border war dispatches and birthday thoughts
Corey Alexander
Hello,
I turned 37 years old this week. I’ve been involved in queer community for almost 20 years, and have seen many shifts and struggles. One of the more heartbreaking and personally impactful things I have experienced again and again has been border wars, identity struggles within our communities. This issue is coming up quite a bit recently in the communities I am connected to. This week, on my birthday, I worked with an ally and close friend to launch a blog of open letters in response to border wars. (http://border-war-dispatches.tumblr.com/) The first letter I have posted “An Open Letter to butch, AG, stud, transmasculine and genderqueer attendees of the 2009 Butch Voices Conference in Oakland, CA”, is one I wrote in response to my experiences with gender border wars at that conference, where I presented on faggot play, stone identity and sexuality, misogyny, and leather butch identity. It seems fitting to put it out into the world now, a couple of weeks before the second National Butch Voices conference.
Here is a taste of it:
This is, first and foremost, a love letter. My love for you is complex, and embraces your contradictions. Part of what I love about you is all the ways you show me possibility, multiplicity, and expansiveness. Part of what I love about you is the ways you insist on precision, draw lines firmly and name boundaries. Part of what I love about you defies the hetero-normative rules about gender and sex, about relationships and space. Part of what I love about you embraces desire and the trappings of gender and the ways that we find traction with each other, including when we find it in ways that look like those rules. Part of what I love about you is the ways I see myself in you, see who I was and who I may become. Part of what I love about you is the ways that you are insistently and definitively different from me, from who I ever was and will be.
I know that loving is about really seeing myself and seeing you, and celebrating our complexities and contradictions, our places of connection, discord and intimacy, the places where we fit and where we rub each other raw. I know that loving is about giving support and asking for what we need, even when that feels scary. I know that when we love, we are transformed, and we transform each other. I know that what allows us to love is being fully ourselves, in our bodies, in our realities and limitations, present and open to ourselves, to each other, to change. And knowing full well what changes we are not up for, not open to, will not allow.
I hope you will consider checking out this new offering, and possibly joining me in this project. Submit your open letters here: http://border-war-dispatches.tumblr.com/submit
I am also excited to announce that I will be reading my erotica on September 2nd at 8pm as part of Ravenous Nights. at the Happy Ending Lounge 302 Broome Street, NYC.
Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction, which contains my story “It’s My Job” was released this week just in time for my birthday; what a great present! In addition, several collections of erotica containing my work have recently come out: Brief Encounters: 69 Hot Gay Shorts, contains my story “This Boy”; In Plain View: Hot Public Erotica, contains my story “Kneeling for Him”; Bondage By The Bay: Tales of BDSM In San Francisco, which contains two of my stories (“Nervous Boy” and “Kneeling for Him”) recently came out in e-book form. My work has been published in over 20 collections, including: Men at Noon, Monsters at Midnight, Biker Boys, Backdraft, Hurts So Good, Best Women's Erotica 09, Leathermen, Frenzy, Daddies, Men on the Edge, Cruising for Bad Boys, Pleasure Bound, SexTime: Erotic Stories of Time Travel, Best SM Erotica 3, and I Like to Watch. It will also appear in the upcoming anthologies Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, Say Please: A Lesbian BDSM anthology, and Nice Butt: Gay Anal Eroticism.
I hope to see you on September 2nd!
Corey Alexander
Corey Alexander is an NYC based FTM kink educator and writer. He was the founding facilitator of the Queer Special Interest Group at The Eulenspiegal Society, a member of the CC4D collective, and was Head of Programming for The Floating World 2010. He has been a kink and sex educator since 2003. He writes erotica under the nom de plume Xan West, and is plotting a book on stone sexuality and identity.
Email: praxispr...@gmail.com
Blog: http://tgstonebutch.livejournal.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TGStoneButch
Tumblr: http://tgstonebutch.tumblr.com/
Border War Dispatches: http://border-war-dispatches.tumblr.com/
Fetlife: http://fetlife.com/users/40282
Google Discussion Group: http://groups.google.com/group/corey-alexander-classes
This announcement list is not intended to be SPAM. You have been added to this list because you expressed interest in being on it, seeing me teach, or in events I have organized in the past. If you do not wish to be on this list, let me know.