#(colloquially known as gay sex)

[valend]

this is how i see lams im sorry

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

I'm new to Sade so sorry if this is a stupid question, but was Sade gay? I'm currently reading Justine and noticed the passionate, semi-romantic descriptions of m/m sex, which contrast with the crude descriptions of f/m sex. I've not read all of Sade's books, but the ones I have read also feature characters who're mostly disinterested in women, who give off self-insert vibes (e.g. Dolmancé). Am I reading too much into it? IDK but I was wondering if you could shed some light.

Happy deathday to Sade!! lol

Really all that can be said with certainty is that he definitely wasn't straight lol. Like anyone who died before modern queer theory, Sade's sexuality can be difficult to label with today's terminology. He was certainly attracted to both men and women, so for simplicity's sake I just say he was bisexual. But really, who knows...

Characters that he uses as self-inserts like Dolmancé in PitB or Bressac in Justine are pretty exclusively attracted to men. Like you said, there's multiple times in his writing where characters will praise m/m sex and show blatant disgust towards sex with women. But if you look at Sade's life, there's only one known* male sex partner and many women. There's also several women Sade was in love with throughout his life, but there exists no letters of him professing love to any man. Could this be because male victims were less likely to go to the police, therefore less known to us? because women were easier to pursue in public? because even he felt the pressure of societal norms? because he kept relations with men better hidden? because any such letters or records were selectively destroyed by a relative? Who knows! It could be some, all, or none of these things. It's really up to the interpretation of the reader. The misogyny, philosophical extremism, and very culturally different ideas about sex add so many different variables to Sade's sexuality.

To add further confusion: gender and sexuality were much more correlated in Sade's writing (and seemingly in the time period in general, I mean look at the bisexual Lord Hervey being referred to as "the third sex"), male characters who get sodimized call it them "becoming women", women who put on strap-ons "become men", even women who get sodimized are masculinized: Saint-Ange says she wants to be a "Ganymede" to Dolmancé. So sodomy seemed inherently gay to Sade, regardless of the sexes involved or what roles they played. Whereas today, that's definitely not the case. Beauvoir follows along with the sexuality-gender correlation and suggests that Sade felt more feminine than masculine and his written contempt for female genitalia was a product of his own gender frustrations. From what I've read, most modern historians tend to avoid labeling Sade with anything other than "sodomite" and "libertine" only using "bisexual" and "homosexual" to label certain actions he performed like "homosexual sex" "bisexual orgy" etc. This is when the word queer is godsent.

Tldr; He's too 18th century libertine for modern labels. Colloquially, I default to calling him bi, but we'll never really know. Maybe he would have preferred gay due to his preferences/philosophies. Who knows. Safest bet is to just call him queer.

*Should go without saying but, there were obviously more. Latour is just the only named one with recorded proof.

[fivestoriesfallingg]

i was about to defend my music taste but until like a month ago i was known colloquially as the cobra starship gay sex blog so i’m not even gonna try

[biglisbonnews]

