Up Front by Emma Hart

I could really get to like this Select Committee thing. I'm not wearing shoes, and better yet, nobody's in the slightest bit concerned about my phone. Which is excellent, because: 

@Simonpnz Hey, y'all, @Ghetsuhm is live-tweeting a #MarriageEquality committee hearing. Best entertainment on the web

 I'm here with my partner. He really wanted to come, despite being just a few days out of hospital after an Unexpected Appendectomy. I was very happy for him to be here, because he drove. 

At the committee. Something about unnatural lusts. This might be more fun than I'd expected. 

You can tell just by looking at them which side people are submitting on. Weirdly, it becomes clear that all the antis are sitting on the left side of the room, which coincidentally is the same side the National MPs are sitting on. We're over on the right side, with the Young People, and the women cuddling. And twice as many seats. And not This Guy. 

And this nice man will let us use the word "gayrriage". 

@lilith_grace @Ghetsuhm is that where we keep our cars? #gayrriage

He was SERIOUS. I shit you not. He'd put a great deal of effort into trying to come up with a word we could be allowed to use, without getting Gay Cooties all over his precious "marriage", and that was the result. Gayrriage. 

@xenomonkey At the select committee hearing. A real eye opener to the bigotry that exists in NZ #iliveinabubble

I don't know how he was typing with my head buried in his lap to muffle the Rage. 

"Those of us who have been married know what it's all about." Oh, Old Bigot, you're adorable

Yeah, stupid young people and their lack of Relevant Life Experience. Silly children, not realising that... oh crap, I've stopped listening. Ruth has told him his time is up. And... wow. Mr Mature Perspective has thrown a MASSIVE hissy fit, and suggested that she's lying and she gave the Pro Guys more time. Man. She can really lay a Smack Down. That's my MP. I'm quite proud. Yeah, dude. Your time is up. See what I did there?

Oh hey, I'm up. 

Okay, I think that went well. Got questions from both sides

 ‏@badtom @Ghetsuhm Taking it from both sides? Not like you at all!

Pretty sure I could actually kill some people in this room with that tweet.

So I speak on my submission, and get follow-up questions from Kevin Hague and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. The latter is perfectly polite and accidentally gives me the perfect opening to talk about the social and institutional ways civil unions are treated as second-class. Cheers, dude, that was awesome. 

Sara Epperson speaks, gets a round of spontaneous applause when she's done. Fuck me, but she was brilliant. Though actually, yeah, civil unions can be plenty romantic, thanks. Still. Hope you get to be that bride, Sara. 

Oh! Homosexual Agenda Lady!

I was a bit suspicious when she got up and turned round and thanked us all for the conversation and shit. Because, y'know, Fuck Nice People. And then she started talking. Oh! This is about how that guy who runs the Gays wrote that thing about how we should all pretend we just wanted to be treated like Human Beings as a "trick", this is really familiar... Whose Talking Points are these, Colin Craig's or Bob McCoskrie's? I can't remember. But I've read this article, and aw, she's just so concerned about what's really going on, and What About the Children? 

Ugh. Think I might be sick. 

Oo! I'm not fit to raise my children bingo!

Because, yeah. Gay people just hatch from pods. All children are straight. Why does nobody ever Think of the Gay Children? I'm really starting to wish we'd all brought our copies of the Gay Agenda with us. Maybe we should gather together in little clumps, whispering and making significant gestures. 

Ruth Dyson has just warned her about being offensive. Massive bonus points for being prepared to call out someone who is just Being So Nice, and So Reasonable. 

I just did that whole indignant head-toss thing and slammed my skull into the wooden ledge right behind me. Best remember that's there for next time. 

And now there's a Presbyterian minister dishonouring my mother's memory.  #speakforyourself

Actually, dude, "your church" is deeply divided on this issue. If my mother, who was a Presbyterian elder, was still alive she'd be here with me right now, and she would give you the Full Fucking Eye-Roll. 

Ow. Stupid ledge. 

Heh. Kevin Hague is taking this jerk to pieces.

