Fingers and trolls
Are they or aren't they?
A couple quick things:
Due to recent increases in trollerly, I’m being a bit more cautious about whom I let comment freely here, and while I will let new commenters post, I will be keeping them on moderation until I’m convinced they’re sincere, and not creepy abusive assholes, etc. In general I will be a bit quicker on the moderate/ban button.
EDITED TO ADD: If you’re a new commenter and want to be taken off moderation more quickly, email me with some info about yourself so I know who you are. (This info will be kept confidential.)
If someone is acting egregiously in the comments, please email me about it.
And generally, keep safe. Be careful with personal info. There are angry assholes everywhere.
On a happier note: Remember that thing about Sandra Fluke and her (allegedly) lesbian fingers? PZ Myers has torn apart the dubious science behind relative-finger-length-gaydar.
Posted on March 10, 2012, in announcements, comments policy, douchebaggery, TROOOLLLL!!. Bookmark the permalink. 122 Comments.
One of the things I see with terms like vanilla is that those who are offended, get told to suck it up. That, as a slur, it’s not that bad.
That’s part of the reason it offends me. It’s got nothing to do with the sex. It’s got to do with the intent I see being used for the word. Maybe it’s not that large an insult, but it insults people.
I like “kink” better than “BDSM” because to me BDSM doesn’t include fetishes like foot fetishes (unless there’s also power dynamics involved),
I like this idea, but what I see being used is BDSM as “kinky” and the other things being called, “fetish”. I understand the desire to categorise but the problem is (as always) that people have things the want to marginalise/keep separate from, “the things I like, which are therefore not weird”.
One of the things about this, which is interesting, is my moderate reluctance to address it, because I knew the reactions were going to be much like this, and why bother? It’s not as if, apart from caring about how people feel when they are insult, I have a dog in this fight.
The problem is that without these categories, I have no way to describe myself. And the world is not yet so open-minded that I can say “oh, I’m just a person who has just one of the many beautiful colors of sex” and have that explain why all the parties I go to are over the state line and why I have to plan two weeks in advance of doctor’s visits and why I change in a bathroom stall at the gym.
(Well, there’s a few reasons for that last one. They also don’t have locker rooms for all the beautiful colors of gender and the visible accoutrements thereof. Which is why I’d also resent being told “don’t call yourself genderqueer, you’re just another beautiful color of woman” …which also happens.)
I’m uncomfortable saying I’m exactly oppressed by being kinky, because it’s so easy to pass for “normal” in most non-sex situations, but it sure as hell presents me with societal obstacles that vanilla people don’t have to face.
So in light of that, I’d like a word for the thing I am. Which means there needs to be a word for the thing I’m not.
“Vanilla” is not the word I would have chosen, but it’s the one that’s entered common use and I don’t have an alternative that doesn’t carry imply “normal.”
I’d rather come up with some neutral word than say “vanilla,” but I’d rather say “vanilla” than not be allowed to express that there’s any difference between me and the people whose sex lives aren’t freaking illegal.
I actually think tofu is pretty good, too; I was just having trouble thinking of really bland foods.
I think the problem with the whole “vanilla” issue is less that “vanilla” is, in and of itself, a particularly insulting term, and more that pretty much any marginalized group will contain some small number of people whose response to being marginalized is to decide that they are better/smarter/more “enlightened” than the non-marginalized group - who, in short, respond to society at large being jerks to them in some way by being jerks themselves. It’s an understandable, if not a particularly nice or helpful response.
When I was in college, my school’s queer student union ended up being split into two separate organizations, because the president of the original organization was kind of an enormous asshole to anyone who wasn’t 100% homosexual. She told bisexual members who dared to date opposite-sex partners that they were “traitors” and “impostors,” and famously stated that all straight people deserved to be raped and beaten (and in case that wasn’t bad enough, she did this specifically in response to a straight student getting sexually assaulted). Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the queer students on campus felt that this sort of thing was horrible, and ended up splintering off to form their own queer student union with an explicit mission statement that all forms of consensual sexuality were equally valid.
