#sociology of heterosexuality

[heterorealism]

[rising-above-stars]

this did wonders on tiktok

this was also my final assignment for a sociology paper

[tamaharu]

its not all legally blonde of course - thats just the musical im interested in currently, as well as being an adaptation that brute forces the romance in. romance as a disarming effect can be seen across a bunch of different musicals. which like. cool! romance is fun to watch! it gets people in seats! but if you have a story that pushes against societal norms, but also heavily features romance, its very interesting to see where the distinction between love for a musical for its romance and love for a musical for its message lies. im talking about hadestown btw.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Do you have a list of good sex ed books to read?

BOY DO I

please bear in mind that some of these books are a little old (10+ years) by research standards now, and that even the newer ones are all flawed in some way. the thing about research on human beings, and especially research on something as nebulous and huge as sex, is that people are Always going to miss something or fail to account for every possible experience, and that's just something that we have to accept in good faith. I think all of these books have something interesting to say, but that doesn't mean any of them are the only book you'll ever need.

related to that: it's been A While since I've read some of these so sorry if anything in them has aged poorly (I don't THINK SO but like, I was not as discerning a reader when I was 19) but I am still including them as books that have been important to my personal journey as a sex educator.

additionally, a caveat that very few of these books are, like, instructional sex ed books in the sense of like "here's how the penis works, here's where the clit is, etc." those books exist and they're great but they're also not very interesting to me; my studies on sex are much more in the social aspect (shout out to my sociology degree) and the way people learn to think about sex and societal factors that shape those trends. these books reflect that. I would genuinely love to have the time to check out some 101 books to see how they fare, but alas - sex ed is not my day job and I don't have the time to dedicate to that, so it happens slowly when it happens at all. I've been meaning to read Dr. Gunter's Vagina Bible since it came out in 2019, for fucks sake.

and finally an acknowledgement that this is a fairly white list, which has as much to do with biases with academia and publishing as my own unchecked biases especially early in my academic career and the limitations of my university library.

ANYWAY here's some books about sex that have been influential/informative to me in one way or another:

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)

Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (Laura M. Carpenter, 2005)

Virgin: The Untouched History (Hanne Blank, 2007)

Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education Before the 1960s (Susan K. Freeman, 2008)

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Mary Roach, 2008)

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (Revised Edition) (Susan Stryker, 2008)

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (Jessica Valenti, 2009)

Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (Amy T. Schalet, 2011)

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Hanne Blank, 2012)

Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships (Meg-John Barker, 2013)

The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Realities (Rachel Hills, 2015)

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Tranform Your Sex Life (Emily Nagoski, 2015)

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (Jane Ward, 2015)

Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Jonathan Zimmerman, 2015)

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus (Lisa Wade, 2017)

Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (Hallie Lieberman, 2017)

Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2018)

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights (Juno Mac and Molly Smith, 2018)

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen, 2020)

Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (Kim Gallon, 2020)

A Curious History of Sex (Kate Lister, 2020)

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity (Peggy Orenstein, 2020)

Black Women, Black Love: America's War on Africa American Marriage (Dianne M. Stewart, 2020)

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (Jane Ward, 2020)

Hurts So Good: The Science and Pleasure of Pain on Purpose (Leigh Cowart, 2021)

Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs (Ina Park, 2021)

The Right to Sex: Feminist in the Twenty-First Century (Amia Srinivasan, 2021)

Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (Eric C. Wat, 2021)

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg, 2023)

[genderkoolaid]

curious if you have any thoughts on the moral panic of “porn addiction”

this ask is 100% inspired by an argument im currently having in the notes of your post about booktok smut (someone gave me the link to a southern baptist lobbying group as proof that porn causes brain damage and i am just. in awe)

& I hope you know how much I value your efforts <3

In my first ever sociology class my teacher showed us a documentary on porn addiction. He was otherwise a cool guy, but leaned radical feminist and it really showed in that unit. The doc starts with a little white child playing on a playground, which was just absurdly emotionally manipulative to me. & throughout the documentary the "experts" were all people who financially benefited from the idea of porn addiction (sex therapists, book authors), they said blatantly incorrect information, and never once explained to the audience the controversy surrounding the term or showcase the opinions of sex workers or people engaged in BDSM and kink.

This is all to say that my experience with porn addiction has been that its often discussed by earnest people with genuine concerns, but the way it is conceptualized and understood is shaped by anti-sex bias & whorephobia. It capitalizes on fears of sex outside monogamous heterosexual vanilla marriage as an intoxicating poison equivalent to alcohol, but causing moral instead of physical illness. When there are real problems related to someone's interaction with porn, the blame is misdirected because of that anti-sex bias. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the people most invested in the idea of porn addiction are conservative Christians (and red-pill types who are also anti-masturbation. Imagine being a misogynist and stigmatizing jerking it? Sad!)