The Year Lesbians Were Chic On any given Sunday in 1993, fresh from releasing her explosive "SEX" tome and the equally explicit album "Erotica," Madonna could be found at the chicest lesbian party at the hottest of restaurant-bars in the East Village. Flanked by gay it-girls like CK One model Jenny Shimizu or OG nepo baby socialite Ingrid Caseras, the pop star, in her prime, would ascend the winding stairs to the VIPs-only second floor and walk the runway between tables full of New York City's most beautiful women, who wouldn’t even pretend to hide their stares. Any given Sunday, Queen Latifah might be in the adjoining room, playing a round on the pink felt pool table and buying drinks for all the players, part-time model-DJ Sharee Nash playing a sensual mix of imported Euro acid-jazz and neo-soul; women buy cassettes to take home with them at the end of the night.A salon that ran from 1993 to 1995 at the model-owned celebrity hot spot, Café Tabac’s "No Day Like Sunday" — known colloquially as "Sundays at Café Tabac" — has been credited with being the birthplace of “lesbian chic.” A cultural moment christened by the media, lesbians' 15 minutes had to do with a convergence of social and political elements, but perhaps no physical space embodied it more than Sharee Nash and Wanda Acosta's famed fashion-forward party in the East Village. Owned by a male model with regulars like Naomi Campbell, Bono and Fran Lebowitz, Café Tabac was already a chic place to see and be seen for the fashion set, but Sundays were for the girls like designers and stylists (and ex-girlfriends) like Patricia Field and Rebecca Weinberg and rapper MC Lyte. A 1994 New Yorker profile of indie filmmakers Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche (also ex-girlfriends) fresh off their Sundance Jury win for their dyke film Go Fish were profiled "drinking Scotch and smoking Rothmans" one Sunday at Tabac, wherein Troche says, "you don't have to look straight or act straight." A New York Magazine item praised Tabac's crowd for being glamorous and "ethnically and sartorially diverse." The party was intended to be something private but different from the dyke dive bars Acosta had been accustomed to. At 28, the Nuyorican party girl divorced her husband and wanted to meet women but was struggling to find a place where she felt comfortable. "I was already feeling like I had been hiding this part of myself for so long," Acosta tells PAPER, "so to have to go down to this dark basement in the back of some space to meet women felt really claustrophobic. I wanted to see a place that was a more elevated, visible [space] that I could explore, getting dressed up and going out and seeing beautiful women."Acosta happened upon Nash at Alexander Smalls' hip Village soul food restaurant where models worked as hosts, among them some of Nash's girlfriends. One night in '93, Nash (a writer herself) sat reading Virginia Woolf's Orlando. "I guess that was her cue to think 'Maybe she's gay,'" Nash says. The two struck up a conversation and found themselves discussing lesbian nightlife, craving something "different.""Just for diversity — different energy, different music, different food, different looks and different people," Nash says. Having recently moved back to New York from Germany, Nash was DJing small spots and was tired of big clubs. There were some great options like The Clit Club at Bar Room 432 on Fridays, but New York was shifting into a dinner-and-drinks era where patrons would commandeer an event all night and let the party circulate around them. The idea of dinner was appealing for Nash, who says that, growing up in St. Louis, her family was big on Sunday meals. She describes the ideal Tabac night as dinner followed by "cocktails, running around, dancing, dessert, then dessert." The party started out as private – word-of-mouth and invite-only — which was part of the appeal. Some of the potentially closeted attendees appreciated the clandestine affair; rarely were photos taken in the pre-cell phone era. "We didn't invite the celebrities," Nash says. "They just found out and they just started showing up."With New York fashion and celebrity comes New York media, and the party started to pick up bits in the press, including the aforementioned New Yorker piece. Designer friends would create looks for Nash to wear as she worked the party, enabling her to connect adoring fans to the creator in the very same room. The salon only ran for two years, but the stories and symbolism of No Day Like Sundays has been so enduring that co-creator Wanda and filmmaker Karen B. Song have been working on a film documenting the women and time of Tabac, touching on what made it so special. "There was that performative aspect of it," Song says. "You would walk in that space and see what it was like to see the confidence in front of you, what that translates to." Acosta says Sundays at Tabac "allowed women to be able to come in and express themselves in a different way than they had been able to before.""I think before we were dressing and signifying each other through our dress codes," Acosta says. "In the early '90s, we started to be able to express ourselves as individuals."Several of the aforementioned women like Patricia Field, Jenny Shimizu and Guinevere Turner are interviewed for the Sundays at Café Tabac documentary, as well as other attendees such as award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson, gay critics Michael Musto and Hilton Als and butch icon Lea DeLaria, all reflecting on the weekly gathering set amongst a highly visible moment for lesbians and, more generally, queer women."We all loved just watching to see who was gonna come up the stairs — what they were wearing and who they were with, " Acosta says. "It was really a bit of voyeurism as well." Voyeurism looms large in lesbian chic, as lesbian visibility has always been a Xena-sized double-edged sword. Although lesbian chic has certainly achieved more visibility and acceptance for some lesbians, lesbians themselves weren't always in charge of the messaging. "Lesbian chic" was a tangible trend co-opted by the media looking for a sexy new flavor of the month, and, post-AIDS, gay women were finally on the menu.Madonna, for one, thrust sexual experimentation into the zeitgeist in the late '80s, first with a flirtatious and rumored relationship with Sandra Bernhard in tabloids and then late-night television. Together, they appeared on "The Late Show with David Letterman" in matching ACT Up uniforms (white T-shirts, denim jean shorts and Doc Martens), dropping New York lesbian dive The Cubbyhole into salacious conversation."She was an enfant terrible sometimes, but for the most part, I think everyone was like, 'Whoa – what's, what is she gonna do next?'" Song says of Madonna. "She was so at the prime – she was in the media eye and every time she was photographed or at a party or at a fashion show or whatever, shooting a music video, she always had a lesbian with her." After falling out with Bernhard (reportedly over Caseras), Madonna set her sights on k.d. lang, feigning a romantic or sexual relationship with the androgynous country-punk crooner and likening her handsome swagger to both her ex-husband Sean Penn and Elvis. (Later, lang would admit they shared a publicist and that the lesbian chic thing "probably benefitted" the both of them.)More than Madonna, lang played an integral role in the visibility of lesbians because, for one, she is one. lang's coming out on the cover of The Advocate in May 1992 followed the success of her sex bomb of a pop crossover album Ingenue, a Grammy-winning turn that was due, in part, to her hit devouring single "Constant Craving." Both the pop cultural and political landscapes were primed for lang to confirm that the seductive love songs on Ingenue were written about women, and she seemed to be rewarded for her outsiderness as opposed to being shunned by it, as she had in the country music realm. She was tired of staying in the closet and playing by as many rules as she could abide, and so her move into contemporary pop came with self-acceptance, a laissez-faire attitude and confident seduction in suits on stage and in interviews. Lang stirred something in people of all genders and sexual orientations. People were fascinated by her, unclear where or how to place her in their desires, but, well, craving more. Lang's effect was so palpable that she won a 1993 MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Pop Performance despite, as she remarked, "never getting played on MTV."Lang's coming out happened in the Clinton era, when the President and First Lady counted a few well-placed lesbians as friends and third-wave feminists were turning political actions into protests for lesbian visibility. The singer rode along the pop cultural push for lesbians to be recognized and represented and became a de facto poster girl. A now-famous New York Magazine cover from 1993 has the square-jawed singer gazing into the lens, brow angled in a saucy dare; all capital letters, all-white font: "LESBIAN CHIC" emblazoned across her velvet-clad cross-body arm, the subhead "The Bold Brave New World of Gay Women" literally resting on her shoulder. It wasn't just k.d., of course. In 1993, Melissa Etheridge came out and released her Grammy-winning Yes I Am, Lea DeLaria made dyke jokes on The Arsenio Hall Show and, by then, openly queer Sandra Bernhard had both a Playboy cover and a regular bisexual role on Roseanne. Tennis star Martina Navratilova had her dyke drama splashed all over The Washington Post. It was primarily white women being celebrated for their chicness, and that there were at least a handful of them being so visible meant only one thing to the media — lesbianism was a cool new trend that could be exploited for a hot minute.In August of '93, lang was being shaven and straddled by supermodel Cindy Crawford on the cover and in the pages of what is now an iconic issue of Vanity Fair. “I don’t know how to use femininity as a powerful tool. I use my sexuality, but I eliminate the gender from it," lang told Vanity Fair, saying that she's long felt a "social pressure to be beautiful, thin, stylish."Never before had a butch lesbian been celebrated, despite a long lineage, and while her Vanity Fair issue remains one of the most iconic covers ever, it wasn't long before butches were erased from the lesbian chic narrative in favor of something more desirable by men.At least the Vanity Fair piece was all about lang; the New York piece mentioned her briefly but primarily reported on the trend of openly gay women who have "transformed the lesbian image." Author Jeanie Russell Kasindorf reported that "the short-haired 'bulldyke' is still many Americans' idea of what a gay woman looks like. Now 'lipstick lesbians' and 'designer dykes' share the bar with the 'butch/femme' group; the downtown black leather crowd and women in Jones New York suits wander among them.'" In other words, anyone could be a lesbian, which made lesbians both visible and invisible at the same time.This new attention spawned skewed speculation from places like Playboy ("the secret to the craze is that Nineties-style lesbianism requires no commitment"), 20/20 and Geraldo Rivera; coffee table how-to guides on lesbian hair, dress and sex (primarily addressing a straight, curious audience) and fashion editorials posing glamorous women together in suggestive photos ripe with Sapphic subtext. It seemed there was a proliferation of lesbians out of nowhere — lesbian comedian Kate Clinton joked in a 1993 LA Times piece that lesbian chic is "in a lot of ways what lesbian separatism was, but with better PR."For women like Clinton who had been performing publicly out as a lesbian since the early ‘80s, the new fad of “lipstick lesbians” and “designer dykes” was alienating to the larger community. Some found it hypersexualizing while others found it neutering, forcing a recycled conversation about respectability politics and feminist principles that has and will continue to plague lesbians for as long as we live in a hetero-patriarchal, capitalist society. If we don't own our own narratives, then how can any of us know or agree upon what a lesbian is or should be? Mairead Sullivan, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of Lesbian Death, says 1993 was significant in that it "was the year 'lesbian' lost its political bite," at least to the consuming public."This is a moment when 'lesbian' is no longer politically associated with a militant radical feminism," Sullivan tells PAPER. "Lesbian chic arrives as a disidentification of feminism."The early '90s was removed enough from the '70s that lesbians were no longer associated with the militant radical feminism of their foremothers, instead acting in response to it. No longer operating out of separatism, women came to work with gay men and trans people during the AIDS epidemic, a new generation of lesbians and bisexual women developing and honing demonstration tactics, bringing newfound ways of being seen and heard into a new future of sex positivity.Media spectacle was one way to get attention. Sullivan points to the political work and televising of the 1993 March on Washington (where the action group the Lesbian Avengers held the first-ever Dyke March with 20,000 lesbians marching together) as part of what led heteronormative stalwarts like Newsweek to run cover stories on lesbians and "the limits of tolerance.""Some people are panicking about [lesbians] and the Newsweek article is doing this identification of it: 'Lesbians are all good trying to raise children, not fringe topless lesbians with their fists in the air,'" Sullivan says. No longer were lesbians seen as men-hating threats to the nuclear family if all they wanted was to be part of their own. The irony is that lesbian visibility could not have happened without the topless lesbians or their fists. It was these activists who forced the lavender menace conversation with NOW, seeking to be part of resourced feminism post-women's liberation, and in the '80s, despite feminist backlash, were huge parts of national AIDS organizations like Act UP and Queer Nation. Within these factions, lesbians were finding themselves, creating connections and empowering each other. Sullivan points out that 1993 was also the first year lesbians were ever counted in any official way as a demographic. When the FDA finally gave AIDS activists a seat the proverbial table in 1991, they brought lesbian breast cancer advocates with them, leading to an NIH-sponsored study on lesbian health and breast cancer. The results went across the AP Newswire and were published widely. "So it's across the national news, this declaration that there's a lesbian breast cancer epidemic, and that becomes a real way in which lesbian then becomes this very clear demarcated like demographic category, in which now there's like an impetus or maybe put differently like a structure to count lesbians that didn't really exist before," Sullivan says.Those numbers reflected a market for those courting untapped markets, and “lesbian” was now an identity that could be advertised to and capitalized on. After close to two decades as a music label for women's music, Olivia Records switched to a lesbian travel company for women in 1990, placing full-page ads in the newly launched glossy Deneuve (later Curve) magazine for trips like its historic, media-hyped sail to Lesbos in 1993. Alcohol companies and brands like Subaru took bets on catering to an untapped subculture with pink dollars to spend, affording gay and lesbian magazines spots on special interest shelves in big box bookstores.Joining Curve in 1992 was OUT magazine, the first glossy gay and lesbian lifestyle magazine that positioned itself as less political than The Advocate or similar news-centric LGBT publications. Spokesman Michael Kaminer told The New York Times that the magazine would "redefine what gay fashion is," adding, "Some people think that lesbian women wear only jeans and Birkenstocks." The pervasive dowdy lesbian stereotype was born out of 1970s separatist lesbians who eschewed capitalism and patriarchal beauty standards. But lesbians weren't an invention of the '70s any more than were the '90s. Pre-dating what is often considered the birth of modern lesbianism are several Sapphic heydays, including the 1920s Harlem Renaissance performers like Gladys Bentley and Ma Rainey and the Lost Generation of Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney and Djuna Barnes. (In fact, the first use of the phrase "lesbian chic" was made by historian Lillian Faderman in her 1991 book Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, in a chapter called "Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s," borrowing a phrase from Djuna Barnes' 1928 Ladies Alamack.) One hundred years ago, lesbians were thriving in their own private artistic circles but still had to maintain a cloak of passing heterosexuality in the interest of their own safety. Every decade following had its own lesbian subcultures (from butch/femme in the 1950s to the respectability politics of the Daughters of Bilitis into the Gay Liberation of the late-'60s), but the proliferation of lesbian visibility that the '70s brought exploded notions of a monolithic sameness when the Sex Wars divided lesbians over things like porn, sex work and S&M into the '80s. When award-winning writer, publisher and sexpert Susie Bright went to work at the hotly contested lesbian erotic magazine On Our Backs in San Francisco in the '80s, she tells PAPER "being in the closet was still de rigor for lesbians and seemed to be just the province of a few well-placed gay men."Facing "real denigration exclusion and persecution by the conservative mainstream feminist movement," Bright and the sex workers who both posed for and published On Our Backs were told they were ruining the progress feminists had made by celebrating their bodies, their desires and their sex positivity in editorial spreads and articles as their answer to Playboy (they even had a butch pin-up of the month).On Our Backs published from 1984 to 2006, long outlasting lesbian chic's 15 minutes, which Bright credits "not just because of our sex appeal but because the charisma and the political vision of 'what if women's sexuality had nothing to do with virtue or decoration or her fertility?'""We strutted our stuff and we voiced our political point of view, and then years later in the nineties, this lesbian chic thing comes splashing across the mainstream press, and my first reaction was, without us, this wouldn't have happened, but I already hate it because it is a new kind of packaging of titillation for men and an accentuation of the femme to the exclusion of the butch," Bright said. (Radical Desire, a retrospective of On Our Backs and its historic women and trans photographers is available virtually from Cornell.)Part of the problem was not just that the idea of lesbians being cool for a moment was not just that it commodified lesbians as a consumable lifestyle, but it suggested lesbianism was something to put on temporarily, like a costume for a theme party. "Lesbian sexual power is not because you're skinny or petite or rich or have the perfect complexion or have a Gucci bag or friends in high places. It's not about 'Ha ha, I was a lesbian at a party for five minutes — it was incredible!'" She adds wryly: "If it stops them from killing us and taking our children and refusing to hire us and chasing us out of our homes and refusing to let us attend our family death beds — if that's what this is about, great, have your little lesbian chic moment."The reality of representation was not all positive: 1993 was the first year hate crimes against gays surpassed racially motivated attacks. The '90s in particular were record-breaking for lesbian murders — Talana Kreeger in 1990, Susan Pittmann and Christine Puckett in 1992, Sylvia Lugo in 1995, Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill in 1995, Julie Williams and Lollie Winans in 1996 and Martha Oleman in 1997. Although not a lesbian, trans man Brandon Teena's murder also sent reverberations through the community. Simply seeing more depictions of gay women wasn't necessarily translating into acceptance or a promise of safety. In fact, it seemed being more visible made them more of a target, which has always been a conundrum for gender-nonconforming people. A media-sanctioned celebration of cisgender, able-bodied, middle-to-upper-class lesbians wasn't helpful to all lesbians, which begs the continual question: If that's the case, how could "lesbian chic" be good at all? What started as a celebration of k.d. lang as a masc-of-center cover model from Alberta, Canada was swiftly reconfigured into a fashion moment that inevitably leaned away from female masculinity and into the edgy but non-threatening "lipstick lesbian." Today, there seems to be a discrepancy on what lesbian chic is – A look? A red lip? A swagger? An identity? – and that adds to the confusion. Fashion expert Chelsea Fairless, co-creator of the popular Instagram account and podcast Every Outfit on Sex and the City, defines lesbian chic as a style that women have always and still wear today."It was kind of like the '90s version of Marlene Dietrich," Fairless tells PAPER. "It was about the men's wear, but with full lipstick heels, in many instances, gelled hair."Fairless designed a T-shirt for (ex-girlfriend) butch comic-actor and Tabac regular Lea DeLaria that bemoaned the moment that she sold at public appearances, reading: "I survived lesbian chic," with 'lesbian chic' written in red lipstick. "Lea is a butch woman of a certain age, and that shirt is speaking to her fans that had a similar experience or a similar reaction to lesbian chic at the time that it was happening," Fairless said. She points to an OUT cover DeLaria shot in 1998 that DeLaria posted for a throwback Thursday not long ago, with DeLaria writing in the caption, "Why the fuck am I wearing lipstick? And grabbing my tit?!" That it was a gay magazine and six years after lesbian chic was au courant suggested that something had been lost in translation.DeLaria was not the lone butch at Tabac, and Nash is quick to point out that the party was not solely catering to high-femme fashion models and their famous friends. "There were celebrities in there, but we had friends who were construction workers who build skyscrapers. I think those women are equally badass," Nash says. "There we had school teachers, professors. We wanted to make it women from all walks of life. It wasn't just exclusive to just pretty models."Nationally, the publicity offered helped to establish lesbians as a demographic to be counted and catered to, but in many ways clung to the preferred idea of an acceptable type of lesbian. (DeLaria, for one, played a lecherous butch coming onto Goldie Hawn in the 1996 film "The First Wives Club" in an otherwise comical scene at a hip lesbian bar. She's played several more stereotypical roles of the same ilk since.) But there's no question Ellen DeGeneres couldn't have come out on primetime television without kd lang and, arguably, lesbian chic having given networks enough proof that there could be a monetary benefit from teasing something so taboo. (Lang, of course, appeared in the episode.)The best-selling musical tour of the late-'90s, the all-women's Lilith Fair, had what Sullivan can attest to from personal experience, "lesbian feminist aesthetics." It's when the 'chic' replaces feminism that things get cloudy. "As the mainstream media picks up and tries to narrate lesbian chic, it has this way of basically being like 'Don't worry, lesbians aren't as threatening as they seem because they're like all just good girls!'" Sullivan says."Before there was lesbian chic there was lesbian invisibility," Bright said in a 1997 interview. "I'd rather be visible. I know how much I felt like I suffered when the media only discussed the gay community in terms of gay men. But lesbian chic is just another signal of exploitation, like when feminists were portrayed only as bra-burners."New York Magazine, the very publication that had deemed lesbians chic in the first place, declared it past its expiration date by 1995 in a piece about Sundays at Café Tabac. Things were coming to an end. The piece quoted a "sardonic regular" quipping, "There's nothing to do but gawk at all the beautiful people."In 1995, lang's Ingenue follow-up All You Can Eat didn't replicate the former's success, and Madonna was looking to soften her image with her post-Erotica album, Bedtime Stories, and seemed to have tired of lesbians as an accessory. Tabac had become so big that Acosta and Nash (ex-girlfriends) had both floors and lines out the door on four-day weekends. The venue's vibe was changing, following the new New York City trend for lounges, thrift store couches replacing tables and doing away with dinner altogether."It totally changed the space," Acosta said. "It totally changed the party." Nash said she knew that Sundays at Café Tabac were over when one night, Kate Moss came up the steps, followed by Johnny Depp instead of a gang of supermodels. "People were like 'Johnny Depp is here,'" Nash recalls. "I'm like 'Yeah, pretty much a wrap for us. It's over.'"Nash and Acosta both went on to throw other successful parties, but their Sundays at Café Tabac have remained a particularly positive experience for many women who found it a place to see and be seen. Nothing has resonated quite like those nights of lesbian du jour. The struggle now is, like most independent lesbian efforts, the documentary about Sundays is underfunded and the filmmakers are looking for support to bring the project to fruition. (Donations can be made directly to Café Tabac on their website.) Lesbians continue to have their chic fashion moments – brands like The Row, Celine and Louis Vuitton have borrowed from OGs like openly lesbian designer Jil Sander, putting models in boxy baggy suits. "Dressing like a lesbian" is still in or out depending largely on what celebrities are wearing anything akin to menswear. Without stylist Patricia Field, Sex and the City would not have been the fashion inspiration that it was, with every single character on the show having lesbian chic moments of their own. (Fairless points to the 1997 episode where Charlotte befriends a group of art world power lesbians who want her to commit, not just play the part. When Charlotte says she loves female energy but prefers men, one power lesbian tells her, "Sweetheart, that's all very nice. But if you're not going to eat pussy, you're not a dyke.") Without the success of Sex and the City, there wouldn't be The L Word, a show that was essentially lesbian chic in aspiration and action. (Its new iteration Generation Q is as much a reaction to the original as lesbian chic was to second-wave lesbians of the '70s.)Nowadays, Brandi Carlile struts in k.d. lang's heeled boots and designer and creative director Jenna Lyons is joining Martina Navritova's wife as an openly gay Real Housewife as she joins the New York cast this coming season. Some of the most famous and well-regarded lesbians are anchoring Good Morning America, hosting the Oscars and being named "Couture Week's Best Dressed Couple" by Vogue. Lesbian bars may be in flux, but queer nightlife and the intentional creation of inclusive spaces is consistently evolving. And despite clickbait proclamations that 30 years after being chic, lesbians are so over, that's just not the reality. Are lesbians ever really done processing?Sullivan says a lot of the conversations happening at the time of lesbian chic in lesbian and queer communities but also nationally are very mirrored right now. "There are attempts from mainstream media to soften 'lesbian,'" Sullivan says, "but I actually think that the response from the lesbian community was a very strong engagement with lesbian politics and dyke politics – and I think we see that coming back in full force right now." Just like Madonna.Photos courtesy of Wanda Acosta and Karen Song https://www.papermag.com/cafe-tabac-lesbian-chic-2659588433.html

