It’s Not Just Lesbians Who Watch Lesbian Porn

by Gabrielle Kassel

‘Lesbian’ has been one of the most viewed porn categories throughout the world for over a decade.

According to the popular site Pornhub, ‘lesbian’ was the third most popular category in 2019 — and the number one among women and viewers in the United States.

Below, sex educators explain why people across the sexuality spectrum can enjoy lesbian porn.

Usually, ‘lesbian porn’ refers to porn that features two (or more!) cisgender women having sex.

But, to be very clear: ‘Lesbian’ does N-O-T refer only to cisgender women who have sex with other (cisgender) women. More on this below.

The most historically accurate definition of lesbian, according to nonbinary lesbian, fat activist, model, and content creator Jordan Underwood, is: non-men who are interested in other non-men, romantically or sexually.

That means someone who is a woman, nonbinary, genderqueer, or any other gender that isn’t “man” could, potentially, identify as lesbian.

However, it’s rare for lesbian porn to feature people other than cisgender women. Porn that does feature non-men having sex with non-men is usually categorized as ‘queer porn.’

Viewers seeking lesbian porn that doesn’t exclusively depict cis women might try searching terms, like ‘queer porn.’ This is a phrase used to describe platforms, like CrashPadSeries.

“That’s because, while there’s a majority of lesbian representation, performers also include people who might not necessarily identify as — or exclusively as — lesbian,” explains Jiz Lee, the marketing director of Pink and White Productions.

“Although not perfect, in this way ‘queer’ lends itself as an all-encompassing synonym for an LGBTQIA+ umbrella that’s broad enough to include performers — without erasing their individual identities,” Lee says.

Enjoying lesbian porn doesn’t necessarily mean your sexuality includes sexual attraction to non-men as a non-man.

“Lesbian porn can be for everyone!” says queer sex educator and lesbian Marla Renee Stewart, MA, a sexpert for the adult wellness brand and retailer Lovers.

Men who watch lesbian porn aren’t necessarily trans or nonbinary folks who are interested in other non-men. And, similarly, women who watch lesbian porn aren’t necessarily interested in being with other women and nonbinary folks IRL.

Simply put: “Liking lesbian porn doesn’t make you a lesbian,” says Katrina Knizek, a lesbian and sex therapist who specializes in helping people explore their sexuality.

The only thing that makes someone lesbian is self-identification, she says. “You’re lesbian because you say, ‘I’m lesbian.’”

There are so many reasons. (One of which is that it allows for a healthier, safer way to explore your sexuality!)

It can flood your senses

For people who are attracted to non-men, seeing two in a scene can be a sensory overload. (In a good way!)

“There’s more to look at, there’s more to think about, and more to imagine and interact with,” Stewart says. “So some arousal potential of the scenes comes from the multiplication factor.”

It might feel safe(r)

Regardless of genre, porn allows people to explore their attractions on their own time, in their own space, and at a pace and duration that feels best for them. And (!) without the potential risk of sexually transmitted infections or unwanted pregnancy.

So, of course, all of this stands for lesbian porn, too.

For people who feel uncomfortable with, afraid of, or intimated by the idea of exploring their sexuality with another person, the private nature of porn-perusing can be hugely beneficial, says Knizek.

For folks who have experienced abusive (partnered) sexual dynamics in the past, porn can play an especially powerful role part in helping them reclaim and re-connect to their sexuality.

“Watching lesbian porn with masculine-presenting non-men can feel like a safer way for people to explore sexual attraction to men than by watching porn with men,” Knizek adds.

This may be especially true for people who have a history of trauma associated with men.

There may be sex toys

If you wanna watch porn that features vibrators, strap-ons, or dildos — either because you think it’s hot or to normalize their use during sex — lesbian porn is a better bet than other genres.

(It’s problematic, because most lesbian porn uses these pleasure products as stand-ins for biological penises — but that’s a topic for another article!)

There may be a more diverse cast

This isn’t true for mainstream (read: typically ‘free’) lesbian porn, but some lesbian porn platforms feature a broader range of people.

Lee says the reason CrashPadSeries exists is because people want to see others in porn who look like themselves.

“Our definition of what’s ‘sexy’ tends to be broader than conventional lesbian porn in terms of gender, race, age, ability, and body type, most likely because our cast and crew are of our communities,” Lee says.

The sounds alone can be hot

“We’ve evolved to find sex noises sexy,” says certified sex coach Gigi Engle, a sex and intimacy sexpert for SKYN and the author of “All The F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life.”

And, oftentimes, lesbian porn is quite loud.

“Listening to people moan feeds into the part of our subconscious that seeks out luscious pleasure without the trouble of having to think so much,” Engle says.

“All mainstream porn is made for cis men, regardless of who’s involved in the scene,” Engle says.

The official term for this is ‘male gaze-y.’

“The male gaze suggests a sexualized way of looking at something that treats the thing being looked at as an object,” Knizek explains. In lesbian porn, women (and non-men) = the object.

In practice, that means scenes in mainstream lesbian porn are designed to fulfill men’s fantasies of what women and non-men do together, as opposed to what women and non-men *actually* do together, Engle says.

“The performers are often doing things that would probably not feel very good in real life, like hardcore scissoring, screwing each other with dildos, neglecting the clitoris, and making a lot of over-the-top noises that feel disingenuous,” she adds.

The downsides of this are multiple.

For starters, “[it] reinforces harmful false stereotypes about what lesbian sex looks like and who it’s for,” says Knizek. It suggests that lesbian sex is a thing people do *for* men and their pleasure, as opposed to for personal satisfaction and pleasure, she says.

It can also make people having “lesbian sex” IRL feel like their sex isn’t good-enough or “right” — or like their bodies are broken if they don’t enjoy said hardcore scissoring.

“Because mainstream lesbian porn doesn’t include much communication between partners at all, it can also lead lesbians to believe that they don’t have to ask questions like ‘What acts are OK?’ and ‘How does this feel?’ when they do,” Knizek says.

That’s why it’s so important to remember that porn is entertainment, not education.

As a general rule, if you’re going to be consuming porn, you should be paying for it. When you pay for your porn, you ensure that the performers are being compensated for the work they’re doing.

Plus, Engle notes, because these films often have a higher production value, “that’s where the good stuff is at.”

“These sites make great ethical porn that’s less ‘punish f*cking’ and more focused on actual pleasure,” Engle says.

“If somebody feels that they are watching too much porn, they should mention that to a sex therapist or other sex-positive mental health professional,” Knizek says.

Typically, she says, people who think they’re watching too much porn are actually dealing with internalized messages from a sex-negative culture.

But regardless, a professional can help you create a game-plan to watch less lesbian porn or feel less shame about how much lesbian porn you’re watching.

Complete Article HERE!

18 Types of Sexuality To Know for Greater Understanding About Yourself and Others

By Korin Miller

There are a number of different types of sexuality, and by learning about each, you can cultivate a better understanding about yourself and others. And since language is always evolving, staying abreast of the different types of sexuality is important for both creating an authentic relationship with yourself and being an inclusive ally for all people. “The constantly evolving lexicon provides more options that can help people explore themselves,” says Corey Flanders, PhD, sexual-health disparities researcher and associate professor of psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College. “The range of sexuality terms available means that more people will find something that resonates with their experience.”

Words matter, and when those words connect to nuanced forms of identity, they matter even more. Such is the case for why it’s so important for all people to understand the different types of sexuality. To contextualize it differently, consider Dr. Flanders’ following example about ice cream: “I had a teacher once who described it in terms of ice cream flavors,” she says. “What if your favorite ice cream flavor was kale, but you never knew that about yourself because it was never an option? And then one day, maybe you come across kale ice cream and love it, and now understand yourself as a person whose favorite ice cream is kale-flavored.”

“Sexuality is full of diversity, and awareness of different types helps build acceptance and understanding of these differences.” —Shannon Chavez, PsyD, sexologist

The implications of understanding the different types of sexuality are, of course, further reaching and more important than ice cream flavors. “Sexuality is full of diversity, and awareness of different types helps build acceptance and understanding of these differences,” says Shannon Chavez, PsyD, resident sex therapist with K-Y. “It breaks down stereotypes, judgments, and myths about different sexual populations. Sexuality is a central part of your identity and who you are, and learning more about your own sexuality as well as others’ can be an empowering and positive experience.”

To be sure, understanding your own sexuality can be beneficial for myriad reasons. It “can help you connect to other folks who share a similar experience, which we know is important for supporting the health and well-being of queer people,” Dr. Flanders says. “For me personally, I grew up in a time and a place where bisexuality and queerness weren’t options that were known to me. Once I met people who used those terms to describe themselves, it provided a framework for me to understand myself and my sexuality in a way that enabled me to communicate it to myself and others.”

And in fact, learning about the types of sexuality—even if you feel you already have a strong understanding of your own identity—can help destigmatize and remove shame surrounding the space for others. “I do believe we are going through a new sexual revolution where people are more open with their unique identities, bringing awareness to pronouns and gender identities, and freedom to express who you are sexually without fear and shame,” Dr. Chavez says.

While, again, the types of sexuality are constantly evolving and growing, below, you can find a breakdown of many up-to-date terms and their meaning, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the University of Connecticut’s Rainbow Center:

18 types of sexuality to know about for a deeper understanding of yourself and others

1. Allosexual

This is a person who experiences sexual attraction.

2. Aromantic

An aromantic is one of many romantic orientations that describes someone who experiences little or no romantic attraction to another person.

3. Androsexual

An androsexual is sexually attracted to men or masculinity.

4. Asexual

People who are asexual have a lack of attraction to other people.

5. Bicurious

A person who is bicurious is interested in or curious about having sex with someone whose sex or gender is different from their usual sexual partners.

6. Bisexual

A bisexual is someone who is emotionally, romantically, or sexually attracted to more than one sex, gender, or gender identity. This is a term that is sometimes used interchangeably with “pansexual,” which more specifically describes someone who is attracted to people without regard to their gender identity.

7. Demiromantic

This is a person who has little or no ability to feel romantically attracted to someone until they form a strong sexual or emotional connection with a person.

8. Demisexual

A demisexual does not experience sexual attraction until they have a strong romantic connection with someone.

9. Gay

A person who is gay is emotionally, romantically, or sexually attracted to people of the same gender identity. This term is often used by men, women, and non-binary people.

10. Heteroflexible

People who are heteroflexible often identify as heterosexual but may experience situational attraction that falls outside of that.

11. Heterosexual

This term describes people who identify as men who are attracted to people who identify as women, and vice versa.

12. Lesbian

A lesbian is someone who identifies a woman or as non-binary who is emotionally, romantically or sexually attracted to other women. The term is used by women and non-binary people.

13. LGBTQ

This acronym is used for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.”

14. Pansexual

A pansexual is a person who has the potential for emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to people of any gender identity or sexual orientation.

15. Queer

This term describes a spectrum of sexual identities other than exclusively heterosexual.

16. Questioning

People who consider themselves questioning are currently exploring their sexual orientation.

17. Same-gender loving

This is a term that’s used by some people instead of “lesbian,” “gay,” or “bisexual” to explain their attraction to someone of the same gender identity.

18. Skoliosexual

A person who is skoliosexual is attracted to people who are non-binary.

Complete Article HERE!

The 7 best lesbian sex positions for breathtaking and monumental orgasms

The best lesbian sex positions will spice up your sex life

By

Trying out the best lesbian sex positions could take your sex life to a whole new level. Expect pleasure, intimacy, and mind-blowing orgasms with our expert-approved positions.

When it comes to lesbian sex, there’s a lot more to it than both partners just using their favorite vibrator. But, with so little education on queer sex available from traditional sex education sources, many people who identify as women find it difficult to define what counts as sex when hooking up with people of the same gender.

