Rat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025

I haven't been posting as regularly on Mastodon, and now, when I do log on and want to say something, I always feel as though I need to start with some sort of apology or explanation.

The explanation is that, as much as I can while still maintaining my #Covid precautions like wearing an #N95 mask anytime I'm in public, I've still been exploring my #kink journey.

A lot has happened to me in the past year--a lot has happened to the world in the past year--and I have some thoughts about #kink, my relationship with my #bisexuality, and #love. And it's #PrideMonth.

Since I joined Mastodon, I have been Very Online™️ about my struggles with accepting myself as #bi, with the #biphobia I've encountered in #LGBTQ spaces, and with the disconnect of what my life could have been had I come out sooner or had the on-going #Covid19 #pandemic not stalled some of those explorations.

So I have a thread...

Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)

I've always said that I was so messily and chaotically Online™️ about coming out as #bi and being #kinky because no one that I could find was talking about these topics in a way that quite resonated with me. And I wanted to give voice to a lot of my feelings and struggles, if only because in being vocal about them, perhaps someone else who was struggling in the ways that I was could find them and at least feel a little bit less alone that I did. I felt like I couldn't give answers or closure or anything concrete like that, but there is at least some comfort in watching someone else wrestle with similarly difficult feelings and ambiguities. If nothing else, I wanted to give someone else that comfort.

And overall, the #kindness, #compassion and #gentleness that I received from so many people on this platform was truly generous! I feel a deep sense of gratitude to the Mastodon community, especially the #queer folks on this site, for your responses

Jun 6, 2025 at 2:49pmWeb
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
Right now, I can't bring myself to go back and reread some of my previous threads angsting about my coming out as #bisexual because I imagine that they're too cringe. At some point, I will probably be able to accept and reread them, but not right now. But so many of you read them! And so many of you offered #compassion, whether that was in commiserating about the #biphobia and #panphobia within so many #LGBTQ spaces or in offering a kind of gentle and generous acceptance of my messy and conflicted feelings and my #grief over who I could have been in a more accepting world. I am so thankful that Mastodon offered me a space to work through those feelings and connect with people who responded with thoughtfulness and patience and kindness. I don't know that there's any other online space where I could have found that kind of response. So, if you ever interacted with any of my posts about my #ComingOut as #bi later in life, thank you!
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I've been reflecting on the past year, and I've realized that, while the #grief over "What could have been?" will always be there, I've come to a place of acceptance with it. I will probably always wonder what could have been had I not been raised on a #conservative #Christian environment that eschewed any sort of exploration of #sexuality or #authenticity. I will probably always wonder what could have been had I had more supportive friends who I could have come out to in my 20s. I will probably always wonder what would have happened had #covid19 not become a #pandemic just as I was #ComingOut as #bisexual. Those questions will always be there, but I've reached a certain truce with them. Rather than something that I'm fighting and resisting, they've become a part of me. They've become part of my own, personal experience of being #bi and being #queer. They're part of what makes me #bisexual and #queer.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I've realized (and what a lot of you all on this site maybe tried to tell me or hoped that I would come to in my own time) that #queerness encompasses so much more than just who I may or may not have slept with. That can be part of it! But it's a fully lived experience. It's more expansive than that. A straight person would not have gone through the inner struggles that I have, whether that was teenage me feeling a confusing mix of #elation and #shame around certain young women friends that I can now identify as #desire and #infatuation or adult me wrestling with certain questions or who I am and who I could be or could have been. Maybe these experiences aren't the idealized images of queerness we see in the media, but they are my experience of my own #queer and #bisexual identity. They are part of the queer experience because I am queer. They are part of the bi experience because I am bi.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
To get to this point of #SelfAcceptance, I've had to sit with and undo a lot of internalized #biphobia. And I've had to come to terms with the fact that, while #bisexuals are part of the #LGBTQ community (in so much as it can be called a unified community), we also have our own unique experiences. So much of the media and discussions around #sexuality, even when they pay lip service to more fluid experiences of #desire and sexuality, is entirely focused on #monosexism, that is, on the idea that sexuality is a fixed and singular entity and experience. For some people it might be! But for others, it is not. And many both straight and cis spaces, as well as #queer spaces, all too often get caught up in one singular idea of what sex and sexuality and desire can or should or do look like, to the detriment of those of us whose experiences are more fluid and more difficult to define.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025

Another thing that has helped me in getting to this point of #SelfAcceptance is #kink. Being into #BDSM is another huge part of my #sexuality that I denied and ignored for far too long, and for me at least, being #kinky and being #queer are closely tied together. There are multiple ways in which my #desires don't fit into what is mainstream, and while I think there are discussions to be had about whether kink is inherently queer, for me, it is. Accepting myself as kinky and accepting myself as bisexual and queer have gone hand-in-hand.

