We Stand Together. We Resist.

This post is long overdue. Watching the events of the last year unfold has been particularly horrifying, and I’ve struggled to articulate a response to engage with politics – not just in my personal life but as a women-owned sex-oriented business in the current climate. In person I never shy away from difficult or socially awkward conversations; in fact in some ways they’re the only conversations I have. But over the past several months I’ve felt shocked into a kind of paralyzed silence online. But with the newest horror — the rescinding of President Obama’s policy recognizing the human rights of trans kids — the time to speak up can not be delayed any longer.

As a feminist, I speak often about the huge impact sexism has on me and on all women.

As part of the queer and kinky community I see sexual expression as a form of activism and radical self expression as a way to take up our rightful space in the world. Rightful, as in: the space to which we have a human right.

As someone with white, cis privilege I’ve become more aware of how I need to use that privilege to make space for more marginalized individuals of all kinds.

And as an entrepreneur I’ve tried to incorporate all that I believe into my scrappy, boot-strapping start-up.

No one who knows me would ever know me to be quiet or to call me a shrinking violet.

Yet when it comes to the political travesties of the past year, and now in the shadow of the real fear that surrounds the current administration I’ve been suddenly more wary of drawing attention to myself, to my work, to my message. I’ve been silent — self-silenced — on social media and in online spaces.

I kept waiting until I “knew” what to say, when I could articulate in some specific and clever way that I believe in this fight, and I believe in the people who are fighting it and that I am one of them.

I kept waiting for some break in the waves of horror, but now, with an administration full of phobic white misogynist assholes, and with the knowledge that there is another horror just over the horizon and then another and another, I want to clearly stand up and say;

Kink Academy is founded on diversity, respect and acceptance. With our identities under fire we cannot separate our politics from our lives.