Give Me Furry Chests or Give Me Death!

Let's talk about body image, shall we?  My boyfriend was picking on me as I was getting dressed this morning.  The issue under particular scrutiny was the fact that I LOVE deep v-neck t-shirts.  I love love love them so much.  I like how they lengthen my torso that could always use a little help on my short frame.  I also love that they showcase prominently one of my physical features I find terribly attractive:  my very sexy and abundant chest hair.  I am terribly attracted to hairy men, and therefore I like to offer up the very feature I am so often drawn to.  I would also like to state for the record that as an aficionado of furry men I have quite a nice pelt.  So fuck yes I'm going to show it off at any possible chance I can get.

Why the tirade?  Well, it boils down to a very bold and shameless internet graphic thingy that he showed me that was completely and utterly negative when it came to body image.  It was a list accompanied by graphics summing up fashions don'ts.  I didn't read the rest of the list because I was so disgusted.  It said, "Deep V-neck T-shirts:  Ew chest hair."  Um....  The last time I checked we are all mammals, and mammals have fur.  Some of us just have an abundance where many others weren't as blessed, or the gods forbid it gets waxed or shaved off.  The issue, however, is not one of personal and aesthetic preference.  It's about cultural prejudices that are driving a society of negative body-image slogans that are becoming the norm in mainstream.

Open up a clothing magazine from almost any company and if you see a man's chest you'll notice not a one will have hair.  Now you can't tell me that every model was born hairless.  I do know that the amount of fur on a man is just as varied as cock sizes, but I know that there are far more furry men in the world than are represented by the models seen in magazines.  The issue goes further, though.  We see it invading our bars, our streets, and our every-day lives.  Men with chest hair are the rarity, and not naturally so.  I can't tell you how many times I have gotten my hands all over a sexy man only to encounter stubble.  Not on his face!  All over the place!  Stubble on his nipples, pecs, stomach......ugh.

I think the issue for me has less to do with hair, however, and more to do with the fact that our society is so driven by these ridiculous concepts of what is or is not attractive.  Have we not yet learned that tastes of attraction are not mandated by anything other than our individual minds?  Then why do we continually not liberate ourselves and instead follow along with what a few silly marketing monkeys tell us is the image of an attractive person?  Have we not learned from all the poor models that continue to starve themselves down to an unhealthy size 2, or the men that are in the gym more than they are at home, or those guys that have forgotten that they are mammals and have tried to eradicate their body of all hair?

I'm here to be a voice that says love you and how you are made!  I thank my stars that we are not all clones that look the same.  There is something refreshing to know that no one will ever look EXACTLY the same as me.  Even identical twins most often have slight differences.  WE aren't meant to all look the same.  I'm a huge fan of people that have learned to celebrate diversity, and in that celebration express their own individuality.  YOU are just as beautiful as I am, not because you have bigger muscles, a thinner waist, or perkier tits; but because YOU are YOU.  Celebrate what you are!  Love the body you were given!  If the issue were changed, we'd all be racing through town with torches and pitch-forks to take down a racist if that same website said, "Black people:  Can't you bleach that out?"  Why the double standard?

Thus concludes my tirade.

Holy fuck! I'm Mr Leather Colorado 2011

On a rare occasion a comfort can be found in the frustration of not having words to describe an experience.  This would be one of those occasions.  Over the last 38 days I've been on a whirlwind adventure of events, some of them piled on top of each other, that have pushed me to places I had never expected.  I'm not referencing physical places, but I'll get there.  For the interest of organization I'll start from the point when my journey took a surprising turn, you'll have to read the blog posts that follow about not having words to describe my experiences., but back to where it began. 

On June 25th I became Mr Leather Colorado.  It was such a great surprise to be given the opportunity to represent my community.  The honor also gave me a sense of being a deer in the headlights of that hypothetical oncoming car.  I hadn't even begun to think about all the events I would want to attend as Mr Leather Colorado.  I was not prepared to become this instant celebrity of sorts.  Sure a lot of people have no fucking clue there is even a Leather title circuit and look at me like I just grew horns when I try to explain it, but that doesn't stop the hundreds of people that know about it from flocking.  I'm honored how many people come up to me when I'm out and about wishing me congratulations and offering encouragement on my title-year.  However, it still feels strange.  I'm someone that has a hard time accepting praise and congratulations as it is, but this time I feel like I didn't even do anything to earn the praise.  I didn't publish a book, star in a blockbuster film, or cut an incredible record deal.  Instead I weathered an interview with a panel of judges that pulled no punches, strutted my stuff on the catwalk, pulled a little speech out of thin air because I had covered all of my speech in the interview, and kept from passing out or puking the whole time.  That last part was the biggest challenge for me.  Ha ha!

