#Gay sex would be less queer than them

[frobby]

If I were to rank who is the gayest in haikyuu 1st place would def be bokuto and akaashi by like miles

[six-of-cringe]

never thought i'd say it. not happy about gay sex

[localgardenweed]

Im on a romance anime addiction rn and like just finished one and OMFG IM GONNA CRY THEY WERE SO FUCKING IN LOVE BRO THEY WERE IN LOVVVEEEE

I can’t fucking believe i almost stayed up all night on a work night to watch Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! A solid 8/10, some parts kinda wanna make me kill myself and some characters got on my nerves, at one point completely dropped till the end, but i felt the pacing was good and didn’t feel super rushed till kinda the end like we could have used another episode or two

Still looking for good wlw anime cause I ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY SUGGESTED WATCHING CITRUS BUT WHEN I READ A SYNOPSIS I LEGIT SCREAMED LIKE NOOOOOO NOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I just want girls who are in love bro and if its doomed so be it man

[leidensygdom]

The ways in which being asexual feels isolating

I've been pondering whether to post this or not, but I figured out I wanted to explain a bit of this experience.

So, I could go on a very long tangent on how being asexual is usually a lonely experience, and how much I've been otherized here and there- Specially in real life. How the same people that claimed to be queer (or allies) had been much weirder about my asexuality than they were about me being bi/pan or whatever.

But I think I wanna talk about how something like that bleeds in every aspect of socializing, even down to something like fandom. I stay away from fandom usually- I like to look at cool fanart and that's about it. I hate discourse, I hate drama, I hate reading people getting worked up because they're treating fanon as canon. But there's one thing I've noticed, over and over, that just sends me off my rails.

And it's how fandom tends to treat asexuality (or aromanticism). So, you get a character in some piece of media that explicitly, unequivocally, states they're either ace, aro, or both. "I do not have interest in a partner", "I don't desire to have sex nor do I enjoy the topic", whatever. And as an ace person, I do appreciate being able to see myself in media- There isn't many chases where something is established that bluntly.

Now, you decide you want to check some fanart for that. Fandoms have this tendency to make absolutely everything about shipping, even when the media they're basing it in does not revolve about that (and it's annoying, because a lot of times people aren't interested in the actual themes- It's all reduced to shipping). Suddenly, you notice people treating the aforementioned character as anything but aro or ace. It's all about shipping. "This person interacted with this other person in a way two friends would, but we gotta make this their entire personality now". Some people may instead go for "well, maybe the character is not having sex, but they're probably an absolute freak about it, studies it extensively, has encyclopedic knowledge about it-"

Now, there's of course sex-favourable aces, and that's completely valid, but it's already straying from what, canonically, the character had mentioned. Asexual or aromantic characters aren't really allowed to exist as themselves. People often see them as a blank slate to fill, to change, to fix. I could talk forever about how people react to real life aces like that. I've had people asking me incredibly invasive questions because they saw my lack of sexual attraction as something broken, something they could fix.

And I hate that! I think I'm allowed to say that I hate that! It's hard and unusual for media to cement an aro/ace character, because they're defined by the lack of interest for something, which is often hard to show. But when it does- No one seems to care. It's all shipping, it's all "well, he's gay in denial", "well, she's probably super repressed". If you took a canonically gay character and made them straight on a fanfic, you'd get angry people. Which is bound to happen when you erase representation that people identify with. But aro/ace characters are NOT even seen as queer, they're not even seen as "representation" by most people. You can erase that bit of it, put some god awful shipping on top, and people will applaud you. And it sucks!

I wish people would see being aro or ace as an identity worth respecting, not an identity that needs overwriting. It feels a bit too close to how people often treat aro/aces irl, and it sucks. It reeks of this sort of exclusionism, where "aro/aces are technically queer but it's queer lite at best, it's less interesting than being gay, and we kinda don't want them near us anyhow". Again, I've had far worse experiences about being ace than I have about not being straight.

Sorry if the post got long, but I hope this experience may at least resonate with other people who have been struggling with this, too. It has always felt just kind of lonely to be ace, and see how little people do even consider it an identity, even when it comes down to something like fandom.

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey sex witch! bit random & unserious question, but what’s up with people saying ‘bottom’ like it’s a funny insult? like. doesn’t someone have to be a bottom in this whole sex thing. or do I just think that bc I’m the bottom here. am I missing something lol

okay I already tried to type this once and the page refreshed and killed it, so fuck me, but:

in many online spaces, especially among mmm younger queer people with less nuanced understandings of sex, top/bottom get conflated with dom/sub (they're extremely different things) and then all four get treated as personality traits instead of sexual preferences.

in this configuring the sub/bottom is often positioned as a flailing, physically frail introvert to their top/dom's competent, physically capable extrovert; if you search "top and bottom bingo" you'll find dozens of deeply cursed results like this one that would suggest that bottoms aren't seeking someone to fuck them so much as a babysitter.

all of which stems from, I guess, the assumption that people who like to get dommed and/or bottom are doing so because they're more passive and less competent than their partners which, again, is a view that generally belays a pretty unrefined grasp of sex and intimacy.

also hey if I can be totally honest. I do think it's a word that some queer people particularly like being able to lob at gay men to suggest that they're effeminate and incompetent without just calling them a faggot, which like. is just unchecked homophobia, btw.

[gatheringbones]

[“Too many of us have chosen to live in sexually ambiguous, sexually boring, sexually dead lesbian relationships because it wasn't safe to talk about desire---desire for cock, desire for pussy, desire for leather, desire for diversity. Exploring my desire for men has led me in an interesting circle---back to my incredible passion for womyn. My queer world will have to stretch (again) to make room for my fantasies, and perhaps even an affair or two. It will have to stretch to make room for whatever I desire.

Finally I realize what I am so afraid of. I am afraid that men and penises have so much power in this heteropatriarchal world that simply desiring one can invalidate 25 years of deep womon-loving. I'm afraid that lesbianism is so fragile that it needs to be protected by an iron fence. I am afraid that by desiring a cock, I will be excommunicated, torn away from the world of womyn. I am afraid that if I allow myself to open, perhaps I will want more. This is why a lesbian wanting a man demands so much courage. Courage to stand outside of identity politics, to insist that our community grow to accept all of us.