In most cases, sex education is heteronormative and takes a gender binary perspective which can be exclusionary of queer sex and lesbian sex. “Our first formal ideas about sex are that sex is when a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina. This excludes anyone who is not a heterosexual cisgender person and creates a restrictive view of what sex is,” says Isabelle Uren, an expert at sex blog Bed Bible.

When we approach sex from a non-biased perspective, things become clearer. Sexual Health Doctor Dr. Eleanor Draeger says, “I would define any activity that could pass on a Sexually Transmitted Infection as sex. Which means that vaginal sex, anal sex and oral sex all count as lesbian sex, as does penetration with something other than a penis, such as fingers, or a sex toy.”

There are plenty of myths about lesbian sex that also might affect what women having sex with other women think are the best sex positions. The most prevalent is that scissoring or tribbing AKA the act of rubbing one’s vulva against someone else’s is the only way to enjoy lesbian sex. Followed by the idea that in order to enjoy sex fully, one person must assume the role of ‘the man.’

Lesbian sex or sex between two people who identify as women is far more varied and enjoyable than the myths suggest. “There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to sex,” says Patricia, Co-Founder of sex toy company Vibio. “The best lesbian sex positions are those that are comfortable and allow our bodies to relax and focus on the sensations.”

It’s all about trying different positions and finding out the one that works for you. And this is where the fun begins!

Best sex positions for blended orgasms

“The key to blended orgasms is simple,” says Patricia. “A good mix of internal and external stimulation.” If you use rabbit vibrators, you’ll be familiar with blended orgasms. They are caused by a mix of stimulation to different areas of the body and are considered by experts to be the most intense type of orgasm.

Clitoral and internal stimulation from penetration is the most widely known combination, but blended orgasms can also come from anal penetration or nipple stimulation, amongst others. “Not everyone will be able to have a blended orgasm,” says Dr. Draeger. “But the best way to achieve one would be to get yourself into a position where you and/or your partner can stimulate more than one of the erogenous zones at the same time.”

1. MISSIONARY

How to do it: Whether we’re talking hetero or lesbian sex positions, missionary is a timeless classic for a reason. The receiving partner can relax and focus on the sensations, and the giving partner in top also has easy access to their partner’s vulva.

Why it’s great: The missionary position is great for manual clitoral stimulation, oral sex, or penetrative sex with fingers or a dildo, depending on what both partners feel comfortable with.

Make it sexier: Try propping up the receiver with a pillow or wedge for easier access to the receiver’s vulva and deeper penetration for access to the g-spot. The receiving partner lies on their back with their hips propped up while the giving partner lies between their partner’s legs and stimulates the whole vulva, including the labia and clitoris. When ready, they can insert their fingers or a dildo into their partner’s vagina. To maximize g-spot stimulation, they can use a ‘come here’ motion on the front wall of their partner’s vagina.

2. SIDEWAYS 69

How to do it: The 69 but not as you know it. In fact, this variation is much more comfortable for all involved. Instead of one partner being on top, both partners lie on their sides, facing opposite directions with their legs open. Using lips and tongues to stimulate the whole vulva during oral sex.

Why it’s great: “There’s a reason the 69 is sex position royalty. There’s something so crazily arousing about the responsiveness of this position—the more pleasure you feel, the more intensely you pleasure your partner,” says Patricia.

Make it sexier: A modified 69 position is perfect for kissing, licking, and nibbling breasts and nipples. Align your mouths with each other’s vulvas, breasts, and stomachs using hands for added sensation.

“For additional stimulation, use one of the best lubes to help your fingers glide over your partner’s clitoris. Experiment with different movements and pressures, such as tapping or circling the clitoris and consider using clitoral suction vibrators that stimulate the internal and external parts of the clitoris on your partner or for mutual masturbation,” says Isabelle.

Best sex positions for clitoral orgasms

Anyone with a vulva can pursue a clitoral orgasm and there are some key positions that can help achieve this, regardless of whether you want to know how to have an orgasm alone or with a partner, manually or with toys.

While most clitoral orgasms typically require no penetration it’s worth noting that a clitoral orgasm can be achieved in various ways. Many people believe the clitoris is just the glans—the part that protrudes from the top of the vulva. The clitoris is actually a much larger organ.

“Typically, the first third of the vaginal canal is the most sensitive. It is the one surrounded by the bulbs and legs of the clitoris so you’ll be stimulating the clitoral cluster just by staying a couple of centimeters in. Any position that allows you to combine this with direct stimulation of the clitoris is a winner for clitoral orgasms,” says Patricia.

“The best way to know what works for you in terms of how to have an orgasm is to practice on yourself first so that you can communicate effectively with any sexual partners you might have in the future,” says Dr. Draeger.

3. CLASSIC COWGIRL

How to do it: The classic Cowgirl position, AKA one person lying down while the other is seated on top of them, can be one of the most enjoyable lesbian sex positions. Begin by straddling your partner and moving as you would as if using your hands to masturbate while seated. Then use your hips to grind together and stimulate your vulva and your partners’.

Why it’s great: This position allows the person on top to control the speed, pressure and intensity. As they are in control, the person on top can relax into the sensation without feeling uncomfortable. If you’re capable of achieving multiple orgasms, this is also the perfect position to attempt a few in a row.

Make it sexier: Introduce a toy that stimulates both partners, such as a double-ended dildo. Some find adding penetration too intense in this position, so remember that you can experiment with sensation using toys like nipple clamps, handcuffs, and silky ties too and with stimulation by simply introducing dirty talk, kissing, and touching.

4. FACESITTING OR QUEENING

How to do it: In this position, the receiving partner kneels with their knees on either side of their partner’s face while their partner performs oral sex and uses their hands to caress their partner’s thighs and butt.

Why it’s great: “The receiving partner has more control over the pace and rhythm, as they can rock their hips back and forth—a motion that can also increase the chance of orgasm. The receiving partner can also use their hands to massage their breasts and nipples. That’s a whole lot of stimulation,” says Isabelle.

Make it sexier: Introducing some consensual bondage for beginners can take this position to new heights. Experiment with restricting movement or tying hands using ropes, silky restraints or handcuffs. Or add blindfolds and collars and leashes to control how you and your partner move while in this position.

Best sex positions for body conscious women

Regardless of who you’re hooking up with, whether your sex is with a partner, a stranger you met on one of the best lesbian dating apps or a friend, being intimate comes with its drawbacks. People who identify as female often struggle with body image issues during sex and for many, the prevalence of mainstream porn has a lot to do with how we perceive our own bodies. While ethical porn for women can help with how women see their bodies, it can take time and awareness to overcome body-conscious feelings.

If you are don’t feel as attractive as your partner, this can affect your ability to enjoy sex. Likewise, if you struggle with a chronic pain condition or physical disability, it’s important to remember that pleasure and closeness are what’s important here, not how you look.

“Lesbian sex is not a performance, it can be as intimate and explorative as we want it to be,” says Patricia. “It’s important to remember that if someone is having sex with you, it’s because they find you attractive. The best positions are those that make your body feel good, not look good.”

5. SPOONS

How to do it: Add a sexy twist to the much-loved spooning position. “Spooning is fantastic for breast and clitoral stimulation either manually or with a vibrator or for penetration with a strap-on,” says Isabelle.

Why it’s great: This position can feel safer than positions where you feel your body is more on show and therefore is good for people who are concerned about their bodies being on display. It’s also great for creating intimacy and slow, mindful tantric sex.

Make it sexier: Adding your favorite sex toy, such as a strap-on or vibrator, can be a gamechanger in this position. With your and your partners’ hands free to explore, use multiple toys for a range of stimulation and spend as much time as you like lying comfortably together.

6. KNEELING SPOONS

How to do it: If you’d like to take spooning to a new level, try kneeling while spooning. While both kneeling, the giving partner can reach around to stimulate their partner’s clitoris with their fingers or a vibrator. The receiving partner can also rock back and forth, grinding their clitoris against their partner’s hand.

Why it’s great: The biggest issue with spooning while lying down is that one arm is always partially restricted so this modification allows for much more freedom. This position creates intense closeness and plenty of opportunities to use fingers and toys for extra sensation.

Make it sexier: Position your partner between your body and a wall so you can control the intensity of your movements and restrict theirs. With your partner facing the wall you can kiss their neck, whisper into their ear and press their body firmly against the surface in front while you grind against them. You can also hold their hands in place against the wall if you’re both comfortable with doing so.

7. ON ALL FOURS

How to do it: For two people with vulvas, one person kneels on all fours and the other applies pressure to the receiver’s erogenous zones from behind. This can be with hands, their mouth or with toys. Whether you opt for external stimulation, penetration of the vagina or the anus or all three is totally up to you. Just be sure to go slow as this can be a vulnerable position for the receiver.

Why it’s great: “Often, on-top positions can be more intimidating if you feel self-conscious about your weight, so going for positions that highlight the parts of your body you feel confident about is always more enjoyable,” says Isabelle.

“Positions where your partner stimulates you from behind, give them a great view of your butt while giving you more coverage of the front of your body if that is what you prefer. You can also use furniture and props to help you feel more supported, such as on all fours with pillows underneath you or leaning over a kitchen counter or chair.”

Make it sexier: There are so many ways to make the all-fours position sexier, from having the receiver hold a body wand vibrator against their own clitoris to using toys like ticklers, crops and floggers for gentle to more intense stimulation. The excitement is in trusting your partner whilst not knowing what might come next.

Complete Article HERE!

Choosing Everything

— Why Queerness Is Freedom To Me

By Rebecca Woolf

First, I want to give thanks to all the queer people who didn’t have the luxury of being offered opportunities to write essays about their queerness, and certainly not for pay. I recognize that the privilege I have in writing such an essay, specifically about mid-life queer awakening, is because of all the queer activists who refused to be minimized. I honor every person who has a story they cannot tell, and every person who has one, but was refused a platform — or wasn’t ever afforded the decency of having their humanity recognized.

The first time I had sex with a woman I was 38 years old. This is not counting the times I participated in male-gaze-y sexual situations that were so performative I instinctively duck my head as I write this out of cringe.

In other words, when I was younger, I got drunk and felt up my friends in front of dudes sometimes. Because I knew they would think it was hot.

Throughout my early twenties, I was almost always the straight girl in a sea of gays. And while I was always attracted to women, I was also petrified of them. I was so detached sexually at that point in my life that the idea of connecting with a person anything like me — even if only in body — was a paralyzing thought.

Beyond that, from the vantage point of a femme, straight-identifying white woman who had no experience with homophobia save for speaking out against it on behalf of my friends, it felt disingenuous for me to identify as anyone other than this version of myself: straight, but up for experimenting.

If I were to sexually identify my early 20-something self now, though, it would be “imposter.”  I was a woman masquerading as whatever the man I was fucking was turned on by; unable to articulate her own wants and needs and, frankly, unsure of what they even were.

But all of that changed when, after 14 years of marriage, I became single again at 37. What a relief it was to feel as if I could start over. I was my new life partner now, and to her I solemnly swore that the only gaze I would prioritize from now on was my own.

Entering a sort of reclamation phase, I opened myself up to every possible situation that excited me. There would be no labels on any of it. No expectations. Just freedom to move about the cabin without turbulence.

Unbuckled, wandering me.

Heteroflexible was a term I first heard via the sex positive dating app Feeld, and it was one that resonated immediately. It felt peripherally queer. Like strapping training wheels to my bike and exploring a new cul-de-sac. Beyond that, it suggested a sort of indefinability which appealed to the part of me who never wanted to be labeled again.

Sexually and otherwise, it felt like a misrepresentation for me to identify with a community that had been marginalized in a way I never felt I was — friends who had been kicked out of their homes, banished from their churches, spat on, beaten up or worse, all for coming out of the closet.

