"Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny"
Article in
Pucker Up (publisher and editrix: Tristan Taormino), Issue 1, Winter 1995, pp. 12-14
- Fantasies aren't reality, I know, I know, I know. Except when they are. Except when you make them into reality.
- And fuck this, I didn't come out of years of fantasy, rescuing myself from a toxic parent and guilt-tripping myself through anti-sex feminism, politically correct lesbianism and socially-programmed homosexual activism so that someone else can make my goddamn sex life into a slogan.
- Safe, sane and consensual — what do those words really mean?
Assimilation, that's what.
- What is happening to my sexuality?
It's cold, it's pasionless, and what's worse, it's dull.
John Preston was right. SM has become a nice, sweet alternative to heavy petting, and the leaders of this SM "community" want us to be the Elks or some other animal-named civics association, gathering to sell expensive clothing and raffle tickets, congratulating ourselves on how nice we are.
- This used to be about sex. The literature of my people was pornography, filled with cries for mercy, drama enacted on people without prolonged negotiation, partners engaged in a dance in the middle of a bonfire. Now, it's 300-page manuals about how to make sure nothing bad will happen.
- What goes on when people overfetishize safety is that they're relapsing into that old frame of mind that what we're doing is BAD.
- The trouble is, SMers are allowing themselves to be defined by what they are not. We think, "Oh, so many people believe that we're all murderers and rapists, and we have to explain that we're not!" Uh — so, a slogan for the gay civil rights movement should be "Normal, Non-threatening and Not After Your Children"?
- There are times when I just want to walk through a room, grab that girl, slap her hard and make her cry. Push her down and fuck her mind over twice as hard as her body. Sometimes, I want to be that girl.
- My fantasies have never been safe ones. Don't fuck with me, unless you understand that.