My lesbianism is as sure and solid as the Himalayas, as predictable as the seasons and the phases of the moon, as familiar as a womon in my arms ("Wherever I go, there's one thing I know, I'm sure to have a womon around me"). My desire for men is as fleeting as good chocolate and ripe strawberries---not always available, sometimes bitter and disappointing, often intoxicating as nectar, somewhat allergic, and extremely tempting.

I can live with all these desires. I will not compromise myself again. Fitting in is less important than filling out. There is a revolution afoot, and it is stretching the parameters of the old gay life. The hundredth monkey. A friend says, "Oy, I'm not ready for this century." But she is. She is.

Just when I thought I'd made some sense of these desires for men and had come to peace with them, my ex-lover called. The butch who couldn't communicate and who could never fuck me right. She has something to share, something important, something very personal. She has decided to come out as a transgendered person---bi-gendered, s/he calls it. S/he has come to realize that s/he has both a male body and a female body. Hir language may be new, but the experience is familiar.

It was hir male body I always wanted. I'd called it butch. S/he says that when s/he is in hir male body s/he desires men; when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn. In other words, s/he's as queer as a $3 bill.

Suddenly, a fog begins to clear. If I desired hir male body and hir male body desires men, and when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn, then s/he must've wanted me womon to womon (or man to man?), while I wanted hir butch to femme (Dare I say, male to female?). Suddenly our sex problems become very clear.

I always felt hir switch. As I filled with desire, wanting hir hardness, her maleness, s/he would become soft, almost girly, and it was like someone pulled the plug on the bathtub, the desire leaked out of me, leaving me--us--empty.

This starts me thinking about the lover before hir. The one with the sweet curls in her hair, the big round belly, and the soft eyes. The kinky one, where anything goes. She loves my femme self, calls me bitch and desires to fell me with hardness, to force me into submission.

Somehow though, it never quite worked. I am beginning to see what went wrong. This one wanted butch/femme, boy/girl sex, and I wanted lezzie sex. I loved hir female body and wanted to touch her. S/he wanted to give me hir male body. When I tried to touch hir breasts, I was reminding hir that she was a womon and was therefore rejecting her power. The lover s/he picked after me identified as a heterosexual woman (although she too used to be a radical dyke). When my ex-lover told me this new lover wouldn't touch her (after all she did identify as straight), I thought, how terrible, such internalized homophobia. Now I am beginning to understand how, by ignoring the girl body, the boy could feel his power. It got old fast, but for a while it worked, fed the rejected boy place inside.

I began this piece saying I hadn't had a man in 15 years. I am beginning to suspect that I've had many men. They'd called themselves butches.

I suppose none of this makes sense if you just think about biological bodies. These girls definitely had female bodies, tits and ass, and oh, so lovely to touch. But there is no doubt that these womyn have also had dicks. I've never said this out loud before, because dick is a dirty lesbian word. But I have been filled by womyn's dicks, and no, they are not "just" dildos.”]

Lionheart, from wanting men, from genderqueer: voices beyond the binary, edited by Riki wilchins, 2002

[gallusrostromegalus]

How're gonna go about making Chizuru Likeable? I'm guessing she's Tatsuki's ex?

Well. Uh.

I kinda stripped her for parts.

Here's the thing: besides being a pretty homophobic and creepy joke character, Chizuru... Doesn't do much in the plot, and I already have an enormous cast. It was easier to take her best qualities and assign them to other characters.

Chizuru's guts to be an openly queer minor in 1999? Now part of Tatsuki.

Chizuru's joy at finding a deep friendship with Orihime despite kind of being a little freak? A new facet to Rukia's personality.

Chizuru's ability to notice stuff and do plot exposition? Chad.

Chizuru's deep fascination with Tiddies? Hallibel.

Like an organ donor, the concept of Chizuru lives in in everyone else.

Last I checked, all the women in AEIWAM who are interested in sex are some flavor of sapphic because nearly the entire cast is what could be called Bisexual or Asexual. Though using those terms kind of buries the lead that the actual axis of attraction is not sex or gender, or that the asexuality is something much weirder than simple disinterest. I honestly kind of struggle writing characters with conventional sexualities like "gay" or "straight"! All I got is:

Characters who are attracted to one very specific thing regardless of the gender anymore exhibiting that thing might be

Characters whose sexuality is predicated entirely on emotional reciprocation

Characters with a profound sense of sexuality who don't get to express it because of societal bias like fatphobia, or situational factors like being trapped in another dimension

Characters whose sexuality is primarily defined by their trauma, sexual or otherwise.

Characters who don't know themselves well enough to even know why they find someone attractive

Characters that don't have a sexuality per SE, but they have other deeply intense sensory drives they use as sexualities because it's close enough

Characters who are wholesale unfamiliar with the concept of sex or attraction, even as adults

Characters who participate in sexuality because they feel obligated to do so, and end up enjoying it anyway

Characters who are into features that do not normally occur in organic beings

Characters who have sexualities but they're very inconvenient so they intentionally cultivate more advantageous fetishes

Characters whose sexuality is defined less by attraction to individuals so much as how different sex acts would effect the greater group harmony

Characters who are attracted to straight up philosophical concepts.

I seem to have drifted from the original ask.

[twilightcitysky]

This post is less Good Omens- related and more personal, but there's been a lot of arguing over "representation" in the fandom the past few days. The strong feelings people express are awesome but ALSO I really want us in the community to appreciate and listen to one another.

People want to KILL queer people. There are still many, many places where it is not safe to have any identity other than cis het. Fighting that means sticking together, not tearing each OTHER apart. Allosexual, asexual, lesbian, gay, cis, trans, nonbinary, gender queer, GNC... we're all part of this community and we're stronger together.

In Good Omens, Neil Gaiman gave us a glimpse of what a world could be if people got to decide for themselves how to present and who to love without the hate and prejudice that inevitably comes along with that in the real world. I know people are questioning exactly what Crowley and Aziraphale are and how they identify, which is fine (honestly I don't know that we'll ever find out for sure. It may be something private between the two of them). But saying things like "it's homophobic" (for them to be ace), or "it's acephobic" (for them to be gay) sort of defeats the purpose of "it's a love story", doesn't it? At the end of the day, maybe it doesn't matter what EXACTLY they are. They're unapologetically QUEER and their story is for and about all of us.

