S

S — The S in BDSM is for submission (opposed to the D for Dominance), and SADISM (opposed to the M for Masochism). The S in “submission” is traditionally kept lower-case in deference to the D; as a pair, they are stylized as D/s.

see also: BIOPOLITICS; REPRESENTATION

SELF-DIAGNOSIS — When someone diagnoses themselves with an illness or injury, including mental illness or a mental health condition.

Self-diagnosis is very important to trans and queer people, and anyone who doesn’t have access to healthcare to get a formal diagnosis from a doctor. It’s belittled as less “legitimate” than a formal diagnosis, but generally people who are self-diagnosing are doing so because they are trying to better understand their symptoms, and their experiences should be taken seriously.

SEX (n.) — A binary division of people based on their perceived possible role in biological reproduction. Sex is a socially constructed category, not an objectively scientific one.

Sex alleges to differentiate between “female” and “male,” but those categories are not discrete. Sex ostensibly describes reproductive organs, genitals, chromosomes, hormone ratio, gametes, and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., breast tissue and facial hair). Sexual dimorphism is a rough guide but not strictly accurate. Many trans and intersex people have a combination of sex traits; and for each trait there is a spectrum on which traits fall, rather than being binary.

Does biology influence gender? Yes, hormones obviously influence our gender, which is why so many trans people feel more “at home” in their bodies after starting hormone replacement therapy. The brain does not have a “sex,” but it is influenced by sex hormones. Even if it did have a sex, it would exist along a spectrum like all other sex characteristics. Our brains also physically change in response to our environments and experiences. Our time spent being gendered changes our brains; gender influences our biology, and biology influences our gender. The mind and body are not separate.

Sex is assumed to be binary and essential. Gender is built on this understanding of sex, and our desires as either “heterosexual” or “homosexual” are built upon that gender. All of this is flawed.

Male and female are both gender-coded words, not objective biological realities. To insist that a trans person is “biologically fe/male” is to suggest that there is a “real” sex beneath a facade of gender expression and identity. Best practice is to let people describe themselves, and trust that they will give you the necessary information when it’s genuinely relevant (e.g., in certain medical contexts).

Thinking about sex in binary terms, or assuming that genitals equate to sex, is medically dangerous. Medical practitioners would do well to learn to ask trans people the questions they want the answers to. Instead of “Are you biologically male?” or “Have you had the surgery?” they might ask, “Do you need regular breast exams?” or “Do you know your hormone levels or do we need to test them?”

Some people assume that sex is knowable through secondary sex characteristics, but it just isn’t. You can’t tell what chromosomes or genitals someone has by looking at them in public; you can’t tell if someone has had genital reconstruction surgery. Most oppression based on sex is actually based on the perceived sex, not on an “actual” knowledge of someone’s chromosomes, genitals, hormone levels, or other biological characteristics.

All trans people, regardless of their genitals, suffer from oppression based on their sex (because their genitals are under constant gaze and discussion, and their transness is the basis for denial of healthcare). This is worse for trans people assigned male at birth. Everyone with a uterus is also oppressed for their sex, and denied bodily autonomy via reproductive healthcare. Cis women and all trans people are routinely dismissed by medical professionals.

SEX (v.) — Any act which involves genital stimulation for pleasure.

Sex is normatively assumed to involve penetration, especially “Penis-In-Vagina (PIV)” penetration; but sex also includes non-penetrative acts such as oral and hand stimulation, and masturbation (“solo sex”).

We should shift our focus from “normal” (acceptable) sex acts to consent and communication between partners, with consideration and without coercion.

see also: CONSENT; SAFER SEX; PIV; SEX POSITIVE

SEXISM — The systemic discrimination of women on the basis of their gender under patriarchy.

Some sexism targets biology associated with women, such as slurs for breasts and vaginas, and gatekeeping reproductive healthcare. Most sexism targets gender: deriding femininity, “women are too emotional” or not smart, women are objects to be gazed at, men are entitled to women and sex from women, women are expected to do all the emotional and domestic and care labor, and so on.

Trans women face sexism, specifically transmisogyny. They are more likely to be harassed or attacked for their womanhood than cis women.

It’s not possible to be sexist toward men because there is no institutional power which buttresses discrimination against men on the basis of their gender.

see also: MISOGYNY; TRANSMISOGYNY; SEX (n.)

SEXOLOGY — The scientific study of sexuality. The field emerged in Germany and England in the 1880s, and shifted sexuality from a set of behaviors (what you do) to identity (who you are).

Sexology divided sexual behavior into “normal” and “abnormal.” This lead to vilifying people as deviant, as well as the “born this way” understanding of sexuality being something you are and can’t change, so therefore you deserve rights and protections.

Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing is an early sexologist who thought that the purpose of sex is procreation, and that any recreational sex is perverse. He’s credited with the first recorded use of “sadism,” “masochism,” “analingus” and “bi-sexual” in its modern sense in his psychiatric book Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). It was one of the first books which studied sexual behavior and sexual identity. His views on same-sex activity were largely forgotten in favor of Freud’s, and because he garnered animosity from the Catholic Church for associating martyrdom with hysteria and masochism.

In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud popularized “sexuality” as a modern idea. He also popularized the idea that the main function of sex was pleasure, not procreation. He thought that sexuality “develops” and is not innate in the subject, and you make a sexual “object choice” to go for either “same” or “opposite” sex attractions based on your Oedipal complex; social environments shape your existing innate drives. He strongly suggested that some sexual practices were “healthy” and “mature” compared to others. Freud didn’t champion conversion therapy, but many psychoanalysts who build on his work have and continue to do so.

Oscar Wilde’s trial and prosecution in 1895 sparked widespread public interest in homosexuality and the scientific study of sexuality in the UK. British scholars Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, and Edward Carpenter advocated for an understanding of sexuality as innate rather than a lifestyle choice. The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology was established in July 1914, with Edward Carpenter as its first president. Its founders sought to provide a scientific understanding of sexual behavior, with the aim of legal reform and public education. The Society published 17 pamphlets on sexual psychology, which included feminist politics. There was an implicit solidarity between the women’s suffrage movement and sex reform, which were understood to be part of the same political struggle.

The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sexology) was a pioneering private sexology research institute in Berlin from 1919 to 1933. Headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, the Institute campaigned for trans and gay rights and tolerance on conservative and rational grounds, as well as advocating for sex education, contraception, women’s emancipation, and the treatment of sexually transmitted infections. Hirschfeld coined the word “transsexualism,” and worked with police to stop the arrest of trans people under anti-cross-dressing laws. The Institute had trans people on staff. The first modern gender reassignment surgery was offered there, as well as hormone replacement therapy. The Institute was harassed by the police for “sexual immorality” beginning in 1932, was smashed up by Nazi students on 6 May 1933, and four days later was more systemically attacked in the Nazi book burnings when the Institute’s archives were burned in the street, forcing it to close. Hirschfeld was abroad on a speaking tour at the time of the burnings, and spent the rest of his life in exile as both a queer sexologist and a Jew.

William Masters and Virginia Johnson were modern sexologists who studied the physiology of sexual activity in laboratory conditions in the 1950s and 1960s. They theorized that sex occurs in four stages: excitement; plateau; orgasm; resolution. Their research prioritizes and normalizes penis-in-vagina heterosexual sex, frames sex as a linear activity, and suggests that sex which doesn’t follow that linear development is “dysfunctional.” The Masters and Johnson Institute ran a conversion therapy program from 1968–1977 which alleged to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals with a 71.6% success rate.

Alfred Kinsey pioneered the idea that sexuality is a scale, not a binary; and that sexuality can shift throughout one’s lifetime. John Gagnon and William Simon, who worked at the Kinsey Institute in the 1960s and 1970s, posited that the social world produces (not just shapes) sexuality and desire, on three interacting levels: cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic (conversations with ourselves).

In the 60s and 70s, Sandra Bem studied how children internalize gender roles. She radically suggested that strict adherence to prescribed gender roles of “masculinity” or “femininity” is unhealthy, and it’s better for people to be androgynous. She argued that gender is not a useful way to categorize people.

While all the aforementioned researchers did groundbreaking work on the study of sexuality, their biases, motivations, and positions as “experts” over their patients should be challenged.

SEX POSITIVE, SEX NEGATIVE — The sex positive movement embraces sexuality and sexual expression. Sex negativity can refer to a normative set of repressive conditions under cisheteropatriarchy, or a nuanced critique of sex positivity.

Sex positivity is liberating in a culture which slut-shames and attaches stigma to promiscuity; but it is also uncritical of the problems with centering sex as a purely positive, and universal, experience.

There are two strands of sex negativity. The first is normative and prescriptive, anti-porn, anti-queer, anti-kink, and sometimes anti-man. The second is a nuanced response to sex positivity which allows space for trauma and complicated feeling around sex and asexuality.

Sex positivity has created a new norm of a happy, uncomplicated relationship to sex and sexuality: pressure to perform desire, to be dating actively, to be having great or certain kinds of sex. Unfortunately, we can’t masturbate away patriarchy and rape culture. We need space to not be into sex, to not want it, to not be interested in changing that. As long as we live under patriarchy, our relationships to sex will always be influenced by sexism. Compulsory sex/positivity isn’t radical.

see also: FEMINISM; SEX (v.); CONSENT; KINK

SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY (SRS) — The previous name for what is now called “genital affirming surgery,” a set of trans-specific surgeries to change the patient’s genitals.