That was when the privilege became something way more than I had expected.  Riding on a car in the Pride parade the next day was surreal.  People cheered and waved as we drove the route.  Hardly any of them knew me.  They have no idea what I'm hoping to do with my year as Mr Leather Colorado.  I wonder if any of them even know there is a contest to become Mr Leather Colorado, but that is aside from the point.  They cheered regardless, waved with honest smiles, and a few even shouted quick words of admiration or encouragement.  At first I had a hard time accepting all the revelry.  I felt like it would have been better given to someone that had worked harder for it, but I accepted it with big smiles and cheers back to many of the shining faces. 

After reflecting back on that parade experience and the many public appearances I have made in the last 38 days I've begun to grasp new concepts of leadership, and in particular the role that a representative plays as a leader in her/his community.   Being Mr Leather Colorado doesn't necessarily mean I will be out to play with all the hot guys, at all the hot events around the country, and get to have all the fun.  I damn well intend to have a lot of fun with a lot of hot guys, but that isn't even close to half of what I hope to accomplish this year.  I am hoping to bring some greater awareness and education into the Leather community about the issues surrounding many of the marginalized subgroups in OUR community.  This is the year that bridges begin to get built or rebuilt.  This is the year for hetero men to stand alongside their gay brothers and say, "Despite what gets my dick hard we all belong together."  This is the year for gay men to play in the dungeon alongside their screaming sisters and smile to the thought of how diverse OUR community is.  This is the year to march hand-in-hand showing solidarity regardless of OUR many differences.  This is THE year.  Over the next eleven months I will be travelling a lot, speaking at as many events as I can, and getting my metaphorical hands dirty in the grime and muck that has divided OUR community into its fragmented and sequestered subgroups. 

With all of that in the front of my mind I realize that it isn't realistic for one man to do it all.  It's going to take many voices and many hands to effectively get some bridges built, but as Mr Leather Colorado I have a unique opportunity to be the nucleus.  As the representative for the community I have an obligation to bring people together, lend my ear to their concerns, and offer what I can to tear down the walls that have plagued OUR community for so long.  So for the next 11 months you'll hear me time and time again saying, "This is THE year."

Thank you to my community for choosing me to represent them as Mr Leather Colorado.  I don't intend on letting you down!

Excuse me. Do I feel a connection here?

Struggle is the easiest and coincidentally most ambiguous word I can come up with to describe the feelings I've been going through when dealing with connections.  I find it incredibly frustrating that I quite often can't come up with easy ways to explain that a connection doesn't exist for me with individuals even though they have this "cupid has stuck me in the ass with an arrow" moment.  I feel this is a good point in my writing to make the disclaimer that I in no way think that I am the most amazingly sexy and appealing man in the universe, and everyone should swoon over me.  It is quite to the contrary actually.  Any of my loved ones will tell you I'm most often receiving compliments with the remarks, "Thanks!  I'm just me.  I'm a person just like you." 

Here ensues the dilemma.  I've found myself quite often in a position where I am approached with the semi-logical thought process of, "I like _____ , and you like _____ , so it only makes sense that we should do _____ together.  When are you available?"  Well....  It doesn't appear to be quite that easy, actually.  I'm not saying I'm not easy.  On the contrary, I'm quite the accomplished slut.  However, doing _____ with just anyone is not an option.  I'm a slut with standards you see, standards of attraction; but those standards aren't always as logical as I'd like.

Do you need an example?  I sure do!  I feel it needs to not be reiterated that I am a kinky bastard that is quite involved in my local BDSM community, but I do realize there may be readers that haven't been introduced to that fact.  I'm also quite accomplished with rope bondage and in particular the Japanese style.  I'm also quite an accomplished rope bondage bottom.  (Not to be read as tooting my own horn)  So I'm out and about several times a week tying innocent sexy people up, or being tied up as well.  The issue comes into play when I encounter the idea that I am just a toy that can be passed around at will for anyone that wishes to tie me up.  Sometimes it isn't a person passing me around; but still the idea is out there that because I like to be tied up and am being tied up by multiple people at any given time, I therefore should like to be tied up by anyone and should find it a privilege to be tied up by such and such a person that expresses interest.  It's hard for me, at this point, to feel like I'm not being an exclusive asshole because I quite often play with new people; but there's just not a connection for me here.  I run the conversation in my head after this.  Such and such a person then says, "Well I think it would be fun because I want to play with you."  At which point I say, "But I don't really feel that connection."  Such and such says, "Well there has to be a connection because I have one...." 