It's okay to disagree. It's okay to ask questions. I mean, that's the moral of Good Omens, isn't it? We don't have to be the same; we SHOULDN'T all be the same... there's strength and beauty in our differences. But even if we don't all agree with one another, let's support each other.

I see them as gay male coded beings who have chosen that identity for themselves and would enjoy sexual pleasure as much as any other earthly pleasure. If YOU see them as agender or nonbinary sexless entities who are QPR or ace or aroace and would never have sex, I SUPPORT THE HELL OUT OF YOUR RIGHT TO DO SO. I'm in your corner and I will fight for you.

Love you all. Love that we love the ineffable love story of Good Omens, whatever form that takes, and let's lift each other up rather than tearing each other down.

[caassette]

been on tumblr less than a week and already Trans Discourse is on my timeline front page dash...

idk i kind of just feel like...there are actual real threats right now in the world to all trans people, and like. trying to create in-groups and out-groups within the community is the most braindead thing you can do

they are killing us. they want us dead. any time you try to segregate one fraction of the queer community from another, their job gets a little easier. let me give you an example that happened recently in Texas while I was living there:

June 2022: Log Cabin Republican Praises Trump, "Don't Say Gay", Trans Hate

Also June 2022: Texas GOP's New Platform calls gay people "abnormal"

Log Cabin Republicans are essentially gay conservatives. And as part of trying to be accepted, under Trump, they decided trans people were the out-group and that gay people (specifically, white cisgender gay men) were the in-group.

If I had to guess, they probably figured so long as they also pointed the finger at us and called us groomers and said we were fetishists, they would be more accepted in the republican party.

Guess what happened? Not that! Instead, the Texas GOP, in 2022 (Two Thousand And Twenty Two) decided that being gay was once again Not Okay!

This is what I'm getting at: in queer spaces, always, always, there must be solidarity. There is no such thing as someone who is "not gay enough", or "not really trans", or "just looking for attention."

I, myself, am a binary trans woman. My current partner is a genderfluid transmasculine nonbinary person. Do I spend hours talking with them about how they do or don't face certain forms of oppression, or about how their identity is less valid than mine?

Of course not! We kiss and hold hands and fuck and have empathy for each other.

As a queer person it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to be one hundred percent accepting, validating, and encouraging of ALL QUEERNESS, because the second you decide to draw the line, the oppressor wins.

Maybe you're not a Log Cabin Republican. Maybe you're not advocating for trans genocide while being in a same-sex relationship. Maybe you just, idk, use the word "theyfab." Or you think pansexuals should "just call themselves bi."

It doesn't matter that the line you've drawn is farther left, or smaller, or excludes less of the community.

What matters is that you've drawn it at all.

[starnana7]

every time I remember that the hit show supernatural made God, the literal God from the Bible, canonically bisexual but couldn’t do the same with a random guy who hunts monsters it actually makes me feel physically ill.. like blasphemy is okay but we draw the line at making the main character a little bit queer because it would “upset the heterosexuals men”? okay ig… and it’s so funny to me that they tried SO bad to make dean like really really straight and macho and a manly womanizer (I mean dude has literal porn brain and is obsessed with cars and is a film nerd) And still is the number 1 bissexual boy.. I mean no one that into cowboys is 100% straight 🙄 and if they actually wanted him to be that much of a cishet guy WHY would they make him have a codependent homosexual friendship with his best friend for more than a decade ?? and we have so much subtext to corroborates it that it’s actually insane.

and it’s also rlly funny to me that sam would be the most obvious choice for a queer storyline. like i’m not sure this is true but i heard somewhere that he actually was supposed to like be lgbt and that it’s implied in the show he’s pan bc he basically have sex w/ everyone and doesn’t care (like monsters and stuff). i wholeheartedly disagree bc sure he hited a demon and a werewolf and a kitsune and God knows what more But it still were just women and for me he’s still just straight 💀 we do have gabriel however and i would say that’s a valid argument but i don’t actually like them together because of the whole torturing-sam-every-tuesday-over-and-over-again but it’s still a good take ig. again this is just my opinion But anyways doesn’t matter my point Is that sam always felt like a freak and wanted to be normal and like was more open minded and “less-macho-toxic-behavior” than dean. he was a theater kid and talked about his feelings and all. STILL THO dean went and become The bissexual icon (Not Sam, Dean!!). and the fact that he was more manly actually only emphasized to his sexuality (and him being closeted) and sam being the straight one, and bare with me here. as sam winchester once wisely said “well you are kind of butch they probably think you're compinsating.” (to dean asking why people always assumed they were gay) and like this is so true, sam always felt comfortable in himself and like his nerdier and less cool strong man personality. But dean, oh, dean, no, no, no. and it could all be linked to john. we know how much dean wanted to gain his father approval and respect, all he ever wanted was for john to be proud of him. so he’d listen to the same music as john, same clothes… and so on. but when we really see a glance of him, we realize he’s actually much more “““girly””” (sorry for the term i lacked a better one) than he shows, Especially when compared to sam—who’s supposed to be the more girly one (again sorry for the term lol) or whatever. dean canonically likes taylor swift, chick flick films, actually liked when a woman made him wear underwear, the bailarinas shoe were “speaking to him” in that one ep of cursed objects, and so on. and every time he makes fun of sam for doing something not-manly-enough (like drinking lemon water or drinking from tiny coups) he eventually goes and do the same thing 😭 and i’m 100% sure that the writers just thought “haha funny scene this really straight deadly man does something not so convencional/more feminine(?) haha comedy relief time!!” but it actually just made him have a whole perfect queer background developed in the series. specially with the fact that He Does Overcompensate. why is he always flirting with women, why is he so butch and scary, always talking about straight sex and so on? because he’s really just deep in the closet. and it makes so much sense with john being his father, with him having to hunt two lesbians nuns in his 17 bday, always having to be strong and macho and cool and perfect—and therefore straight. even without cas, dean really does immaculate the bissexual experience and i’m so sorry but this is just true.

