This week, I’m talking with Amanda VanderBroek, who I interviewed about four years ago under her pen name: Leandra Vane. She's a kinky, poly, sexually fluid woman, and we had a great conversation talking about all that's changed over the last four years, including being outed and having to fight for the validity of her identity, facing gatekeepers within the queer and erotic writing communities, living as a bisexual, kinky person in the rural Midwest, how writing about monsters and zombies can help reveal things about the treatment of sexual and racial minorities, and a lot of other things.

Links

Amanda's blog, The Needle & Bow.You can also see her archived work at The Unlaced Librarian.You can also find her on Instagram, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Episode Transcript

Mike: [00:00:00] Welcome to the human tapestry podcast, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of humanity through conversations about gender, sexuality, relationships, and sexual practices. 

This week, I'm talking with Amanda Vanderbroek, who I interviewed about four years ago under her pen name, Leandra Vane. She's a kinky poly sexually fluid woman. And we had a great conversation talking about all that's changed for her over the last four years, including being outed and having to fight for the validity of her identity, facing gatekeepers within the queer and erotic writing communities, living as a bisexual kinky person in the rural Midwest, how writing about monsters and zombies can help reveal things about the treatment of sexual and racial minorities and just a lot of other things.

So let's get to the conversation.

So it's been four years. Um,

you're still female. Um, you're still writing. Erotic romances. Um, and, uh, it's still poly and sexually fluid, but I'm sure I'm sure things have, uh, have changed some in that the last four years we talked a little before, so I, but 

Leandra: [00:01:32] yeah, so I guess so 2016 was kind of the height of my sex blogging. I was blogging as the Unlaced Librarian doing non-fiction sexuality book reviews.

I was speaking at like sexuality conferences. Like I was just really out about so many things like polyamory and, uh, kink and BDSM. And I wrote a lot about pornography and whatnot. Well, then I got a day job that, uh, cared about that stuff and I live in the Midwest and, you know, I have to be vague about the details and I'm a little uppity about it, but, um, essentially like, uh, yeah, like.

I was open about it. I was out and some people found it, even though it was not to be found, it was just there and tried to get me fired from my job. So it was like a very big thing and I have chronic health issues. And so, you know, kind of threatening my health insurance was very, had held a lot of weight.

You know, it really made me question a lot of things about, you know, if I'm going to die on this Hill, it better be a good one. And that just impacted how I saw so many things, my writing, um, the, the work that I was doing with my blogging and my speaking, um, I was trying to sort of marry it professionally, um, you know, trying to bring in resources into my field and things like that to sort of give it validity.

But then I was, you know, fighting for my validity for my whole identity, because it was so tied to it. I couldn't sort of separate it. And then shortly after that, there was sort of a big cancel thing on, on Twitter with like a lot of gatekeeping. And I completely questioned like my bisexuality and using that label and I didn't feel validated up there.

So I'm like, okay, well, I can't be online.