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ctan@circlet.com
http://www.ceciliatan.com/home.html
Circlet Press: www.circlet.com
“Cecilia Tan transcends time,
space, gravity, and cultural norms in her line of work: erotic science
fiction,” according to the San Francisco Weekly. Her collection of
erotic short stories, Black Feathers (HarperCollins, 1998) was described
by Kirkus Reviews as “hot” and “twisty.” Tan always considered
herself a writer, but her career took off in 1992 when she
self-published a chapbook of three kinky science fiction stories
entitled Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords-and thus Circlet Press was
born. Since that time she has published stories, essays, and articles in
dozens of magazines and anthologies including Best America Erotica, Best
Lesbian Erotica, Playboy Online, The Mammoth Book of New Erotica, On A
Bed of Rice, To Be Continued, Queer View Mirror, Dark Angels, Penthouse,
Ms. magazine, and Publishers Weekly. When she’s not writing or running
Circlet Press, she teaches tae kwon do and directs media relations for
the
New
England
Leather
Alliance
.
SENSUOUS SADIE: You often act as
a link between the bisexual community and the BDSM community. What do
you feel your activism in this area adds to the mix? What are your goals
in helping these two communities understand each other?
CECILIA TAN: “I think the common ground between the bisexual community
and the S/M community is that our sexualities and attractions are not
necessarily as dependent on the gender of our partners as hetero- or
homosexuality. Both communities try to make the point that what we want
or need doesn’t have to fall into these two choices, male or female.
There’s also really a tremendous crossover between these two
communities, between bi folks coming out and feeling adventurous about
experimenting with different sexual flavors so they try S/M and like it,
to S/M players who may eventually realize that people of all genders can
play power games and spank and tie and do all kinds of wonderful things
that aren’t dependent on genitalia.”
Sadie: I found it very
interesting that you have said that your real activism is through your
erotic fiction, saying that, “portraying characters with alternative
sexual lifestyles is one of the most effective ways to open people’s
minds to different erotic possibilities.” I can understand that
because I also feel that my writing is a conduit for acceptance and
validation of our lifestyle. Why do you feel it’s important that
people’s minds be more open? Why not just let people be what they
wanna be?
Cecilia: “Ha ha--in my view people can be whatever they want to be...
except closeminded, stubborn, phobic bigots! We all learn a certain
amount of prejudice or fear around sexual things as we grow up in a
culture that has so many authority figures, from the Pope to John
Ashcroft to our own families, telling us that sex is evil, dangerous, or
just a bad idea. Even a fairly liberal person with limited experience
may feel deep down that sex must have negative consequences, and
especially the further from the vanilla heterosexual you go, the more
negative those consequences must get. The result is a lot of people
don’t even want to THINK about some of the variations and flavors of
sexuality out there. And if they read an article in a magazine about it,
they can still hold themselves apart from it, thinking ‘oh, how weird,
I’d never be into THAT.’ Fiction is different. People empathize with
the characters, they feel like they’re experiencing what the
characters are experiencing. Next thing you know, they may find
themselves a bit more open to new or different ideas. Plus reading is
the ultimate safe sex.”
Sadie: You are active with the
New
England
Leather
Alliance
which was one of the host organizations for the 2003 Leather Leadership
Conference. The keynote speaker was author Patrick Califia, which caused
quite a bit of controversy in the
New
England
area and of which you wrote “Califia’s work has always challenged
notions of complacency and conformity.” Broadly speaking, would you
say that your approach is to educate the BDSM community internally or to
promote acceptance in the larger vanilla world?
Cecilia: “Both. Those things go hand in hand and both forms of
education and outreach are crucial to the survival of our communities.
Internally, we will never be ‘finished’ with the need to promote
safety education because new people are always coming into the
community. We also have a great need to keep educating new activists in
our community so that fresh blood replenishes the ranks and so every
generation of activists doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel! I’m in
my thirties, I’m smack dab in the middle of Generation X. When I got
into leather activism a little over a decade ago, the generation above
us had gone through so much in-fighting that they were in a shambles.