and now pointing to the subtext that i mentioned in the first paragraph (lol i can’t believe i’m making a whole rant as to why dean winchester is a confirmed bisexual), that whole confession to that priest where he says he wants experience new feelings, new people, FOR THE FIRST TIME. that always that the show mentioned a gay couple it ALWAYS focused on dean—not sam, DEAN. the gay hunters, the gay couple on the bar that the cupid “made”, the two cosplayers partners… the fact that every time that dean liked something it was borderline fangirl (gay) obsessive (the dr. sexy episode, that wrestler fighter). he Had a gay thing—and was all flustered about it. he flirted with a guy throughout charlie. THE MALE SIREN. the male siren like after that ep i was 100% convinced that man was not straight. he had a hot demon sumer with crowley?!!! and it’s so funny to me that not one of these things involves castiel, so if they really wanted to make dean be that straight why would they do that?? and only to dean, not even once to sam. Like. and not to mention all the homoeretic tension with benny??? sam never had a male best friend like that.. all of that and i didn’t even entered on destiel. Because this then really just confirms that he is Not straight. even if he wasn’t In Love with cas, they had something going on and the fact that if cas was a girl it would 100% be canon and filmed and Everyone would ship—and I really mean everyone—it just makes me go fucking insane. they could’ve had it all. the fanfic episodes, the parallels between dean and cas and “real couples”, ruby and cas duality and the fact that sam indeed had a relationship w/ her. Anyway i’m a # bi dean truth believer and i know this bc same boy # happy pride month to my fav bissexual boy in the whole world

also to anyone that says that “destiel” was unrequited love yes it kinda of was but only bc dean was so deep in the closet, he did love cas. he was indeed a bissexual man. i’ll die on that hill.

[unfortunate17]

i agree with you about being frustrated with how often this fandom has top/bottom discussions but its a pretty common talking point in most fandoms so YR isn’t special for that

No I totally agree with you that it’s a common topic of discussion in a lot of fandoms, but there’s a particular way we have it in this fandom that really grinds my gears.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if you hc Wilmon to be vers or if you think Wille tops or Simon tops or whatever - it’s the justification and reasoning that I’m seeing behind these headcanons that I find deeply irritating and, frankly, insulting and kind of homophobic.

This is going to get long so forgive me.

1. I’ve seen so many posts talk about how the show is “brave” and “subversive” by having Wille go down on Simon or potentially bottom, but like - what the hell are we even talking about? In what world is it subversive to show a queer character having queer sex?? What are we subverting?? This show has never shown us anything with its intimate scenes other than two guys that are deeply in love and really horny for eachother and I hate that we keep bringing this shit up!!!

2. I’ve also seen people say that it was very important for us to see Wille moving to go down on Simon in the tape in S1 because it’s “more damning evidence that he’s queer” and otherwise Wille could’ve just said he was horny and desperate but he was actually imagining he was with a girl in his denial statement. But be so fucking forreal, in what world is that a thing he could argue in an official statement to the press? He’d be the laughing stock of the world.

Wilhelm isn’t more or less gay because he went down on Simon vs the other way around. He’d still be having queer sex because he’s having sex with another guy. Arguing that the framing here is for anything other than a plot device so Wille’s face wouldn’t be visible to set up the denial is actually kind of ridiculous.

As someone very smart on here said, “I’m sorry that you apparently have a tier list of sex acts ranging from “kinda straight” to “Gaylord” 😭😭 get well soon, couldn’t be me.”

Imagine for one second Simon was the one giving Wille head? Would you have criticized the show for that?? And WHY?!

3. Next: saying that Wilmon’s relationship is “equal” because you think they’re vers is…a take and a half lmao. What the fuck does being vers have to do with a relationship being equal?? Why are we assigning arbitrary hierarchies to sexual preferences??? Why are we implying that topping and bottoming are somehow not equal and you have to carefully balance both, when, ideally, it’s just whatever the fuck everyone is into???

Wille isn’t selfish for topping. Simon isn’t sacrificing anything by bottoming. They’re fucking because they’re in love and they want to 😭

TLDR: Wille doesn’t suck Simon’s dick for class liberation. Simon riding Wille isn’t a commentary on how he’s “girl-coded.” It’s just sex, leave them alone to have a good time and stop assigning agendas to queer sex.

[hondafuckingodyssey]

I love the way that even though there was some level of queer baiting and censoring being done by Disney, nobody fucking cares and we're counting this as the gayest fucking marvel movie ever and a total win for the gays. (At least I am.)

Like, arguably, if they had just put in a gay kiss or let them make out in the Honda Odyssey, it would have turned out less gay.

Because they had to disguise a sex scene as a car fight it turned it into some sort of five dimensional chess version of queer coding and it somehow turned out more gay than gay sex.

Like, I'm not even mad about it.

If you strike us down Disney, we shall become more powerful gay than you can possibly imagine.

So, like keep up the good work I guess?

Sometimes I worry that the day will come when we don't get these queer coded masterpieces and things will just be plain queer. And I mean, that'll be a great day for LGBT rights and all, but I'll kinda miss this madness.

[nevertheless-moving]

“The other day,” Skar added, “he was talking about what he’s doing there. It sounded an awful lot like he was learning how to read.” The men shifted uncomfortably. “So?” Kaladin asked. “What’s the problem? Sigzil can read his own language. Storms, I can read glyphs.” “It’s not the same,” Skar said. “It’s feminine,” Drehy added. “Drehy,” Kaladin said, “you are literally courting a man.” “So?” Drehy said. “Yeah, what are you saying, Kal?” Skar snapped. “Nothing! I just thought Drehy might empathize.…” “That’s hardly fair,” Drehy said. “Yeah,” Lopen added. “Drehy likes other guys. That’s like … he wants to be even less around women than the rest of us. It’s the opposite of feminine. He is, you could say, extra manly.”

Different possible explanations for this scene, to be taken up depending on which headcanon would be the funniest for a given fic:

While being gay is more broadly acceptable than being unmanly, conflating gender roles with sexuality is not uncommon; the other guys have just gotten more than one drunken lecture from Drehy about how he hates being treated womanly just because he likes dick. Kaladin was obviously working those nights.