Pornography Use and Psychological Science: A Call for Consideration (article)

What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research? (book)

[ipso-faculty]

Today's rabbithole: the origins of "dyadic" as opposite of intersex/h-word

TLDR: "dyadic" seems to come from 1970s radical feminism and seems to have entered intersex vocabulary via gender studies. This implies it is NOT a term coined from within the intersex community.

I've been reading Cripping Intersex since it's this month's pick for @intersexbookclub (and it's not too late for you to pick it up yourself! 💜). One thing that caught my attention is Orr spends a bunch of time presenting the origins of "endosex" and "perisex" as disputed for whether these terms were coined by intersex people or not.

Orr does this because they clearly prefer "dyadic" and are trying to justify why they're talking about "compulsory dyadism" rather than "compulsory endonormativity/perinormativity" etc. 🤨

Interestingly enough, Orr makes absolutely zero attempt in the book to find an origin for the word "dyadic". 🧐 Orr also never questions whether the term "dyadic" actually came from the intersex community. 🧐 So..... rabbit hole time!

Before I get into what I found on dyadic, I wanna quickly fact check Orr on the origin of endosex. Best as I can tell, the term was first used in German in 2000 by Heike Bödeker. Bödeker is controversial for supporting autogynephilia 😬, but I've never seen anybody doubt Bödeker having mixed gonadal dysgenesis. If anybody knows of an older use of endosex, please send it my way! But as far as I can tell, "endosex" was coined by an intersex person.

Okay, onto the origin of dyadic. Orr presents this word as though its only detractors come from its implication there is a sex binary, even though as @intersex-ionality discusses here there are other reasons people don't like it. One reason is that the term is considered to originate from outside the intersex community.

Orr never questions the origins of dyadic. But intersex-ionality's post got me wondering if I could track down an textual origin.

So I went to Google Scholar, searched for "dyad" or "dyadic" plus "intersex" or the h-word and kept changing the time period increasingly far back in time. (Initially I just used intersex until I remembered the h-word slur would be more common in older articles 😬.)

I went into this thinking maybe dyadic would be related to how in early intersex studies literature like Critical Intersex (2009) you can see authors trying out terms like "dimorphic" and "dimorphous" that reference sexual dimorphism. (Neither "dyadic" nor "endosex" show up in the book.)

But the earliest works by intersex scholars that invoke dyadic tend to use it in a way that implies to me it has its own origin - e.g. Malatino (2010) talks about "at one pole, the dyad of the dimorphic heterosexual couple and, at the other, the hermaphroditic body" and "the heteronormative promised land of proper dyadic, dimorphic sex" which gives me the impression dyadic has a more sociological origin rather than the biology origin of dimorphic.

This 2010 gender studies article by Mandy Merck that talks about the intersex rights movement was my first solid lead. Merck draws a direct connection between the intersex rights movement and the 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. 😯

In the book, Firestone explicitly talks about the "male-female dyad". This book had a fairly big impact when it came out. Firestone was a big-name second-wave radical feminist. And as Merck puts it: "[Firestone's] aim is to release women and men from the culturally gendered[5] dyad of the “subjective, intuitive, introverted, wishful, dreamy or fantastic” and the “objective, logical, extroverted, realistic”[6] into a society undivided by genital differences. This she calls “integration.”" (emphasis mine)

Pushing the search terms to before the 00s, I found I there were some 1980s botanists kinda using "dyad" as an opposite to "hermaphrodite" (example). I don't know how standard this was though, and with Google Scholar it is important to remember that digitization becomes less common the further back you go. 🤷‍♀️

Judith Butler used "dyadic" in a 1985 article about Foucault's Herculine Barbin.

The Butler article got me searching for more generally - "dyad" or "dyadic" plus "sex-roles male female". I found lots of results using dyadic to talk about female/male sex roles from the 1970s.... and a rather sudden paucity of such articles in the 1960s. 🤔

When I restricted the search to anything before 1970, I get results from symbolic interactionist sociology. I.e. the sociology use of "dyadic" (i.e. any social interaction happening between a pair of individuals).

So looks like dyadic as a sex role thing entered the academic lexicon in the early 70s. Which lines up pretty damn well with The Dialectic of Sex coming out in 1970. 👍️ And indeed, many of the 70s uses of "dyadic" explicitly cite Firestone.

