I partially agree. One the one hand, I have serious issues with kinky/poly folks who describe themselves as "queer", because I don't think it's acceptable to appropriate a word or experience that has been used to systematically oppress people who experience non-heteronormative attraction or non-cis gender identities just as we're starting to reclaim it to the point where it's an identity we can be comfortable in.

That said, as a bisexual, sorta-poly kinkster, I feel significant similarities when it comes to the concept of "coming out". I know I would risk far less censure walking down the street hand in hand with a man I have kinky sex with behind closed doors than I would with a vanilla woman (or, for that matter, a femme-presenting genderqueer kinkster, as has more recently been the case). I appreciate that safety and from that perspective I agree that kink and orientation aren't comparable.

But on a more personal level, coming out as bi meant little more than the standard "how can you be sure" comments from my parents, and was then accepted. By contrast, I know that revealing I'm dating someone who is dating someone else (consensually and with full support of all parties) would cause much more disapproval from my family.

Similarly, I don't need to tell people what I like to do in bed, and there's no need for them to know--but I do struggle with not being able to mention casually that I met x or y friend at a munch, or that I'm running a bottoming class at my local rope group this weekend. I struggle a lot more with that secrecy than I ever needed to with liking girls.

Obviously, being kinky or poly isn't something that puts me at risk walking down the street, and I'm aware that my family's acceptance of my bisexuality is a privilege. But being kinky and having non-monogamous relationships does require me to be secretive in a way that makes me wish I could just be open about it.

Maybe the kink community maybe needs an alternative term. I would note that I only rarely hear people talk about a kink "closet", which is a far queerer term which I would agree doesn't belong to that community--but I feel like there's enough similarity when it comes to "coming out" that it's acceptable for kinksters to use. But that's just me.

Mine was called Gulliver, and I lost him, and I am STILL DISTRAUGHT

OH MY GOD this is making me miss archaeology so much. I've tried to make it in the office world, but I'd just so much rather be digging. I think I need to go back to it. Archaeology is the absolute BEST and it's a shame it's almost unsustainable as a long-term job, at least in the UK.

I recently had this happen! Someone who was a manipulative asshole to me and my friends is returning to my town and wanted to "apologise" and reconnect. I responded that his behaviour at the time was inexcusable, that I didn't trust him or believe he'd changed, and that I didn't want to interact with him anymore. It was a good email.

That's an interesting point! I started out in the publishing industry, left my first company because they repeatedly promised me a promotion and then backed out on it, and then the economy crashed and there were no jobs anywhere. Really bad timing. But it also looked like everyone wanting to do anything editorial just spent years moving sideways, and I decided I wasn't prepared to work for a pittance for years without even knowing for sure whether I'd enjoy an editing job when I got it : /

Yes, thank you! Some time ago, I and a number of other people in my community had some really difficult experiences with a very manipulative person. We all really struggled to understand why someone we cared about and who had seemed to care about us would act that way. His behaviour just didn't make sense, and we had difficulty putting the experience behind us without being able to understand his actions. It wasn't until we started comparing notes and considering the possibility that he had a personality disorder of some kind that we found an explanation that made sense. Being able to recognise his behaviour as abnormal and representative of dark triad traits really helped me process the experience.

Uggghh I remember reading a book once as a teenager (I think it was called Undercover Cleo) where the protagonist was this porcelain-skinned thin leggy redhead with gorgeous green eyes, whose mother was a model and who herself could step in to modelling gigs at short notice, but for some reason could not be called beautiful. What. Like, I'm short with quite standard brown eyes and hair that's been going grey since I was 18 and I often have a spot or two on my chin, and I think I'm pretty damn hot most days, actually.

So I guess I have to assume that Cleo was in fact nine feet tall with skin so flawless and translucent you could see her veins and muscles underneath, and that her eyes were entirely green, not just the irises but the pupils and what would otherwise have been the whites too, and that the modelling gigs were aimed at aliens. Because how the fuck is that not beautiful otherwise.

Also:

mad in America = angry
mad in the UK = crazy

Oh, it wasn't that awful! I'm pretty sure it wasn't bad enough for it to be categorised as an anxiety disorder or anything. And it wore off after a few years. I think I just reacted to new things with extreme caution and compulsive altavista-ing--and in those pre-google days that usually meant ending up on a livejournal community where people with Sailor Moon avatars would seriously tell you that yes, you can definitely get AIDS from dirty toilet seats. I think I was usually about 88% sure that it was rubbish and I was completely fine, but couldn't let go of the niggling little worries that remained.

I always thought it was a horrible story because I feel like it's so relatable--not that I've had such an immediate scare (ask me about the benign tumour I found in my first year of uni, though!) but I feel that my early teens was also the point when I realised things could go wrong with my body. I was constantly paranoid about accidentally dying because I'd cracked my neck funny or getting blood poisoning from accidentally scratching myself with a pen or going blind from wearing eyeshadow and not washing it off before bed. To be suddenly, inexplicably bleeding would have been like something from a horror movie.