Why Must Ettina Be Like This

CW: ableism, transphobia, pedophilia apologism/rape culture, mentions of domestic violence and CSA, BDSM, ABDL, sexualization of children and animals, COVID-19, sexual assault

Yes, I'm back! Kind of. I'm aiming for a spot on the Dean's List, along with hopefully graduating magna cum laude and with departmental honors from the social work program, at my university so my time is mostly preoccupied by studying, and then maintaining my relationship with my lovely girlfriend, my entire heart, my biggest cheerleader, the part-lady I'm head over heels for, Lane, on top of that. 

And also, quarantine. Which I don't really want to talk about honestly because this whole pandemic like...I get that it's such a huge issue for public health and I'm doing what I can to help by self-isolating, sending supplies over to my grandparents, and supporting local Chinese-owned small businesses that have been struggling due to my fellow whites using the virus to legitimize their racism. HOWEVER, the whole thing is all anyone can talk about and it's fucking with my anxiety disorder, which I really just cannot afford right now. So after this post it's back to hiatus and this will be the last time I mention COVID-19 on this blog, for the sake of my mental health and academic future.

Anyway! Y'all remember Ettina, right? Abnormaldiversity? She's another blogger on here who is known for her shitty homophobic and racist posts, which I've criticized multiple times on here and in her comment section. Also, she once called me a TERF because I apparently hate ace people, despite the fact that she knows I'm nonbinary and that she's misgendered me on her blog. I will link the posts where she's done all of this, if requested.

Ettina is a trainwreck, basically. Like with all trainwrecks, it is very hard to look away from the mess and gore once you've seen it. So I occasionally have looked on her blog to see if she's said anything else fucked up recently. And for a long time...she didn't! Color me shocked! But then she did and I am here to break down exactly why what she said is fucked up. The specific parts that I am criticizing will be bolded. Everything she says will be italicized. My own words will just be normal.

I came across a news article about research into the formation of kink/fetish identity, and it suggested several stages of development. So I thought I'd take a look at these stages, and see if I can identify anything matching that in my life experience.

1) Early Encounters: This stage encompasses early inklings towards kink, typically taking place before the age of 10, where kinky people experience an attraction, draw, or fascination with a kink or fetish interest, often without the words or concepts to understand it, and often without sexual arousal. Examples include always wanting to be captured while playing cops and robbers, or seeing television shows with superheroes in peril and feeling absorbed by the show.

This stage definitely defined my childhood. One of my earliest memories is of watching The Jungle Book, around the age of 4, and getting fascinated by Kaa, the hypnotic snake, to the point where I wandered around preschool the next day bugging my eyes out and singing "trust in me".

With regards to my interest in disabilities, that came later. I had a sometimes-friend in elementary school who had cerebral palsy and a mental disability, but I remember liking her in spite of her differences, which quite frankly repulsed me a bit. I also remember being forced to read about Louis Braille, and resonating with his conflicts with teachers while having basically no interest in his blindness.

This, first of all. So, as a student of the social sciences, I feel obligated to discuss the article itself. I didn't bother reading the whole thing, but a lot of what comes from psychologytoday.com isn't peer-reviewed. It's essentially social scientists contributing their thoughts on various issues, not necessarily saying where they got that information or what experiments they ran to obtain it. If I used it in a paper, it wouldn't be considered a quality source. Also, this particular researcher doesn't seem culturally competent - putting LGBT people and kinksters in the same category comes across as an extremely hetero point of view to me. He says he recruited 292 people for his study from FetLife, which maybe isn't the best way to find information. I kind of get it, because a lot of people aren't just going to show up in person to discuss their sex lives with a stranger...but at the same time I just have my doubts. I, personally, would have put a flier in a BDSM club in order to find participants, just so I could verify a little more easily whether their information was valid and whether they were, say, trying to participate twice in order to gain two times the research incentive (i.e. let's say you're participating in a study on racism and as a reward for completing the study successfully you get a free MLK shirt. That's an example of a research incentive).