[puddlebrigade]

@error404-s the og post would imply um, group sex wherein a "cute little gay" person's body cavities would be "filled" by a series of gay members from the Oxford trivia community. In English this is colloquially known as "running a train" because of the idea of a queue of sex partners might resemble cars on a train passing through a given point. The OP omitted the word Pub from the phrase "Gay Pub" which would change the interpretation from a bar or tavern full of lgbtq trivia nerds into the idea of a single gay person getting a train run on them by lgbtq trivia nerds. The accidental omission is much more sexually explicit.

Good luck with your ESL struggles; Urban Dictionary is a lifesaver for getting innuendos.

[forthoseinterested]

Whores and madonnas

The term madonna–whore complex comes from psychoanalysis. I occasionally see people say it’s also known as the madonna–mistress complex, but it’s called the madonna–whore complex first and foremost in every reference or resource so I’ve ever seen, so that name is the one that’s most recognizable, even though madonna–mistress complex makes more sense for what it’s describing. A whore is somebody who sells sex, right? Whoever first named this thing the madonna-whore complex was using whore in a more colloquial way. Really they just meant, like, slutty.

In this context, the word ‘madonna’ has nothing to do with the pop singer. It comes from the Italian for ‘my lady’, which for a long time was another way of referring to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus—which isn’t what the pop singer named herself after; Madonna was literally just her birth name, because Italians families also do that. I don’t capitalize the word ‘madonna’ in this context, because we’re no longer using it as a proper noun for a specific person. I’d capitalize it if we’re talking about Madonna the pop singer or Madonna the Jesus-mother.

The term madonna–whore complex seems to have come about to explain why some people end up in sexless marriages, where they still love their wives and have a sexual desire for women, but not a sexual desire for their wives. It’s not a general truth or a description of something found in all men, but a specific pattern of behaviour that some men exhibit. They come to view women either as saintly madonnas (good, respectable, sacred) or as debated whores (sinful, profane, irresponsible, but sexually exciting). Normally, you can just be both; the complex describes a man who is for some reason incapable of seeing both in the same woman. Why? I don’t know. It’s weird. There are some characters in media that seem to exhibit this tendency, and many writers have consciously written pairs of female characters to represent idealizations of the two archetypes for a male character to choose between.

But what interests me isn’t the actual psychological complex, if that’s even a real thing, so much as the implied spectrum in what men find valuable about women. Even though men don’t have to choose between them, ‘the madonna’ and ‘the whore’ are personifications of the two main functions that men want women to fulfil: the ideal sex-partner and the ideal mother-figure.

Part of the reason so many transsexual women lean into being overtly sexual is because of their male upbringing and socialization, i.e. their lack of female socialization, which emphasizes the importance of sexual repression and caution in partner selection. Early trans women—i.e. trans women who didn’t transition that long ago–may act more like gay men, because only last year they practically were gay men. But even among the more traditional and female-conforming trans women, who are in most other ways trying to fit in, many people have observed that trans women seem to embrace being really slutty and sexually open at a far higher rate than cis women. I’m not certain this is really the case on average, or if it’s not a media-driven perception, but my personal experience, and that of people I know who have experience with the trans community, suggests the former. I do think it’s true on average. And for many people, “oh right, because they used to be guys!” is a satisfactory explanation for what could be perceived as a more male-coded sexuality, i.e. being slutty and horny and raunchy. That’s usually a male thing. That’s probably especially true if we’re talking about a pre- or early-transition trans girl you see on the internet who’s like 18–22 being horny on main, but what about the majority of us, who are significantly older, been around longer, and just trying to exist?

For this section, my thesis is there’s another, less-obvious reason for us being more likely to be all slutty and sexualized, and one that I’d bet is far more significant to that effect overall, which is that trans women are acting, consciously or subconsciously, within the madonna–whore paradigm.

We know that men who are looking for saintly madonnas to bring home to their parents and settle down and start families with are going to look past us. And not only because we’re incapable of having children with them, but also because for a lot of society, dating a trans women is still going to be considered weird, so there’s a good chance the man himself isn’t interested, but even if you are, your parents and grandparents might not like it. And your buddies at work might call you gay. There’s a lot of social cost you have to endure, and for many guys, we’re not worth it. This leaves us feeling like the only way to feel desirable is to provide sexual attention—since we can’t be madonnas, we may as well fully lean into what we can do. Specialize in what you’re good at. But even there, most men are less interested in us than in cis women. So out of desperation—in order to ‘compete’ in the ‘sexual marketplace’—we undercut our competitors by having lower prices. In other words, we’re easier, more open, more accessible, we let you skip the song and dance of courtship and just sleep with us. We become all slutty. There’s a similar stereotype about how ugly or fat girls are more likely to be easy, because they know they have to be. There’s a depressing truth to some of this.

It probably comes from the other direction too, where a guy who’s okay with trans women is probably going to be less traditional and therefore be less offput by a woman being slutty. In a traditional setting, women being slutty is an indication they’re lower-value as a long-term partner, or doesn’t have good values, or wasn’t raised right, or something like that. This affects women’s behaviour: they don’t want to be judged negatively and seen as low-value, ergo they avoid slutty behaviour and make men work for it. It’s kind of like how if a product is really cheap, you assume it’s worse than the expensive stuff. A good woman is supposed to be hard to get. The crude logic is that if you’re willing to sleep with me, as a trans woman, then you probably don’t care that much about the traditional rules of engagement, so I don’t incur as high a cost for being slutty. If there are any traditional men in the room, they might judge me more harshly, but they’re the ones who wouldn’t have wanted me anyway.

Whether that reasoning is actually true or if that’s really how things play out, I don’t know.

