Wednesday 11 June 2008

FUCK YES

Vanilla Privilege (personally, I think the term "privilege" is kind of overused, but I agree 1000x with the sentiments)
It exists, you know. And no, it is not as pressing or obvious as male privilege, het privilege, white privilege, class privilege, or other privileges out there, but it is there. And you may have not ever noticed it if you are a Vanilla Person, because well, it doesn’t affect you. And this is not a knock on Vanilla People, Vanilla People are okay in my book, but, if we’re examining and all, especially examining privilege, well, Vanilla’s time has come.

There have been some very interesting posts and threads here as of late which have caused me to come back to something I once mentioned half jokingly, the whole idea of Vanilla Privilege, but the tone of those posts as threads have me looking at it far more seriously now. I do, in fact, think it’s a very real thing, and like most other “privileges”, I think, while it can and does impact men, it impacts women to a more negative degree. After all, we still live in a society where many people honestly think that women cannot or should not enjoy sex, and if they dare to, they better only do it in certain contexts, for certain reasons, and with their husbands. Ah yes, the old virgin/whore dichotomy, alive and well and at work…and at lending it’s efforts to V.P.

So what is V.P. anyway? Well, simply put, it is the thought or assumption that those who engage in vanilla sex are somehow better than those who do not. And if you think that people who are not vanilla are not treated differently, please, do look at some of the links I’ve provided, and then, why yes, examine. What do you think of a woman sitting next to you on the subway at night if she is wearing a collar? What do you think of the guy in the locker room with heavily pierced genitals? What do you think of the woman who does gangbangs on the weekend? What do you think of the man who pays a dominatrix? What do you think of people who get off on pain, giving or receiving? The woman who likes to be choked, the man who likes to be flogged? The kinky people and the rough sex people and the non-vanilla people? If you are a vanilla person…don’t you other them, just a little bit? Well, if you don’t, good for you. You are among the few.

....And that’s the less malicious aspects! You want concrete examples of V.P.?

Look at rape trials. If it is learned that the victim was into BDSM, rough sex, or was “overly promiscuous” or dressed "slutty" there is the assumption that she/he consented, or, in some cases, due to her/his proclivities, cannot be raped.

Look at employment. People have been fired/ passed over for being kinky even if it had no bearing on their jobs or ability to do them. They also face strife in places of higher education.

Look at parenthood. People have lost custody of their children or fear that for being not vanilla, even when there is no evidence whatsoever that anything the parents might do impacted their children at all.

People have been dragged into court for obscene conduct in their own homes.

“Safe Spaces” for kinky people, such as BDSM clubs, private residences, and swinger clubs are often subject to harassment from legal authorities and civil groups.

Very rarely do Vanilla People have to deal with this sort of thing due to their sex lives. Hell, a great deal of non-vanilla hetero sex is still considered both a sin & mental illness by a whole lot of folk.

And non-vanilla people can point this out, over and over, and still get told to examine, that they are the bad for other people people, that they are wrong, are oppressive, are “normalized”…

Yeah, right.
DEAR REN: YOU WIN AT EVERYTHING. I DON'T CARE WHAT IT IS; YOU WIN AT IT.


17 comments:

Renegade Evolution said...

Well, a gal can only take so much bullshit...

Anonymous said...

seriously.

my college roommate thought I was crazy for going to fetish parties. meanwhile going to frat parties was totally OK.

as Ren said, women who are OK with kink tend to be much more focused on their own desires than those of men.

Trinity said...

"my college roommate thought I was crazy for going to fetish parties. meanwhile going to frat parties was totally OK."

Yep!

Anonymous said...

I think there is a lot of fear from dom men 'coming out' to vanilla people - fear of being seen as an abuser and ostracized.

Trinity said...

anony: I hadn't even thought of that, but yeah. I don't envy them that hot mess.

Anonymous said...

I remember reading once about a woman who was cast out of the rape crisis center she volunteered at because a roommate found a copy of _Coming to Power_ on her bedroom floor. She was publicly accused of abusing her girlfriend, and basically exiled from the local lesbian scene. The irony, she said, was that she and her girlfriend at the time hadn't even done any BDSM yet, but were simply reading up on the subject because of mutual curiosity.

[Pounds fist into wall.]

Trinity said...

"I remember reading once about a woman who was cast out of the rape crisis center she volunteered at because a roommate found a copy of _Coming to Power_ on her bedroom floor. She was publicly accused of abusing her girlfriend, and basically exiled from the local lesbian scene. The irony, she said, was that she and her girlfriend at the time hadn't even done any BDSM yet, but were simply reading up on the subject because of mutual curiosity."

I'm not at all surprised, but I am appalled. Such stuff is what prompts my (unusual, perhaps, for me) heartlessness here:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=31330468&postID=2401819693038980212

doll said...

The very fact that we now have people prosecuted for strange sex acts in their own personal space rather destroys the reality of vanilla sex and starts to make it simply a concept. We cannot know what any of our friends, family or neighbours are doing sexually unless they demonstrate it to us.

I now work on the principle that anything is possible and in fact is quite likely probable.

Anonymous said...

"I remember reading once about a woman who was cast out of the rape crisis center she volunteered at because a roommate found a copy of _Coming to Power_ on her bedroom floor. She was publicly accused of abusing her girlfriend, and basically exiled from the local lesbian scene. The irony, she said, was that she and her girlfriend at the time hadn't even done any BDSM yet, but were simply reading up on the subject because of mutual curiosity."

God, that's a fantastic example. What total bullshit.

One hard thing is I think it's fantastic for abusers to be convicted without the victim's consent... but damn that's a scary situation for doms. I really really think something along those lines is important to help victims of domestic violence. But not at the expense of kinky people :\

Linden Tea said...

@ dana: YES. I get so scared when I'm getting a spanking, that the neighbors might call the cops, and (in NY state at least) the cops *have to* press charges at a domestic abuse call, even if myself and my mate insist it's consensual activity. :/ And, I mean, I think that law is in place for a very good reason, and I support its existence and enforcement. Just... I wish there was a way for me to not feel so anxious that my mate might get charged or arrested for doing something I begged for.

Anonymous said...

Damn, Linden, that's so true. Gosh...... ugh. I love getting spanked, and I live in a Mexican border town that is extremely intolerant of.. everything. This blog has awakened a new fear and rage in me.

Trinity said...

sorsofilia,

As a top myself, I've always been uneasy about "you can't consent to assault" deals. I mean, I do realize that sometimes abused people are very much stuck, not only in the abusive situation but also sometimes in denial patterns. I just wonder, though -- is it really worth it to completely disregard someone's own reports, when they calmly and carefully explain the situation, without seeming to dissemble?

Unknown said...

This reminds me of Tenacious' "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Sexual Conservatism" It runs down 50 ways in which non-kink folk are privileged.
See: http://darkdaughta.blogspot.com/2006/02/unpacking-invisible-knapsack-of-sexual.html

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