The men’s community was devastated by AIDS, as well, but the growing
pains of the community and the inability of so many people to find
common goals and work toward them really set us back ten years, I
believe. So now we have things like Leather Leadership Conference, where
anyone can come and take seminars on conflict resolution, learn the
history, and network with each other. Meanwhile we have an equally
pressing need to educate the public--to try to counteract negative
stereotypes and misconceptions. If we don’t, people into SM will
always be in danger of losing their jobs, their kids to the courts, and
their dignity in stupid, misguided ‘raids’ like the Paddleboro
bust.”
Sadie: Along those same lines, do
you believe that the best way to make change happen is by working within
the system or rather by jolting things up, such as in choosing a person
like Califia for the keynote speech?
Cecilia: “You have to do both. The same person probably can’t do
both at the same time, but some must be working from the ‘inside’
while others are agitators. Without the agitators, people don’t get
stirred up enough to do squat. Thos who do get stirred up and want to do
something become the people doing the lobbying, teaching the educational
seminars to the police and domestic violence advocates, writing to their
legislative representatives, etc. etc.”
Sadie: You received your black
belt and teach Jae Hun Kim Tae Kwon. I’ve been reading more and more
about some of the connections between the martial arts and BDSM. What
parallels do you see in your own practice?
Cecilia: “Well, first off, there are a lot of masochists in the
martial arts. We all grew up on these classic stories and movies of the
young student being put through hell by a wizened old teacher, made to
chop wood and carry water, to stand on one foot for days, whatever. Lots
of suffering with a noble result--the fortitude and ability to be a
hero. And of course you get hit a lot... (just kidding). But there is no
denying that the martial arts are very attractive to that brand of
masochist who loves noble suffering, and who also gets a charge out of
putting their body into harm’s way and surviving. Mastery of the
martial arts also requires a kind of submission, but it’s a totally
different kind of submission for me than the type I experience in S/M.
Hmm... I’m not sure I an explain the difference without writing a
whole book on it. Maybe I’ll have to write a book on it...”
Sadie: Would you say that you
take a spiritual approach to your BDSM practice? If so, how?
Cecilia: “Yes, definitely. I think it is a part of my worldview that
1) there are power relationships among humans and to live a complete
life we have to honor rather than suppress them, and 2) that pain is a
validating thing that can be transcended in life rather than avoided. I
feel I’m the most spiritually centered in the universe when I keep
these two things in mind.”
Sadie: You have commented that
you’re attracted to people and ideas that cross over, such as Mr.
Spock from Star Trek, David Bowie, or gender and sexuality dualities in
general. I have also been reading Justin Tanis’ book in transgendered
spirituality which talks about the unique perspective of trans people
due to their unique body awareness. What has your interest in this area
added to your work and to your writing?
Cecilia: “I think the most basic thing that helps a writer is that by
being a ‘middle person,’ I can usually see more than one perspective
on any situation. As a writer it’s a crucial quality to be able to see
into the heads of many characters and write from many points of view
(though not necessarily all in the same story...). My erotic writing
would be rather monotonous if I always wrote from the point of view of a
bratty female masochist, wouldn’t it?
Sadie: You’ve said that, “not
being monogamous does not mean you are not committed, not loyal, or not
good.” Considering that we grow up in a culture that considers
monogamy the basis of an intimate relationship, how can people in the
BDSM community understand that monogamy is one choice of many?
Cecilia: “I think it’s easier to get people in the SM community to
see the point of non-monogamy than ‘vanilla’ folks. Kinky folks
already come to understand setting their own boundaries and limits, and
if they are participating in the community with events like parties and
such, they must see people playing with people other than their
‘significant other’ all the time. It’s easier for us to make that
step to say, well, I wouldn’t want my partner to fuck someone else,
but maybe a little spanking would be okay...
I remember one of the first play party I ever went to. The hosts
were a young couple in their early twenties and all of us attending were
in our twenties also. (Remember what I said before about the young
generation having to re-invent the wheel? No one at that party had been
to more than one or two parties before--all with each other!) Anyway,
after the party the female of the couple made a comment to her partner
that they shared with all of us in email. She had said ‘I was
surprised about my jealousy.’ Her mate, who had played with a lot of
people that night, said ‘What about your jealousy?’ Her comment:
‘There wasn’t any!’
