Versus? Are they opposites? Not really, but there is a relationship between them – what is it? What are they to me? "Privacy" is when there's something about you, some information, that someone doesn't need to know. People who don't need to see your naked body, your "privates", who don't need to know your personal information like your address or phone number or what library books you check out. "Privacy" is personal information: where you live, how much money you have, who you're friends with, what you do. It's your right to not have your life investigated, your right to not have your information made public without your consent.
But that's different from keeping everything secret, and that, too, is different from being ashamed. I'm certainly not ashamed of where I live or of my phone number, although I'm not going to list them here on the internet.
But I was ashamed of where I lived as a kid, on the poorer side of town. I didn't want my friends to see where I lived, know that my family had less money than theirs. To see our struggle. I was overly concerned with what other people would think... So that's an example of "private" personal information that I was also ashamed of.
And as an adult, I keep my alternate, smut-posting pseudonym "private." But is it really private? Is it information accessible only on a need-to-know basis, from a legal perspective? Or is it just a secret? And is it private (or secret) because I'm ashamed of it?
Secrecy and shame go very well together.
"Privacy" has a veneer of respectability. When one chooses to keep things private, that's a personal choice. Serious. Mature. Reasonable.
But "secrecy" implies that you're doing it behind someone's back, hiding it. And you only hide things that you don't want people to know about, that you're are ashamed of.
So when people ask what name I write smut under, usually I deflect them by saying they wouldn't really be interested in what I write, or more honestly, that I like to keep that separate from my personal life. Why do I do this? Why do I want this separation?
Well, the 9/11 USA PATRIOT Act and the loss of those freedoms certainly has something to do with it - and that's when I started writing smut. I was also concerned at that time that if I was ever going to work in a public library, possibly with children, that I could lose my job or get into legal trouble or even be accused of molesting children. The Act created a climate of fear, and that was where my response came from.
But I don't want to live in that world.
And that's not the entire truth anyway. That's the logical, rational explanation for where my fear came from, but I already had a pseudonym lined up. And it's not true that I don't tell anyone at all what my pseudonym is, because I do. There is some overlap, some people I've trusted with that information.
And what of my rebuff, telling the others that what I write isn't something they'd want to read. Who the hell am I to say that someone may or may not be interested in what I write? Usually, if they push, I tell them I write gay male porn, and then they're no longer interested – which is fine. But why didn't I say that in the first place instead of hedging?
And how dare I put them in that position anyway, of being forced to say "No, I don't get off on gay porn, you're right" or even "Oh, but I love gay smut, give me your URL right away?" It's not my place to out people. Or to prevent them from sampling something new. We live in a homophobic world, and it's not right for me to make people take a stand on what they want to read, even just in a conversation with me.
Some people have been into it – but most haven't. People are into whatever they're into, and if they want to read my stuff, why the hell not? It's not like I'd keep it off the shelf in a bookstore just so nobody in the store accidentally stumbled upon it. I'm not forcing people to read it just because they know what my pseudonym is, right?
But then I also don't want people reading my smut because "Oh, this is the smut that Wanton Hussy wrote" – I want them to read it because it looks interesting or they'll get off on it or... But then, why do I care? Why on earth should I care why people read anything I write? I should just focus on getting people to read it.
I suppose my concern is that if I know someone personally, I want them to like my work. And if they're reading my smut just to see what I'm writing, then they probably won't like it, and if they don't like it, then... What? I'll feel bad? That's fairly ridiculous, isn't it?
And with that as an example, back to privacy and shame:
We have a lot of shame in our culture, particularly about sex, particularly about sexual fantasies, sexual desires, sexual behaviors, sexual thoughts. And sometimes we hide that shame by saying "I like to keep my private life private." I agree that no one should be forced to make their private life public, but I find the ability to hide our shame behind the convenient excuse of privacy worrisome.
I've know at least three married men who read/write/look at/wank to online erotica/porn/whatever and don't tell their wives. And I know at least four female slash writers whose husbands or lovers don't know that they write gay erotica. Committed long-time partners, lovers, life-mates, being kept in the dark about what their husbands/wives/partners are interested in and get off on.
Does that sound right to you?
And where is that all coming from? The ones I've talked to about it have said that they're afraid of their partner's reaction. Because (in some cases) it has come up before and their partner expressed disapproval. Because they're ashamed.
Why ashamed? In what way could their partners react that would be so awful? And where would this (hypothetical) negative reaction come from? I mean, if your life-partner has a humongous problem with something that you're doing, but you're not going to stop doing it, what does that say about your relationship? Do you not trust your partner? Does he or she not trust you? What's happening in that dynamic, that sort of interaction?
What is it that makes us feel ashamed? The idea of getting caught and someone thinking less of us? Isn't that what shame means - that we're afraid that other people will see deviant desires in us that they would disapprove of?
Who the hell gets to decide what thoughts we're allowed to have? What desires we're allowed to explore in the safety of our own minds? What we can fantasize about?
Who gets to tell us who we can think about fucking in the secretest, darkest, quietest, most hidden away places of our brains? Who to fuck or how to fuck or when to fuck or why to fuck?
Who gets to tell us that and make us feel bad?
And really, no one makes us feel bad until we let them. If we don't let people tell us that we should feel ashamed, then we don't feel that way. There are all sorts of cultures with all sorts of taboos, all kinds of rules for sexual behavior. From what I know of social anthropology, the only universal sexual taboo is mothers and sons fucking. Aside from that, anything goes, somewhere, at some time. What's fine in one culture is abhorrent to another. There is nothing intrinsically in humankind that says "we can't" or "we shouldn't" or "that's wrong" or "that's evil" or "that's bad."
NOTHING.
And if we believe that, if we really believe those things are evil and bad, what do we get out of wanting to do them? "Perverse" desires come from the recognition that what we want doesn't seem "evil" or "bad" to us, despite our culture telling us that it is so. Does that make us perverts wrong? Or does it make our culture wrong? Who does it hurt?
If what we really want is to be tied up and spanked, and we're ashamed of that but it's what we fantasize about, and if we live in terror of someone finding out that this is what gets us hot and bothered to think about, what right does anyone have to peek into our heads and tell us that that's wrong?
More than that, why does our culture have the right to tell us that it's wrong? What about societies that tell their members that people with dark brown skin are sub-human and that women are incapable of logic? Or that its members can never escape the class system to which they were born? Or that it's the height of arrogance to think mankind could ever fly like a bird, ever leave this planet, ever live survive having cancer?
What about societies that tell us that it's wrong to not want to be raped? Or that it's wrong to want to have sex with someone of the same gender? Or that oral sex is disgusting and evil?
We look at those cultures and shake our heads and say "That's not very enlightened." Well, how are we not enlightened? What is our shame hiding, there, away in the dark?
What ways have we swallowed shame and covered it with a veil of privacy? How much of our shame is just habit? How many things do we really want, or even want to think about, that we think are wrong to just think about?
Are they? Really? Just to think about?
Cultures have been known to be wrong.
Cultures evolve.
Let's evolve, shall we?
~ Posted 28 March 2006, property of Wanton Hussy. Please do not re-post without permission.