[hesspass23]

Pope Francis Allegedly Uses Derogatory Term for Gay People

In a recent incident, Pope Francis allegedly used a derogatory term for gay people during a closed-door meeting. This article delves into the details of the incident and discusses its potential implications for the LGBTQ+ community and the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis Allegedly Uses Derogatory Term for Gay People

In a recent incident that has sparked controversy, Pope Francis is reported to have used a derogatory term for gay people during a closed-door meeting at the Italian Bishops' Conference. This revelation could have a significant impact on how his attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community is perceived. The Pope's reported comments have raised questions about his stance on gay rights and the inclusivity of the Catholic Church. In this article, we will delve into the details of the incident and discuss its potential implications.

The Incident

During the Italian Bishops' Conference, Pope Francis was asked about whether gay men should be allowed to train for the priesthood, on the condition of remaining celibate. In response, the Pope stated that they should not be permitted. However, it is alleged that he went further and used an offensive slur in Italian, referring to an "air of frociaggine" within the Church. This derogatory term has understandably caused shock and disappointment among many.

Confirmation and Reactions

Although the meeting was initially behind closed doors, the Pope's reported comments were first revealed by the Italian tabloid website Dagospia. Subsequently, other Italian news agencies have confirmed the remarks, citing multiple sources. The use of such language by Pope Francis, who has previously emphasized respect towards the LGBTQ+ community, has surprised and saddened many of his progressive supporters.

Pope Francis' Previous Statements

Pope Francis has been known for his more inclusive approach compared to some of his predecessors. Early in his papacy, when asked about gay individuals, he famously responded, "Who am I to judge?" This statement was seen as a sign of his willingness to adopt a more understanding and accepting stance towards homosexuality. He has also expressed that gay people are welcome in the Church and even suggested that priests should be able to bless same-sex couples in certain circumstances.

Contradictory Remarks

The reported derogatory remarks made by Pope Francis have contradicted his previous statements and actions, leaving many confused and disappointed. Some observers had speculated that the Pope's more inclusive rhetoric was a sign of his willingness to eventually allow gay men to train for the priesthood, as long as they remained celibate like other priests. However, the recent incident has shattered those hopes and raised questions about the sincerity of his previous statements.

Language Barrier and Cultural Context

Defenders of Pope Francis point out that he occasionally makes mistakes in Italian colloquialisms due to his primary language being Spanish. They suggest that he may not have fully understood the level of offense his words could cause, despite growing up in an Italian-speaking household in Argentina. However, this explanation does not excuse the use of derogatory language, especially from someone in such a prominent position.

Vatican's Response

The reported use of a derogatory term by Pope Francis in reference to gay people has created a wave of disappointment and concern among his supporters and the LGBTQ+ community. This incident raises questions about the Pope's true stance on gay rights and inclusivity within the Catholic Church. It remains to be seen how the Vatican will respond and whether this incident will have lasting implications for Pope Francis' reputation and the Church's relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. Read more

[conarcoin]

YOU WERE WRONG!!

the flying machines one was the fake! for context:

smplive had a hit system where viewers could donate to have players kill or prank each other

when schlatt first scams connor, connor sues him in a court case known as "people of smplive vs schlattcoin". ted nivison is the judge

speaking of ted nivison, he also ran a void cult! one of its induction rituals is jumping directly into it. quite a few players were involved.

the spinoff with nuclear warfare is an unnamed tekkit server colloquially called tekkitlive, which has more heavy rp elements and focuses mainly on players forming companies and getting into conflicts. technoblade is a hitman in it.

it's minecraft there's gonna be gay sex

smplive had a mayoral election, and schlatt ran in it! this is actually referenced by michaelmcchill in dream smp

the coffee shop is just an early s&c shenanigan, with the help of altrive

nicolas cantu, aka junkyjanker!

please don't reveal if you know, and feel free to reblog :3

[firelxdykatara]

I’m just really confused as to where this idea that Zuko is gaycoded came from. Like people are allowed to have that headcanon but I don’t understand where people are coming from when they try and claim that he was undisputedly gaycoded and trying to deny it is homophobic when he’s only ever shown romantic interest in women.

I made a pretty long post on the topic a while back, but the ultimate gist of it is this: there are a lot of elements of Zuko's status as an abuse victim and trauma survivor that resonate with queer folks. This is understandable and completely fine! However, there are some parts of the fandom who have taken that to the other extreme and will now insist that those elements are uniquely queer, and that they can only be read as some sort of veiled gay/coming out narrative, even though that doesn't make much sense since there is no part of Zuko's narrative which is unique to any sort of queer experience.

I think the problem really does stem from two things being conflated--Zuko's history of abuse and trauma, and trauma&abuse being something a lot of queer people have experienced. I suspect it goes something like 'I see a lot of myself in Zuko, and I was abused for being gay, therefore Zuko must be gay too in order to have had similar experiences.' This can then lead to feeling dismissed or invalidated when other people point out that those experiences are not unique to being queer--but on the flip side, abuse victims and trauma survivors whose abuse&trauma do not stem from queerness (even if they are queer themselves) can feel invalidated and dismissed by the implication that their trauma must be connected to their queerness or it isn't valid.

This is also where the 'people don't actually know what gay coded means' part comes in, and I realize now that I didn't actually get into what gay coding (and queer coding in general) actually means, since I was so hung up on pointing out how Zuko doesn't really fit the mold. (And the few elements that exist which could be said to count are because of the 'villains historically get queer coded bc Hays Code era' thing and mostly occur in Book 1, not because of how he acts as an abuse&trauma survivor.)

Under a cut because I kind of go on a tangent about gay/queer coding, but I swear I get back to the point eventually.

Queer coding (and it is notable that, with respect to Zuko, it is almost always framed as 'he couldn't possibly be attracted to girls', rather than 'he could be attracted to boys as well as girls' in these discussions, for... no real discernible reason, but I'll get into that in a bit) is the practice of giving characters 'stereotypically queer' traits and characteristics to 'slide them under the radar' in an era where having explicitly queer characters on screen was not allowed, unless they were evil or otherwise narratively punished for their queerness. (See: the extant history of villains being queer-coded, because if they were Evil then it was ok to make them 'look gay', since the story wasn't going to be rewarding their queerness and making audiences think it was in any way OK.) This is thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially and more popularly known as the Hays Code), which was a set of guidelines which movies coming out of any major studio had to adhere to in order to be slated for public release and lasted from the early 1930s until it was finally abandoned in the late 60s.

The Hays Code essentially existed to ensure that the content of major motion pictures would not 'lower the moral standards' of the viewing public. It didn't just have to do with queerness--cursing was heavily monitored, sex outside of marriage was not allowed to be seen as desirable or tittilating, miscegenation was not allowed (most specifically interracial relationships between black and white people), criminals had to be punished lest the audience think that it was ok to be gay and do crime, etc. Since same-sex relations fell under 'sexual perversion', they could not be shown unless the 'perversion' were punished in some way. (This is also the origin of the Bury Your Gays trope, another term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied today.) To get around this, queer coding became the practice by which movies and television could depict queer people but not really, and it also became customary to give villains this coding even more overtly, since they would get punished by the end of the film or series anyway and there was nothing to lose by making them flamboyant and racy/overly sexual/promiscuous.

Over time, this practice of making villains flamboyant, sexually aggressive, &etc became somewhat separated from its origins in queer coding, by which I mean that these traits and tropes became the go-to for villains even when the creator had no real intention of making them seem queer. This is how you generally get unintentional queer-coding--because these traits that have been given to villains for decades have roots in coding, but people tend to go right to them when it comes to creating their villains without considering where they came from.

Even after the Hays Code was abandoned, the sentiments and practices remained. Having queer characters who weren't punished by the narrative for being queer was exceptionally rare, and it really isn't until the last fifteen or so years that we've seen any pushback against that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is famous for being one of the first shows on primetime television to feature an explicitly gay relationship on-screen, and that relationship ended in one of the most painful instances of Bury Your Gays that I have ever personally witnessed. (Something that, fourteen years later, The 100 would visually and textually reference with Lexa's death. Getting hit by a bullet intended for someone else after a night of finally getting to be happy and have sex with her s/o? It wasn't remotely subtle. I don't even like Clexa, but that was incredibly rough to witness.)

However, bringing this back to Zuko, he really doesn't fit the criteria for queer coding for a number of reasons. First of all, no one behind the scenes (mostly a bunch of cishet men) was at all intending to include queer rep in the show. This wasn't a case where they were like 'well, we really wanted to make Zuko gay, but we couldn't get that past the censors, so here are a few winks and a nudge', because it just wasn't on their radar at all. Which makes sense--it wasn't on most radars in that era of children's programming. This isn't really an indictment, it's just a fact of the time--in the mid/late 00s, no one was really thinking about putting queer characters in children's cartoons. People were barely beginning to include them in more teen- and adult-oriented television and movies. It just wasn't something that a couple of straight men, who were creating a fantasy series aimed at young kids, were going to think about.

What few instances you can point to from the series where Zuko might be considered to exhibit coding largely happen in Book 1, when he was a villain, because the writers were drawing from typically villainous traits that had historically come from queer coding villains and had since passed into common usage as villainous traits. But they weren't done with any intention of making it seem like Zuko might be attracted to boys.

And, again, what people actually point to as 'evidence' of Zuko being queer-coded--his awkwardness on his date with Jin and his confrontation with Ozai being the big ones I can think of off the top of my head--are actually just... traits that come from his history of trauma and abuse.

As I said in that old post:

making [zuko’s confrontation of ozai] about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

And, regarding his date with Jin:

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

Zuko is socially awkward and maladjusted because he was abused by his father as a child and has trouble relating to people as a result. He was heavily traumatized and brutally physically injured as a teenager, and it took him years to begin to truly recover from the scars that left on his psyche (and it's highly likely, despite the strides he made in canon, that he has a long way to go, post series; it's such a pity that we never got any continuation comics >.>). He was not abused for being gay or queer--he was abused because his father believed he was weak, and part of Zuko's journey was realizing that his father's perception of strength was flawed at its core. That his entire nation had rotted from the inside out, and the regime needed to be changed in order for the world--including his people--to begin to heal.

That could be commingled with a coming out narrative, which is completely fine for headcanons (although I personally prefer not to, because, again, we have more than enough queer trauma already), but it simply doesn't exist in canon. Zuko was not abused or traumatized for being queer, and his confrontation with Ozai was not about him coming out or realizing any fundamental truth about himself--it was about realizing something fundamental about his father and his nation, and making the choice to leave them behind so that he could help the Avatar grow stronger and force things to change when he got back.