Point being, that girl said the word “straight” like it was the dirtiest word you’ve ever heard. It was unambiguous that when she called someone straight, it was meant as an insult. But the thing is, “heterosexual” was also a slur to her. Or “non-gay.” Or “woman who likes having sex with men.” The issue wasn’t the words she chose; it was the underlying attitude. She felt that, having been shit on by various straight people throughout her life for being a lesbian, the proper response was to turn around and shit on all straight people everywhere, and no change of vocabulary would have altered that.
So, as a kinky person, I’m totally okay with finding a word other than “vanilla” for people who don’t identify as kinky. If someone wants to suggest one, I’ll happily use it. I have no attachment to “vanilla” and definitely don’t want to offend people who are bothered by it. I just don’t think it’ll really solve the problem. If we change the term for “people who don’t identify as kinky” to “non-kinky” or “purple” or “squirblegorf,” there will promptly be a small portion of the kink community that will take to giggling at people while saying, “pfft, you’re so squirblegorf.” And those people will be dicks (although they’ll be dicks whose actions should be understood in a larger context in which many squirblegorf people treat them like they are dirty, perverted criminals for having the sex they like, and in which they can quite seriously risk losing their jobs, losing custody of their children, or even being sent to jail for having the sex they like).
Really, I can only see two solutions: have no terms at all (and Holly has already explained the issue with that very well), or address the underlying structure in which people feel the need to pass judgment on other people’s sex lives in the first place. I’d really like to live in a world in which “kinky” and “vanilla” (or “non-kinky,” or “squirblegorf,” or whatever) carry no more moral judgment than “person who thinks baby sloths are cute” and “person who prefers baby seals.” I definitely don’t think anyone needs to “suck it up” if someone uses “vanilla” in that obnoxious “ha ha, you’re so unenlightened, unlike me” way - or indeed, if someone uses it in a way not intended to be offensive, since everyone is allowed to be offended by things whether that’s the intent or not - but I do think the most productive way to deal with that offense in the long term is probably to try to address discrimination against kinksters so that future generations of kinksters are less likely to feel marginalized and thus less likely to feel like they have to put non-marginalized groups down.
(Also, boomboom, for the record, PIV is awesome. I’m a huge fan. I tend to like it extra much following a nice beating, but trust me when I say that I am never ever ever going to suggest that there is anything inferior or uninteresting about good ol’ PIV.
)
(Also also, apologies to all if this was too long or rambly or obvious. I am sleepy and full of painkillers, and I doubt those things do my writing any favors.)
As someone who has generally quite vanilla sex, it’s never occurred to me to take offense at the label. For one thing, the term only really crops up in sex-positive spaces. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s just called sex, because it’s considered “normal” and doesn’t have to be qualified in any way. Obviously that’s all kinds of fucked up.
When I’ve seen it used in sex-pozzie spaces, usually it’s just as a neutral descriptor. I’ve only seen it used negatively occasionally, and when it has, it’s been occasionally hurtful; but it’s not damaging. Some minority of people might have some negative opinions of the sex that I have, but as Holly pointed out, that doesn’t make it against the law. It’s not something I have to keep from friends in case they’d drop me for being “deviant”. There isn’t a prevalent cultural belief that something must have happened me somewhere along the way that “damaged” me and made me enjoy the things I do*. In fact, the little hostility I have seen towards people who enjoy vanilla sex quite often from kinky people who are used to vanilla people discriminating against them. It’s not “the sex you have is BORING” so much as “I’m expecting you to tell me that the sex I have is wrong, like tons of vanilla people I run into every day.”
*This holds true for how people view the monogamous sex I’m having with my cis dudely boyfriend, even though it doesn’t always hold true for how people view my sexuality. I had a super fun bi-erasing time with one of my closest friends just last night >.>
Vanilla as a descriptor, in general, can obviously be used in a dismissive manner but I haven’t seen it used as a slur as far as “vanilla sex” goes.
This
and this
as a response to boomboom’s post, however, I don’t get. What I mean is: yes, the stereotypes used against the kink community are problematic and need to be challenged and erased. But, what does that have to do with what “vanilla” people would like to be addressed as. I don’t personally have any issues with people referring to my sexuality as vanilla, but if “vanilla” people, as a group, felt that vanilla is offensive, what’s the issue with wanting to change that?
I mean lowquacks is absolutely right that it would be the “honky” or “breeder” of sexual slurs, but it would still be a slur. I don’t go to random white people and refer to them as honkies in general conversation. If I refer to a white person as honky, it’s usually because I’m insulting them.
