Sexuality Happens

The lovely Thursday’s Child posed a question to me on my formspring the other day. Well, a few weeks back. It took me a while to answer, because I really wanted to figure out how to say what I meant.

And now I want to share it with you.  This was her question:

How has coming out in public as Essin’ Em affected both your personal and public life? Would you encourage other sex bloggers to come out and live openly as you do?

And this was my answer:

I’ve been very lucky.  And some of my luck was lucky (accepting friends/family, finding jobs I like within the adult industry, etc), and some of it was determination/stupidity (I am determined to make things I care about and find important acceptable enough for people to be able to talk about, and I don’t really give a flying moose’s ass if people don’t like me because I’m sex positive).

That said, sometimes it’s hard. When I broke up with F, I lost some readers that were her real life friends. But I don’t write for readers per se, so it was ok.  Conversely, when Q and I started getting serious, she asked me to take my blog link off of networked blogs on Facebook (it would post new content daily) because she didn’t want her friends reading about the sex we had. Now that Essin’ Em and Shanna K are much more synonymous, many of them have found my blog anyways. So Q and I talked, and she’s ok with that happening…but I can’t put it on FB now, cause I’m connected to her mother.

I understand that not everyone has the ability to “come out” as I have. Not everyone has a job that reveres (or even understands) their sexuality background. Some people have jobs that would fire them.  Some people have families that might reject them or judge them (AAG has had this issue). There are many reasons not to.

However, I never live in fear of being revealed. I never have to decide who gets to know my real name vs. my pen name. I never worry about what happens if I accidentally sign the wrong name, or if an affiliate program (goddess forbid) gets hacked. I can be proud of all the work I’ve done, including my blog (and as we all know, writing a regular blog IS a lot of work).

For those who can’t come out for safety (mental/emotional/physical) reasons, including family/work/etc, I validate. But to everyone else, if you CAN come out as someone who is sex-positive/queer/kinky/poly/etc, as someone who enjoys sexuality, as someone who talks about it in a non hush-hush way, then please do. The world needs to know that people have sex, and enjoy it, and that diversity amongst sexuality is ok.

I have the privilege of being able to “come out.” So I did. It’s hard at times, when I’m trying to protect Q, or when people who might creep me out add me on my Shanna profile (I’ve since taken off more specific location info). But all in all, it’s worth it.

-Essin’ Em