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a fanciful affair | hjs (m)
summary: your sister is getting married, and you are the maid of honor in the wedding party. to your surprise, the only other person in the wedding party is a previous fling whom you would have rather never encountered again, so maybe it's the “love in the air” that makes you agree to round two.
pairing: jisung x fem reader
genre: some angst, smut
word count: 8.9k
rating: mature (18+)
warnings & features: profanity; alcohol consumption; mentions of sibling favoritism; mentions of societal/parental pressures; some heteronormativity; the wedding takes place in a church but there aren’t any heavy religious elements; pessimistic views towards marriage; jisung and the reader have poor communication at first but eventually they start to get on the right track; graphic sexual content; mentions of (past) casual & drunken sex; some dirty talk; a little bit of foot play; vaginal fingering; oral sex; semi-public sex
author’s note: reuploaded from my old blog and rewritten for stray kids bc i wanted to. i hope you enjoy!
( click here to read on AO3 instead )
---
“I’m on my way right now.”
That part is essentially true.
“Yeah, I’m in the car.”
That part is a downright lie.
“Yes! Stop worrying so much. It's just the rehearsal, isn’t it?”
It takes two heartbeats for you to realize your mistake, at which point your heart practically stops. You close your eyes curse your loose lips. You hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud — it just slipped.
Detonation imminent in three... two... one...
“Just the rehearsal?!” Jihye screeches. “Are you kidding me right now? I mean, yeah, I guess it's just the rehearsal. …For my goddamn wedding! It’s only the practice for the most important event of my life. It needs to be perfect, and my Maid of Honor is probably still at home, probably not even dressed yet, telling me it's just the rehearsal. So typical of you, Y/N. Oh, and for the record, Mom and Dad aren't happy about you not being here yet, either.”
You reopen your eyes just to roll them, then return to fishing your car keys out of your bag.
They may not be happy, but it's not like your parents can be surprised by your tardiness. It’s their younger daughter — the perfect student, the perfect athlete, the perfect musician — who is the stable, reliable one.
Sure, you know for a fact that your mother and father love you. They’d do anything for you, give you anything and everything they can. But you’re also well aware that Jihye’s compliant, placating nature takes a lot less of a toll on them. Your parents must be beyond grateful for her. Their nerves are frayed and frazzled from suffering through your rambunctious “phase” that still hasn’t passed.
Your teenage years can be summed up in a series of jaundiced words, whiny protests, and indignant groans from your side of the ring, and stern lectures tapering off to exhausted sighs from your parents’ end. Whenever your attitude became too much, your mother and father would turn their attention to Jihye. She would present them with yet another trophy or academic achievement to soothe their souls and assure them that they were capable of raising a “successful” human being in the eyes of society.
These days, you are keeping your trend alive and well by refusing to conform to your parents’ expectations of settling down in a monogamous heterosexual relationship for the purpose of “stability” and starting a family of your own. And, just like always, your parents have turned to Jihye for comfort. They are spending a fortune on your baby sister’s wedding, a clear display that they favor the direction her life is going.
But Jihye — like most everyone else in the world — deserves happiness, of course, so why not try to make this special day as perfect as possible for her? If she wants to get married, she is certainly entitled to her dream wedding.
Just shy of four months ago, in a show of sibling camaraderie and familial commitment you knew would please your parents, you had promised to be nothing but supportive of all of your sister’s wedding plans, from the humblest of requests to the most exorbitant demands. Your stamina had kept up fairly well, but you are gradually losing steam as the end draws nearer.
Only a little over twenty-four more hours to go, you remind yourself with dull cheer.
Though, if you’re being completely honest, you aren’t even sure that Jihye getting married is such a good idea. At least not so soon, anyway.
She and her boyfriend (fiancé now, of course) had only been dating for eight months when he proposed. Surely that was not a long enough period of time to truly get to know another person, and you blatantly told her as much. But Jihye was over the moon and she couldn’t — wouldn’t — hear of it. She swore up and down that she knew in her bones Chris is definitely the one, which took you aback. Your sister was never one to be overly romantic. Jihye always, always keeps a calm, disciplined, pragmatic head on her shoulders. So even while you are quite skeptical of her declaration of having found her so-called soul mate, you also trust her judgment. She is the smartest person you know, after all.
Besides, you can’t deny that by the rigid standards of society which your parents hold in such high esteem, Chris is everything a husband “should” be. He is charming, handsome, clever, funny, financially stable, and the epitome of etiquette. And, above all, he seems to make Jihye genuinely happy. He hasn’t changed her, but he does get your uptight, austere little sister to giggle and joke and relax and adore life. You have to admit you’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner for her to spend the rest of her life with.
But do they have to be so hasty about it? And do they have to get married on their one-year-anniversary? It makes you want to gag.
Presently, you collect yourself and say, “I know, honey, I'm sorry. Still trying to get my shit together and act like I’m the older sister here.”
Jihye sighs quietly on the other end of the line. When she speaks again, her voice is much calmer and softer. “I didn’t mean it like—”
“Yeah, I know,” you say. “I'll be there in ten minutes, okay? And for the record, I am dressed.”
She giggles, and you know you’re on your way to being forgiven. “Okay. Drive safely, Y/N. See you soon.”
---
Everyone who arrived at the church on time gives you peculiar looks when you join them inside seventeen minutes later.
It takes a moment for you to realize it is because they all dressed up for the rehearsal while you are still clad in a pair of ripped, black denim shorts and a white tank top with the name of your favorite band advertised across your chest. Evidently the universe decided you just needed something else to mentally kick yourself over today. You only hope that Jihye and your parents will be too absorbed in other, more crucial details to waste energy scolding you.
No such luck.
In a flash, your mother is on you like a vulture to carrion.
“I thought we told you this would be semi-formal!” she whisper-hisses in your ear as she hugs you.
“Hi Mom,” you say with an unapologetic smirk. “Hi Dad.”
“Hi pumpkin, glad you could make it,” says your father. He leans down and pecks the air near your temple.
“Oh look, hon!” your mother exclaims to your father. Something behind you has caught her attention. “That must be Chris’s sister and her two kids. When did they get here? Let’s go say hello...”
As quickly as that, your mother ushers your father away to leave you standing alone, but only for a second.
“There you are!”
Oh no, it’s the Bridezilla! you panic playfully, turning towards the sound. Jihye waves excitedly and hurries towards you with quick and dainty stiletto’d steps. Her fiancé follows her at a much more leisurely pace, hands in his pockets.
Chris catches your gaze and smiles. Then he glances at the back of Jihye’s head, gives a slight shrug of his shoulders, and looks to you again with raised eyebrows as if to fondly say, Yeah, she’s been a little much today, but we love her.
You grin back at him from over your sister’s shoulder as she slams her frame into yours and wraps her arms around your neck affectionately. The scent of her signature shampoo makes you think of home.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” you say. “I'm the worst.”
“You are not, don’t say that. It’s fine, Y/N.” She might be reassuring herself more than you, but you’ll take it.
Jihye pulls back and squeezes your bare biceps. Her eyes sweep over your outfit in the same judging manner as your mother’s did, but she manages to hold her tongue. She’s trying to keep it together for the rest of the day.
“I’m just glad you’re here now,” she says instead, smiling warmly. “This should all be really simple. The minister already talked me, Chris, Mom, and Dad through most of it. We just need to ‘act it out.’ If we can just find your partner now, I think we’ll be ready to get started...”
By “partner” you know she means whoever Chris elected as his Best Man, whom you have never met before. His and Jihye’s relationship has been such a whirlwind that you’ve never gotten the chance.
It will just be you and the Best Man in the wedding party, which is one decision of Jihye’s for which you are admittedly thankful. Large wedding parties are typically too ostentatious in your opinion. Though you can’t help but wonder if there would have been more people involved if your sister had only given herself more time to plan.
Jihye peers around with sharp eyes. “Darling, have you seen Jisung?”
Chris also makes a cursory inspection around the place at her request.
“Hmm... Well, I don’t- Ah, here he comes now, sweetheart,” he says with a gesture of his hand somewhere to your left and Jihye’s right. You look to where he is indicating and see a man making his way towards the three of you from between the pews.
The immediate thought that registers in your mind is that he is extremely good-looking. Thick dark hair parted slightly off-center, eyes the color of bitter coffee, wide shoulders. The sleeves of his button-down shirt are rolled up to his elbows, granting a nice view of veined and sinewy forearms. He isn’t especially tall, but his legs are a bit long for his body proportions. His smile is wide but a little nervous for some reason…
… Oh no ...
You’ve seen him somewhere before.
You’ve spoken with him before.
You’ve slept with him before.
And he was one of the worst one-night-stands you have ever had.
It was something around six months ago when you had gone out with a group of friends to one of the city’s hottest night clubs. It was a scene you felt like you were starting to outgrow, to be honest, but your mission success rate had always been one-hundred-percent, and you were in the mood to score that night. The mission was simple: get laid.
It was always easy to find someone to take home or leave with for the night, sometimes scarily so. It was nothing a form-flattering dress, sexy heels, and a boat load of confidence had ever failed to accomplish, in your experience.
It was two shots and half a cocktail into the night when you spotted his friends dragging him to the dance floor. He was laughing, that much was clear. You think you may have even heard the sound of it over the chatter and thumping music. Maybe that was why you continued to watch him.
He was awkward getting started, likely embarrassed, but he was good when he finally let himself go and really dance. His friends were objectively better — their moves were sharper, cleaner — but it was he who held your attention. Even from a distance, you could see his bangs were damp from his exertions and the heat of the suffocating crowd. His face was dewy and glowing. Even while dancing, he didn’t stop laughing and talking with his friends.
“He’s cute,” said one of your girlfriends. “And he looks like he’s having a good time.”
You didn’t need to follow her line of sight to know who she was talking about — you’d already been staring at him for minutes.
It was when you had finally lowered your eyes to the dregs at the bottom of your glass when your friend had leaned in closer and said, “He's looking at you!”
You remember snapping your eyes up to find she was right. The music had changed, and the man didn’t look awkward at all as he stared right back at you. He must have caught you staring.
The events between then and when you entered his apartment were a thrilling mix of drinking, laughter, and shameless flirting. Some memories have been blurred by the shots you consumed, but others you remember vividly. His touch on the small of your back when he ushered you out the door. The heavy cloud of stale smoke in the Uber to his place. The exact angle of the tent in his pants while taking the elevator up to his apartment.
If only the X-rated scenes that transpired after tumbling into his bed were as worthy of such detailed remembrance.
He had been a messy kisser, but that was something easily excused by the healthy stream of alcohol muddying his veins. Unfortunately, it did not help his head skills as you’d hoped it would. His fervent desire to go down on you had initially turned you on greatly, but you soon grew frustrated at the sloppy way his tongue lapped at your folds — never in the right spots, and never with the right consistency. Several times you had climbed close to your climax, only to never quite crest.
Frustrated, you opted for urging him to just fuck you already with the prayer that having him inside of you would be better. And it was better... until he came within five minutes of entering you, pulled out, then slumped to the side.
Unfortunately, he was not the first man you had hooked up with to finish so quickly and leave you unsatisfied, but he was the first one to fall dead asleep within seconds afterward. He didn't even bother to remove the soiled condom from his softening dick first. You also left it right where it was and fled his place as quickly as possible, feeling an odd sense of petty payback while thinking of the gross mess he would have to deal with in the morning.
On your way home, you sulked over the disappointing night that you thought held so much potential. There had been such chemistry between the two of you at first, after all. Sadly, he ended up just being some hot guy you enjoyed flirting with for a couple hours and a pitiful story you could tell your friends about later.
You never expected to see or hear from him again, yet here he is. What a small, funny world.
Except you are far from laughing.
Your heart kicks into overdrive with worry and fear over the impending awkward situation, but you do your best not to let it show on your face. In fact, you resolve not to mention your previous acquaintance with Jisung at all. Definitely not in front of your sister and her fiancé at their wedding rehearsal.
You manage to get your heart rate down to what you estimate to be a smooth one-hundred-ten beats per minute by the time Jisung the Terrible Lay is standing directly in front of you.
“Hi,” he says, still smiling. “I'm Jisung. You must be Jihye’s Maid of Honor?”
Oh, so he’s also going to play dumb. Good.
You nod and introduce yourself (again) while giving his outstretched hand the briefest of shakes.
“So, how do you know Chris?” You mentally applaud yourself for the calm steadiness of your voice.
“Best friends since middle school,” is Jisung’s simple answer.
“I wish you two could have met ahead of time,” Jihye chimes in apologetically. “It would have been nice if you had gotten to know each other at least a little bit before the wedding. I should have made the time for all of us to go out to lunch or something, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, it’s no big deal,” says Jisung. His smiling eyes do not leave yours. “I mean, it’s not like we’re the ones getting married.”
He has the nerve to punctuate his stupid jest with a wink. You pretend to be flustered by forcing out a giggle in harmony with Jihye’s.
Your sister glances back and forth between you and Jisung for a moment, and you can practically see the gears turning in her head. It wouldn’t be a surprise if she took a stab at playing matchmaker at some point today to hook the two of you up.
Already beat you to it, you brood silently.
“Shall we get this show on the road, then?” Chris asks.
“Please,” agrees Jihye. She waves to the minister to signal she is ready, and he nods.
The minister takes his place near the alter and requests that everyone else congregate at the other end of the chapel. Jisung sidles up next to you at a proximity that is a bit too close to just be friendly, but you refuse to acknowledge him by even moving away.
It’s funny how senses work — a whiff of his cologne takes you straight back to that night. Your memory flashes you a vision of you leaning against his arm on wobbly legs, and you suddenly remember the feeling of his warm, slightly callused hands cupping your elbows to steady you. You swear you can even remember the sound of his amused laughter at your inelegant state, and the taste of his beer breath in the air.
You force yourself out of your reverie before you become lost in it.
“It’ll be very simple, everyone,” assures the minister, echoing Jihye’s earlier words. “I think everyone has already been made aware of the seating arrangements, so let’s just get straight into the processional order, and then do a rundown of what the ceremony itself will entail...”
As more instructions are given, Jisung leans into you and murmurs under his breath, “You look nice today.”
A laugh almost escapes you at his unexpected comment. He utters it with the perfect ratio of humor and sincerity.
You manage to play off the smile on your lips by flashing it towards the woman your mother said to be Chris’s sister when you suddenly catch her eye.
“Uh, thanks,” you say to Jisung in an equally hushed tone.
“I mean it,” he insists. “You look every bit as pretty as when I saw you in the club.”
You ignore his compliment and try to move your lips as little as possible as you say, “Can we please not talk about that here?”
Jisung lets out a soft snort of laughter. “Sure, no problem.”
He leaves your side when his turn comes to practice standing behind Chris near the alter, and you follow immediately after to take your place on the opposite side, all too aware of his eyes on you for the remainder of the rehearsal.
---
His eyes are still on you when you take a seat directly across from him at the dinner table.
Jihye, in her mildly Bridezilla-esque way, opted to forgo the big, customary rehearsal dinner with the families in favor of a more intimate meal with just her fiancé, her fiancé’s Best Man, and her Maid of Honor. Your parents were more than a little offended about not being included, and perhaps Chris’s were, too, but who were they to deny a bride’s request on the eve of her wedding day? What they don’t realize is that this is the cordial outing Jihye wished she’d planned for just the four of you months ago. It took everything in you not to roll your eyes when she suggested this arrangement back at the chapel, but you weren’t at liberty to reject her wishes any more than your parents were.
