#I've finally had enough I'm done playing nice and tiptoeing around the blue whale in the room

[molsno]

what I've experienced and observed as an asexual trans lesbian is that engaging with certain kinks can be unhealthy and harmful, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.

by and large, most of the people who have "unhealthy" kinks are victims. that is to say, their kink originates from a place of trauma. someone who's experienced sexual abuse in the past, for example, may very well have internalized the idea that they deserved what happened to them. and because escaping that traumatic mindset is incredibly difficult, they may find themselves having sexual fantasies about being abused again long after the danger they were in ceases; to them, it can feel like being sexually abused means they're fulfilling what they believe to be their only purpose. these fantasies can be deeply damaging to a person's self worth, not just because they're blind to their own inherent value as a person, but because they're denying themself any form of sexual agency. they may very well seek out relationships in which they're abused once again. and that is unambiguously harmful! I've certainly seen several people that this has happened to, and it's an incredibly demoralizing and heartbreaking situation to observe and an even more miserable one to be in.

however, that isn't a universal experience. for some people, engaging with their kink with someone can actually be a source of empowerment. let's continue with the previous example. if, instead of seeking out a relationship in which they're sexually abused, they decide to engage in their fantasies with someone who genuinely recognizes their sexual autonomy - someone who they can honestly talk to about their experience, who respects their boundaries, and who communicates with them to establish safeguards to ensure that their consent is never violated - then they may well find a feeling of power over the situation that they didn't have before.

that isn't guaranteed to happen; for some trauma victims, their pain may be too great to replicate, even in a state of significantly reduced danger. some people may try to and discover that it is affecting them in an unhealthy way and stop. and that's okay! their sexual autonomy deserves to be respected. however, others who do engage with it may come out of the experience with a newfound recognition and acceptance of said autonomy. if they know they have the power to make the experience stop any time they feel uncomfortable, they may come to realize and truly believe that they didn't deserve what happened to them, and that they don't have to tolerate anyone who disrespects their boundaries in the future.

it's perfectly fine to not want to see someone's engagement with a particular kink. it can be upsetting for those who have been personally affected by it to witness recreations of it. luckily, in online spaces, there's an easy solution to this problem: you can avoid it by unfollowing or even blocking anyone who posts about it.

I find it troubling that so many people are averse to this idea - particularly because of the way they direct their anger toward trans women. it is a regular occurrence on this website and in fact most online spaces for someone to accuse a trans women (or multiple) of having an "inherently harmful" kink. often, these accusations are made with little to no context or even proof, if they're not simply fabricated outright (which they frequently are). accusing trans women of being sexual predators is one of the oldest forms of transmisogynistic violence you can commit, which is why I find it infuriating that this is such a common tactic in purportedly transfem-supportive communities.

perhaps you might be thinking that engaging in harmful kinks contributes to their normalization. I find this idea laughable, because sexual abuse is already normalized in society - it's baked into its very foundation, in fact. marriage, the nuclear family, christianity, police, the judicial system, and just about everything else was designed to give cishet white men absolute unchecked sexual power over women and children. and while some small advances have been made to chip away at this authority, by and large, these men are still free to perpetrate sexual abuse without facing any consequences.

minorities, on the other hand, have always been and continue to be violently punished for even being accused of sexual abuse. for example, there's a very long history of white women falsely accusing black men of rape with the express purpose of getting them lynched. still today, black people are viewed as hypersexual predators who pose a danger to white women and children for doing things as insignificant and nonsexual as wearing a revealing outfit. trans women are in a very similar position, with our mere existence being nothing more than a fetish to a significant number of tme people. it's no surprise, then, that accusations of sexual predation against us largely focus on the non-normative ways in which we often have sex.

what this inequality often looks like in practice is that cis men are free to browse the step-sister category on pornhub to their heart's content, whereas a trans woman who might, potentially, call her girlfriend her "sister" as a means of recovering from a form of sexual abuse she faced in the past is stalked online by people who believe her to be a physical danger to others, who will then publicize all of the details they can find about her private sex life with the intention of isolating her from what is likely the only community and support network she has. this should be obvious, but a trans woman without any community to accept her is significantly more likely to attempt to commit suicide, making this form of social outcasting a form of violence.

so the question then is, why does this happen? because let's be honest, it's not really about "removing predators from our communities", as much as people like to claim it is. if that were the case, then it wouldn't happen so disproportionately to trans women; the demographics of people accused would be more representative of their actual proportions. the real reason this happens is specifically because of transmisogyny. tme people, even those who are outwardly supportive, harbor internal conceptions of trans women based on stereotypes of us being sexual predators, and they react to our every action with undue scrutiny and vigilance. and because they hold the privilege of being transmisogyny-exempt, they can exert power over us in a way that they can't do to cishet white men by exiling us, knowing full well that they'll be believed by other tme people, even if they have no evidence of actual harm being done.

and that's the metric by which we should actually be judging the validity of claims of sexual predation - whether or not someone was actually harmed. if no one has genuinely been harmed, what good does it do to isolate someone from the only community they may have? that in itself is obviously harmful to the person being exiled, so the question to ask before utilizing it is: will doing so actually prevent more harm from being done unto others?

trans women as a whole are a deeply traumatized demographic. I can almost certainly list off more trans women I personally know who have been raped than who haven't. we are victims, in the vast majority of cases. despite that, we live under a veil of transmisogyny that constantly calls us dangerous degenerate freaks. as a result, some trans women develop coping methods you may find unpalatable. I'm not a very kinky person myself, and a result of me being ace is that a lot of even the most basic and common sexual acts are physically repulsive to me. because of that, I feel uncomfortable when I see people engage in certain kinds of sex and kinks, even if they're fellow trans women. you know what I do in these cases? I just don't follow them. I mind my own business and move on. it's really that easy.

arguing that nobody can engage in certain trauma-based kinks because it can harm them is short-sighted at best and actively dangerous at worst. how can you claim to be a feminist who supports bodily and sexual autonomy and be opposed to people having consensual sex you don't like? it's the same conservative rhetoric that aims to suppress women for taking control of their own sexual desires. it's one step removed from telling trans people not to get bottom surgery because they'll regret it. if you truly believe that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies, you're going to have to accept that some people will do things that personally make you uncomfortable, and you're going to have to acknowledge the fact that just because they make you uncomfortable, that doesn't mean they're harming anyone. just mind your own business. it's seriously not hard.