Go Polli and Holly, they say all the smart shit.
I don’t mind vanilla. When I think to vanilla, I think too vanilla ice-cream, a food people in small part to feed but mainly by pleasure.
Vanilla is taste most know, and that a majority of people enjoy. Cheap vanilla (which is actually artificial vanilla) is very plain, but vanilla can be good and it can be really awesome.
Good vanilla ice-cream with just-picked rasberries and a bit of chantilly on a hot day? One of the best desert I’ve ever eaten.
Anyway, my food fantasies apart, I think we all agree that no word or ‘normal’ are not acceptable. But the only proposition I’ve read so far is another taste, and I don’t see that solving anything.
I also agree with polliwog, the problem is more the intention than the choice of word, though I’m still open with a new one.
@Pecunium: One of the things I see with terms like vanilla is that those who are offended, get told to suck it up. That, as a slur, it’s not that bad.
That’s part of the reason it offends me
I don’t choose to use the word (food term). I use straight and heternormative and such like terms.
If Boomboom and others want to coin new terms and use them, go for it-they can be a part of deconstructing the normativity involved in the coinage of that term, great. Or they can challenge those who are actually using it as a slur. BB said it was not something that happened to them here-so why bring it up. .
Context matters: coming to people who have been stigmatized for quite a while and who face real social consequences for their sexualities and asking for sympathy is not going to get them very far.
I also don’t really care if white people are offended by discussion of whiteness, or men by analysis/discussion/deconstruction/terminologies associated with theories questioning masculinity.
Maybe telling them to suck it up is “offensive.” But white people complaining about racism, and straight people complaining about the nasty language of queer people is still not something I can find myself having much sympathy for.
So I’m a bitch. I’ve been called worse.
@Polliwog and Holly: +1000000000000000000000
@Shadow: I don’t personally have any issues with people referring to my sexuality as vanilla, but if “vanilla” people, as a group, felt that vanilla is offensive, what’s the issue with wanting to change that?
Nothing wrong with wanting to change language-the wrongness is coming to people who (as far as I can tell, as Boomboom said, are not as a group using it as a slur) in a number of cases part of the groups whose sexualities are illegal, marginalized, closeted, etc. and (apparently, as I read the post) putting the onus on that group to change-and maybe also acknowledging that even if it’s used as a slur (which it it not always), that slur carries little chance of major problems with it (for example, I doubt anybody wrote graffitti about BoomBoom in a public bathroom accusing them of being vanilla-graffitti was written in the women’s room where I work about me).
And as Polliwog said, the problem isn’t the word-it’s possible to use ANY word as a slur. Look how the MRA”s use “girl” and all its associated ways in horribly insulting ways.
While I don’t know what BB intended, the post came across to me as typical of the “member of dominant group appropriating language to claim victimization” and that is not usually going to end well.
A friend of mine on Fetlife made a user photo for themselves that was a picture of an ice cream cone crossed out. For the longest time I thought the sign said “No ice cream”, until they pointed out to me that the ice cream was supposed to be vanilla (“no vanilla”). I don’t think it makes much sense either way.
RE: Ithiliana
I don’t choose to use the word (food term). I use straight and heternormative and such like terms.
Can I just say that as a gay trans man, the idea of anyone calling any of my sex heteronormative makes me angry as hell? I feel the same way about that as I do the lesbians who’re willing to date me, because I guess I don’t “count.”
I readily admit I don’t get the vanilla as a slur thing, but I guess that’s because I’ve never been mocked for it. If anything, I’m considered intrinsically exotic, so ANYTHING I do is therefore holyshitweird. *rolls eyes*
Also, sure, heterosexual queers exist. Ace folk! Poly folk! People with unusual desires! Trans folk, if they ID that way. (Some don’t.)
I have only ever heard “vanilla” used as a slur.
Not to nitpick, but asexuals don’t really qualify as heterosexual at all. Even heteroromantic aces aren’t heterosexual.
@LBT : I would not call a gay trans man heteronormative. Why would you think I would?;
I’m getting a bit confused because, to me, kinky sex and queer sex are very different things, despite the perception that queer sex is inherently kinkier. According to my definition, two men or two women can have non-kinky (or vanilla or whatever term people prefer) sex. I wouldn’t call that sex heteronormative by any means. Am I talking about something different than everybody else?
