desexy

What a Desexy Movement Could Be

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

We have reached the wrapping up point of desexy. It’s been a wild few weeks of research, interviews, and writing to get here. While I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of discussions of desexualization, I wanted to thank those who have been reading for your support. This project couldn’t have happened without you.

In this final post, I want to leave you with some of the insights I’ve gained after writing for desexy on what a movement that celebrates “out-of-the-box” sexuality could look like.

We have more in common than we think.

Cross-movement work serves as the foundation for social justice movements. The early homophile, sexual liberation, and gay rights movements not only supported the Civil Rights Movement but also borrowed tactical frameworks. For example, the CRM popularized the sit-in, borrowed by ACT UP in the early 1980s and most recently seen in the Black Lives Matter movement in response to police brutality against Black Americans (seen in the pictures below). This shared commonality not only exists in the ways social justice movements advocate for change. Marginalized communities often share similar struggles in terms of access and experiences. For example, trans justice and disability justice movements fight for safe and accessible physical spaces (like bathrooms, locker rooms, and housing). As I mentioned in my first post, Alex⁺ and I found that we both experienced desexualization because we had “non-normative” bodies. Understanding that people who hold different identities may also experience desexualization can allow for the facilitation of discussion.

Source: Civil Rights Movement Veteran

Source: David Mixner

Source: Mashable

We can create communities and social spaces where we can support one another in an affirming way.

Sharing our experiences of intimacy is already a difficult task. Adding layers of rejection based on oppressive structures makes it all the harder. People who work in social justice or live at the intersections of marginalized identities can often have a difficult time unlearning oppressive behaviors themselves.

“What we do need is discussion and acknowledgment, not as a defiance of our desires, but to perhaps understand how external forces narrow their scope. Acknowledging the prioritizing of certain bodies and identities is just the beginning, and will lead to many difficult conversations…but ultimately can only lead to more understanding, more inclusiveness, and stronger communities.” (“Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse”)

We need to create spaces that allow us to call out people with care (rather, calling people in) to hold ourselves accountable for our actions and learned prejudices in regards to attraction, intimacy, and sexuality.

Reclaim, redefine, own, empower, deconstruct, reconstruct.

The spaces we build can allow us as individuals or collectively as communities to name ourselves. We can celebrate the pain, awkwardness, and rejection inherent to desexualization by leaning into that discomfort and defining sexuality on our own terms. As people who experience this form of interpersonal oppression, we can innovate ways to empower ourselves sexually in opposition to these oppressive attitudes. We can listen to disabled people in our communities talk about the rich and complex diversity of disabled sexuality, and how they overcome physical obstacles through “invention, creativity, cleaver adaptation, and brilliant accommodation” when it comes to sex” (“Desexualizing Disability”). We can be like founders of the Rose Centre for Love Sex and Disability, Tim and Natalie, and find ways to show affection for our partners in nontraditional ways:

“I used to think I was bad at sex because I can’t do it in the traditional way,” says Tim. “So I didn’t enjoy it. And I thought it was wrong that I didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t until I had a partner, Natalie, who was willing to say, ‘OK, let’s figure out what works for the two of us’ that it started to be great.” (Dean)

We don’t have to work around our body differences; we can work with them. We can completely redefine what sex and sexuality mean to us, even if that means not experiencing sexual or romantic attraction at all. We can boldly claim that our identities are the sexiest parts of us, because would we really be us without them?

Being desexy is more than just lamenting painful experiences of rejection; it’s what you do to redefine (and relearn) your sexuality because of them.

References

“Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse.” Gudbuy T’Jane. WordPress, 13 Oct. 2011. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Dean, Jamieson. “Surprise! Disabled people have sex.” The Star. Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd., 5 Oct. 2014. Web. 1 Jan. 2015.

Smith, S.E. “Desexualising Disability.” This Ain’t Livin’. S.E. Smith, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Relearning Sexy (P. 4): Still Learning

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

When I met Rueben⁺, I realized why it felt so good to hide my hair and put eyeshadow in the wrong places. Rueben and I met online, where they had disclosed to me that they were trans. When I got to their place, we started talking and immediately hit it off. Since my first relationship with Nate⁺, Rueben was the only masculine person I had found myself attracted to. As they talked about how they felt growing up, body dysphoria, and why they wanted to pursue transition, it was like a light switch had suddenly been flicked on. When Rueben talked about their relationship with their body and the discomfort that dominated all of their intimate relationships, I knew.