Beyond that though, I would say explaining polyamory to a monogamous
BDSM person wouldn’t really be any different than explaining it to a
monogamous vanilla person....”
Sadie: I really liked what you
wrote about masochism, something which is broadly misunderstood. You
wrote, “Masochism, for the self-assured masochist, is what makes some
people successful. It is the knowledge that you can suffer through
anything, whether it is long hours at the office, all-nighters for end
of term projects, long distance running, and ENJOY it in the process.”
Why do you think masochism is so widely misunderstood?
Cecilia: “Because people fear pain. And they see anyone who enjoys
what they fear as a little bit crazy or sick in the head. Add in the
sexual connotation and you have a sure way freak out your in-laws. I
mean, people think skydivers are crazy, too, but they’re not as quick
to tell them to go seek psychiatric help as they are to us. I don’t
think it’s a lesson that everyone can grasp though. Maybe we’re the
chosen people because of it!”
Sadie: You write that,
“Housework may be an issue that you and your partner will decide falls
outside the scope of the s/m component of your relationship. I repeat:
we have a tendency to try to solve all problems in the relationship
through the s/m framework, but perhaps some things won’t fit. Just
because you decide to divide up the housework like vanilla housemates,
roommates or domestic partners does not mean your s/m relationship is
not “real” or that it is flawed.” I think this idea is probably
self evident to experienced players, but how do you help novices
understand that they don’t need to try to be the “ultimate”
Dominant or Submissive?
Cecilia: “Well, I write stuff like what you quoted! And I teach
workshops. I just try to show people that there are different
perspectives to look at things by. If you have an S/M relationship, you
are already making your own rules, so don’t get sucked into following
what some hormone-soaked fiction writer dreamed up one day as the
‘right’ way to do things. Of course, to write your own rules
requires a lot of self-knowledge and a lot of people would rather just
run on a bunch of assumptions about ‘roles,’ rather than search
their own souls for what they want or need. Roles work as a shorthand,
but they are the beginning, not the end, of the definitions.”
Sadie: You wrote once that, “He
couldn’t break me, but I did bend of my own accord. Ultimately, what
it proved to me is that no one can “take” control away from you in a
scene, you can only give it away.” It seems like you’re talking
about the idea of control on a deeper level, similar to how people like
Nelson Mandela who spent much of their life in jail have said that their
bodies might have been jailed, but no one could enslave their minds. Can
you expand on this idea?
Cecilia: “Not really--it’s a pretty simple concept. But like many
simple concepts sometimes you have to experience them before you have
that Zen-like moment of understanding...”
Sadie: You’ve said in another
interview that you, “like the term pornography because it’s honest.
It tells you that what you are about to read is going to be about
fucking, and it’s meant to arouse the reader.” The problem of course
is that erotica writers want increased legitimacy, and the word
“pornography” is so loaded. What’s your feelings about this?
Cecilia: “There is no difference between what is ‘erotica’ and
what is ‘pornography.’ What is the difference between a woman, a
lady, and a female? Between a kitty and a housecat? I think pornography
is becoming a less loaded word in the same say that ‘queer’ became
less of a charged word when people grabbed it for their own use. The
real difference between erotica and pornography is marketing.”
Sadie: I think a lot of readers
would be surprised to hear that you don’t earn a salary from Circlet
Press. Considering the huge amount of work it takes to run a publishing
company, not to mention that the pool of BDSM publishers is shrinking,
what keeps you motivated?
Cecilia: “That’s a good question. At this point, Circlet has
achieved every goal I set out to achieve except for the financial one,
which was, admittedly, lower down on the list than things like exploding
the stereotype of nerdy
‘sexless’ science fiction, break new ground in the genres and push
the envelope of what was possible and ‘normal’ in both erotic
fiction and science fiction, create a market for the new generation of
erotica writers who, like me, seemed to all enjoy both S/M and science
fiction, create a crossover community between the sf fan communities and
the S/M communities, bring critical acclaim to a new genre of fiction,
etc. etc.
