Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
via lets go lesbos
+ At the Hairpin, A Queer Chick answered questions about homophobia, the best nail length for lesbian sex (short and smooth) and bisexuality:
“When I was but a young and inexperienced Queer Chick, I spent a shockingly long time being informed by every lesbian I knew that I was not really queer, because I had dated a boy. So, in an effort to prove that I was actually The Gayest, I slept with all of their girlfriends.
No, I just felt awful and insecure about myself for a long time, and was afraid to pursue women because I thought they would reject me for not being queer enough, until one day some ineffable transmutation took place and for no apparent reason I felt ready to stand tall (well, average height. Well, kind of short, actually) and say: ‘I like boys and girls! I might like girls a little extra! And if you disapprove, you are more than welcome to not have sex with me!'”
+ Goddess of Java wrote about the polyamorous secondary relationship card and not treating people like things:
“I genuinely do not know what happily opening up a relationship looks like. I’ve never observed such a thing close hand and haven’t the faintest idea what it looks like.
What I do know, is what a good relationship looks like. What I do know is how to treat human beings.
Most of the problems illustrated on this card revolve around treating people as things. It revolves around treating them as objects for gratification. That’s not what love looks like, but I’m sure you know that.”
Related: Solopoly wrote about the grownup test, communication and negotiation.
+ Without My Consent has a round-up of all the news related to making revenge porn illegal.
+ Make Love Not Porn is “a start-up website designed to shatter the myths of porn and allow anyone to share their intimate moments with a wider audience, providing a real-life demonstration of what sex is actually like.”
via gray27
+ Good Vibrations has a round-up of the Feminist Porn Awards and the Feminist Porn Conference, as well as the list of winners.
+ Nerve discusses how sex on tumblr will change journalism:
“Sex should already be everywhere in American journalism. The media are part of a sensual family of artists, singers, musicians, novelists, writers, filmmakers and poets. Every song is about foreplay, fucking or fallout; “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the latest bestseller and a painter’s raison d’etre is the nude. I remember in Dorothy Allison’s “Bastard Out of Carolina,” the leading lady, Bone, masturbates against a tree limb at 12 or 13. That’s honesty you’ll never read in a newspaper, which is ironic, because papers are supposed to reflect the public’s interests. Journalism’s always been tied down by two prude dudes: America, who decided that political gossip and violence stories are more acceptable than naked booties. And advertising, who always bows to political heat or gets up in arms when an ad is placed too close to sex. As if a Chevy is more sacred than fucking. Scram, guy!”
Here’s a poem for you, it’s from What the Living Do (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998) by Marie Howe:
Practicing
I want to write a love poem for the girls I kissed in seventh grade,
a song for what we did on the floor in the basement
of somebody’s parents’ house, a hymn for what we didn’t say but thought:
That feels good or I like that, when we learned how to open each other’s mouths
how to move our tongues to make somebody moan. We called it practicing, and
one was the boy, and we paired off—maybe six or eight girls—and turned out
the lights and kissed and kissed until we were stoned on kisses, and lifted our
nightgowns or let the straps drop, and, Now you be the boy:
concrete floor, sleeping bag or couch, playroom, game room, train room, laundry.
Linda’s basement was like a boat with booths and portholes
instead of windows. Gloria’s father had a bar downstairs with stools that spun,
plush carpeting. We kissed each other’s throats.
We sucked each other’s breasts, and we left marks, and never spoke of it upstairs
outdoors, in daylight, not once. We did it, and it was
practicing, and slept, sprawled so our legs still locked or crossed, a hand still lost
in someone’s hair … and we grew up and hardly mentioned who
the first kiss really was—a girl like us, still sticky with moisturizer we’d
shared in the bathroom. I want to write a song
for that thick silence in the dark, and the first pure thrill of unreluctant desire,
just before we’d made ourselves stop.
–
Kathreen & Lily, photograph by hannah gottschalk via behance
+ A survey of 100 (straight) Australian women was used to draw some pretty broad conclusions about women and sex (“science proves women like men with bigger penises!”). Even though it’s not queer, this article about how the mainstream media exploits “science” to reinforce gender stereotypes is pretty interesting:
Under the guise of being backed by scientific authority, news outlets will often tout studies’ results — or sometimes, selectively highlight certain results — to reinforce gender-based stereotypes. Of course, citing research also sets up a situation where it’s more difficult for opponents to take issue with the those studies, since it may appear as if they’re objecting to scientific fact simply because they don’t want to believe the truth.
+ Friendship is the new marriage:
“Those friendships shaped the usual roller coaster ride that is your twenties: break-ups, job losses, late rent checks, evictions, diabolically ill-conceived nights out, and countless moves into fifth-floor walkups. In my thirties, we have supported each other through weddings, family crises, marriage, and children.