I'm guessing Firestone was probably influenced by the interactionist term. Lots of sociologists were talking about dyadic relationships and/or interactions such as teacher-student, parent-child, husband-wife, etc. In this context, it's not surprising that Firestone would pick dyad as a term to talk about male-female sex roles and interactions.

Other than the 1980s botany articles I didn't actually find much from the pre-2000 biology world, and no leads from the medical literature. This doesn't mean "dyadic" wasn't being used by physicans, just that it isn't showing up in my searches on Google Scholar.

I'm coming out of this with the impression that Merck's got it right to be connecting the intersex-related use of dyadic as originating from the writing of Shulamith Firestone. If anybody knows of competing evidence for an origin, *please* do send it my way as I'd be super interested. But in the absence of other evidence, I'd tentatively say that the term dyadic came out of second wave radical feminism and *not* the intersex community.

[gatheringbones]

[“For many participants who engaged in “Critical Cis-ness,” there was a connection to their own lived experiences and an active interrogation of self that led to their refusal to force trans women to live according to the whims of cisgender people. Alyx, for example, stated that she respected if someone did not want to immediately tell her they are trans. In response, I asked her, “What makes you respect that decision?�� Alyx explained:

I grew up in [a predominantly White, wealthy, conservative city in Georgia,] and it’s not exactly like the most welcoming place, so like I super understand if you don’t wanna like put that out there immediately. That could be dangerous for some people. Um so it’s, yeah, it’s someone’s own personal decision.

Alyx “came out” in middle school, and her first non-cisgender, man partner was an individual who “came out” to her as a trans man in the middle of their relationship. After “coming out,” she experienced overt and covert heterosexism from adults in her school, and her experiences of discrimination led her to understand why people would not want to be out as LGBTQ.

Another participant, Cookie, utilized her sociological imagination to understand why a trans woman would not want to tell her that she is trans. When I asked Cookie how she would react if she dated or slept with a woman who later “came out” to her as trans, she answered:

I wouldn't really be mad because I understand. From her standpoint, how scary something like that might be, um, just because of how, you know, people may have responded to her in the past, or fear of how people might respond, or the fear of losing me as a friend, as a partner, whatever. So, I would be like, “Damn,” but like, it wouldn't change anything. Like we wouldn't stop talking, like I wouldn't stop talking to her because she neglected to tell me until late or wouldn’t stop talking to her because it, that was the reality of the situation. Like I get it, like people go through their own stuff. People, you know, heal and grow and learn in their own ways. And I would be a bullshit ass person to just, ‘cause I’m sure there’s things that I probably might not tell her ‘til sometime down the road. You know?

Cookie understood the reality of a cissexist world that socializes trans women to be hyper-vigilant regarding to whom and when they “out” themselves if at all. Cookie shifted the emotional labor off the trans woman regarding “outing” herself and onto cis partners to process potential feelings of disappointment on their own. Further, Cookie highlighted the time it takes for individuals to share various pieces of themselves. Rather than viewing trans women not “outing” themselves as deceptive or dishonest, she normalized it by comparing trans women’s decisions to any other mundane decision when dating.

While Cookie’s response was a longer, more introspective answer, most participants who engaged in Critical Cis-ness answered questions regarding trans women “outing” themselves succinctly and nonchalantly. I asked Peaches, “Do you care whether a woman tells you right away or not that she’s trans?” Peaches said, “No, I think that should be someone’s option when they’re ready to tell you, they can tell you . . . I don’t think I would be upset because if she identifies as woman, then she’s a woman at the end of the day.” Peaches did not have to consider her response, nor did she figure herself into the equation. Instead, she like other participants in this category centered trans women and displayed forethought regarding the lived experiences of trans women.”]

alithia zamantakis, from thinking cis: cisgender heterosexual men, and queer women’s roles in anti-trans violence, 2023

[heterorealism]

(via (50) Pinterest)

[animefeminist]

Hagio Moto’s Marginal and BL manga as feminist fabulation

Content Warning: Discussions of sexual assault and gendered violence

Major Spoilers for Marginal

Hagio Moto—a key manga artist of the year 24 group shoujo renaissance—is famous for her comics exploring gender and sexuality (The Poe Clan, The Heart of Thomas), and her often mystical, mind-expanding sci-fi (Otherworld Barbara), as well as works that do both (They Were Eleven, A, A’). Marginal, released from 1985-1987, is an example of this overlap. Set on a Dune-like desert world in which all women have died out, and all babies are born to a mysterious religious figure known as “Mother,” Marginal explores what gender relations might look like in a world with no women.  Here, Hagio follows in a long sci-fi tradition of feminist novels and short stories like Suziki Izumi’s “Onna to onna no yononaka” (A World of Women and Women, 1977), Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), and Kurahashi Yumiko’s Amanon koku ōkanki  (Records of a Voyage to Amanon, 1986), which use a fantastical premise conduct speculative sociological experiments into other ways gender could be done. Marginal is very much worth the read alongside these texts, as a work of feminist fabulation which uses emergent “boy’s love” tropes to talk about heterosexual relationships, as much as to fantasize about homosexual ones. 