 But hey, I don't know all the details of his study. I will say, though, he never actually says whether it's peer-reviewed, so we can't assume that it is. Also, he groups LGBT and kinky people together in terms of our identity development, as though identity development for any of us is the same as identity development for a cishet man who likes pretending his girlfriend is a toddler that he's sexually abusing. So, that's a major red flag for me.

Moving on, though. Ettina and I are both multiply disabled. She's autistic and has a mental illness; I believe c-PTSD but can't say for sure and don't want to spread misinformation. As far as I know, she has no other disabilities though if I'm wrong don't be afraid to let me know. 

I'm not diagnosed with autism, but have multiple autistic traits and my therapist agrees with me that I might be autistic. I also have diagnosed ADHD, anxiety, and depression, plus a chronic pain disorder that has left me reliant at times on braces, pain cream, a heating pad, and a cane and has limited my mobility. I suppose I'm visually impaired, though I consider myself sighted these days and move through the world generally like a sighted person. And I'm debatably hard of hearing due to my auditory processing issues and the fluid in my ears, though I don't overtly identify as either hearing or hard of hearing. I'm mainly involved in Deaf culture as an ally and accomplice to Deaf people and also because Lane is single-sided deaf (among their other disabilities) so we sometimes practice ASL together.

I say this to clarify that Ettina is not an abled person involved in this behavior, and I am not an abled person speaking over a disabled person. However, Ettina is, as far as I know, sighted and able-bodied. She's not blind and does not have cerebral palsy, and like me is able to perpetrate lateral ableism against people who do have those disabilities. So the fact that she's uncritically saying this girl's cerebral palsy and mental disability "repulsed" her? And the way she's ignoring that a man who invented a language that provided so much accessibility to the blind community...is blind himself? Not cool. Blind people and people with cerebral palsy are more than just their disabilities, but there's not some hidden person who is separate from those conditions. And being disabled isn't "repulsive!"

It wasn't until right around the cusp of puberty, age 10-11ish, that I suddenly developed a fascination for disabled people. I remember my attention being caught by an autistic child I met, though I have no idea how much of that was dawning fetish and how much was a subconscious recognition of a person with a similar neurotype to myself. On the other hand, the fact that seeing one kid about my age with a limb difference at the pool prompted me to obsessively draw similar limb differences in my school agenda is pretty clearly an early sign of my fetish for disabilities. And even more so my reaction to my school's unit on disability awareness, which motivated me to spend time pretending to have various disabilities as well as learning the Braille alphabet and fingerspelling.

I mean...it's generally pretty fucked up to talk about a kid, especially one that young, having a "fetish" so that part makes me pretty uneasy. However, she's talking about her personal experiences and as long as she doesn't start trying to say that it's like, normal for 10-year-olds to want to fuck then I'll let it slide. The way she's talking about this kid who has a limb difference - I'm assuming a congenital amputee, though she never actually says and I don't know the correct terminology for this - is pretty fucked up though. I know I'd be creeped out if I found out someone saw me with my cane and braces and started obsessively drawing people with mobility aids, and then later formed a fetish around it. Jesus. Physical disabilities are not fetishes. Autism is not a fetish. Disabled children, especially, are not fetishes. And the fact that she's normalizing them as fetishes, particularly as an adult talking about disabled kids in a sexualized manner, only contributes to the rampant violence against disabled people.

It's normal for a little kid to be curious about disability, and weird as hell but ultimately not that harmful for a little kid to pretend to be disabled. Like, yes if you're an adult pretending to have a marginalized identity that you know you don't have that's deeply fucked up and harmful to people in those actual communities. But a little, individual autistic kid doing it is just...strange, though it won't ultimately contribute to ableism in the end. Also, you can want to learn Braille despite not being blind. You can want to learn sign language despite not being d/Deaf, mute, or hard of hearing. You can want to learn about disabilities that you don't have and how those people live their lives. That's not an inherently sexual thing and it's not inherently a sign of having a fetish. And talking about it like it is...is just creepy. A hearing parent learning to sign for their Deaf child is not sexual. An able-bodied person learning about wheelchair maintenance to help out a friend who has recently become a wheelchair user is not sexual. A neurotypical person learning about dementia in order to care for someone with Alzheimer's is not sexual. A social worker, psychologist, nurse, or other healthcare provider learning about any disability is not sexual. Stop framing normal things that happen to benefit disabled people as signs of a fetish.