“Ah, I’m so glad we’re doing this now!” Jihye says buoyantly. She even bounces a little in her seat to show how physically overcome with joy she is. She beams back and forth between you, Jisung, Chris, and back to you again. Sometimes you still see your kid sister in her.
“Absolutely,” Chris agrees at once.
“Yeah, this is... lovely,” you decide unenthusiastically. You swivel your eyes back to your menu when your sister shoots you a scolding look that says: Be nice.
“So, have you guys been here before?” Jisung asks the betrothed couple conversationally, waving a hand through the air to show he is talking about the restaurant.
“We came here on our first date, actually,” Jihye answers in a chipper tone. She scrunches her nose at Chris in a cutesy way and proceeds to tell the table all about the memory.
In the spirit of neatly categorizing him back into place amongst your other lousy one-night stands and nothing more, you try not to grant Jisung too much of your attention when you fall into the conversation. It proves to be quite difficult, however. Listening to and observing him in this casual, non-sexually-charged scenario is intriguing. It also brings to mind a thought that had not occurred to you before: Jisung could make a wonderful boyfriend.
You had been so wrapped up in your mission of merely hooking up that night months ago that you never stopped to think about whether or not the person you went home with could be more than a one-night-stand, or could even be dating material.
But Jisung is.
He’s witty but not arrogant. Funny but not obnoxious. Charming but not cheesy. Gorgeous but not conceited. His smile is distracting and compelling. His stories are interesting and comical. His laughter is merry and infectious.
No wonder he’s best friends with perfect-fucking-Chris. But there has to be something wrong with him...
And then you remember there is, in fact, a catch: his bedroom manner.
That thought makes you snort out loud into your drink, and you sweep away the romantic notions clouding your mind.
Some time between dinner and dessert, a local band begins to play music near the dance floor, and Chris whisks a giggling Jihye away from the table. As soon as they are gone, you contemplate making up an excuse to slip out, but Jisung is already speaking to you.
“Good, we’re alone now,” he says.
“Good? How so?” The question spoken with a different tone could sound cute and flirty, but the flat disinterest in your mumbled words is moody and a bit harsh even to your own ears. It doesn’t appear to dampen Jisung’s sunny demeanor, though.
He simply grins and says, “Because now we can talk to each other.”
You shrug your shoulders. “We’ve been talking.”
“Don’t play coy with me, pretty lady,” he says. “You know what I mean. We can talk about the night we met, and why we haven’t met up since.”
You groan and cross your arms over your chest as you lean back in your chair. “I’d really rather not.”
Is he really that clueless? If he truly has no idea what went wrong that night, it is not worth your time explaining it to him. But god damn him for being so handsome and likable otherwise...
“Okay...” Jisung says slowly. “If you don’t want to talk, then how about a dance?”
“What, here? Now? I don't think so.”
“What if I put it this way: we can sit here and talk like adults, or we can dance and I won’t say a word. What do you think?”
The silent dance is definitely the lesser of two evils in your mind, but you are afraid of what other nostalgic feelings could be dredged up while in that intimate situation. Your only real option is to elude the decision he wants you to make.
“You can’t make me do either,” you say.
Jisung’s grin widens. “Is that a challenge? What if I picked you up and carried you to the dance floor?”
You allow yourself a laugh at his joke. “Do you think that would be cute or something? I think everyone else in this restaurant would throw your ass out for trying, especially if I was kicking and screaming the whole way.”
“You wouldn’t dare cause a scene like that, would you?”
“You wouldn't cause a scene like that, would you?” you throw back at him.
“I just might.”
“Do it, then. I dare you.”
The pair of you sit there smirking across the table at each other in a weird sort of stand-off, waiting for the other to make a move. He caves first by breaking the silence.
“Dance with me,” Jisung implores in a soft, honeyed tone. His eyes twinkle brightly. He looks wholly unafraid of being rejected.
God, he really is clueless, isn’t he?
“No, thank you,” you answer shortly, stubbornness getting the better of you.
“Would you dance with me if I was the last man on Earth?”
His follow-up question comes as a surprise. He must be determined to get some sort of positive answer from you tonight.
The best you can do is laugh away the silly question and wish him a good night. When you get up to leave, Jisung offers to at least walk you to your car, and after a moment of hesitation, you agree.
You both say hasty goodbyes to Jihye and Chris on your way out. Jihye pouts a little at your abrupt departure, but she doesn’t complain, and you know it is because she is pleased to see you walking out with Jisung. Everything looks to be going according to plan in her brilliant match-making mind.
When you and Jisung reach your car in the parking lot, you turn to tell him goodbye once again.
“You were really awful in bed,” you find yourself blurting, apparently unable to keep the words bottled a single second longer.
Jisung at least has the decency to flinch at your blunt assessment. The wrinkle of his face is noticeable before he turns his head away and takes a step back from you. You wait for him to retort, but he stays silent.
Unbelievable, you think. He’s not even going to defend himself.
Just as you turn to leave, his fingers close around your wrist. True to the nature of electricity, a spark jolts through you nearly instantaneously. His hold is delicate but it feels as though you are being branded. You whip your head around to regard him curiously.
“Sorry,” he says, letting go of your wrist as quickly as he grabbed it. “Just— please wait. Let me say something. Please.” He emphasizes the pleasantry as if it means all the difference. He takes a deep breath; it goes in shaky and comes out resigned. “I know I was terrible. I could make excuses about being drunk and about you being so fucking pretty that I couldn’t help myself from coming so quickly. Both of which are true, for the record, but they’re shitty excuses and you deserve better because from what I can tell, you’re a pretty great woman. All I can say is that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Y/N, you don’t even know how sorry I am. And I know you don’t owe me anything, but I would love to have a chance for us to start over.”
At the end of his little speech, he reaches out for your wrist again and gives your hand a little squeeze. It is a soft gesture and over in a flash, but a warm tingle still ripples through your body and doesn’t fade.
You can still feel it on the drive home... in the shower... when you climb into bed.
You can still see his smile reflected in your windshield... against the tiles in your bathroom... in the blackness of your room.
You can still hear his laughter in the lonely car ride... over the drumming of the water in the tub... over the serenade of crickets outside your window.
And you can’t understand why it matters to you so much that he was terrible in bed that one single time.
---
The ceremony went off without a hitch.
The decorated chapel — stuffed with flowers, wreaths, streamers, candles, bows, as well as people donned in silk, lace, velvet, perfume, diamonds, gold and pearls — was a vision worthy of any bridal magazine showcasing the “ideal” wedding. Beyond the floor-length glass windows, the sky was dyed like cotton candy from the fading sunlight. A violinist stood to one side and played light, dreamy tones before and during the processional, then the classic Wedding March for the bride’s entrance.
Jihye played the part of the radiant bride beautifully. Seeing your little sister’s eyes coated in glassy tears as she walked down the aisle on your father’s arm, then hearing the tremble in her normally steady and authoritative voice as she vowed her devotion to another person (all while wearing a several-thousand-dollar dress meant for this one single occasion) was almost enough to make you cry, too.
Several times during the vows, you couldn’t stop yourself from looking across the aisle just to see the beautiful smile on Jisung’s face. It had been there since he met you at the other end of the aisle and presented you with a beautiful, white orchid corsage to match the boutonniere pinned to his lapel. When he slipped it onto your wrist, the touch of his slender fingers started to rekindle the spark the two of you had had months ago.
“You look beautiful,” Jisung had whispered in your ear. “You are beautiful.”
The same could have been said of him in his dapper black tuxedo and bow tie, but you could not locate your voice to tell him as much.
The nervous flutter of your heart was made visibly apparent in the way your fingers trembled when he lifted them to kiss the back of your hand, but Jisung couldn’t take notice because his gaze was fixed on your face, and yours was fixed on his in return. The pools of his eyes were so easy to drown in.
In that moment, immersed in the whimsical atmosphere all around you, you were prepared to give him the answer you couldn’t give him last night when he proposed to starting over. You were ready to tell him you had been foolish for not giving him a second thought all these months, and you would appreciate a do-over very much.
But then Jihye was hissing from somewhere off to the side for Jisung to get moving, and you lost the chance to speak your wishes. Something about the small bounce in Jisung’s gait down the aisle told you he already knew what you had wanted to say, however.
Now, here at the reception, it is time to forget about such sappy things and get drunk.
If only the waiter with the tray of champagne would circle back around so you don’t have to go chasing after him and start up some “alcoholic spinster” rumors for your family to enjoy at your expense.
“Hi!” Jisung appears at your side like a miracle, bearing a knowing grin and two flutes of the same champagne you were just ogling. “You looked like you needed a drink,” he says, letting you lift one from between his fingers.
Your lips are already around the edge of the glass. “Was it that obvious?”
“A little, but hey, who cares? It’s a party.” He pauses for a sip of his own drink, then says, “I liked your Maid of Honor speech, by the way. The story about your little car surfing adventure was hilarious.”
“Oh, thanks,” you giggle. “I’m afraid my parents didn’t find it quite as funny.”
“Well, no, but they wouldn’t, would they?” Jisung laughs. “But they did like the part when you said that Jihye getting married is far braver than all your teenage stunts combined.”
You hum in agreement. “Hm. Yeah. Luckily, they don’t seem to know the difference between bravery and stupidity.”
Jisung’s grin tilts lopsidedly at your comment. “Not a big, uh, proponent of the whole marriage thing, I take it?”
“Nah,” you dismiss at once. “There are billions and billions of people in this world, and folks want to tie themselves to just one with a sheet of paper recognized by the government? To some person they met in a teeny tiny corner of the world without ever having stepped outside of the thirty mile radius they’ve lived in for their entire life?” The bubbly alcohol in your glass sloshes haphazardly as your hands become animated, but you pay it no mind. “And so many marriages just end in divorce anyway, so then people have to go through that whole fuckery. Lose half their money, half their shit. And the things they do get to keep, they have to look at and get a big fat reminder of how they picked it out with their ex-spouse during a time when they thought they were in love. They probably went to the store that day hand-in-hand and had no idea things were going to totally implode spectacularly—”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Jisung interrupts, laughing loudly. “How drunk are you right now? Maybe I should take that back...”
“I'm not drunk!” you say hotly and a bit too loudly, jerking your glass away even though he isn’t actually reaching for it. A few nearby heads turn in your direction, so you lower your voice and grit, “I’m not drunk.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” The expression on his face does not look particularly sorry. “Can I ask you something else without you going off on a rant?”
You deflate with a sigh, calming yourself before saying, “Sure, what is it?”
“Dance with me?”
You force the corners of your mouth down a bit to prevent your smile from growing too wide at the sparkle of amusement in his eyes.
“Sure.”
He does take your drink now, setting it aside with his before taking your hand next.
If people are watching the two of you when you step onto the dance floor together, you are oblivious. The only thing you can focus on is the warmth of Jisung’s other hand radiating through your dress from its place on the small of your back when he pulls you in close, and the solid plane of his chest heating you from the front. You absently wonder if he can feel your heart racing. You think maybe you can feel his.
“I haven’t looked around in a minute,” Jisung says quietly when you both settle into the soft rhythm of the music and begin gently rotating. “But am I suddenly the last man on Earth?”
An ungraceful bark of laughter pops out of your mouth. Too late, you cover your lips with your fingers, but Jisung does not accept the movement of your hand. He reaches and brings it back to his shoulder, then gives it a few pats as if to embed it firmly into place.
“You’re not the last man on Earth,” you admit without looking at him.
“So you want to dance with me?” he presses, playfully ducking his face into your view to force your eyes on him.
You exhale a softer laugh. “I do.”
“Funny. Your sister said those exact same words a little while ago.”
“So did your best friend.”
Jisung curls his lips down and protrudes his chin thoughtfully. “I guess that makes them both stupid.”
“Or brave,” you argue matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. Or brave.”
A few silent twirls go by before he speaks up again.
“I have another question,” he begins slowly, then goes quiet for long enough that you eventually look at him questioningly. The resident smile is gone from his face because his lips are pressed together rather seriously.
“What’s your question, Jisung?”
He parts his tight lips and whispers, “If I were to kiss you right now, would you consider it brave or stupid of me?”
If he could not adequately feel your heartbeat a moment ago, he certainly should be able to now.
You take a moment to consider your words. “Neither,” you finally decide. “I’d consider it cliché.”
“Ah. Well, what do you think about cliché, then?”
You swallow hard. “I think I can handle it.”
To put that statement to the test, Jisung suddenly dips you backwards, and you squeak in surprise. He keeps his eyes locked on yours while waiting to see if you will protest. After a long enough moment of receiving no resistance, he leans in after you and matches his grinning lips to yours.
Several whistles and cat calls ring out all around you. The supportive sounds encourage Jisung to lift you back upright and continue the kiss ardently, which you reciprocate in full. Instead of simply enjoying it, your brain chooses to analyze the kiss and how much it differs from the last time you did this with him — in a good way. Either he has been practicing or alcohol completely abolishes all sense of his coordination.
With that thought, you start to laugh until you are unable to maintain contact with his lips. Jisung celebrates your laughter by beaming and squeezing you tightly.
The audience of people crowded around begins to applaud at the endearing display. Even the bride and groom — the people who should be the sole center of attention all night — are standing on the sidelines clapping their approval. It’s as if none of them have ever witnessed two people kissing before.
Then you see the unmistakably hopeful look on your parents’ faces, and it dawns on you that they are excited by the prospect of you entering an actual relationship with someone. You know how their minds work. No doubt they are already going so far as marrying you off to Jisung despite the fact that he is essentially a stranger to them — and to you.
Those bothersome thoughts threaten to spoil your cheerful mood, but Jisung reels you back in by pecking your mouth chastely. It feels like the punctuation to an unspoken agreement to a new start.
You gift him with a flattered smile and allow him to lead you back into another dance, and everyone else resumes their own business.
The fast pace of the next song immediately reminds you of the infamous night that has been on your mind ever since Jisung reappeared in your life yesterday. The way his eyes are following the motion of your hips tells you that he is remembering, too. With just a few well-timed shakes and some not-so-accidental brushes, things quickly alter from sweet and charming to hot and tense.
Jisung brings his lips to the edge of your cheek and whispers towards your earlobe, “You’re giving me some dangerous thoughts right now, baby.”
Boldly, you entreat, “Tell me.”
He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “I’m thinking about asking if you want to get out of here, but I don’t think I should.”
The scent of his cologne tinged with just a hint of sweat is positively intoxicating. The tips of his fingers grazing along your hips makes you lightheaded in the best possible way.
“Why not?” you ask.
“Well, you see, the last time I left with you like that, I screwed up and didn’t see you for six months,” he tells you. The smile on his face is a bit forlorn. “I don’t want to make the mistake of sleeping with you too soon again. I want this new start to be perfect.”
His words are wise. You put your hormones on pause for a moment and envision yourself going on sweet dates with him in all the usual places — to the beach, to an amusement park, to his favorite café — before one night the two of you finally make love to each other in a perfectly romantic setting.
As darling as all of that would be, you have no patience for it now. There will be plenty of time for those fanciful scenarios later. Or at least, that’s what you’re planning on.
“The problem wasn’t us sleeping together too soon,” you explain. “The problem was that you were bad.” You pinch his earlobe to let him know you mean what you say, but in a playful manner.
