Category: Blogging

Building a Sex Positive Brand

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Building a Brand, while marching to my own drum!

What You’re Not Supposed to Talk About: The Lows

On July 30th I will be celebrating 8 years of blogging and as I have written a few times, I have certainly learned a lot and grown into the Sex positive soul that I am today.  But there is one key point that we, as content creators are not allowed to talk about, and that is the low’s of building a brand.  And that is just what my writing has become.  It has evolved past my own words, and into an identity all of it’s own.  It is a blog, a website, a coaching business, a podcast, and a place that has grown far beyond what I ever could have imagined at its conception.  And the reality is that it was incredibly hard, and I have shed countless tears over it.  And yeah, here I go again tackling another taboo subject, building a brand and what you’re not supposed to talk about, it sucks and is hard.

Social Media Skews Reality

For whatever reason our society has decided that social media is a place where you can freely share all the joys, highs, and amazing points in your life.  By extension, the same is true of starting your own business or brand.  We want to build this illusion that we are successful right from the onset.  Fake it till you make it is the rally cry we here.  If you want to get funding, support, accolades, or any sort of exposure you need to be unique, successful, and solve people’s pain in a way no one else can.  And yes, these factors definitely play into building a brand and are important for growth and success.  But, this is only a very teeny tiny fraction of the truth behind any creation, company, product, or in this case a brand.  The truth is, it is 99% percent blood, sweat, and so many tears in the beginning, and very few ever find success from all that hardship, and yet, we keep up with this smoke and mirror anyways because we cannot let go of our dream, or our what if.

But you see, I am not supposed to talk about this.  By sharing with you that blogging about my first open relationship, all the trials and errors of non-monogamy, and all the hardships I have faced by publicly sharing nude photos will give you doubt about my abilities as a writer.  It will make you question why you follow me, interact with me, or share my work.  If I go out, into the world showing the entire picture, I will be showing the truth behind the magic.  And then, what am I?  Just another hack, pushing and prodding, waiting for my next big break.

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The Creators Myth

I am supposed to tell you that I blog for fun.  It’s my hobby and if I ever make it great, but if I don’t that’s fine too. I love what I do.  And I will be completely honest with you, this statement is true.  I adore what I do.  And I am the entire embodiment of this brand I have built.  It has been worth almost every second I have put into it, and it is my passion.  That my friends though, is not the entire story.  The passion is the fuel that allows me to write a little more every day, and create engaging content, or photos.  But, you cannot feed yourself on passion alone, actually you cannot feed yourself at all.  And that my dear friends, is what we are not supposed to talk about.

I have a very dear friend who has created an incredible product, and has received awards, accolades, and international exposure for his invention.  People are constantly telling him that they love what he does, he is on the cutting edge of something big, and that they will support him any way that they can.  So he tells them that he needs funding to build the next prototype.  Guess what happens when the investors hear this…?  You guessed it, crickets!  Now again, I am not supposed to share this, and he is not supposed to share this pain.  Instead, we are all supposed to keep fighting the good fighting, wishing and praying that one day our ship will come in. Hard work always pays off we tell ourselves.  And yes, someday it will.  However, when you are in the thick of things, treading water, desperately hungry, and trying to fuel yourself with dreams, it gets…. disheartening.

Why am I sharing this with you?  Are you going to see a huge Go Fund Me link at this end of the post because I have guilted you into paying for the content that I offer?  Nope, that would feel weird, coercive, and honestly challenge my whole identity and belief of free flowing information.  While there will always be an affiliate link and a Patreon offer with each post, your interaction with those offers will not change the content I love producing.  This post is more directed at the other content creators, inventors, entrepreneurs, etc.  I want you to know I hear you pain, I feel the loneliness of hearing nothing but crickets post after post, and I acknowledge you wanting to throw in the towel and say screw it this isn’t worth all the shit, and abuse we get online daily.  We aren’t supposed to talk about the pain of building a brand, so I say screw it, let’s talk about it! 

Sharing is Caring!