For me it's 99.9% impossible to explain that connection.  I've learned that the connection-meter is much more impossible to predict than I'd like it to be.  I've encountered people that in theory I should have an amazing connection with and it just never works, and there have been others that in theory are completely and utterly not the kind of person I should have a connection with and the connection is amazing nonetheless.  So I'm beginning to give up on trying to use my words.  I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to rely on the good old, time tested approach of using the absolutely ambiguous explanation of, "I just don't feel a connection."

This whole subject is really hard for me to even deal with because in my ideal world I would play with anyone and everyone that expressed interest, who wasn't out to harm me in a nonconsensual way, so that everyone could walk away from the experience happy and edified.  Unfortunately I just can't bring myself to that place.  I've passed up experiences with terribly attractive and amazing individuals just because a connection never evolved.  So I try to rationalize saying no, and now I've talked my way into something I think is an issue that needs further addressing.  Why should I have to feel bad about saying no?  I'm going to have to sit on that one for a while, but keep a look out for a continuation of this.  I'm suddenly a bit disturbed that I feel this "guilt" about not doing something I don't feel excited about in the first place.

~Otter

A quick note from the scholar:  I never thought I'd be uploading anything from my academic writing, but I've finally had a moment in which I said to myself, "It's ok that this isn't finished.  I'll certainly be doing much more work on this project."  Gasp!  I may have found something in my academic career that I actually enjoyed.  So I shall share with all of you the beginning of a writing project that very well may become much more than what it already has.  Just excuse the MLA in text citations that appear in ( ).  I'm too tired and lazy to go find them and cut them out.

The Power of Words

Historically many social movements that have centered around oppressed groups of people have consciously made an effort to "reclaim" certain terms used as pejorative identifiers. One interesting part of this "reclamation" process is that the terms originally were not necessarily considered pejorative, but because of their association with the dominating subset of the culture the terms became pejorated. Take for instance the term nigger. Its origin comes from a very simple reference to the descent of African people and their skin color. However, as the issue of racism became less tolerated the term took on a pejorative nature because it was no longer an acceptable term to use when classifying an individual by her/his race. Part of the pejoration then can be attributed to a shift in perspective when a dominant cultural group begins to face opposition. Another part of the pejoration can be attributed to the nature of the word itself. In the case of nigger it is obvious to understand from our perspective today in a country that has struggled through the civil-rights movement and abolition of slavery. We can see that using such terms as nigger can be and most often is very offensive because of the historical weight of the word's use. However, an interesting turn of events can be witnessed as a "reclamation" of such terms. I use quotes around reclamation because it is not necessarily taking something back that was once present or used, but it is more of a theft of the word from the dominant culture and used as a self-identifier of the minority group. We see this today in the use of the term nigger especially in the gangster rap sub-culture as well as many facets of African American cultural groups. This theft is very often a conscious act by the minority group in order to weaken the pejorative power of the term, or to demystify it. Once the word is claimed by the minority group as a self-identifying term, the dominant cultural group has very little oppressive power to wield with that word. This same process of pejoration and consequent amelioration can also be seen in the history of the word queer. However, the amelioration, or thievery as I'm calling it, is still very much in-process. The word queer has had a rather interesting progression in its amelioration process that has been different from the word nigger as well. Through analyzing its colloquial and formal uses one can see this process taking place and expect that one day the term queer will only have a history of being a pejorative term and be completely ameliorated.

It seems appropriate to begin the process of examining the word queer at the very beginning or best estimation of when the word entered the English language. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the predecessor to the word queer entered the English language as a direct borrowing from Norman French in the mid to late 1300's as a verb meaning to ask, inquire, or to question ("queer, v.1"). To trace the roots back further, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, queer was borrowed from Spanish in the tenth century CE and its derivative can even be found in classical and post-classical Latin. All of the historical roots of the word queer meant to inquire or to question. There is very little evidence, however, that this use of the term queer is actually the root of the adjectival form. In 1513 CE Gavin Douglas, in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid into English, is the first person historically to use the word queer in print as an adjective meaning "strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric...of questionable character" ("queer, adj.1"). A folk-etymology could very easily be assumed that there is some link between the older use of the word queer as a verb and it's later adjectival form; however, according to the Oxford English Dictionary the two are not clearly linked. Nonetheless it isn't until 1894 that the word queer is associated with people who were identified as homosexual ("queer, n.2"), and its first use as an adjective to describe individuals identified as homosexual was in 1914 in the Los Angeles Times ("queer, adj.1"). At that point in history having homosexual contact was illegal. Therefore it was originally a term used by the dominant culture to identify an oppressed minority group in much the same way as nigger was.