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[cognitohazardous]

its interesting to watch poly v monogamous discourse proliferate to the point that straight (derogatory) has become monogamous (derogatory). like i saw a post saying "monogamous people must be stopped" with a screenshot about some woman getting a gift from her husband saying "im sorry if you dont feel secure in our relationship my heart is yours" after looking thru his phone and was thinking about how, a few years ago, that wouldve said "the straights need to be stopped".

I saw another post about fears regarding the loyalty of one's partner inherently stemming from biphobia, which i would argue is entirely untrue, though maybe i simply misinterpreted the post because that's quite a bold claim to have gotten >5k notes.

i havent considered the broader topic much and havent actually seen much genuine discussion about monogamy and also i don't concern myself with sexual sociology but it seems that monogamy is becoming shunned as an antiquated/traditionalist relationship structure. My initial reaction is that this feels a bit unfair and pointlessly divisive. I know monogamy is the long-predominant western relationship structure so it's recognized as being tied to heterosexuality, but to diminish gay/bi monogamy is counter-productive when it comes to liberating intimacy. It seems that a lot of poly people view monogamy as inherently possessive and jealous, though that is not true. Of course there is much to be said about monogamous people's misconceptions about polygamy, but that's another soapbox that I am not equipped to stand on.

My view is that monogamy is a very personal preference and oaths of loyalty should be respected as individual choices rather than outright castigated. this comes with combating abusive and possessive relationships and loyalty-related insecurities, though these are not by any means issues intrinsic to monogamy.

This also comes with the normalization of polygamy, though. Both of these are personal preferences that should be readily available to those wanting to pursue them and both of them come with the potential for specific forms of unhealthy relationships.

I think my overall point is that I worry about polygamous people falling into misplaced criticisms which would lead to arbitrary conflict. And again, there is much to be said about the other side of the coin but i'll leave that to someone else so that I can read it. This is not a topic with which I engage much at all but I wanted to think aloud in the hopes that I can learn from any opposing viewpoints presented.

[sinimake]

MK1 is such a bizarre experience bc on one hand some characters have benefited a lot from the "universe reset" (Baraka, Reptile, even arguably Shao who is less than a muahahaha conquer villain but someone who actually seems to care about his realm?). Others kind of raise interesting questions, like Shang Tsung : is he doomed to be bad or can he be good for a change? (In the story he choses to become a snake-oil salesman before joining the imperial family + there is an Union of Light Shang Tsung so him being good is a thing that could happen).

But then, instead of using that full reset NRS just leaves some things the same? Like. It's a reset. In 2023/2023. That was the perfect moment for implementing some (maybe not lots) changes. Perhaps starting making Johnny canonically bi? Just a small ripple towards a bigger change? Instead of getting stuck in same old ways?

YOW EXACTLY

Things i loved about Mk1 change:

Mileena and Kitana sibling relationship

Rain's character design

Tanya and Mileena!!!!

Sindel being badass empress and outworld thriving in peace under her reign

Baraka and Syzoth on the good side!!

Kenshi's yakuza past

Geras and Liu Kang's friendship! Liu Kang actually treating Geras as his equal 🥺 and Geras being so loyal to him 😫😭

Shang Tsung's zitsy behavior

Lin Kuei brothers 🥺

What i hate:

Hanzo being a kid and essentially everything about him being handed to Kuai Liang

Kung Lao being the second best again

Raiden and Kitana romance

Mileena and Tanya having the barest screen time

Controversial opinionated rant down below

I hated that they essentially just switched Liu Kang and Raiden's places. I started MK1 right after MK11 that i was furious to see Raiden chosen as the champion (IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MY BOY KUNG LAO LET HIM SHINE ISTG) and then flirting with Kitana with Liu Kang's exact line (I hope we meet again under different circumstances)??? Tf??

