hareofhrair

[hareofhrair]

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

[hareofhrair]

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Dialogue written by @classpectpokerap

[hareofhrair]

You would be shocked how much understanding of occult stuff in the cultural zeitgeist comes from Supernatural.

its infused itself into our cultural understanding of magic so smoothly that people who have never seen a single episode will quote shit it made up as though it were well know ancient tradition.

Salt as a multipurpose weapon against ghosts/anything paranormal? Supernatural more or less invented that. They got the original concept from, as far as I can tell, the movie Hocus Pocus, where a circle of salt is used to ward off witches specifically. In the movie, the book the kids read the salt thing in doesn't actually specify what to do with the salt, they come up with the salt circle thing on their own and it just happens to work. Which is why I think that's probably where Supernatural got that specific imagery. I haven't done *exhaustive* research, but so far I haven't found anything earlier than 1993 that claims salt is a paranormal cure-all. Historically, salt has never been used as witch or ghost repellent in any tradition I'm aware of. Blessed salt is used in some Roman Catholic rites such as blessing holy water and part of the invocation mentions driving away evil, but it's... not the salt that's driving anything away.

Exorcisms are actually just a spell in Latin and if you can read it fast enough the demon has to give up? Not remotely how that works. Inasmuch as exorcisms work at all irl, I mean. It's not how it's done, is what I'm saying, traditionally speaking. I'm fairly certain the Catholic church would agree that you cannot exorcise a demon by playing a recording of someone reading the lord's prayer.

The whole concept of a Devil's Trap- a magic circle you can draw that traps demons if they step into it- very much made up by Supernatural. It does draw loosely from earlier fantasy tropes. The concept of a complicated magical sigil or circle which can summon and bind a demon goes way back. The idea that you can just draw a five pointed star on the ground and trick a demon into walking into it and they'll be trapped forever? Less so. Initially they used The Grand Pentacle and the Fifth Pentacle of Mars from the Lesser Key of Solomon mashed together, but that was really complicated to draw so they pretty quickly switched to just using a normal ass pentagram with some vague magic symbols around it.

(What even are those supposed to be. They seem to be somewhere between the symbols around the lesser key's version of the seal of solomon, random alchemical symbols, and some really jank fake arabic)

You can make holy water by just dunking a rosary in any container of water- They didn't invent this one. Constantine(2005) at the very least did it first (or maybe concurrently- Supernatural premiered the same year) but they sure did popularize it. This show is very culturally protestant in the way it treats catholic liturgical practice as like, just straight up fantasy magic completely removed from a religious context, and honestly that's pretty funny. Latin prayers are just spells now. Holy water's a potion. There's an episode where they decide they're going to try and turn a demon back into a human so they gotta inject him with the blood of a holy man so they make Sam go to confession- No, no I'm not going to get dragged into this tangent. That episode makes my brain explode. In case it was not obvious, consecrating holy water is a bit more complicated than that. You need to be a priest, for one thing!

There are probably a lot more, but it's past my bed time so I'll stop there lmao.

Yall I am so sorry but in most of the mythology around blues singers talking to demons, it's just the devil. As far as I'm aware, the idea of the Crossroads Devil as a distinct class of demon is from Supernatural.

#I watched all of Supernatural because the gf is a hardcore fan #Fortunately it's pretty compelling in a car crash kind of way #Except for like #Season 10. Season 10 was so blandly bad I couldn't even hate watch #It doesn't really improve after that but it does get aggressively weirder in a few interesting ways #But honestly after the season 8 finale when they just. #kept disrespecting my boy Crowly #to the point i was actively rooting for Mark Sheppard to leave the show because the paycheck could NOT be worth it #after that I had pretty much checked out #There were exactly two characters in that show I found compelling: #Benny the cajun vampire who dressed like a tom of finland drawing and specialized in homoerotic warrior bonds #and Crowly #Both of which got just the worst treatment imaginable #because apparently that's the only consistent factor in what makes me get emotionally attached to a character #I exclusively love neglected side characters the writers actively hate and only acknowledge to make fun of them or have them die badly #*Gestures wearily at Equius and Gamzee*

[hareofhrair]

From here

[hareofhrair]

Yall need to learn to give fat bald people some dignity or youre gonna hate yourselves on the upper half of your life lmao

[hareofhrair]

Sorry, your game looks cool, but the promotional material used the words "wholesome" and "cozy" so I gotta stick by my principals.