I want to hear your stories, so please write a post and link it in the comments, or link it to my twitter feed (with a note it’s OK to share) and I will add it to this post!   It’s OK to talk about the bad.  It’s human, and we need to feel safe to do more of it!

Breaking Free From Gaslighting

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Gaslighting

First off, I am a survivor and not a victim.  I say that out loud to myself from time to time, because I find it helps me regain my power and control over the situation that I found myself in a few years ago (sorry I cannot give a specific timeline due to circumstance outside of my control).  Why did it take me so long to come out and write about it?  Because, it was difficult for me to put a label on it, and publicly address what happened to me, especially as, until recently, many of the people I considered extended family read my blog and knew this man.  The silly thing is, the fear of not writing this post, is a key reason why I need to.  I need to break any and all control that my former mentor, and confident has/had over me, and I need to do it from a place of serenity and autonomy, and try not to let the fear of him getting upset and isolating me any further (I still am keeping his full identity anonymous as this is about healing and not about starting a witch hunt). This is my experience as I am Breaking free from gaslighting.

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What is Gaslighting?

When I first read about the term gaslighting, I dismissed it as the latest buzzword.  A trend to label behaviour that was most likely a form of abuse and required a person to just get out of the situation.  For the most part, I dismiss labels, and by doing that I feel that I can be more fluid and not allow them to define or trap me.  However, as I recently discovered, I needed this term in my life, to come to full terms with what was happening to me, and just how bad things were about to get.  If you want a fuller description of gaslighting, please check out this link, but for the context of this post it is someone who never apologizes without making you feel guilty.  It is someone who makes you feel isolated and that everything wrong is your fault, and claims to love you unconditionally with caveats that are completely unachievable.  They lie repeatedly, refuse to take any personal responsibility, and what for me was even worse, they tell everyone that you are the crazy one.  Honestly, there were times that the magnitude of how cruel the whole situation was, I could barely catch my breath.  And being isolated from all my family friends, and not realizing how deep the isolation actually went, I would naively turn to them for help and end up making an even bigger hole for myself, by proving that I was the crazy one who was off kilter. 

All I can say, is that even though he tried numerous times to turn my partner against me, and drive a wedge between us, my partner has the most incredible B.S. detector I have ever met and he called him out for exactly what he was, and what he was doing to me.  Without my partner, I may have crumbled and gone crawling back to this man because I honestly was left with, a feeling of complete nothingness. 

Where Am I Now?

While I still feel the weight from time to time of this person’s years of abuse, and occasionally find myself asking if I am stupid or weak, I have far more good days than bad. I have incredible friends who ensure I do not feel alone, and are happy just to sit in silence sipping a beer with me if I need to, sometimes it’s not enough.  There are moments, that I dream about him, and honestly wake up believing that things are back to how I idealized they were when I was younger.  I feel this incredible calm, that maybe this nightmare I have lived is over, and I am free.  I go back and forth between fantasy and reality, sometimes worried that I will never know the truth.  I am not fully free of this man, and for my mental sanity, I have to just accept that for the time being and continue to find peace in what I can control.  And that, is how I move forward with my life, and how I can forgive myself for living so long with the mental hell of my past.  

And please, out of respect for me, and my families privacy as I continue to work through this difficult time, do not guess who this person is, or try and reach out to that individual.  There is zero good that can come from that.  And I have learned that the only person that I can control is myself.  I am not looking for apologies, answers, or even acknowledgment.  I am simply taking care of my own mental health by writing this very painful post out, and continuing to heal with purpose.

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3 Myths I Believed About Sex

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Water is not lube, no matter where you put it!

If you search for blogs discussing sex myths, you are going to find a tonne of them.  Some that you may laugh, cringe, cry, or even, dare I say, learn something from?  In this post I would like to focus on a few that personally had an effect on my sex life.  And why, I always try and push for better sexual education and open and honest, consent first, discussions when it comes to sex.  Some myths cause far more harm than others but the fact remains all of these sex myths impacted my path to being sex positive.