“Look at a lot of the top erotica writers of my generation and
you’ll find a lot of them made their first sale or a very early sale
to Circlet Press. Mary Anne Mohanraj, M. Christian, Thomas S. Roche,
Gary Bowen... When I started
the press in 1992 there was no place to send an S/M story that wasn’t
exclusively lesbian or gay, or that had any plot other than ‘two
people meet, they get it on.’ Penthouse Variations wouldn’t take
anything over 2000 words. Heck, for me 2000 words is just enough for a
decent sex scene with character development and dialogue. What about
some plot? I wanted more and I made a place for it to happen, and it
did.
“Right now what keeps me going is mostly momentum. I’m just too
stubborn to quit, even though the book industry has been getting worse
and worse for ten years.”
Sadie: Thanks to the internet
there’s really a huge wave of what I consider erotic drek. How do you
define quality erotica? Do you believe that most writers either have it
or they don’t?
Cecilia: “Quality erotica has the same qualities of any other good
fiction. Good characters, an engaging scenario or plot, well-turned
phrases and word choice, a confidence to it, a momentum that the reader
can sense, pacing. A lot of this can come with innate talent, but a lot
of it can be taught, too. So no, I don’t believe some writers ‘have
it’ and some don’t. I send a lot of rewrite requests to authors
whose manuscripts my interns wanted to reject. We’re all amazed at how
good the rewrites come back, sometimes.
”People don’t realize, also, how much work an editor does to a
fiction manuscript before it appears in a print publication. Many of the
great writers you can name can’t spell, or have grammar glitches, or
overuse words, or need to kick the adverb habit. On the Internet, of
course, it just comes out raw. You’d be amazed how much ‘better’
some writers would seem if they went through these cosmetic changes by a
line editor or proof reader.
“That said, of course there is a lot of drek, but I guess I’ve been
mostly insulated from it. My slush pile is huge, but most of the stories
are at least worth looking at, which is why I am so slow to get through
it. If I could automatically reject most of it as ‘drek,’ my job
would be a lot less time consuming.”
Sadie: You have commented that
you were very concerned about the challenges writers face in terms of
signing away all their rights to publishers. I can certainly understand
this because I did that very thing with my first publisher and regretted
it. Considering the desperation that many first time writers feel, what
advice would you give them?
Cecilia: “First off, there is strength in numbers, and weakness in
ignorance. Join the National Writers Union, or another writers group, so
that you can learn from people who have been down the road before and
find out the do’s and don’ts. The NWU is a great resource, from
getting contract negotiation help, to grievance help when publishers
refuse to pay, to just moral support from other writers when you are
feeling isolated. Right now media companies, which include publishers,
magazines, web sites, everything, are making a grab for all the rights
they possibly can. That means they get to sell your work again and
again, reaping a profit again and again, while you only got paid the one
time. Gee, isn’t that what they call piracy? Basically, don’t give
in to that crap.
”Get educated about your rights and people will be less able to take
advantage of you and you will be more empowered to speak up. Half the
time I complain to publishers about a bad contract they change it to
what I want. Some of the time they tell me they can’t change it, but
they shut me up by offering more money up front. Sometimes I’ll take
the deal, sometimes I’ll walk away. The truth of the matter is if one
publisher wanted it enough to offer a contract, if they’re ready to
screw you, another publisher somewhere will be equally interested. So
don’ be afraid to walk away if its a work you really care about and
want to keep the rights to.”
Sadie: A delicate subject. You
were raped in your past, but it seems that you’ve been able to get
past this. Have you found that BDSM in one way or another helped you
most past this trauma? What do you feel about using BDSM as a conduit
for emotional healing?
Cecilia: “No, I really got over the ‘rape,’ long before I figured
out what my interest in S/M was. And I was not traumatized by the
experience. I know that sounds weird, but I felt that if I had really
spoken up sooner I could have easily put a stop to the situation before
we ever got that far. So even though the situation got out of my
control, I took the control back once I realized what was going on.
“What is funny is that the situation I’m
talking about was a lot less like an abusive or nonconsensual
situation and more just a stupid, ignorant situation. I was in college
at the time and we had been educated up the wazzo about the dangers of
‘date rape.’ When it happened to me, though, I almost had to laugh.
