![A couple embraces in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as part of the New York City Pride Parade in 2005. The shirtless man shows welts on his back as he hugs his partner, a woman wearing renaissance fair garb.
This picture is of Eileen and I when we marched in the NYC Pride Parade 2005, blurred and published with her permission. I remember the experience vividly. It’s one of the most self-empowering memories I have: “I am not afraid to be seen here,” I thought to myself. I don’t show, or even get, marks like these often but, having had them, and having the opportunity to march, I thought it important to be visibly proud of them.
By being visibly proud of who I am, I fight against stigmas that people like Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks would use to intimidate me, and which contribute to the shaming and suicides of innocent youth like Hope Witsell. I am not afraid to be different, to showcase the diversity of people’s differences, or to support others’ rights to be, to live, to learn, and to love differently from me. In their “bulletin,” Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks refer to MaleSubmissionArt.com as a pornographic web site on the humiliation and sexual abuse of men, blatantly ignoring how strongly I write against abuse and against humiliation, which this entire website was founded to reject.
The willful ignorance of so-called “feminists” like Donna M. Hughes to acknowledge the validity of consensual sexual behavior terrifies me (as it should you—regardless of your sexual predilections) because by actively conflating adults’ consensual behavior, sexuality education, and public discussion about sexuality with human trafficking, Donna M. Hughes, Margaret Brooks, and their mob strengthen the abuse they claim to fight. When people like Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks use fear tactics to incite moral panic, whether it was about interracial marriage in the 1930’s, about homophobia in the 1950’s, or about sex education more recently, ask yourself if they are really fighting to change the status quo, or fighting to keep it.
As Clarisse Thorn rightfully asks:
[W]hat’s with this assumption that sex-positive activists have no clue about social issues of sexuality, or matters of the heart? Working to destigmatize sexuality is in no way incompatible with working towards better, more consensual, more meaningful relationships; in fact, I’ll be bound that sex-positive activists do a much better job of this than these “anti-trafficking” folks do.
No matter the outcome of my current tribulations, I am not going to be the hero in this story. You are. Heroism is not the adherence to conformity but the courage to deviate from it; unity cannot be achieved through homogeneity but diversity; bravery is not the absence of fear but the ability to stand tall in spite of it, for what the fear-mongers and the fearful surely know is that fear and intimidation have the power to halt action. In Clarisse’s words, We can’t erase Hughes’ and Brooks’ harmful accusations, but we can damn well expose them for the absurdities they are.
Yes, we can.
-maymay](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0bvoktZSz1qzs83zo1_r1_500.jpg)
A couple embraces in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as part of the New York City Pride Parade in 2005. The shirtless man shows welts on his back as he hugs his partner, a woman wearing renaissance fair garb.
This picture is of Eileen and I when we marched in the NYC Pride Parade 2005, blurred and published with her permission. I remember the experience vividly. It’s one of the most self-empowering memories I have: “I am not afraid to be seen here,” I thought to myself. I don’t show, or even get, marks like these often but, having had them, and having the opportunity to march, I thought it important to be visibly proud of them.
By being visibly proud of who I am, I fight against stigmas that people like Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks would use to intimidate me, and which contribute to the shaming and suicides of innocent youth like Hope Witsell. I am not afraid to be different, to showcase the diversity of people’s differences, or to support others’ rights to be, to live, to learn, and to love differently from me. In their “bulletin,” Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks refer to MaleSubmissionArt.com as a pornographic web site on the humiliation and sexual abuse of men
, blatantly ignoring how strongly I write against abuse and against humiliation, which this entire website was founded to reject.
The willful ignorance of so-called “feminists” like Donna M. Hughes to acknowledge the validity of consensual sexual behavior terrifies me (as it should you—regardless of your sexual predilections) because by actively conflating adults’ consensual behavior, sexuality education, and public discussion about sexuality with human trafficking, Donna M. Hughes, Margaret Brooks, and their mob strengthen the abuse they claim to fight. When people like Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks use fear tactics to incite moral panic, whether it was about interracial marriage in the 1930’s, about homophobia in the 1950’s, or about sex education more recently, ask yourself if they are really fighting to change the status quo, or fighting to keep it.
As Clarisse Thorn rightfully asks:
[W]hat’s with this assumption that sex-positive activists have no clue about social issues of sexuality, or matters of the heart? Working to destigmatize sexuality is in no way incompatible with working towards better, more consensual, more meaningful relationships; in fact, I’ll be bound that sex-positive activists do a much better job of this than these “anti-trafficking” folks do.
No matter the outcome of my current tribulations, I am not going to be the hero in this story. You are. Heroism is not the adherence to conformity but the courage to deviate from it; unity cannot be achieved through homogeneity but diversity; bravery is not the absence of fear but the ability to stand tall in spite of it, for what the fear-mongers and the fearful surely know is that fear and intimidation have the power to halt action. In Clarisse’s words, We can’t erase Hughes’ and Brooks’ harmful accusations, but we can damn well expose them for the absurdities they are.