#me but when they call it “witty and irreverent”

[hareofhrair]

Good Bones

The first thing you must understand is that God is a body.

You creep within him like microbes. Like mitochondria. Life within life, growing inward in a fractal pattern, you mirror the body that contains you. And like the dense little nucleus coils of information you are, you build cell walls to contain yourselves. Your houses stand, gods in their own right, and shelter the organisms that move through them and give them life. Life within life, bodies within bodies. Which makes God a kind of house. And if he loves us, he loves us in the way you love your gut bacteria. Does God eat probiotic yogurt? I think you must hope that he does, this infinite titan we inhabit. I think you must hope that he takes very good care of himself. And if we hope, we self-aware nuclei, we houses, we gods teeming with universes of infinitesimal life, does the life within us hope? Does God? Does a house?

Margaret considered herself a healer of houses. There were many who did what she did, buying cheap, neglected properties, fixing them up and selling them on. But she was no cheap house flipper, slapping on a new coat of beige paint and calling it a day. She was a physician, taking battered and ailing homes and making them whole again. Restoring original features, replacing cheap materials with sturdy, long lasting hardwood and brick, teasing out the true character in even the most cookie-cutter suburban stucco box. It wasn’t easy money, oftentimes they barely broke even, but it was her first and truest passion.

Then came the house on Oak street. 

It was supposed to be an investment, a step forward for them. Between the picturesque location and the impressive square footage, it might bring enough profit to finally build that family home they’d dreamed about.  As much satisfaction as Margaret found in turning flop houses into homes, she could not pretend she wouldn't prefer to work on something with a little more substance. Something with good bones. And the house on Oak street had those in spades.

It was a towering brick colonial, symmetrical and severe, with neat rows of multi-paned windows dressed in tidy little dark blue shutters and a great tree for which the street had been named standing sentinel in the yard, green and gold in the fullness of summer. Even with as long as it had sat empty and abandoned, the quality of the original craftsmanship stood firm against the years. Its steep dark roof, set like a furrowed brow above the tall windows, showed no signs of sagging. Her inspections had revealed no major sources of structural damage. And yet, she thought, as she stood before it, the dust filmed windows looking back at her like cataract milky eyes, there was an unmistakable something to it. An age. A patience. Somewhere in the lines of its facade she saw, or convinced herself she saw, determination. It was a proud house, and though it had fallen on hard times, it would rise again. And Margaret would be the one to help it rise.

The house had been built in the 1700's, and had for many years been a family home. Generations lived and died in its halls, and it sheltered them well. Then some misfortune had struck the family, Margaret wasn't privy to the details. She couldn't know how the air had soured almost overnight. How the petty family dramas those walls had witnessed previously paled in comparison to the fury and despair that came to inhabit them. What happens to a body whose cells hate and fear one another? Who lash out and wound each other? Who rage and weep?

And then the family was gone, and ownership of the home fell to relatives overseas for some years. And then to the bank for some years more. And eventually into the hands of Margaret, who arrived cheerful and smiling with paint and spackle, ready to heal it. She stepped inside, and the door closed soundly behind her.

Margaret did much of the work herself. It saved on expenses, ensured the work was of the quality she expected, and she enjoyed it, laborious as it often was. Some things required a trusted second set of hands or a call to an outside contractor, but she was proud that most of the work had been done personally. She was often alone, just her and the house, as she stripped old wallpaper and tore out moldy wood and cut away mildewed carpet. 