And as a cis, white, hetero-passing person, who has never struggled in the way so many of my friends have, I have found myself questioning whether or not there was even a need for people like me to come out. I live in Los Angeles after all. Queerness in our community is the norm. I can count how many straight-identifying girlfriends I have on one hand. Straightness comes as more of a surprise, if I’m being honest.

Not that we are, in any way, living in a post-biphobic society. Statistically speaking, bisexual people, specifically those with cis partners are the least likely to come out.

And it wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that in the same way I claimed to be an imposter in my early-twenties — centering the male gaze as the only gaze that mattered — I found myself similarly centering all queer voices save for the ones I personally identified with: bisexual cis women.

Because we can pass as straight. Because we tend to engage in heteronormative sex. Because because because because because….

It wasn’t until I had my first solo, sexual, no-men-in-the-room experience that I realized, Wait, no, THIS is for me.

This is for me.

At one point I felt as if I’d left my body, so overwhelmed was I by the euphoria of connecting to another woman in a way I never had before.

When it was over, I cried. Beyond the sexual dynamic between women being so profoundly different, I felt like I had been reborn in my own image. The power of experiencing sex without men was overwhelming to me — not because I do not love sex with men but because, up until that point, sexual experiences without men didn’t exist.

It felt a bit like the dreams I sometimes have, where after years of living in the same house, I discover another room that had been there all along. How could I have missed this? Where have I been all my life?

This, of course, led to more experiences, which led to a love affair — my first and also hers — a coming-together so overwhelming I assumed, I would only ever love women after this.

I am done with men! There’s no going back! Cheers to a future with women ONLY.

But it wasn’t true, and months later, I am once again in a relationship with a cis man — one I happen to love very much.

I am now extremely aware of the fluidity of my sexuality, which is not unlike my fluidity when it comes to intimate relationships — the wanting, the needing of an open door. And a partner who not only respects that, but desires the same thing.

Many women who identify as bi, pan, or queer feel like the nuances of having a non-binary sexuality precludes them from being a part of the conversation. When you’re not queer enough to be gay and you’re not straight enough to be straight, your voice tends to come out as a whisper, your experience less validated. Perhaps because we have confused fluidity with fickleness; recognizing our inability to commit to a team without celebrating what that really means.

And even though I was in free-fall, life-altering-first-love with a woman, I found myself doing what I’d been working so hard NOT to do: pushing myself off the side, standing on the periphery, insisting that my experience was inconsequential. Not valid enough. As a person who claimed to be inclusive, why did I have such a hard time including myself?

There’s a conundrum in feeling empowered by new freedoms and unworthy of experiencing sexual relationships that might be unfamiliar: Because so many of us have spent years in traditional relationships, we never had the opportunities to pursue them. It’s not because we haven’t wanted to, but rather because monogamous heteronormative relationships have not allowed us to.

It is because of this that, for many of us, we don’t know where to begin. Additionally, it is not uncommon for women to come into our sexuality later in life, perhaps because we realize how much of it has been wrapped up in performative heteronormativity. We are told our early experiences were just a phase (Oh, her? That was just her “experimenting” in college) while also struggling with our own internalized monosexism, which suggests exclusive heterosexuality and/or homosexuality is superior or more legitimate because it’s specific. This is not to mention the various forms of biphobia claiming that women are only attracted to other women because of the trauma we’ve experienced with men.

And, because we are so conditioned to get specific — to pick a team — we still feel, even in 2021, that wanting sexual relationships with people of different genders, often simultaneously, makes us indecisive when in reality, many of us, after years of struggling, have finally arrived as our whole selves.

It makes sense if you think about how our culture is so obsessed not only with binaries, but also with choosing one thing. We don’t think twice about asking our children what their favorite color is. Or asking our date about their favorite film. We want so badly for people to choose, to be decisive about one person or one gender or one sexual orientation. And then we get confused when The One isn’t enough, when we realize we don’t work that way.

Queerness isn’t just about sexuality and gender. It’s also about embracing healthy lifestyles that do not fit into a white, patriarchal, heteronormative box. This goes beyond intimate partnerships and intersects with inclusion of all people who deserve love, autonomy, pleasure, and joy.

And isn’t that the whole point of Pride? To pull at the seams of limitation so that everyone, regardless of their past experiences, can pour through the ever-expanding opening? So that all humans — regardless of gender expression or sexual orientation — can experience such moments of intense realization without the fear of repercussions? I want everyone who feels similarly to be able to explore their feelings unencumbered, to experience the euphoria of connection without obstruction.

I have long made an effort to center those who have always identified as queer. But, as a way to understand how to include myself — while also being mindful of the many privileges I possess as someone who has never had to fight against anyone else’s bias to love who I love — I have also spent this time embracing my own version of heteronormative defiance. It’s one that is personal to me, and no one else. It’s a reminder to myself that a person’s truth is theirs to experience, define, and prioritize — not on the periphery of other people’s experience, but to center as our own.

All of this is why, in the end, I knocked the heteroflexible from my dating bio and replaced it with queer.

It is a beautiful thing to stay open. To liberate ourselves from all gazes beyond our own. That’s queerness to me. It’s about embracing the nuances of sexuality and gender and defining ourselves as indefinable. It’s about allowing ourselves to trust our bodies, to listen to our own wants and needs — especially as women and mothers who have centered everyone else’s for so long, only to wake up and realize we have never even asked ourselves what we want out of love — out of sex; out of connection.

And, as we collectively celebrate Pride this month, no matter where we are in our journey and what it took to get to queerness, may we remember that Pride was always a protest against the puritanical fear of queer liberation, acceptance and joy. It has always been a celebration of freedom to live and love and fuck with abandon, in bodies that are worthy of uninhibited truth — filtered through no one’s gaze but our own.

Complete Article HERE!

How To Explore Your Sexuality In A Personal And Fulfilling Way

Hint: Labels don’t matter.

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Maybe you got a tingle down there during Portrait of a Lady on Fire (#relatable). Perhaps you’ve only been attracted to women your whole life, but now you’re having wild sex dreams feat. your swoony male Peloton instructor. Or maybe you’ve been smooching people across the gender spectrum for years, and are just now trying to find a label that fits. Whatever the reason, if you’re exploring your sexuality (or want to be), you’ve landed in the right place.

“It is absolutely normal and common to explore your sexuality to figure out what and who you like and don’t like at one or more point in your life,” says queer sex educator Marla Renee Stewart, MA, a sexpert for Lovers adult wellness brand and retailer. In fact, one 12,000 person survey published in Journal of Sex Research found that sexuality changes substantially (substantially!) between adolescence and early twenties, and then again from early twenties to late twenties, which suggests that exploring your sexuality is not just common, but necessary in order to achieve self-knowing.

As for WTF your sexuality is exactly? Washington-based sex therapist Katrina Knizek says sexuality is a big, broad term that names a number of things. These include: who you are sexually attracted to, who you are romantically attracted to, your preferred relationship structure, how you like to be touched, the time of day you like to have sex, your erotic content preferences, your past and current beliefs about sex, your kinks and fetishes, your past sexual experiences, and more.

But typically, when people talk about ~exploring their sexuality~, they want to figure out who they have the capacity to be sexually, romantically, or emotionally attracted to (a.k.a their sexual orientation), Knizek says. And if that’s why you’re here, you’re in luck: Ahead, queer sex educators and therapists offer tips to help you Dora The Explorer your sexual orientation.

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First of all, do I even need to label my sexuality?

Big nope! For some folks, labels offer identity security. Gabi, 28, Boston, says, “For me, identifying as bisexual feels like coming home.” Using the term, she explains, allows her to own and feel valid in her lived experiences.

“Labeling yourself also offers the benefits of helping you more easily find people with similar experiences to enter a community with,” says Knizek. (Think: lesbian book club or bisexual bowlers.) Having a label(s) can also be helpful when you’re actively dating. “It gives you something to put in your Tinder bio, or allows you to name the genders you’re interested in if someone offers to set you up,” she adds.

At the same time, others find sexuality labels suffocating. “I’ve dated people—women, men, and non-binary people—but I don’t want to identify as bisexual, pansexual, or omnisexual because labeling myself feels like boxing myself in,” Ash, 22, Hartford says.

Even still, some people find one label ineffective at naming their desires, and choose to stack two or more labels together. Personally, I identify as a queer, bisexual dyke because the trio names my lived experience better than any label individually.

Before you decide to buck labels altogether or add one (or more) of them to your identity laundry list, you should know what the common sexual orientation terms are. Here are several to consider:

  • Allosexual: The opposite of asexual, people who are allosexual regularly experience sexual attraction or desire.
  • Asexual: Asexuality is an identity and/or orientation that includes individuals who don’t experience sexual attraction to anyone, of any gender.
  • Bicurious: Bicurious is a label for folks who are exploring whether or not they are bisexual. Typically, “bicurious” is seen as a temporary identity.
  • Bisexual: Describes people who have the capacity for sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction to people with genders similar to their own, and dissimilar to their own. Sometimes also defined as attraction to two or more genders.
  • Demisexual: An orientation on the asexuality spectrum, demisexuality describes people who only have the capacity to experience sexual attraction towards someone(s) they already have a romantic or emotional connection with.
  • Fluid: Describes people whose sexual orientation changes over time, or is constantly in flux.
  • Gay: Names individuals who are sexually attracted to individuals with genders that are the same or similar to their own.
  • Graysexual: Also on the asexuality spectrum, “graysexuality” is a term people use if they rarely experience sexual attraction.
  • Lesbian: The most historically accurate definition of lesbian is non-men who are attracted to other non-men. But sometimes, the term is also defined as women who experience attraction to people of the same or similar gender.
  • Omnisexual: Used to describe individuals who have the potential to be attracted to folks of all genders.
  • Pansexual: Names people who can experience attraction to any person, regardless of their gender.
  • Queer: An umbrella term someone might use if they are not heterosexual, not allosexual, or not cisgender. Sometimes used by people who don’t fit neatly into any other sexual orientation category.
  • Questioning: A temporary label for someone who is currently curious about their sexuality.

Okay, what if want to explore my sexuality, but I’m in a relationship?

Fingers crossed it’s a happy, healthy, and fulfilling one. And if your ‘ship is, good news: It’s still entirely possible to explore your sexuality and/or sexual orientation while boo-ed up. That holds true whether you’re in a monogamous relationship (meaning, you are each other’s one and only), or in an open or polyamorous relationship (you’re able to explore other people sexually, romantically, and/or emotionally).

“Your sexual orientation exists and is valid whether you are actively dating and sleeping with the gender, or all the genders you’re attracted to,” says Knizek. In other words, you’re still bisexual if you’re only sleeping with someone of a different gender than you, and you can still be lesbian if currently dating a man. “Self-identification, not current or past relationship or sexual history, determines sexual orientation,” she says. Noted!

How exactly can I explore my sexuality?

To start your sexploration, Knizek recommends filling your social feed with folks across the sexuality spectrum. “These influencers will give you a sense of who you can be, or what your future might look like,” she says. So, as you scroll, notice which creators you see yourself in.

If you’re a Very Offline Person™ (jelly!), you could intentionally and respectfully put yourself in queer spaces. For instance, you might grab a beer at your local queer bar, or buy your next read from a queer-owned bookstore. Also worth trying: listening to an LGBTQ podcast.

Next, reflect, reflect, and reflect some more. Knizek suggests spending some time noodling or penning on questions like:

  • Who do I feel most magnetically drawn to in my life?
  • In what ways do I want to explore my sexuality?
  • Where did I learn compulsory heterosexuality?
  • What label(s) feel good coming out of my mouth?

Oh, and don’t forget, you can masturbate! Defined as any practice of self-pleasure, a regular masturbation practice can help you understand what and who turns you on. “As you touch yourself, fantasize about a variety of genders, and watch straight and queer (ethical) porn, to discover who you’re most drawn to,” says Knizek.

Do I need to come out?