I understand that some plot elements are too good to change but character romances? Don't replace one side of the pairing, then try to serve it to the audience again! Reboot should give us more variety of character designs, stories, dynamics, and relationships. Give us the genderbent, queer, poc characters BC YOU'RE NOT EVEN SACRIFICING ANYTHING when we literally have infinite alternative timelines you can recall classics from. For example, we have our human Raiden and old man titan Raiden. We can do variety. I wanna see female Fujin, i wanna see Scorpion Harumi and fighter Suchin, i want actual deserved queer representation in Kung Jin, and i. wanna. see. canon Johnshi!

My hypothesis is that NRS is gonna bring in mk children through dimensional travel so that they don't need to age up our current characters. I'm saying this to push my point further that we don't need to repeat romance plotlines (dont come at me. I have bais just as you have bais for ur fav old pairings)

Listen, i loved Sonya and Johnny in previous games, her and Cassie were a huge part of Johnny's character arc, but since Johnny is already maturing by the end of mk1, i don't see a point in Cageblade anymore (very controversial but it's my blog so i will yap as much as i want) We are not erasing anything by possibly making Johnny queer. Johnny and Sonya can be married in different timeline and Cassie is still their child. If anything, we are enriching the character, expanding the universe. Really, I don't wanna buy the exact same game story in different graphics. I don't want to see Suchin die again just to serve Kenshi and Takeda's dynamic.

And don't even get me started again on heteronormality of the game. We have 6 realms that have diverse variety of biological and sociological configurations AND YOU'RE TELLING ME THEY ARE ALL HETEROSEXUAL?? NRS is a fucking pussy for not having enough queer representation. They think they can give us vague "blink, you will miss it" moments and move on. There are so many high selling good games with good lgbtq characters. Literal 2023's the game of the year, BG3 is so fucking gay that it's off to space and you're telling me that NRS is just going 🥺👉👈 but our fans 🥺👉👈

Anyways, NRS can eat shit and Johnshi for the president 🤘

[velvetvexations]

People seem to think socialization necessarily means something about an individual but imo it's more meant to be group focussed or related to how people are viewed. Like if a child is assumed to be a boy because of bioessentialsm, they're going to be pressured to be masculine and heterosexual regardless of their actual identity or response to these forces. And the same for children assumed to be girls. That means nothing about the individuals gender or anything. I wouldn't even necessarily call that male/female socialization, but it's not wrong to acknowledge that we exist within a system that does it's darndest to force everyone to conform to expectations based on "biology".

Slightly unrelated but there's this idea that gendered socialization is limited to a binary and not intersectional. Like actualizing socializing forces demonstrates that not only is it not necessary broadly applicable, but it is also highly influenced by other factors such as race class, location, etc. socialization, imo, is more about were there certain social pressures to look and act a certain way that are then responded to or internalized depending on various factors not "boys are told to be mean so everyone who was raised as an assumed boy is mean and bad"

Like terfs use a fucked up definition of socialization to harm trans people, often to frame transfems as harmful in a way that sounds scientific enough if you don't know about actual sociology, but that doesn't mean we should respond "actually this entire framework for viewing cultural forces is entirely garbage because it can be misinterpreted in a harmful manner"

As always :nothing is a purely black and white binary. Individual experiences will always vary within a group, and categorically denying someone can experience something will always end up alienating part of the group you're trying to protect instead of helping. Transfeminism is not helped by forcing trans women to toe the line of the right way to be trans women in order to be accepted no matter who that comes from

it just sucks that I was talking about how TRFs would interpret that kinna thing and it happened within the day

[possumsinpeoplesuits]

So, every once in a while, I have to rant about something online before I just start blabbing to some poor unfortunate Wendy's employee about niche internet pornography. Sometimes in the middle of that rant I realize I might be onto something, and have to share it with others who might benefit.

Today, that subject is the Omegaverse, and the squandered potential for worldbuilding therein.

Now, this post is gonna have some very broad generalizations about the genre, because while I'm certain there's plenty of authors who do put a lot of thought into the pedantic details I'm about to have a Category 5 Autism Event about, it's been difficult to find them amongst a sea of painfully mediocre fics.

For every stellar Locked Tomb Omegaverse fic set in a modern day Taco Bell (Seriously, I want to engrave Double the Meat onto a satellite and launch it into space so that extraterrestrials can see the peak of human civilization) there's like... a million and one Alpha Male/Omega Female pairings written by Conservative Mormon housewives that dare to ask such questions as "What if a man and a woman could have a baby?" and "What the hell is consent?"