Remodeling is an interesting word. To shape again. We use it to describe gutting a house and refitting it with new features. And also to describe the way bones change their shape after injury. Though the wound is gone, evidence of its presence remains.

Margaret sometimes spoke to the houses she worked on. She was just talking out loud to herself really, but pretending the house could hear her made the work less lonely.

"There you go," she'd say as she braced a rotting beam and prepared to cut it out and replace it. "That must feel better." And sometimes she fancied she could feel the houses responding. She imagined their gratitude and their relief. For some reason, when she tried to imagine the house on Oak street feeling grateful or relieved, the thought was less than convincing.

She found she didn't like staying there after sun set, though she did so more and more often lately. She found nightmares troubled her more often than she was used to. Nightmares in which she stood in the house on Oak street while acid boiled up from the floorboards and teeth pushed through the crown molding and the rug grew soft and wet as a tongue and hurled her down a hallway as black and deep as a throat.

Many of the symptoms we attribute to haunted houses are in truth symptoms of an ailing body. Un-level floors caused by sinking foundations create feelings of vertigo and unease. Poorly sealed windows and gaps in the baseboards lead to drafts, causing cold spots and doors that open or slam shut on their own. Aging faulty plumbing announces itself by strange knocking in the night. Gas leaks and unshielded electrical wiring manifest visions, shadows lurking in the corners of our eyes, not threatening but desperately warning- Something is wrong. Hauntings are an immune response.

Margret knew this, and when she felt cold spots in the house on Oak street, she held out her hand for her level and measuring tape, only to find the cold spot had moved in the moment it had taken her to grab them. She measured dutifully anyway, took careful notes.

"Probably the windows," she told the house. "Frames are warped."

It would be tragic to remove the original windows, and she hoped she could find a way to preserve them, but it might be better in the end to replace them entirely with more energy efficient models, if this was to be a functioning, lived in home and not a historical preservation piece.

That night she dreamed she was running through the house, running from something. Every time she tried to shut a door between her and what pursued her, the door grew flimsier. At first it simply would not lock or close, and then it was not a good solid oak door at all but thin hollow-cored MDF. Then it was a half-screen porch door. Then all screen. Then an absurd half door. And then she would give up and flee to the next room, the next door to hide behind. All the while the unknown thing pursuing her grew closer.

The Ship of Theseus is an ancient thought experiment, in which a ship, over many years of regular maintenance, is slowly replaced one piece at a time, until no single piece original to the ship remains. What is a ship but a house at sea? How much of a house must you replace before it ceases to be what it was, and becomes something new? How many organs can you transplant, how many limbs can you sever and stitch back into place, before the body that laid down under your knife is no longer the body that rises after it?

During the time the house lay in legal limbo, it did still have inhabitants. No house is ever really without them. In the absence of the family, there were rodents. And insects. And vagrants. And angry, destructive children. Margaret found evidence of fires, and crude words in spray paint across the living room walls. To her dismay, even months after beginning this project, she was still finding such evidence. It was a large house, with doors that stuck and whose keys had been lost for decades. It wasn't really surprising to discover rooms she had not even touched yet. She did tend to get very caught up in her work and miss things. She cleaned these rooms too, patting the wall in reassurance.

"Don't worry," she told the house. "We'll get it all fixed up."

That night, she dreamed she was laying on the hallway floor, and the floor rippled beneath her, moving her slowly forwards, headfirst down the hall. Rats and roaches paced beside her like a funeral procession. Her foot snagged on an exposed carpet nail, and she watched it unravel like a knit sweater, her flesh uncoiling, spilling slowly out behind her like spaghetti. It climbed up her body, her calf, her thigh. She felt the wet bag of her torso split and her contents gush and flop out behind her. Still the house dragged her onwards.

Theseus was a hero, who founded Athens and rescued children on a ship that would one day become a paradox. Once, he walked into a maze carrying a skein of thread, which unspooled behind him to mark his way back. At the heart of this maze was a monster. 