Jisung snorts and shakes his head away from your fingers. He seems unwilling to say more on the matter, so you have to continue and make your desires known.
“Jisung, I’ve been waiting for months to get laid at this reception, and you’re the only one here I’m interested in following through with now,” you level seriously. “Besides, if we’re starting over, I need to know that the first time was a fluke.”
“It was a fluke,” he insists.
You press your lips to the shell of his ear. “So prove it.”
When you pull back, there is still a somewhat hesitant expression on Jisung’s face, but the desire in his eyes is growing; the brown that used to be there is being swallowed by black lust. His gentlemanly resolve is crumbling.
“Can the Best Man and the Maid of Honor even leave the reception?” he worries, still clinging to his better judgment.
Good question. Honestly, you have no idea what the standard protocol is for the wedding party’s attendance after the ceremony is finished and the obligatory speeches have already been made at the reception.
You contemplate just going to Jihye and telling her outright that you and Jisung are leaving. Certainly she has no further need for you to be here. But then again, there is probably something more you are supposed to be doing for her. Helping with the gifts or cleaning up the mess afterward, perhaps. But didn’t she hire a crew for that? You can’t remember. In any case, you can hear her incredulous tone now, scolding you for wanting to duck out early on her big night just to hook up with Jisung — even though she wants you two to become a thing.
You gaze around and spot your sister sitting beside her new husband at their specially reserved table, feeding him a bite from her fork and laughing. She seems distracted enough for the moment.
“We don’t have to leave. We just have to be quick,” you say, taking Jisung’s hand and tugging determinedly. “Come on.”
You half expect him to remain rooted in place and hiss another anxious remark at you, but he comes along willingly. The things you assume of him never go as expected; you should probably stop assuming things altogether.
Without stopping to survey the curious looks that you know are being shot in your direction — because it is clear that you are moving with a purpose and Jisung is along for the ride — you lead Jisung straight to a side room containing the gifts you were just wondering about and shut the door behind you. Not a second is spared before you grab the flaps of Jisung’s tuxedo jacket to pull him in for a more heated kiss.
“This is crazy,” he laughs after you release his lips again with a wet suction noise.
It is crazy, but it is also too thrilling to stop.
“Well, it wouldn’t be my sister’s wedding reception if I didn’t try to cause some sort of scandal,” you joke off-handedly.
“You mean your speech wasn’t inappropriate enou- hnghh, holy shit.” Jisung’s laughter dries up when he witnesses you sliding your panties off from beneath your dress. You watch his Adam’s apple bob as he gulps.
With a smirk, you say, “Come on, we have to be quick, remember?”
Your fingers work quickly at unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. Your hand slides past the band of his underwear to find him not very hard, but not completely soft, either. His breath hitches at your touch.
“Ffffuck,” Jisung breathes. “You really want it, don’t you?”
You grin wickedly. “Mhm. Really want to be fucked the way I should have been months ago.”
You give his cock a squeeze, earning a full moan from him. You rub him up and down as best as you can from the angle permitted by the confines of his clothing. His cock stiffens rapidly and a lustful sigh overflows from his mouth.
With a few quick shifts and yanks, you guide his erection out of his pants and boxers and drop to your knees in front of it. You don’t remember it being quite this thick, but you’re pleased. It looks so delicious. The head is ruby red, and the vein curving around the smooth underside looks fit to burst.
Jisung gasps at the first kittenish lick you draw on the slit of his cock. One of his hands comes down to hold the side of your face. You peer up at him through your lashes and smile as you press the head of his cock against the tip of your tongue. He groans lowly in his chest at the sight.
“We don’t have much time,” he tells you as though you haven’t already told him as much. His voice is already getting husky. “So we’d better make the most of it.”
Unexpectedly, he curls his hands around your arms and pulls you back up to your feet. The action utterly confuses you. No man you have ever been with has ever stopped a blowjob before it has even started, and there is no way he could have misinterpreted your intentions. Is he afraid of coming too soon again? That’s certainly a likely possibility.
Before you can question him, Jisung takes the back of your head and brings you in so he can slant his mouth over yours. The force with which he crashes into you is enough to bruise your delicate lips, but oddly enough, you don’t mind. The sincere passion he is pouring into the kiss is burning you from the inside out. He moves to assault your neck next, freeing you to speak.
“Jisung, what—” You clear the rasp in your voice and start again. “Why did you stop me? I wanted to—”
He interrupts you with a moan that rattles against your collarbone. “I know, baby. As much as I would love to have your lips around my dick, the point of this is to make you feel good right now. We can worry about me later.”
He breaks away from your skin to glance around the room. There isn’t exactly a four-poster bed in the vicinity, so he decides the best option is to sit you down in a small chair. Either that or the gift table, but that feels like it would be a bit too disrespectful to Jihye and Chris.
Jisung kneels in front of you and removes your heels carefully as you take a seat. His thumbs rub gentle circles into your smooth skin as he shuffles closer to you on his knees and leans in to peck your lips twice. His touch is sweet and relaxing, letting you know without words that he is going to take good care of you. The anticipation is nearly overwhelming.
Soon, Jisung’s fingers trail upwards, following the muscled lines of your calves under the skirt of your dress. You swiftly drag the expensive fabric up over your thighs to give him unfettered access. He grins at you then looks down at the view you have so generously granted him. His hands creep higher and higher on your legs until he is tantalizingly close to where you need him most.
“Jisung, we can’t take too long,” you remind him impatiently. The whine in your tone is apparent, but you don’t care.
“I know, baby,” he says again. One of his index fingers skims just over the lips of your pussy. “Indulge me for just a minute, please.”
He distracts you with another kiss, and you meet his probing tongue with a whimper of need. Since using words isn’t an option at the moment, you try to convey in other ways how much you need him right now. You pull on his arms and at his hair. Your feet glide along his legs and he opens them wider. When your toes bump against his cock still standing out from his pants, he groans loudly against your mouth, and you can tell it is not out of pain. He likes it. Emboldened by his reaction, you press the ball of your foot directly against his cockhead with a bit more pressure.
“Fuck, that feels good,” he pants against your chin. “I bet you’re good with your feet.”
Honestly, you have never tried serious foot play, but he sounds turned on enough to make you want to try.
“Maybe you’ll find out,” you tease with a giggle. “Right now I want you to prove you’re good with your fingers.”
“You got it, baby.”
He finally pushes a thick finger between your folds and curls it, beckoning a gasp into your lungs. Your hips automatically jerk forward to seek more friction. Jisung obliges your body language and buries a second finger deep inside your walls alongside the first.
“Shit. Your pussy is even tighter than I remember.”
“Have you thought about my pussy a lot these past six months?”
“Absolutely,” Jisung admits freely, and you have no reply for his honesty because you were not expecting it.
He draws his fingers out to just the tips, then plunges them back inside without delay. He repeats the motion again and again, gradually increasing the pace. The sounds coming from your core are sticky and obscene. Your eyes roll back in your head, and your head falls back as well.
“Fuck, just like that,” you urge breathlessly. “Touch my clit, too, please. I need more.”
Jisung lets out a hungry moan. Instead of using his thumb like you figured he would, he bends forward to brush his tongue against your swollen bud. Your thighs twitch reflexively at the sudden contact on your most sensitive area, ready to either snap against his head to stop him or fall away even further to invite him in. They decide on the latter.
A whimper squeezes out of you, along with a string of barely coherent encouragements.
“Oh God, J-Jisung. Yes, yes, y-yes! Like that. Don’t stop. F-Fingers a little s-slower. Tongue faster. Please. Oh f-fuck, yes!”
He redistributes his weight on his knees to get comfortable between your legs, then hastens to follow your commands. His tongue sharpens and digs relentlessly into your clit. The points of his fingers graze against your g-spot with each deliberate stroke, and that’s when you twist your fingers in his hair.
“God d-damn it, Jisung,” you moan. Your body starts to writhe uncontrollably, trying to ride his face to your finish.
“Yes, baby,” he coos sweetly, face still planted firmly against you. The vibrations of his voice tickle your clit gloriously, and you can feel his grin against your hot skin. “You taste like fucking heaven. Is this good? Does it feel good?”
“Yes, fuck, oh, fuck, k-keep going.”
He hums and continues with renewed vigor.
Every time his fingers drag backwards from your pussy, you suck them right back in with a tight squeeze. His lips wrap around your clit and his tongue slips under the hood. The ministrations on your raw bundle of nerves drive you straight to the edge of madness.
Your fingers curl against Jisung’s warm scalp. Your toes curl against the cold tile floor. Your back stiffens to keep your center firmly locked against Jisung’s face. Your breath hangs suspended in your chest for a long moment...
...then suddenly you’re exhaling it with an expletive cry of satisfaction when you tumble over that blissful edge. Spasms wrack through your body repeatedly as it struggles to harbor the intense pleasure crashing over you.
Somewhere in your electrified mind, you are aware of Jisung’s other hand on one of your hips, trying to pin you back down to the chair. You let go of him and move back quickly when you realize you must be suffocating him, and his fingers slip from you in the process with one last parting squelch. When you look down at him, you can clearly see the glisten of your juices slathered over his nose and chin and mouth.
His grinning mouth.
“I think you enjoyed that, baby,” he comments proudly, “considering I just about drowned just now.”
You huff out a laugh and shake your fuzzy head. “Fucking hell, Jisung. Why the fuck couldn’t you have been that good the first time?”
“I wish I could have been. Then I would’ve been doing this with you this whole time.”
“Oh, you think so? You think we would’ve stayed together up to now?” You grin at him and push your toes against his shoulder playfully.
He doesn’t answer you right away. First, he takes your foot and brings it up to his sticky lips to kiss the pads of your toes gently, one by one. Your smile falters when your mouth droops open at the strangely erotic sight, but his smile only widens.
“Yeah, that’s what I think, pretty lady.”
His presumptuous yet sweet admission leaves you speechless. All you can do is tug him towards you to kiss him with newfound admiration, heedless of the mess still glued to his lips. Truthfully, you relish the taste of yourself on him; you think of it as proof of the capabilities you thought he lacked, and you have never been happier to stand corrected.
Jisung is the one to break away first, still smiling. “Can I have one more dance before I take you out of here to make you come some more? Preferably on my dick this time?”
The bizarre combination of endearing and lewd words makes you laugh heartily. What a surprising man he has turned out to be.
“Absolutely.”
---
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#han smut#jisung smut#han jisung smut#stray kids smut#skz smut#han x reader#jisung x reader#han jisung x reader#stray kids x reader#skz x reader#a fanciful affair#daizymax
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Gender and Identity Studies: How Gender, Sexuality, and Identity Intersect with Skincare
Proactiv Adverts (2017):
My subject librarian shared these case studies with me, demonstrating how language targets stereotypical notions of attractiveness. Proactiv has used this type of offensive advertising before:
Clearasil Thinks Unwanted Zits Look Like Stereotypical Homosexuals, Say Critics (2018):
This controversial 2018 advert from Clearasil titled “Pimples Make Terrible Prom Dates”. The ad follows a pair of female high school students preparing for prom, when one discovers she has a blemish.
“If this turns into a pimple, I will literally die,” she tells her friend.
Cut to a close-up of the pimple, which is an effeminate man with a shrieking voice in a pink ruffled suit.
Clearasil is applied, prom is saved, and the young ladies are returned to their prom dates. The ad has since been removed from the internet as it cannot be found anywhere
https://web.archive.org/web/20190703012332/http:/www.towleroad.com/2018/04/clearasil-homosexuals/
‘He wouldn’t be seen using it…’ Men’s use of male grooming products as a form of invisible consumption:
The study included interviews with men aged 18-59 who were either in full-time education or employment. Most identified as middle class, with varying ethnic backgrounds, and the majority described themselves as heterosexual.
Male skincare UK market valued at £77.2 million and the global market at USD 11.6 billion.
Younger men more open to skincare, with older generations feeling emasculated
Younger men prefer online shopping for skincare products due to its privacy.
This reluctance to talk about these issues may be contributing to mental health challenges among men.
Growing pressure on men to enhance their "market value" in the context of individualization and neoliberal competitiveness
Attractive people are more likely to form social connections, which can affect self-esteem.
"invisible consumption," highlighted that men seek to enhance their appearance but wish to keep it private.
The rise of selfies and video calling has made younger men more conscious of their appearance
Byrne, A., & Milestone, K. (2023). ‘He wouldn’t be seen using it…’ Men’s use of male grooming products as a form of invisible consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol.23 No.1 pp. 146-167. https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405211066314
Influence of gender and sexual identity on adolescent skin health (2021):
This study focuses on understanding the dermatologic conditions and skin-related behaviors that affect Sexual and Gender Minority youth, such as LGBTQIA2S+ individuals, who have historically been underserved in healthcare.
Adolescents aged 13-21 years
The study used a questionnaire covering four main areas:
Demographic characteristics
Presence of diagnosed skin conditions
Hormone therapy use
Participants' views on how their gender identity and sexual orientation influence their skin care practices, including tanning behavior.
Key findings:
The majority of the study population was White, accounting for 68.6% of the participants.
SGM youth preferred to receive care from a dermatologist who openly identified as SGM.
Cisgender adolescents were more likely to engage in tanning behavior, motivated by the perception that tanned skin was more attractive.
Gender identity was found to influence how participants personally felt about and cared for their skin, while sexual orientation did not show a significant association with these factors.
Adolescents actively adjusted their skin care practices to conform to societal gender expectations. For some transgender males, this manifested as reduced concerns about their skin complexion and a limited need for a skin care routine, which they considered consistent with gender norms and expectations surrounding masculinity.
Transgender and cisgender females alike expressed feeling heightened expectations to achieve a societal ideal of clear skin, requiring more time dedicated to a skin care regimen:
“I don't always do skin care because it's seen as a traditionally feminine thing and it can make me dysphoric.” (transgender male, bisexual, 16 y.o.)
“Girls/women are expected by society to take better care of their appearance than men to fit society's ideal standard.” (transgender female, bisexual, 16 y.o.)
The study found that there were no statistically significant differences in the reported prevalence of most dermatologic conditions among sexual minority youth, gender minority youth, and cisgender/heterosexual youth subgroups.
However, there were two exceptions to this overall trend:
Adolescents who identified as heterosexual had a higher prevalence of atopic dermatitis (13%) compared to those who identified as sexual minorities (3%, p = 0.031).
In an analysis specifically focused on transgender males, there was a significantly higher prevalence of acne in those individuals who endorsed the use of hormonal therapy compared to those who did not (63% vs. 13%, p < 0.001).