2) Exploration with Self: This stage encompasses kinky people exploring their kink or fetish interest with themselves, typically between the ages of 5 and 14. This exploration typically occurs via fantasizing, seeking out erotic media, masturbating, and exploring material sensations on their bodies.

Kids can masturbate and be curious about their bodies and sex from a young age. It doesn't mean they actually want to fuck or have any real interest in it yet. Even college freshmen in the social sciences know this.

OK, here I feel like the stages start overlapping. For mind control, forced transformation, kidnapping, whump, etc, this stage started in elementary school, several years before the dawning interest in disability I mentioned above. I was obsessed with the Animorphs series in elementary school, going to the point of conceptualizing my least favorite teachers as Controllers as a coping strategy. I also liked this one series about the daughter of a veterinarian who investigated crimes against animals, and thought up elaborate hurt/comfort scenarios involving tortured animals. 

What the fuck, Ettina? Why are you involving animals in your weird ass fetish? Which, I don't even get why you're calling it a fetish when you later say it's not erotic but still.

I also developed a fascination for the 1994 movie Pet Shop, which featured an alien couple disguising as human and starting a pet shop with the intention of kidnapping humans to sell as pets on another planet. In the movie, they were foiled quite easily - in my fantasies, they succeeded, and I had long-running stories about kids in cages, trying to cope with captivity, wondering what fate awaited them. After I got anti-drug education around 10-11ish, I'd always throw in an addict character undergoing withdrawal.

Anti-drug education, particularly at that age and time frame (for her, it would have been the early aughts, maybe 2005 at the latest), is generally not scientifically sound and is often steeped in racism, ableism, and classism. It's victim-blaming copaganda from the War on Drugs that equates legality with morality, places the norms of middle-class white westerners on a pedestal of morality, and doesn't even fucking work. Obviously, none of us knew that in the fifth grade, and if these stories just stayed in her imagination that's...not as bad I guess, because she's not putting them out into the world for people to read and internalize.

For me, this stage continued well past 14, easily into my twenties. It's important to note that all of this occurred through fantasizing, first expressed through playing with twist tye people, and then later through writing these stories down, and none of it involved me paying any attention to my own physical body. The only scenario I recall where my body was even relevant at all was one where I was a giant who'd captured tiny people to torture and play with.

One, I don't get how playing with twist tie people is sexual or fetish-related. Two, she did apparently write the stories down. Don't know if she had anyone read them though.

I certainly never conceived of any of this as erotic, or paid any attention to my genitalia whatsoever. I generally tried to forget that I had genitalia altogether, and apart from trying to make sure they remained clean, I never touched them. Any conscious awareness of sensation in my genitalia was likely to trigger flashbacks to my childhood sexual abuse, so I suspect that I heavily dissociated from my own body.

3) Evaluation: This stage encompasses the process by which kinky people evaluate what their kink interests mean for their identities and lives, and typically takes place between 11 to 14 years old, at the same time when other identity development processes are often in full swing. It can involve feeling stigma over their kink interests, feeling generally different, realizing that not all of their peers share their interests, worrying there might be something wrong with them, and sometimes actively engaging in research in order to try to label and understand their interests.

I probably unconsciously stigmatized my own kinks due to both a fear of any sort of sexuality and the negative reactions I got from people (mostly my teachers) who took my fantasies too seriously and stereotyped me as violent. In addition, my kinks heavily line up with my mom's triggers, so any discussion of them with my mom tended to get shut down very quickly, leaving me feeling guilty for having upset her.

My first exposure to direct kink-stigma, however, was through the Courage to Heal book, which quoted from a contributor who'd used BDSM to self-harm. Her account heavily implied both that BDSM was inherently unhealthy for anyone to participate in, and that healing from trauma could and should involve shifting your sexuality away from BDSM to more vanilla interests. At the time, I uncritically accepted this account, and even proceeded to try to convince kinky people I met online later to believe the same way.