You may want to tell someone(s) that you’re currently exploring your sexuality, or that you did explore your sexuality and settled on a new label(s). Or, you may not want to. Either way, you don’t need to do anything. “It’s a personal decision,” says Knizek.

On one hand, “sharing your sexuality with other people can be a powerful, wonderful, and affirming experience,” she says. On the other, if the receiver doesn’t respond to the news with the kindness you deserve (*side eye*), it can also be a scary, stability-slashing experience.

Stewart’s suggestion: “If you are dependent on someone or if coming out could put you in danger, weigh the benefits and consequences of sharing this information to ensure your own personal safety.” And if telling someone does result in a sticky situation, do what you can to get to a place of safety ASAP. Maybe even call The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth service center, at 866-488-7386 for help or guidance.

The bottom line: Knizek emphasizes that while many people are nervous about exploring their sexuality, the process “can be fun and fulfilling.” And who knows? You might have some great solo, partnered, or multi-partnered nookie along the way—or simply find a new group of pals.

Complete Article HERE!

The Queer Victorian Doctors Who Paved the Way for Women in Medicine

In an era when women were discouraged from entering the work force, these women forged ahead in a profession normally exclusive to men.

English doctor, teacher and campaigner for medical education for women, Sophia Jex-Blake, c. 1865.

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In the mid-19th century, Sophia Jex-Blake struggled against constant roadblocks as a woman trying to earn a medical degree—so she decided to establish a school of her own.

Founded in 1874, the London School of Medicine for Women was the first and only place a woman could earn a medical degree in the UK for many years. Between its opening and 1911, the number of women doctors in the country skyrocketed from two to 495. Jex-Blake was also the first woman M.D. to practice in Scotland. The hospital she established in Edinburgh provided women doctors with jobs and women patients with high-quality care for 80 years.

While Jex-Blake’s legacy as a medical pioneer is well established, one aspect of her personal biography is commonly left out—her romantic partners were women. And Jex-Blake was far from the only notable lesbian in the medical movement.

Outspoken Pioneers

Some might argue that Jex-Blake’s sexuality was an asset in her role as a women’s rights trailblazer. Other women in the movement could be hampered by their desire not to step on men’s toes. In The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician, biographer Julia Boyd writes the first UK female doctor Elizabeth Blackwell “wished to see her sex enjoy wider opportunities … but not at the expense of men.”

Jex-Blake, on the other hand, saw no reason why women shouldn’t have it all, and have it now. Heavy-set, stubborn and hot-tempered, yet blessed with a sharp wit and eloquence, her contemporaries often cringed at her outspoken bluntness. She wrote responses to articles that objected to women doctors in medical publications and got into heated arguments with her professors at public meetings.

In her essay in the 1869 anthology Women’s Work and Women’s Culture, Jex-Blake demanded to know: “Who has the right to say that they [women] shall not be allowed to make their work scientific when they desire it, but shall be limited to merely the mechanical details and wearisome routine of nursing, while to men is reserved all intelligent knowledge of disease, and all study of the laws by which health may be preserved or restored.”

She may have startled some with her words, but it was hard to argue with Jex-Blake’s results. The publicity she garnered translated into significant public support for women’s right to become doctors.

Victorian Era Set Strict Limits for Women

Photograph shows Dr. Rosalie Slaughter (1876-1968), co-founder of the American Women's Hospitals Service, with philanthropist Anne Tracy Morgan (1873-1952), who worked to provide relief in World War I.
Photograph shows Dr. Rosalie Slaughter (1876-1968), co-founder of the American Women’s Hospitals Service, with philanthropist Anne Tracy Morgan (1873-1952), who worked to provide relief in World War I.

Medicine was one of the first professional battlegrounds where women pushed back against the era’s norms dictating a woman’s proper place. Early Victorian vocation options left much to be desired. When it came to professions, teaching was essentially the only acceptable career. For upper class women, to work was considered an embarrassment to their family; jobs were for women who didn’t have husbands to provide for them.

Rosalie Slaughter Morton’s aristocratic father was so scandalized by the thought of his daughter earning money that it wasn’t until after his death that she attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1893. Since he left her no inheritance, she used money she’d been saving since childhood and eventually earned degrees to become a physician and surgeon.

Florence Nightingale’s family lodged similar objections to her nursing career aspirations. Whenever she brought up the topic with her mother and sister, they reportedly required reviving with smelling salts.

Jex-Blake’s father had only permitted her to become a math tutor—if she didn’t accept a salary. Even if a woman had a career before marriage, she was expected to quit upon tying the knot.

These stringent societal standards left some women in a special quandary. What if you weren’t planning on marrying a man? How could you support yourself financially? This challenge drove queer women to lead the way in the push to prove their gender could pursue any profession.

19th-Century Women Who Led the Way in Medicine

Susan Dimock, Queer Victorian Doctors Who Paved the Way for Women in Medicine
American physician Susan Dimock. In 1872 she was appointed resident physician at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston where she immediately organized a training school for nurses, the first of its kind in America.

Nineteenth-century doctors Emily Blackwell, Marie Zakrzewska, Lucy Sewall, Harriot Hunt, Susan Dimock, Sara Josephine Baker, and Louisa Garrett Anderson all preferred women (and many of their romantic partners were also physicians). And while there may have been a stigma around women working, some argue there was less societal scorn attached to women loving women.

“Such relationships enjoyed a level of acceptance greater than what many experience today,” historian Arleen Tuchman writes in her biography of Marie Zakrzewska. Tuchman says that, in her writings, Zakrzewska “blurred the line between conventional marriage and same-sex relationships with great confidence and ease, providing further evidence that the anxieties that would surface later in the century about lesbians were not yet present.”

Tuchman also believes our modern preoccupation with whether these partnerships were sexual, “reveals more about our own understanding of companionship and intimacy than that of women in the past.”

Women’s Hospitals Fulfill a Need

English-born Dr. Emily Blackwell, c. 1860, one of the first women to practice surgery on a major scale.
English-born Dr. Emily Blackwell, c. 1860, one of the first women to practice surgery on a major scale.

Blackwell and Zakrzewska were among the first women in the United States to earn M.D.s, in 1854 and 1856, respectively. Together with Blackwell’s sister Elizabeth, they established a women’s hospital in New York. It was forever expanding, never quite big enough to accommodate all the women who wished to be treated there. Later, they added a women’s medical college to their offerings. Blackwell met Elizabeth Cushier when she became a student at her college. Cushier then began working alongside Blackwell at her hospital.

“I do not know what Dr. Emily would do without her. She absolutely basks in her presence; and seems as if she had been waiting for her for a lifetime,” a colleague gushed of Cushier. Blackwell and Cushier raised an adopted daughter together. By the time Blackwell closed the college in 1899, 364 women had earned M.D.s there. In 1981, Blackwell’s hospital relocated and merged with another institution. It’s now known as the New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital.

Soon after establishing the New York women’s hospital, Zakrzewska went to Boston to repeat the experiment. In 1862, she opened the New England Hospital for Women and Children. That same year, Julia Sprague moved into Zakrzewska’s home, and they soon began a relationship that lasted until Zakrzewska’s death 40 years later.

Women flocked to her hospital, which was one of the first in the country to institute sanitation and sterilization protocols. Boston’s top physicians were agog at its singular success in preventing the spread of disease. Before sterilization was standard, a visit to the hospital could leave patients sicker than before. Zakrzewska’s hospital remains open as the Dimock Community Health Center.

When Jex-Blake visited the Boston hospital, she met resident physician Lucy Sewall and the two started to plan a life together. Those plans were interrupted when Jex-Blake’s father died, forcing her to return to the U.K. Like Blackwell, she finally found lasting love with a former medical student-turned fellow physician: Margaret Todd.

By establishing women’s medical colleges and hospitals, these 19th-century pioneers helped open the profession of medicine to women. One of the biggest hurdles for women medical students at the time was finding a place to receive practical training and internships, and then a job. Most establishments invariably turned women away. These hospitals filled that need.

By the end of the 1800s, some new terms had emerged in the English language: “new woman,” to describe educated, independent career women, “Boston marriages,” to describe two professional women sharing a home, and “sapphist,” to describe women who loved women. By pursuing careers, toppling norms and offering their personal roadmaps as examples, these women ensured others like them could flourish both in their private and professional lives.

Complete Article HERE!

The push for LGBTQ equality began long before Stonewall

The value of restoring the LGBTQ rights movement’s radical roots

By Aaron S. Lecklider

The annual raising of rainbow flags outside America’s strip malls and the bounty of LGBTQ-friendly swag being hawked inside them can only mean one thing: Pride month is upon us. Ostensibly commemorating the birth of the gay liberation movement, Pride also points to the outsize influence of Stonewall as a singular catalyst for sparking LGBTQ liberation.

And yet, there were activists advocating for LGBTQ Americans decades before the gay liberation movement of the 1960s. This history has been largely forgotten, because their work was tied to a radical social movement critiquing capitalism.

Thanks to the Cold War and the “Red Scare,” gay rights activists made a calculated decision in the 1950s to cut ties with this movement and to purge this history from the story of the fight for LGBTQ rights. While that strategy might have been politically advantageous for some, reclaiming radical queer history is essential to understanding the full scope of LGBTQ lives and politics in the 20th century.

In 1932, leftist journalist John Pittman published “Prejudice Against Homosexuals” in his radical Black newspaper, the Spokesman. “What Negroes and homosexuals both desire,” Pittman wrote, “is to be regarded as human beings with the rights and liberties of human beings, including the right to be let alone, to enjoy life in the way most agreeable and pleasant, to live secure from interference and insult.”

Prejudice against gay and lesbian Americans, Pittman argued, was anathema to social justice. As a Black leftist who was committed to revolutionary politics, Pittman well understood how prejudice structured American life, and he was unyielding in his opposition to all its forms.

One reason that leftists — communists, socialists, anarchists and labor organizers especially — concerned themselves with sexual politics was because radicals often found themselves in shared urban spaces with gay men and lesbians, notably local YMCAs and public parks. According to Jim Kepner, a gay leftist journalist, places such as Pershing Square in Los Angeles were available for “public open-air debate, officially designated as a ‘free speech area,’ ostensibly free from police harassment of people whose views they might find offensive, and also popular for gay cruising.”

These spaces reflected how marginalization from mainstream American life made leftists and LGBTQ Americans into strange bedfellows.

Once gay men and lesbians and radicals found one another, new worlds opened up to them. John Malcolm Brinnin and Kimon Friar, both members of the Young Communist League, developed an intimate partnership and observed other Depression-era same-sex couples who were also “consciously trying to mold the course of their relationship in channels that will fit their new sense of responsibility since they have become Marxists.” Betty Millard described her shared passions for radicalism and same-sex intimacy in her diary. “Socialism & sex is what I want all right,” she wrote in 1934. “I just didn’t happen to explain to him which sex.” The line between sexual and revolutionary desire was so often blurred.

LGBTQ people were drawn deeper into the orbit of the left because they, too, were cast as deviant in American society. “I’m a gay fellow, so what do I care about social position?” a gay man wrote in a 1949 letter. “I don’t want to go to any tea parties.” Allying with the radical left was less marginalizing to those who already lived on the margins of American society. In fact, sexuality and communist leanings were both things that kept people closeted.

One such man was Ted Rolfs, a member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards (MCS), a radical labor union that was well-known in the 1940s for its disproportionately Black and gay membership. “On the San Francisco waterfront,” one member reported, “the word was that the Marine Cooks and Stewards union was a third red, a third Black, and a third queer.”

That unique composition shaped the politics of the union. “If you let them red-bait,” Revels Cayton, a prominent Black MCS member cautioned, “they’ll race-bait, and if you let them race-bait, they’ll queen-bait. These are all connected, and that’s why we have to stick together.”