Covelli, I, Ahrens, K, Onchiri, FM, Inwards-Breland, D, Boos, MD. (2021). Influence of gender and sexual identity on adolescent skin health. Pediatr Dermatol. Vo.38. pp.65–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/pde.14686
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"Addiction Rates Rising in the LGBTQ Community: What We Need to Know"
Sadly, addiction and substance abuse is a problem that frequently affects the LGBTQ+ community. A survey from 2018 found that LGBTQ+ adults are more likely to misuse substances than their heterosexual counterparts. This article attempts to dive deep into the causes and ways in which this crisis can be effectively addressed. The article commences by discussing the factors that lead to addiction and substance misuse in the LGBT+ community. This includes biological influences, physical and mental health problems, social stigma, and discrimination. The article then moves on to outlining the high rates of drug and alcohol consumption in this community. It's clear that the LGBTQ+ community is severely affected by the substance misuse crisis. Here are a few key points from the article: * LGBTQ+ teens and adults are twice as likely to consume drugs and alcohol compared to their heterosexual counterparts * Substance misuse is also connected to feelings of isolation, depression, and anxiety in the LGBT+ community * Discrimination from both society and the medical industry lead to further mental health and addiction issues It's evident that improving the access to proper addiction treatment centers and drug rehabilitation programs is crucial in order to assist people affected by these issues. Furthermore, the article outlines a few recommendations for preventing similar issues from arising in the future. It's vitally important to recognize and take a step forward in order to address the serious substance misuse problem that frequently affects LGBTQ+ populations. Finally, providing an affirming and supportive atmosphere for LGBTQ+ individuals is one of the most effective means of allowing this population to lead a happy and healthy life.
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[“… the American construction of modern heterosexuality was inseparable from white-supremacist gender norms. White male social reformers, who possessed far greater power and authority than civil rights and feminist activists, defined healthy heterosexual marriage in their own image and according to their own interests. Marital rape may have been discouraged by white male marriage experts of the twentieth century, but their emphasis on men’s entitlement to women’s emotional and reproductive labor, and women’s ostensibly innate vulnerability, virtue, and tendency toward self-sacrifice, ensured that modern heterosexuality served the interests of white supremacy. As the Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers illuminates, whites treated Black people with such dehumanizing, “ungendering” brutality during slavery and its aftermath that whites effectively barred Black men from the kind of patriarchal power that constituted masculinity and Black women from the kind of purity and fragility that constituted femininity. Slavery and anti-Black racism positioned Black people outside the boundaries of a white gender binary, as threats not only to white ideas about normative masculinity and femininity but also to white men and women’s unity with each other. Illustrating the inseparability of modern heterosexuality and white supremacy, many early white feminists based their arguments for nonviolent marriage and women’s rights on the claim that bringing white women closer to equality with their husbands would ensure that white people remained a united front against Black civil rights. If white men forged egalitarian, companionate bonds with white women, they argued, then white women would offer race loyalty in return.
In sum, eugenicists, sexologists, and social reformers of the early twentieth century ushered in three concepts that would become enduring features of the heterosexual-repair industry. First, they exposed the ubiquity of violence and mutual loathing in heterosexual relationships but also reassured their readers that these were natural impulses in need of simple management. Rape could be curtailed by sexual and anatomical education. Mutual disgust could be diminished by better hygiene and beautification of the body. Communication between the sexes could be improved if couples read and discussed, together, the right marital literature written by knowledgeable guides. Second, they secured their own role and the role of expert white professionals more generally—physicians, sexologists, and later, psychologists—in defining modern heterosexuality and repairing heterosexual problems. By naming men’s and women’s ignorance of the unique temperament and anatomy of the opposite sex as the source of straight couples’ problems—rather than, say, patriarchy and white supremacy—early promoters of modern heteroromance introduced self-help projects, guided by marriage experts, as the new normal. Heterosexual desire and mutual likability did not come naturally, they acknowledged, but could be cultivated with the proper tools. Last, they accepted the premise that women and men often found each other’s bodies undesirable and hence advocated for the consumption of beauty products that help stimulate opposite-sex desire. Laying the foundation for the midcentury explosion of beauty interventions targeted to women attempting to appear “fresh” and “lovely” for their husbands while laboring at home, eugenicist advocates for hygienic and modern marriage offered soaps, perfumes, makeup, douching, and other consumer goods as keys to happy heterosexuality. They made explicit that heterosexual marriage was no longer a labor contract in which both parties showed up “as is” but an ongoing affective project requiring access to precise tools and information that would build mutual affection.
Each of these interventions set the stage for straight culture’s emergence as the romantic arm of misogyny, wherein the delicate coexistence of hate and love, the slap and the kiss, would come to represent the heteroerotic. But this era also initiated straight culture as a gendered mode of consumption in which the purchase of beauty products and relationship advice were vital to maintaining this delicate balance.”]
Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality
#Jane ward#currently reading#history stuff#gender stuff#lesbian literature#cw rape#cackling intensifies
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On 9 October 1936, Elizabeth Scattergood ignited a 60-foot (18-meter) electric arc over the Los Angeles Civic Center with hydroelectricity from the just-completed Boulder (now Hoover) Dam. Introduced as “the American Girl who possesses the potentially most powerful fingertip the world has ever known,” 28-year-old Elizabeth stood before the crowd of one million observers largely due to the role her father, Ezra Frederick Scattergood, played in the dam’s construction. Her presence literalized Ezra Scattergood’s future reputation as “The Father of Modern Power” and marked the first in a series of ceremonial performances anchoring the dam in very traditional narratives about gender, race, and nature. Before pressing the button connecting Los Angeles and the Hoover Dam, Elizabeth Scattergood gave what the Los Angeles Times called “a simple little speech full of feeling” (see below). Her words personify the dam’s turbines as “Power Giants” in language referencing the Greek myth of Prometheus [...].
Scattergood’s ceremonial role resembled a woman christening a ship, and her speech offered a particularly White and feminine endorsement of an event staged with highly-gendered overtones. Picking up on the “Power Giants” metaphor, an account in the Los Angeles Times personifies electricity as a god-like and virile male figure with “meteor eyes flashing and lightning blazing around his head” whose entrance into the “dim-lit city” caused it to startle “like an aroused sleeper at his touch.” Electricity’s cultural life had been marked by such sensual and gendered associations for nearly two hundred years. For David Parisi, the Venus electrificada, a popular eighteenth-century demonstration, was a “site of spectacular gendered play” in which a suitor’s merit was demonstrated by his ability to withstand the shock administered through the charged lips of his beloved.
Building on David Nye’s observations on the late-nineteenth-century rise of electric metaphors, Scott McQuire notes that “to feel electricity in the air became synonymous with excitement, arousal and even love.” In this context, the performative presence of Scattergood’s father and a friend identified in press photos in as her “maid of honor” offered a heterosexual, matrimonial frame -- one understood as another of “natures laws.” For utilities whose business model rested on expanding home energy consumption through the mass adoption of modern conveniences, linking the domestication of power consumption to the White, heteropatriarchal family reinforced carefully crafted advertising narratives.
As the arc ignited by Scattergood’s “magic finger” was extinguished, LA’s iconic, art deco city hall was illuminated by a “billion candlepower” floodlight on the roof. In a moment underscoring what Nye describes as the particularly American conjunction of national exceptionalism and the technological sublime, floodlights from adjacent buildings powered on as a chorus sang the United States’ national anthem. Like in turn-of-the-century light shows, shifting floodlights highlighted distinctive architectural features, extending them immaterially into the night. [...]
Themes of conquest became literal in the next event of the evening, the “Lights On Parade.” Following a division of military bands, unnamed students from the nearby Sherman Institute, a residential school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, played roles in the “Prehistoric-Pioneer Days” pageant entitled “Aborigine Chief,” “Primitive Indians,” and “Indian Youths … Modern Trades.” Such residential schools were key to the government’s brutal policy of cultural annihilation, and the students’ public performance of “Indianness” to a largely White audience was framed by a heavy-handed “civilizing” narrative, beginning with the “primitive aborigine” and progressing through racially charged acts like “Cabrillo’s Ship,” “Peon Vendors,” and “Pioneers” before ending with the “Modern Trades,” implicitly powered by electricity from Hoover Dam. However, the Sherman students no doubt had their own reasons for participating. Their very presence was a reminder that the past they were purported to represent had never been fully extinguished and that there exist other ways of being modern than engineered Giants and powerful beams of pure, white light. [...]
Although mediated by heavy-handed symbols reinforcing the eco-social relations of White, colonial modernity, the Boulder Power Inaugural nonetheless allowed the people of Los Angeles to experience their connection to the Colorado River and Hoover Dam. As climate change forces Los Angeles to rework these infrastructures, the cultural mythologies and social relations they sustained must also be reimagined. What forms of ritual and collective assembly might make palpable an alternative intimacy with the “forces of nature” on which all energy -- and all life -- depends?
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Headline, images, captions, and all text published by: Sarah Kanouse. “Touching Power: White Womanhood, Colonial Spectacle, and the “Forces of Nature” at the Boulder Power Inaugural.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia no. 34. 2021.
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Something I don't think enough people ask themselves regarding celebrities: who is the "coming out" performance/ritual for? If a celebrity simply exists as a queer person without that, does that diminish their own queerness? I think some people would answer "yes" and those are the people that make me mad. It's a complicated question for sure, but privacy does not equal a need for an assumption of heterosexuality.
SPEAK ON IT, ANON. I could not agree more!!!!!!
Also: I’d add that while privacy does not equal a need for an assumption of heterosexuality, nor should people demand a celebrity “come out” because they think they know the celebrity best (???). Which is what you’re basically saying, but I’m just adding that coda because like... it drives me CRAZY that people speculate about celebrities’ sexualities to the point of harassing them or making bad jokes especially where they can fucking see them on social media. Social media is not the harmless echo chamber people think it is, especially with Twitter. Stuff does not hide.
One example in particular I’m thinking of is Shawn Mendes. People loooovvee to say–for no good fuckin’ reason–that he’s queer, usually with crude or cruel undertones about him being closeted. To the point where he’s gone on the record in interviews about how much anxiety it’s given him, not because being gay is a bad thing, but because of how that scrutiny makes him feel and makes him second-guess his decisions in ways that he hates. That’s absolutely bullshit and makes me black out with rage. It’s not our BUSINESS to speak on people’s sexualities or overanalyze their every action!!!!
(this ask is in reference to this post)
Jensen and Misha are a different case (per linked post) because like... they require no over-analysis, they’ve been acting Like This for over a decade in their bubble primarily on con stages on their own terms (this is key), and could at any time have dissuaded people from making the obvious conclusions if it made them uncomfortable but instead they’ve only encouraged those conclusions. If you think they’re heterosexuals, that’s on you. But this doesn’t transfer over automatically to other situations, and it’s not the same as something like harassing Shawn Mendes, or having fucking One Direction "ships” that negatively affected friendships, or any of that–all of which no one has any business doing.
And to route back to your point: God forbid one of the celebrities that the public sticks under a microscope is queer, and doesn’t feel the need to “come out” with a label and participate in that ritual, but they are forced to do so because of scrutiny and this damaging culture surrounding these sorts of topics. Oh, wait, hang on... that’s right... that literally happened to Lee Pace. And others too.
So yeah. Big mood. Great rule of thumb? Other people’s lives are not our business. If they’re out there Being Queer But Unlabeled, we can acknowledge that (because we have eyes and brains) without assuming heterosexuality, and then move on without perpetually making a Thing of it and forcing them to address it in so many words. And regardless... privacy and responsible discussions (or lack thereof) in the public sphere is key. Always.
Celebrities are not characters and their lives, beyond what they care to willingly share, do not exist for our consumption.
#I FEEL FUCKING STRONGLY ABOUT THIS TOPIC!!!!! I AM AT ALL TIMES WIELDING A KNIFE TO DEFEND CELEBRITY PRIVACY!!!!!!#I DON'T EVEN SHARE PAPARAZZI PHOTOS IT'S NOT MY BUSINESS LEAVE THEM ALONE#anonymous#asks
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On June 2, 2020, a crowd of mostly white people arrived at a library parking lot in Bethesda, Maryland, to show solidarity with a Black Lives Matter rally. During the rally, one of the organizers had the crowd raise their hands and take a pledge to oppose racism. The attendees obeyed and repeated the pledge, many kneeling as though in prayer. A video of the event made its way around the internet, providing yet more evidence that America is experiencing a religious revival on the political left — and that the heart of this revival is the deification of group identity.
Until the last few years, identity politics — now commonly referred to as "wokeness" — has avoided serious scrutiny as a religious movement. Yet even before the Bethesda episode, political observers had an inkling of its religious character. Professor Elizabeth Corey's recollection of her experience at a 2017 conference addressing identity and the law offers one illuminating example. One of the presentations she described featured a call-and-response session that ended with an exhortation for political revolution. "I began to feel that I was not at an academic lecture at all," she wrote, "but at an Evangelical church with a charismatic pastor."
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Scholars of religion tell us that the human person encounters the divine in two distinct ways: subjectively, as with matters of faith, and objectively, by performing rites in accordance with their faith.
The objective components of religious experience are those that onlookers can easily observe. They consist of what Wilfred Cantwell Smith calls "cumulative tradition" — the liturgies, processions, pilgrimages, public acts of penance, and other rites that faith communities celebrate. The behavior of the attendees during the Bethesda rally offers a useful illustration of such phenomena, as does the call-and-response session Corey described.
Within these cumulative traditions, people have personal encounters with religion. These encounters are subjective, in the sense that each person experiences the divine in a way that no outside observer can measure. Social scientists can record such encounters through interviews, but they can never experience them or reproduce them in their scholarship. Subjective religious experiences are very real, however, meaning that they cannot be dismissed simply because social-science methods cannot comprehend them. Gaining a full understanding of wokeness, therefore, requires an account of both its public rites and the subjective religious experiences of woke adherents.
We can begin our analysis of the emerging woke faith by probing its concept of the divine. Wokeness has an unconventional understanding of divinity that tends to disguise its religiosity from those accustomed to monotheism; in fact, the notion may not be fully recognized among its practitioners themselves. For the woke, identity is the source of divinity. Yet individuals are not divine on their own; they only participate in the divinity found in shared group identities.
Certain segments of wokeness also exhibit pantheistic traits in that they view the natural world as divine. For these adherents — particularly those who identify as vegan, green, and in some cases, indigenous — nature unmolested offers harmony within the individual and among the growing multiplicity of identities that make up humanity. For other segments of the woke community, human beings must adjust nature to render internal identities external. Gender re-assignment surgeries and hormone replacement or suppression regimens for transgender persons are among the most conspicuous examples.
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What Wade describes is a central rite of passage into the woke framework. The transition typically begins with a person living an ordinary existence of production and consumption. Over time, the individual notices how this way of life is lonely and unfulfilling. Traditional authorities are hypocritical or incompetent. Nothing is as it appears. There is a sense of living in a "Cartesian nightmare" in which the world exists not because God created it, but because the devil — or what in traditional Gnostic texts is called the "demiurge" — did. It is only when the individual discovers a small collection of like-minded believers who have pierced the veil to see past the illusions of the world that he "awakens." Together, woke believers become a people apart from and above those who still labor in the corrupted world of appearances.
These like-minded groups of believers replace the un-woke families, neighborhoods, and religious communities in which the woke individual was raised. Scholars and activists call these voluntary communities "families of choice" — safe harbors for woke individuals who feel unsafe in a traditional family or community, often because of bullying or violence they experienced. Woke families of choice are grounded in the identities that woke individuals adopt. To share an identity with others after becoming woke is to subject one's personal identity to the rules governing that group, and in turn, to police those rules.
According to the woke creed of intersectionality, human beings are composed of not just one, but a multiplicity of identities, among which are race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, and sexual preference. In his book American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell classifies these various identities using the terms "innocent" and "guilty" in an effort to compare wokeness to a kind of decomposed version of Protestant Christianity. According to Mitchell's account, the guilty identity, or scapegoat — namely the white, heterosexual male — must be purged in order to restore and confirm the cleanliness of all other identity groups. He is the "transgressor," Mitchell explains. "All others — women, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ persons — have their sins of omission and commission covered over by scapegoating" this transgressor, just as the scapegoated Christ covered over the sins of all the descendants of Adam.