The thievery of the word queer happened in a very interesting way that diverged from the way in which nigger began its amelioration. Academics started using the term as the most neutral to describe a subset of the feminist and LGBT movements of the 1960's that included both gay men and lesbians. I could not get my hands on the book Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography by David Halperin, but there is a great quote from it on the wikipedia page entry for queer theory that explains the conscious efforts to ameliorate the word queer in the realm of academia. "Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative" ("Queer Theory"). This quote also makes a stab at defining the word queer not as a term with the lexical definition of homosexual but defined as "whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant." Not only did the efforts of the queer theory movement take conscious effort to ameliorate the word queer, but it also strove to use the word in a more broad sense of any entity that went against the dominant culture. This then allowed the word to not only ameliorate but broaden as well.

The broadening of the term queer is seen today in some of its colloquial uses, however it's also taking on a new narrowing that seems unique to identifying terms like it. Queer is beginning to be used as a term to describe individuals that don't necessarily fit into the categories of gender and sexuality that are available today. This is seen firsthand in the term gender-queer. Individuals that identify as gender-queer don't necessarily have the outward presentation that conforms to either of our stereotypical presentations of masculine or feminine. These individuals quite often have outward gender presentations that portray pieces of both genders. The term is also used by many people as a self-identifier when they don't fit into categories of sexuality. This can be seen in the existence of a forum group on the social networking site Fetlife.com. On that website there is a group titled "Kinky Queers, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexuals, Trans, Gender Queer, InterSex." This title very obviously puts people identified as queer in a category separate from the others and also includes gender queer as another category. In this example of "demarcation [of] positionality," as Halperin describes, it can be seen that the word queer is no longer being used as a term exclusively meaning homosexual or individuals that are identified as homosexual. It has now not only ameliorated as a self-identifying term, but it has also broadened as a catchall term for things other than sexuality that is not the normative sexuality.

This movement toward amelioration has also relied heavily on a need for agreement between the implication of the speaker and the inference of the listener. When there is a disconnect between the two there can be some quite dramatic consequences. An example of a phrase in which this disconnect could quite easily happen is, "You're so queer." If the term had completely ameliorated at this point there would be no pejorative bias, and therefore the individual the statement was directed to would not have any biased feelings. However, if any person I didn't know came up to me and said, "You're so queer," I'd be liable to get into a fistfight. This demonstrates that the term still has much of its pejorative bias still in place. So it begs the question of whether or not the word queer will eventually ameliorate completely, or if it will maintain a portion of its cultural bias like the word nigger has. In any case it can be seen quite clearly that a conscious shift is being experienced in the pejorative use of the word queer.

Pondering fuck buddies...

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Your taboo is fine by me....don't judge mine.

Taboo.  A word that has not changed in its definition since it was adopted into English in 1777.  That in itself is curious to me because words that resist change in language are generally the ones used the most.  So I ponder why this word, that is so often used pejoratively, has resisted change....

Well, that isn't of major importance at the moment.  What is important to me is why people are so quick to pass judgment on individuals with taboo sexual practices.  I personally love men's asses.  The hairier the better.  Give me ass or give me death should be my motto.  I love sticking things in asses.  My cock, fingers, hands, tongue, toys...I don't think there's anything to do with an ass I don't like.  Well, except pooping, but even that isn't a completely hard limit I don't think. 

This brings me to the issue at hand.  (hand being the operative term)  I have a new boy.  It's a long distance connection at this point, but there's hope that it won't remain that way forever.  This boy is really into my favorite "kink," fisting!  I love getting an ass all lubed up and loosened then going in knuckles first.  If I can find an accommodating ass to take both my hands, AWESOME!  If I can shove my dick in there too it's even better.  

