Reading

Rogan: While shelf-checking at the sci-fi library, I found Phyllis Ann Karr's Frostflower books: Frostflower and Thorn, and Frostflower and Windbourne.

I had encountered the characters before, in a short story, "Night of the Short Knives," in the Crossing Press anthology The Women Who Walk Through Fire: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction vol. 2. In the back of that anthology (which the sci-fi library also has), I found the following author's note:

"I met Thorn and Frostflower at a summer writing workshop led by George R. R. Martin in Dubuque, Iowa. Not that they are based on anyone I ever met in 'real life.' Since long before I knew any theory about the Astral Plane, I have believed that characters are real entities who allow writers to use them. Thus, my fiction is a cooperative effort between the characters and myself; but Frostflower and Thorn answered a call for Sword and Sorcery figures in particular." (p. 273)

That note was written in 1990; her first Frostflower title came out in 1980. She's still writing other books today.

When I talked about sex, it was often assumed that I didn’t know about sexual abuse, that I didn’t know about violence against women, and that because I chose to celebrate a passion or to describe a passion, I was immune from the anguish of being a woman in this society. [...] My whole life’s work has been saying—along with others—that we cannot only have an anatomy of victimization. We are more than that. We must have an anatomy of desire, of celebration. We must not assume that because a woman speaks about passion she doesn’t know pain.

—Joan Nestle, “A celebration of butch-femme identities in the lesbian community,” A Persistent Desire: A Femme/Butch Reader p. 462

Rogan: Joan Nestle was talking about the power of transgressive female desire, but the quote also rings with me as a trans multiple. As there’s a push within our own ranks towards identifying with trauma, this idea that the only “respectable” way to be or become multiple is to be (preferably sexually) victimized, and as there’s a political push to see trans people’s very existence as sexually abusive to children, I have found power in shamelessly depicting my erotic desires through art.

It took years to reach this point; sexual violence is like a black hole that sucks everything into itself. Every time I write about sex, including this post, I have to delete constant digressions about the damned black hole. Mac and I had to set a rule that Multi Orgasmic would NOT discuss abuse because otherwise it would’ve been about damn near nothing else! And obviously it was a smart choice; Multi Orgasmic is my #2 ebook bestseller. People are clearly hankering for this stuff; they just don’t say so in public, mostly, because true, honest desire is scary. When you want something that badly (sexual or not), that is a vulnerable place to be in, and that vulnerability by nature is uncomfortable to witness. So we ridicule it, trying to end that vulnerability, that honesty, so we don’t have to look ourselves in the face.

If heartbreak HAS been a part of one’s multiplicity, it’s natural to go through a stage where the grief consumes everything. But like a necessary burn, it’s meant to leave a more fertile land behind, ready for new growth. Eventually, you gotta have something besides suffering to hang your sense of self on. Eventually, you need something good to fight FOR, not just something evil to fight AGAINST.

For me, that good stuff includes banging my headmates and making stuff like Multi Orgasmic. Think what it might be for you. What gives you that soul-satisfying feeling? What waters your heartflowers? What is that good thing to fight for?

What brings you to that scary place of wanting?

True Memory Syndrome

Thorn, Frostflower, and Phyllis Ann Karr

Anatomies of Desire