"I think I need a break," Margaret told the house, dropping her wallpaper scraping tool and leaning her head against the wall, back aching. "No offense, but you're a lot of work."

She looked towards the window, reminding herself she still needed to call about having those replaced, and saw the oak tree outside, its branches bare against a gray, overcast sky, studded with small green buds. She had been so sure she'd be done with this before Christmas. 

She stood, and stretched, and opened a door, which stuck and shuddered as she pulled on it. Inside was another wall full of graffiti, and the smell of mildew rolled out like a flag unfurling. Margret groaned and took the scraping tool as it was offered to her.

Your bodies depend on microbial life you gather from the world around you. Some of your mitochondria are not grown within you, but moved into you while you were in utero, inherited from your mother. You contain these refugees from another body, another god, the first house to hold you. When life on this planet was single celled, a bacteria with the ability to release energy from oxygen found its way inside another cell. Eaten, or burrowed in on its own, it carved out a place for itself inside. The cell sheltered the bacteria, and the bacteria fed the cell. And from that union rose all eukaryotic life on earth. How do you feed God? How do you feed your houses?

It's a mistake to think of the maze and the monster as two separate things. The monster lives in the maze as your cells live within you, a holobiont. A lichen. What then does that make Theseus? And you must recognize of course that the monster was never the threat. The monster is not why he needed the thread.

Margret dreamed. She dreamed of walking out into a crisp fall morning. She dreamed of setting fires. She dreamed of scraping her skin away like old wallpaper. 

Margret felt a cold spot. She reached for her level and her tape measure and her notes. She fumbled, dropping the notebook, and muttered a curse at herself and reached back as it was handed to her. She was getting clumsy. She was going to suggest a long vacation once this house was done. Somewhere warm, where she could lay outside in the grass and see the sky. She felt like she'd been staring at these walls forever. She'd promised Julia-

The name rang like a bell in her thoughts and she dropped the notebook again to grab at the wall for support. Julia. Julia. The name reverberated with such urgency, her heart leapt with every repetition. Why was she here alone? She never worked on the houses alone, Julia worried about her too much. She didn't talk to the houses, why would she? When there was supposed to be someone else there to talk to? Where was Julia?

Who had handed her the notebook?

Margaret stood very still, and listened to the shifting of the house, and the breathing of the person standing behind her.

There is another story, not about Theseus. About Orpheus, and his lover Eurydice, who was dead. He went down into the underworld, into a dark maze, to find her. He did not bring thread. The God of the Dead told Orpheus that Eurydice would follow him out of the underworld, but he must never look back at her until they were both in the world of the living. All the long way home, Orpheus walked, and something walked behind him, breathing in the dark. 

How many days, how many weeks, had they wandered through this house together? How many rooms had they replaced together before the ship changed? When had she last left the maze, and why had she come back?

She came back for Julia.

She walked. She did not run, she did not scream. She walked through the house, back through the endless rooms, each one so lovingly remodeled. She tried to remember the way out of the maze. She wondered if the footsteps behind her were Eurydice, or the Minotaur.

The maze cannot expel the monster. The ship cannot shed its boards. The cell cannot eject the organelle that feeds it. Why would it want to? Why would God evict you?

Why would you leave the house? Why would you leave me?

The procession of rooms is never ending. Margaret turned to the window, tried to keep her hands from shaking as she clawed at the sash. Outside, the oak tree was covered in snow. The window refused to move, stuck. The frame is warped. She meant to call about having them replaced. She looked out at the oak tree, and in the reflection of the glass, the person behind her shifted.

What you must understand is that God is a body. That a house is a body. That a body is a house for other life, and that makes the house God. And what you have to understand is that illness and injury change the body from the inside out, and once the boards of the ship have been replaced you cannot just put them back in again.

It is not. The same. Ship.

It is not. The same. House.

And what you really, really have to understand is that life on this planet began when one life swallowed another, and kept that life living inside it. Life within life. Bodies within bodies. Do you understand?

In the end, Margaret was right.

The house did have good bones.