The existential threat posed by the rise of Nazism shifted the focus of American radicals away from revolution to anti-fascism, which meant building alliances with liberals promoting democracy. Edward Dahlberg published a radical novel, “Those Who Perish,” in 1934 — one year after Hitler’s rise — depicting a gay man at the center of the anti-fascist struggle. Willard Motley, a Black radical writer, gave an anti-fascist speech in the 1940s in which he listed gay men and lesbians among other groups whom Americans “love to hate.” Gay men such as Will Aalto and David McKelvy White joined international soldiers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1951, it was out of this populist milieu that a group of former communists built on their experiences opposing fascism to form Mattachine, an organization explicitly advocating for gay rights. In 1954, a writer in ONE Letter, a movement newsletter, described its founders as “young communists with a rage to get out and do something active like picketing and get themselves clobbered and perhaps laid.” In one of its earliest actions, Mattachine teamed up with the Los Angeles chapter of the Civil Rights Congress, an organization with deep connections to the U.S. Communist Party, to protest the entrapment of five Mexican American boys arrested in Echo Park.

Yet this alliance was short-lived. In 1953, Mattachine’s founding members were ejected from the organization over concerns about their histories with the Communist Party, and the organization shifted focus to positioning gay men and lesbians as upstanding citizens. The Cold War’s impact on LGBTQ Americans is often remembered through the lens of the “lavender” scare that purged gay employees from the U.S. State Department. But its influence was no less significant in shaping the fledgling homophile movement, an emergent coterie of new organizations sharing the goal of advancing gay rights through full-throated claims to citizenship.

Anti-gay and anti-communist conservatives invoked historical connections between radicals and gay men and lesbians to discredit both groups. “The Homosexual International began to gnaw at the sinews of the state in the 1930s,” one right-wing journalist correctly, but perniciously, wrote in 1960. These sorts of attacks prompted homophile activists to distance themselves from earlier leftists who had spoken out in defense of gay men and lesbians. “Communism and homosexuality,” the editors of ONE Magazine, a nationally circulated homophile publication, declared in 1960, “are contradictory and inimical.”

By the 1960s, members of Mattachine were fully enlisted as stalwart Cold Warriors, using these anti-communist credentials to push for citizenship rights. While earlier leftists had folded gay men and lesbians into a movement advocating for the end of predatory capitalism, the advance of racial justice and the liberation of the working class, the homophile movement sided with those who saw gay rights as disconnected from broader revolutionary struggles. Full incorporation into mainstream American life became their primary goal.

The post-Stonewall gay liberation movement restored some of the radical energy that animated earlier leftists seeking to align sexual politics with radical social change. There is much in that moment that is worth celebrating. Yet ongoing debates about the radical roots of contemporary queer politics too often overlook connections between LGBTQ rights and the left that appeared in the decades before the 1960s.

That’s because the powerful effects of McCarthyism continue to shape which stories get told and whose lives are remembered. The radical LGBTQ political tradition, both its rise and fall, is a history we can take pride in, but one that might require us to take stock as well.

Complete Article HERE!

41 homophobic things straight people say every day without realising

‘Okay but who’s the man and who’s the woman?’

By Izzy Schifano, Georgia Mooney & Harrison Brocklehurst

You’re probably homophobic. Even if you don’t think you are, or if you don’t mean to be, I guarantee that on a regular basis you say homophobic things you don’t even realise are actually incredibly rude and harmful. LGBTQ+ people get these casually homophobic questions and comments from straight people every single day, and we’re sick and tired of it.

From playground stuff loads of people still seem to have not grown out of, like “no homo” and “that’s so gay”, to calling us your “gay best friend”, questioning if our sexuality is legitimate, or asking in-depth questions about our sex lives. If you’re really an ally, pay attention when we ask you not to say these things; actually listen and understand what we’re explaining to you; and please, please, just stop saying all of them.

Here are 41 homophobic things straight people say to us every single day:

‘That’s so gay’

Sorry, I didn’t realise we were still in primary school – not that it was acceptable to say this then, either. I can’t quite believe we still need to explain this, but if you’re using “gay” in a negative way when what you really mean is “that’s so annoying/stupid/lame”, you’re literally just being homophobic.

‘I wish they were fully straight’

The only thing bi people “fully” are, is fully bi.

‘Queer’

Yes many LGBTQ+ people have reclaimed the word – but you can’t say it if you’re not gay, hun.

And whilst we’re at it, don’t use ‘dyke, poof, fag or twink’ either

Just because some queer people choose to use these words when referring to themselves, again – it’s not a free pass for you to say it. If it’s not you, you can’t say it. They’re literally slurs, and we use some of them very loosely than their original meanings.

‘What does [insert gay slang here] mean?’

Not every queer person is a homosexual dictionary. If you really want to know, Google it.

‘You’re gay? What a waste’

This really isn’t the compliment you think it is – it’s just prejudice. Why can’t I be attractive and gay? Sorry I didn’t realise I existed literally just for you to try and get with.  It’s a selfish thing to say, it’s an insult with casual homophobia thrown in there.

‘Omg you have to help me decide what to wear’

Sweetheart just because I am gay, it doesn’t mean I double as the cast of Queer Eye.

‘I bet I could turn you’

You really couldn’t, trust me.

‘Who’s the man and who’s the woman?’

I hate to break it to you, but we’re both the same gender – that’s kind of the whole point.

‘But you look straight/you don’t look gay!’

A lot of masculine queer men and feminine queer women get this and even though it’s almost always intended as a compliment, it doesn’t feel like one to us. Gay people come in all shapes and sizes, there’s no need to be patronising and tell us we don’t fit the stereotypical queer person.

Also if you’re literally saying we don’t look gay as a good thing – that means you think it’s bad to look gay. Careful hun, your homophobia is showing.

‘I wish I was a lesbian! You’re so lucky you don’t have to deal with men’

If I had £1 for every time a straight girl said this to me, I’d be able to go live on a private island where I never had to see a heterosexual ever again. Okay so we all get men are annoying, but you wish you could have a girlfriend and risk getting hate crimed every time you walk down the street? Cool cool cool.

‘It’s fine you’re gay, but don’t hit on me’

And “do you fancy me?” – I promise you luv, you’re not that attractive.

‘I always knew you were’

What gave it away?

On a real though, so many queer people get this when they come out – and it’s not a compliment. Okay so you reckon you clocked something that took me literally years to figure out and accept about myself? Do you want a medal?

‘When did you decide to be gay?’

Around the same time you made the conscious choice to be straight, I think!

No one chooses their sexuality, it’s who we are – just like you. Grow up.

‘What was it like when you came out?’

What makes you assume I feel comfortable enough around you to share such a personal detail about me? I get it, some queer people like talking about stuff like this to help normalise it, but not all of us are.

Coming out is incredibly emotional and difficult – like with anything personal, a lot of us need to establish a relationship with someone before answering these questions.

homophobic things straight people say

‘It’s just a phase’

Yes sexuality is fluid and can change over time, that’s fine. But how would you feel if I told you being straight and being attracted to your boyfriend was “just a phase” you were going to “grow out of” soon?

‘Are you like 50/50?’

See also, bi people being asked: “So what percentage do you like men, and what percentage do you like women?”

‘Why are you single? You’re bi’

Some people literally say that it should be easy for bi people to find partners, just because they’re bi. Just because someone’s attracted to more than one gender, that doesn’t mean they don’t have standards.

‘Are you a top or a bottom?’

I don’t ask you for in-depth details of how you and Tom have sex, Ellen, so you really don’t need to ask me for mine.

‘Lesbian sex doesn’t count’

There are loads of different ways different people can have sex, and they all count. If we say it’s sex, it’s sex – it’s not up to you to question it.

‘How does sex with girls work?’

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GOOGLE IT XX

‘I watch lesbian porn, but I’m not gay’

Ah yes, I remember my first post-lesbian porn panic. We’ve all been there. You don’t need to worry, I’m not going to try and graft you just because you’ve seen two women have sex on the internet. But I appreciate you confirming your heterosexuality nonetheless.

‘But don’t you want to have children?’

You might not know this but queer people can actually have children, biological or not, the same as straight people.

‘Omg I love gays!’

You “love” gays?? Right but you saying this makes me feel like you don’t love me one single bit.

‘Will you be my gay best friend?’

Why do I have to be your “gay” best friend? Can’t we just drop the category and be friends? Or should I call you my “straight” best friend???

‘How far have you transitioned?’

The only genitals you should be concerned with are your own. Fuck off.

‘Bi people are just selfish’

Being bi doesn’t make you greedy, selfish, or anything else. And while we’re at it – bi people are no more likely to cheat than anyone else, gay or straight.

homophobic things straight people say

‘Can I watch you have sex?’

Um, no?

‘Have you tried the other gender? You might actually like it’

Have you tried sleeping with the same gender? You might actually like it x

‘I like gay people, but not when they’re too in your face with it’

Okay so we’re not allowed to hold hands, talk about being gay or even think about mentioning going to Pride, but when Fiat 500 Lucy and Football Twitter Jack start pretty much shagging in a club, we’re meant to be okay with that?

‘You’re gay but you don’t have to make it your whole personality’

Okay well I can assure you it isn’t – but who even cares if it is? Sexuality is a massive part of your identity, and if you think there’s something wrong with being out and proud then you’re just homophobic.

Using someone’s deadname

If you don’t know what a deadname is, it’s the name someone was given at birth, which a trans person has changed as part of their transition.

Using someone’s deadname, or their wrong pronouns, is just straight-up transphobic. Deadnaming is so harmful. It can cause discomfort that could be associated with that person’s old name. It’s not that hard to just use whatever name someone prefers, trust me.

‘He’s a bad type of gay’

You can be bad and gay, just like you can be bad and straight. But the two aren’t linked and there’s literally just no such thing as a “bad gay”.

‘You’re not asexual, you just haven’t met the right person yet’

If someone is asexual, their sexual feelings won’t just magically appear out of thin air one day. Just like gender, sexuality is a spectrum too. Some asexuals have sex and some of them don’t – it’s not your job to comment on it.

homophobic things straight people say

‘No homo’

Same energy “that’s so gay”, it’s mainstream and very immature. It’s homophobic and offensive. It usually follows something which men aren’t stereotypically ‘meant’ to do, like crying or showing their mates affection. It doesn’t make you less of a man if you show emotion, just like it doesn’t make you less of a man if you’re gay. Just grow up.

‘I experimented with girls in first year!’

My sexual identity isn’t your experiment.

‘I don’t want to put my pronouns in my Insta bio in case people think I’m gay’

Right so first things first – everyone has pronouns, whether you’re straight or gay, cis or trans. Putting yours on your social media, email signature and other places helps normalise it, which can massively help trans and non-binary people and make things more inclusive for everyone.

Secondly – who cares if anyone thinks you’re gay, trans or anything else? If you’re worried about people saying that to you, it means you think there’s something wrong with being gay that you don’t want to be associated with.

‘How do you know you’re gay?’

How do you know you’re straight?

‘Are you sure you’re gay?’

This is just incredibly rude to ask. A lot of us have found it extremely difficult getting to the place we’re at now, we go through a lot of uncertainty and internalised homophobia to reach a place of comfort.

If someone tells you they’re gay, it is not your place to question or unpack how they feel. Just accept us as who we are and what we tell you.

‘You fancy everyone, you must have loads of threesomes’

Maybe I do have threesomes, but I’m not about to have one with you and your crusty boyfriend, Emily.

‘You can date girls, I don’t mind’

Bisexual woman are often told by the straight men they date that they can also kiss/sleep with/date other women. If they’re also cool with you doing this with men, if you’re poly or in an open relationship, that’s fine.

But more often than not, these men who are encouraging you to get with women would kick off if you did the same with men. They let you do it because they think girls kissing each other is “hot”, and also often because they don’t see queer female relationships as “serious” or legitimate.

Complete Article HERE!