But I'm not here to be mentally ill about yet another space being drowned in heteronormativity. Nor am I gonna be a dick about the first fics written by teenagers who're just dipping into fan communities, because my terminally online since the age of 11 ass would be a huge hypocrite for that.

No, instead I'm here to talk about genitals, and deliver just enough sciencey technobabble to justify my passionate opinions about the potential of what is, ostensibly, werewolf porn.

So, for those who've somehow gotten through all these paragraphs but have zero idea what the Omegaverse is, the basic gist is that there are three sex categories that're separate and occur within the usual sexes that humans already have. Effectively, this means that male, female, and intersex individuals can also be Alphas, Betas, or Omegas.

So, to understand these categories, there's a pretty simple rule. Alphas can get Omegas pregnant, regardless of physical sex. Sometimes Alphas are bigger than normal, and Omegas are more petite, but that's not quite as much of a core "rule" to follow, and more just dependent on people's tastes. Betas usually follow standard human dimorphism, though I have seen some people headcanon them as a sort of halfway point between Alpha and Omega.

There's some more details, too, like the presence of knotting (where the base of the penis swells and prevents pulling out during orgasm), heat cycles and rut (where the mating instinct goes into fucking overdrive in the most literal sense), pheromones, bite marking, and sometimes that whole... imprinting thing from Twilight.

So, taking this all into account... Omegaverse fiction has the potential for a BARE MINIMUM of 6-9 SEXES before even taking the vast spectrum of gender identities and presentations into account.

Do you see what I'm on about now? When our society is still struggling with the concept of being nonbinary, and barely ever even acknowledges intersexuality as existing, any Omegaverse setting would be radically different on a biological, psychological, and sociological level.

Can ya see now why I get frustrated when it gets stripped down to compulsive heterosexuality with wolf dicks?

Now, with all the standard tropes laid out like this, we get back to the question that started this all, the question that should be a no brainer when it comes to smut... What them genitals look like? What does a female Alpha, or a male Omega have down there? I have three concepts in mind, and explanations on how they could work from a scientific perspective that's just barely not bullshit enough to overcome suspension of disbelief!

So, the first thought, and the one that initially appeals to me as a nonbinary person... they just look trans. This concept is really simple to work with, because we can just look at real life trans people and just tweak things a little bit. Maybe primary and secondary sexual characteristics operate independently naturally, or maybe there's HRT for it. It's a pretty common method, too, and I enjoy seeing it... but it feels like it needs something more?

Don't get me wrong, this one's basically my personal gold standard for shorter Omegaverse stories, especially fanfiction, but it's also just... swapping parts around. Great for ease of access, but hard to differentiate from the trans experience. Definitely a go-to if you want to play with transition in an alternate society, though.

For the other two, I have to explain a bit about fetal development and reproductive organ equivalents. Also a bit of genetics, too, because it's where we're gonna fuck around and build a lot of theoretical bullshit around a little bit of real knowledge.

So! Some of you may have heard that every fetus starts as female, but might not know some of the mechanisms at work when that changes, and how finicky they can be. This is also fun to throw at TERFs, because ambiguity throws a wrench in the simplistic arguments of reactionary bigots. :)

So, the usual arrangement of sex determining genes is often simplified to XX=female and XY=male. This leaves out other variations like Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) which affects 1 in 500 people under the AMAB umbrella, causing some degree of infertility, autism symptoms, and a somewhat androgynous body shape. (I've been checked for this one! It came up negative, but reading about it was enlightening.)

Now, the presence of a Y chromosome (usually) causes the proto-organs to change function, and develop into the male-aligned reproductive systems at roughly, say... 6-8 weeks? (Unless, of course, there a deficiency in the 5α-Reductase enzyme, which causes a delay in some of this process, resulting in a child that appears female, then just... grows a dick during puberty when the higher levels of testosterone overcome the deficiency and finish off the primary sexual trait development.)

Hey, wanna know the fun thing? Even that is an oversimplification. The whole Y chromosome doesn't mean shit unless the sex-determining region Y gene is in the right place. It can just... fuck off and attach to the X chromosome. If this mutation occurs in XY individuals, it causes Swyer's syndrome, resulting in a female aligned reproductive system that just doesn't include functioning ovaries, just purposeless ambiguous gonads. Pair that fucky X chromosome with another X chromosome, and you get a male with XX chromosomes.

Plus, if someone has a faulty androgen receptor? Well, partial androgen insensitivity can leave things ambiguous, but if it just doesn't work at all? Yeah, everything will develop along the female blueprint, despite the fact that the gonads are testes.

I swear this is still about the porn.