TL;DR: at the end of the day, none of the traits, scenes, or behavior Zuko exhibits which shippers tend to use to claim he was gay-coded are actually evidence of coding--they aren't uniquely queer experiences, as they stem from abuse that was not related in any way to his sexuality, and they are experiences that any kid who suffered similar abuse or trauma could recognize and resonate with. (Including straight kids, and queer kids who were abused for any reason other than their identity.) And, finally, Zuko can be queer without erasing or invalidating his canon attraction to girls, and it's endlessly frustrating that the 'Zuko is gay-coded' crowd refuses to acknowledge that.

[potteresque-ire]

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈  (June is Pride Month where I am 😊) For the occasion, may I recommend this animated musical short, 秘密港 Safe Haven, by the Beijing Queer Chorus (北京酷兒合唱團)? Published on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT; May 17th, 2021),  the animation, with its lovely (and at times, heartbreaking) song, is about a queer person and their friend who tries to offer their support. The lyrics is English-subbed.

(Below the cut: a wish for the c-queer community; conception of Safe Haven, as explained by the Beijing Queer Chorus; CW/TW for homophobia, violence and forced abortion)

Background for my wish: with the recent Chinese government’s aggressive turnaround in its population control policy to combat its declining birth rate—on 2021/05/31, China further lifted the cap of number of children allowed per couple from 2 to 3 (the number was 1 for almost four decades, 1978-2015; the population control measure has therefore been colloquially called the “One Child Policy”), younger generations of Chinese are already feeling the pressure and fearing the consequences of non-compliance (for example, if the state levies heavy fines on non-child-bearers).   

While I have not yet read articles that directly connect the major policy shift with the c-queer community, I imagine it may bring both relief and additional challenges. The relief will likely take time to come; the challenges, meanwhile,  will likely be immediate. 

This has to do with the root of antagonism against homosexuality in Chinese societies. Unlike in their Western counterparts, Chinese queers have consistently reported that family, instead of societal, pressure as the greatest challenge they face (societal pressure includes that from religion, from government etc). C-queers are expected to abide to the heteronormative traditions of opposite-sex marriage and child-bearing, in a collectivistic, conformist environment still strongly influenced by the Confucian notion that continuing the bloodline is the primary responsibility of a filial child. Men, especially, are under heavy pressure to carry on their family surname. Those who fail to do so are seen as irresponsible at best, moral failures at worst. They suffer anything and everything from constant nagging from their relatives, to ostracisation, to disownment. 

A better known consequence of this cultural antagonism against homosexuality in the tragic Tongqi (同妻 “homo-wives”) phenomenon that is, perhaps, unique to China. 

Tongqi are straight women who unknowingly entered marriage with closeted gay man, who often learn about their spouse’s sexuality only after the filial obligation of having children has been fulfilled. It’s a form of marriage fraud; women who file for divorce, however, are likely to lose custody of their child(ren) under Chinese laws, and so many of them keep mum. The gay men involved are also victims in many cases; the lack of public, open education and discussion of queer topics in the country mean even the queers themselves may not have a full understanding of their own queerness, believe that “straightening” themselves is something they can do with sufficient willpower and love for their family. 

As one may expect, these marriages are mostly unsatisfying; psychiatric issues and intimate partner violence (IPV), which include verbal, emotional and physical abuse, have also been frequently reported. Just how prevalent are Tongqi’s in China that, in turn, reflect how many gay men in China are pressured to remain in the closet and get married? The following numbers may serve as comparison. In 2010, the percentage of gay men married to heterosexual women in the US was 15-25%. In China and in 2018, meanwhile, the reowned Chinese sexologist, sociologist and LGBT rights activist, Li Yinhe (李銀河), quoted an estimate of 80% of China’s ~ 20 million gay men were married to heterosexual wives; i.e. the Tongqi population amounted to ~16 million. Literature has reported a similar estimated size of the Tongqi population—at 13+ million, in 2016. 

(Reason for the numbers being estimates: the exact size of the c-queer community isn’t known. China’s decennial census questionnaire from late last year (2020) once again excluded questions about its own LGBT+ community. "Room mate” is how many c-queers have to refer to their partners).

While the Chinese government decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 and its current laws carry no clauses that target the queer community—the official stance of Chinese government on homosexuality is currently 不支持，不反對，不提倡 “not supporting, not opposing, not advocating”—what may seem to be its non-queer-related policies have indirectly but majorly impacted the lives of c-queers. In particular, the “One Child Policy” has been hypothesised to exacerbate the challenge faced by c-queers, as the only child becomes the sole “next generation” available for producing grandchildren and extending the family bloodline. 

Hence, my expectation / hope that the relaxation of "One Child Policy”, by lifting the cap on the number of children a couple can have, will bring relief to the LGBT+ population—even if the relief will only come years down the road, as the newer generations of c-queers will then have siblings to share their filial responsibilities. 

However, this also explains my worry for now, for the immediate months and years to come, for not only c-queers but the younger generations of Chinese in general. My worry is about how, exactly, the state intends to drive its birth rate upward, and the hardship the new policies may bring. 

The practices of China’s population control policies have historically been brutal. Forced, late-term abortions were common, for example. This is reflected in the country’s birth control propaganda banners, commonly seen in Chinese villages until late 2000s, which were infamous for their verbal violence:

“Beat it out! Abort it! Miscarry it! Just cannot give birth to it!”

Fines, which were levied on offenders of the One Child Policy, may seem like a better option but can place an unbearable burden on poorer families, of which there remain many in China. Premier Li Keqiang reported, in May 2020, that >40% of China’s population—600 million—are living with a monthly income of ~$140 USD or below, despite the glitz often seen in the country’s entertainment productions. Using One Child Policy era fines for reference, the famous Chinese director 張藝謀 Zhang Yimou was fined 7.48 million RMB (~$1.17 million USD) for his three children, in 2013. Defying the new population control policies may therefore be a privilege reserved for the very powerful and very rich. And the government is likely to be aggressive in enforcing its new policies—the social media accounts of > 20 feminist activists, who advocate for reproductive freedom among other women’s rights, have already been shut down in the recent weeks. 

Will the Chinese government find ways to penalise members of the queer community who do not contribute to the new baby count? Will it turn a blind(er) eye to the Tongqi 同妻 (and to a lesser extent, Tongfu 同夫 ~ heterosexual men married to lesbian women) tragedies happening every day? It’s impossible to say yet.

For this year, therefore, I wish the c-queer community this—I wish it to be safe from the reach of China’s population control policies, whatever they will be. 

Back to the animated short, Safe Haven, which is about coming out. In 2016, a 18,000 people survey by the United Nations Development Programme reported only 5% of Chinese queers had come out to people outside their families. Only 15% have come out to their families. A more recent survey reports a significant improvement in these percentages, with ~50% of gays, bisexuals and transgenders and 70% of lesbians having come out to their families (Table 2). Fully out queers remain rare (<10%).

There’s still, therefore, a long way to go. With queers often being out (if they’re out at all) only to their most immediate/intimate social circles, with the state’s censorship of LGBT+ presentation in visual media, many (especially older generations of) non-queers in China haven’t seen a living, breathing, outwardly queer person before. The process of coming out, by extension—what it means, what it takes for both the giver and receiver of the message—may have never entered the thoughts of these non-queers before.

What should they say? What should they do? What words and actions will convey support? What won’t?

Safe Haven is about these questions. I’ll end this post with a translation of the Weibo post in which the animated short was first published, in which Beijing Queer Chorus explained the project’s conception:

#517 IDAHOBIT# Do you remember how it was like, the first time you came out of the closet, or someone came out of the closet to you? Who was that person? What did you say at the time, and how did that person react?

The person who voluntarily exposes their heart requires courage. The person who receives the message may have their own heart filled with unease. 

Maybe, both are thinking: “What should I do?”

Coming out is such an important occasion. It can, perhaps, change a relationship forever.

Some will welcome warmth and hugs. Some others will get their first taste of homophobia. Yet some others will find neither.

After a queer person came out to their friend, they got, in return, “Don’t worry. I’ll still treat you as a friend.” It made them uncomfortable for a long time. But their straight family and friends didn’t understand. How could this be not a kind thing to say?

What is gay-friendly? What is homophobic? It appears that everyone has their own standards. The same words and behaviours transmit warmth to some, deep offence to others.

So, when we’re talking about “homophobia”, what are we talking about?

To commemorate this years #517 IDAHOBIT#, the Beijing Queer Chorus interviewed its tens of members and their relatives and friends, in hopes of investigating the difference in perspectives between homosexuals and straight people. How can this barrier be crossed, how can they work together to take care of the valuable relationships.

In the stories of all interviewees, a warmth like this can be felt: even with the risks, there remain those who are brave enough to display their true self; even with the misunderstandings, there remain those willing to keep the secrets of others, willing to learn to understand a whole new world.

We condensed these stories into an original, animated musical short, Safe Haven.

We hope every boat riding the winds and waves can find a harbour to unload their secrets. We also hope every person has enough gentle strength to be the safe haven for others. 

We offer our best wishes to every queer who lets their heart be seen ~ may your courage reap its rewards.

We thank every friend and family who have treated these hidden matters of the heart seriously. You make the world a better place.

[akookminsupporter]

This is maybe going to be a controversial thing to say but I am seeing a lot of top and bottom speculation in parts of the Jikook community and thought I would humbly offer some thoughts. This is something that people might be doing and not aware of how inappropriate and sucky it is. I beleive in free speech so I don't think anyone should listen to me if they don't want. But ignorance is not always malicious. Sand sometimes it helps to hear perspectives from different people.

Using terms like 'alpha' to describe why anyone thinks someone is a top is wrong on about a dozen levels. It's sexist first of all. It's dehumanizing. It sounds like someone bases their idea of same sex relationships from reading abo fics. While I personally don't have a problem with people writing and reading that kind of stuff, please please know that it doesn't reflect real life. When a person uses this language and makes an argument like "I can't see × bottoming because he is alpha", (which I did see someone write today. ugh) it is frustrating and toxic. It also implies that cis women and at birth female assigned people who like being penetrated are.... what exactly? Not powerful? Never dominant?

Lgbt people have a long history of being asked inappropriate and invasive questions about our sex lives. We are almost taught that it is ok for straight people to say things like "he is giving me a lot of top vibes" because it means they are not openly grossed out by us (which should make us hashtag grateful). We are kind of fed the message that setting these sorts of boundaries could alienate us from well meaning straight people. I can't tell you how many times I have listened to someone assuming what position a gay man takes in sex (and it is always under the assumption that this role is fixed). Fanfics are fiction. But when it comes to analysis of real life people using real life "evidence", that kind of discourse crosses the line in my opinion. Kpop shipping culture is complicated for many reasons, not least of which is that it is constructed from a predominantly hetero and eroticized worldview. When I see people having these kinds of conversations (on other blogs), and spouting some ignorant, unexamined shit, it shows me how comfortable they are in commandeering conversations about gay sex and sexuality. It shows me they believe their personal interest makes it reasonable and decent for them to debate the penises and bums of living human beings on a public forum.