Many forms of BDSM ARE harmful! Rape play, sexualizing real-life power differences such as age or the racialized dynamic between slave and owner, or calling your partner degrading and oppressive terms is unhealthy and using these things as a coping mechanism can impede recovery. There are other forms of BDSM that are more harmless, but in some ways I would say this woman is right. Also, Ettina, why is your personal kink more important than the reality of the many people who have been hurt by BDSM and the BDSM community?

I remember at one point posting on an LGBT forum wondering if there was something wrong with me for liking stories where characters were tortured and hurt. Some people mentioned hurt/comfort fics, but that just left me feeling more broken, because I didn't really care about the "comfort", just the hurt. I felt like I was supposed to feel bad for characters who had bad things happen, and write about bad things mainly as a serious exploration of dark themes that resonate with real life, but I still found myself relishing descriptions of characters being tortured and feeling disappointed when they got rescued.

I also regularly, starting around 10-11ish if not earlier, had revenge fantasies about torturing and maiming harmful people and this somehow leading them to be reformed. Those bothered me because a) I couldn't think of how to make it realistic, and b) my self-insert character doing the torturing and maiming and proceeding to use the character's vulnerability to manipulate them into reformation usually came across at least as villainous as their victim, if not more so for the extreme measures they took.

4) Finding Others: This stage encompasses the process of realizing that there are other kinky people out there and often takes place after the age of 11. The discovery of other kinky people often occurs via the internet, magazines, and is often accompanied by a feeling of kinship, such as finding their home, tribe, people, or family. This stage often includes a process of developing resilience against kink-related stigma and developing a positive sense of kink identity. Physically attending a kinky club, group, event, or conference also often comes up during this stage, though typically not until they are at least 18 years old.

In July of 2012, when I was 23, I wrote a description of several categories of "identity weirdness" I'd discovered, including ABDL and transabled. I had absolutely no inclination that either would be in any way relevant to my identity, or any idea that it was anything more than my ongoing special interest in psychology and my recent encounters with a trans boy that led me to be interested in the subject. (Ironically, I've since realized I am somewhere on the spectrum of each of those, though not the particular points I described in that post.) Around that time, I remember wondering briefly if I might be interested in ABDL, and then firmly shutting away the possibility because I didn't want my life to get harder.

Don't include trans people in the same category as transabled and ABDL. To be more specific, Ettina has alternately described herself as a cis woman, "mostly cis", and a nonbinary person who presents as a cis woman. She says in a coming out post that she feels like she's "a little bit genderfluid" and experiences "vague hints of other genders", as well as that her relationship to gender mostly adds up to cis but not "100% cis and not the conventional idea of cis." She calls herself simply a person rather than a woman, but says woman doesn't feel wrong either and other genders do, dresses masculine at times, feels like her gender isn't a big part of who she is, uses she/her pronouns, and would rather use neutral or nonexistent forms of address (i.e. Mx., Dr., or just none) over either feminine or masculine titles. She in pretty much every way has cis privilege, identified as cis at the time she wrote that post on identity weirdness, and doesn't identify as trans nor is she read that way.

 Also, ABDL sexualizes disabled traits and roleplays sexual abuse.

I don't remember how I first discovered ABDL, it might've been through transabled discussions, given how I mention the potential confusion between the two. (I still think a significant subset of DLs would be accurately described as transabled/BIID people who desire incontinence.) But later on, I rediscovered ABDL sites while researching incontinence for a story I was working on, and this time, I stumbled across ABDL fetish fics. At first, I skipped past them as irrelevant - I was there to research, not read fiction! - but I kept getting distracted by them and sucked into reading them despite my efforts to stay focused.

Not even getting into it.

One of those times, I was 26, sitting in the backseat with my parents on a road trip for my mom to do a job interview. I was researching incontinence on my phone, and I once again got sucked into reading fetish fics instead. And this time, I noticed a wetness in my crotch - the first time I remember ever noticing anything about my genitals while engaging with my kink fantasies.

My immediate assumption was that I'd started my period. I don't remember what I did for supplies - I might've had a tampon in my jacket pocket, or else asked Mom to give me one from the glove compartment. But I do remember vividly the shocking moment when I wiped myself and it came out clear, not red. And I remember suddenly realizing that it was sexual arousal, not my period, that had made my crotch wet.

