dear silly people,

i am a person. a complete human being. i am not a collection of body parts. i am not defined by my sex, nor by my gender. i am not like any other transgendered person, just because we both happen to be transgendered, any more than a cisgendered person is like any other cisgendered person, just because they are both cisgendered. i am unique - just like everyone else.

i do not need you to tell me that you don't have a problem with my being transgendered. do you go around telling cisgendered people that you don't have a problem with that? do you think i need your approval? do you think you are the arbiter of what it is ok for me to be?

i will assume that you do not have a problem with me being me unless you give me reason to think otherwise. and if you do, i really do not give a fuck.

thank you, that is all.

a friend told me a while back that i was 'seen as too nice'. i didn't get it at the time. how can you be 'too nice'? but something happened recently that brought it all home for me. being too nice, apparently, is walking around with a big 'use me - and not in the good way' sign tattooed on your back.

if you let people take advantage of you, some of them will. not all of them, thankfully, there are good, kind, generous, noble people out there who will not take advantage of you, but there are, sadly, way too many of the other kind, too.

i knew this, of course. you don't get to my age without learning that there are selfish, manipulative people out there. but somehow, despite the years and the experience, i still don't expect it in people i meet. i'm not sure that i want to become the sort of person who expects it, who trusts no-one and is suspicious of everyone, or worse, the kind who believes in taking advantage of others 'before they take advantage of you'.

i am, however, getting rather tired of being taken advantage of, and finally, after all these years, i think i've learned a basic lesson that i really should have learned a long time ago, which is that if they do it once, they'll do it again if you let them. so i've resolved on a 'one strike and you're out' policy.

fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice ... nah, i ain't stickin' around for that to happen any more.

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a friend of mine uses an alias 'unnaturalfreak'. when i asked her why, she said "because that's how i think people see me". after watching a video on yahoo today, i was moved to send her the following message ...

exhibit a) a straight cis-gendered male, dresses conventionally, likes to terrorise people with a chainsaw.

exhibit b) a bisexual transgendered person, likes to wear pretty dresses.

which one is the unnatural freak?

i seem to have developed the ability to 'go deep' almost at will during play these days, to step into a place where i'm still aware of pain, yet somehow unaffected by it. it's almost like stepping through a door. i did it while being flogged at january nimhneach, and my play partner promptly stopped play.

i would have continued if given the choice, but she made the right decision under the circumstances. i could not have been relied upon to be a safe judge of how much i could take in that frame of mind. in a private session between two play partners who know each other well, it might be acceptable for a dominant to accept responsibility for continuing to play under those circumstances, but a noisy, dimly-lit, crowded club environment is hardly the place for that.

january nimhneach was also my first experience of being flogged with a dragon's tongue. at least i think it was my first. i'm not always aware of what's being used during play, i tend to have my back turned, and my eyes closed a lot of the time. anyway the dragon's tongue turned out to have a bit of a sting in the tail in more ways than one. the places where i'd been hit with it continued to sting and burn for quite some time after play ceased - another good reason for my play partner ceasing play when i stopped reacting.

the following weekend, i was reminded once again of just how much i love being bitten. i'm not sure if it's the concentration of quite intense pain in a small area, or the intimacy of the act, or possibly the combination of the two (i'm leaning toward the latter) but being bitten tips me over into an endorphin high faster than anything else i can think of right now.

irony. life is full of it. the irony for me today is that having written last week about my reasons for publishing some very personal, intimate thoughts and experiences, i now feel almost honour bound to write about something very difficult.

despair. there, i said it. it didn't taste good. it's not a nice word. it's an ugly word. a cold, hard, grim word. but i'll say it anyway, because i'm not the only one that's feeling it, and because, like so many of the things we fear, it's stronger in the dark. its power over us grows stronger when we try to hide from it. we need to grab it by the throat, drag it out into the light, look it in the face, spit in its eye and tell it to fuck off.

c'est la vie. shit 'appens. don't let the bastards grind ya down. is that all ya got? fuck it. next!

i was asked recently, why do i do this? why do i write this blog? does it not bother me knowing that strangers are reading about the intimate, personal experiences that i write about here?

strangers? no, i don't care what strangers think. but many of those who read this blog are not strangers. they're people who know me, who've met me and talked to me at munches and at nimhneach. they're people i like and respect. some of them are people i've played with, some of them are people i hope to play with some day. i care what those people think. i want them to like me. i want them to invite me to parties. i want them to play with me. their opinions matter.

so yes, there are times when i write something personal or intimate, something which, to re-use a phrase from an earlier post, reveals my deepest desires or darkest fears, and i hesitate, the mouse pointer hovering over the 'publish post' button, thinking, do i really want everyone to know about this?

the answer has almost always been 'yes'.

there is no point, not for me, anyway, in writing at all if i'm not going to write about what matters. and this is the stuff that matters to me. i need to write about it, i need to express it. and the whole wanting to be thought well of thing works both ways. we worry that people may not think well of us if they really know us, but then we can hardly expect people to think well of us if they don't know us at all, can we? this is my way of letting people know me. some may not like what they see. hopefully, some will.

ultimately, there's nothing that i'm really ashamed of in here. a little embarrassed, perhaps, but not really ashamed. i'm not harming anyone. i may hurt you, if you ask nicely, but i'll never harm you. i may flog you, but i will not scar you physically, nor traumatize you emotionally. and those, in the end, are the only things of which i would be truly ashamed.

and maybe, just maybe, once in a while i may get lucky and manage to express an idea or an emotion that someone else has been struggling with but has been unable to express. maybe, someday, someone will read something i've written and say "yes, that's what i wanted to say". and then it really will have all been worth while.

it's all about trust.

we kinksters trust each other with our bodies. we give ourselves to each other, saying, in effect, here i am, take me, restrain me, do as you wish with me - within the limits of what is safe, sane, and consensual, of course.

more than that, though, we open ourselves emotionally. we let down our shields, put aside our defences, reveal ourselves as we truly are, share our deepest desires and darkest fears.

to stand before another naked, physically and emotionally, to reveal one's innermost secret self, and to be accepted, is a truly liberating experience.

the corollary, of course, is that when we make ourselves vulnerable and are rejected, the hurt goes deep, and takes a long time to heal.