Yet wokeness involves a complicated system of ranks that do not break down easily into two, mutually exclusive categories. It's more useful to think of woke identities in caste terms, wherein the highest-caste identities are "clean" and lower-caste identities are increasingly "unclean." Unclean identities are those born into "privilege," while clean identities are those that suffer under oppressive cultural forces like whiteness, masculinity, heteronormativity, cisgenderism, Christianity, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and even humanity (as in the presumption of human beings' superiority to the rest of the natural world). A person bearing all of these identities is maximally unclean, since he is thought to have experienced no suffering and only privilege. Those individuals bearing oppressed identities — including racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, transgender persons, religious minorities, and indigenous people — are considered clean.
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The key animating principle of wokeness is the collective struggle against the evil geist that inhabits the privileged, with the ultimate goal being the reversal of the advantages inherited by the privileged in favor of those who have suffered. The cleaner identities, by virtue of their cleanliness, have the standing to determine how the struggle is to proceed. The privileged, meanwhile, must atone for their unclean status by struggling alongside the clean. All must struggle, but the privileged must struggle most of all.
The primary means by which the privileged may join the struggle is through "allyship" — the subordination of their privileged identities to those who have historically endured the greatest suffering. For this reason, Mitchell is not quite right when he says there is no possibility of forgiveness in wokeness; it's just not the kind of Christian forgiveness that he and others recognize. Forgiveness for the woke comes from becoming a good ally. There is no absolution, however, as privilege is permanent. The privileged, therefore, are required to engage in constant, public acts of atonement.
The willfully privileged — those who refuse to struggle alongside the clean — remain unclean. The firmer their attachment to their privilege, the less clean they are. Whites who refuse to reckon with their privilege make up the majority of this lower caste, with the least clean among them being white supremacists — among which include neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Proud Boys, and even devotees to right-wing conspiracies like QAnon — who revel in their privilege. These are the untouchables of the woke hierarchy. Due to their willful privilege, they are thought to deserve any hardships they suffer.
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The afterlife for the woke is not one where the soul awaits the judgment of creation. Rather, like the pagan Romans, the woke find life after death through fama, or the renown due to a person who lived a glorious life. Similarly, fate for the woke seems to lie in the continued caste struggle. Yet whatever successes the woke might achieve, they are never complete, and are always subject to reaction. This makes the outlook of the woke a rather bleak one.
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As theologian William Cavanaugh observes, the claim that there exist boundaries between religion and non-religion, and that these boundaries are "natural, eternal, fixed, and immutable," is a relatively new phenomenon that came about "with the rise of the modern state." "The new state's claim to a monopoly on violence, lawmaking, and public allegiance within a given territory," he continues, "depends upon either the absorption of the church into the state or the relegation of the church to an essentially private realm."
In the latter scenario, state actors profess indifference on matters of faith, provided the faithful make no effort to interfere with the use of state power. This is the stance the woke ostensibly push for in the public sphere, especially with regard to traditional religious faiths (more on that later). Yet as philosophy professor Francis Beckwith has argued, such an arrangement is arguably incoherent, as matters of faith place the faithful under obligations to act on their faith in the public realm. To demand privatization of faith, therefore, is to ban it outside of the human heart.
The second possibility Cavanaugh raises is equally dangerous. In this scenario, the state absorbs the church and uses its monopoly on violence to impose at least outward compliance with the religious tenets of that church. In America today, these tenets are increasingly the tenets of wokeness.
If wokeness is a religion, it is a civil religion, in the sense that it merges one's duty to the divine to that of the state. For proof, one need only examine how in recent years, in cities across the nation, woke protesters have torn down statues of the old American civil religion of the founders, Catholic saints, and soldiers, and demanded new ones be built in their place to honor the gods of the woke pantheon.
For the woke, the state is the central entity through which clean identities struggle not only for justice, but to secure patronage. Eric Voegelin's Political Religions offers a useful example of how a religious patronage system works. Here again, we depart from Western — and indeed, modern — monotheistic faiths to draw comparisons between wokeness and a much older, polytheistic tradition.
In ancient Egypt, according to Voegelin, temples of the lower gods were linked in a patronage network that held the different regions together. The pharaoh patronized the gods of these temples by offering local priests and aristocrats prestige, money, and power. In exchange, the priests and aristocrats pledged their loyalty to the pharaoh. While rival cults disliked having to compete for state patronage, they all agreed that the worst outcome would be for the pharaoh to reserve the patronage for his own god and put the local cults out of business. And so they agreed to the arrangement.
The woke patronage network functions in much the same way. Patronage in wokeness takes several forms, the cheapest of which is recognition, or the state's acknowledgment that certain identities are deserving of respect and deference. Bearers of clean identities look to the state for such recognition, typically in the form of a holiday, a public display, or a committee or hearing on matters of importance to woke identities. From there, they seek out more significant forms of patronage, including financial and political investments. Examples may include academic chairs or departments at colleges and universities, along with monetary compensation covering expenses like medical procedures and the restoration of property.
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This arrangement is merely an updated version of the Egyptian patronage system Voegelin described: The different identities that populate the city receive state patronage as they supervise the diversity, equity, and inclusion of clean identities in the public sphere. Thus when Ibram Kendi — a historian and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research — suggests establishing a department of anti-racism at the federal level, he is merely applying the logic of municipal governments on a larger scale.
To gain further leverage over the state, the woke frequently court influence in the corporate world. Such efforts date at least back to 2017, when Pepsi hoped to capitalize on Black Lives Matter protests by launching an advertisement featuring a short narrative of a self-satisfied consumer, played by supermodel Kendall Jenner, emerging from her private world to join a broader movement of individuals living out their own authentic identities. The participants depicted in the ad are unified in this endeavor through their attachment to global corporate brands — in this case, Pepsi — that support them in their efforts to win over the state's coercive power to work the will of the diverse identities united under wokeness.
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Consultants like DiAngelo provide prestige for elite organizations seeking to adorn themselves with examples of their continued commitment to the moral issues of the day — in exchange for a fee, of course. Yet questions remain as to the efficacy of these arrangements. As Bonny Brooks argues in Arc Digital, "activism is now firmly near the top of many big-brand marketing agendas" because it "is a lot simpler to appropriate images of protest to sell soda than to ensure there are no exploitative practices in your supply chain." Helen Lewis of the Atlantic concurs, defining the "iron law of woke capitalism" to be that "[b]rands will gravitate toward low-cost, high-noise signals as a substitute for genuine reform, to ensure their survival."
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Some universities are looking to ground higher education entirely in the tenets of wokeness. The University of Tulsa, for example, has recently sought to re-orient the university around the twin pillars of business and social justice while cutting the traditional core curriculum to the bone. Among those angry at the decision are many of the students. Meanwhile, Ivy League institutions have owned up to their history of systemic racism by making the appropriate hiring and funding decisions — all while vigorously defending themselves from lawsuits made on behalf of Asian Americans claiming systemic exclusion in their present-day admissions processes.
Wokeness is the opiate of the elites. None of the patronage directly benefits struggling communities; it simply moves funds from state institutions, global corporations, and universities to diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. These consultants, in turn, serve as moral and spiritual alibis, helping to rehabilitate institutions' public image whenever issues of prejudice emerge. Paradigmatic cases can be found, as Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute has argued, at global corporations like Alphabet, which generously donates to social-justice organizations while opening an artificial-intelligence research center in China — despite the latter's horrifying record of human-rights abuses (often in service to these very corporations). Like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, state entities, corporations, and academic institutions offer patronage to the woke gods in exchange for their loyalty. And like the priests in those old Egyptian temples, the consultants grant prestige and temporary absolution while keeping the money.
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If states and public entities are increasingly patronizing woke identities and causes, are they also establishing wokeness as a government-sanctioned religion? In some respects, they surely are.
The Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman has set the standard for what qualifies as an unconstitutional establishment of religion in America since 1971. The Lemon test consists of three dictates: Laws must have a secular purpose, they must not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and they must not promote excessive government entanglement in religious matters.
If wokeness is indeed a religion, then efforts to establish its tenets through legal and regulatory frameworks clearly violate the Lemon test. State-sanctioned endorsements of woke identities advance the woke faith, as do municipal commissions tasked with promoting identity-based equity initiatives. Distribution of state money to woke identity groups and causes fosters government entanglement in religion. The hiring of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators at public universities to oversee the representation of clean identities is akin to those universities hiring priests or rabbis to oversee their adherence to Catholicism or Judaism. In short, if the Supreme Court were to recognize wokeness as a religion, these state-sponsored patronage efforts would have to end.
This conclusion, of course, hinges on whether wokeness constitutes a religion for First Amendment purposes. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has never quite articulated a concrete definition of the term as used in the Constitution. Its earliest attempts included an 1890 description of religion as "one's views of his relations to his Creator, and to the obligations they impose of reverence for his being and character, and of obedience to his will" — a standard that confined religion to traditional monotheistic beliefs. The Court eventually abandoned the use of a belief in a creator as the hallmark of religion, declaring in the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins that the government may not "aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs." While this clarifies that a religion need not involve a creator, it offers little in the way of a distinction between religion and non-religious belief systems.
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Such vague descriptions may not offer much to guide us, but given what the Court has deemed a religion in past cases, the legal classification of wokeness as a religion likely rests on firm ground. In the Torcaso case, for instance, the Court explicitly recognized both ethical culture and secular humanism — philosophies premised on non-spiritual moral traditions and the rejection of religious dogma — as being "[a]mong religions in this country." Even atheism qualifies for constitutional protection — at least under the amendment's Free Exercise Clause, which draws from the same mention of the term "religion" as the Establishment Clause. The bar for what legally qualifies as a religion is thus quite low. Given the deeply held and undoubtedly sincere nature of woke adherents' beliefs, along with the tenets of wokeness described above (the belief in the divinity of identity, the concept of the woke faith community, the Gnostic understanding of the world, notions of fate and the afterlife, and the moral code grounded in the struggle against oppression), one would be hard pressed to explain how wokeness is less deserving of the status than belief systems explicitly grounded in secularism.
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If wokeness becomes a legally recognized religion in the United States, efforts by adherents to secure state patronage and enlist public entities in their struggle would violate constitutionally protected natural rights. Historically, such measures have provoked an organized political and legal response among disadvantaged faiths. And that is precisely where we may be headed.
Adherents to wokeness might object by noting that they oppose laws viewed as the product of church-state collusion — including laws that coerce prayer and scripture reading in schools, those that ban the teaching of evolution in schools, and those that mandate days of rest on the Sabbath — as well as displays of religious symbols on state property. This objection is not so much wrong as it is decades out of date.
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With the decline of the old Judeo-Christian consensus, the woke have sought to establish themselves in the spaces left open by the success of secularization. But as their faith coalesces and their successes build, they are beginning to grow out of those spaces. It seems that at the very moment of its overcoming, the struggle is struggling with itself.
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It really is scary. Men view us as some objects to conquer. They refuse to acknowledge our humanity. They look at us as something that exists solely for their pleasure & consumption. It’s low key predatory & dehumanizing af. It’s just sad how so much of what they do is to soothe their fragile ass egos. You think a mans pursuing you out of genuine interest when it’s really to one up some other man that doesn’t even know he exists. Being heterosexual woman truly is ghetto af. Men are exhausting.
this is all facts. where are the decent men at? cause it really seems like most of them have this mentality and it’s really discouraging. i really wanna know how our parents’ generation did it because it’s pretty sad.
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No. 1: Fania
Fania Noel is a woman with plans. And not just the vast, sweeping plans like the dismantling of capitalism and black liberation. She also has smaller, but no less important, plans like brunch with friends, hitting the gym.
“Every week, I put in my calendar the times I need to be efficient,” she explains. “So I put what time I work out, with my friends, my time to watch TV shows, to read. And after, I can give people the link to put obligations.”
The link she’s referring to is her online scheduling system connected to her personal website. It’s one I’ve become well acquainted with after our first two failed attempts to schedule interviews. We had plans to meet in person, in a Parisian Brasserie she’d recommended, but between canceled flights and buses, Skype turned out to be the most practical option. Our disrupted travel was just one in a long list of inconveniences brought on by the virus safety measures. It might even be said that the coronavirus also had plans.
The global pandemic and subsequent slowing of—well, everything comes up a few times in our conversation. Like some of the other activists I’ve talked to, Fania sees a silver lining, an opportunity.
“This might be the only sequence of events in the history of humanity that you have the whole planet living at the same tempo, being in quarantine or locked down or slowed activity,” she says.
“So we all have a lot of time to think about how [society is] fucked up or the weight of our lives in terms of this society. And I think we have to ask if we want to go back to this rushed kind of living. It’s really a game changer.”
I first heard of Fania, a Haitian born afro-feminist, earlier in the year, while talking to a Parisian friend about the need for more black spaces in the city. She angrily described how a few years ago, Fania tried to have an event for black women, only to be met with fierce backlash and derision from not just right-wing groups, but anti-racist and anti-Semitic groups. The event wasn’t actually Fania’s alone; it was an effort by Mwasi Collective, a French afro-feminist group that she’s involved with.
Either way, it was a minor scandal. Hotly debated on French TV and radio. Even Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, voiced disapproval. Critics claimed the event, called Nyansapo Festival, was racist itself by exclusion because most of the space had been designated for black women only.
Despite all the fuss, the Nyansapo Festival went on as planned. Several years later, following the killing of George Floyd and the international movement that followed, Anne Hidalgo published a tweet ending with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. I found it curious, she’s always struck me as more of an #AllLivesMatter type.
I ask Fania if, given the tweet and possible change of heart from the mayor, she thinks her event would be better received in the current climate. She points out that there had been two Nyansapo Festivals since, with little to no media coverage, but seems overall uninterested in rehashing the drama.
“We’re way beyond that now,” she says, shaking her head. She ends it in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever been almost imperceptibly corrected by a black woman, and I quickly move on to the next topic.
It’s not until later, when reading some of her other interviews, that I’m able to fully contextualize our exchange. It’s common for activists, especially those working in or belonging to a culture where their identity makes them a minority, to be asked to view their work through the lens of conditional acceptance of a larger group of oppressors and/or gatekeepers. Asking feminists what men think, asking LGBT how they plan to placate heterosexuals. In her dismissal, Fania resists the line of questioning altogether, and in another interview, she makes the point more succinctly when explaining why she doesn’t believe in the concept of public opinion:
“As an activist, the core ‘public’ is black people and to think about the antagonism and balance of power in terms of our politics rather than its reception. It’s normal in a racist, capitalist, patriarchal society that a political [movement] proposing the abolition of the system is not welcomed.”
One might argue if you’re not pissing anyone off, you’re not doing anything important.
Rolling Stone’s July cover is a painting featuring a dark-skinned black woman, braids pulled into a round bun on her crown. She has George Floyd’s face on her T-shirt and an American flag bandana around her neck. One of her hands is raised in a fist, the other holds the hand of a young black boy next to her. Behind her, a crowd, some with fists also raised, carry signs with phrases like Our Lives Matter and Justice For All Now.
