I meet people everyday that thank me for reassuring them that it’s okay to be themselves. I'd say that is the number one compliment I get…”Thank you for being so sex-positive, queer-positive, kink-positive…etc.”

My reassurance is not profound or terribly eloquent, but here it is…

Go where you are celebrated.

Really let that sink in…go where you are celebrated.

Our identities – poly, kink, and gender – do not have to be tolerated. They do not have to be endured. They do not have to be suffered through. They are not something we will grow out of or get over. All of these parts of our identities are equally as valid as our religious beliefs, our ethnicities, our ableness, etc. No one would ask you to grow out of your ethnicity…accuse you of being selfish when you consider your ableness…tell you to get over your culture.

I can’t grow out of my blue eyes… I can cover them up. Just like when poly people are pressured into monogamy, when queer people try to play it straight for a job interview, or when kink people try go vanilla…it shows around the edges and that’s the part that scares us. When we permit people to shame us for things we have no reason to be shamed for, we allow that to happen. No one can shame you without your permission. GO WHERE YOU ARE CELEBRATED. Find the people in this world who genuinely want you to have happiness and thrive…and for someone of us that means loving more than one person…or loving someone regardless of their gender…or expressing our love unconventionally.

I found that on the journey to find my most authentic self, I found a couple someones who were so close. I spent YEARS compromising on what happiness looked like to me because of a lifetime of social programming. And because they were close…they could almost accept me….they only had to tolerate a few things…I settled. I was so happy to have most of me accepted that I ignored the fact that the parts that were endured/suffered through/tolerated are also parts of my identity. If we are mostly celebrated…that’s good enough, right? No, my loves…if you are asking yourself if settling is good enough, it probably isn’t however, your mileage may vary.

Now, let’s be clear – no person is going to celebrate every action or behavior you make. It drives me fucking crazy that The Monogamist likes to put things on the counter. Bat shit, certifiably, crazy. Okay…that might be a slight exaggeration, but it bothers me significantly. The Mrs. used to smoke like a chimney and I strongly disliked having to wait for her to finish a cigarette so that we could get in the car… These are behaviors, not parts of my partners’ identities.

I can dislike the way someone uses a flogger and still celebrate their kinkiness. I can dislike the way someone eats pussy and still celebrate their sexuality. Poly…Kink…Queer…these are parts of my identity not behaviors. How much of my identity they are is up to me…or in your case, up to you. What I have come to find is that the non-monogamous part of me is not nearly as hungry as the days when it was shamed, starved, and silenced by those “oh so close” partners. As the stifled part of ourselves push harder and harder to see the daylight, our “oh so close” partners tend to counter with “You’ve changed.” Its not that we change. I have always been poly, kinky, and queer. What changed over time is that I was no longer able to silence those parts of myself. The more that someone asked me to hide the parts of myself…the parts that didn’t fit into their straight, monogamous, and/or vanilla agendas…the more they promoted their agenda and capitalized on their privilege…the louder the stifled parts of my identity screamed to be out.

Once I made the decision to only participate in relationships that celebrate me as a person, I’ve found that the rage that came with silencing myself has dissipated. By putting love out into the world and receiving unconditional love from the people in my life….I have a lot less to fight about.

And that’s me. Queer. Poly. Kinky. Femme.