Myth 1: You can tell a woman is ready by how wet she is

A woman shows she’s ready for sex by being wet enough for immediate penetration.  While physiologically, yes, this may happen, there were numerous times in my world of monogamy where I wanted a quickie and was not quite wet.  The man I was sleeping with would grow concerned that I just didn’t want it, based on my level of self lubrication.  And would either be turned off, or try and get me wet (so I guess that’s a plus?).  The thing was, he believed my bodies response, over my words as a direct result of this myth.  Obviously this made a huge impact on my views of my body, and I would try and pre-game so to speak to ensure I was always wet enough for sex.  All I can say to this, is I now have a container of lube on every level of my house, and is always a part of my sex purse.  Why? Because lube (affiliate link to my favorite lube) is awesome and this myth is crazy.

Myth 2: Anal sex makes you cool

In this one, I am going to lump a whole bunch of anal misconceptions that I have into one paragraph with the disclaimer that I was very ill informed about anal sex right from the get go, and basically had zero business doing it, or talking about it.  I could blame my catholic school girl sex education, porn, or the internet in general for the misinformation, but I think it is better to just dispel this myth altogether and all the variations that go along with it.

  • Once you warm up the first time, you shouldn’t have to spend as much time warming up the next. 
  • The type or quality of the lube does not matter, it’s all about the volume of it.
  • Having sex in the butt is the ultimate way to show your man that you love him.
  • You are super bad ass and sexy as fuck if you do it in the butt.  That’s what bad girls do, and the taboo makes you hella cool.

A quick summary on this one, yes, I at one time or another was exposed and believed these myths to be true.  As a result, I am still anal sex conflicted and did spend a significant amount of time healing from a very bad experience.  

Myth 3: A woman can only orgasm from one body part

Now this one, is a bit of a gray area for me.  I remember watching the Friends episode that discussed all the different erogenous zones, and while TV shouldn’t be the way people form their base sexual education, the reality is that it happens all the time.  So, I was fully aware that women could get sexual pleasure from more than one place.  With that being said, the episode did focus on the big finale, so I for a long time equated all my erogenous zones with being part of the fourplay.  It wasn’t until much later in life that I embraced the fact that I can have a pretty amazing orgasm just from having my breasts sucked in a certain way and that it doesn’t always have to peak with PIV (penis in vagina) sex.  The reason I include this one in my list of myths that affected me, is due to the fact that I have had more conversations than I can count with men absolutely mystified by this little tidbit.  No, I am not some magical, sexual anomaly. In fact, I think if more people understood that sex and orgasms are much for fluid in nature for woman, sex in general would improve for many.

So in an effort to keep this short and sweet, I am going to leave this list at 3.  Please feel free to share your own myths, and how they affected you, via this blog, on my Patreon, or on Twitter.

Being Triggered is No Reason to Censor

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I honestly strive to be level headed, compassionate and understanding, especially to all those around me who are going through difficult times.  I earnestly try to keep my overly critical comments to myself, and try to understand why I feel the need to be so harsh, rather than, whatever the opposite of an opinionated, judgemental so-and-so.  In this post, I am breaking that silence, and saying to hell with it.  I have a strong opinion on those who feel triggered by things in our society and then take great strides to try and ban or censor those things for other people.  And basically, I think these people to need to grow up, and not project really shitty things that have happened to them onto others.  I believe censorship teaches us nothing, and banning things directly violates our freedoms, and yes, I think less of you for wanting to impose your skewed belief onto me.

A few weeks ago, I had a friend tell me that she supported the banning of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” because every time she heard the lyrics, “what’s in this drink?” she felt triggered.  It was a painful reminder of the situation that lead up to her first rape and she was in complete shock that I wrote about not wanting to ban it here.  Now I know she shared this very painful moment with me to illicit sympathy and understanding as to what she went through every time she heard the song.  The pain, is for her, still as fresh today as it was many years ago.  And while I wanted to pause, and give her a shoulder to cry on, the realist in me took over and basically told her that regardless of her specific situation, banning a song would accomplish nothing.  You cannot shelter yourself from that specific phrase for all time, and you have zero right to impose your pain on the rest of us.  That is plain wrong.  To take away something from me, that I love, because it causes you pain is the epitome of selfish.