According to Rolling Stone, they tasked the artist, Kadir Nelson, with creating something hopeful and inspirational and he “immediately thought of Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People,’ the iconic 1830 painting that depicts a woman leading the French Revolution.”
Regarding his choice to center a black woman in the piece, he explains: “The people who were pushing for those changes were African American women. They are very much at the forefront in spearheading this change, so I thought it was very important for an African American woman to be at the very center of this painting, because they have very much been at the center of this movement.”
During our call, I mention the painting and ask Fania her thoughts on why, so often, we find black women at the forefront of any social justice or human rights movement.
“Women have always organized,” she says simply. “Women work collectively, they run organizations.” She points to the church and organized religion as an example.
“Look at the composition of church. Who’s going to church, who’s going to ask for help from God?”
Anyone who’s spent time in the houses of worship for a patriarchal religion has vivid memories of the very present men in the room. From the booming voices and squared shoulders of the pulpit to the stern, sometimes shaming looks of brothers, uncles, fathers. But the women, often more numerous, run the councils and the choirs. Around the world women pray more, attend church and are generally more religious. And the men?
“In a context of church, it’s really acceptable to ask for help from God. Because it’s God,” Fania says. “But you don’t have a lot of black men, a lot of men in any kind of church.”
That isn’t to say that men, especially black men, are complacent. Fania notes that traditional activism goes against the patriarchy’s narrow view of masculinity.
Activism, she explains, requires one to acknowledge they’ve been a victim of a system before they can demand power. And for a lot of men, that’s not an option.
“They want to be seen as strong,” she says. “As leaders. They want to exert control.”
In short, both black men and women acknowledge the system would have us powerless, but while women organize to collectively dismantle it, men tend to stake out on their own to dominate it.
Black capitalism as resistance isn’t new, and was more prominent during the civil rights movement, which was largely led by men. In 1968, Roy Innis, co-national director for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) opined,
“We are past the stage where we can talk seriously of whites acting toward blacks out of moral imperatives.” While CORE’s other director, Floyd McKissick, reasoned,
“If a Black man has no bread in his pocket, the solution to his problem is not integration; it’s to get some bread.”
More recently the dynamics of this played out in real time on Twitter as Telfar, a black, queer-owned fashion label, sent out notifications of a handbag restock only to be immediately descended upon by a group of largely black, male resellers. Telfar describes itself as affordable luxury for everyone, and for many of the black women who buy Telfar, it exists as proof that class and fashion need not be so inextricably linked. But for the men who bulk purchased the bags just to triple the price and resell, these were just more items to wring capital out of on their quest to buy a seat at the table.
Of course, it’s not unreasonable to argue that the purchase of a product, regardless of who makes it, as a path to liberation is still black capitalism. And in another interview, Fania specifically warns against this type of consumption. “Neoliberal Afrofeminism is more focused on representation, making the elite more diverse, and integration. This kind of afrofeminism is very media compatible. Like great Konbini-style videos about hair, lack of shades of makeup, and [other forms of] commodification.” But, she explains, “The goal is a mass movement where our people are involved, not just passively or as consumers.”
But can consumption be divorced from black liberation if it’s such a key aspect in how so many black people organize? I bring up all the calls to “buy black” that happened in the wake of George Floyd. Some of it could be attributed to the cabin-fever induced retail therapy we all engaged in during quarantine. And for those of us who, for whatever reason, were unable to add our bodies to a protest, money seemed like an easy thing to offer. Buy a candle. A tub of shea butter. A tube of lip gloss. But what did it all really accomplish, in retrospect?
“We have to think about solidarity,” Fania explains. “Solidarity is a project. When we say support black-owned business, we still have to think about the goal, the project. So if we support coffee shops, bookshops, hair dressers that have a special place in the community and are open to the community and in conversation with the community, it’s good and it can help. But if it’s just to make some individual black people richer, it’s really limited.”
Black capitalism vs anti-capitalism remains an ongoing debate, but shouldn’t be a distraction. In the end, everyone will contribute how they best see fit and we still share a common goal. Besides, we’ll need all hands on deck to best make use of our current momentum. And that’s something Fania underscores in one of the last points she makes during our conversation:
“Something we have to repeat to people is that these protests: keep doing them. Because you have years and years of organization behind you. People came out against police brutality and a week later we’re talking about how we move towards the abolition of police, how we go towards the abolition of prison. How we move towards the end of capitalism. And this is possible because you have a grassroots organization thinking about the question even when no one else was asking it. So now we have the New York Times and the media asking if these things are possible. But that’s because even when we didn’t have the spotlight, we were working on the questions about the world after. And every day radical organizations, black liberation organizations, are thinking about the world after and the end of this system. And when protests and revolts happen, we can get there and say ‘we have a plan for this.’”
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The Genteel Englishwoman of the 18th Century
Thoughts on the book: The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery (1998). Can I resist a scholarly book with over 50 pages of notes at the end and FIVE appendices? Certainly not one in which "Fortitude and Resignation" is a chapter title!
Vickery set out to write a "study of genteel women strongly anchored in the hills of the north of England." Her focus is on women from families headed by lesser landed gentlemen, attorneys, doctors, clerics, merchants, and manufacturers, not members of the ton (whom AH once hoped a prospective wife would have an aversion to, while still being well-bred).
Vickery wisely points out that these types of studies are always complicated because there are almost always attempts to address the key Big Question for many scholars: when did the modern gender constructs for women arise? (She usefully uses the phrase, "domestic femininity" for behaviors that are grouped together.)
Vickery rejects "public and private" and "separate spheres", stating that "it has little resonance for the prosperous women studied here," for these impose categories that are dismissive of women's concerns. Expanded by myself, women were concerned about matters of politics, besides intellectual interest, because they were also heavily tied to notions of duty - to family, to child-rearing, and for the benefit of the nation. Vickery also notes the rise in philanthropy as a domain for the married woman in the latter half of the 18th century - a very public role.
"...[T]he administration of the household, the management of servants, the guardianship of material culture and the organization of family consumption fell to their lot. Most were well prepared for this deluge of responsibility; in girlhood, many had copied and seconded their mothers, others heeded advice that they should begin a reference manual on matters material to the running of a house.
"...Yet the household and family were not the limit of an elite women's horizon. Nor was the house in any simple sense a private, domestic sphere. Indeed, the idea that the home was a refuge insulated from the world is one that would have perplexed the well-established in this period. Genteel families were linked to the world in a multiplicity of ways, as kinsfolk, landowners, patrons, employers, and as members of the elite. All these social roles were expressed through a variety of encounters which took place in the home. Open-handed hospitality was still crucial to the maintenance of social credit and political power, and, as mistress of ceremony, the elite hostess might wield considerable practical power from the head of her dining-table. The women at the heart of this study presented themselves to the world in the mantle of politeness. Politeness was a tool which a well-born women could use to extend her research: she could use the language of politeness and civility to encourage heterosexual sociability, to demand social consideration and to justify criticism when this was denied. The accusation of vulgarity was as significant as a weapon to undermine male posturing and masculine brotherhood, as it was a device to disparage the less socially favoured.
"...To be mistress of oneself was paramount - genteel ladies aimed to be self-possessed in social encounters, self-controlled in the face of minor provocations, self-sufficient in the midst of ingratitude, and, above all, brave and enduring in the grip of tragedy and misfortune."
The fortitude and resignation chapter covers infertility, pregnancy, child-birth and lying-in, nursing, weaning, the specter of childhood illness, and motherhood. For even with servants/nannies/nurse-maids, care of children was still primarily the expected duty of the mother. The genteel women of Vickery's book condemn that their social lives effectively end with motherhood, as their children are so closely tied to them (reminds me of this quote: a husband needs a well-informed wife since she’s the one who will educate the children).
Women were (and still are!) administrators. Almost every genteel woman had and carried on her a pocket memorandum book that contained everything from recipes, the terms and wages of servants' contracts, common prices on goods, the inventories of food stored in the pantry/attic, food processing requirements, number of linens/clothing needed, correspondence that had been responded to, marketing tables for calculating taxes, currency exchanges, and more. Hiring and managing servants was perhaps the most arduous task for genteel women - were they efficient? How to maintain authority? Yet servants in England were highly mobile and highly in-demand, so they cared little about abruptly leaving one employment. Much of the role of a genteel married woman was as manager: of people, goods, and household items.
[I’ve written on some of these topics before, and I link most of them at the top of this post. I’ll do another post on more of Vickery’s work.]
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are U interested in reading my final paper for a course on Queer Literature and Theory? do u like lesbians? are u curious about lesbian sexuality in pornography? do u need a good sassy laugh?
look no further than right under this cut!!!
Content Warning: This essay contains sensitive content discussing sexually explicit material.
Tribadism: Lesbian Bump and Grinding. (Definition courtesy of Urban Dictionary)
“Hey, Kylee, how do lesbians have sex?” I pause for a moment, trying desperately not to roll my eyes. With a deadpan expression, I hold up two victory signs with my fingers and mash them together. “We scissor each other, of course.” I let a few seconds pass, taking in their look of bewilderment, before I crack a sardonic smile. I was joking of course. Every good lesbian knows that scissoring isn’t actually a real thing. Scissoring is what straight men think they see women doing in lesbian porn, opening their legs and criss-crossing them together in a cutting motion. Fake lesbians scissor. Sophisticated lesbians trib.
Of course, it took me a while to learn this. Like many other queer youth, I struggled to squeeze out any information in regard to lesbian sex out of the public sex education system. What choice did I have but to stumble across some poorly-made erotic content on the Internet? (Many choices, in fact, but I didn’t know that then.) Much of my knowledge about how two women have sex together without a man initially came from this exploration, shortsighted and misrepresented as it was. But now that I am a Real Adult Lesbian, I am interested in Real Adult Lesbian Sex. As such, I want to move beyond the question of what lesbian sex is and instead examine how pornographic sex represents the lesbian community. What better way to explore this idea than to return to my original Sapphic-inclined childhood investigation… porn on the Internet!
I was a naïve child, so of course I didn’t know that the lesbian porn I was viewing has a specific name: Ersatz porn. Ersatz porn is the term used to describe “girl-on-girl” pornography made by the straight man, for the straight man. And it is this porn that inflames the hearts of indignant female feminists everywhere, including my own. So imagine my surprise upon discovering that sometimes these fake lezzys fueled a fire in my loins as well. How was I supposed to reconcile this?
The 3 P’s: Penetration, Pleasure, and Pussy Shots
Everything I hate about lesbian porn made for men’s consumption comes to the tip of my tongue instantly- pun not intended. First, there are the fingernails. Every performer has an obscenely long, pointed, hot pink $40 set of acrylics. If you buy into the longstanding and dodgy myth of nail length indicating whether a woman is gay, then the 1-inch kitty claws on the screen in front of you are a dead giveaway: She isn’t a lesbian, and the girl she’s fucking isn’t enjoying it. I myself have a love-hate relationship with the nail clipper, often keeping my nails longer (a reasonable length, of course), but I can definitively say that the prospect of somebody scratching up my vulva with those talons, pretending it’s pleasurable… Needless to say, not my kind of thing. Unfortunately, these pricey manicures are least of our worries.
Ersatz porn has only one audience in mind: Men. And every straight man knows that women, lesbian or not, just want a dick. This isn’t about her pleasure, it’s about his. And by involving aggressive sucking and fucking with a strap-on, the male viewer can identify with the woman wearing it on screen. Her purpose is to simply act as a placeholder for a male body. For some odd reason, men still seem to think that women easily get off on penetration alone, so it’s not surprising that there is little clitoral stimulation in girl-on-girl porn. These poor guys don’t know any better. But us lesbians know the truth: The clit is the shit. Dildos and vibes all have their place in the bedroom for dykes, but the end-goal of it all is arousal and orgasm, not a penis. Unfortunately, the sole attention on penetration means that the best these pseudo-lesbians can get are pseudo-orgasms (not that many viewers would be able to tell the difference).
I was happy to discover that I am not the only one curious about other queer women’s take on “lesbian” porn; in an exploratory experiment performed by Todd Morrison and Dani Tallack, a small group of lesbian and bisexual women were interviewed after viewing scenes from both Ersatz porn and lesbian-created lesbian porn. They discussed what they saw the films representing in terms of lesbian identity. Viewers noted that the women having sex in the girl-on-girl scenes didn’t appear to enjoy it at all; there was no genuine emotion nor any interest in pleasing one another. One viewer remarked, “Yeah, this didn’t look very physical … She could have been reading the paper while the girl was banging her.” When one girl fingers or goes down on her partner, she rarely looks up to make eye contact. It’s all very detached, and the pained expressions on their faces accompanied by high pitched whines seem less like the result of a good fucking and more of a “God when the hell is this gonna be over” response.
The male gaze is all about those close-up shots of the genitalia, which is sort of confusing to me because as much as they want to see it, they don’t seem to worship our labia as much as their local dyke does. The objectification and exploitation of the female body is at work, a key instrument in the misogynistic toolbox designed specifically for mainstream heteronormative pornographic orgasms. Let’s pull out the hammer then, shall we? Our good friend penetration makes yet another appearance, often combining hardcore fucking with restraint practices—whether it’s steel handcuffs or a rough pair of hands clenched tightly around wrists. In and out, in and out, we see the pink dildo pounding into a pussy, and rarely does the camera stray from this scene to her face, essentially detaching female pleasure from the action of penetration. She is reduced to an object in which the only use is a hole to be fucked. The penetrator then forces the body below her to slobber and choke all over the dildo, hissing out abusive and demeaning remarks: “Your dirty little fucking pussy likes to take this big fucking cock, doesn’t it? Dirty little slut.”
Pornhub gratuitously offers up tons of content like this. Just look at “TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” (Don’t worry, I took the liberty of analyzing the scene to pull out its most ridiculous parts so you don’t have to.) Here we have a busty blonde TSA agent watching two naked women sixty-nine on a table with a bright light shining down on them… very reminiscent of a visit to the doctor’s office—minus the sex.[1] The blonde doesn’t engage in any physical contact while the other two are going at it and instead looks on with a forced smile of pleasure. Then we have the painfully slow zoom in on the JUICY WET PUSSY. There was also a gun involved, just in case you forgot this was porn made for men; nothing screams heterosexual masculinity like pointing an armed weapon at a woman’s head while you fuck her. And finally, how could we forget the infamous double dildo scene? It’s very important to show that every hole is filled by a phallus. If we zoom our male gaze out a bit to take in the whole body, I fear what we see is not much better than these money shots.
Being Butch and BDSM
Let me just lay this on the table now: I am a hyper-feminine queer woman. I am all too familiar with comments like, “But you’re so pretty?!” or “I never would have guessed…” when a straight person finds out that, yes, I am in fact queer as fuck. My love for glitter, killer eyeliner, and an overall hatred of pants puts me at the unwanted mercy of male attention. Even among the queer community, I feel the need to loudly announce my presence; I’m here, I’m queer, and you can shove your misguided compliments on my “straight” appearance right up your ass. One would think then that I enjoy the performers in mainstream porn, that I would laud them for actively combating femme invisibility. The problem is that a) because of this “representation” men think feminine-appearing lesbians are really just college chicks experimenting and having threesomes before running into the muscular arms of someone with a real penis and b) it simply doesn’t turn me on. Where are the butch ladies? Perhaps my biggest beef with Ersatz porn is that I feel it actually does a disservice to representing lesbians, even my fellow femmes. Representation is only good if it is appropriately and accurately diverse, and Ersatz porn is decidedly not. Sure, the hair color may change and maybe one of them has double Ds while the other has Cs, but other than that… Femmes aren’t flat and they’re certainly not fat.