Sex reassignment surgery involves a dubious use of the word “sex”; it’s also called “gender reassignment surgery,” which is problematic for similar reasons. Colloquially it’s called “bottom surgery,” which avoids those problems.

SEXUAL INVERSION — see: INVERT.

SEXUALITY — An identity based on sexual attraction or lack thereof.

Sexuality is not innate, but fluid and contextually defined. People’s sexual preferences can change over time. Even if they don’t, the labels which people use to describe those preferences can change or be interpreted differently in different situations.

The concept of sexuality as we understand it is relatively new, coming from the sexologists of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Philosopher Michel Foucault published The History of Sexuality in 1976, which suggests that sexuality is produced by certain forms of knowledge (e.g., religion and science); there is no “truth” about it to be uncovered. Foucault argues that sexuality became an identity category as a tool of post-industrial power relations, which shifted from sovereign power to “biopower” (power over bodies: labor); sexuality was a means of archiving and cataloging normalcy in bodies.

see also: BUTCH

SURVIVOR — Someone who has survived sexual violence, intimate partner violence, or familial violence (the latter two are often referred to as “domestic violence”). It can be more broadly used to describe anyone who has suffered sexual, physical, emotional, or psychological abuse.

Queer and trans people are disproportionately likely to experience sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and familial violence.

“Abuse” is a broad category of violence, and includes:

• Sexual violence—any sexual interaction where consent is absent or lacking, including when the victim is asleep or too intoxicated or unwell to consent, and when the victim is coerced

• Financial abuse—stealing or controlling the victim’s money or spending

• Threatening to use systems of oppression to gain power, such as threatening to call immigration control or threatening to out someone as queer

• Physical abuse—beating, choking, using physical intimidation or threatening physical violence including gun violence

• Emotional abuse—verbal abuse, isolation, threats of self-harm or suicide as a manipulation tactic, guilt as a tool for coercion, withholding the victim’s important documents from them

• Psychological abuse—gaslighting, stalking, cyberstalking, blackmail, childhood neglect

Many survivors don’t report their abuse, and under-reporting is likely to be a bigger problem for queer people because the police and the criminal justice system are more likely to fail us. Queer people have legitimate concerns that the police will be prejudiced, and the more marginalized a survivor is, the less likely they are to know their rights, to have access to victims’ advocacy services, and to have time and emotional energy to report. Queer survivors may also worry about being outed in reporting, or judged for the context of the abuse (e.g., dating apps or sex work).

Survivors are not a monolith: some have experienced a single incident of violence; some have suffered sustained and long-term violence; some are traumatized and some aren’t; some have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD as a result, some don’t. Queer identities which are the “result” of trauma are still valid.

Survivors cope with their experiences in different ways. There is no wrong way to be a survivor. Coping strategies are diverse: substance use, finding community, faith, immersion in hobbies, meditation, exercise, self-harm, excessive or not enough sleeping, emotionally withdrawing, minimization of event/s, therapy, and support groups, to name a few. Rather than moralizing different coping strategies, we should support survivors to process their experiences in all their complexity, and give them as much agency as possible.

Survivors may need sustained support and access to resources to recover, including emergency medical care, safe emergency housing, long-term housing assistance, protection orders and safety planning, legal services, victim advocate services, time off from school or work, financial assistance, assistance with childcare, and prolonged therapy or support groups.

Survivor is a not uncomplicated term. It can be more empowering than “victim,” but it also implies a strength that some don’t feel is appropriate, and they might prefer the term “victim.” Claiming either term can be an important step in the process of recovery, allowing the person to name their experience of abuse or violence and their relationship to the perpetrator.

Neither “survivor” nor “perpetrator” are terms used lightly; hopefully in naming people with these terms, we are starting a conversation which will support the survivor and facilitate their recovery, and allow the perpetrator to be held accountable. But there are limits to the language, and the binary of survivor/perpetrator. Consent is constantly negotiated, boundaries are moving lines, and we are all capable of being both survivors and perpetrators. Sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and familial violence are common and extreme manifestations of boundaries being crossed.

Assault and abuse are not the only breach in boundaries which should be taken seriously. If someone’s consent is violated in a way which is “less serious” than sexual assault or abuse, they might not feel able to use the language of survivor/perpetrator because it carries so much weight. Hesitation to use the language of sexual assault is understandable, given the stigma and drama which can ensue from using it, but that shouldn’t mean that consent violations go unaddressed. It is very common for survivors to take time reflecting on and processing their abuse before naming it as abusive, or naming themselves as victims or survivors. The dominant narratives about sexual violence suggest that it’s only serious or legitimate if it is named as violence during or immediately after the event, but this assumption must be challenged.