These relationships are as close to unconditional as I can hope to find, and they will continue throughout my life. It’s not hard for me to imagine meeting these women for happy hour on a beach in Miami before hitting the early-bird special at the retirement home cafeteria.Sadly the same cannot be said for my romantic relationships.
Or maybe not sadly.”
via weedandhips
All of the photographs on NSFW Sundays are taken from various tumblrs and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the tumblrs and photographers who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email bren [at] autostraddle dot com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.
Great post, wow, lots of things to chat about. While I want to touch on my opinion and experience with Polyamory, I will refrain because I feel it’s more relevant in my own situation right now to touch on bisexuality and how it affects my dating life.
While I live on the opposite side of the country right now, I grew up in San Francisco/bay area of Cali…that being said, as a child I saw same-sex couples together, as well as my parents together. This made me believe that love, marriage, sex, etc was not limited to physicality/gender. After moving here when I 8, I was suddenly told to believe being “straight” was the only way into heaven. (Now, not to open a can of worms in the whole religion area of this)
I will just say that I consider myself bisexual. I cannot help my feelings physically/sexually towards either gender. However, due to experience I’ve had emotionally, I feel I am at a point in my life I only want to date women. The issue is that most lesbian women I’ve dated (ok, 99%) hate that I am still attracted to men physically. The only woman I’ve dated who was bisexual as well wanted polyamory. I’m monogamous by nature. Can anyone give any feedback on what I should do? My options right now are: 1-Lie and tell women I only like women, or 2-Continue on my hunt for an understanding woman
Pick option 2. You have a sample size of 1 bisexual woman- not enough to draw conclusions that they’ll all want polyamory/nonmonogamy. You also have a sample size of… unknown number of lesbian women. I’m assuming your 99% is humorous hyperbole and you haven’t actually dated 99 lesbian women. But even if you have, 99 is not 100, and if you’re monogamous all you need is 1! Be persistent. Lying about this kind of thing will only make things worse and will never turn out well in the long run.
Hibiscus, great feedback, thanks. I had an inner-monologue after submitting the post, “be confident in who you are, you’re young and you’re bound to find someone who understands you and is not intimidated or insecure about your sexuality.” So, maybe I’ll just have to be more assertive in telling the girl (whomever she may be) that I wouldn’t leave her for a man? And yes, that was bad math on my part, 99 women is a hilarious overstatement….
I’m currently exclusively dating girls but have been with guys in the past so I can promise you that there are plenty of women who are in the same boat as you. The understanding ones are harder to find but so so worth it when you do.
By all means, if that’s what she’s afraid of, be assertive in telling her it’s unlikely. But don’t fixate on it, and identify it as the problem it is if she fixates on it. Because when the rubber meets the road, there are tons of reasons you could break up with her (or vice versa!): you could leave her for another woman. Or because you want to spend more time studying/working/playing chess. Or because you’re not compatible in some major way. Or because you want to move to New York/Amsterdam/Siberia and she doesn’t. You being bisexual doesn’t automatically make you leaving her for a guy more likely than any of those other reasons, so it doesn’t make sense to give it undue weight (unless you have a long track record of leaving women for men, in which case it’s your track record that’s the relevant data, not your bisexuality). And honestly, fixating on any one particular reason that two people may or may not break up in the far distant future, when you have no evidence or reasons why it’s particularly likely to happen, is pretty useless and counterproductive.
I have this same problem as well. I went to a university that was almost all male and ended up dating men because of it. (Not necessarily because I had to date someone, but with only guys around I ended up being attracted to only guys). About a year ago I reached a point where I was happier exclusively being with females. I tried to minimize my male experiences, in hopes that people would grow to like me before writing me off as bisexual (and thus “unworthy”). Eventually, I just got tired of it. Not everyone can be a gold star. Now I point it out with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude when asked. I might snag fewer ladies, but I don’t have to lie. The rejection sucks, but in my opinion having to mask part of myself was worse.
This pretty much describes where I’m at. I decided that a) I get to define my sexuality for myself. If I want to call myself bi, because I have a history of dating men for a long time while I was torturing myself trying to be straight, I can call myself bi. If I want to call myself lesbian because at this point I am only attracted to and only want to date women and do not anticipate that changing, I’ll call myself lesbian, and b) I will not hold back or hide my history from anyone I want to date, because if I treat it like something to be ashamed of, I’m communicating to other people that it is shameful, and c) I can also keep whatever I want about my past private until I feel like sharing it. I do not owe a sexual history to someone unless and until they are going to be a sexual partner, and even then I don’t owe them every little detail.