#zampanio

[hareofhrair]

really surprised i have of yet to see this reading of laios' and toshiro's relationship before tbh

[hareofhrair]

#*scribbling on the bottom of the page* #or is autistic in a way they think is weird or cringey or inconvenient #or too depressed to shower #or ADHD in a way that makes them annoying and unreliable instead of funny and quirky #or or or #basically it's all performative bullshit and always has been #If they claim they support autistic/adhd/depressed people but turn then turn around and demonize people with personality disorders #they dont actually support people with any mental illness #just the sanitized romanticized commercially friendly versions of those illnesses #which conveniently don't require them to change their beliefs or behaviors in any way

[hareofhrair]

the french beatles

[hareofhrair]

it's funny, I was talking to someone last night who didn't really know what an illustrator was. so when I introduced myself as one, he gave a speech that would've probably gone over well with a gallery artist, but which was precision-tailored to make any illustrator within a 50 mile radius go into eyes-glowing-red kill mode.

his speech was about how there is a difference between craft and art, and how people can practice craft (as in, skillfully execute a painting) without it having any artistic merit.

so I'm someone who gets paid to paint waffles for restaurant menus and dinosaurs for museums exhibits, and AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH! you can't make art without it being something something you've made. does that make sense? like every illustrator I know has an individual way of approaching any given imagery that is informed by a lifetime of inspiration, and of passive intake of culture, and of the specific mistakes they make because of whatever their particular mass of grey matter deems as important thing to render or unimportant, just fuck it up.

I can make something that is informed by both a century of Canadian print-making and by my own particular neurosis, and it can also be commissioned commercial imagery that I regurgitate without care because I want to pay my mortgage. everything is art, nothing isn't art, art is something sticky and impossible to shake off of you.

anyway he got very wide-eyed and said "I'm sorry if I offended you," so today I feel a bit bad for having gotten so, uh.... excited.

[hareofhrair]

Gamzee is that asshole highblood friend with the super cold and clammy hands that takes advantage of the body temperature difference to sap Karkat’s warmth.

(Extremely late GamKar commission for the wonderful fromgilbowithawesome . THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR UNENDING PATIENCE ;_;)

[hareofhrair]

I don’t know if I have many pagan followers, let alone pagan followers in the Louisiana area, but the WyldFyre Beltane festival is coming up (May 3-5). I go every year and it’s just about my favorite place in the world. This year I’m going to be teaching a class on poppet magic and making your own poppets out of salt dough!

There’s still time to get tickets if you’re nearby and would like to check it out!

#beltane #paganism #paganblr #witchcraft #witchblr

[hareofhrair]

The Woodland Park Zoo had a spring event this past weekend, which I had to hit up for the fun enrichment. My favorite of all is the maned wolves - who you rarely ever get such a good chance to see!

One moment, they're elegant and ethereal. Then there's enrichment, and you realize they're just long-legged stinky goofballs [affectionate].

Meet Rosario (with tail) and Urso (tail-less).

Elegant, ethereal, unreal:

Ridiculous, adorable, dogs-running-fox-software:

#maned wolves #are some of my very favorite animals

[hareofhrair]

what will the name of this tumblr sexyman be?

[hareofhrair]

if i had a nickel for every weird alien clown society i would have 4 or maybe 5 nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it keeps happening.

[hareofhrair]

something you said has been on my mind for a while - "kink is not inherently sexual". good faith! I don't understand that at all, could you explain it a bit?

This post is educational, hooray! Extensive discussion of kink under the cut. Nothing explicitly sexual is described in detail.

Please note that in this post, I use the terms top and Dom/me interchangeably. This is because I personally identify as a "top" and not a Dom. Some communities draw sharp lines between these two terms, and it's useful to make sure that you're using the same definition as other people when you're talking. Some people use "top" solely to refer to the giving or penetrative partner, which is not synonymous with the dominant partner. Topping subs, power bottoms, and all other permutations exist. I just use that term for myself because I don't like being called a Dom. It sounds like a guy's name to me, I don't like it.