 ‏@Simonpnz @Ghetsuhm would you say @KevinHague is charging the heavy air with emotion? Humiliating the submitter perhaps?

I'm very disappointed he hasn't thrown any furniture yet.

And then we got to The Guy of the Morning. At first we kind of thought starting his time with a waiata was a bit odd, but by the time he was thumping the table we were all looking back on the singing with fond nostalgia. 

Dear Douchebag, Being denied my "right" to my father was awesome, and probably saved a life.

 "I'm not here to be judgemental as such, but..."

Wow. This is... I am struggling. I look over at the guys who spoke so brilliantly on behalf of OUSA before and, like me, they're both shaking with silent laughter. I've made a little snorty noise. Which to be honest isn't as bad as when I did that *bullshit* cough before. Sorry, dude, but you know approximately Jack Shit about anthropology. 

I want a little sign that says, "Citation needed" to hold up. Although my arm would get tired

 

 

Seriously, though, the whole experience was brilliant. And down here, we'll take all the democracy we can get, which isn't very much. Hague and Dyson were brilliant, as I expected, but I was really impressed with Chris Auchinvole. He was warm and engaged with the submitters, and asked questions with genuine interest. Eric Roy didn't speak all morning. Kevin Hague came down and spoke to us in the cafe afterwards. In search of food, he got as far as the next table before someone else stopped him to tell him how brilliant he was. 

And Hague was optimistic. They have one more day of hearings to do in Wellington, and then they're preparing their report. I got the impression that the whole committee has agreed to push the process through and ensure it doesn't get bogged down. They had clearly already reached some decisions, and those decisions indicate that their overall recommendation is that the Bill should proceed. 

I'm laying in some booze, people. We're going to get this. 

I think it's beyond contention now that my university cohort are all adults. There don't seem to be any particular benchmarks: it's not breeding or house-buying, but rather the simple toll of time. Though I have to admit I did feel more adult somehow after my mother died, and I was no longer someone's child. 

In any case, our bright-eyed youthful idealism is behind us. Some of us had a good deal more of that than others, of course. The light you see in our eyes in old photographs is not so much belief that the world can be better as it is cheap bourbon. And it seems, as disconcerting as this is for me, that some of my acquaintances really have drifted to a gentle centre-right as they've aged, just like you're supposed to. 

Many, many years ago, a friend took me out to dinner just before he left Christchurch for good. The restaurant is, unsurprisingly, no longer standing. We're both creating-types, the kind of people who look at this and think, "Oh gods yes." We talked about our dreams, the kind of work we'd really like to do if it weren't for trivial things like food and roofs and clothes. Then we toasted each other in our endeavours and vowed to see which one of us sold out first. 

A bit later, he went to work for Telecom. I could not have won more: more decisively, more clearly, more pettily.* 

Years later, I find myself in a position many 'Creatives' do: far more people want my work than want to pay for it. People value what I do, but not with the universally-recognised purveyor of value: currency. I don't wish to sound like a whiny bitch: that's simply an inevitable result of the bitchy whining. There are many reasons for me being where I am, and I'm at peace with them. 

My partner and I recently had a conversation about the Worth of each other's work. He claimed that what I do is worth more, because it can change people's lives. (I don't aim to change people's lives. My life-goal is to make people spit beverages on their monitors.) I insisted that his work was more valuable, because it allowed us to have a house. And food, and clothes, and has taken away the desperate stress we used to live under when we were, as we were, grindingly poor. 

Thing is, you can't ask people to invest you with the kind of trust people have given me, you can't trade intimate confidences with them, and then go and advertise finance companies or something. From a cynical point of view, my integrity is part of my brand – a very special, specific, narrow kind of integrity, to be sure. I'm not going to be sitting around saying, "Sure I took money for blogs, what of it?" If I were to do that, you'd all stop telling me about "that one time..." (It's never at Band Camp. Did none of you go to Band Camp?) 