Under Vorinism, Gender roles are rigid, but a range of sexualities are perfectly fine. The ardent who visited Kaladin's hometown was just a freak who hated gay people so much it was unreal, and took great pains to explain to the boys of this isolated rural town the unhinged idea that marrying a man was OBVIOUSLY womanly and therefore Bad. He mostly unlearned that shit after joining the army but is a bit confused. It doesn't come up often.

There was one (1) elderly queer couple in heartstone growing up, and one of the men was super gnc, which made people uncomfortable but his parents always told him that you shouldn't shame people for harmless joy. so, yeah, Kaladin just sort of figured that in a relationship between guys, one of them is the woman. He assumes Renarin is gay and I mean. He's not wrong. Part of the reason he never accepted friendly offers of soldier companionship. Not that there's anything wrong with it. He never asked Drehy who was who, because its none of his business and he didn't want to know.

the only times Kaladin has personally ever noticed being attracted to another man is when the guy was doing something womanly. Is it a kink? Is it an extremely dense man needing someone to stand on top of clearly marked social signposts and wave their arms for him to even register them as a sexual being? who knows! not Kaladin! he doesn't have time to unpack any of that. anyway he assumed that all same sex attraction worked the same way and obviously never actually talked about it with a living person. actually I'm expanding this to cover all of Kaladin's sexuality just to make him extra stupid. first time he noticed Tarah was when she punched a dude.

[smytherines]

I often wonder if I would feel differently about The Staircase Scene if I had seen SAF when it first came out in 2016. The first time I saw it was probably around October or November of 2023, and like... the context is different now.

Whatever we want to say about the personal story arcs of these characters (and I know I'm in a tiny minority because, for me, killing Owen does not constitute a satisfying close to Curt's arc, that's totally fine), there is the very real issue of the sociopolitical context that this scene takes place within- both in their time (1961) and in ours.

One very cool thing about SAF is that, in order to understand these characters better, a lot of younger queer folks end up learning about the Lavender Scare, about Executive Order 10450- which officially prohibited gay people from working for the US government- for the first time. That's an incredible, precious thing to me. Yay queer history! It's important!

The show itself never addresses the fact that both the US and UK governments had very public, very brutal campaigns equating homosexuality with communism with being a traitor to your country. But if you want to understand these characters, and especially write fanfiction, you're really incentivized to teach yourself some fundamentally important aspects of queer history.

In the 54 Below concert, before singing Not So Bad, Brian Rosenthal talks about how when they were developing the show they thought N@zis were more or less a thing of the past, that they're fully aware of how differently that song might be taken now after an escalation into a more open embrace of fascism in the US. And they're absolutely right about that.

But I think that's also perhaps an issue with the staircase scene, or at least it is for me. Obviously homophobia and transphobia were not "fixed" in 2016, they were still massive problems resulting in violence and discrimination and brutality. But institutionally, at least, you could look at the situation and point to some things that were gradually getting better.

In 2016 trans youth in my state were legally allowed to receive gender affirming care. In 2024, they are not. It's not that homophobia and transphobia went away and then came back, but there was a very real resurgence of the use of the media and of governmental power to inflict pain on queer & trans people and chase them out of public life- bathroom bans, gender affirming care bans, Don't Say Gay laws, trying to make drag illegal, equating queer and trans people with pedophilia. There has been a big cultural shift back towards the same kind of violent governmental moral panic that our beloved Curt & Owen would have lived under.

Whatever we want to say about these characters and this story (and there's tons of fascinating debate there), there is still the base of a gay man killing his ex-lover ostensibly to protect US foreign policy objectives. Killing the man he loves- or loved, at least- to protect the secret that he is gay. And that hits different for me now.

I watch that scene and it is heartbreaking on a personal level, but its also heartbreaking as a queer person who just wants to scream "your government will destroy you for being gay, you don't owe them shit!"

Owen tries to explain that the surveillance network is happening, that the future won't wait for Curt to catch up. Barb has been saying she's working on the same thing for the US government the entire show, but Curt just kept ignoring her. And I just want to say "Curt, honey, what do you think your government is going to do to you with that surveillance system? Do you think you're useful enough to keep around even though you have sex with men? Because I promise you they will not care."

It feels tragic to me because on some level it seems like Curt would actually be safer with another gay man having control of all the world's secrets than he will be if the government he has dedicated his life to gets their hands on that same technology.

And the thing is, having a tragic ending doesn't make the show bad. This show is great. This scene is spectacular. It makes you think, it makes you feel things, it does all the stuff that great art is supposed to do. Absolutely none of what I'm saying here is meant to denigrate the show as a musical or a story or even a queer story. I hope it doesn't come off as me saying "actually this show is bad," because I don't feel that way at all.

Clearly I live and breathe this show. That's why I spend all my time on here analyzing every scene, every frame, every facial expression. I love this show so much that I can't help but deconstruct it and look at all its component parts- including the sociopolitical context both now and in 1961. Because that context, despite never being explicitly mentioned, is important to our understanding of these characters.

I love these characters so much that it's actually pretty difficult for me to watch A2P7 anymore, because the staircase scene is so emotionally devastating to me that it's hard to try to swing back into that more comedic tone (even though Spy Dance is a certified bop).

I'm not even sure what my point is with all of this, other than to say that Spies Are Forever is a show that is great and fun and funny as written/performed, and becomes gradually more emotionally devastating when you rewatch it or when you understand the subtext of it. When you can engage with the themes of gender and sexuality, surveillance and technology, trauma and trust, and tease out even more satisfying theories around this show.

So yeah. It's a musical. It's about spies.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Only Friends, Boston, and Queer Culture

I wanted to talk a little bit about an observation that I made about Boston and how he acquires sex partners (i.e. who he picks up, how he picks them up, where he picks them up, and where he chooses to have sex). Now, again, we are only two episodes in so I will not presume to make a pattern of anything quite yet, and I am looking forward to seeing how my current observations shift in light of any new information coming out of future episodes. But, it was notable to me that the only times Boston has been seen actively pursuing a second sexual encounter with someone is either in public spaces or after he has had sex with them in public.