RE: Lauralot
*shrug* I’ve met ace folk who ID as straight when they’re heteromantic. I mean, I’m trans, so obviously I can’t be homoSEXual, only homoGENDERal. But then my head starts to ache.
RE: Ithiliana
I didn’t mean that you’d automatically see such sex as heteronormative. It just made me a little uncomfortable that you mentioned using that or straight synonymously with vanilla. I’m sure you wouldn’t call anything I did straight, it was just something that caught my eye.
Then again, I’ve really never heard the term vanilla used as a slur at all. Seriously, this is all news to me. O_o I mean, I’ve heard the sneers about me being mono, but never vanilla. But then again, I don’t know much of anyone who DOESN’T have that kind of sex at least every once in a while.
@ithiliana
Fair enough. To me boomboom’s post read as “This has been on my mind and I wanted to discuss it with you guys to pick your brains”. I felt it wasn’t so much addressed to the kinky people here as it was to the general community, both vanilla and kinky, to get their thoughts on the matter. I actually got where you were coming from after reading your response. It was just that DSC’s post seemed quite adversarial, so I was wondering if zie had an issue with vanilla people wanting to change that term. I don’t know if zie also felt that boomboom’s post was putting the onus on kinky people to change.
And I fully agree with that fount of wisdom that Polliwog blessed us with.
*I actually got where you were coming from after reading your response to boomboom’s post
Yeah, I’m confused why Ithiliana would use “heteronormative” to refer to vanilla people. There are a lot of queer people who don’t like the hittysex, and straight people who do.
Hellkell: Really? I don’t mean to question your experience here, but the vast majority of the time I’ve heard the word “vanilla,” it’s referring to vanilla sex/people in a neutral or even positive way (like “that boy is great at vanilla sex”). Man, you must have encountered some asshole kinksters.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “vanilla” used as a slur, but that’s probably because practically the only person I’ve seen use it (in the context of sex) is Holly.
Fun Fact! The top three contexts I experience the word “vanilla” in my life are:
1. Food by a wide margin
2. Magic: The Gathering - a “vanilla” creature is one with no rules text
3. Sex on the Pervocracy and other feminist sites
Talking of trolls (and apologies if it’s old news: I haven’t read every comments thread recently), ‘Matriarchy’ (aka MRAL) ended up in the Pharyngula dungeon.
His fatal mistake was to repeat the same schtick that he did over here - i.e. admitting that he was a troll. Which is an automatic banning offense over there.
Yeah, as someone who sometimes engages in vanilla sex, I’m really not seeing a big issue with “vanilla.” Sure, sometimes kinky people use it in a snarky way, but there really isn’t any term out there that is better. What are you going to call it, “normal sex?” That would demonize kinky sex.
I mean, if someone comes up with a better term, I’ll use it, but I haven’t seen one anywhere.
Also, vanilla really does taste good. Apple pie with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream? Mmmm.
I’m not making a double entendre there. I just like apple pie with vanilla ice cream.
has to be warm apple pie…cold apple pie just does not work right with ice cream.
Can we call kinky sex apple pie? Let’s name all styles of sex after delicious desserts!
Aww, now I want pie. Or sex. Or tomato and shrimp over sizzling rice.
tomato and shrimp over sizzling rice
YES. With crumbled feta; or, as the kids today call it, “doing it the Greek way.”
(apologies for disgusting)
My boyfriend and I have started using delicious foods as terms of endearment. As in, “How much do I love you? I love you cheese. No, no. I love you bacon.”
Last night he called me just to tell me he loved me turducken.
Vanilla is my favorite ice cream flavor. Vanilla is also my favorite kind of sex. I know that I do not speak for anyone but myself, but as someone who engages primarily in what is often described as vanilla sex, I am not in the least offended by the term. I have tried to find a less offensive term for it but have been unsuccessful. Anything I can come up with sounds like it is a fake term designed to mock the concept of non-offensive terms. Now, I have never felt discriminated against for being vanilla, so perhaps I do not understand why such a term is unsatisfactory. Could anyone here who has been offended by the term explain the problem to me? Sorry for being clueless, but on this topic I freely admit to being clueless and am asking to be given a clue, if one of you has one to share.