A lot of times, assumptions about being the top or bottom are loaded with other stuff. It is a way to fit a same sex relationship into a false 'm/w' binary. It makes the lgbt relationship into something that a straight person can relate to or project themselves into. It draws a false distinction between the 'weaker' (or smaller or more fem) partner and the 'stronger' (ie the man, the alpha) one.

Bottoming does not make you passive or girly. Nor does topping make you a jealous, testosterone fueled manimal.

Almost all cis men and people assigned male at birth (including straight guys), have a 'p spot' or, as it is medically known, a prostate. It is a walnut sized gland located below the bladder. Internally, it can be accessed by probing about 2 inches up the rectum. Externally, it can be stimulated by pressing against the skin between the scrotum and anus (the taint). Stimulating or massaging it can produce extremely powerful orgasms. (The thing colloquially known as the female 'g spot' in cis women and people assigned female at birth is sometimes referred to as the 'female prostate'. It can be accessed internally through the vagina). The internet is full of ideas on how to safely, skillfully explore this pleasure center. Some people are open to it. Some aren't. It's no big deal and no one's loss. Everyone likes what makes them comfortable. But in case anyone didn't know, that part of the anatomy produces the sensation what feels good when a male at birth person is an anally penetrated (with lube etc). So my point is: what does having a prostate and liking having it touched have to do with being feminine? It is literally a bundle of nerves in the cis male anatomy. Many straight men like to be pegged with strap ons by their girlfriends. Does that make them omegas? Or girls? No. It makes them cis men who like having their prostates stimulated because it feels good. Often times it has meant having to rewrite a lot of societal baggage in their mind and tear down the box one is placed in.

Also: lgbt men aren't always tops or bottoms. Sometimes they are both. Sometimes neither. OBVIOUSLY. Why limit or call the shots on a person's sexuality? Roles can be versatile. Sex can be versatile. Prescriptive ideology should not limit anyone's exploration of their own, unique, precious human body, or motivate them to label anyone else's.

Straight cis men's sex lives are not as often subjected to scrutiny in the media. Nor can their 'normative' sexual practices be used against them (for the most part). Justin Trudeau can kiss his wife and look at her adoringly without inviting widespread speculation as to who is giving what to who on a public forum and what that means in a larger behavioral context. Shouldn't same sex couples enjoy the same respect? Gay sex has been pathologized greatly for the better part of the past century. It takes a long time for hateful undertones and connotations to be neautralized. So wouldn't it be best if we wrote about real life m/m couples with greater care? How would our considerations of these discussions change if different gender dynamics or identities were in play?

POWER in sexual relations is NOT always dictated by who is the penetrator. And the way someone carries themselves on the football field or in the boardroom doesn't always having bearing on their genitalia or how they like to use it. Prescriptive sociocultural forces still seek to label leaders as tops or masc presenting or having an abundance of testosterone. And if someone lives up to the cultural stereotype of a flamboyantly gay presenting, femmy, ballet and make up loving bottom? Well that is perfectly powerful and lovely.

Sorry for this very long spiel.

Thank you so much for this opinion anon, your words carry a lot of truth. Thanks for the little explanations. Thanks for the little anatomy lesson too.

I have said several times that I will never discuss or talk about Jimin, Jungkook or anyone else’s  sex lives, although I may be crossing a boundary by speculating about their love lives, talking about their sex lives is a boundary that I will never want to cross.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with talking about sex, I talk about sex with my friends, it's a topic I enjoy, especially when I'm in a group with several conservative women 😏😆🙈(  I don't bring it up, others do, but I'm not shy to talk about it) I'm comfortable talking about sex in general or my sex life, but never about other people's sex lives, especially when they are not present.

Anon, THANK YOU for your long spiel. 

[fatesline]

some gay symbolism

in Belros, rams are associated with homosexuality, since gay sheep are more common than you'd think. in real life, not just a worldbuilding thing.

buttons or jewelry made of ram's horns can be a subtle indicator of sexuality. the cyclamen flower is associated more specifically with lesbians due to their being the favored flower of the somewhat mythologized soldier Emelin, eventually evolving to an association with hares since the flower's petals resemble their ears. however, some lesbians still prefer the ram iconography. same-sex marriages are colloquially known as ram weddings, even though the couple in question might be straight.

(just as gay people may end up in a political marriage with the opposite sex, if you're not the first son (/daughter where relevant) you may end up in a gay marriage in order to strengthen bonds with another family while preventing you from having legal heirs that could enable you to challenge your older brother(s).)

in Sirine, as red is associated with blood, life, and childbirth; blue, as its opposite, can be used to indicate homosexuality or someone who is averse to marrying having children. plenty of straight people wear blue, but it's used as a euphemism, and in plays the use of blue for character's costumes is very deliberate.

[amphibious-thing]

Because it’s interesting here are some LGBTQ+ words and their earliest known usage according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s important to know that the earliest known usage is not necessarily the first usage, also in some cases such as with gay, queer and queen it can be unclear which definition is being used in early examples. Also just to be clear these are the definitions given by the OED and do not always reflect current definitions. This is obviously an incomplete list feel free to add more if you’d like.

Asexual

Earliest known usage: 1907

Definition: An asexual person; one who has no sexual feelings or desires, or who is not sexually attracted to anyone.

Bisexuality

Earliest known usage: 1892

Definition: Originally Psychology and Psychoanalysis. The state or quality of being sexually attracted to both men and women; bisexual character or identity. Also: bisexual behaviour or activity.

Butch

Earliest known usage: 1947

Definition: A lesbian whose appearance, behaviour, or identity is regarded as masculine. Frequently in explicit or implied contrast with femme.

AND

Earliest known usage: 1963

Definition: In a male homosexual couple: a partner who takes on a more dominant or active role (either sexually or in a more general sense).

Camp

Earliest known usage: 1909

Definition: Esp. of a man or his mannerisms, speech, etc.: flamboyant, arch, or theatrical, esp. in a way stereotypically associated with an effeminate gay man.

Cisgender

Earliest known usage: 1997

Definition: Designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth; of or relating to such persons. Contrasted with transgender.

Dyke

Earliest known usage: 1931

Definition: colloquial (originally U.S.). Chiefly derogatory and offensive. A lesbian. Also (now less commonly): any woman whose appearance is regarded as masculine (often used with the implication that she is a lesbian).

Femme

Earliest known usage: 1933

Definition: Frequently derogatory. An effeminate homosexual man.

AND

Earliest known usage: 1947

Definition: A lesbian whose appearance, behaviour, identity, etc., is regarded as feminine. Frequently in explicit or implied contrast with butch.

Gay

Earliest known usage: 1922

Definition: Originally U.S. slang.  (a) Of a person: homosexual;  (b) (of a place, milieu, way of life, etc.) of or relating to homosexual people. Although more frequently used of homosexual men, this sense can either include or exclude lesbians.

Heterosexual

Earliest known usage: 1892

Definition: Sexually or romantically attracted to, or engaging in sexual activity with, people of the opposite sex.

Homophile

Earliest known usage: 1945

Definition: A homosexual person (now somewhat dated in general use); spec. (chiefly with historical reference) a member or supporter of the homophile movement.

Homosexual

Earliest known usage: 1891

Definition: Characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to, or sexual activity with, people of the same sex; involving or relating to same-sex desire or sexual activity.

Invert

Earliest known usage: 1892

Definition: Chiefly Psychology and Psychoanalysis in early use. A person with sexual feelings or other psychological characteristics regarded as contrary to those considered normal or typical for their sex, or as characteristic of a person of the opposite sex; spec. a homosexual person, esp. a man ... Late 19th- and early 20th-cent. descriptions and discussions of ‘the invert’ by psychologists frequently dealt with feelings and behaviour that would now be related to questions of gender identity rather than sexual orientation, but for much of the 20th cent. the word in this sense was often used—particularly by non-specialists—to refer to homosexual men and women.

Lesbian

Earliest known usage: 1732

Definition: A woman who engages in sexual activity with other women; a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted (esp. wholly or largely) to other women; a homosexual woman.

Molly

Earliest known usage: 1708

Definition: slang. An effeminate man or boy; a homosexual man. Also: a man who performs work typically associated with women, or who concerns himself with women's affairs.

Pansexual

Earliest known usage: 1977

Definition: A person who may be sexually attracted to others regardless of their biological sex or gender identity. Also (and earliest): an animal that exhibits sexual behaviour towards others of its species regardless of their biological sex.

Queen

Earliest known usage: 1729

Definition: slang. A homosexual man, typically one regarded as ostentatiously effeminate.

Queer

Earliest known usage: 1894

Definition: colloquial (frequently derogatory). A homosexual; esp. a homosexual man. Although originally chiefly derogatory, since the late 1980s it has been used as a neutral or positive term, originally by some homosexuals.

Sapphic

Earliest known usage: 1761

Definition: Of, relating to, engaging in, or characterized by sexual activity between women or female same-sex desire.

Sodomite

Earliest known usage: 1300s (approx.)

Definition: A person who engages in a form of sexual intercourse (esp. homosexual anal intercourse) characterized as unnatural or immoral, or otherwise culturally stigmatized. Also: a homosexual, esp. a homosexual man.

Transgender

Earliest known usage: 1974

Definition: Designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond to that person's sex at birth, or which does not otherwise conform to conventional notions of sex and gender.

Tribade

Earliest known usage: 1585

Definition: A woman who engages in sexual activity with other women; a lesbian.

[bidotorg]

No matter which part of our beautiful queer family you belong to, coming out can be a daunting experience.

In addition to a lot of the concerns LGBTQ folks express about coming out, there are unique difficulties in coming out as bi. And a lot of coming out resources don't talk about them.

Nevertheless, many people also express an enormous sense of relief after coming out. Spending your life lying about who you are is stressful and alienating. Working through that initial fear often leads to a much happier and simpler life in the long term.

"But what if I'm monogamous? Do I still need to come out?"

You never need to come out, but plenty of bi folks are in monogamous relationships and happily out. Being monogamous doesn't make you not bi; it just means you're monogamous.

"Won't people think it's a phase?"

One difficulty of coming out as bi is the perception of choice. There are those who are willing to accept that a gay or lesbian friend or family member cannot help their orientation and so are willing to accept their same-sex partners. They are seen as helpless victims of their orientation who cannot help who they love.

