You Are Not My Daddy
By: Chelsea Anne Fawcett
Tags: Feminism, Sex, Identity, Violence

When I was young, no one ever told me I could be an actress. I was not pretty enough, but I did have the dark, knowing eyes, and the soft expressive face; the fathomless gaze. Instead, they told me, not with their words but with their actions, that I could be a prophet. And so I did. An oracle. A martyr. A saint. Not human but more than human. Which I suppose is also what an actress is. I was beautiful, but just shy of the barrier of beautiful that makes you an actress. Had I been less fat, had slightly better face skin, or been blonde, naturally, I could’ve been an actress. I was instead, beautiful for what was inside of me, for what I represented, and I wished that someone would think I was beautiful in that ordinary way too. That I was pretty. Fair. I did not want to be complicated and gristly. I did not want to be a fine steak, bloody and tense on the end of their forks. I wanted to be a soft bed of greens, or a fine and decadent cake, a piece of candy between their teeth, a dollop of something soft and sweet on their tongues. I was those things, but they would never see it, or acknowledge it, and it made me angry.

I am tired. So tired of apologizing for my love of pleasure, for wanting to be happy, for wanting to come for free. Women I follow on the internet post pictures of themselves for people like me, for people like themselves, to love their bodies. The price they pay is having to also say things like “I love it when he rams his cock down my throat.” They pay the price of loving with language of being possessed, dominated by men. I know you can trick yourself into getting pleasure out of situations that you know are bad if you just tell yourself it’s as good as it gets. I’ve always had too good of an imagination. A long time ago, when I was a teenager a woman wrote a book that was based on another book about a man who excited a woman because he was abusive but he let her cum. He would tie her up, ignore her consent, things that men think are normal now and probably then. Some people were saying it was a bad representation of BDSM. “In REAL BDSM,” they said, “The submissive is actually the one in control. It’s empowering.” I read the sentence 15 times without it meaning anything. But it stuck in my head. Men want to choke me. They want to pull my hair and hurt me and they want me to like it. “You like sex,“ they sneer, “So you should like THIS.” The underlying assumption is, if I like sex it is because I am perverse. I am a masochist. If I like sex then I must also like being abused. I must also like pain. I do like pain, sometimes. It’s a kind of stimulation. I turn my music up too loud, I make my showers too hot and eat my food before it’s cool enough that it won’t burn the soft flesh of my tongue. But even those things I have slowly stopped doing. I don’t hate my body anymore. Not like I used to. And when I dream I dream of soft kisses, slow caresses and a lover whose presence feels like warm, golden, liquid sunshine sliding down my throat and over my shoulders. Whose embrace feels like coming home. I dream of a lover whose freckles I imagine to bring me out of a panic attack; or whose smile ripples my body with joy.

And I dream of biting her, on her shoulder, when so much has built up in me that I can’t hold it in any longer, and the pressure of my teeth, not the violence of it, making her shudder in pleasure. I dream not of pain but of understanding, and I know the difference between the two. I know the intimacy of letting someone into the soft, angry, terrified place inside of you, and I know the longing of a soul to FEEL it, exactly how I feel it, so that they can know, that they can love me there by being PRESENT in the pain with me. I know that men lash out because they are afraid of being alone and I know that they do not have my consent to do that. That if you can easily feel your own pain but would rather give it to someone else you can stay the hell away from me. I know the difference between what is too much for one human heart to bear and what is just an excuse to hurt someone else and call it love. I know that you want your pain to POSSESS me. To TAME me. To make me into your “little slut”. I know you want to control me. I know you get off on it and I Know that You Know, that you are not my Daddy.