Ozy, you did just question my experience. Perhaps they were asshole kinksters, I don’t know, I guess they can’t all be wonderful. I was just mentioning that that’s the only time I’ve really heard it used.
Is it weird that I want this more than sex right now?
I don’t know if I’m nauseated by the cute, or the thought of a turducken >_>
Also, I gets down like French Silk pie…. you may commence swooning
@Hellkell
Isn’t that a bit of an unfair accusation? Ozy did go out of zir way in zir post to assure you that zie’s not questioning your experience, just shocked that you’ve had such a different one to zir. At least, that’s how it reads to me.
Shadow, I read the “really?” differently.
Oooh, ooh! How about “curly sex!”
It analogizes cutely to “kinky” and I think it’s without value judgements or implications that one is more “normal” than the other. (Obviously, “straight sex” was right out. “Wavy sex,” I suppose could work.)
If you do not practice fetishes or engage in BDSM or related activities, you have curly sex.
problem solved
@Hellkell
Oh, okay. I read it as an expression of surprise, but I see where you’re coming from.
Is a three-way “braided sex?”
I like “wavy” sex.
Kind of like “creamy” and “crunchy.”
This conversation is making me a bit confused as to whether I should stop saying that I’m into BSDM, since what that means to me doesn’t seem to line up with what it means to other people. I like bondage (from the domme side, not the sub side). I like some bloodplay. But I don’t really like any form of hitting. I’ll do it, if a partner wants me to, but only up to a certain point (I won’t ever hit anyone in the face - if someone wants to be hit on the ass or back, that’s fine). The idea of doing what I think of as BSDM stuff outside of a clearly sexual context baffles me - if we’re not going to fuck at some point during the proceedings, I have no interest in any of that stuff. It’s intrinsically sexual to me, and I can’t decouple it from sex, so the idea of doing just the BSDM stuff and then not having sex leaves me scratching my head. I’m not challenging anyone else’s right to do it, it’s just not how I’m wired at all - is that what most people mean when they call themselves kinky?
So I’m left wondering if I should be calling myself vanilla, even though I like tying people up and I’ve been known to cut someone’s chest and lick the blood, and I’ve happily done breathplay which I know a lot of kinksters consider to be rather at the hardcore end of the spectrum.
Please excuse both TMI and rambly incoherence - I have the flu so I’m hopped up on all kinds of meds.
CassandraSays - You sure as hell sound kinky and BDSM-y to me. Hitting and nonsexual play are kinds of BDSM, they’re certainly not the Only Official Kind.
Also, at some point it’s a self-definition thing. You identify as kinky? Then welcome to the club.
I’m not challenging anyone else’s right to do it, it’s just not how I’m wired at all – is that what most people mean when they call themselves kinky?
Not in my experience, at least. I know self-identified kinksters who fall into both camps, and I’ve never encountered anyone in either camp who argues that the other folks aren’t kinky. So you’re probably fine, as heaven knows there’s enough kinky people out there who are more than happy to tell people about the One Twoo Way to be dominant/submissive/masochistic/etc.; if there were any particular push not to count people for whom BDSM is inherently sexual, I feel like I would have encountered it and rolled my eyes at it by now. :-p
I feel like declarations of the One Twoo Way to do things happen in any subculture, because some people are assholes. Just wondering if there had been some sort of odd linguistic shift since I seem to be the only person identifying as kinky here for whom it’s purely sexual (and who doesn’t like hitting).
On the vanilla thing, I’ve seen it used both as a slur and in a totally neutral, descriptive way, so again I feel like the issue there is that when it’s being used as a slur it’s because the people using the word are assholes.
I am old enough to remember when vanilla/kinky were never spoken of, ever. Well, in public. I have only ever done things considered vanilla, and I am fine with that. I am also fine with being called wavy or whatever.
No one is going to fuss at me in any way in my regular life for what I do in the bedroom, and I think everyone should have that kind of expectation for their lives.
No one should be arrested or harassed for things they do in private that are consensual.
Now I’m trying to remember when I first heard the word vanilla being used to refer to sex. 90s, maybe?