I was horrified. I fortunately had a counseling appointment only a couple days later, but those couple days I waited were miserable. I kept feeling compelled to read fetish fics and then hating myself for it. Once, I hung out in my office reading fetish fics while my family were painting (we run a law firm as a family business) and I was feeling guilty for not helping, but I couldn't convince myself to stop reading. And then my brother walked in to ask what I was doing, and I was horrified. I stammered out something nonsensical and fled to the bathroom, and proceeded to have a panic attack while cleaning myself up. I had another, very similar panic attack when my dog sniffed with interest at my crotch at home right after I'd been reading fetish fics and I realized that she could smell my arousal.

Ettina has a lot of legitimate reasons to have a negative relationship with sex, being a CSA survivor and also just moving through an oppressive society as an autistic, mentally ill nonbinary person who is socially classed as a woman, an experience that can be very traumatizing in itself. However, her coping mechanisms do NOT seem constructive and she needs to move past this with treatment. Treating other disabled people as fetishes and sexual objects is not constructive for you or them.

That counseling session helped me calm down. The counselor talked to me for quite awhile about the difference between fantasy and reality and encouraging me to remember that fetish or no, I absolutely didn't have to kidnap and torture someone in real life just because I'd fantasized about it. During that session, I realized that for the sake of my mental health I had to come out to my family, and we talked about that, too. And afterwards, I called a family meeting and had one of those awkward, formal and anxiety-inducing "coming out" discussions that you see people posting videos of online. Ironically, when I came out as asexual at 18, and more recently as nonbinary around 28 or so, those were nothing like the standard "coming out" narrative you tend to hear, and yet telling my family about my fetish felt exactly like that narrative in every excruciating way.

Ettina is nonbinary, though she also describes herself as mostly cis and materially has cis privilege in a lot of ways. However, because she's an aromantic asexual and is content, from what she's described previously, presenting as her assigned sex, she functionally has the privileges of a cishet person. Coming out for her is not at all the same as coming out would be for someone who is gay or bisexual, or a trans man or woman, or a nonbinary person who is more visibly non-cis. She has consistently refused to acknowledge this in the past.

And in most circumstances, I don't get why you would tell your family about your kink. I do know a woman who is open with her mom about her kinks, but that's a different context. The two of them have always had the kind of relationship where talking about sex openly is encouraged and are from a culture that is very sexualized and yet also very sexually repressed in some ways, so it's a little more understandable and they handle it in a very healthy way that I respect and envy. And, because this woman is a wlw who has been in an abusive relationship where violence was framed as normal, harmless kink, the ability to be open with her mom about sex and have such a great ally in her mom is a strong protective factor - which the mom, a psychology major, knows.

So basically, I get coming out to your family as aroace and nonbinary. I don't think it was totally necessary in Ettina's case, because she presents so much like a cis woman and it's effectively just telling your parents you're not into anyone, but it's understandable. But I would need more context to see why telling your family you're kinky is beneficial to your mental health.

But fortunately, as my logical mind had known all along but my self-hating kinkphobic inner voice refused to be convinced of, my family was completely fine with it. My Mom took some time to accept it, and we've had some arguments about how to balance her triggers with my need to speak openly in order to accept myself, but we've gradually worked out an amicable solution. And my Dad and brother have had absolutely zero issues with it whatsoever. It felt like a weight off my shoulders when, a couple hours after my awkward coming-out, I was grocery shopping with Dad and he started asking me questions trying to analyze exactly what it was about my kink fantasy that appealed to me. We've always bonded over analysis, so it was the perfect sign to me that he fully accepted my kink as just more fodder for our ongoing analytical discussions.
Shortly after I came out, I made a Tumblr account with the express purpose of exploring my fetish and what it meant for my identity. I became notorious among the more kink-negative sections of Tumblr for being "that ableist kink person", but at the same time, I stumbled into two communities that helped immensely with my self-acceptance - pro-shippers and the paraphilia/minor attracted person communities. When Tumblr banned porn, I followed both of these communities to Twitter.