Plus, the kink community, by and large, has been, in my experience, much more accepting of the full range of experiences someone can have as a #bisexual, in a way that certain more maintsteam #LGBTQ spaces have, again, in my experience, not been. In many kink spaces, you are who you say you are. Full stop. There isn't the same gatekeeping I've faced in vanilla queer circles.

Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025

At least, in my experience, within the #kink community, there is a kind of #RadicalAcceptance that allows for a more diverse range of experiences around #sexuality, #desire and what #sex even is. So many vanilla #LGBTQ spaces I've been in have been overly concerned with being "the right kind" of #queer, whatever that means in a particular space. As a #bisexual who came out later in life, I felt like I was always failing at being whatever the "right" kind of queer might be.

In the kink community, most people, again, in my experience, aren't overly concerned with being the "right" kind of anything. They're more concerned with questions like, "Does this make you feel fulfilled and happy?" or "Does this feel authentically aligned with who you are and what you want?" or "Does this make you feel good without harming anyone else?" It's just been an entirely different way of thinking about and approaching the self and identity.

Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I'm not saying that all #kink spaces are perfect--many of them have a lot of problems and the more time I spend in my local #kinky community, the more time I discover who the toxic people are and who the harm do-ers who should be dealt with but aren't are. I'm also not saying that all vanilla #LGBTQ spaces are terrible! I have some friends I've made through a local vanilla #CovidCautious #queer group who I'm very close to and who are accepting of me as #bisexual and #kinky exactly as I am. I'm just saying that, for me, accepting myself as kinky has helped me in also accepting myself as #bisexual and working through a lot of internalized #biphobia that I've been carrying. It's given me new ways of thinking about identity and desire that I have found to be more helpful and more healthy than the kind of binary thinking I encountered around what #queerness is in other spaces.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
Ultimately, to me, being #queer should be about being able to transcend binary thinking and overly simplistic "Are you or aren't you?" questions. I've been able to come to that understanding in a large part through #kink. I don't really want to get into whether or not kink belongs at #Pride, because I think that anyone who says it doesn't is ignorant (often willfully) of the history of support the kink and #BDSM communities have had for #LGBTQRights. I also think a lot of the people who say kink doesn't belong at Pride are honestly bad faith actors trying to undermine both the kink and #queer communities. For me, this #PrideMonth is going to be about celebrating myself as #bisexual, queer, and kinky. It's going to be about taking genuine, hard-won pride in who I am, despite the #queerphobia of the fundamentalist Christian community I grew up in and despite the #biphobia within myself and wtihin the #LGBTQ community.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
It's also going to be about figuring out what being #queer and being #bisexual look like for me going forward. Right now, the US is descending into #fascism and launching terrifying attacks on #LGBTQRights, especially #TransRights. One issue that has hit me particularly hard is #LGBTQBookBans and attempts to remove discussion of #LGBTQ issues from the school curriculum. I can't change my own personal past, but I can make it easier for #queer youth to learn who they are and feel safe #ComingOut sooner than I did. My own long experience in the closet and my desire for kids today to have an easier time and to find an acceptance that I didn't is uniquely a queer experience, and it's also very much part of my own experience of being queer. I want to spare kids today the #shame and #grief that I had to go through, and that's something that I don't think a straight person could ever fully understand.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I also truly hope that rather than infighting around who the "right" kind of #queer is, the attacks on #LGBTQ rights overall bring the queer community together to fight #fascism, #queerphobia, #biphobia, #transphobia, and yes, even #kinkphobia. We are all under attack right now,. The only way that we can survive this is to recognize our shared oppression. The #Christofascists don't care about our minor quibbles around labels or life experiences. To them, we are all a threat because we are all different and because we all trouble their very rigid and oppressive notions around #sexuality, #gender, and #sex. We need to simultaneously celebrate and respect our differences while coming together in #solidarity to recognize that our oppression is shared. The more I learn specifically about #bisexual activism, the more I learn that biphobia, transphobia, and queerphobia are all linked. The only way we get through this is together.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
#Pride has always been political, and as the wishy-washy corporate sponsors predictably pull their support for parades and festivals in a climate that is capitulating to #fascism, it is up to us, this month and every month, to embrace the fluidity, messiness, and complicatedness that often comes with being #queer, with being part of the #LGBTQ community, with being authentically ourselves, in the myriad of ways that can look and be. For me, this is the first #PrideMonth where I have felt truly proud of my #queer and #bisexual identities, and I intend to revel in that, no matter what the #fascists say! I have fought too hard and too long to understand and accept myself, my own feelings, my own desires, and my own needs to let them take that from me. My expression of who I am may not look quite like anything else, but it is mine. It is who I am and what I fought for. I'm not giving it up now.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025

I began this thread with acknowledging that I was very messily online about my feelings around #ComingOut later in life as #bisexual, as #queer, because I wanted to leave something for someone else, anyone else, who might resonate with it. I was also doing it for my closeted self who wasn't able to grapple with those feelings.