Source: Emmett Patterson

Before I went to see them again, I told them that I thought I might be trans. They told me to come over in whatever clothing I felt comfortable in. That Friday night, I drove into the predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the city, wearing slim fitting jeans, sneakers, and a baseball t-shirt. As soon as I stepped out of the car, they ran over to me and offered me a yamaka. “It’s Shabbos. You’ll need this.” Looking back, I remember that this moment marked the first time someone had not only been accepting of my unapparent transness but had validated my experience in a very intentional way.

Someone had finally seen me.

This is when I began relearning sexy. In my personal experience, being sexy as a woman was very different than being sexy as a man. Before, I unashamedly used my body to get things I needed. I knew how to make my partners’ eyes grow as wide as dinner plates, simply with a look. When I began presenting masculinely (and by presenting masculinely, I mean looking like a distraught 12 year-old boy), I found that people didn’t look at me the same way. My partners’ eyes didn’t grow wide as easily as they once did. Learning masculine sensuality was (and is) incredibly difficult. This journey of navigating an identity I knew to be true in the form of a body that lacked the same certainty really began when I began dating Dylan⁺.

Source: Emmett Patterson

My relationship with Dylan was complex. Dylan had never dated a man before, nevertheless a trans man. Even when we did start dating, Dylan grappled with his sexuality. At the same time, I was grappling with mine. I constantly questioned whether Dylan saw me as the man I knew I was. I never felt sure, even when he said he did. I remember feeling more exposed than usual when we were intimate. Not only was I battling being a teenager, still new to navigating sex. I was also dealing with the constant fear that my partner was perceiving my body as female. Nothing kills your sex drive like constant body dysphoria.

After a long relationship, Dylan and I broke up for reasons unrelated to intimacy. When I threw myself back into the single world, a world I had left three years earlier, I was terrified. This would be the first time I was dating as an openly trans man. In the first few weeks after the breakup, I had casual flings with people I knew, people who affirmed me. At the end of the day, I felt more and more comfortable expressing my sexuality as a man even in intimate situations that would have terrified me before.

Source: Emmett Patterson

Dating, romance, being intimate with someone? These experiences are still intimidating beyond belief. These are still my Everest’s to climb. The fear that no one will love me for who I am or will see my body as desirable still plague my mind. Internalized transphobia is a bitter pill to swallow and incredibly difficult to unlearn. I still spend some days looking in the mirror, finding the imperfections. The width of my hips. The patchy 5 o’clock shadow. Any number of flaws that I see. There are other days where I feel incredibly sexy. Where my body’s “imperfections” aren’t imperfect at all because I would never be me without them.

Author Laila Gifty Akita said, “Life is a continuous learning process. Each day presents an opportunity for learning.”

With each morning, I greet the day. I’m living.

And I’m certainly still learning.

+ Name has been changed.

The final post on desexy discusses how to create space to talk about our intimate experiences.

The Student Becomes the Teacher: Creating Peer-to-Peer Inclusive Sex Ed

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

In my friend group of people of color, queer, trans, disabled, First-Generation people, we talk about marginalization and oppression. A lot. It’s not only part of the work we take on as activists but it’s also the reality of living as multiply marginalized young people. One of the experiences almost all of us have in common is being desexualized on the basis of these identities that we proudly hold. Because of all the questions our own friends had, my friend Lex and I decided to create an affirming sex ed program created by people who had been left out of conversations about sex ed altogether.

Source: Emmett Patterson

Not Your Average Sex Talk (NYAST) is a peer-to-peer sexual education program taught by college students for college students that uses a social justice framework to discuss issues related to sex and intimacy that are often neglected in traditional sex education settings. These issues critical to navigating safe and consensual sex include: testing, health information, power dynamics, consent, and sexual values. The NYAST model engages participants in a judgment-free zone and teaches college students how to bring tailored, peer-to-peer programming to their campus. Understanding that there is no universal, comprehensive sex ed curriculum, our program aims to: disperse sexual health information; facilitate discussions beyond heteronormative sexual intercourse; and address how homo/bi/transphobia, ableism, and racism intertwine with attraction and intimacy. Our biggest goal is to create dialogue and resources that are sex-positive, intersectional, and catered towards marginalized people. For sex ed to be truly inclusive, the movement for inclusivity and acceptance in the field cannot do so without incorporating the frameworks of multiple social movements. The 2014 National Sex Ed Conference released a statement that show the importance of creating intersectional sex education:

Solidarity Statement on Racial Justice in Sexuality Education Because we are in the field is Sexuality Education, a profession skilled at creating space for dialogue, acknowledging difficult topics, and facilitating change; Because we stand on the shoulders of many before us, some who have received recognition and others who have not; Because we live in a country founded on systems of oppression, institutionalized racism, and violence; Because we see police brutality, racial profiling, and mass incarceration as a gross misuse of power which terrorizes individuals, families, and communities; Because we know the system is not broken, it is doing exactly as it intended; Because of all this, and so much more, we also know – Because we are a part of the problem, we are also part of the solution; Because we as sexuality educators teach about love, equity, justice, relationships, communication, and safety; Because we believe in living our lives fully, with intention, agency, and freedom from fear; Because we hold power, as individuals and as organizations; Because we can, and we must; As a multicultural group, we commit to addressing and working to undo racism on personal, professional, and institutional levels within the field of sexuality education and in our diverse roles within it, in solidarity with other movements towards racial justice; Today, we commit to the formation of plans of action towards racial justice in sexuality education. (WoC Sexual Health Network)

Statements of solidarity like these can truly drive a more inclusive sex-ed movement. Making sex-ed not only inclusive and empowering for people of color but also making it LGBTQ inclusive and disability inclusive could improve the health and wellbeing of our communities. So, where does desexy come into all of this? A blog post on gudbuy t’jane summarizes why talking about desexualization is critical in social justice movements:

We want to believe our desires are our own, unshaped by the media, patriarchy, racism, ableism, transmisogyny, or other oppressive systems. This is even more challenging when one’s identity is based in ideas of activism, social justice and equality; We don’t want to feel like we’re upholding oppressive standards, or engaging in systems which sometimes violently desexualize marginalized identities. (Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse)

Creating inclusive and sex-positive sex ed means creating a space for people to talk about these experiences of desexualization, how we process them, and how we learn to reclaim our own unique “desexiness.” Even those who are committed to social justice can perpetuate desexualization. We need to dismantle the systems that normalize desexualizing oppressions. We can only begin to do so if we sit down and intentionally lean into our discomfort to have these difficult conversations. In the conclusion of desexy, we will talk about how to reclaim these experiences and what we can learn from them. Up next, the final installment of Relearning Sexy tackles how far I’ve come but how far I have yet to go. References “Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse.” Gudbuy T’Jane. WordPress, 13 Oct. 2011. Web. 2 Jan. 2015. WoC Sexual Health Network. “WOCSHN at National Sex Ed Conference 2014.” YouTube. Youtube, LLC, 7 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

Relearning Sexy (P. 3): The Time In Between

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

I felt invincible.

One summer night, my parents were both working and out of the house. I loved being home alone, mostly because I refused to practice my music in the company of others. But this night, I was thankful to be alone for another reason. Ever since that intrusive thought had infiltrated my mind in gym class, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, I took to my closet, hoping to find something to make me feel more at home in my body.

As I mentioned, I gravitated towards v-necks and form-fitting dresses. Not necessarily what you need when you’re trying to hide your chest. I found some older jeans buried in the back of my closet and slipped them on. I forced an ace bandage around my chest, not yet knowing how to bind my chest safely. Over top of the bandage, I layered a black t-shirt. My chest still looked too exposed to me. I dug around some more and found (ironically) an oversized Victoria’s Secret black hoodie. I threw it on as I headed into the bathroom. After pinning my hair up in my beanie, I completed my armor by smearing gray eyeshadow where my 5 o’clock shadow should have been.

Source: Emmett Patterson

I stared at myself for a long time. This was completely unlike the person everyone else saw at school or at work or in the pool. I felt like an entirely different person. Even though this picture makes me burst out in laughter when I look at it now, in that moment I felt so handsome it hurt. The faux eyeshadow beard and the Bieber-esque hair swoop are completely ridiculous now. But that night, it changed me.

All dressed up and nowhere to go? Absolutely not. I hopped in my car and drove to a gas station a few towns over. I was still afraid that someone would recognize me. I put gas in the car, never talking to a station attendant or another traveler on the road. It didn’t matter. Although my chest was constricted and I was hiding in plain sight, I felt like I was finally free and could breathe easy for the first time in a long time.

