There is no one meaning of Queer
How good is that!
So here’s my chance to tell you what Queer is for me
But before that shall I, say, introduce myself?
I think I’ve been a feminist since that time
I must have been 13 I think
My father was sending my brothers on a school trip
And I asked ‘Accha? Aur beti ka kya hoga?’
Long before I found the word
And joined the women’s movements
Feminism, I feel, is in my blood
Unfolding and unfolding in my life, that feminist mantra
‘the personal is political’
never ceases to amaze me with its meanings
And I’m filled with gratitude for it
At 35 sudden, dramatic, lust for a woman made me realize I was not straight.
A quick plunge followed quickly by a plunge into queer activism.
At 47 I fell in love, sudden and dramatic once again
This time with the amazing world of Bondage, Domination and Sado-Masochism
Quickly followed by kink activism
with comrades in Kinky Collective
busting myths and sharing
the magic of BDSM
Circling back
to Queer
If I may begin
with what I feel Queer is not.
Queer to me is not just an umbrella term for the many sexual and gender identities that exist.
Queer to me is not just LGBTQIHKJ….
Those other alphabets, BDSM,
helped me understand this more.
Oh wait here! Like with Queer, let me say what BDSM is not.
BDSM is not about 50 Shades of Crap, oops, Grey
It is not about men inflicting pain on women because they had a traumatic childhood.
It is not about weak women.
Not about violence and abuse.
It is about letting power and energy flow as intensely as it will,
in the erotic.
And it’s not as exotic as it sounds.
You know, we know that binary of pain and pleasure is false
If we’ve enjoyed a love bite
Or a mirchi vada
And it’s not just about pain.
For some it’s not about pain at all but about
Complete surrender or total domination
Pain or power
What matters is consent
It’s what makes BDSM tick
So now
Without more ado, adieu to introductions
Shall I tell you why I feel kinky is queer?
Maybe I feel that Kinky is Queer because I am Kinky and Queer
But maybe it’s also because when I first joined the community
and as a hyper excited and nervous newbie asked the experienced ones
how they had dealt with the fear they must have felt at the beginning,
they turned around and said fear? You mean thrill?
Maybe it’s because I had no answer to ‘did you like it’ after I was whipped for the first time
till the wetness told me that I did
Maybe it’s because Pain is pleasure
Humiliation is hot
Every thing is upside down
Subversion I guess
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer because of the biggest ulta phulta of them all
Of how powerful I feel as a submissive
Maybe because boundaries are pushed
And because the Dominant can dominate only because I submit
And that time when I was down, on all fours,
and the fury of a Dominant was pouring down on me,
and I, absolutely still, unresponsive, in my head, was saying…
you fucker…you are so wrong this time
And the other time when after I did what I can’t believe I actually did, he said - you are not my slave.
Why did you even do that? Who was it for?
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer
Because I thought I was a hard core submissive
Till the time we bought a flogger
And I used it and I felt angry because she did not say thank you like she meant it
And because, later, with my feet resting on her chest,
I felt like a Goddess
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer because of the flogger
I wish an Akhil would write about the flogger
So gentle, so sensuous, barely touching the skin, so rhythmic, so fierce, so able to break the skin…
Creating marks we wear with pride, like jewellery
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer because not everyone has the luxury of wearing marks
Not the submissive man who is married
Who has no way of explaining away the marks
Who has no way of explaining to his friends why he wants a divorce from his wife who is oh so nice
Including his best friends who have no clue that kink is his sexual orientation
Although they suspect he might be gay.
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer because it’s like a raag
Crazy creativity unleashed
within the discipline of boundaries
Maybe I feel Kinky is Queer
Because of my dear heterosexual male friend who finds himself playing with a person who happens to have a dick
Or the many dykes who submit to and are in relationships with men
Because at the end of the day it’s whether the power flows that matters
Whether the power does not cling and fix and stay but flows
that matters
My speaking about kink bhari sabha mein,
Having felt like a revolutionary as I walked in handcuffs on pride the other day
Quite the aaj baazar mein pabajaulan chalo
Maybe it is because of the privileged upper class, upper caste, older bitch that I am
That I can sit here and say with pride that Kinky is Queer
Jaya Sharma is a queer, kinky feminist who is trying to become a writer. She is part of the Kinky Collective. To reach out to Kinky Collective, go to their Facebook Page here.