Because Boston is very sexual, we actually have a lot of data points on him already, (and will likely get many more, seeing as Boston has been in 5 out of 7 of the heavy makeout/sex scenes in the show so far). What we have seen so far is a one night stand with Drake’s character after Boston is picked up at a bar and brought back to unnamed-Drake-character’s apartment; Boston returning for a second and third sexual encounter with Nick after he and Nick fuck for the first time in the cellphone repair shop; and Boston openly flirting with and trying to tempt Top in to sex in exclusively public spaces.

Cruising 

What is Cruising and Why is it Important? 

Photograph by Steven Barker

I realize that there are many people here who may be unfamiliar with the term/concept of ‘cruising’. As a self-defined “baby gay” there are many terms that came out of the past decades’ queer culture that I was and am personally unfamiliar with. As such, I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with the terminology. “Cruising” is a code-word/gay slang that refers to an individual or individuals ‘walking or driving around a locality, called a cruising ground, in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one time variety’ (Wikipedia). 

In her essay Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism, Jody Ahlm (then PhD candidate, now Dr.) states the following: “Cruising traditionally occurs in bars, clubs, or public spaces such as parks and public restrooms where men generally signal sexual interest in another man through established non-verbal signals (Be ́rube ́, 1996; Delany, 1999; Humphreys and Rainwater, 1975; Tewksbury, 2002).”

For the sake of simplicity, cruising is a term applied to the action of (usually, but not exclusively) gay men seeking out casual sex in public spaces. 

Cruising is and was an important aspect of queer culture, for a number of different reasons. “Tearooms” or private public spaces that were adapted to accommodate gay sex (public bathrooms, for example). While a benefit of tearooms was instantaneous sex, a much more important and notable aspect of tearooms was who in the queer community was frequenting these cruising locations

Of the bar crowd in gay (homosexual) society, only a small percentage would be found in park restrooms. But this more overt, gay bar clientele constitutes a minor part of those in any American city who follow a predominantly homosexual pattern. The so-called closet queens and other types of covert deviants make up the vast majority of those who engage in homosexual acts- and these are the persons most attracted to tearoom encounters…It may be more surprising for the outside to discover that most of these [tearoom participants] are married. Indeed, 54 percent of my research subjects are married and living with their wives. (Tearoom Trade, Laud Humphreys, 1970)

In short, cruising and cruising locations are important to ensuring that men who have sex with men (MSM) who are closeted, married, or do not frequent bars, have an opportunity to engage in sex with other men. (Tradition of sex cruising at Aquatic Park to end. John Geluardi, 2001)

How Cruising has Changed Over Time 

Overall, cruising is a lot less popular now than it was in the 1960s and 1980s, in part due to the AIDs epidemic and concerns of HIV transmission (Ahlm, 2017). Ahlm’s essay argues that the AIDS epidemic “initiated a trend toward monogamy among gay men” and that apps like Grindr have shifted the landscape of sexual interest and politics towards a “contested cultural space where publicness and privateness co-exist, creating tensions for self-presentation that are structured by contemporary sexual politics.”

Sociologists have identified a shifting in cruising culture from public, in-person spaces to private, online spaces. In her research, Ahlm noted that none of her subjects who used Grinder reported engaging in public or semi-public sex or being asked to engage in public or semi-public sex by another person. So we are seeing the landscape of where and how gay men engage in sex shift ever increasingly towards private spaces. We can ask ourselves why that may be: 

Dalton (black/mixed,5 28) says,”People like to maintain a certain image of themselves, and everybody wants to appear chaste but desirable at the same time, and whatever. People will say ‘‘Oh you’re going on there and you’re trying to do that [find sex], I just talk to people and I never do anything.’’ I’m like ‘‘Sure, right’’ [sarcastic tone].” The multiplicity of intentions on Grindr allows for plausible denial of promiscuity, while the app’s reputation requires constant management of the stigma in order for that denial to be plausible. Like the majority of users, Dalton’s profile says he is on the app for ‘‘Friends, Chat, Networking.’’ However, sexual interaction is the goal of his in-person meetings, and he only chats with people he finds attractive and would potentially like to have sex with. This contradiction between stated intentions and actual use is not unique to Dalton’s Grindr use, it is the rule rather than the exception (Ahlm, 2017)

While privacy can be a valued aspect of people’s personal life experiences, shifting cruising culture to major online spaces designed specifically for gay people, and having sex with people who connect across mobile apps, is contributing to respectability politics: 

Shifting cruising to private spaces—both actual sex acts and the practices associated with finding a sexual partner in a public space, furthers the sanitation of gay physical spaces. Users can meet sexual partners without ever leaving home, and public gay spaces become sites for platonic socializing. Gay men go to the bars with their friends to hang out, not to cruise…The performance of cruising is desexualized by the plausible deniability of using a phone app and the plausible deniability of Grindr itself, as discussed earlier. It is not just public sex that is disappearing, so too is the public pursuit of sex. This is not to say that gay bars have been completely desexualized…However, as Orne (2016) shows in his ethnography of Chicago’s Boystown, they are the cultural markers that make the neighborhood a popular place for bachelorette parties ‘‘on safari’’. They are not the same as a visible collective practice of searching for and choosing a sexual partner for the night, regardless of where the sex occurs later. (Ahlm, 2017)

TL;DR: The act of looking for sex partners and engaging in public or semi-public sex as a result (“cruising”) has been steadily phasing out as a practice in gay culture, heading towards more private sexual encounters with sex partners who meet on mobile apps, ultimately resulting in a sanitized image and partial desexualization of gay spaces/bars.

Boston’s Cruising Habits 

When I was reading that Ahlm piece, I could not help but think about our very first introduction to the characters of Only Friends in Episode 1. The show opens at a gay bar, we go around listening to Mew’s descriptions of what archetypes his friends fit in to, at which point we learn that everyone in attendance at the bar that particular evening are wearing wristbands indicating their availability to be hit on. Which is making me feel like Jojo and co. (Ninew, Den, the rest of the writing crew) are placing their characters in a past gay culture, giving them an opportunity to return to roots of public cruising. Not every character will engage in such activities, but we know for a fact that Boston and Top are cruising in some capacity from the outset of the show (Boston trying to talk his way into a threesome with Bar Stranger #1, Boston getting picked up by Bar Stranger #2 [aka unnamed-Drake-character], Top striking up conversation with Mew after Mew bumps into him), and with the direct references Jojo and co. are making to Queer As Folk (UK) (1999) if the goal of Only Friends is to highlight queer culture, I would not be surprised. 