As A Queer Person, Relationship Anarchy Helped Me Create The Family I Need

by Kori Nicole Williams

Like so many other people in the LGBTQ+ community, I grew up feeling like I had to be straight. Being straight is treated as the “default,” for lack of a better term, and I had always been attracted to guys as a teen. It was only when I got to college that I realized I could be attracted to other genders—and that realization overflowed into questioning all my other kinds of relationships, including nonromantic ones.

When I started to question and understand my sexuality, it led me to question the other relationships in my life as well, why I prioritized them as I did, and why I felt the need to do so.

I belong to a family, like so many others, where everyone is just assumed to be straight and cisgender and expected to get married and have kids. Nothing else was ever even talked about. So during my time of self-discovery in college, I was too scared to speak to my family about my sexuality because I didn’t want to be judged or shunned by any of them. On top of worrying about what my family would think, I identified as pansexual, and I doubted anyone in my family had even heard that word back then.

But in college, I was meeting people who lived their lives outside the gender binary, who were loving individuals of all genders, and who would accept me for who I was, whatever that looked like. I was building new friendships with people who I, in time, began to see as family. One of them is the first person I ever came out to.

I think it was this experience that caused a shift in my mindset around relationships—and why I began to embrace the concept of relationship anarchy.

Family is more than just what blood runs through our veins.

Relationship anarchy is a term for viewing all relationships as having no rules other than the ones all involved parties agreed to. Although relationship anarchy is often used in the context of ethical nonmonogamy, relationship anarchy can apply across relationships with family members, friends, and others. Essentially, it refers to viewing all relationship types as equal. The importance of a relationship doesn’t have more or less value because of the presence of blood or sex. It relies solely on your bond with that person.

I’m close to my family, sure. I figured I was supposed to be. But at the time I was exploring my sexuality, I didn’t feel like my emotions were safe with them. On the other hand, I had cemented bonds with people with who I had no fear. We were exploring our thoughts and beliefs together, and anything I said was something we could talk about openly. The buds of relationship anarchy were forming.

Think of that old saying, “Blood is thicker than water.” It’s meant to convey the idea that family always comes first. But I choose to live by another saying: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” This phrase says the exact opposite. Relationships with family aren’t more important just because of a shared bloodline.

For some, relationship anarchy seems like a radical idea. But for me, it’s more logical than anything. It’s used by those who reject societal expectations of how close people are supposed to be to others.

Realizing I’m a member of the LGBTQ+ community inadvertently caused a shift in my thought process. Just like I was learning that I didn’t have to honor the traditional markers for what being “masculine” or “feminine” was supposed to be, I was also learning that I didn’t need to abide by the pre-distributed labels placed on certain types of relationships. Not only did I begin to look at romantic and sexual relationships differently, but I began to understand that my previous view of what’s an important relationship was based on societal expectations: that I should love someone just because we’re related by blood, or that none of my friends who have been there for me for years (and vice versa) could ever come close to the distant relative I only see during the holidays.

For me, the idea of ditching the relationship hierarchies in favor of relationship anarchy was easy enough to adopt, although my family has never been on board. My mom’s always been one to say that friends come and go. At the end of the day, family is all you have, and you have to keep them close, she would say. My grandmother also hammered this idea home, saying that my “little friends” would never be there when I needed them.

But that ended up just not being the case. I have the friends I have today because we’ve shown each other over the years that we’re always here for one another.

And it wasn’t just our shared queerness that brought us together: These are the people I turned to when I was boiling over with self-hatred. My friends understood me because we were dealing with the same kind of negative feelings. We all hated ourselves in some way, and it was easy to sit in that together.

My mom, though, could never understand why I felt the way I did, and it was difficult to find the words to make my thoughts make sense. She would say things like “Happiness is a choice,” but I could never understand why she thought I would choose this.

Looking back, I was definitely depressed, and I don’t believe my mother understood how serious my feelings were. But at that time, speaking to her about any of that seemed almost impossible. Reaching out to her for help felt like blasts of judgment every time. Our conversations left me feeling frustrated and isolated.

I realize now that a lot of the reason I even made it through my high school years is that my friends and I were all depressed together. We were all trying to find small ways to make it through each day and support each other. We talked about how we purposefully looked forward to seeing each other or reading the next chapters in our favorite books.

I was able to see these kinds of adult bonds through rainbow-colored glasses, and questioning that one type of relationship bled into questioning them all.

As I’ve gotten older and more secure in my pansexual identity, I’ve been able to reach out to my family just to talk. I realize now that we don’t have to have deep, soul-searching conversations about my life if I don’t want to. No one is entitled to my story except me. But I will say that taking the small steps to initiate the conversation has allowed me to build new relationships with my family on my own terms while still keeping the close bonds I formed in college as my primary emotional connections.

What I am saying is we can all choose the kind of relationships we have with others. Coming out as a part of the LGBTQ+ community meant that I wasn’t limited to having friendships with other women. I was able to see these kinds of adult bonds through rainbow-colored glasses, and questioning that one type of relationship bled into questioning them all.

Family is more than just what blood runs through our veins. A family can be chosen. You can actively choose to put people in high regard and keep them the closest to you.

I’m not sure when this thought process began or when it ended, but being a relationship anarchist has—just like being a member of the LGBTQ+ community—meant that I’m leaving expectations and generalizations behind in favor of creating a new narrative for myself that’s completely my own. I can shape it how I want, and I refuse to feel bad about removing people from my space who don’t serve my needs and wants.

It’s important to mention that the fact that I can actively choose which relationships are most important to me is a privilege. Other people in the community aren’t that lucky. So many are thrown out of their homes, live in areas that are unsafe for them to be themselves, or have countless other barriers that prevent them from being around others that will accept them. For those people, keeping the bonds you have, sometimes regardless of how fulfilling they are, is all you have. Relationship anarchy alone won’t solve these systemic issues.

But just remember: At the end of the day, you have the power. Not every physical space can be safe, but our chosen relationships can be. Wherever you can, find a community that will accept you and understands you for who you are. You don’t owe your story to anyone, and this should be one aspect of your life where you feel empowered to take control and set the terms.

Complete Article HERE!

Yes, You’re ‘Queer Enough’

— So Call or Label Yourself Whatever Feels Right

by Gabrielle Kassel

This article is for anyone who’s ever asked themselves “Am I queer?” or “Am I queer enough?”

(Spoiler alert: The answer to the first Q = the answer to the second Q).

Here we go!

Typically an umbrella term, “queer” is an identifier that means outside the norm of society, explains Eva Bloom, a queer peer sexuality educator, sex science communicator, and creator of F*ck the Patriarchy, F*ck Yourself, a shame-busting program for non-men.

The so-called norms of society that they’re referring to are cisgender, allosexual, and heterosexual.

“If you’re anywhere outside those identifiers — even a little bit! — you can be queer,” they say.

Sometimes people who are “not straight” or “not cisgender” or “not allosexual” might identify “just” as queer.

And sometimes they may layer “queer” alongside another identity. For example, someone might be a queer bisexual dyke, or a queer trans man, or a queer biromantic asexual.

“Historically, ‘queer’ was used as a slur against the queer community,” says Rae McDaniel, a licensed clinical counselor and gender and sex therapist based in Chicago.

Starting in the 18th century, the word started to get slung at people assumed to be “homosexual” or “engaging in homosexual activity.” Folk who fell outside the acceptable versions of “man” and “woman” also fell victim to the word.

However, in the late 1980s/early 1990s, LGBTQ+ communities began to reclaim the term both as a personal identifier (“I am queer”) and as a field of study (queer theory), says McDaniel.

What fueled this reclamation? Mainly, anger. During the AIDS epidemic, LGBTQ+ communities were (rightfully!) pissed at the lack of response (or compassion!) from doctors, politicians, and unaffected citizens.

Out of spite and in power, LGBTQ+ people began using the word as both an identity and a rallying cry. “We’re here, we’re queer, we will not live in fear,” for example, became a common march chant.

“For some people, especially those alive at a time when queer was used exclusively as a slur, queer is still a dirty word,” says McDaniel.

As such, you should never call someone queer unless that’s a word they would use to refer to themselves.

Due to its history as a slur, many (queer) people see it as having political power.

“For many, identifying as queer is a way of saying ‘I resist cis-hetero patriarchal society that stuffs people into tiny cisgender, heterosexual boxes,’” says McDaniel. For these folks, queerness is about trying to disrupt the people, systems, and institutions that disadvantage minorities.

For them, “queerness is about freedom to be yourself while also working towards others’ freedom as well,” they say.

For the record, you don’t have to be queer to be invested in actively disrupting systems of oppression!

Straight, cisgender, allosexual individuals can and should be doing this activist work, too.

That’s a question only you can answer!

If you answer yes to one or more of the following questions, you may be queer:

  • Does the term “queer” elicit feelings of excitement, euphoria, delight, comfort, or joy?
  • Does it give a sense of belonging or community?
  • Does the fluidity of queerness feel freeing?
  • Does your gender exist outside of society’s understanding of acceptable manhood or womanhood?
  • Is your sexuality something other than straight?
  • Do you experience sexual attraction somewhere on the asexual spectrum?

Remember: “You don’t need to have gone through a physical transition, have a particular kind of gender expression, or even have a queer dating or sexual history in order to claim the label,” says Casey Tanner, a queer licensed clinical counselor, certified sex therapist, and expert for pleasure product company LELO.

“It refers to a sense of self, rather than any behavior or appearance,” adds Tanner.

If you’re queer, you’re queer enough. Full stop.

Unfortunately, many people who want to identify as queer worry that they’re somehow not adequately queer or queer enough to take on the term for themselves. (Tanner says this is known as “queer imposter syndrome.”)

Bloom notes this is an especially common phenomenon among bi+ women and femmes — especially those who have a history of dating men or are currently in a relationship with a nonqueer man.

“Often, the question of ‘Am I queer enough?’ is the result of internalized biphobia and femme-phobia,” she says. Blergh.

While this feeling of inadequacy is common, they say, “You don’t have to worry, sweetie, if you’re queer, you’re queer enough.”

That stands if:

  • You’re in a so-called “straight passing” relationship, aka a relationship others assume to be heterosexual.
  • Nobody knows you’re queer but you.
  • You’re a new member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
  • You’re not physically “clockable” or identifiable as queer.
  • You don’t have any queer friends.
  • You have no sexual or dating history.
  • Your sexual and dating history doesn’t “confirm” your queerness.

PSA: Your current relationship doesn’t dictate whether you’re queer

“People who’re in straight appearing relationships but identify as queer often feel like they aren’t queer or aren’t queer enough because their queer identities aren’t always visible at first glance,” says McDaniel.

But this doesn’t change the fact that they’re queer!

Self-identification — *not* your relationship status (or dating and sexual history) — is what determines whether someone is queer.

No doubt, there’s tremendous privilege that accompanies “passing” as straight (aka not being publicly identifiable as queer).

But, “on the flip side, queer (and bi+) invisibility is associated with increased depression and anxiety and decreased access to affirming healthcare,” says Tanner.

Why? “We all crave being seen and accepted for who we are, and if we aren’t seen, we aren’t accepted,” she says.

Further, not feeling queer enough to enter queer spaces isolates people from the opportunity to make queer friends and join a queer community, says McDaniel.

“And connection to community is an important part of resiliency,” explains McDaniel. “So not feeling able to enter, welcomed by, or seen as queer by the people in your life can have profound impacts on mental health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.”

The short answer: Connect to the queer community. These avenues can all help.

Read queer books

“Consuming a wide variety of queer stories is an excellent way to normalize queerness for yourself, and even see yourself in the pages,” says Bloom.

Queer memoirs in particular can be powerful for identification. For example:

Watch queer movies and TV shows

“If you’re constantly consuming cisgender and or straight images and media, it becomes easy to forget to affirm the queer part of you,” says McDaniel.

