(by Eric Muhr)

Setting Moon from the Oregon Coast

Photo by Jerad Armijo

cruisin’

Silver Falls State Park - Oregon

Blue sunrise on the Oregon Coast

To those wondering, it is a sunrise! 7am. The light you see is a crabbing boat

Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington

North Cascades

November, 2023

And there are deliberately and specifically nude events in Seattle, as opposed to incidental nudity at Pride, so the fact that no one is clutching their pearls about the nude cyclists at the Fremont Solstice Parade is telling.

If I had to guess, over half the people who are like "oh we don't want sexual stuff at pride" are people who've been told there is public fucking at pride by people intentionally misleading others. I know when I first heard about the discourse I thought the two sides were "people should be allowed to fuck publicly at pride, there shouldn't be any kids there bc it shouldn't be family friendly" and "pride should be family-friendly bc there will be kids there" and my initial reaction was "wait people fuck at pride? Yeah that's wrong, I think pride should be able to be attended to by queer kids and teens".

I then learned that the people who presented the two sides in that way were being misleading and went "wait wtf??" (I also learned that "family-friendly" was not, in fact, synonymous with "okay for kids to see", but was actually a dogwhistle.)

So, like, there is something to be said for the fact that 'sex in public' is a fact of life for unhoused people and for the history of queer people, and I don't want to be like 'hey any kind of sex in any place that might be vaguely considered public should ruin your life.' That's the kind of thinking that ends up with a woman thinking she's alone on a deserted beach masturbating, not realizing a family is within eyeshot up the beach, getting her arrest video posted by the cops to shame her, and dying by suicide because people harassed her endlessly. (This was recent.)

But that said, no one is whipping out their dick at Pride. The issue is that, to some people, any display of queer sexuality is considered basically the same as two dudes rawdogging on a pile of dicks.

And yeah, sure, Pride should be for a lot of people, but also, Pride started because a bunch of kinky queer adults said 'yeah, we deserve time and space for us,' and making it okay for queer kids and teens should not result in the expulsion of those who created it in the first place.

I fully support the creation of additional and alternate Pride spaces for kids and teens, but under no circumstances should that come at the cost of pushing out the people who got us there in the first place.

But yeah, there are people who are being super fucking disingenuous about this and I'm over it.

sammfisherphoto

St. Johns Bridge // Portland, Oregon

Island in the mist

Mount Rainier National Park, WA by Erwin Buske

Vancouver (1990)

Washington

North Cascades

November, 2023

fading fast..

Oregon, USA (by Eric Muhr)

King tides

midnightmovies

Moss falls