So, with the information we have about these real, existent conditions, we have a good idea of reproductive development, and the mechanisms at play. Now, there's still some theory that's not been definitively proven yet, but the current consensus on the primary sexual equivalents are as follows:

The clitoris forms into the penis, while the vaginal canal doesn't form.

The ovaries become testes, or stay as undefined gonads.

The salpinx become the vas deferens (these are the tubes that transfer eggs or seminal fluids, respectively. More on this later.)

And finally, and the most theoretical, the uterus is believed to become the prostate. (There's sometimes a little pocket, or divot in the prostate, and the arrangement makes sense, but it's still up for debate.)

But how do we use this for our fuck fics, you ask? How do we take your failed medical career, and translate it into Destiel's babies ever after? Well, it's quite simple! We just have to add the bullshit!

So, most alterations to the SRY gene or the androgen receptor tends to just wholesale alter the whole array, and the midway point usually results in infertility and difficulty with sexual function, but what if we could change this? What if, for the purpose of our fiction, we can mix and match everything, and somehow make it all functional and neat? Well, fasten your fuckin' seatbelts, because we're finally at the theories I made while delirious due to a combination of sleep deprivation and the after effects of eating an entire ice cream cake to myself over the weekend.

So, the firmest idea, and the idea I'll be using because I am WAY too deep into this to not write Omegaverse unironically, is what I've dubbed the Primary/vestigal system for f!A and m!O characters.

So, this theory would require that we shove two things into suspension of disbelief. One, we have to completely fuck with androgen and estrogen receptors to mix and match the development of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Two, I have absolutely no idea how you'd be able to tell when this is going to occur. Maybe genetic testing, or maybe it's just a surprise? Depends on your style of story.

Effectively, we'd base this off the delayed primary sexual characteristic development mentioned above. Alpha Females would operate similar to the real thing, being born looking typically female, before puberty hits and the Alpha genes take over for the genital development, while secondary characteristics still follow a feminine shape. Maybe the gonads stay inside, but function as testes? Sure, sperm production is more effective around 1-2 degrees lower than normal body temperature, but it doesn't stop entirely.

For Omega Males, the process would occur in reverse. Maybe the testes just change course and go back into the abdomen to become ovaries, or maybe they don't descend at all and the first clue this is happening would just be finding a vaginal canal forming?

I like this one primarily because it feels like a less 1 to 1 allegory for being queer, but still feels kind of relatable? You can, of course, still have the end result resemble the first method mentioned waaaaay up past the sciencey bits, but I kind of like the idea of there being a vestigial remnant of the birth parts left behind. I like the ambiguity, and the chance to explore how this would affect someone appeals to me.

Now, my last theory is mostly for the lulz, but this must be DOCUMENTED for POSTERITY'S SAKE.

So, Omegaverse started with m/m shipping with mpreg, right? Well, a lot of the earlier fiction just... describes typical cis male anatomy, with zero explanation for exactly how this is all occurring. There's just... anal sex, and then that somehow forms babby.

Well, what if I told you that I've figured it out? See, remember how I mentioned that the prostate is theoretically what became of the fetal uterine tissue? Guess where the prostate is? Guess. GUESS.

THE ASS IS WHERE!

So, we just have to bullshit the prostate back into a functioning uterus, but leave the placement in close proximity to the anus. Now, the other problem is that that would mean that there's an opening leading to the colon, which... look, I have no idea how birds and lizards keep their cloaca from getting infected, but connecting other tracts to the asshole doesn't usually end well.

So, we have to find a way to seal it up when not in use. Now, the cervix serves this purpose in the real world, opening to let in fluids, or let out discharge or, y'know... a baby, but that's really expensive so most of us settle for having a breeding kink that we never act on, and instead impose on our favorite blorbos who don't have to pay for health insurance.

But still, even with a butt-cervix, bacteria's still likely to get in, so we need a firmer block. I've suggested a little flap like the epiglottis in the throat as a second line of defense. If it can protect your trachea from wayward chicken nuggets, then hey! It might not be terrible for keeping sepsis at bay!

Unfortunately, layering extra protection over the bussy business zone ain't gonna cut it. Hell, as self cleaning as the vagina is, infections happen all the damn time, even if your hygiene is good. So, we need to take that self cleaning nature, apply it to the bussy business zone, and crank it up to eleven. Just constant mucousal discharge, pushing all the bad back out.

So, yeah. Your favorite Omega Man'll have a rectal womb covered with a secondary internal assflap that's constantly discharging a steady stream of slime (just consider it free lube!), but if you can make it past that, you can live your dreams of gettin' that bussy mpregged by cumming in they gay ass. Then they'd just kinda... poop out the baby, presumably.