On top of that, it can expedite feelings of inadequacy and otherness.

Listen to queer podcasts

From raunchy to educational, there are queer podcasts for every queer listener’s taste.

Trust, you’ll like all the below!

Follow queer people on Instagram

“Filling your feed with people who are unapologetic in their queerness, can both normalize queerness while validating your own queerness and identity,” says Bloom.

Following people who show off their queer joy, in particular, can be pretty damn invigorating, she says.

Get on TikTok, and maybe even participate

One of the great things about TikTok is how excellent the algorithm is at showing you the content you want to see.

To get on queer TikTok, mass-follow a bunch of the suggested accounts that pop up after following your fave queer comedian, celeb, sex educator, podcaster, or influencer. Then, enjoy falling down the rabbit hole of your now very queer For You feed.

“When you feel comfortable, you might participate in one of the TikTok sound overlays that applies to you,” says Bloom. “This may help other queer people find you, which may lead to friendships or community.”

Attend a queer event online

Thanks to the pandemic, there continue to be all sorts of online queer dance parties, matchmaking games, book readings, and performances, says Bloom.

“For some queer people, these online events feel less intimidating than in-person events because you can leave when you want, keep your camera off, and stay anonymous if you choose,” they say.

If that’s you, she says, “Attend, attend, attend!”

Keep hunting for community until you find one that affirms you

It’s important to remember that the queer community isn’t a monolith.

So, if you attend an event and don’t find queer people who affirm your queerness, keep looking, suggests McDaniel.

“I guarantee there are people out there in the world who will believe and affirm your queerness just because you tell them who you are,” they say. “And when you find them, it can be incredibly affirming and euphoric.”

Identity gatekeeping, which is the act of trying to limit access to who can use an identifier, happens with most gender and sexual identities. And every (!) single (!) time (!) it’s not only disgusting but potentially life endangering.

“Telling queer people that they aren’t queer enough or that they shouldn’t have access to the queer community is no small potatoes,” says Bloom. “It can be detrimental to someone’s mental health.

So, if you’re reading this and you’re being an identity gatekeeper, cut it out.

There are times that queer imposter syndrome and gatekeepers may make you feel otherwise, but if you’re queer, you ARE queer enough.

Queer is queer is queer is queer enough. We promise.

Complete Article HERE!

Pride 2021

Happy Gay Pride Month!

gay-pride.jpg

It’s time, once again, to post my annual pride posting.

In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a most remarkable change in societal attitudes toward those of us on the sexual fringe. One only needs to go back 50 years in time. I was 17 years old then and I knew I was queer. When I looked out on the world around me this is what I saw. Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.

Today, gays and trans folks serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay and trans protagonists.

Six years ago this month, a Supreme Court ruling lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the whole country.

The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks, and AIDS. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.

And yet some still experience a backlash in the dominant culture. I don’t relish the idea, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. And while we endure this be reminded that it won’t smart nearly as much if we know our history. And we should also remember the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”

In honor of gay pride month, a little sex history lesson — The Stonewall Riots

The confrontations between demonstrators and police at The Stonewall Inn, a mafia owned bar in Greenwich Village NYC over the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 are usually cited as the beginning of the modern Lesbian/Gay liberation Movement. What might have been just another routine police raid onstonewall.jpg a bar patronized by homosexuals became the pivotal event that sparked the entire modern gay rights movement.

The Stonewall riots are now the stuff of myth. Many of the most commonly held beliefs are probably untrue. But here’s what we know for sure.

  • In 1969, it was illegal to operate any business catering to homosexuals in New York City — as it still is today in many places in the world. The standard procedure was for New York City’s finest to raid these establishments on a regular basis. They’d arrest a few of the most obvious ‘types’ harass the others and shake down the owners for money, then they’d let the bar open as usual by the next day.
  • Myth has it that the majority of the patrons at the Stonewall Inn were black and Hispanic drag queens. Actually, most of the patrons were probably young, college-age white guys lookin for a thrill and an evening out of the closet, along with the usual cadre of drag queens and hustlers. It was reasonably safe to socialize at the Stonewall Inn for them, because when it was raided the drag queens and bull-dykes were far more likely to be arrested then they were.
  • After midnight June 27-28, 1969, the New York Tactical Police Force called a raid on The Stonewall Inn at 55 Christopher Street in NYC. Many of the patrons who escaped the raid stood around to witness the police herding the “usual suspects” into the waiting paddywagons. There had recently been several scuffles where similar groups of people resisted arrest in both Los Angeles and New York.
  • Stonewall was unique because it was the first time gay people, as a group, realized that what threatened drag queens and bull-dykes threatened them all.
  • Many of the onlookers who took on the police that night weren’t even homosexual. Greenwich Village was home to many left-leaning young people who had cut their political teeth in the civil rights, anti-war and women’s lib movements.
  • As people tied to stop the arrests, the mêlée erupted. The police barricaded themselves inside the bar. The crowd outside attempted to burn it down. Eventually, police reinforcements arrived to disperse the crowd. But this just shattered the protesters into smaller groups that continued to mill around the streets of the village.
  • A larger crowd assembled outside the Stonewall the following night. This time young gay men and women came to protest the raids that were commonplace in the city. They held hands, kissed and formed a mock chorus line singing; “We are the Stonewall Girls/We wear our hair in curls/We have no underwear/We show our pubic hair.” Don’t ‘cha just love it?
  • Police successfully dispersed this group without incident. But the print media picked up the story. Articles appeared in the NY Post, Daily News and The Village Voice. Theses helped galvanize the community to rally and fight back.
  • Within a few days, representatives of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis (two of the country’s first homophile rights groups) organized the city’s first ever “Gay Power” rally in Washington Square. Some give hundred protesters showed up; many of them gay and lesbians.

stonewall02.jpgThe riots led to calls for homosexual liberation. Fliers appeared with the message: “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” And the rest, boys and girls, is as they say is history.

During the first year after Stonewall, a whole new generation of organizations emerged, many identifying themselves for the first time as “Gay.” This not only denoted sexual orientation, but a radical way to self-identify with a growing sense of open political activism. Older, more staid homophile groups soon began to make way for the more militant groups like the Gay Liberation Front.

The vast majority of these new activists were under thirty; dr dick’s generation, don’t cha know. We were new to political organizing and didn’t know that this was as ground-breaking as it was. Many groups formed on colleges campuses and in big cities around the world.

By the following summer, 1970, groups in at least eight American cities staged simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots on the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York to a parade with floats for 1200 in Los Angeles. Seven thousand showed up in San Francisco.

What does it mean to be Queer?

Definition and history explained

The word ‘queer’ can represent an orientation, a community, a form of activism – and often, all three.

By

Over the last few decades, the word ‘queer’ has been reclaimed as an expression of empowerment by a large part of the LGBTQ+ community. For people who exist outside the gender or sexual norm, it can represent an orientation, a community, a form of activism – and often, all three.

Unlike labels such as ‘lesbian‘ or ‘non-binary’, which focus on a single aspect of someone’s identity – sexuality or gender, respectively – the term ‘queer’ encompasses both. However, since the term means different things to different people, its definition transcends any meaning that is pinned to it.

We spoke to Dr Kate Tomas, a spiritual empowerment mentor for women and non-binary people, Philip Baldwin, an LGBTQ rights activist, and Liz Edman, leading LGBTQ+ theologian and author of Queer Virtue, about what ‘queer’ means today:

What does queer mean?

Queer is predominantly used as an umbrella term to describe sexual orientations and gender identities other than heterosexual and cisgender (people whose gender identity and expression matches the sex they were assigned at birth). For people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, the word ‘queer’ can also convey a sense of community, acceptance, kinship, and represent a revolutionary, political rejection of heteronormativity.

‘Queer can be used in a range of contexts by LGBTQ+ people,’ Baldwin explains. ‘It can be used by people who want to reject specific labels of romantic orientation, sexual orientation and/or gender identity. It can also be used by people who want to challenge perceived norms of the LGBTQ+ community – for example, seeking to reject racism, sizeism or ableism.’

Queerness can convey a sense of community, acceptance, kinship, and represents a revolutionary rejection of heteronormativity.

Up until very recently, the word ‘queer’ was exclusively a homophobic slur. ‘It was first reclaimed in the late 1980s,’ says Balwin. ‘A younger generation of LGBTQ+ people now increasingly use the term. It can be empowering – some LGBTQ+ people associate the word with a sense of community and acceptance.’ Not everyone feels this way, he adds, so it’s important to listen to LGBTQ+ people and find out how they identify.

Not only is the word ‘queer’ interpreted in different ways by different people, but it can mean many different things to an individual, too. As an author, says Edman, ‘One of the first questions people always ask me is ‘how do you use the word ‘queer’? The word ‘queer’ means two things to me. It is an umbrella term comprising various iterations of Queer sexual identity and experience.

‘Basically, it’s a neat and nifty way to communicate what is otherwise an increasingly cumbersome list of initials that begin LGBTQIA,’ she says. ‘I like ‘queer’ in this sense because it can hold identities and preferences that are being felt and named now and into the future.’ In addition, Edman’s work ‘draws on the academic discipline of Queer Theory, where “to queer” is to rupture false binaries – or put another way, to disrupt rigid, black and white thinking.’


Is ‘queer’ an insult?

‘The label “queer”, when used by people hostile to difference, is a slur,’ says Dr Tomas. ‘All slurs act in the same way: it is a way of labelling someone as sub-human, indicating to the world that they do not deserve to be treated with humanity or respect. Sometimes the most powerful way to fight back from such an act of violent labelling is to reclaim the term itself.’

Using the label is a choice that can only be made by the individual. ‘One can self-identify as Queer, but it is not appropriate to label others as Queer because of the history of the word,’ Dr Tomas explains. ‘So, if you know your friend identified as Queer you can talk about your queer friend – but if you think someone is gay, it is not appropriate to refer to them as queer.’

The history of the word ‘queer’

The word “queer” hasn’t always related to sexuality and gender. When it entered the English language in the 16th century, queer was a synonym for strange, odd and eccentric. ‘It wasn’t until the 1940s that the term was used a slur against gay people, or anyone who wasn’t gender-conforming,’ says Dr Tomas. ‘To be labelled as “a queer” was extremely dangerous, and would often result in violence, abuse and sometimes death.

Three decades ago, Queer – with capitalisation to denote a proper noun – was reclaimed, Dr Tomas continues. ‘Reclaiming words that have been used as slurs and weaponised against oppressed communities is a form of resistance,’ she explains. ‘There is power in taking back a term used to shame, humiliate and violate, but that reclamation can only be done by members of that oppressed and marginalised group.’


How to be more inclusive of Queer people

It’s easy to make the world a more welcoming, safe space for Queer people. Here’s some pointers on being more inclusive that are actionable right now:

🌈 Don’t miss the ‘Q’ in LGBTQ: Whenever you talk about sexual orientation and gender identity, make sure you include the word queer.

🌈 Increase your understanding: Do your own research. ‘Listen to LGBTQ+ people, learn about LGBTQ+ identities and challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia whenever you hear it,’ says Baldwin.

🌈 Don’t make assumptions: Open your mind to the possibility that any person you ever meet might identify as Queer. Avoid drawing conclusions based on your perceptions of who they are.

🌈 Share your pronouns: ‘Making a point of sharing your own pronouns – “Hi, I am Kate, I use She and Her pronouns” – and not assuming any one else’s are two powerful and impactful ways to make Queer people safe and welcomed,’ says Dr Tomas.

🌈 Ditch dualisms: Make an effort to use non-gendered language whenever you can, like ‘people’ instead of ‘men and women’ and ‘children’ instead of ‘boys and girls’.

🌈 Fly the flag: Quite literally, if you can. ‘Displaying the rainbow flag in your businesses will instantly let Queer people know you are safe for them,’ says Dr Tomas.