I feel like this thread has been for my past self who was out but who was conflicted about her place in the #LGBTQ community, who was struggling with internalized #biphobia an a lot of #shame, and who was grieving who and what she could have been. I want to tell her it's okay. It's okay for her to feel all the confusion and grief and shame. I want to tell her that, even though she can't see it, there is a way through it all. It doesn't look like what she thinks it does. It's going to involve her shedding some maladaptive ways of thinking to deepen her understanding of love and of herself.

Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I would also want to tell her that the only way through all the #grief, the internalized #biphobia, the #shame, and the confusion is through. And it's not a way out. Those things are still and likely always will be, to some extent, with her. But she'll learn to live with them, and along the way, she'll still find #SelfAcceptance. She'll still find #love, both from other people and from herself. She'll find that #shame and #pride can co-exist, and that in a paradoxical way, the pride can come from the shame. She'll discover that being #bisexual isn't the combination of being straight and gay that she saw in the media but that it's an amorphous, third thing that can really only exist and be embodied by each individual, bi person who is living out what #bisexuality means to them. She'll learn that that's what makes it so powerful and so distrusted and shunned by people who want easy, rigid, simplistic ways of understanding #sexuality.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I would tell her that as she gets older, she will get tired of attempting to be what other people think she should be as a #queer person, but in being tired, there is a kind of strength that will teach her to accept herself. She will come to understand that she cannot be anything but what she is, but she will also finally understand that what she is can be enough. She won't desperately need to see herself reflected in the media or in the #LGBTQ spaces around her because she will learn to accept herself, for herself. She will be too tired to care about the opinions of people who tell her that she should be something she is not or who don't both to try to understand the experiences and struggles that made her who and what she is. Maybe these experiences are difficult to explain or depict because they're complex and internal, but the people who are worthy of her will try to understand them, will try to understand her.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
She will wish that certain parts of her life and her past were different, but she will also accept that they were beyond her control and that her survival of those experiences deserves recognition and that anyone who tells her she should have acted differently doesn't matter. She will also wish that certain parts of her present and future were different, but she will also accept that they are beyond her control. None of us have as much control over our lives as we perhaps like to think that we do or as neoliberalism tells us that we do. She will learn that her own values and sense of self-worth matter more than whatever her past, present, or future might be. And despite the lack of control that she has in shaping the world around her, she can control how she sees herself, she can control what she chooses to value, and she can control what she does to try to give those who come after her a different life than the one she had.
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
I think that exploring #sexuality and identity is a life-long journey, but I do feel as though I've reached a place of #SelfAcceptance of my own #bisexuality, #queerness and #kinkiness that I didn't think was possible a few years ago. I'm going to honor that #SelfAcceptance this #PrideMonth. I'm going to hope that in being authentically myself, I give others permission to do the same, whether that's in #ComingOut later in life or expanding ideas of what #queerness can look like and who can belong in the #LGBTQ community. I'd like to think that this acceptance and honesty can, in some small way, serve as an alternative to the bigotry and conformity that #fascism is attempting to force on us all. I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that, even a few years ago, for me, this kind of self-acceptance felt unobtainable. But somehow I've found it, and that gives me at least a little bit of hope. </thread>
Show threadPomegranate Pirate 🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️Jun 6, 2025
@TheRatCantRead This post is beautiful and your experiences are valuable (?maybe not the right word). Thank you. So much invisibility gaslights us, those queers who are not binary in sexuality. It does take a lot of working through what it all means when you don't see yourself represented.... I totally get that, and yes to pretty much all you wrote. Yes to Solidarity, Yes to not making assumptions about each other, pigeonholing, or excluding. We are all family.
Happy Pride!
Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
@Pomegranatepirate , thank you for reading! I'm glad you found things that seemed to resonate. Happy Pride to you as well!
Show threadWillow (she/her)Jun 6, 2025

@TheRatCantRead as a fellow bi person who is also kinky, and also probably chronically messy online... Hi!

I love chatting and learning about kink and bdsm. And like you I think sometimes posting my rambling messy thoughts and processing can help other people who are struggling similarly 💕

Show threadRat Can't Read (she/her)Jun 6, 2025
@MsHearthWitch , hello! Yes, being willing to ramble and process online can definitely help other people who are similarly struggling, and as messy and vulnerable as it can feel, my hope is that it can at least show people that they're not alone, especially for folks who are bi and/or kinky or who don't fit into the mainstream in certain ways 💕