So my boy and I were fooling around on Skype the other night.  Dirty talk was flying back and forth about wrecking his hole.  It was so hot!  And then a subject came up that we had touched on when talking about fantasies.  My boy started using the language of K9 with me.  By the time he got to saying I was going to knot him I exploded cum all over my chest, stomach, the sheets, the pillow behind my head...  It was a mess.  What fueled that massive explosion was the fantasy of a taboo subject of being fucked by a dog.  Sure he was talking about ME fucking him, but using the terms of a dog fucking him really fueled the image in my mind of a dog, maybe even me as a dog, fucking him. 

I suddenly started to think about why we hold such taboos.  Sure there's the general rule of not harming anyone or anything for pleasure, and I would uphold that in the sense of non-consensual harm.  When it's two consenting parties I say go for it, but at the root of the matter I would question if no one is being harmed is it ok?  Could we ask that hypothetical dog if he wasn't enjoying fucking a person?  Could we ask him if he consented to the act?  Does that mean it isn't consensual?  I'm in no way saying I'm going to go out and adopt a dog to test these theories, but it got me thinking on a grander scheme about taboos. 

Anal fisting is a taboo for many people.  Hell, my very sex life is taboo for millions of conservative people.  So what makes one taboo something we're willing to overlook and another taboo completely objectionable?  Shouldn't we all just get to a point of saying what happens in your bedroom is your prerogative?  I, for one, tend to err on the side of tolerance.  If you want to get fucked by a donkey just do me the favor of not uploading it online so my friends can non-consensually assault me with the images of that.  Frankly I don't want to see it; but if you want to get it, you get it!  What my neighbor does for pleasure has no effect on me.  I just don't want to watch.

So I encourage you, my reader, to grab a handful of tolerance when it comes to the taboos of the world.  Let your neighbor get railed by that donkey, and shake my hand when we finally get to meet because honestly I ALWAYS wash the crisco off my hands after I've been elbow deep in an ass.

So you want to know what queer means to me?

In the most appropriate fashion I figured my first blog post should be a little of a "get to know Otter" experience.  The musing has been partially inspired by a comment a friend made yesterday as we were driving to Bandita's for Spa Day.  My friend said, "Queer is such a complicated term because it means something different to everyone that uses it."  (or something very very close to that effect)  It got me thinking about my own use of the word queer.

I identify as queer because it seems much easier to call myself queer rather than explain all my significant relationships that happen to involve female bodied individuals.  Sure if you want my dick to get hard it is pretty important to provide me with some delicious manly stimulation, but with that being said I have been known to do more than platonic things with individuals of the not-so-manly persuasion.  So I land in this lovely ambiguity I call queer.  Basically I'm saying I don't want to be boxed-in.  Take it or leave it, I'm not going to jump onto the binary of the Kinsey scale.  I want more options!

Mind you all of this is being typed the morning after I gave Bandita a ridiculous birthday present.  I arrived at Spa Day with my usual array of kinky toy bags, but she didn't know I had tucked my urethral sounds into one of the bags.  She has been wanting to play around with them on me for quite some time, and I figured her birthday would be a great occasion to allow her the pleasure of partaking in an activity I had formerly reserved as a part of my masturbatory pleasure only.  Friends were slowly trickling in while wifey was frying some cubed squash when I pulled them out of my bag and said, "For your birthday I figured it would be fun if you fuck my piss hole."  The squeals of glee were exactly the reaction I was looking for.  So yes, my sexual world is nothing too ordinary or dull.  Needless to say the day was wrought with activities that most people don't even imagine.

So who is Otter, anyway?  Well, I'm 31 years old as I write this.  I'm working on my undergrad in English Literature and Linguistics while also pursuing a teaching license to teach middle school and high school English.  I'm also working on getting certified to teach English as a second language in the schools.  I'm a super queer feminist and heavily invested in the BDSM and Leather community.  I have a lovely man that I am LEGALLY married to.  You'll see many references to my Husbear in future posts.  I was raised in an extremely conservative and fundamental xtian home.  My father is a Baptist minister.  I spent a portion of my life as a bible-beating zealot and committed atrocities I don't care to ever relive.  I'm now a self-identified agnostic and have very little tolerance for religiously-based prejudice and hatred.  I try to live a greener life by recycling, riding public transit, eating a mostly vegetarian diet, and buying consciously.  I do not view myself as perfect or superior to anyone else, but I'm trying to be the best ME I can be.  I also encourage everyone to strive to be the best YOU possible.

That's a little about me, and as I finish this up I looked back and noticed I hardly explained the word queer at all.  Well, keep an eye out for more on what queer means to me.  Till then here's some sloppy kisses from Otter!