Source: Emmett Patterson

The next few weeks at school, I began binding and presenting more masculinely. Part of this storytelling project is finding pictures of myself from “the time in between.” I thought only I noticed that I was spending time in between. But before long, my parents and friends took notice. I knew I had to begin telling my loved ones how I truly felt. During this time, I began mandatory gender counseling, just one of the requirements trans people have to undergo in order to access legal document changes, hormones, surgeries, you name it. As part of this counseling, I had to look back on my life and try to pinpoint any feelings of gender nonconformity. If you’ve never tried it, think about what your favorite food was in May of the year you were 5 years old. Now, your parents may be able to tell you what it was. That’s a fact. But do you remember how that favorite food made you feel?

That’s what is so difficult about looking back on our experiences. When I thought back, I couldn’t think of any feelings of gender nonconformity in my childhood. I could only see the facts. Yes, I hated dresses. Yes, I made friends with boys more than girls. Yes, I portrayed what outsiders might call gender nonconformity. But was I ever cognizant of how these rebellions against femininity affected my gender? Not that I can think of.

But when I looked to more recent years, I found my intimate relationships coupled with my discomfort with certain parts of my body played a key role in my identity formation. Not every trans person’s experience is the same. But for me, the source of my discomfort came from these sources. Sitting in the armchair of my therapist’s office, I recounted times where I just felt discomfort being with Nate⁺. The reason I broke up with Nate in the first place was because I assumed this discomfort had to do with my sexual orientation.

“Oh. If I’m not attracted to him, I must be attracted to women.”

For the next year, I dated mostly female-identified people. I still felt uncomfortable when I was intimate with my partners. I had partners who loved me because I was extremely femme. That made me uncomfortable. I had partners who said their favorite asset of mine was my chest. That made me uncomfortable. I had partners who refused to let me wear my binder went to bed. That made me more than uncomfortable. I was exploring women as a queer woman and I still couldn’t find solace. I could never pinpoint the source of the discomfort.

That is, until I met Rueben⁺.

Find out more next time on the final installment of Relearning Sexy.

Next on desexy, how to create truly inclusive and sex-positive sex education.

What You’re Actually Saying When You Say, “I’m Not Attracted to Trans People”

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

“I’m just not attracted to trans people.”

I’m sure that almost every trans person has heard this in some way, shape, or form in their lives. Whether it was directed at them or not, whether it was explicitly said or merely implied, the discomfort of seeing trans people and their bodies as sexual and desirable runs rampant in our culture.

Source: After Ellen

Albeit in a different way, trans people also experience sexualized desexualization, such as I discussed in this post about the desexualization and hyper sexualization of women of color. “Chasers” are people who exoticize (mostly) trans women and seek them out for sex in a fetishizing way. Recently, the new hit show Transparent crafted an entire episode around the aspect of “chasers.” In their article in The Guardian, author Avery Edison touches on this trope of the exoticized trans woman: “Transgender women are often fetishized: explicitly in ‘she-male’ porn…sensationalist headlines about a celebrity having a ‘sex change.’ We’re cast as mysterious and exotic, repellant but seductive. There are people who find transwomen irresistible, and others who see us as just another illicit conquest” (Edison).

Source: Trans Men on Grindr

Trans men and trans masculine people also experience this on gay dating apps like Scruff and Grindr. David Levesley’s article discusses the complexities of being a trans man on queer men’s dating apps. A Grindr user named ‘Transartist’ discloses that they have been harassed on the app and has even been told that they didn’t “belong” on the app (Levesley). Transartist’s experience also includes having to provide potential hookups with a basic “Trans 101″ before meeting up (Levesley). Trans artist says, “I’ve gotten really sick of fielding basic ‘trans 101’ questions that could be answered by spending 30 seconds on Google. I just block ignorant guys now” (qtd. in Levesley).

The frustration that Transartist expresses reflects the reality for some in the trans community when it comes to sex, dating, romance, intimacy, and other “four letter words.” In addition to being fetishized, trans people and their bodies are consistently looked upon as undesirable. This unwillingness to see trans bodies as desirable is rooted in the fear of the unknown and the larger cultural hatred of gender nonconformity.