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Here is what I equate this thinking to, in all it’s ridiculous form.  Imagine, as I know many of us can, myself included, that the word rape makes you uncomfortable.  Now imagine, for example that any form of that word would trigger in you some form of emotional response, as again, it does for so many of us.  Now, let us imagine that you are shopping for peanut butter, and decide to quickly peruse the ingredient list to ensure that it is appropriate for your specific dietary needs, and BAM!  Without warning, you see the word “rapeseed” listed innocently amongst the listed inclusions.  And you, understandably, do a double take.   Now, here’s where we see rational get overtaken by the emotional, because in that moment, you vow that you will never look at the word rapeseed again.  You vow further to ensure that you a) never read an ingredient list again, or b) start petitioning food manufacturers to take this obscene word off of the list (screw anyone whose allergic to it) or c) you work in earnest to get this seed renamed for the sake of “all the children” who will be exposed to such a vile word (again not taking into the fact that this could have serious consequences for those who are unaware of the change and ingest it accidentally).

Yes, this example is ridiculous and way out in left field, but I do feel it makes a pretty clear point.  When you are triggered, you do not think rationally, and that is completely understandable.  I am not trying to shame your gut reaction.  What I am hoping to accomplish here, is that you take a step back, perhaps remember this crazy illustration and maybe, take pause, to remember that censorship will not in fact heal you.  It will not make you feel better in the long term, and it is selfish to try and impose your will on other people, especially when you have become overcome with emotion.  Hiding behind the word triggered is just that, hiding.  If you need to hide for a while for your own mental well being, then please, do what you need to.  But know, imposing your pain on others does not make you a do-gooder… it makes you selfish.  There, I said it.  Sorry, not sorry!

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#ReindeerBoob and the Fine Line About Censorship

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Last week, a friend of mine sent me a few images of #reindeerboob and I was immediately smitten with them.  Combining my love of costumes and showing off I knew this was a photo shoot I needed to do.  So, I sipped some wine and started drawing out what would become a set of antlers, picked out a shirt and enlisted my partner to take some pictures of the completed look.  After taking the pictures, I grew a little sad that this photo album would be for my Patreon fans only.  What a waste I thought!  And then, yesterday, on Facebook of all places I saw it, a post of #Reindeerboob in all its public glory.

But wait a minute, Facebook is supposed to be a family friendly platform, so how was this post not flagged as inappropriate?  Why is what is basically a bare breast with a little bit of glitter and decoration suddenly OK to show?  Well, while it may be flagged as offensive by some, it actually doesn’t violate the prime policy Facebook leans on, and that is the display of the female nipple.  The other component, is that in this case, the breast is not sexualized (well I mean arguably it’s more humorous than randy), but the fact remains, the breast is not being displayed in a way the elicits any sexual behaviour.  It is simply a fun place to put a reindeer, and all the naughty bits are covered up.

Does this seem a little weird or fishy to anyone else?  Why is this the line?  What makes the nipple something worthy of censorship?  Why are we all so afraid of seeing this particular body part?

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Honestly, I have no answer.  There is little rhyme or reason other than someone was asked to draw a line in the sand about what to censor and the nipple was poking just a little too far out.  It was bright and perky, and got noticed.  And well, I now keep my nipples out of the sunlight.  I keep them hidden from public platforms like facebook, and show them off less proudly on my blog.  That’s a hassle I just don’t need in my life.  I have zero desire to have someone tell me that my nipples violate anything and need to be put away, or hidden from view.  No one tells me what I can and cannot do with my body!  So, I toe the line.  I adhere to the policies of the public platforms I use, as best I can, and instead of challenging a faceless entity with my pictures, I use my words.  I use this blog, and the vlog to shout as loud as I can, that censorship is bad, and #FreetheNipple! And when I see the opportunity to follow the rules and show off?  Well, obviously I pounce!  So enjoy this wonderfully festive hashtag.  Make your own #reindeerboob.  Share it with pride!  Have fun with it!  And most of all make this your most sex positive holiday yet!

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