The criminal justice system reifies gendered violence. The criminal justice system criminalizes surviving abuse, if you use any force to defend yourself or escape, or if you later speak about your experience when your abuser has not been convicted.

You might notice that I’m deliberately avoiding calling abusers and perpetrators “criminals.” A criminal is only someone who is prosecuted and deemed guilty of a crime. Many abusers are never prosecuted, and many survivors are criminalized for surviving; many survivors also have criminal records. It’s important to question the label “criminal.” Criminals include street sex workers, undocumented migrants, substance dealers, and thieves, all of whom might commit their crimes to survive. There is no binary between “survivor” and “criminal.” Survivors do not need to fit a “perfect victim” narrative in order to be supported. We must expand our template for what a survivor looks like in terms of race, gender, class, and criminal record, lest we fall into racist narratives of innocent white femininity threatened by aggressive Black masculinity.

The survivor/perpetrator binary also reduces people into categories of essentially “good” and “bad,” instead of focusing on harmful behavior. Abusers shouldn’t be afforded good faith at the expense of validating a survivor’s experience; but also casting people as simply “bad” makes them disposable, turns accountability processes into popularity contests, and, should perpetrators be socially exiled, just moves the problem elsewhere.

There is a myth that all abusers are themselves survivors. Many abusers are survivors, but that does not excuse their abusive behavior. Many abusers are not survivors. Most survivors do not become abusers.

There is a difficulty of abusers claiming victimhood themselves. Abuse requires a power imbalance, and I think the idea of “mutual abuse” is dubious at best, though I recognize that people may have power over each other on different axes.

Usually this means that one person will get access to social support and the other one won’t, and will be ostracized and gaslighted. Supporting survivors should not be about discerning an “objective truth” about what happened; it is possible that two people exit an interaction with both of them feeling abused. Rather than try to diminish either of their experiences, we should support them in processing their feelings and living dignified lives, as well as understanding how they may have caused harm and how to prevent causing harm in the future.

Considering identity is important because structures of power impact how likely we are to face violence, how likely we are to be believed or disbelieved, and how likely we are to be seen as victims. Queers are more likely to suffer from gendered violence and intimate partner violence, but because the gender dynamics are different than the “default” narrative of domestic violence with a violent man and a battered woman, our experiences are minimized by society and within our communities.

Activism should be survivor-centered but not necessarily survivor-led, because survivors shouldn’t have to do all the work. Survivors also shouldn’t be expected to know what their needs are immediately, or to name their experiences immediately, and their needs may change over time or not fit the template survivor narrative. Survivor-centered means taking supportive action (which might be inaction) which helps the survivor rather than burdens them or puts them at risk.

This is more important than justice for the abuser, although that is important too.

“Support survivors” is something people say, but I want to explicitly name what that means to me. It means practically offering support; and fostering a culture of support.

Practical support can look like emotional support: “I believe you, thank you for confiding in me.” It can also be: listening; cooking for them; financial assistance; legal assistance; childcare; housing; restoring agency; letting them control the narrative of their experience, and validating that narrative; organizing with survivors’ support and advocacy groups; asking what the survivor wants to happen to their abuser, and if you can help action that; and implementing formal structures of accountability so people can safely and anonymously make complaints in your groups and you know what you’ll do when someone is named as abusive. Let the survivor lead the conversation, offer them the support you can without pressuring them, be clear about what you are and aren’t able to offer in terms of support, and don’t disclose their experience to anyone else without asking them first.

Fostering a culture of support for survivors means creating safer spaces, having accountability processes, and no purity politics. Having suggested actions is great because it alleviates the burden of imagining an action from the survivor, but allows them to feed back whether it’s good or not; for example: “We think they need to be asked to leave the space now. What do you think?” and “We’d like to check in with you in a few days. Would you find that helpful?”

Supporting survivors is difficult and tiring work. If you’re in that position, make sure you have your own support network where you can discuss your feelings about it, without putting your feelings about supporting the survivor onto the survivor themselves.

SWITCH — Someone who is both a sadist and a masochist, or dominant and submissive, and can derive pleasure from either role(s).

Switch is a liminal space; a challenge to the binary, and a constant becoming. A switch is either dominant or submissive, depending on the context of the scene. Switch isn’t really a role: it’s an adaptation, a state of flux, a dynamism depending on their relation to the partner(s), their mood, the environment, and the scene. The relationship to power is constantly renegotiated, fostering good consent and agency.

Switch isn’t both; it is the possibility of either.