Those who have cisgender “passing privilege” may be able to choose when they disclose to a potential romantic or sexual partner. As part of The Stranger‘s Queer Anthology edition, author Tobi Hill-Meyer wrote “How to Have Sex with a Trans Person,” and truly illuminated the frustration with the “big disclosure” that almost every trans person has to go through:

I love moments in which being trans just doesn’t matter. It can happen in porn, with a familiar partner, or just with someone who I know is a good ally. I don’t have to stop to say, “Wait, there’s something about me you should know,” as tension rises for a dramatic reveal. I don’t feel like there’s some toxic cloud hanging over me that requires us to sit down and have a serious conversation. I can feel like any other person. In the throes of passion, I don’t want to have to ask a potentially mood-killing question like “Are you afraid of seeing me completely naked?” (Hill-Meyer).

Those who do not have this privilege, those who are actively read as trans, can face disastrous outcomes, including violence and death from potential or current partners. The desexualization of trans people serves to dehumanize trans people. Dehumanization allows for the perpetuation of violence against trans people. The perpetuation of violence against trans people allows for the culture to not value trans lives. When the culture does not value trans lives, the phrase “I’m just not attracted to trans people” stops being a “personal preference;” instead, it reflects larger themes of inequality and the value taken away from trans people.

Part 3 of Relearning Sexy is up next.

References

Edison, Avery. “I’m trans and on Tinder, but I am not a fetish for your sexual bucket list.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 2014. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.

Hill-Meyer, Tobi. “How to Have Sex with a Trans Person.” The Stranger. Index Newspapers, LLC, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Levesley, David. “Grindr’s Trans Dating Problem.” The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast Company, LLC, 2014. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.

De-story: Thomas

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

Thomas⁺ identifies as a “feminine gay man.”

This is his story.

Tell me about a period of time or a particular experience where you felt desexualized.

Sometimes I feel desexualized when using Tinder, when I don’t feel attractive or valued or validated after having fewer than 1-2 matches after what seems like 40-50 swipes.

During the “heat of the swipe” (I should trademark that), I’ll pause every few minutes on some guy’s picture who I find very hot and just think, “Who am I kidding? He’ll never want to fuck me.” Which is a scary thought, because obviously I have value other than whether or not somebody wants to have sex with me, but when I have that need to feel sexually validated, I am concerned about whether somebody would find me “sexy” or not.

But more than that, I have found that the images that cause me the most consternation are the “traditionally masculine” ones. And it’s part of a larger conversation about masculinity & queer men, in that I’ve internalized the idea that masculine men are more attractive and more valuable than us feminine men. For example, I am attracted to all sorts of men, but I can only imagine myself with another more feminine man, because I feel like a masculine guy can “do better than me.”

These feelings worry me because they seem very misogynistic, that even about queer men, the “feminine” is subjugate to the “masculine.”

Tell me about a positive experience you had of feeling sexual.

I feel very sexual when I embrace these feminine aspects of myself and my body, rather than rejecting them.

I remember getting ready to go out with my friend, Jess⁺. I was wearing this delicious pair of corduroy red shorts which hardly covers half of my thigh. I love to show off my cute, hairy legs! And then, as Jess and I get dressed together, she puts this beautiful shade of red-purple lipstick on me, and I feel fierce as hell. She takes out the tube and nods at me, and I nod back, before she applies some to my lips. Which stands in stark contrast with the time, a few months earlier, when we had been out for a few hours, we were drunk and dancing, and she takes the lipstick out and starts to reapply her own lips and those of our friends, and – because I’m drunk – I work up the courage to jokingly ask, “What about me?” She puts some on, and I feel cute as hell. And this time, I’m (mostly) sober, and I feel great with my lipstick and my short-shorts. It’s my gay boy interpretation of a “freakum dress” and I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT GIVE A FUCK if someone looked at me and thought, “Wow. He looks way too feminine.” Like fuck you. I’m not dressing up for you. I’m dressing up for me.

+ Name has been changed.

Next time on desexy, I discuss why saying you’re not attracted to trans people is problematic.

References

Anonymous. Personal Interview. 1 Jan. 2015.

Not Quite Bedfellows: Separate Beds for Gay Male Couples in the Media

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

Source: Motherhood The Truth

For the eight years of the show’s run, real-life couple and co-stars of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, never once shared a bed while the cameras were rolling. The epidemic of separate beds, even for married couples, permeated television in the early days of television broadcasting. When I first heard of the “separate beds epidemic,” I remember laughing. But I slowly realized that popular media still continues to desexualize queer couples portrayed on television and in the cinema by not allowing them to be as unapologetically sexual as they allow heterosexual pairings.