Yes, actually, I've done all kinds of shitty paid advertising work. I'm not sure whether the nadir was the articles on baby jewellery, or the ones pushing Florida time-shares in hurricane season just before Katrina hit. But I think the really significant thing to recognise about that is that none of it was done under my real name. You buy the copyright, you buy the blame. 

This is all a very round-about way of telling you all something: I've been working for Telecom. Well, alright, I've been working for Scoop, but that doesn't make as neat a punch-line. I'm happy enough that this balances my integrity against contributing to my forth-coming trip to Egypt and Jordan. And if someone wants to pay me to write about that? My integrity would love to hear about it.

*I should probably mention that said friend is now working his Dream Job. He could not have won more.

It's always nice to feel, as an activist, that things are changing. Progress is being made. Things will be easier for the next generation than it has been for mine. That is a great feeling. 

Which is what makes this research so depressing. It's nothing I haven't said before. The sample size is tiny, but it agrees with overseas research: bisexuals have higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse than other sexualities. What also isn't in the least surprising is that Stuff will headline their article like this: Binge Drinking a Problem for Young Bisexuals. 

Here's a clue, guys: it's not the drinking, it's the why they're drinking. Take a lesson from gaynz.com, and maybe work out why I link to so many stories there instead of at your place: Exclusion Leading Some Bi Youth to Binge Drink. The drinking is not the problem, it's one of the symptoms of the problem. This shit just isn't that hard. 

A quick read of that Stuff article raises some problems with the research. There's no definition of 'binge drinking', and n=32. How could you tell if a group of 32 mostly female mostly students are really 'binge drinking' more than anyone else that age? 

Well, if you found the article at gaynz, there's a link to the research itself, and what you find there is a bunch of people talking honestly, openly, and sometimes quite heart-breakingly about their own experiences. This is a qualitative study. 

I drink more when I’m under high stress, when I’m stressed out, and maybe sometimes at parties when, after conversations with people, where they want to know, no one gets the bi thing. It’s really hard to explain. Quite a bit because you get people who want to know why you are not lesbian, why you are not straight, and I kind of feel that, it’s slightly easier to be one or the other, like I envy some of my friends who are gay, I’m like you know who, you know you’re there and no one questions it. But I get questioned all the time, and I find that frustrating sometimes.

 

Arahia: You kind of drink more so you can say the next day: “Oh, I was just drunk, you know. It didn’t mean anything really.” Sometimes it does, sometimes. But if you wake up the next morning with a huge hangover, you can say to the person: “Oh god, it didn’t mean anything. I was just so wasted.”

Fiona: “Didn’t mean to grope you. I was just drunk.”

Arahia: It is such a good excuse.

Fiona: And I think bi people definitely use it as more of an excuse than any other sexual orientation.

 

Yeah, I know. Our behaviours play into our stereotypes. There's no space in our stereotypes for our actual motivations, though. So maybe those bi girls getting trashed and snogging girls at parties aren't doing it because they're Happy Boozy Sluts, but because they're too scared to approach women when they're sober. I mean, she's probably straight, right? What are the odds of her being same-sex-attracted and being attracted to me? Practically fucking nil. But. If we have a few more cocktails, we can snog, and she has plausible deniability the next day. Even if we sleep together. That? No, I'm straight. I was just drunk. 

You know what? Fuck this is depressing. These people are nearly twenty years younger than I am. It should be better by now. This kind of shit? 

Almost all participants reported situations in which they or other  more-than-one-gender attracted young people had experienced negative stereotyping from lesbians and gays. The three stereotypes most commonly quoted were that sexual attraction to more than one gender was a stage of sexual orientation confusion; that it was a phase on the way towards sexual attraction exclusively to the same gender; and that more-than-one-gender attracted young people  were “greedy” (Oli, 18, New Zealand European). Several participants also reported that lesbians and gays constructed sexual orientation as binary (e.g.,  same-sex attracted versus opposite-sex attracted), which did not conform with the participants’ understanding of their own sexual orientation as fluid along a continuum. A small number of participants reported biphobic behaviour from gays and lesbians.

