The Georgia Straight

Sex-shaming bro is the bad guy

- By

bDan Savage

STRAIGHT AND MARRIED but not boring, and heading to my parents’ house for our first family Christmas since my asshole MAGA brother “stumbled over” the Tumblr blog where the wife and I posted about our sexual adventures. (Pics of MMF threesomes and cross-dressing/pegging sessions, plus some dirty “true enough” stories.) My brother has always been an angry screwup, so he leapt on the chance to make me look bad by sending the link to my parents, siblings, and even some close family friends. Our Tumblr blog is still up because we aren’t ashamed. Any advice?

- Totally Uncool Malicious Bastard’s

Lame Reveal

Your Tumblr blog isn’t going to be up for much longer, TUMBLR, as the company that owns Tumblr—verizon—is ashamed of your blog and the millions of others like it. Tumblr announced last week that all “adult” content is banned as of December 17. And the definition of “adult content” is pretty broad: “photos, videos, and GIFS of human genitalia, femalepres­enting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrati­ons”, although they will allow genitals and those wicked “femalepres­enting nipples” in images of classical art. (No contempora­ry junk or lady nips allowed.)

This is not just a blow to people who use Tumblr for porn—and that’s most people who use Tumblr—but also to the sex-work community. Sex workers had already been driven off most other online platforms by anti sex-work crusaders, and now sex workers are being driven off Tumblr as well. Forcing sex workers off the Internet won’t end sex work, the stated goal of anti sex-work crusaders, but it will make sex work more dangerous—which tells us everything we need to know about the motives of anti sex-work crusaders. While they claim to oppose sex work because it’s dangerous, they push policies that make sex work more dangerous. Sex workers weren’t just advertisin­g online, they were organizing—in addition to honing and making the political argument for decriminal­izing sex work, they were screening potential clients and sharing informatio­n with each other about dangerous clients. Just like anti-choice/ anti-abortion crusaders, anti sexwork crusaders don’t want to “protect” women; they want to punish women for making choices they disapprove of. (As a general rule: if what you’re doing makes people less safe, you don’t get to claim you’re trying to protect anyone. It’s like claiming you only set houses on fire to drive home the importance of smoke alarms.)

Anyway, fuck your sex-shaming/ smut-shaming brother, TUMBLR. As for the rest of your family, you and the wife should slap smiles on your faces and act like you’ve done nothing wrong—because you haven’t done anything wrong. Your asshole brother is the bad guy, and any family members who wish to discuss how offended they were by your Tumblr blog should be directed to speak with your brother, as he’s the one who showed it to them.

bimagine my sexuality as a gay man’s sexuality in a woman’s body, and I try to explain it to them in this way. I’m not a secret right-winger or someone kidding around by asking this question. This is a real issue.

- Give It To Me Straight P.S. I have a straight male friend who says he’s a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. What do you think of this?

People don’t choose to be straight— some poor motherfuck­ers are born that way—any more than heteroroma­ntic bisexuals choose to be hetero-romantic bisexuals. You can’t help who you’re attracted to, GITMS, primarily or otherwise, and the contempt of family members can’t change a person’s sexual or romantic orientatio­n. Your sisters should understand that, since they most likely wouldn’t be with women if the contempt of family members had that kind of power.

As for describing yourself as a gay man trapped in a woman’s body and your straight male friend describing himself as a lesbian trapped in a man’s body… Unless the two of you are trans—in which case, you could be homos trapped in the wrong bodies—your friend is just another straight guy mortified by the mess straight people (mostly white, mostly men) have made of the world. You’re also mortified by straightne­ss, GITMS, or at least the sexual inequality that often comes bundled with it. But instead of your straight male friend opting out of heterosexu­ality (which he can’t do) or you framing your attraction to men as a gay thing to get your sisters off your back (which you shouldn’t have to do), your friend should identify as straight (because he is) and you should identify as someone who doesn’t give a shit what her sisters think (because you shouldn’t).

If good straight guys and “free sexual women” in opposite-sex relationsh­ips don’t identify with heterosexu­ality and/or hetero-romantic orientatio­ns, GITMS, all the shitty straight people will conclude that they get to define heterosexu­ality (which they don’t).

b

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