Source: Starcasm

Keeping with representation in sitcoms, one of the most famous desexualized gay couples on television is the duo of Cameron and Mitchell in the critically-acclaimed hit, Modern Family. During a HuffPost Live interview on gay men’s media representation, Madison Moore, staff writer at Thought Catalog, sounded off on Modern Family‘s representation of Cam and Mitch, saying, “TV always wants to show the safest version of a gay male couple” (Zepps). Zach Strafford, editor of BOYS: An Anthology, agreed when they said, “A lot of fat gay men in the media are used as punchlines. Cam…is very desexualized. You don’t really see them kiss or he and his partner being sexual” (Zepps). Moore jumps back in, detailing the differences in representation based on the couple’s sexual orientation, mentioning that sitcoms featuring heterosexual couples shows them being affectionate towards each other that just does not happen for gay couples (Zepps).

Historically, the beginnings of desexualization occurred in the wake of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Prior to the outbreak, the sexual liberation movement proved to be an anti-assimilationist, unapologetic push for queer sexual freedom and expression. However, when the epidemic ravaged queer communities, the process of desexualization of the gay man began. According to M.V. Lee Badgett’s book, Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men, as government officials forced bathhouses to close, they limited the sexual freedom that gay men fought for (Badgett 113). This desexualization of the queer sexual economy may be one root for the desexualization of queer sex in the media today.

Source: Out.com

However, more mainstream productions are slowly beginning to portray gay men as sexual people, not just as comedic punchlines or committing queerbaiting. How to Get Away with Murder made a splash in its pilot by opening with a not so subtle gay sex scene featuring one of the central characters, Connor. In an interview with EOnline’s Kirstin Dos Santos, creator of Murder, Peter Norwalk, shared his vision for the character of Connor:

I knew I wanted to push the envelope, especially with the gay sex…And to me, writing the gay characterization and writing some real gay sex into a network show is to right the wrong of all of the straight sex that you see on TV. Because I didn’t see that growing up, and I feel like the more people get used to two men kissing, the less weird it will be for people. I just feel like it’s a lack of vision that you don’t see it on TV. (Dos Santos)

LGBTQ representation in the media at large has miles and miles to go. Change is slowly occurring but only when LGBTQ people are in the room and at the writer’s table, creating whole, unapologetically queer characters that challenge the current dominant mainstream narratives. Allowing queer male couples to be explicitly sexual, complex, and sometimes messy begins the broadening of this representation of queer people at large.

Next time on desexy, Thomas⁺ shares his experiences of desexualization as a “feminine gay man.”

References

Badgett, M.V. Lee. Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Ebook.

Dos Santos, Kristin. “Why There Will Be Plenty of Gay Sex on How to Get Away with Murder.” EOnline. NBCUniversal, 2014. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.

Zepps, Josh. “Gay Men Sound Off on the ‘Desexualized’ Gay Couple in ‘Modern Family.'” HuffPost Live. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 2014. Web. 3 Jan. 2015.

Disabled, Dehumanized and Desexualized

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

Source: The Huffington Post

“Nobody makes a public announcement that they don’t find the woman in the wheelchair to be sexy. There aren’t any articles in Cosmo saying, ‘Men who use crutches have zero sex appeal.’ It is one of those unspoken and often unconscious things making it impossible to prove or disprove, yet disabled people are clear that it is part of their reality.” (Jen)

The current myths perpetuated by the dominant, ableist culture, which further the erasure of disabled people’s potential to be sexual, allows for the denial of “sexual abuse and violence committed against disabled people” (“Desexualising Disability”). S.E. Smith, writer for This Ain’t Livin’, asserts that if disabled people supposedly “have no sexuality,” they couldn’t possibly be assaulted or abused (“Desexualising Disability”). In this regard, desexualization further contributes to the silence surrounding sexual assault of disabled people and lack of awareness of this issue’s severity. Desexualizing disabled people also contributes to the myth that “disabled people can’t and don’t form close relationships with other people,” allowing for disabled people in romantic partnerships in an institution to be separated (“Desexualising Disability”).