Returning to the interviews, the participants noted that the bodies in Ersatz porn reflected society’s expectation for straight women, even if they were supposed to be lesbians. Even more unsettling, the performers look less like women and more like girls. Straight men seem to think that college freshmen have the time, energy, and money to maintain a perfectly hairless physique. To loosely quote the response of a previous professor of mine to a male partner who wanted her pubic hair shaved: “Why? Do you like to fuck little girls?” Proportionally, their appearances are reminiscent of the old school Barbie doll: slim waist, young face, and huge boobs. Women, lesbian or otherwise, come in all different shapes and sizes, but it seems that these straight male viewers have yet to catch on to that. Difficult enough is it to accept that two women can get sexual satisfaction without a man, they’ll be damned if she’s fat or has short cropped hair! The performers’ bodies appear to be the biggest difference between mainstream lesbian porn and porn produced and made specifically for queer women.
There is one specific butch body that comes to mind within the mainstream sphere, however: Lily Cade. Now, I have my own gripes with Cosmopolitan magazine. Their advice essentially boils down to “here’s why you’re single and sad, so let us show you how to be sexy in order to catch a man and fulfill your meaning in life!” Any articles that mention identities outside the normative are riddled with misinformation and operate only as a way to clickbait intersectional feminists into reading them. Needless to say, my initial reaction to their article titled “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star” was dismissive at best. However, upon looking at the photo of the petite, jean jacket-wearing woman with choppy ginger hair and heavily lined eyes underneath the title, I knew I recognized her and couldn’t resist giving the article a read. (Like I said, fucking clickbait.) Cosmo names Lily Cade the exception to the rule that most girl-on-girl porn stars are actually straight. Before her career really kicked off, Cade described herself as a butchy lesbian with a little bit of baby fat. She struggled to convince directors to give her a chance because her appearance didn’t fit what mainstream porn was selling. Cade then lost 40 pounds, got a tan, and revamped her sexy lingerie in order to break through the business. So how does a real dyke feel producing Ersatz porn?
Cade admits that sparking chemistry on set with the straight women she performs with is one of the most difficult parts of her job. Interestingly enough, Cade criticizes girl-on-girl porn because it’s not meant for female viewers, that the overall the performance is “fake on every level.” Although she weaseled her way into the business by adjusting her look, she doesn’t necessarily think that she performs the way that everybody else in Ersatz porn does. Cade strives for authenticity; she makes an effort to connect with the women so that they can perform a real sex scene. Cade comments, “You don’t have to make love to me, you don’t have to even touch me. Just let me fuck you, and I’ll get you off, and you’ll like it.” But how is it that a lesbian performer can engage in the content she criticizes? Indeed, this is a point of contention for many people involved in queer porn. Lily Cade has come to acquire the label of “sell-out” among the queer underbelly of the mainstream. The changes Cade made that brought her success in the mainstream industry only resulted in derision in the realm of queer pornography. Already a sort of niche business, Indie queer pornographers could have used another butch body to represent and pleasure us lesbians out here. To turn your back on your community and play pretend for the straight team? Unthinkable. Worse yet is the fact that, of all venues, her outlet for public exposure was Cosmo magazine.
But who are we to say that Cade isn’t having authentic sex? After all, she is still a lesbian. And her attitude toward her work certainly seems gay to me; she maintains a high level of enthusiasm and a devotion to performing sex with her female colleagues. For the lesbians that do stumble across her work within the mainstream sphere, Cade is putting out content that is more accessible and relatable for them. Her apparent conformity does not mean she is suddenly no longer a queer woman. In response to criticisms, Cade says that she’s “chosen to create a look that is accessible to a more mainstream audience, but is undeniably a lesbian look… I don’t see myself as a sell-out; I see myself as subversive.” And to all of the straight male viewers of her work, Lily Cade has a message: “I’m showing them how a real dyke does it.”
When the butches do come out to play, they star disproportionately in the BDSM genre, especially in mainstream porn. So even though I want to see the bodies I’m attracted to, I’m caught in a catch-22 situation: Yes, the butches exist, but often only in circumstances involving extreme violence and submission. That isn’t to say that BDSM isn’t arousing. In fact, BDSM relies on domination, bondage, sadism, and masochism as a turn-on for viewers. What I’ve found, though, is that in mainstream porn BDSM is performed in a male heterosexual context rather than a lesbian context. Another Pornhub gem, “Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5,” exemplifies this concept. The video is a thirty-minute compilation of strap-on fucking with butch women doing most of the labor. The content and title combined appear to give us lesbians the recognition we deserve. However, it opens with a quote: “By far, one of the most popular fantasies women have is being the man for one night, literally. That’s right, I’m referring to a strap on penis.” In wearing this sex toy, a lesbian is suddenly transformed into a heterosexual man; it’s clear that the butch body still acts less as a queer woman and more as the placeholder for the male viewer.
Abuse and objectification of the female body also is heightened to suit the male gaze. Hair is pulled violently back as she extends one of her legs straight in the air so that our view of the dick is not obscured. It does not matter that these inorganic, acrobatic positions are not pleasurable nor conducive to sex; penetration and the role of the penis is the primary focus. There is little clitoral stimulation involved, the scenes are rough and more demanding than pleasurable, and the strap-on is glorified as the Sub is made to perform a blowjob for the Dom.[2] Finally, one of my personal favorite scenes—a long-haired femme being pounded against a weight rack, her tennis shoes still on. How did she get her clothes off without taking those bulky sneakers off? It doesn’t matter, these women are making gains at the gym, appealing to the Frat boy’s favorite pasttime. In the end, it seems you have two options to choose from when it comes to Ersatz porn: Watch a threesome between Sorority girls experimenting with lesbian sex for the first time through a hazing ritual, or watch a (still pretty feminine) butch relentlessly subjugate a dubiously consenting hyper-feminine girl and not even pretend to enjoy it.
Advertising and Authentic Arousal
Obviously, then, queer porn is much better at depicting authentic lesbian relationships than Ersatz porn… Or is it? My knee-jerk response would be to let out a loud, defiant YES! OF COURSE IT IS! It’s far easier to find what you are into when perusing the realm of queer porn—even if getting access to it is much more difficult in the first place. Unlike mainstream lesbian porn, which you can find in abundance uploaded on sites like Pornhub or xHamster, queer-produced porn often does not find its way out beyond access to those who pay for it. But when you do find it, you’ve hit the Sapphic jackpot. Performers vary from the familiar femmes to chubby dykes, from chapsticks to stone butches and trans women. The scenes are often more believable because of the bodies in them; they are diverse and range in size, echoing many a lady-lover’s desire to appreciate all parts of all women. The women in Morrison’s study noted that the performers were often much older, “not like they had pubic hair a week ago,” and that “they had marks on their bodies, like stretch marks and stuff. They weren’t perfect.” Not only do the bodies reflect a diverse array of lesbians in terms of style and age, they are also more realistic because of their “imperfections.” These are the same flaws that are quickly airbrushed and implanted away in the mainstream sphere. However, nail length still seemed to be an issue, and what the women lacked in a perfect figure they made up for with the heavy use of makeup, accessories, and perfect hairdos. It seems that no matter who it’s for, pornography still has a certain aesthetic of ideal beauty to maintain.[3]
Bodies aside, what about content? When a butch straps on a dildo and fucks her hot femme girlfriend, are the underlying themes really so different from Ersatz porn? Even in queer porn, it appears that the strict gender binary has its place. Unfortunately, no matter how exclusive the lesbian club may be, societal expectations of gender roles and expression still exert themselves full force on our bodies. Yet somehow, as queer women, we proclaim that this is still what real lesbian sex is. Whether or not it resembles heterosexual sex is not the point or purpose; the fact of the matter is that these are queer bodies performing queer sex. Theoretically, it does not rely on misogyny the way that porn for heterosexual men does. The performers engage in a subversive and empowering scene where they reclaim their right to their bodies and their sex lives. They are performing with their fellow lesbians in mind, not acting for a male gaze.
When examining how porn produced by lesbian women is advertised for consumers, one thing becomes very clear: We want real sex. In order to draw in their demographic, many queer pornography sites capitalize on the idea of authenticity. A few catchphrases used by CyberDyke.net include: “We depict the sex the way people really have it.” “real fantasies / real orgasms / real lust / real butches / real bodies / real sex.” Well fuck, the site has me sold! I would take CyberDyke’s “porn aimed at real women and lesbians” over Lesbian Cheerleader Squad 2 any day. How do I know that those lesbians are fake? Well, I don’t, really, but I’ve never seen porn aimed at straight men claim that the women are Real Lesbians. Mainstream pornography doesn’t need to affirm the sexualities of their performers because men don’t really care about authentic representation. A title with “TWO HOT WOMEN” in it is just enough and the Kleenex are out. Women wouldn’t be watching their porn, anyways, so what does it matter? Perhaps queer porn is not showing us reality, but rather performing “a fantasy of authenticity.” Pornography is essentially a visual fantasy, and we lesbians dream about a world in which our identities are valid, every woman loves us back, and men aren’t around to fuck it up and exploit our desires. It is that illusion of authenticity which gives queer lesbian porn its allure.
It may come as a surprise to learn that not all lesbians necessarily agree that queer porn is the better porn. Authenticity, it seems, has to do with much more than just a body. In a different set of interviews conducted by Valerie Webber, non-heterosexual women who performed lesbian porn made for men were asked to discuss how their performance related to their sexual orientation. It turns out that many did not believe that they were performing “fake” sex, rather simply adjusting their actions to capture and create what the audience needed. Performing with a woman who was also lesbian-identified did not immediately make the scene the performer’s real sex life, and most agreed that the line between their work and authentic sex was not so clearly defined.
Despite the many quarrels we have with Ersatz porn, lesbian-created lesbian pornography cannot escape our critical eye either. Emotional intimacy makes sex appear authentic; when both women are clearly into each other (not giving weird sultry looks in the male viewer’s camera’s direction), I’m much more likely to be aroused. But intimacy quickly strays into mushy romance in lesbian-created porn. The stereotype that women are more sensual and emotive and thus lesbian relationships would maximize on romantic, loving sexual activity is a key point of criticism in queer porn. I, for one, resent the assumption that any sex I have will be vanilla by default. Some viewers admitted to preferring scenes from Ersatz porn; one remarked that the lesbian-created scene “was completely… boring in every way. The music was boring, the women were boring, the scene was boring, the colors were boring, the film was boring, the camera stayed stationary for Christ’s sake. It was boring.”[4] Another admitted, “Um, you guys are going to think I’m a bad lesbian, but I really like the penetration. It’s hot.” Bad Lesbian Club rejoice! Her guilt echoed my own anxiety at my arousal by certain girl-on-girl porn scenes. But clearly not every dyke is into the same thing, and even content produced by queer creators can fall prey to harmful stereotypes.
Not all lesbian porn is quite so corny, of course. Vanilla can be a pleasant no doubt, but as one viewer noted, “Let’s get it really raunchy sometime.” When some of us come out of the closet, we bring along some of our more hardcore desires—whips, sturdy ropes, ball gags, and leather collars. BDSM has long played a role in the lesbian community, and its prominence in lesbian-created pornography adds to the supposed authenticity of the performance. However, as Julie Levin Russo points out in her article, “’The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces,” it is the “mobilization of recognizable markers of dyke subculture (e.g. butch bodies, tattoos and piercings, fetish attire)” that feed into stereotypes about what being a lesbian is really like. Needless to say, not all queer women participate in or identify with these things. Although butch bodies help clue viewers into what porn is made for them, their representation is still almost exclusively present in the realm of BDSM. Themes of dominance are associated with masculinity, thus reflected in butch-heavy scenes of punishment and orgasm denial. After assessing my pleasure at certain penetration scenes in girl-on-girl porn, now I must question why I can so easily accept porn as made for my fellow lesbians through the mere presence of a butch body. It may seem more authentic to me, but for other queer women, perhaps the message they’re receiving is that certain characteristics—both in your relationship and your physical appearance—must be present in order to be real lesbian.
Reaching the Climax
Some would say that the question of authenticity is irrelevant because the purpose of pornography is to reflect viewers’ fantasies. How necessary is it to be real lesbians having sex? Why does it matter if most people can’t do the splits while they’re being eaten out? But without giving genuine thought to the performers and scenes you show, you run the risk of spreading misinformation about lesbians. Our existence cannot be denied, and failing to consider the impact of homogeneity in porn does a disservice to our very real livelihoods. The ruling is not decisive among women, queer or otherwise, as to which type of pornography is better or worse. My idea of what good porn is does not always match the reality of many queer women in the world; everybody has a different dynamic within their relationship, after all. Ultimately, though, there are definitely some things I could live without. (I’m glaring back at you, male gaze.)
[1] Doctor settings are actually quite a common scene in mainstream porn; straight men seem to have this idea that going to the gynecologist is hot. Because having my OBGYN shove a speculum up my vaginal canal is totally a turn-on, right?
[2] I’m still not sure how either party would get any personal pleasure out of choking on a silicone cock… but then again, butches are really just women who want to be men, remember?
[3] It’s not like we sweat during sex or accidentally choke on our girlfriend’s perfectly curled hair or anything.
[4] A 70-minute sex film set to classical music with zero dialogue wouldn’t be particular titillating for me, either.
Works Cited
Morrison, Todd G. and Dani Tallack. “Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Interpretations of Lesbian and Ersatz Lesbian Pornography.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, Spring2005, pp. 3-30.
Russo, Julie Levin. “‘The Real Thing’: Reframing Queer Pornography for Virtual Spaces.” In Jacobs, Katrien & Janssen, Marije & Pasquinelli, Matteo. “C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader.” Jan. 2007.
“Strapon Women Who Fuck Better Than Men – 5.” Pornhub, 2016, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph577e65b319a02.
“TSA Agents Engage in Lesbian BDSM! (Part 2).” Pornhub, October 2017, https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph59ccece3078ca.
Webber, Valerie. “Shades of Gay: Performance of Girl-On-Girl Pornography and Mobile Authenticities.” Sexualities, vol. 16, no. 1/2, Jan. 2013, pp. 217-235.
Wischhover, Cheryl. “What It’s Really Like to Be a Lesbian Porn Star.” Cosmopolitan. 2 Mar. 2016.
#personal#i know like maybe 2 people will read this but thats ok#im really happy w how it turned out and if ur interested it is here for u to read!
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From religion to pop songs, US culture makes male sexual exclusivity into a great feat for which they deserve extraordinary credit and praise.
By Tristan Bridges, PhD; originally posted at Gender & Society.
Two songs that seemed like they were on the radio every time I tuned into a pop station last summer were Omi’s single, “Cheerleader” (originally released in 2015) and Andy Grammar’s song, “Honey, I’m good” (originally released in 2014). They’re both songs written for mass consumption. Between 2014 and 2015, “Cheerleader” topped the charts in over 20 countries around the world. And, while “Honey, I’m Good” had less mass appeal, it similarly found its way onto top hit lists around the world.