Agreed. When people ask my sexuality now, I normally just say “queer” and fill in the details down the road. :P
Elizabeth : I’m bi too, and while I personally wouldn’t mind an open/poly relationship (although it does sound really tiring and stressful for an introvert like me) I can tell you that there’s a LOT of us who are into monogamy – most of my queer friends are. Don’t let one disappointing experience keep you from dating other queer girls :)
As for biphobia, I never got flat-out hatred for my sexuality by dates or partners (and if I did it’d be an instant dealbreaker), but mistrust is super common and hard to deal with.
All of my serious relationships have been with strictly monosexual people, and they all said that they were totally ok with it but they never really were – no matter how long I stayed with them, how much I showed and told them that I cared, how hard I fought for our relationship, everytime my attraction for the other gender came up I could see the insecurity in their eyes or hear the awkwardness in their laugh.
It’s like they couldn’t ever fully believe in me and in our relationship because there’s another category out there that they can’t “compete” with, and it just hurts.
I’d love to hear about the experiences of other queer folks and the gay/straight people who date them on that, because at that point I’m seriously considering swearing off of dating anyone who isn’t queer. (Sorry that wasn’t really comforting, but I had to be honest/am looking for reinsurance too :/ )
I’d be happy to tell you about my experiences/have my partner tell you about his, although you’ll have to clarify your usage of “queer” for me because I’m sort of confused. Do you have an AS account (or email) where I could PM you?
Hi! First off, you’re awesome whoever you are, and if your partners have been incapable of or unwilling to going out on that limb of trust to love/commit to you because of your bisexuality, well that reflects of them. Not on you. Courageously is the only way to love, something that we queer folk ought to probably know pretty well.
That said…. I think we lesbians tend to get a bit insecure when we start falling for a bi chick. To be straight up with you, every single bi chick I know right now is in a heterosexual relationship, some polyamorous and some monogamous. Personally I’ve twice dated a bisexual girl. The first cheated on me with a dude three weeks into our relationship. The second broke up with me when her mom threatened to disown her and is now married to a man. Did it hurt like hell? Of course. Am I a little bit terrified to ever date a bi girl again? Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but the fear is there. Would that fear hold me back from trying, if I found an amazing bisexual woman who wanted to be with me? No. At least, I really, really hope not.
I guess my point is, don’t let people who judge you affect your view of yourself or dictate your behavior. And maybe try to give the fearful ones a little bit of grace, because we’ve all been burned before.
Oh and never stop chasing happiness.
I read that Queer Chick article earlier this week and liked it a lot, having felt that particular problem myself. What helped me stop feeling bad was the realization that being a member of a particular group (whether that group be women, queer people, astrophysicists…) does not make one magically immune to ever being incorrect, honestly-mistaken, or thoughtless. (Otherwise, we could find the person who identified with as many cool groups as possible, and ask them The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.) Once I realized that, I felt much more comfortable being open about who I was and what I was looking for, questioning problematic things, and double-checking the math when my physicist friends split dinner checks.
We already know the Answer is 42. But what’s the Question??
(I am not a member of all the cool groups, just a nerd :). )
nerd is certainly one of the cool groups!
Speaking of “diabolically ill-conceived nights out”, this is the perfect thing to read while lying hung over on my couch with my cat.
Great range of pictures this week, by the way.
Oh, that poem echoes poems I’ve written (and never shown anybody, because I am not in fact a very good poet) about exactly the same thing. Loved it. I mourn that moment when, for so very long, I made myself stop.
It is very depressing to know that if I ever get the courage to date a woman, she might run the other way if she knew I had been with men.
Just because I’ve slept with men doesn’t mean I’m not gay.
Honestly, I haven’t slept with a guy, but I don’t think I’ve ever slept with a girl who HADN’T slept with a guy (and most of said girls ID’d as gay)(it’s not like I have a massive sample size or anything for you statisticians). Ahem. Anyway, it takes people a while to figure things out sometimes. It’s okay.
And bi ladies, there are plenty of women out there who will be okay with it. I promise they totally exist.
I’ve gotten a lot of jokes and flack for dating men, from ladies I’ve dated, as well as the reverse from men. However, the only person who seemed to think it was a total yahtzee was the transman I dated. Admittedly, in that case, it totally was.
However, I definitely don’t take any of these as demonstrative of everyone in every community. I just wish we could all get along sometimes.
And in so many ways, we all do.
Also, thank you for the 42 reference. It made me feel very at home.
Last picture…DAMN!!
Marie Howe’s *What the Living Do* is amazing from beginning to end. I strongly advise every person on earth to read it as soon as possible.