Source: Undressing Disability

Myths that reinforce the desexualization of disabled people do not stand alone in negatively impacting the sexual health and wellbeing of this community. Educators, health professionals, and other adults in adolescents with disabilities’ lives may either “deprive them of sexual education or provide them with inadequate information that doesn’t address their specific risk factors” (“Discussing Disabled Sexuality Is a Radical Act“). Among queer and/or trans teens, the lack of information about sexual identity and gender identity can contribute to feelings of isolation, an increase in depression risk and other mental health conditions (“Discussing Disabled Sexuality Is a Radical Act”). Additionally, by not providing specific information of the biological mechanics behind the spread of sexually transmitted infections and the behaviors that cause pregnancy, disabled teens may not be able to identify early warnings signs of either STIs or pregnancy (“Discussing Disabled Sexuality Is a Radical Act”).

The root of disabled desexualization lies in the desire to dehumanize disabled people in order to make a clear distinction between able-bodied and disabled people (“Desexualizing Disability”). “If we can be rendered sexless, neutered, inert, and nonthreatening, it can be made clear that here lies yet another difference between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ another reminder that we are not quite fully human,” writes Smith (“Desexualizing Disability”). I’ve also discussed this dehumanization process in past posts. Social identities cannot stand alone, so being a disabled person also can include oppression from the result of intersecting identities of race, class, and gender, just to name a few. One blogger discusses that when people desexualize them, they don’t only do so as a result of their disability; this desexualization also occurs because they are a disabled woman:

“Even if the attention comes in the form of compliments…it is still behavior based on me being a sexual object not a woman. Desexualized and denied personhood. Sexualized and denied personhood” (Jen).

Desexualizing people with disabilities is not only an interpersonal attack on self-worth, agency, and autonomy; it also impacts the safety and wellbeing of those already living in a world where disabled people are inherently undervalued and dehumanized. In one of the concluding posts of this blog, I will discuss what disability-positive sex education can entail and share stories about the current movement fighting for inclusive sex education.

Next time on desexy, find out why queer couples on TV still sleep in separate beds.

References

Jen. “Newsflash: I’m Female!” People Aren’t Broken: Disability from the Inside Out. Blogger, 2011. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Smith, S.E. “Desexualising Disability.” This Ain’t Livin’. S.E. Smith, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Smith, S.E. “Discussing Disabled Sexuality Is a Radical Act.” RH Reality Check. RH Reality Check, 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Relearning Sexy (P. 2): Four Square Epiphanies

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

Source: Emmett Patterson

With an hourglass figure and a confident sensuality in my step that would make a pin up girl blush, I strode through the beginning years of high school confident with my body. As a competitive swimmer, I prided myself on my toned body, conditioned from hours of practice. I loved the power that my body had. I felt sensual and powerful all at once. In turn, I channeled that sense of power through high femme gender presentation, a killer strut, and some serious attitude.

As I mentioned in the last installment of Relearning Sexy, my presentation changed drastically when I entered into my first serious relationship at the start of my high school career. I hung up the hoodies and gym shorts and slid into the most form-fitting of dresses and the skinniest of jeans that I could get my hands on. In hindsight, I don’t know if entering my relationship with Nate⁺ caused this shift. I can imagine at the time, I might have felt pressures to be more feminine because I was in a (what others thought was) heterosexual relationship. Maybe this shift occurred because of the cataclysmic warning of my family friend to “grow up.” Maybe at that moment in my life, I was just redefining what comfortable meant to me.

Source: Emmett Patterson

There’s a lot of maybes in this story. At this point in my life, I can remember only few specifics. Telling a story about the person you used to be can be rife with inaccuracies. While it may be easy to point out “facts,” I think it’s more difficult to remember how you were feeling at any given moment. That feeling is so critical to how I remember and tell this story. So, I look to the facts and try to interpret what I may have been feeling at that moment. No story, especially those about ourselves or the people we used to be, can ever accurately capture how we may have felt in one particular moment.

But I distinctly remember how I felt on one day late in my junior year. It was an ordinary day in gym class. I was absolutely destroying my opponents in foursquare. Business as usual. Although my school had co-ed gym classes, the class seemed to segregate itself. Four square was a predominantly male-dominated corner of the gym that I gravitated towards. As I advanced quickly to the king’s square, I continued to strike people out.