So there you have it! Three in-depth explorations of how Omegaverse genitals can work! I'm gonna go take my psych meds and fucking SLEEP.

[djuvlipen]

With the end of Pride Month and Romani Heritage Month approaching, I recommend every radical feminist to read Dzuvljarke

“Džuvljarke (*Ȝuvlӑrke) – is a term from the Roma language (Romani) and used among Roma living in Serbia. Together with its Serbian-influenced suffix, it is used to refer to a lesbian, a woman emotionally and sexually oriented towards women. This term usually implies a negative connotation, particularly within the heteronormative patriarchal Serbian and Romani social matrix.”

“The aim of this paper is to ensure that when lesbian existence is discussed, the conversation opens a path leading to the empowerment of these women, who are, at the moment nameless and invisible and remain objects of shame and victims of multiple forms of violence and discrimination.” (European Roma Rights Centre)

"Vera Kurtić is a radical feminist and a Romani woman. She is an activist and one of the coordinators of Women Space, an organization based in Niš, Serbia and one of is a founding member of the Romani Women Network of Serbia that gathers organizations and groups from across the country into a joint and unified force directed to enhance the position of Romani women. Also, she is a one of the founders of informal international Roma LGBT Network. She studied sociology and communications, the main fields of her interest are intersectionality of different discrimination based on gender, sex, race, class and sexual orientation, as well as representation of marginalized social group in media and public space. Vera is the founder of Campaign Month of Roma women activism, author of Džuvljarke- lesbian existence of Roma women, the first study on Roma women of different sexual orientation than heterosexual." (source)

It's available for free here: x

[lwcina]

started writing a whole long detailed post with sociology in it. but let me just. trim it all the way down to: i think the main disconnect that leads to a lot of ace discourse is that allosexuality doesn't exist. asexuality and aromanticism are real experiences/identities/ways of being, but "allosexuals" aren't a distinct population in the way that "heterosexuals" are

[farrellchilde]

found file.

name: hasil farrell. age: early 20s. birthday: he doesn't know his day of birth in a traditional sense. knows it was during winter’s harshest month, his naming day was a few days later, given to him by the elders of the clan. sally ann informed him he was born in january, the word means nothing to him. gender: male. place of birth: morgan county, kentucky. orientation: heterosexual. affiliation: farrell clan, shay mountain dwellers. relationship: verse dependent. occupation: hunter, gatherer, occasional moonshiner. underground fighter. parents: deceased. silas farrell, fell to his death, and rowena farrell, died during childbirth. appearance: lean with long, dark, dirty blonde hair often tied back; rugged and weathered from a life in the mountains; dark blue eyes— intense, often reflecting a mix of curiosity, and wariness. tattoos are a cluster of celtic-like symbols, lines imperfect. deer antlers, circular knotwork symbol. soft spot:  pretty smiles. anything weaker, animals. is the soft spot obvious?:  somewhat, depending on the sociological view of the person who's around him. he's been known to shoot suffering animals between the eyes. when asked why he would do such a thing, he says, 'it was goin' to die, anyway. might as well help it along.'

in the pines, where the sun doesn't shine.

his style is utilitarian—he wears rugged, durable clothes that have seen better days. flannel shirts, well-worn boots, leather belts, and patched jeans or work pants are staples of his wardrobe. his belt often holds a hunting knife, small tools, and occasionally, items tied in leather pouches. scars scattered across his arms and hands from hunting and fights. he has a small, simple necklace made from leather and bone, passed down through his family as a symbol of protection.

hasil moves with quiet grace, always aware of his surroundings, like a hunter stalking his prey. he’s quick on his feet but never seems hurried, always maintaining a deliberate and steady pace.

temper is like a slow-burning fire—rarely does he explode in a sudden rage, but once ignited, it’s fierce and dangerous.

fighting style is raw, instinctual, and deeply connected to his survival in the mountains. one of the smallest of his clan members, he often had to hold his own against family that are twice, or thrice his size. hasil excels in hand-to-hand combat, often preferring to fight up close where he can use his strength and agility. his movements are precise, with quick strikes designed to disable an opponent before they can react. he’s unpredictable, combining elements of brawling, grappling, and striking. he adapts to his environment, using whatever is at his disposal—sticks, rocks, glass bottles, even the terrain itself—to gain the upper hand. he’s not afraid to play dirty if it means surviving, but he’s also not reckless—each move serves a purpose.