September 29: Of course it wasn't one of us…

A local event space recently posted a write-up about something that happened at one of their parties.

Someone complained that they'd had sex with a trans person without knowing.

The owners, who are cis, put the blame squarely on the trans person.

No questions asked.

Then they spent hundreds of comments defending that position without once pausing on the thing every sex-positive space claims to believe:

You are responsible for your own sexual safety and negotiation.

Not the other person.

Not the venue.

You.

If something matters to you before you get naked with someone, that's a conversation you get to start.

Skipping it and then blaming a partner isn't a safety issue.

It's transphobia wearing a safety costume, and it always lands hardest on the people who already have the least protection in those spaces.

After Bliss Boogie, I watched a smaller version of the same thing play out.

Several people told me about someone behaving badly.

Fair enough, that happens at every event I've ever run or attended.

But almost every time, the story came with a label attached.

Nonmono folks said the person was one of the kinky people.

Kinky folks said they were a tantra person.

And so on down the line.

Because of course nobody from our group would act like that.

Every one of those people knows full well that assholes come in every flavor.

They've met them.

Some have probably dated them.

But in the moment, it felt safer to hand the bad behavior off to somebody else's community.

That's how othering works.

When we don't know a person or a group well, we fill in the blanks with the worst traits of humanity.

It's comfortable.

It lets us off the hook.

You see it all over dating conversations online, too.

Every woman gets reduced to the worst date some guy ever had.

Every man gets reduced to the worst message someone ever received.

An entire gender, flattened into a bad Tuesday night.

No real lesson today.

I'm just sharing some thoughts, and I'd love to hear yours.

If you've caught yourself writing off a whole group of people (women, men, poly folks, kinksters, "people on the apps") because of a few rough experiences, that could be worth untangling.

Those walls often cost more than they protect.

Book a free 15-minute Big Ask consultation and let's look at what's underneath yours:
https://my.curiouser.life/15-minutes-big-ask

--
Rev Heather, aka Nookie, LUQhttps://my.curiouser.life

+1-855-712-5433 (toll-free)

P.S. Have you ever been on the receiving end of othering in a community you belong to? Or caught yourself doing it?

Hit reply and tell me. I want to hear it.