27 December 2006

Writing 'Profusity'

So, after thirteen years of lurking on spanking sites, I'm finally debuting a kinky blog of my own. I sometimes feel like kind of an anomaly among spanking fetishists, especially given that I have other BDSM interests as well, though they are less prominent. I don't attend munches or play parties. I much prefer pubs to clubs. I've been known to write the odd spanking story, but I don't publish them. Though I've been fascinated by internet spanking discussions, I've never joined in or emailed the authors. A few of my friends are kinky- most are not.

Honestly, I attribute this to sheer laziness more than anything else, and a strange shyness at the computer. I seem to be the opposite of your average person- in general, I'm way more comfortable speaking my mind in person than trying to find the words on a blog. I'm an articulate, quick speaker and a usually-articulate, slow writer. Papers for school inevitably involve length extensions and recieve As, but I work on them for literally 50 or 60 hours before they're done. Likewise, on my other, non-kinky, general blog, I've been known to open up an entry, type a few words, sit and stare, and then scrap the whole thing. It might just be my enormous perfectionist streak- it's so much easier to catch errors in print than in speech, and I always want the words I write to convey exactly what I mean.

Lately, though, I've been struck by a desire for community when reading spanking blogs. I have things to say, people to respond to, and experiences of my own that I want to catologue. Writing on paper has always been cathartic for me, but now I want the feedback to that catharsis. As I'll get on to explaining in a later post, the experiences I read about and craved for years are now part of my own life, and maybe there's a sense of affinity with other writers that wasn't quite the same before.

I know the anonymity thing is going to be a little bit of a struggle for me. My spanking fetish, my DD relationship, these things are not divorced from who I am- they are directly tied in to my personality, my lifestyle, my fears and joys, and my politics. As I recently explained to a very vanilla friend, it's an orientation, not just a preference. So of course, I want to be able to give general and specific information about my life. I'm not exactly what you'd call "closeted." Almost all of my friends understand the nature of my relationship. I will happily talk about BDSM to strangers at parties. But the point of all of this is that I get to choose when I talk about it and how much information I give. By keeping things at least somewhat anonymous- not listing my real name or what school I go to- the audience of this blog will be somewhat self-selecting. People will find it by looking up spanking, not by looking up me.

There are only a few people I'm actually "hiding" from- like deans of law schools I might apply to- and hopefully they won't stumble on to this blog. But there are lots of people I just don't want to talk about spanking with, the same folks I like just fine but wouldn't talk to about my period or my family history. Intimacy levels, you know. And finally, there are people with whom I have very in-depth conversations about other things, who could judge me or not without any effect, and I still just wouldn't really want to explain. There are lots of resources out there to answer questions like, "How can you be a feminist and be spanked by your male partner?" "Why do people do this?" and "Am I normal?"
I'm just not one of them. That isn't to say I won't ever re-consider these questions for myself, or that I won't happily point people who ask them in the direction of good resources. I just don't want to have to answer them three times a day from people who sit in class with me or read my other blogs.

Anyway, my guess about anonymity is that I'll handle it on a case-by-case point. My main goal is to write what I think and feel and experience, and hopefully connect with others along the way. Certain details will always stay hidden, but if I were really obsessed with remaining totally anonymous, I wouldn't be posting on the internet!


3 comments:

Lena said...

Welcome to the neighborhoods and happy spankings! Can't wait to read...

Yours,
Amber

P.S.: Thanks for the link!

Mouse said...

Thanks, Amber!

Lena said...

I have to say that I try hard to be anonymous - no pictures or indication of where I am on the map or even the country I am from for the most part. I am highly secretive about my kink, and from the r/l people I know, it's only my husband and a college friend who know (at least openly). The college friend was quite embarrassed by knowing, and barely ever mentions it, although he has a couple of times. I just can't share this, people won't understand, it's a small town thing.