These same people will often perceive bi people as greedy or indecisive. The problem is that the only way to change this perception is to have more bi people out and visible. You are far from alone. Recent research shows that 52% of the LGB community is bi.

You know your attractions. Go check out our bi 101s and arm yourself with knowledge. Feel free to educate those who question you and let them know that your orientation is just as "real" as theirs.

"When will I be done coming out?"

Probably never. "Being out" is a colloquialism that describes a lifelong process. You may be out to your closest friends and family, but not your coworkers, or it may be the first thing listed on your Facebook profile. You get to decide who you are out to, and that should be true for everyone.

Bi folks face an extra hurdle in this respect. It's not always obvious to people when we are bi. If a woman is seen holding hands with a woman, most people will assume that they are lesbians. It will not cross their mind that one or both may be bi.

You will find people assuming your sexuality based on your partners or dating patterns over and over. The good news is you will find it easier to remind people that you are indeed bi. The better news is that the more we remind people that we are indeed bi, the less they will assume.

Everyone goes through this process differently, and it is easier for some of us than others. Some of us have known we were bi as long as we can remember; some of us didn't figure it out for a very long time. Families, relationships, communities, local laws may all impact how, when, and to whom you come out. But know that there are a lot of people rooting for you.

Check out bi.org's amazing online community of Facebook and Twitter, or check if there's an amBi chapter where you are (or maybe start your own).

Peruse our famous bis and see how many amazing bi people past and present have lived their bi truths.

Or maybe you'd like to see, read, and listen to more bi narratives? Go have a look at bi characters.

What Bi Looks Like gives you profiles of real-life bis around the world. There are so many more of us than you think.

Learn more here~ https://bi.org/en/coming-out

[saywhatjessie]

TRC Exchange

This is my gift for @richardcampbells who requested so primo Gansey content! 3.7k [Ao3]

Gansey did not remember being this twitchy in high school.

It was difficult to remember ‘high school’ as this thing that had happened to him only a short year ago and not something in his distant past. He’d experienced so many things in the years of high school and also in the gap year since, it was hard to hold the memory of Aglionby as something associated with himself. He had felt quite different then.

Quite less twitchy.

Blue would probably take offense to the word twitchy. He didn’t think it was a slur of any kind, but it still felt like a word she would not-so-gently correct. Fidgety, she might say. Hyper.

Not that he was hyper, he just couldn’t seem to stop picking at the corner of his folder. Or playing with the zipper tag on his schoolbag. He had to admit, he did feel rather high-strung.

To be so far away from her – Blue – when they’d so recently been so close. Closer than close. It was mildly unbearable.

And not only her, but Henry who had been with them on their gap year road trip around the world. Adam, who was following his own academic pursuits but had been a real grounding presence in his Aglionby days. Ronan, who he missed like a limb and who’d worried him while he’d been away and potentially worried him more now that he was close but still extremely far.

Georgetown was not so far. Ronan came to the area every week for mass with his brothers.

It was enough distance for Gansey to feel it in the marrow of his bones.

He tapped his pen distractedly against his laptop, waiting for class to start and contemplating if he should send Ronan another text. Just to make sure he was coping. He couldn’t remember ever tapping his pen at Aglionby.

“Okay, class, welcome to BBH 251, colloquially known as ‘Straight Talks.’”

Gansey sat up straighter, taking a firmer grip on his pen to sublimate the urge to fidget.

“You can all put your laptops away, this isn’t that type of class.”

Gansey startled, blinking for a good few seconds before shutting his laptop and sliding it back into his bag. He wasn’t sure what kind of class didn’t require taking notes. His pulse jumped a bit in his neck, some predecessor to an inappropriate sense of dread.

“This class is about exploring intersectional identity, putting focus on privilege and invisible identities.”

And now the dread made more sense. Gansey was always far too aware of his privilege.

It would be absolutely heinous to have to get up in the front of this room and list out all the ways society valued him more than them. Looking around the room there were women, there were people of color. Students with pride flags on their bags and their hair dyed outrageous colors. There were students who looked like Adam had when he’d first come to Aglionby: hollow cheeked and broken down in a way that could only be reached by withstanding poverty. How was he supposed to come out to this class as a straight, white, wealthy son of a Republican career politician?

“The class is called straight talks because what we learn in this class, we carry over into other classes. We reach out to other classes and introduce ourselves with our full intersectional identities.”

The horrors continued abound. Gansey would have to do this around the entire university.

“I’ll start.”

Their instructor introduced herself as a white, cis woman. She was a lesbian athlete in her mid-fifties. She talked about the difficulties of being a lesbian athlete, how she suffered ageism in the gay community, and the stereotypes that come with it.

Braver souls than Gansey came forward and asked what cis meant. The teacher calmly explained that it simply meant “not trans”. Gansey hadn’t known there was a word for that. He hadn’t thought about the need for one. And that made him feel worse than anything. Because anything that wasn’t “other” was “normal”. What a terribly privileged thing he was.

“And now, to present more examples from your peers, I’ve asked some of my students from last semester to show you what a straight talk might look like. Ryann, do you want to start?”

Ryann didn’t look particularly bothered either way, but started on what was obviously a well rehearsed speech.

He was genderfluid, which meant he changed his pronouns regularly, but he told them all that at this moment he was a he so please refer to him as such. He was of Māori descent. He talked about what it was like to be underrepresented and constantly likened to Taika Waititi just because he was the only Māori person anyone ever heard of, if they’d heard of it at all. He suffered from EDS, which meant he had what was usually referred to as an invisible disability. In other words: people assumed he was abled when they looked at him since he didn’t need a wheelchair. At least not yet.

This wasn’t at all about Gansey, but he still found himself sinking slightly in his seat, the shame he felt by the simple fact that he had none of these additional social obstacles to deal with making him feel absolutely wretched and helpless.

The next speaker helped some. She was white and cis and able-bodied. But she spoke of growing up in poverty in the American south, constantly living in fear because she was bisexual and a woman. She discussed how she’d known more girls who’d experienced sexual violence than she could fit on two hands.

Gansey felt a little like crying. Actually, a lot like crying. But he was a Gansey and he would never show such unmeasured behaviour in company. And this was not about him. He would not make it about him.

The last person was agender. They were mixed race: what races, they weren’t even sure because they were adopted. They grew up in a wealthy family but lived in a community where they didn’t feel deserving of that station. Feeling undeserving was something, at least, Gansey understood.

They were also demisexual.

“So, demisexuality is on the spectrum of asexuality,” the person – Storm – explained, in a practiced-sounding way, but not like Gansey thought they were tired of explaining: they still sounded as if they cared deeply about this label. “Everyone’s heard of the Kinsey scale?” Most everyone nodded, Gansey maybe too enthusiastically. He’d read a lot of history when he’d realized Adam was bisexual. “Asexuality has that same kind of scale, ranging from sex-repulsed asexual to sex-positive gray-asexual. Asexuality is differentiated by the lack of feeling of sexual attraction. sex-repulsed asexuals don’t feel sexual attraction and don’t want sex in any way. People can still be asexual but have sex anyway for stress relief or for their partner: they don’t feel the attraction but don’t mind the act itself. Gray-asexual people can feel sexual attraction but only sometimes. It’s all very relative and, obviously, I don’t speak for everyone blah blah blah. Following?”

There were grumbles of assent from the assembled class and Gansey nodded distractedly.

What Storm (and that was another thing: Ronan would absolutely love the names nonbinary people chose for themselves when Gansey told him) what Storm was talking about with gray-asexuality sounded just like normal people. Not everyone experiences sexual attraction ALL the time. Then wouldn’t everyone want to have sex with everyone else all the time? That sounded extremely distracting, who would have the time?

And not everyone was in the mood all the time either. He was working to be really open-minded, but this didn’t sound real. 

“Demisexuality,” Storm continued, “Is on that spectrum. The important qualifier is that demisexual people can feel sexual attraction but only if they establish an emotional bond with someone first.”

And just like that, something in Gansey’s head snapped.

He shot his hand up.

Their professor waved him off. “We’re not doing questions right now,”

“That’s okay.” Storm said, smiling at him. Something in their eyes glinted in what Gansey thought might be recognition, even though they’d never met. “What’s up?” They asked, nodding at Gansey.

Gansey had no idea what was up. He hadn’t raised his hand with any kind of plan.

“Hello. My name is Gansey,” he introduced himself, because his mother always said that was a good jumping off point. “Demi is from the Latin word dimidius meaning partially or half.”

That probably wasn’t the right direction to start with, judging by the muttering and eye rolling from his classmates. Gansey felt his neck heat up but Storm looked amused.

“Are you calling me half-sexual?”

“No,” Gansey shook his head, trying to come off better. “I guess I just wondered how the leap was made from demi meaning half to demi meaning… what you said.”

“Mr. Gansey–” the teacher started again, looking a little put-out. Gansey guessed he’d probably said something wrong. Something offensive. Something condescending. He was good at that.

But Storm waved her off again. “I don’t know, man, I didn’t invent the word. I just learned it, same as you’re learning it now.” Their eyes flashed again on the words ‘same as you’. “I learned the word and I remembered every teacher I’d had a crush on growing up after they’d established a connection with me. I remembered the weird sex dreams I’d had about literally every one of my friends. I remembered how any time someone talked about having sex with a stranger I thought they were kidding because how could you feel that way about someone you didn’t know?”

Gansey’s hand gripped the seat of his chair, each statement from Storm triggering his own memories. How he’d never had a crush on a girl – a serious, Want To Do Anything About It crush – until Blue. How confused he’d been when Adam said he had more experience with girls, because he hadn’t, really. How Helen’s advances on poor unsuspecting men felt false, because how could she want to sleep with all of them? She’d just met them.

And he remembered the weird sex dreams he’d had about Adam and Ronan, even though he was straight.

At least… he’d thought he was straight?

Storm smiled at him in a soft, almost pitying way. “Any other questions?”

Gansey shook his head. “No, thank you. Please continue.”

It seemed this class may teach him more than he’d counted on.

His first order of business was to call Blue.

Both because he needed to speak with her about this new word he’d just learned and also because he had a scheduled call with her and also because he missed her fiercely.

“Have you heard this word ‘demisexuality’?” Gansey asked by way of hello.

He could almost hear Blue blink in surprise. “No. Where have you heard the word demisexuality?”

“I’m taking this Bio-Behavioral Health class. It’s usually reserved for at the very earliest second semester students but I spoke to my advisor about my apprehension regarding achieving the required credits for gen eds and she suggested combining requirements through some classes that might cover both. This class counts for gym and science.”

“So you’re not taking a gym class?” Blue hummed, mournfully. “No pictures of sunkissed Gansey rowing in the early morning?”

