Your Right to Free Kink

I'm all for Gay rights. I have gay, queer, bi, trans, etc. friends, and they're absolutely delightful human beings. And I think that no one should deny someone a job based solely on their sexual orientation or their bedroom preferences (or for race, sex, religion, or any of those other ugly discriminations). But with that being said, I don't think the queer community (or any community, for that matter) should use their "minority" status as a crutch or a scapegoat.

Take this kinky, pagan fellow. Kudos to him for being counter-culture and open about his sexuality. And while his civil suit is really bordering on TMI, I wonder why it's relevant. Did he walk into the chauffeur-permit-granting institution in a black leather mask with a whip in hand? Because I could understand why someone would not want to grant even a fishing permit to someone dressed like that in public. I'm all for BDSM, but y'all have to admit it's a bit creepy when you start wearing the full costume in broad daylight. And if he wasn't dressed to fuck, then why would the discriminating officer even know to deny him a permit based on his BDSM status? I can really only draw two conclusions: either this guy wears his kinks on his sleeve (which is really not a good quality to have for a chauffeur), or he's just bringing up the issue because he wants to make a lot of legal noise about something that didn't even factor into the decision.

No, I don't think we should discriminate over someone's kinks, but I also don't think your personal sexual preferences should be brought up over a chauffeur-permit application. So, I'm going to suppose that this whole denial has some other reason other than his BDSM-loving ass, and the true source of his permit denial probably resonates with the legitimacy of some other reason: like having a felony on his record (like kidnapping?), or having too many traffic tickets, or just not having all the proper information.

This kind of attitude is just reprehensible to me: to not just ignore one's own shortcomings in life, but also to demand that the rest of society ignore them for fear of upsetting one's minority status. Your minority status is not your crutch. And if you want to stop being considered a minority, maybe you should stop insisting on special treatment over it. I mean, when you start getting down into minority status over sexual kinks, almost everyone is a minority. Also, to compare something like one's own bedroom preference to the light of the oppression that other minorities have suffered (consider the slavery of race, the genocides of religion, the lynchings of sexuality, the silencing of gender) is utterly ridiculous. No dominatrix has suffered the way that blacks did in early colonial America (or the Native Americans, for that matter). No foot fetishist was forced into concentration camps. No latex-lover was dragged from the back of a truck for miles and then hung dead on a makeshift cross for his family and friends to find.

This BDSM-loving pagan man's false cry of prejudice is an insult to the real minorities that have suffered. It seems unlikely that any discrimination could have occurred, since one's Pagan or BDSM status are unlikely to come up on a chauffeur-permit application. I smell the foul scent of special rights for stupid reasons, and I'm sickened by it.

A Sex Letter

Dear Sexists,
This isn't a letter about sex--well, yes it is, but not like you're thinking. This is about my sex, not the one I give, but the one I was born with. The female sex. I'm tits and cunt and a whole lotta smarts, too. Does that scare you? Or do you just think it's unfair for me to have tits, cunt, and brains all in one package? If you want to talk about what's unfair, we can go on at length about dehumanizing attitudes, because you're giving me a great example.
I don't pretend to understand your kind; I must always forget to multiply fear into the equation of boobs + brain = sexist prick. (Us girls and our math, what can I say?) But whatever tiny complex is making your tighties knot whenever I open my mouth to argue, you seem to respond in ten-fold anger, condescension, or both.
Thanks to pricks like you I understood the root word of patronize. Thanks to pricks like you I learned that sexism is still alive and well. And it is because of you that feminism cannot die--nay, will not die--as long as you decide that you need to restrict my mouth and my confidence until I am beaten down into willful submission so you can carry on your conversation with the boys.
You need to recognize you're sexist. You need to recognize that you don't respect women when you can only argue condescendingly with us. And you need to recognize that women will avoid you and you will wake up one day next to a wife who cannot really love you because you cannot really respect her. And one day you will look back and think on all the women you have burned and raged at because they dared to argue, dared to object, dared to question, and realize that your attempts to drag them back down to the kitchen were done in vain. For you cannot make us submit. The times you thought you had beaten us down were merely times we laid low to strike back. We never submitted. And we're not going to now. Because we're smarter and swifter and stronger than you, and no wimpy sexist is going to make us stop believing that.
Tomorrow night is Take Back the Night. And we're taking it back, you pricks.

Love,
Smart Women Everywhere