While we are only two episodes in at the time I am writing this, it was intriguing to me that Boston appears to be one of the few characters engaging in more traditional cruising culture. It is clear that most of the main characters frequent Yo’s bar, though it appears the friend group uses the space more as a place to hang out with one another, rather than a space to cruise. All except for “The Hunter”, Boston, who is seen constantly attempting to pick up, or being picked up by other queer men in a bar setting. We know that Top also frequents the bar, and we have not as of yet seen him with any other friends, so we can presume that Top spends his time at Yo’s bar cruising as well (based on the fact that he has slept with Boston and he did hit on Mew at the bar, but we don’t have any definitive evidence of that yet because we don’t know how Top and Boston met, and Top has only actively been pursuing Mew thus far). 

A trend I saw in the first two episodes when it comes to Boston that I find particularly noteworthy (aka, is a trend I want to track as the show progresses to see if that trend continues), is that Boston is only ever repeating sex with people who engaged in public sex with him in the first place. From flashbacks we see Top and Boston making out in a photobooth, an implication there that Top and Boston then fucked in the photobooth since “once was enough” for Top and Boston. The first time that Boston and Nick fuck, they do so in the aisle of the cellphone repair shop. Nick may turn off the lights, but that does not negate the fact that there is a chance that Boston and Nick may be walked in on and caught by an unassuming customer. When Boston hits on Top, it is in a public space: the bathrooms of Yo’s bar, when Boston attempts to initiate a second sexual encounter with Top, it again is in a public space: the locker room/showers at the wakeboarding place.

Public Sex, Photography, and Brewing Thoughts about Boston 

Image by @nongnaopat

While I was reading up on cruising, I came across a couple articles with quotes and observations that immediately made me think of Boston, and a question started brewing in my mind: 

Is Boston a physical manifestation of the queer hookup cultures 60s-80s? 

Boston’s Personality v. Public Sex

Again, we have only seen two episodes of Only Friends so I am not yet secure in my own interpretations of Boston. However, I was thinking about the conversations that occurred the other day about how Boston must exert control over others (@respectthepetty), and how he is ready and willing to meddle in Mew’s life by trying to seduce Top, but that there is noticeable fear and slight panic at the thought that Mew might catch him and Top together in the shower (@stuffnonsenseandotherthings).

There was something that just spoke to me so strongly about Boston’s character archetypes in relation to the conversations brought up in Chapter 6: Tearoom Trade: Tales of Public Sex of the book Marginal People in Deviant Places: Ethnography, Difference, and the Challenge to Scientific Racism by Janice M. Irvine. 

In this chapter, Irvine discusses the essay Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Spaces written by Laud Humphreys. Within this chapter, Irvine states “Humphreys argued that tearoom participants varied in vulnerability to risk of exposure. He noted that married men and men who did not have career autonomy were highly vulnerable to negative consequences if discovered in the tearooms.” (Note: my understanding of “tearooms” from this reading is that they are public restrooms that have been transformed to better support instant sex, i.e. a broken window for a lookout, glory holes, walls removed between stalls, etc.) While an assumption could be made that vulnerable men would not engage in public sex, that assumption does not carry through to reality. Humphreys further claims that highly vulnerable men did still engage in public sex via tearoom visits, but they employed protective strategies to mitigate any suspicion of their queerness, often a hypermoral one. 

I know “hypermoral” is not a term that anyone who has observed Boston for more than twenty seconds would really attribute to his character, but what did speak to me is what Humphreys says about the strategies employed by the highly vulnerable: 

The secret offender may well believe he is more righteous than the next man—hence his shock and outrage, his disbelieving indignation, when he is discovered and discredited…Subjected to harsh social condemnation and legal penalties, the tearoom participant was likely to turn his anger and hatred on himself or others in his group. “Worse yet,” Humphreys argued, “he may justify himself by degrading others, displacing his hostility onto outgroups in the manner of the authoritarian personality.” (Irvine, 2022)

Now which Only Friend character are we thinking of based on the quote above? 

“Hence his shock…when he is discovered…” 

“The tearoom participant was likely to turn his anger and hatred on himself or others in his group” 

“He may justify himself by degrading others”

One thing we do know about Boston is that he currently does not have career autonomy. He wants to be a photographer, but he is studying business because he may have to take over his father’s company (YouTube: Only Friends, Episode 2, Part 2/4, timestamp: 2:27). How much that pressure is really on him and how highly vulnerable Boston may be if caught engaging in gay, public sex remains to be seen, but to me it is worth noting. A research question to be asked: Why does Boston act the way he does? Is he vulnerable in some way and trying to compensate for it, or is just genuinely an asshole? Not sure, but I look forward to finding out. 

An additional similarity that immediately came to mind in my readings and their relation to Boston was a reference to Rechy and his writings about male hustlers: 

Rechy wrote about how male hustlers selling sex navigated the toilets. He cited the norms of the sexual marketplace with sociological precision: “Stand at the urinal long after youre [sic] through pissing. At the slightest indication of interest from someone in one of the cubicles, go up to him quickly before he gets any free ideas and say: ‘I’ll make it with you for twenty.’ (Irvine, 2022)

Boston is not a sex worker, he is not asking to be paid for his time, but the way he approaches Top in the bar bathroom to try to prompt a second sexual encounter does allude to the hustler culture. Top is standing at the urinal when Boston approaches

He strikes up conversation with Top who only really seems to be partially engaged, Top walks away from the urinal to wash his hands, Boston follows, placing his hands around Top’s, trying to proposition sex, appealing to their supposedly similar approaches to sex.

This is not a direct comparison to be sure, but I just wanted to mention it because it felt similar enough to be a reference. This reminded me too of the nod Jojo and Ninew had to gay male sexual culture in The Warp Effect when Alex has his shoulders massaged by a random patron propositioning sex at Jedi’s bar while he is standing at the urinals. Or to the more direct reference to cruising that Jojo and Aof put in to the character of Arm in Gay OK Bangkok, or Army in The Warp Effect (two pieces which I will continue to say are required viewings before [or at this point in conjunction with] Only Friends). 

