Thanks for reading. I would be grateful if you upgraded to paid—even just for a few months—to support the work I do here every week. Paid subscribers make this newsletter possible. Queer pleasure is 'a big middle-finger'Also: 'Don’t think I’m touching a man anytime soon.’ Post-election, I asked where you're at when it comes to sex, desire, and your body. Here's what you said.
The day after the election, his face kept popping into my head. The face of that sad young man who announced into his webcam, “Your body, my choice, forever,” before cackling like a movie villain. I have been writing online as a woman and a feminist for the entirety of my adult life. I know a troll when I see one. I know one should not feed them. I know the sage advice: block and ignore. Still, his face. That night, I got into bed with my person, who is a man. At his touch: that cackling face, again. I pushed the image away, determined to lose myself in the moment. It felt like an act of resistance, a coping strategy. You will not steal this from me. A few days later, though, my body started saying “no.” My mind: a yes. My mind: hating the no. Still: no. It felt like that hateful slogan—and the broader political mission that it represents—had settled into my being, against my will. In the midst of my own see-sawing bodily response, and the heightened debate over the 4B movement, I decided to put out a call to all of you. I asked, in the broadest of terms, where folks were at right now when it came to sex, desire, and their bodies. The responses came through an anonymous form, where people could choose which personal demographics to include. It was not even remotely a representative sample, which proved positive and expansive in some ways (e.g. a notable percentage of polyamorous and bisexual folks) and drastically limiting in others (e.g. the majority of respondents were white). The answers tended to fall along two separate lines: an impulse toward “yes” or “no,” moving toward sex or away from it. It’s clear that sex right now can feel like an act of resistance and affirmation—here, that notably seems to be the case with respondents who are trans and/or non-monogamous. Sex can also feel undesirable and entirely out of reach in the midst of despair, anxiety, and fear. Clearly, too, announcing the wish to not have sex can be a form of protest. A question I’m thinking about a lot right now: What does it mean to bring this energy of resistance—whether the impulse toward “yes” or “no”—beyond the private bedroom and into collective action? Tangled up in these individual experiences of the body and desire is the reality of forced birth in this country, and the many ways that access to birth control and abortion could be further eroded. “I’m getting my fallopian tubes removed, because I definitely don’t want kids and don’t want to be forced to have one should I get pregnant,” a 35-year-old woman wrote. “I anticipate feeling quite relieved once they’re out, but I resent having to have surgery to protect such a basic right.” This is to say nothing of growing threats to the ability to choose to have kids and raise them in safe and well-resourced communities. Below, a sampling of responses that show sex as everything from “a revelatory act of world building” to “unappealing” and “deadened.” A 36-year-old immigrant genderqueer trans-masculine Jewish person, married and monogamous, but considering opening up their relationship:
A 30-year-old mixed-race, bisexual, single woman:
A 39-year-old woman, bisexual and married to a cis-het man:
A 62-year-old pansexual polyamorous woman:
A 34-year-old white, straight, and single woman:
A 39-year-old white, trans, non-binary, queer person, who is married, non-monogamous, and polyamorous:
A 43-year-old “straight-ish,” cis woman, recently divorced but currently dating a “straight-ish” man:
A woman married to a man who voted for Trump:
A 28-year-old cisgender man, bisexual and in a limited-open marriage:
A 34-year-old white, bisexual woman, married for over a decade to a man, with two kids under 5:
A 29-year-old cisgender woman, “not straight but not sure how exactly,” in a long-term hetero partnership, “but not sexually active, womp womp”:
A 38-year-old white, heterosexual, cisgender woman, who is married, polyamorous, and in an “intense sexual relationship dynamic” with a partner outside her marriage:
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četvrtak, 21. studenoga 2024.
Queer pleasure is 'a big middle-finger'
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