They’re different genres of music. But they both fall under the increasingly meaningless category of “pop.” And, because they both gained popularity around the same time, it was possible to hear them back to back on radio stations across the U.S. Both songs are about the same issue: each are ballads sung by men celebrating themselves for being faithful in their heterosexual relationships. Above is Omi’s “Cheerleader.” Here is the chorus:
All these other girls are tempting / But I’m empty when you’re gone / And they say / Do you need me? / Do you think I’m pretty? / Do I make you feel like cheating? / And I’m like no, not really cause / Oh I think that I found myself a cheerleader / She is always right there when I need her / Oh I think that I found myself a cheerleader / She is always right there when I need her
In Omi’s song, he situates himself as uninterested in cheating because he’s found a woman who believes in him more than he does. And this, he suggests, is worth his fidelity. Though, he does admit to being tempted, which also works to situate him as laudable because he “has options.”
Andy Grammar’s song is a different genre. And like Omi’s song, it’s catchy (though, apparently less catchy if pop charts are a good measure). Grammar’s video is dramatically different as well. It’s full of couples lip syncing his song while claiming amounts of time they’ve been faithful to one another. Again, and for comparison, below is the chorus:
Nah nah, honey I’m good / I could have another but I probably should not / I’ve got somebody at home, and if I stay I might not leave alone / No, honey I’m good, I could have another but I probably should not / I’ve gotta bid you adieu and to another I will stay true
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Unlike Omi’s song, Grammar’s single is a song about a man at a bar without his significant other. He’s turning down drinks from a woman (or women), claiming that he doesn’t trust himself to be faithful if he gives into the drink. Instead, he opts to leave the bar to ensure he doesn’t give in to this temptation.
Both songs are written in the same spirit. They’re songs that appear to be about women, but are actually anthems about what amazing men these guys are because… well, because they don’t cheat, but could.
I was struck by the common message, a message at least partially to blame for why we all heard them so much. And the message is that, for men in heterosexual relationships, resisting the temptation to be unfaithful is hard work. And this message helps to highlight key ingredients of contemporary hegemonic masculinities: heterosexuality and promiscuity. Both men are identifying as heterosexual throughout each song. But, you might think, they’re not identifying as promiscuous. So, how are they supporting this cultural ideal if they appear to be challenging it? The answer to that is all in the delivery.
Amy C. Wilkins studied the ways that a group of college Christian men navigated what she terms the “masculinity dilemma” of demonstrating themselves to be heterosexual and heterosexually active when they were in a group committed to abstinence. Wilkins discovered that they navigated this dilemma by enacting what she refers to as “collective processes of temptation” whereby they crafted a discourse about just how masculine they were by resisting the temptation to be heterosexually active. They ritualistically discussed the problem of heterosexual temptation. And, in so doing, Wilkins argues that the men she studied, “perform their heterosexuality collectively, aligning themselves with conventional assumptions about masculinity through the ritual invocation of temptation” (here: 353). It’s hard to craft an identity based on not doing something. But if you’re going to, Wilkins argues that temptation is key.
Similarly, Sarah Diefendorf found that young evangelical Christian men navigate their gender identities alongside pledges of sexual abstinence until marriage. Men in Diefendorf’s study used one another as “accountability partners” to make sure they didn’t cheat on their pledges if they were in relationships, but even with things like pornography or masturbation. As Diefendorf writes, “These confessions… enable these men to demonstrate a connection with hegemonic masculinity through claims of desire for future heterosexual practices” (here: 658-659). In C.J. Pascoe’s study of high school boys navigating tenuous gender and sexual identities, she refers to this process more generally as “compulsive heterosexuality.”
Both songs are meant to situate the two singers as great men, men to be admired. But, being able to listen to this message and “get it” means that you can take for granted the premise on which the songs are based—in this case, that men are hard-wired to be sexual scoundrels and that heterosexual women should count themselves lucky if they are fortunate enough to have landed a man committed to not living up to his wiring. Without understanding men as having a natural and apparently insatiable sexual wanderlust, these songs don’t make sense.
Both Omi and Grammar need the discourse of temptation to frame themselves as noble. If we want to challenge men to not cheat, we should be challenge the idea that they’re working against biologically deterministic inclinations to do so. I’m not sure it would make a top 20 hit, but neither would it recuperate forms of gendered inequality through the guise of dismantling them.
Tristan Bridges, PhD is a professor at The College at Brockport, SUNY. He is the co-editor of Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Inequality, and Change with C.J. Pascoe and studies gender and sexual identity and inequality. You can follow him on Twitter here. Tristan also blogs regularly at Inequality by (Interior) Design.
*Thanks to Sarah Diefendorf for her edits and smart feedback on this post.
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In the way you said it
Whenever there’s representation
In a manner that can be called queer
Your tone and comments turn so nasty
Your mouth curls up into a sneer
It’s in the tone of your voice as you watch it
The characters just interact
You don’t openly say what you think
But empathy for them you lack.
You openly mock certain groupings
Try to engage me as well
But it’s not funny the stereotyping
Your unsaid sentences manage to tell.
Yes two guys on tv had some pet names
But so do the straight couples too
Exactly what part of their relationship
Is considered taboo to you?
We stopped watching more than one show
Because of the relationships within
Now forgive me, but we’re not religious
So you can’t possibly see it as sin
In fact when the words you don’t say
The laughter that openly rings
About two girls in love or a transperson
Are the reason no one tells you things.
According to Mulan its not genitals
That define if you are a man
It’s got more to do with the moon and storms
Than what’s inside of your pants.
In the same vein a woman can be
Anything she should so choose
But neither or both, intermittently
Are an identity, regardless of your views.
The person you like, love or lust after
Can be any gender at all
It’s really up to the individual involved
To make that judgement call.
No they don’t advocate child-abuse
Nor what the media will say
But two legal adults consenting
To be together will not ruin your day.
It’s odd to hear the hatred inspired
And experience the lack of empathy felt
Towards two or more characters in media
Dealing with circumstances dealt.
What’s the difference between the relationships
If they are straight or something else?
The shows all deal with their complex situations
And give sappy scenes designed to make you melt.
Where’s the empathy lost on the way,
When the young woman decides on a wife
Over some boring love interest dude to order
Who was clearly stifling her life?
When the character realises his friends are attractive
In a more than No Homo way
Why the sudden disinterest in watching or reading
Anything that features ‘a gay’?
The thing is it’s all just labels designed to
Try to categorise what differs from the norm
To be honest, it’s a tad frustrating
Orientation is not as simple as filling out a form.
Some people feel nothing romantic
Others for multiple persons at once
Some people want to go out on a picnic by a lake
Or hold hands with their love over lunch.
They are not all heterosexuals,
Nor, to be fair, are they all cis
But the reality is what’s it your business
To feel that you can judge them for this.
It’s so tiring hearing what you say,
Even more in the derision of tone
As if, by pretending to not be disgusted
You are doing ‘all those people’ a boon.
Well the reality is passive-aggression...
Tends to be more the latter
For if it lent more towards the former
You should hardly consider this a matter.
Representation is important to those
Who rarely ever see themselves in stories
It covers more than orientations
And frankly, The Straights™ are just getting boring.
Can we take another white couple
Another comedic romance
Where the premise is either believes in love
And all the chemistry of a dead plant?
Perhaps it would be nice for once
To hear the ‘B’ word on the screen
For trans, POC and Disabled to have
Their own heroes, that is the dream.
It’s so easy to mock and despise those
Whose life and barriers you cannot understand
To understand the fight that has led to,
Two gay characters being able to hold hands.
Tut if you must, but it’s happening
There are shows in the world just for those
Whose existences and viewpoints are usually marginalised
The age of Baby Boomer draws to a close.
In this society different is frightening
Labelled as wrong or obscene
How can the haters be so sanctimonious
Considering their hands are not clean?
The conservatives voted in a man who
Who pays people to kiss his posterior
But even compared to his childish ilk
Your negative commentary comes across as inferior.
So you don’t like to see two people kissing,
Unless it’s a woman and man,
Somehow the merest things are sexualised,
When you view two women holding hands.
If a man calls his partner babe,
Sweetiepie, Darl or Megatron,
The reality is, what is it to you,
Take a look at your flaws, reflect, move on.
You don’t want to see it in public,
And you question their ability to work in certain occupations
Many don’t want to have them near their homes
And actively exclude their ‘wrong’ neighbours.
How will that look on your final report,
Before the great lord almighty?
You know, the guy you always tote out,
To sanctimoniously condescend ‘righteously’.
All people are humans created equal
It is the society you uphold that picks and chooses
Who meets the questionable standards
Or normality, and decides based on birth, who loses.
You claim that tolerance is key when,
Dealing with anyone falling under ‘those people’
Because in your mind and your manner and words,
They cannot possibly be equal.
Some see them as sub-human,
Because of orientation, ability or skin
But the reality is that the hatred inspires
Bands the minorities together as kin.
They find their own spaces, and shows and representations
Despite the prejudice that suppresses
The evidence of inherent biology, their individuality
To choose the narrative of psychological messes.
Perhaps you should date a boy instead,
Lesbians often are advised.
Is this about not having a father figure?
Of gay men, a rhetoric that never tires.
Bisexuals, Aces and the followers of Pan
Hear just as many ridiculous ideaologies
As if the only conceptual path
In life, is monosexual monotony.
We ask of the ace what is wrong with them,
To not want certain contact or touch,
Always ‘jokingly’ stating,
That without sex what is the use of love?
The Pan, Poly, Bisexuals prefer certain people
Sometimes two or more at a singular time
It does not automatically assume adultery,
And yet the association is always put to mind.
You laugh aloud at the very concept,
Of a woman with breasts, and a phallus instead
Of what you think should perhaps be,
Situated between her legs.
Likewise when a young man has to wear
A binder to suppress his chest,
There’s always someone out there who dares
Ask why ‘she’ is not in a dress.
Have you ever considered it is not,
Nor ever really has had anything to do
With your thoughts or beliefs, not your business
It is their lives, and does not include you?
From the generation that endorsed a series
Filled with abuse and assault
Don’t blame the gays for your follies
50Shades was the heteros’ fault.
To be blunt, it is just so tiring
To see and hear people of all types demeaned
Because the ideology of difference disconcerts you
And therefore must be obscene.
The fact is your words do unseen damage
To people you pass everyday
Mockery and condemnation build walls
And turn friends and family away.
How could they tell someone like you,
The person with a poisoned tongue
That they fit the categories of those you condemn
Your words wound both old and young.
It is always a joke, a laugh, lighten up now
‘You need to stop being so severe,
You and your silly internet culture,
Where everyone thinks they’re ‘queer’!’
Back in your day... you start with,
As young people more informed roll their eyes
You claim that ‘x’ never existed
Never considering they did, in disguise.
Even now people cannot be open,
Holding hands in public tends to invite
Someone lewd to proposition or harass them
Tongues wag if you dare stay the night.
So of course historical figures, then and now,
From Achilles to Sappho, were very open
In fact you’ll find that their lives were revised
By the straight archaeologists who cloaked them.
People have been people for a long time,
It didn’t overtly matter to many
If your husband or wife, or mate for life
Wore a toga, dress or barely any.
Recently people have gotten hung up
Moreso than ever before
About which people you SHOULD be with
And it’s really quite the bore.
Men have loved men for forever,
Entire societies founded on this ideal
And women have loved other women
Since before civilisation was real.
Some fall into either category, both at once
Or then again neither, these individuals exist
And have done so, sucessfully
For long enough to do without your ire.
Ancient Egypt buried their people,
With great ceremony, purpose and pomp
Their transgendered persons always honoured correctly,
Would you dare to claim they were wrong?
Evidence and history have heroes,
Many of whom have been ‘revised’
For societal consumption as ‘everyday heroes’
Hiding their non-standard husbands and wives.
Look to Hercules and the Gods of Olympus
They had a rolicking gay time
But dare ask a historian about certain art
And they’ll have heterosexualty in mind.
The purpose is to say, here
That the reality is, all through history, we existed...
Beyond tv and comics and other media
It’s not a new fad that we twisted.
So sneer if you must when the two girls kiss,
Or put down your book in disgust
When the two male characters realise their infatuation
Was not with the anticipated one.
But the story and characters are still there,
Whether you choose to consume
But perhaps consider this instead, livelaughlover
They were not created for You.
To see yourself represented,
Be it on page or screen
As something other than the punchline or villain
Feels like a wonderful dream.
It gives a sense of belonging,
Normality in a world that blatantly refutes
The existence of people outside of a bubble
But some media actively salutes it.
An encouragement meant for the groupings
Who need to see those people existing at all,
The two boys on a date, the transgirl in a promdress
Just humans, seeing, doing, being, normal.
So perhaps before you sneer or comment
Perhaps before it’s ‘just joking’
Think about why you are acting that way,
Who, in society or family, are you quoting?
Why would you consider this person contemptible
Below even basic empathy and compassion
When exactly did hatred and bigotry
Suddenly rise into high fashion?
They are not the heroes we need, my friend
But they are the representation we deserve
So let go of your prejudiced ideals
They are nothing you need to preserve.
- - - -
I don’t know what this is, but sometimes you hear old people complaining and it’s so tiring...
#i just got tired of hearing old white people talking about anyone different as if they're zoo animals and smashed this shit out#long post#sorry
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Hi admins, I read the response you gave to that lengthy ask about smut. I'm very in line with what you are saying, and I've been thinking that way for a long time. I have a question though. I don't write smut because a) I'm not (yet) comfortable writing that kind of thing for any sort of relationship, and b) I am underage and have no experience with that sort of thing. Is it still fetishization if I write m/m, but leave out smut for the above reasons?
Fetishization of gay relationships does not start and end with smut.
It isn’t the sex that makes it fetishization, its the appropriation of queer relationships into a heteronormative (M/F) relationship structure for the consumption of straight people that is fetishization. Yes, that means your favorite cute fluffy romance fics too. It is the use of queer relationships to fulfill the fantasies of straight people without approaching queer people as PEOPLE. It is the use of heteronormative stereotypes, forcing queer people into restrictive and sometimes wrong heteronormative gender and social roles.
It’s getting hung up on tops/ bottoms; and masculine/ feminine but putting penises on both your main characters. Which doesn’t require smut to do, as romances can do it just the same. In fact - I would closely examine why Queer Sex in particular makes one as an author and consumer uncomfortable… Why the romance must be seperate from the sex??? As though there is something inherently dirty about Queer Sex - and would you honestly and sincerely hold the same qualms over heterosexual sex and relationships? Smut or no smut? There is nothing inherently wrong with men loving men (mlm) fics, writing or reading it. It is the attitude at which you approach those kinds of stories, it is the preconceptions of what that queer people are. It is the manner in which you treat your characters.
I find it telling that you recognize your lack of personal experience with sex, yet feel you can approach queer and mlm relationships and sex. It is somehow less important to understand the real experiences of queer folks in order to write them? Is it just easier to fit queer people into heteronormative boxes rather than engaging in the rich diversity of relationships and sex that queer folks have?
Self awareness is key to understanding your own motivations for reading and writing gay and queer fanfic. You’re on the path to that now. Don’t stop searching yourself for these motivations, and adjusting your worldview accordingly.
For more information, please read On the Fetishization of Gay Men By Women In The Slash Community and Gay Romance Novels Are Not Queer Romance Novels
and also try There Is No Secret To Writing About People Who Don’t Look Like You.
-aeryn and her friendly ghost writer Mouse
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