Boston’s Interest in Photography v. Public Sex Debates

Another aspect of Boston’s character that feels relevant to previous queer culture is his interest in photography itself, because photography has its own ties to tearooms and public sex. 

In 1964, The Florida Legislative Investigative Committee “published a pamphlet that featured an explicit photograph of a man engaged in a sex act in a public restroom. The report, dubbed “the purple pamphlet,” was intended to shock readers and mobilize antigay repression.” (Irvine, 2022). 

As a warning I am about to cite a pretty big chunk of text, but it is important information: 

Photography became one of several technologies police and moral entrepreneurs used to observe and produce evidence of sexual deviance. Yet photographic surveillance could also be subverted. After the tearoom photograph was published in the 1964 Homosexuality and Citizenship brochure, conservatives attacked it as pornographic. The committee quickly removed it from the report, but the photograph was reprinted and vigorously marketed by Guild Press, a publisher of homoerotic materials. Gay pulp publishing was growing by 1964, and Guild Press, established in 1962, was no doubt gleeful to find and market this photograph. The Guild advertisement pointed out that this was the only “action photo” of a glory hole scene that had ever been in print, and as historian Thomas Waugh noted, “the glory hole photo became famous.”23 The “purple pamphlet” and its widespread dissemination was an early case of how social and religious conservatives played a significant role in making visible the sexual representation that they condemned. (Irvine, 2022)

Thinking about Boston and his interest in photography, we can notice another potential link to queer culture. Going in to Boston’s darkroom, we see a number of photographs on his wall of hot men in various stages of undress. With the preceding scene of Boston taking a photo of Nick after they fuck establishing some context, we can make some quick assumptions about who those men are to Boston and what was occurring prior to the photo being taken. 

Even within two episodes of Only Friends the camera has almost served as an additional character, bringing us in to the private-public spaces we aren’t supposed to witness. In a conversation I was having with @waitmyturtles, she made the absolutely brilliant point: “the camera of the show is messing around with what we perceive as privacy”. 

Sure Boston is making sexual advances on Top in the showers of a public locker room, but no one is supposed to know that, at least no one who could be actually, emotionally impacted by catching Top and Boston together. We see it, but we aren’t supposed to. 

But I want to move beyond the show’s actual camera to briefly touch upon the other cameras we have seen alluded to on screen so far. Kudos to whoever it was on tumblr that took the screen shots of the hook up between Neo and Drake and pointed out the web camera that was sitting at the top of the computer monitor. Now, we have absolutely no idea if that is relevant at all to future plot lines, if the web cam was on, or if any part of that sexual encounter will come back to haunt Boston. But I think it is worth mentioning the very real and easy possibility that the web cam could have been recording the room (whether it actually was or not). In this way, Boston is playing with fire around what aspects of himself and his sexuality are captured on a screen. 

When Boston and Nick hook up for the first time in the cellphone repair shop, Boston stops the make out session long enough to look around. No, not around, up. Up to the ceilings as if he is scanning the room for possible cameras. Again, we don’t know for sure if a) there are cameras there, b) if that is relevant at all to future plot lines or c) if that really was what Boston was doing. But either way, Nick catches on to Boston’s scanning of the room, and turns off the light so that they can’t be seen. 

In both of these cases, whether the cameras exist, are on, recording, or saving any information is not fully the point. The point I am trying to make here is that there are constantly opportunities to have gay sex be captured, and whether or not it is comes down sometimes to shit dumb luck.

Conclusion

gif by @maxescheibechlinichacheli

I am so fascinated by Boston’s character, just thinking about the ways he does and does not fit in to the archetypes of a highly vulnerable tearoom participant: in his interest being in photography, capturing the images of queer men post-coitus, in the way he approaches Top at the urinal trying to entice him in to sex, in the ways he engages with and thinks of other people, and I am very much looking forward to seeing if this trend continues or diverges. For instance, will we see a drastically different side of Boston if we see more of how he interacts with professors in school considering that the one time that he was really quiet and reserved was during the presentation in front of the entire class? Will Boston fall in to the “public saint/private sinner” dynamic that would root him firmly in behaviors of a highly vulnerable queer man engaging in public sex? Or will he drift away from that alignment? 

Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge that I am a Westerner and I am engaging and interpreting this show and the gay culture in this show through my own Western lens as well as the Western Gay Culture lens. However, I feel comfortable using these lenses to discuss, analyze, and identify threads of interest to follow throughout the show because: 

In 1984, the ‘Boston Bar Study’ conducted by Men of All Colors Together Boston (MACTB) cited numerous examples of widespread discrimination at gay bars in Boston against black men. Similar types of discrimination have also been cited in Los Angeles and New York (Wat, 2002). Even more troubling is that this type of behavior seems to be international as well*anywhere that gay white men come into contact with gay men of color (Ridge, Hee & Minichiello, 1999). One can only imagine how many others never make it into the new stories. Rather than isolated events attributable to racist owners of single bars, the attempt to patrol the borders of whiteness in gay-owned business establishments seems to be a systematic practice (They Don’t Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and Racial Politics of Exclusion, Chong-suk Han, 2007). 

In short, cruising, and discriminatory cruising practices are seen worldwide, and therefore I argue that gay culture in Thailand, while likely not identical, is similar enough to Western gay culture to apply similar frameworks, especially considering the aspects of gay culture Jojo and his co-creators have placed in their past works. 

Sources 

Ahlm, Jody (2017) Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism, Sexualities, DOI: 10.1177/1363460716665783

Chong-suk Han (2007) They Don't Want To Cruise Your Type: Gay

Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion, Social Identities, 13:1, 51-67, DOI:

10.1080/13504630601163379

Humphreys, Laud (1970) Tearoom Trade. 

Irvine, Janice M. (2022) Tearoom Trade: Tales of Public Sex, Marginal People in Deviant Places, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11519906.11

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @neuroticbookworm, @so-much-yet-to-learn, @waitmyturtles for their thought partnership, edits, and suggestions!