 Why is this still happening? This is why stuff like this really matters. It's not a stupid nit-picky language-policing political debate. If you call your event "Wellington's Gay and Lesbian Fair", how the fuck are young bisexuals supposed to know they're welcome to go? At that age I always, always assumed that if an event was for "lesbians", I wasn't welcome. I'm not a lesbian. Yes, bisexuals who are involved with LGBT organisations are going to know, but all this research shows that young bi people aren't making those connections. They feel excluded. (I really want to say, if your event is for female-identified female-attracted people, call it that. And then we could have a FIFA Window. Because I'm that pathetic.) 

There were a couple of notes of optimism in all this for me. Personally, this makes me very happy: 

Several of these participants argued that having other family members who were sexual minority persons was the reason for the positive reception of their coming-out to their families.

 Just hanging about being me makes it easier for my children to come out. So no, Mummy won't be stopping saying those things about Alex Kingston in a hurry. It's for your own good. I'd hope, too, that some portion of that effect also applies to having family friends who are Out. Our friends are our families for many of us, after all.

And then there's this. Hope. Or a giant "Y'all can go fuck yourselves." Let's call it hope. 

We note that the above participants, while discussing the way in which their more-than-onegender sexual attraction was socially excluded by lesbian and gay as well as heterosexual communities, were relatively secure and confident in their sexuality and their right to be integrated members of New Zealand society.  That  more-than-one-gender attracted young people are able to acknowledge the normality of their sexuality within an adverse environment and are identifying strategies that can modify adverse environments demonstrates this community’s significant resiliency.

As the fabulous girlonthenet says, being a sex blogger is great. And, as she goes on to add, being a sex blogger is awful. While her conclusion is absolutely correct, posts like that give me pause. See, it's really unusual for someone to blog about sex, even in the more theoretical less explicit way I do, under their real name. When people think those things, they think them about Emma Hart. 

On Coming Out Day, Clarisse Thorn (not her real name) wrote about why she, in fact, isn't out. All of her reasons are things I've thought about myself. I perform the same risk calculus, and come to a different conclusion. That doesn't mean that I don't worry about those things approximately all the damn time. I know it doesn't look like it. It's easy to assume I give no thought to consequences, particularly when you can't see all the times I've sent a column to someone else to vet before I put it up.

When I was talking about this to my partner, I told him how much easier I find it doing this when he and our children have a different surname from mine. He was quite startled: it had never occured to him. The idea of people making assumptions about him because of things I've said, reading – correctly or incorrectly – between the lines, makes me deeply uncomfortable. I'm lucky that he's always had a sense of humour about it, even when people were introducing him at work by saying, "This is Karl; his partner blogs at Public Address." 

And I cannot tell you, though I probably don't need to, how much I don't want people connecting my children with my writing. "Hey, your Mum said..." Fucking hell. Like my partner, my kids didn't volunteer for this. 

And probably nobody's noticed, but I write a lot more about BDSM since my mother died. 

With all that to worry about, protecting myself is actually pretty far down my list of priorities, and not something I often remember to think about. Well, not until, say, someone who lives in New Zealand has sent me pictures of them masturbating and I realise just how easy it would be for them to find my house. If that were a thing that happened. And, just to be clear, it is. 

Mostly I cope using a sort of weird dissociative walled garden. I assume no-one I know reads my blogs. All the different bits of my life stay in their own discrete boxes. I only discovered a bunch of my friends were reading earlier this year when it caused a Bit of a Thing. Genuinely surprised. Basically, if you never say anything to me about my writing, if you're read-only, I have no sense of your presence, so I assume you're not there. And yes, perhaps a bunch of my mum's friends are still reading my stuff and thinking, "Goodness!", but I have no way of knowing, so it doesn't matter. They don't exist. Seriously, you there reading this. If you've never communicated with me, you don't exist. 