Excuse me, I need to shoo these kids offa my lawn…
@Several people about terminology:
LBT: I didn’t mean that you’d automatically see such sex as heteronormative. It just made me a little uncomfortable that you mentioned using that or straight synonymously with vanilla. I’m sure you wouldn’t call anything I did straight, it was just something that caught my eye.
Sorry-that was my fault! I was careless in my comments, mostly because rushing off to the doctor’s office yesterday, then didn’t get online again, then our internet was out today.
I should have clarified: when I talk about using straight or heternormative or whatever, I would not apply to any individual-I’m talking about language for social categories about sexuality. I wouldn’t ever use vanilla because, food term. But I wouldn’t call ANYBODY heternormative: that’s a term for a cultural category. My definition of heternormative is, more or less: MAAB and FAAB cis, self-identified as straight, people, in roughly same age and ethnic categories, who define procreation as goal of marriage, and in theory perform monogamy, etc. And only have PiV sex (because in my understanding, vanilla sex means PiV? Is that inaccurate?)
The discussion was about calling people X or Y on the internet-and my stance there is I don’t all people anything on the internet — unless they tell me what they want to be called (pronouns, terminologies, etc.). But the cultural category that most seem to agree “vanilla” is connected to is what I’d consider heternormative. It’s the ‘idealized’ cultural norm (that “vanilla” is poking fun at/or slurring at, from the alternative sexualities position.).
It’s the cultural ideal that is (usually) associated (though completely inaccurately with many) people who define as straight or heterosexual. (Just as most middle class white people get to think their individual dialects are “good” English even though no dialect is “Standard” whereas everybody else gets told their dialects are “bad” of “non-standard.).
Not sure this is making too much sense (am sort of zonked with spring break exhaustion, a missed thryoid pill, and news I have to get another thyroid biopsy in a few weeks because ultrasound showed enlargement).
So, not, I don’t see heternormative as synonym for vanilla in any way, and was sloppy for language implying so.
@Bostonian: I’m old enough that I remember that the only terminology was “normal” and “like that” (“like that” in a hushed voice, behind closed doors by adults, about the strange man who was found to be up to something strange with his cub scout troop.)
I did not learn the word ‘homosexuality’ until college.
I did not have any concept of same-sex relationships until I found and read Mary Renault’s Greek novels (in college, in the university library reading room, because I was afraid if I checked them out, the librarians would tell my father-small town, rural Idaho, that was not a paranoid fear).
I only knew I didn’t want to get married and did not want to have children and did not like the idea that I had to date men (which meant among other things that I could never show them I was ‘smart’ and I had to always be more interested in their lives).
Oh man, ithilana! I remember those conversations. I am glad things are at least somewhat less horrible.
@Bostonian: It sucked!
If anybody waxes nostalgic about the wonders of the 50s, I know I want nothing to do with them!
Hellkell, I’m sorry. My “really?” was intended as an expression of surprise, not to erase your experience at all. Your experience was very different from mine, and I am curious why that might be.
Ithiliana: I define vanilla as “sex that doesn’t involve playing with pain or power, bondage, or fetishes.” So while PIV is (usually) vanilla, so is oral sex, manual sex, anal play, etc. Admittedly, the edges of the term are extremely fuzzy.
It’s OK, Ozy. Yesterday was my day for misinterpreting things all around. I think part of the difference is that the people who were using the term as a slur were kind of the kinkier than thou, new to the scene types. Also, add a dash of of asshole-which one of the people saying this later turned out to be in a huge way.
Hope that made sense. My new migraine meds have me all, “words, how the fuck do THEY work?”
@Oxymandias42: Ithiliana: I define vanilla as “sex that doesn’t involve playing with pain or power, bondage, or fetishes.” So while PIV is (usually) vanilla, so is oral sex, manual sex, anal play, etc.
Fascinating (see why we all need to define terms). I have never heard that take on it.
The problem is that the ‘default’ is so embedded in people’s minds: one of my students in a grad course did her project on CHOBITS, and I spent all semester pushing her to get out of the rhetoric of “they cannot have sex because her on/off switch is in her vagina” to “they cannot have PiV sex”-and in fact throughout the course the students in general had a terrible time understanding that sex did not in fact mean ONLY PiV sex (teaching gender classes in rural Texas oh so much fun).
For info on CHOBITS: see here, http://sh.chobits.wikia.com/wiki/Chobits_Plot_Summary