Okay, so I’m only kind of cheating this week because I’m not exactly going to be talking about things that I learned from the videos I watched this week, although I will be talking about some awesomely fantastic videos. My life for the last week revolved around my first public workshop, which was on Thursday. I was presenting on the topic of gender. For most of the week I was gathering data and information from both books and web sources to be sure that what I presented was the latest and most up-to-date gender theory that I could be presenting.
Part of the reason why I want to write about this and these videos this week is because I want to bring attention to them. It is easy to focus on kink when looking at videos on Kink Academy since, well, it’s right in the name and there is a vast library of videos to choose from. While gender can be a kink for some (it certainly is for me–but not in the sense that I fetishize gender-variant people, in the sense that I get off talking about gender and gender theory–but I digress) that doesn’t mean that everyone is open to talking about it.
Learning about gender should be something required for everyone, not just those who are gender-variant or don’t fit within the gender binary. Everyone has a gender, but often people who are cisgendered (their sex and gender align with what they have been assigned by society) are forgotten when talking about gender because people who fit into the norm often do not get discussed because we assume that everyone knows what that means. However, I also think it is necessary for us to talk about cisgendered people to attempt to un-other gender-variant people, but that is a whole other topic.
I had previously looked around the Gender category and was pleased with what I found, especially Mary Kay’s Gender Identity and Presentation and the LGBTQQ Terminology video, but there were some definitions which I did not agree with. This is one of the tricky things when talking about gender theory or gender studies, the terminology is changing really quickly and quite drastically now that it has gotten into the hands of the community versus simply academics. Mary Kay recognizes this in the beginning of her video, and I want to point out that I’m not saying that either of the videos is wrong or bad.
Just in the last few weeks, however, there have been a few really fantastic videos that have been added which I think are more in line with my understanding. These include two in the beginning of a longer series TransQueering Your Sex: Terminology and Pronouns which both give great gender overview information in a succinct way, something I had difficulty with in my own presentation. I think these videos are a must for anyone with a gender and especially those interested in interacting with gender-variant people. It really makes me unspeakably happy that these videos are on Kink Academy.
Although this video (also the beginning of a series) isn’t directly about gender but is already talking about gender in the negotiation of sex: Negotiating the Grey Areas of Sex. I’m really excited for the rest of this series also.
Really, the point of this post is that I am struck with gratitude that this category and these videos are on Kink Academy. Although I wouldn’t expect any different from such an awesome company, not all kink-oriented companies would necessarily be willing to include information about gender, even though it’s something that affects all of us. I have definitely seen more acceptance of gender-variant people in the kink community than in mainstream society, but that doesn’t mean it is universally accepted. This is just one more way that Kink Academy is awesome.
-Scarlet Lotus