Gansey’s ears heated up and he cleared his throat. “Any photos you’d like I’ll take for you, Jane.”

Blue hummed again, self-satisfied.

Gansey cleared his throat again. “So this class explores identity and marginalization–”

Blue cut him off with a barked laugh. “Oh, man, I would love to watch this class react to you .”

“Yes, Jane, it was not very comfortable for me, aware as I am of my privilege.” He tried not to sound petulant but he was and it did. “But there was a student named Storm who introduced me to this new word. Demisexuality, I mean.”

“Okay,” Blue said. There was rustling on the other side and Gansey pictured her getting comfortable, sitting in the chair next to the table in the phone/sewing/cat room. She had her own cell phone by now – a fight that spanned weeks and several countries of their road trip – but she refused to use it to speak to Gansey himself, only saving it for calling her mother while she was away or to speak to Adam on the phone his own boyfriend had bullied him into accepting. He assumed she’d cave and use it to speak to him when she was away at school herself (her semester didn’t start until October) but for now they were relying on old habits. “So tell me about demisexuality.”

He began to talk through it with her, repeating some of what Storm said and drawing new conclusions and going so far as to pull a webpage on the subject up on his phone as he spoke, switching between reading off of it and putting the phone to his ear to hear her reply. He knew she could have looked this up herself, but he appreciated she was letting him tell her about it. Teaching her was the easiest way for him to learn himself.

She cut to it pretty quick. “Is that what you think you are?”

Gansey blinked, expecting the question, he supposed, but not expecting how it would make him feel.

“I thought I was straight,” he answered. Because it was true. Even if it was becoming less true by the moment. 

There was a rustling that Gansey recognized as a shrug. “Everyone thinks they’re straight until they don’t.”

Gansey blinked again.

“Thank you, Jane.”

Blue hummed. “I’m gonna let you sit with this. Call me back with any updates?”

Gansey hummed back. They hung up.

Gansey appreciated she wanted to let him sit with this – it was a kindness and potentially a necessity. He didn’t know how to do this, he’d never had a sexual identity crisis before.

So he called Ronan.

Who didn’t answer, of course, so he was forced to sit with his sexual identity crisis.

  He sat with it for two hours until Ronan sent him a text. “Dick.”

Gansey called him.

Ronan answered. “Jesus Mary, Gansey, what ?”

“I think I had a crush on you when we first met.”

Ronan choked and immediately hung up.

Gansey swore, growling, before hitting redial.

“Gansey, I swear to Christ,” Ronan pleaded.

“Shut up!” Gansey swore. “Please shut up. I am so stressed out right now, Ronan.”

Ronan, for his part, shut up. It was an angry and embarrassed silence, but considering what Gansey had just confronted him with that was understandable.

“I learned something in one of my classes today and Jane thinks it might apply to me.” Blue had said no such thing, but something told Gansey that Ronan would take information like this more seriously if it came from sensible Blue. “There is apparently a sexual orientation previously unbeknownst to me that describes feelings of attraction only when there’s an established emotional connection.”

Ronan was silent for a few breaths before he said “Okay?”

“So we were very close when he first met and I felt an immediate connection to you and I didn’t know how to process that outside of friendship because I’d never felt it before but now with this new term sort of recontualizing things, I think it may have been a crush.”

Ronan made a sort of squawk in his throat, reacting similarly to the first time Gansey had said the word “crush” but, thankfully, not hanging up the phone.

“Gansey… I don’t know what you want me to do with this.”

Gansey opened his mouth then shut it again. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Ronan either. He didn’t know how to ask “Do you think I had a crush?” or “Do you think I’m not straight?” or “How do I restructure myself, how do I think of myself, if I’m not straight like I always thought?”

But that was an emotional burden he had no business troubling Ronan with. Gansey’s feelings weren’t Ronan’s responsibility. He had other things going on.

“Nothing,” he answered, quickly, attempting to brush off the entire conversation. “Just a thought to mull over. I thought I’d share. But, you’re right, you have other things to do–”

Ronan sighed so loud and dramatically, he cut off Gansey’s prepared polite change of topic right in its tracks.

“Gansey, it’s okay if you’re not straight. It would be fucking cool, actually. That means none of us are straight. High five for a perfect queer score or whatever the shit.”

Gansey’s mouth twitched.

“And if you had a crush on me that’s cool too.” He cleared his throat, his next statement coming out as a growl to cover embarrassment. “I had a crush on you in the beginning, too. So it’s whatever.”

Gansey grinned. “Oh, you did?”

“We are never bringing this up again,” Ronan told him firmly. “But yeah, man, you’re like the portrait of well tended youth. But you drove a fast and shitty car and smiled like a dork. I was sixteen, what do you want?”

Gansey’s grin softened. “Well, now I feel indecorous. You’ve had time to think about this. I have nothing prepared to tell you why you were crushworthy.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Ronan said, quickly. “Tell me about the crush you had on Parrish, instead.”

Gansey sat up straight, very much feeling like he’d received a rowing oar to the face. “Did I have a crush on Parrish?”

Ronan snorted, cruel yet fond. “Of fucking course you had a crush on Parrish. Everyone with eyes and a brain has had a crush on Parrish.”

Gansey frowned but remembered again the inappropriate sex dreams. Then he blushed. Then he conceded. “I suppose you make valid points.”

Ronan laughed. “Did you get butterflies the first time he helped you fix the Pig?”

Gansey hummed, getting a little lost in the memory, before jerking back. “Oh. Have I been a little stupid about this?”

Ronan snorted again, the sound 100% joy this time. “Yeah, man. But that’s okay. No one can know everything.”

When Gansey was slated to present his own “straight talk” to the class weeks later, he was prepared. Not ready. Not comfortable. But prepared.

“Hello,” Gansey started, his politician’s-son smile on. “My name is Richard Campbell Gansey III, but I go by Gansey. The legacy in my family, so aptly captured by my name, has never been something I was comfortable with.”

Gansey watched a few faces around the room nod. Expressing that they saw him, they understood what he was saying, and they accepted it.

It gave him the strength to continue. He smiled a bit more easily this time.

“It feels overly boastful to list the ways for which I have privilege in this world – it was something I was never brought up to put a name to for fear of coming off ungracious or pompous. But putting a name to something is the first step to breaking down the social structures that put people like me so far ahead simply by the state in which I was born. So just because it makes me uncomfortable, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say it. I only ask that as I go down my list, you all don’t hate me too much.”

That got a few laughs. Gansey sighed a bit in relief before steeling himself.

“I’m white. White Anglo Saxon Protestant, which is rather ironic as I’m deathly allergic to wasps.” Another laugh. Gansey took another breath. “I come from a wealthy family: what some call old Virginia money. I’ve never wanted for anything. I am cis, I am male, I am able-bodied – save my poor eyesight and previously mentioned bee and wasp allergy. Access to care for eyes and allergy has never been a problem, though, because of the aforementioned wealth. I’ve been able to go through my life relatively normally because of the wealth and despite what otherwise might be debilitating conditions.”

The bee allergy had killed him, once, but Gansey wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to get into that in this setting.

“I have a girlfriend, so I am straight passing,” Gansey continued, swallowing. “And, until very recently, I thought I was straight.”

He lifted his eyes to the class, hoping some of them were remembering his questions to Storm on the first day. Storm themself wasn’t there but Gansey pictured them in his mind as he continued.

“Learning about demisexuality has opened some things up for me,” he confessed. “I spoke to my girlfriend and to some friends from high school who are queer themselves and who I only recently realized I had had crushes on. They all think it’s extremely funny, telling me I was terrible at hiding it. And they’re all very excited to realize this gives us a perfect record of queerness in the friend group.”

More laughs. Students’ faces were very open and friendly. Some were still a bit disdainful – there would be some fights he couldn’t win, some people he would never be able to win over because they had suffered too much by people just like him – but there were people in this class who didn’t visibly hate him. Gansey grinned fully.

“I expect this discovery of identity will continue: probably until I die.” (Again) “And it was challenging to have to restructure my self-perception, but a bit thrilling, too. I thank you all for sharing so much of yourselves with me. I hope I can go forward in this life and take advantage of my outrageous privilege to do right by you.”

He glanced over at the professor, who looked rather stoic, but nodded once, eyes shining in something that looked a little like surprise and a little more like pride.

Gansey looked back to the class and nodded. “Thank you.”

He hoped he could answer questions – from the class and from himself – whenever they came.

[rigelmejo]

lgbt term notes from this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/eaqzbz/how_to_discuss_lgbtqia_issues_in_chinese/

Basics

LGBTQ is universal, so there is no Chinese term for this.

同志 means gay in colloquial Chinese. It also means comrades. So... Comrades = gays @@

男同志 = gay n.

女同志 = leabian n.

Formal terms:

同性戀 = homosexual

異性戀 = heterosexual

雙性戀 = bisexual

泛性戀 = pansexual

無性戀 = asexual

*You can add a 者 to the terms above:

同性戀者 = a homosexual person

異性戀者 = a heterosexual person

Queer does not follow the 者-rule.

酷兒 = queer

彩虹旗 = 🏳️‍🌈 n.

Simplified version for above vocabularies:

Homosexual - 同性恋

Heterosexual - 异性恋

Bisexual - 双性恋

Pansexual - 泛性恋

Asexual - 无性恋

Queer - 酷儿

In addition:

Coming out of the closet - 出柜（quite literally huh）

Lesbian - 蕾丝边 （one of tee ways to say it. The two words just sound alike, yknow)

And 基佬 may be—just may be derogatory, but it’s changing, I think, like the word “queer”.

Some words I use with my friends:

给 - bc its pronounced like “gay”

姐妹 - feminine male gay, bc they have very strong and intimate bonds with their girl friends

Ah yes, tops and bottoms...

A few years ago (and now) people used 攻 for top and 受 for bottom, but now there are two new terms and slang terms that derived from them.

Introducing: 1 and 0. 1 for top and 0 for bottom, ofc. Ya get? Also 0.5 for vers (I hope I spelled that right).

Eg: there is this actor whose name contains 京, and people found a early work of him in which he seeps Bottom Energy. One person captioned a gif as xiǎo jīng líng, which sounds like “little elf”, but the word was actually spelled as 小京零（basically, “the young 京 bottom”) (he is pretty attractive, I’d admit that)

Safe sex is just 安全性爱. Don’t be shy to use this term even when most people bush when saying it. It’s important and should be known and practiced.

Transgender is 跨性别(者), while transsexual is 变性(者/人)

Note: I suggest to say 跨性別 (or even 跨 only in very collegial speech) when you address a transgender. It may be considered offended to say 變性人.