When I text my wife in every morning, "Please bring me my coffee," and she answers, "Yes, Sir!" is that sexual? I'm surely not feeling sexual when I'm barely awake. When I hold my other wife's hand when she's having a depressive fit and tell her, "Daddy's got you, it's okay," that's kink, but it's not sexual. In that moment, neither of us feel particularly sexy, and we're surely not engaging in sex, but it's kink that - forgive the pun - binds us more strongly together.

One of my girls wears a 24/7 collar that I locked in place. (She can ask me at any point to take it off, or she can take it off herself if she wants to, but she chooses this.) That's kink. It's also... a necklace. That's not any more inherently sexual than her wedding ring, though it - for us - certainly symbolizes part of our relationship that happens to sometimes include sex, exactly the same as a wedding ring.

There are a lot of types of kink that don't include sexual contact in any way or which might include sexual contact but don't need to. One of my friends is a sex-repulsed ace bootblack. They literally take care of the boots of tops, usually at play parties. For them, this act of service and submission allows them to go into a particular headspace that's very fulfilling for them. They are explicitly serving the people whose boots they clean and polish. The Dom/mes receive that service and not only get really great-looking boots out of the deal but also get the feeling of power from having someone eager to take care of them and serve them. For some of us, that kind of service allows us access to a feeling of power that can be hard to access in our daily life, and that feels really good.

Sometimes, it can feel good in a sexy way, and sometimes it feels good in a "makes lizard brain feel powerful but not sexy" way. Neither one is inherently better or worse or more or less kinky than the other.

Sometimes, people who like being whipped like it because the line between pain and pleasure is like a wave on the ocean, and they want to surf it. Sometimes, that involves mashing squishy bits together, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it's just about riding that endorphin wave and then having someone take care of you afterwards.

Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots and fucked. Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots because that process requires a lot of trust and is an intimate ritual that takes a lot of time. Sometimes, it's both. Sometimes, people want to tie up others because it's a beautiful work of art, because that ritual of binding is a ritual and accesses something sacred for them. Sometimes, they want to be tied up because it's playtime, and that's fun for them! Sometimes, they want to be tied up because when they're tied up, they are 0% in control, and they want to just surrender control to someone whom they can trust.

Some people want to go into sub space - that headspace I talked about earlier - because in their everyday life, they have a lot of responsibilities and stress, and going into that space where nobody can ask anything from them, where they have no responsibility to make any decisions at all, is a relief to them. That might involve squishy bits, or it might not. Some people like going into that sub space because being someone's Good Boy, Sweet Girl, or Good Pup is gender-affirming for them. A friend of mine only feels really safe when he's got his pup hood on, because that means he's With Master, who will protect him.

Some people get gender affirmation out of being in control, being someone's Daddy or Mistress, Sir or Boss. It allows them to access a power that helps them to square their shoulders and take on the world.

All of this entirely skips over the fact that a person's primary sexual organ is between their ears, and some people do get sexual fulfillment out of kink even when no genitalia are involved at all, but I cannot stress enough that the reasons that people enter into the multitude of kink situations in the world are as varied as the people involved. People gain access to comfort, to feelings of stability and order and control over their lives, to gender affirmation, to endorphins that are or aren't sexual in nature, to release from responsibility, to ritual and intimacy, to the ability to provide for others and take care of others in a way that their outside lives may or may not permit. For that matter, they may simply gain access to a paycheck, and that's fine, too. That's no more or less "selling your body" than when I used to run my ass off for 13+ hours a day at my retail job, and I guarantee they're making way, way better money.

The fact that so many people see kink as only and purely sexual means they're missing out on so much of what kink can offer, and narrowing down the experiences of others to this tiny little sliver of what actually exists. Yes, it can be sexual, but it doesn't have to be. The reasons that people engage in kink are as varied as the reasons that people engage in any other kind of interaction, and the fulfillment they get from it is as varied, too.