theirs to accommodate us. The spread of information technology has made the old policy of run and hide difficult to the point of impossible, now we have to be prepared to stand up and fight for our rights, lets make sure that we are fighting for something worthwhile and not just to provide a hiding place for the undesirable elements of the world. We can show all the reasonable arguments in the world why we should be accepted by society but not dealing with our own problems is leaving the back door of the castle open and sooner or later the bad press will find their way in and decimate us, we have to deal with these problems ourselves, before outsiders use them against us.How powerful are we?
Well we definitely have numbers, far more than I would have suspected 15 years ago, before the age of the internet gave us a means to communicate with each other on mass. I think that some of the higher estimates of 20%-25% of the population are a bit optimistic but 10%-15% is far from unimaginable. We are a minority but a sizable minority, large enough to turn some important heads. The problem is that most of us, for whatever reason, bias in the work place, fears over child custody issues and other reasons, would find it hard to show our faces publicly. But there are ways that we can still be heard as a group without all of us having to show our faces, consumer strikes, soliciting the interest of politicians who would like to secure 10%-15% of the vote, other ideas welcome. Even if you can't show yourself that does not make you powerless and to those who do protest and address the populous on our behalf, please be aware that your efforts are more than just appreciated.Conclusion
Sooner or later there will be a low news period and the poorer quality press and media will look in our direction again or politicians will look for easy popularity by persecuting us, expecting to find easy victims. Lets use this time to sort ourselves out, so that when they come, we are ready to fight back.
Prefectdt
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