What is Queer Theory?

Queer Theory (QT) explores and challenges the various ways society perpetuates gender-, sex-, and sexuality-based binaries, such as feminine/masculine, man/woman, and heterosexual/homosexual. These binaries reinforce the notion of the minority as abnormal and inferior, Encyclopaedia Britannica writes, ‘for example, homosexual desire as inferior to heterosexual desire, acts of femininity as inferior to acts of masculinity.’

‘Thus,’ the text continues, ‘Queer Theory is a call to transgress conventional understandings of gender and sexuality and to disrupt the boundary that separates heterosexuality from homosexuality. Instead, Queer Theorists argue that the heterosexual-homosexual division must be challenged to open space for the multiple identities, embodiments, and discourses that fall outside assumed binaries.’

In essence, Queer Theory focuses on dismantling oppressive cultural norms. ‘Whether or not you are considered to be “a man” or “a woman” directly impacts how much power you have access to, how much respect you are given, and therefore how safe you are in the world,’ says Dr Tomas. ‘If you happen to not confirm to either of these options for gender presentation, or you are neither a man or a woman, the world is not a safe place.’

Complete Article HERE!

Feminism’s legacy sees college women embracing more diverse sexuality

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Most adults identify themselves as heterosexual, meaning they report being attracted to, and engaging in sex with, only members of the other sex. However, women ages 18 to 29 are increasingly rejecting exclusive heterosexuality and describing their sexual orientation in other ways. These changes in women’s sexuality are not mirrored by their male peers.

That’s the primary finding in our most recent report on nine years of surveys at the Binghamton Human Sexualities Research Lab, just published in “Sexuality in Emerging Adulthood.” Together with our Binghamton University colleagues Richard E. Mattson, Melissa Hardesty, Ann Merriwether and Maggie M. Parker, we conclude that changes in young adults’ sexual orientation are not just as a result of increased social acceptance of LGBT people – but also are related to feminism and the women’s movement.

LGBT progress

These findings align with recent polling by the Gallup Organization, which found that American adults are increasingly identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or more than one of those. The Gallup report attributed these changes to increasing public awareness and acceptance of people who identify as LGBT, as well as the influence of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Another potential factor was proposed federal legislation banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

But our study goes beyond those poll results, showing that young American adults are shifting away from heterosexuality not just in how they identify themselves when asked about their identities, but also how they describe whom they are attracted to and with whom they have sex. That indicates something more is happening than an increasing willingness to “come out” and identify as LGBT.

The fact that these differences are larger among women than men indicates, we believe, that feminism and the women’s movement have, in fact, begun to change female sex and gender roles.

Compulsory heterosexuality

In the early 1980s, lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich argued that what she called “compulsory heterosexuality” was the primary cause of gender inequality. She said that because social pressures and threats of violence – as well as actual violence – force heterosexuality on women, that made women dependent on and subservient to men in all areas of life, including gender roles and sexual expression.

Our research indicates that one outcome of more than a century of feminist activism and progress may be women’s increasing resistance to compulsory heterosexuality and its consequences. As a result, more women under 30 are moving away from exclusive heterosexuality than men in the same age group.

In a related development, we found that women in this age group are also reporting more open attitudes toward sex than previous generations of women. They are separating sex from traditional love relationships, describing themselves as enjoying casual sex with different partners and more likely to have sex with a person before being sure the relationship would become serious or long term. These attitudes are more akin to those of their male peers.

The shift is more pronounced among women who are moving away from exclusive heterosexuality, and less obvious among women who report they are exclusively heterosexual.

There’s much more to learn

We still have a lot of questions about these trends. We wonder how they affect the ways that these young adults engage in sex and relationships. We also don’t know how women who identify themselves as not exclusively heterosexual negotiate and navigate sexual relationships with men – or whether these trends will continue as they age.

We are also interested in why men in this age group are less likely than women to reject exclusive heterosexuality – but are more likely to report exclusive homosexuality. And we’d like to know whether, or at what point, those who are not exclusively heterosexual might come out to family and friends – and if they deal with things like anti-LGBT prejudice.

As human sexuality becomes increasingly diverse, it remains unclear whether the political and social landscape will affirm these changes or threaten those who are expressing that diversity. We are hopeful that the continued success of the LGBT and feminist movements will push society toward an affirming future.

Complete Article HERE!

Sex Ed Often Leaves Out Queer People.

Here’s What To Know

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Sex can be a nerve-racking experience no matter what. That’s especially true if you have no clue what to do. And since LGBTQ+ topics are often left out of the conversation in school sex ed classes, many queer people know this feeling well.

There is no national mandate for sex education in the U.S., and even in the states that do provide courses, homosexuality is often disregarded or vilified. According to the organization SIECUS: Sex Ed For Social Change, nine states require educators to portray homosexuality in a negative manner or do not allow them to speak about LGBTQ individuals, while only 11 states require classes to include affirming sexual orientation instruction. That number shrinks to seven when SIECUS accounts for states that mandate affirming instruction about both sexual health and gender identity.

It’s a hotly debated topic being taken up by state legislatures now.

Aside from leaving some queer people in a panic searching for “how to have sex” online, there are consequences when students don’t receive a proper sex education. For example, lesbian and bisexual youth or those with both male and female partners experience a higher rate of unintended pregnancies when compared to their heterosexual peers.

Some sexuality educators are pushing for comprehensive sex education, which would include topics relevant to queer students, that leave behind abstinence-only and shame-based messages.

Life Kit spoke with sexuality educators to understand what sex education could look like for queer students.

Get to know your body and discover what pleasure feels like to you.

Ericka Hart, a sexuality educator with a focus in racial, social and gender justice, reminds us that messages about sex in education and in the media are typically for a white, cisgender and straight audience. To get a better understanding of what you like, “I think it’s a matter of just taking in messages that you’re receiving from the world and seeing if they are fit or not,” they say. If those messages don’t fit or affirm you, Hart suggests masturbation as a way to unlearn that in order to discover what does please you.

Another way to figure out what you do or don’t like can be through watching porn. If this is your preference, consider watching porn created by queer performers — and make sure it’s made ethically, by paying performers and using safe practices.

There isn’t a singular or “right” way to have sex.

Historically, sex education in the U.S. has revolved around the idea that sex involves a penis and vagina. However, it can involve different kinds of genitalia, body parts or none of the above. Sex is whatever brings you pleasure.

“Just because you are queer doesn’t mean that there’s such a thing called queer sex,” Ericka Hart says. “We all have sex differently. It’s really just [however] you are defining it.”

Sexuality educator Melina Gioconda Davis, who also goes by their stage name “Melina Gaze,” is co-founder and director at Vulgar, a sex education project in Mexico. “When we’re looking to explore our sexuality, or our pleasure, it’s a really great tool to think of our explorations as pleasure-oriented instead of goal-oriented,” Gaze says. In other words, the end goal doesn’t need to be an orgasm.

Communication should be ongoing with sexual partners to make sure everyone is comfortable and satisfied.

Of course, consent is always necessary. Hart says how you communicate what you want is also important. “I” statements are good to communicate what you find pleasurable. Be forthright about what you want and discuss with your sex partner(s) where you all agree. If someone draws a boundary, respect it and move on. This communication will evolve over time. Ensuring that a person is comfortable with terms or sexual acts that continue to affirm their identity is crucial.

Hart recommends Scarleteen’s Yes, No, Maybe So: A Sexual Inventory Stocklist” to discover what your physical and non-physical boundaries are. It reviews questions like whether you are comfortable with your top off with a partner, whether you want to be the one to put on the condom, whether you want to share your sexual history with your partner and more. (Life Kit has a whole episode on navigating consent, too.)

Don’t let shame or stigma prevent you from caring for your sexual health.

Melina Gaze believes a big priority for sexuality educators should be to reduce the stigma and shame surrounding STIs. Gaze says testing is important and a great way to check your status. They recommend speaking with a trusted physician to decipher what your individual risk assessment looks like. “Risk is not a moral judgment,” they say, “it’s kind of like a statistical equation.” If you don’t have access to healthcare services, you can also visit a community clinic like a Planned Parenthood for testing and treatment.

Gaze also believes that sexual health includes mental, emotional and physical health. “I think sexual health has to do with general bodily well-being,” Gaze says. “Are the social conditions present for me to be able to feel good as a sexual being?”

And, it’s important to remember that sexual health is intersectional. “We’re not just individuals, right? We’re inserted in structures that go beyond just individual social structures, like racism, like classism, like ableism. And those things impact how we have sex. They impact whether we feel entitled to our bodies or not.”

Complete Article HERE!

You shouldn’t feel pressured to define your sexuality

By Peyton Jeffers

How do you know if you’re gay or bi?

If you were like me at 12 years old, no amount of anxiously Googling “Am I gay?” or frantically taking quizzes that promise to reveal your true sexual orientation gave any insight into what your sense of sexual identity or lived experiences would be.

I turned to the internet for information because the messages I received in school or from popular culture about sexuality were not congruent with my thoughts and feelings. I felt I didn’t fit in either category I had been exposed to at the time — “gay” or “straight.”

So, if you’re asking yourself this question, you’re probably trying to describe your sexual identity to yourself and the people around you in a way that makes you feel comfortable. 

Questioning or challenging your sexuality can feel both confusing and isolating, but take a breath. You’re not alone.

Traditional models of understanding sexuality tend to center around one aspect: our sexual orientation. This model says you can be attracted to the same sex and/or gender, the opposite sex and/or gender, or people of either.

These models are limiting because their language and definitions often assume gender and sex are binary. They don’t account for aspects of sexuality outside of gender, such as the different kinds of sex or sensations we like or the levels of physical or emotional attraction we experience with others.

It might be helpful to consider who you are attracted to in these ways. 

Are you attracted to same-sex, different sex or intersex people? People who are androgynous, masculine or femme presenting? Are you attracted to people who are genderqueer, genderfluid, transgender and/or nonbinary? Simply people regardless of their gender presentation or sex?

If you’re afraid of claiming a specific identity because you’re unsure, then know you can also identify as gay, bisexual, questioning or otherwise without any experience or desire for physical intimacy. 

Relationships require vulnerability and an understanding of how to be romantically or emotionally available with other people, and sometimes these feelings don’t align with our behavior or sexual attraction.

Genevieve Labe, a Ph.D. student and adjunct faculty member teaching human sexuality at the IU School of Public Health, said they don’t think there’s a clear answer to the reader’s question because the way people ascribe labels to themselves varies person-to-person.

“How I might feel or determine how I identify could be so different for someone else,” they said. “I think whatever feels right in the moment is good. My question back to you is why do we need that label?”

Labe said labels can help us make sense of the world, but it’s important for us to think about the trauma labels have inflicted on people in the queer community, whether it be lingering stereotypes or forcing ourselves to stick to labels once we’ve claimed them.

How we interpret ourselves is dependent on the tools we have available. Knowing this, we can accept our sexualities are subject to change as new information and experiences become available over the course of our lives.

For example, if you’re someone who has identified as gay but end up feeling attraction to someone of a different gender, you shouldn’t feel pressured to prohibit that based on a label, Labe said.

On the contrary, it’s also completely valid to want to identify yourself with a label that feels most affirming to you when you use it.

“Labels should not be boxes into which we feel we must squeeze ourselves, but rather tools with which to communicate and to begin conversations,” Robyn Ochs, bisexual activist and editor of “Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World and Recognize,” said on her website.

If you feel safe and comfortable confiding in someone close to you, opening up about these feelings might alleviate some pressure. Your sexuality is also yours to share on your own terms — when and with whoever you want to.

Overall, whatever feels comfortable, makes you feel good about yourself and gives you a sense of community is what is right. You’re always allowed to change and reevaluate your needs and desires if you feel your identity doesn’t suit you anymore.

Complete Article HERE!