the view from the bottom

After my posts about the extreme porn law and the demonstration I attended in Parliament Square, I received an invitation to write a guest post on the issue for Heresy Corner, a UK political blog with an impressive readership. "While I do my research thoroughly, my opinions are theoretical and those of an outsider. You actually live this stuff." the Heresiarch explained in his email. "I was also struck from something you wrote a while ago about how 'sex blogs' are rather cut off from other parts of the blogosphere - and it seems to me that your thoughts deserve a different audience."

I've been pretty over-committed lately, so it took me a while to get back to him. I said I was honoured to be asked, definitely interested, but well aware that my tendency of setting myself ambitious goals in four or five different areas at once leaves me vulnerable to changes of focus, and I have a bad habit of leaving projects unfinished and commitments dangling. The Heresiarch assured me there was no hurry from his point of view, but I shyly asked if he could set me a firm deadline, or it probably wouldn't happen. He was kind enough to oblige, and I said sure, I'd write him something.

I started work on the blog post two days before the deadline. Loads of time, I thought. But first there was the writing block to overcome. Suddenly this felt like a real writing project. I haven't had written a proper article since I was studying. I didn't help matters by looking through the recent posts on Heresy Corner until I felt thoroughly intimidated and uninformed in comparison.

But I chatted to my Doms in IRC, and they both had useful input, and I made a lot of notes about censorship and democracy and media responsibility. Once I started writing, I quickly realised that I had enough thoughts on this topic to fill a small book - particularly since I'd been told I shouldn't assume that my audience was familiar with kink, so I had to start from scratch with explaining where I'm coming from, and challenging some of the misconceptions which played a part in getting this legislation passed.

I finally finished it, after cutting it down to about a third of its original size, three days after the deadline. So I probably deserve a spanking for that. And I have at least two more articles I could write with the material I collected. But I'm pretty happy with the post that went up on Heresy Corner yesterday. It's not a bad start.

The View from the Bottom - An insider's take on spanking, S&M and the new porn law.