Doing a different calculus, though, I get different results. I err on the side of a different caution. There are so many columns you'll never see, because I write under my real name. You'd have read a lot more about BDSM and abuse and abortion if I weren't protecting all those other people. I have thought about how to say those things, how much they need to be said and how much I need to have said them. Once, I wrote a piece anonymously. It felt wrong. Reading people's comments felt like spying. I felt like, in writing anonymously about what had happened to me, I made it something that specifically hadn't happened to Emma Hart, and that was wrong. It was a lie. 

There is, however, one main reason I write under my real name, that makes all the down sides completely worth it. And this is going to sound unbelievably wanky and arrogant. Pretend some other chick said it. 

People appreciate the honesty. I am a proper person, and so they listen to me as they wouldn't otherwise, and understand things they might not have. And if you think that's altruism, that I'm doing all this for The People, think again. Thing is, you guys say the most incredible things to me. And yes, people would still do that if I wrote under a pseudonym, but the other day I got this comment from someone who knows me, under my real name, from a completely different context: 

I think when someone speaks openly and clearly in a forum like the internet it is hard to see the dividends it pays. Emma's honesty and willingness to speak has done so much to make me comfortable with myself and my sexuality that I don't even know how grateful I am, because I can't imagine how much harder it would have been without her. 

Cried Like a Bitch. Sinead, you're the reason I'm out. 

              

Okay, look. I don't own a tie. I'm not saying I won't wear one, but you'll have to provide it, and I'd like it to be a bit less fugly than that one, okay? The whole white blouse and black pencil skirt thing I can do: every skinny brunette needs that trick in their armoury, right? 

Yeah, I like men in suits. I love cigars. And yes, holding someone's ashtray for them is the sort of thing I might do. It'd be negotiated, of course, as part of a relationship to which affection and mutual respect is integral. In that context, yes I would hold your ashtray, or pour your drinks, or go and get you some fucking ribs. I am that kind of woman. 

But here's my problem. If I were to hold your ashtray, I wouldn't be doing it in such a blatantly stupid position. I'd either be facing you or, preferably, kneeling to one side of you. That way you, as an obviously dominant male, would be capable of, you know, taking a step. Should you want to. I wouldn't have my arm raised like that in an obviously unsustainable way, because I'm going to be there a while. But then if I were constructing the scenario, also your cigar would be lit, and you would know how to hold it, and indeed have some grasp of what the object might be. And you wouldn't look quite so... gormless. 

No, here's my problem. I really, really don't like it when vanilla advertising co-opts imagery from BDSM. I don't know why this is becoming such a thing. All you can get that way is surface. You scrape that off and take it and you don't understand what's underneath. Yes, 'human ashtray' is a thing, and I don't recommend you google it. (Though if you do, you might notice something about the gender balance of subs.) That kind of service is a Dominance/susmission thing, and you so clearly don't understand it. You don't get why your image is so much more disturbing than, say, this one (NSFW, mild nudity). So many little things, like facial expression and tiny pieces of body language that show an understanding of a D/s dynamic. 

Mind you, to be fair, I'd be pretty appalled if that turned up in a share prospectus too. Surely the only time there should be porn in your business is if porn is your business. 

Context is everything. You've quite deliberately taken that imagery out of context, and planted it square in your hotbed of misogynistic marketing bollocks. I mean, it's not that you're really sexist and homophobic, right Moa? You just think it sells. That's why 'one picture' is problematic: because you think misogyny chimes with your target audience. You think it's what they want. You took something I love and made it cheap and tacky and insulting, and you've got no fucking clue what you've done. 

You're also hoping the humourless outrage will get you sympathy and lots of tasty cheap publicity. Thing is, the outrage has been pretty humoured. Just the Twitter hashtag has shown more "sharp wit" than, obviously, you can buy. And let me tell you, as a submissive woman who thinks Cassells' Alchemist is up there with the Civic and John Barrowman in terms of Perfect Things? I don't think your Modern Manhood is quite Premium enough to cope with me. You can't have my money, Moa, but you can have my slightly condescending pity.

 

Image Credit: Atheist Pinko Sluts Monthly.