We had NOT been drinking or anything like that, but this guy I was kind
of interested in followed me back to my dorm room one night. He wasn’t
forceful at all--not even what I could call pushy, just sort of
insistent in that way that guys who are really horny just have one thing
on their minds and all resources are aimed at reaching that goal.
“I was kind of curious to see how this was going to turn out. I
wasn’t very experienced at that time and it eventually became clear to
me that his expectations of the night and mine were quite different. He
obviously thought he was there to ‘go all the way’ with me, whereas
in my perhaps more sheltered experience that really wasn’t assumed on
my part. When he stuck it in me I was like, hey, whoa, hang on a second!
I was not a virgin at that point, but I was still pretty clueless about
what to do with a man in my bed, so I had basically left him in the
drivers seat. I had no clue what to do, and I was hungry for experience,
but I had some limits and that was one of them.
“He obviously had no clue I would react the way I did: ‘This is a
risk I’m not comfortable taking.’ I think those were my exact words.
He was like, ‘Huh?’ I had to repeat it, and then elaborate on it,
i.e., I wasn’t prepared to do that with no condom. Somehow all the
safe sex stuff we had also had crammed down our throats at school just
hadn’t sunk in to his white heterosexual boy brain as applying to him.
He had a condom in his wallet that was too old and decrepit for use. I
was not stocked up myself at that time either or I think I might have
gone through with it and let him fuck me, or maybe I wouldn’t have
because I was a little put off by the fact that he just went and did it
without asking me. In a nutshell, he had no idea he had done something
wrong by not asking for my explicit consent. And I realized I didn’t
have a lot of right to be angry about it since he just didn’t have any
clue I expected him to. I suddenly realized that even though I was not
the ‘experienced’ one, I was a lot more EVOLVED sexually than he
was.
“I think to this day he has no clue what happened that night, why I
said no, nor why it was that I never returned any of his phone calls
after that. he kept calling and being like ‘do you want to go out and
see a movie? I want to take you to dinner...’ and I was just thinking:
I’ve got to find myself someone with an awareness of what is going on
that matches mine! I eventually found that with other people, and then
found it codified as part of the ‘rules’ of SM! Halleluiah!”
Sadie: You have two cats, Tai Gau
and Varenka. Can you tell me how you named them, and whether they are
dominant or submissive? (some say all cats are dominant as in that old
line: dogs come when you call; cats take a message and get back to you)
 
Cecilia: “Heh heh. My cats are switches, just like me. They can be
bossy and they can be beggars, depending on their mood. You know, goal
oriented--whatever works! Tai Gau is Vietnamese for a kind of beef
noodle soup. When corwin and I got him we knew we wanted to give him an
Oriental name because his tabby stripes look almost like something from
a Chinese landscape painting. (We had just seen an exhibit at the
Museum
of
Fine
Arts
on this at the time...) And we are terrible, terrible punsters. Tai Gau
sounds like ‘tiger,’ and he is a little ‘taigau’ because he’s
so stripey. Are you gagging now because this is too cute? Varenka was
named by my aunt Maureen Brady (who is also a writer and one of the
founders of Spinsters Ink and the lesbian feminist presses of the 1970s,
so I am not even the first queer writer/publisher in my family!).
“Maureen and her partner Martha Hughes found her at a cabin they were
staying in upstate
New
York.
The name on the cabin was Varenka so that’s what they named her. The
poor thing was starving and desperate for help--they wonder if she got
separated from some vacationing family and left on her own by accident!
Somehow Renki just knew that these two nice lesbians would help her
though, and they did, bringing her back to the city to get her shots and
all that. I was supposed to just be cat-sitting her for a month while my
aunt went off to a writers colony, but it was just after my other cat
Zot! had died, and basically once Renki came into the household she just
never left. She still has gaydar though--she absolutely LOVES lesbians
and will leap right into the lap of any gay woman who walks in the
house. How does she know? We don’t know, but she hasn’t been wrong
yet.”
Sadie: Thank you very much!
Cecilia: “No, thanks to you!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sensuous
Sadie is the author of It's Not About the
Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html).
She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of
Rose
&
Thorn
,
Vermont
's first BDSM group. Comments,
compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed
to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com
or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely
is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.
Copyright
2003 Sadie Sez Publications
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