#this post is NOT about the word queer which has been widely reclaimed at least where i am

[aropride]

maybe this is problematic but idk i think reclaiming slurs for urself is fine and good but i think when u start using them for other people without asking. especially strangers. that's not okay actually. like it's totally fine to use them for urself but i think keeping in mind that they are slurs. is important. like maybe we shouldnt be just throwing them around

[desidarling123]

FACT CHECK: Did JKR sue people for writing Wolfstar fanfiction? [FALSE] [with sources]

So, if you're at all active in the HP fandom, and ESPECIALLY if you're on TikTok, you've likely come across a post or video claiming the following:

JKR LITERALLY SUED PEOPLE OVER WOLFSTAR FANFICTION! AND THAT'S ALSO WHY SHE MADE REMADORA CANON -- TO SPITE THE SHIPPERS!

I'm not sure who first started this claim or how its various permutations grew, but it spread at the speed of light across social media. This widely-circulated meme summarizes it:

For the LONGEST time, I didn't know what to make of it. The claims were vague enough that they seemed like they could be true -- after all, JKR is a megacunt and a renowned TERF. You don't need to fact-check either of those things.

But then -- for the first time ever -- I came across a video on TikTok claiming that what was being said was NOT true, and that it was being used SPECIFICALLY to stir up drama. Which was... crazy, to say least.

And that led me, well, to do my own research & fact-check. I've taken the original video's structure and added some exposition as well.

So here's the truth:

That 2003 case the above meme refers to? Not even REMOTELY what the situation was about. Hell, not even CLOSE.

In 2003, JKR sent a cease-and-desist letter to an explicit adult HP fan fiction website, called "Restricted Section". Here's the letter:

As the above letter states, the site was sent a notice because of overarching concerns that minors would accidentally stumble onto the sexually explicit content the site hosted after searching up 'Harry Potter'.

The hand-wringing over minor safety probably seems dated now, but it was, in fact, standard practice in the early 2000s - sexually explicit fan content was being removed across the internet for those exact concerns. In fact, just the year before, in 2002, fanfiction.net was purged of NC-17 content (which would happen one more time, in 2012).

I feel ridiculous stating it, but just to be clear -- in the above letter and all my subsequent research, there's NO evidence she went after Wolfstar -- or any ship, for that matter -- directly.

In fact, the letter goes an extra mile to declare that "our clients (JKR) make no complaint about innocent fan fiction written by genuine Harry Potter fans", but that, "there is plainly a very real risk that impressionable children... will be directed... to your sexually explicit website".

But that leads in nicely to the next point -- the website DIDN'T shut down, as per the letter's request. Instead, they added password protection to ensure only members older than 17 were accessing it.

OK, but why did JKR and Warner Bros go after this site in the first place? Most believe it was because of a widely-publicized article in THE SCOTSMAN that talked about the website. But, once again, this article doesn't go after Wolfstar in particular -- it only goes after Harry x Draco and Harry x Snape. The inclusion of latter was arguably what generated the biggest controversy -- the pairing of Harry, a fictional minor, with an adult character, in slash stories largely written by adult heterosexual women, was not one that could be cast in a good light to the general public. It's hardly a surprise JKR's lawyers sought to do something before the controversy got out of hand and worried parents started to make calls.

What I said before still goes, though. The legal core of the issue was ALWAYS to do NOT with the ships, but the EXPLICIT NATURE of the work -- and the (very real) concerns that the series' then-mostly-under-18 readership could find said works with very little as far as guardrails were concerned. (I know, because I was one of those kids)

TLDR; JKR did NOT sue people over Wolfstar fanfiction, she sent a cease-and-desist notice to a website that was not taking adequate precautions to prevent minors from accessing the explicit adult content on the site.

To be clear -- this is not meant to be a statement on what to ENJOY in your fandom ships. You can ship Wolfstar, Remadora, both, neither -- it really doesn't matter. I think the fandom is critical enough of the author to have reclaimed her work on our own terms, and people should be allowed to just, idk enjoy things.