One stray spike sent the ball flying across the gym. As I jogged to reach it, I noticed my body feeling heavier than usual. I was about 100 yards from the ball. For some reason, I started feeling exposed, like in that dream where you’re standing on a stage (or, you know, jogging through the middle of a crowded gymnasium) in nothing but your underwear. Suddenly, a thought shot forward into the front of my mind: “Wow, my chest is huge.” Standing in the middle of the gym’s paneled floor, my stride and my world came to a screeching halt.

Where the hell did that come from?

Source: Emmett Patterson

Every time I tell my coming out story, I struggle to find the origin of where I began to understand that I wasn’t a woman. I look into the arsenal of memories I have, from childhood up until the first night I purposefully dressed to look like a man. But this day in the gym stands out in my mind as the origin of this questioning. As I stood alone in the gym, long after my classmates had shuffled off to their next classes, I knew something wasn’t right. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

On the next installment of Relearning Sexy, I talk about about the beginnings of my identity exploration and the impact that my partners had on me.

Next time on desexy, how does dehumanization impact perceptions of disabled sexuality?

+ Name has been changed.

De-story: Ami

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Not Your Average Sex Talk

Ami⁺ identifies as “a biracial Japanese American born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a White American father.” Ami also describes herself as having light skin and very rarely (if ever) White-passing. Ami presents mostly in a gender-normative, feminine manner, and experiences sexual and romantic attraction “to men, women, and many other kinds of people.” Through engaging heavily in queer theory and politics, Ami has taken to advocacy and organizing for queer communities. Ami notes that her queer mindset has led her “to forefront my sexuality more than those who are cis[gender] or het[erosexual]. Even if it isn’t specifically about queer sex, I find myself thinking and talking about sexuality more than many of my peers, and I attribute this partially to the intentionality required by my queerness.”

This is her story.

Tell me about a period of time or a particular experience where you felt desexualized.

I don’t feel as though I am necessarily desexualized for my social location—if anything, I am hyper-sexualized as a young Asian woman—but I continue to find that my sexuality is invariably read through my race.

I’m going to use the word ‘ethnicity’ to refer to the multiplicities of my national origins, linguistic and cultural competencies and family histories, and ‘race’ as the way that most Americans see me: as monolithically “Asian.”

I moved from Berkeley, California, where my high school had a plurality of Asian students, to D.C., where Asian people are a nearly invisible minority in comparison. I have experienced a completely different reception in this city than in California; people see my facial structure and react in a variety of bizarre ways. For example, my manager at my job told me last week that every time he looks at me, he is “reminded of a geisha.” He said my eyes and my general demeanor indicated my similarity to geishas. He asked me if that was an offensive thing to say, but then reassured me that he wasn’t being offensive—that it wasn’t that I was a prostitute, but that I was well educated and beautiful and that’s what made me similar to geishas. I had little to say in response. I mumbled vaguely about caricatures and Western imagination, but ultimately said nothing of substance. Good employees and good Asian girls don’t talk back.

This interaction demonstrated the way that my body, and my implied or perceived sexuality, is constantly mediated by my race. Especially in a city where my race is so marked, these exchanges happen almost daily. Offhand comments and “compliments” remind me that I can never just “be”–I can’t just be attractive or good at my job. My image will always call to mind notions of Asian femininity and racial tropes like the submissive sex kitten and the severe Dragon Lady that are in turn projected on to me, obscuring my humanness and turning me into an object of the Western imagination.

Tell me about a positive experience you had of feeling sexual.

One night last semester, I met someone I’d met once through a friend at a cafe in the city. We met at 8PM, but I just had a cup of coffee and we talked and got to know each other. I learned that Max⁺ lived nearby so we walked to Max’s house together, where Max lived with five other housemates in a beautiful, historic three-story home. There, we began having sex after very few formalities. The sex was incredible, especially for near-strangers; not because either of us are particularly phenomenal at it, but because we were relatively confident in ourselves and were able to interpret and meet each other’s needs very well. Although Max wasn’t Asian, Max was mixed-race. I think I found comfort and familiarity in that. I trusted Max completely that night. Afterwards we lay naked in bed together, awed at ourselves and each other. We compared tattoos and birthmarks, laughing incredulously; it wasn’t until then that Max clarified how to correctly pronounce my name. Max was saying it wrong all night. It was awesome.

+ Name has been changed.

References

Anonymous. Personal Interview. 6 Nov. 2014.