That's actually...fucking horrifying? The pro-shipper people are usually talking about HARMFUL ships, like shipping a gay man with a trans woman or a child with an adult, or abusive and toxic ships like Mon-El and Kara from Supergirl. I vented about how much I hate this ship to my friend Vera awhile back, and why most of the fandom (including Melissa Benoist, Kara's actress, who seems like a lovely lady from the little I know about her) hates his character. She'd never actually seen the show, but it's a favorite of mine. I explained how much it bothered me that her love interest had changed from James, a sweet, sensitive, sexy, funny, stylish, intelligent, supportive, kind, gentle, courageous, loving, heroic black man who was good to his family and friends, an ally to women, immigrants, and LGBT people, just wanted to make a positive difference in the world, treats the women in his life like queens, and did everything he could to help the aliens and be a hero when he's just a human himself (and yes, if you couldn't tell, I totally want to fuck James, like this guy is really just Mr. Perfect in pretty much every way), to bratty, white, slave-owning manchild prince Mon-El, who drugged his people so they wouldn't realize they were living in a dystopia, only paid lip service to being a hero so Kara would fuck him meanwhile lying to and manipulating her, and at one point kissed her when she was unconscious and they weren't in a good place in their relationship. That is the kind of relationship anti-shippers are criticizing. It's not just about being horrible prudes stomping on everyone else's fun.

And minor attracted people! Even worse! She's aligning herself with LITERAL PEDOPHILES in the interest of excusing her fetish and her fantasies of preying on the vulnerable. I would expect more from a CSA survivor, like what even is her issue here. Though I guess it's not surprising that someone who fetishizes and objectifies one vulnerable population would identify with a group of people who do the same thing, is it, Ettina?

Both of these communities accepted my kinks without question, and included people with far more taboo sexualities than my own (MAPs in particular have probably the absolute most stigmatized sexuality it's possible to have). And both regularly argued with trolls who were saying the same sorts of things my negative inner voice often said to me, and arguing with research citations, logically-thought out arguments, and civility and respect against people who uttered death threats and had arguments consisting of illogical one-liners attacking strawmen. I found watching these arguments incredibly healing, as if I was bandaging the wounds in my souls with the reasoned and compassionate voices defending people I identified with.

MAPs are stigmatized because they cause very real harm and trauma to children, which Ettina should damn well know better than anyone. They often refuse to seek treatment to get rid of their condition, sexualize children even if they don't actively rape one, defend people who do rape children, infiltrate LGBT spaces and make them unsafe for young people and sexual violence survivors, and fucking DESERVE to be stigmatized. They are stigmatized BECAUSE THEY FUCKING HURT PEOPLE!!! THEY ARE THE WORST FUCKING THING THAT EVER HAPPENS IN THEIR VICTIMS' LIVES! THEY CAUSE A LIFETIME OF PAIN, CHAOS, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORMENT AND STILL GET DEFENDED WHILE THEIR VICTIMS ARE BLAMED AND TOLD THEY ACTUALLY WANTED IT WHICH IS THE MOST TRIGGERING SHIT EVER! They're also! Objectively not even a fucking sexuality because sexuality is just what gender you're attracted to and "child" is not a gender! Literally WHY THE ACTUAL HELL would ANYONE align themself with the same kind of sexual predators who violated them!?

5) Exploration with Others: This stage encompasses the process of actually engaging in kinky play and/or kinky sex with another person, and typically takes place after 18 years of age. For many kinky people, they only really felt kinky when they actually engaged in kink with another person.

I've done a little bit of experimenting here and there, but mostly I haven't done any kink play, and yet I very much see myself as a kinky person regardless of whether I practice it IRL or not. I'm content with reading and writing fiction, to be honest. The stuff I've tried IRL I've enjoyed, but it's not really necessary to me, and right now I have other priorities that are more crucial to me, such as starting a family.

Ettina, if I were a CPS worker, I would be the first to advocate for placing any kids you had in foster care. You clearly can't be trusted to support them if they're ever raped by a pedophile or if they end up being abused because someone saw them as their personal sex toy.