Hoe Phase

Hoe Phase

Why is it that when men sleep with multiple women or have multiple partners that its empowering and applauded, but when women decide to experiment and embrace their sexuality they’re shamed? Growing up I’ve seen the different ways that sexuality has a huge double standard. But I feel like as long as both partners are being safe and considerate, why does it matter who sleeps with who? It’s not like it effects anyone else’s life other than the ones involved, but yet someone always has something to say.

Girls are always told while growing up if you have multiple partners throughout your life time that you are of lesser value then someone who has waited to save themselves for marriage or someone that has slept with only one or two people. But in reality, just because you haven’t had as much experience it doesn’t make you any different than someone who has lots of experience. Sometimes women feel the need to experiment with their bodies, just like men do. Women just want to feel pleasure, just like men do. 

This generation of young adults are completely shifting the views on sexuality and what is now considered ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ and it’s amazing. But let me say this, no im not promoting people to sleep around, catch unnecessary bodies and to be unsafe because there are still things to worry about such as disease and unwanted pregnancy. All im saying is stop demonizing women that also enjoy sex and don’t want commitment. There are now female artists that talk about their sex life in their music, such as Nicki Minaj, Megan the Stallion, and Sexy Redd. But it’s not just about sex, it’s about female empowerment, it’s about women being able to express what they like and what they don’t like.

Queer Identity Discovery: The Domino Effect and Queer Time

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Image Source: http://www.avclub.com/article/theres-mash-rainbow-road-themes-all-8-mario-karts-206528

I’ll focus on my own experience here but I know there are going to be things about my experience that many other queer people can relate to in this regard.

My experience with queerness has never been linear, it has indeed been very queered. It has consistently involved not knowing about a way of being queer and then being introduced to the concept, a moment of reflection and then realizing “oh shit that’s me.” But I’ve also consistently struggled with coming to terms with these new labels and seeing how they fit me.

From the age of 12 to about a month away from turning 21 I had been on a journey of denial, internalization, grief over myself changing and growing, complete secrecy, exploration, etc. etc. about me being bi. I had come out after years of being afraid of myself, but in that time I also developed a yearning for community. When I came back to UMBC after two years of community college I knew that I’d want to seek out my community. Since then my reality as a queer person has shifted so greatly. I feel so liberated. Yet I grieve. I grieve for the ways I have been, not knowing if they are different than who I am now. My sense of self has been questioned. I don’t know if my new state of existing is just blurrier, or if things have just been just out of my sight this entire time and it constantly feels like both. I don’t know how consistent this person who is me is. Continue reading

Disabled people and pleasure

I had a conversation with people I was close with about nurses who help disabled people find sexual pleasure. Someone brought up a documentary about the nurses who do this and I offered that I heard a little about it in my Unruly Bodies class. I told them briefly about our section on disabled bodies and the things we’ve discussed in class. Continue reading

A Reflection on the Past of a Gay Baptist

In 2011 I came out while simultaneously accepting Christ. Apparently, that is a very odd thing to do, especially on a Southern Baptist mission Trip in Lousiana. My camp counselor cried tears of joy for me, but looking back on it I think he thought I was rejecting my homosexuality, rather than affirming it. I thought I couldn’t be a good Christian if I wasn’t being honest with myself, my community, and God. So this decision made perfect sense to me at the time, and I stand by that, even though I don’t attend church much anymore (for many reasons that do not pertain to this discussion). Continue reading

PSA: Transgender ≠ Gay

In the way gender and sexuality operates in our world, often times they are highly construed and mistaken for each other. Are they related? Yes. But they are still separate things. Because these identities are often mistaken in this way many people have this idea that being transgender is an identity that’s ‘chosen’ to receive some kind of access to heterosexuality and that to be validated as a trans person you need to be engaged in this effort to be on some end of the gender binary only performing gender in ways that are widely accepted in a hyper policed way, this includes heterosexism as it relates to transess. In fact there’s  a whole other level of heterosexism that is applied to trans people.

But sexual diversity is just as diverse in the trans community as it is in the cis population. I can only speak deeply about my own experience, and I realize it is but a mere single experience in a sea of many others and I do not speak for other trans people, though I feel like my story is relevant to this topic. My personal experience with my gender identity and sexual identity, has been a long and arduous journey that starts out in the closet as being reluctantly bisexual, often leaning towards my attraction to women. Then I was introduced to concepts of there being more than two genders, and it struck me. There were months of tears, denial, and confusion. Once exposed to different genderqueer, nonbinary, and trans identities that I suddenly felt aligned with I couldn’t go back to a reality where my sexuality was the same in relation to my gender identity ever again. Ultimately this ended up being a positive thing, something freeing, something that just ended up feeling more comfortable. But my initial reaction was fear, uncertainty, and feeling disingenuous because of the way the world saw identities like mine and I reflected that back into the way I saw myself. I still do feel internal conflict, I still get scared that I, in no way, have all of the answers about my identity, but as I come into my gender identity I find that I’m making progress in establishing peace with my bisexuality. It’s as if I didn’t want to identify as bisexual before, something about seeing myself as a ciswoman before I knew about the trans identities that fit me,  dating a man really did not sit with me well, it just wasn’t me and it isn’t. I’m finding that being trans and accepting it has essentially worked me into actually being more comfortable about my bisexuality. Now I find new complications in grieving my previously thought of lesbian/queer woman identity, but again I can’t go back, it’s just not me. I am a transmasculine person who is bisexual and with that I am queer and transgender. I think it’s a timeline and identity that defies this heterosexist view of trans people, as different stories and sexual identities of many trans people do. I wanted to provide my own experience as an example of how transness does not equate to gayness. There are certainly many other narratives out there that proclaim trans does not equal gay as well and encourage people inside and outside the LGBT community to realize that there is no one way to be trans or queer and that there is no reason someone can’t be both.

Everyone Else Wants a Dick in My Mouth (In which society takes one glance at my body and assume they know my whole life)

A few months ago when eating lunch with friends, one of my friends offhandedly commented that ‘men must love [me]’. I realized that she was referring to my ability to fit a large amount of food in my mouth, and assuming that I would use this ability to give great blowjobs (something I have no interest in doing). This got me thinking.

Continue reading

The Relationship to Labor in Sex Work

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When we speak about laboring bodies in class I am instantly aware that my relationship to labor is vastly different than that of my classmates. While I have worked in retail, food service, and other odd jobs, the majority of my work experience has been in sex work. I want to flesh out some of these differences, specifically in my experiences of being a stripper for the past four years. Continue reading