But propagating straight-up falsehoods is dangerous, especially when it comes at the expense of 1) a safe fandom environment (see: the current fandom ship wars between Remadora and Wolfstar, which are difficult to watch) and 2) serves as a distraction from the ACTUAL garbage JKR engages in (of which there is plenty -- no need to make it up lol).

Also, truth be told -- inter-fandom ship wars don't generally add anything productive to the necessary conversations that need to be had about her works. The thought that dashing fan ships was a key motivator in her writing rather than, I don't know, plot concerns, is ludicrous on face, and gives fans a level of control over the original writer that just... doesn't exist IRL? And certainly didn't back then?

And again -- the books would have been VERY different series, plot-wise, if Sirius Black HAD lived. Him being in a relationship with Remus, confirmed or implied, has no relation to that decision.

If we have talk Harry Potter, I'd rather talk about just about anything else -- the racism, the misogyny, the lack of any sort of organic queer rep and JKR's inability to just own up to the problems in her works. But the minutiae of ship wars -- and the inevitable stream of disinformation that comes with it, sans any kind of concrete evidence -- is one I'd prefer to pass on.

SOURCES:

Cease-and-Desist Letter Copy: http://archive.is/HTLsq

THE SCOTSMAN Article: http://archive.is/VdEaY

Restricted Section Updates Page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030815233612/http://www.restrictedsection.org/news.php

BONUS: The original TikTok video I came across whose structure and sources I shamelessly stole to read and build out my argument. I copied a lot of their wording because it explained it better than I could, you just get some bonus snarky commentary from yours truly

[hoe-doroki]

Alright, friends, your local demi is going to take one last bow before ace week is up.

I’m going to talk about myself, because I the lived experience of ace and acespec people isn’t talked about enough and, well, this is the week to talk about it!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bring in a good ol’ frame of reference:

78% pure. For those who don’t know this is the rice purity test, where high scores mean you haven’t participated in many “racy” activities and low scores mean you have.

First, let’s state that I don’t want to put too much stock on this test. Only 3/4 of the questions are about sex and dating while the remaining 1/4 is about alcohol, drugs, and illegal activity. (Part of the reason my score is so high is because I, unrelated to being acespec, don’t drink or smoke.) But, like I said, it’s a place to start.

Stats. I’m a 24-year-old woman. I am cisgender, straight, and demisexual/demiromantic (not asexual or aromantic). I have never had a boyfriend, I have never enjoyed kissing, I have never had sex.

Oof, and right away, I’m embarrassed saying that.

And that’s the whole problem.

(This post clocks in at ~1.6k, so the rest is under the cut. Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.)

Well, not my whole problem, haha, but it is why I’m bothering to talk about this instead of keeping it secret, like I prefer to. I want to dispel some myths that harm the way I view myself and keep me from being honest with others. Because I fear that when people look at me and hear “24-year-old virgin” they assume things about me that just aren’t true.

First thing’s first. The fact that I’m a virgin means nothing except that I have not had sexual intercourse with another person. There are no other assumptions to be made.

It hurts when people are surprised by this. I happen to fall mostly into the barbed categories of American conventional attractiveness, so when people hear that I have never had a boyfriend or that I’m a virgin, they assume there’s something wrong with me. Or that past men I’ve been around have missed an opportunity or something.

This is shitty on two levels. One, the assumption that my stats are the way they are because of some failure sucks. All it should be is a reflection of my agency and the fact that I am the queen of saying no. (In fact, it was my first word.) But then people are assuaged by the fact that I have, in fact, been approached for sex, as though that confirms for them the value that they assumed I had. As though that’s where any of my worth should be coming from.

Two, these assumptions, when flipped, imply that it would “make sense” for me to have my stats if I looked different or was less neurotypical.

Media--as it does--has played a role in these assumptions. I think about the characters who are “later-in-life virgins” and I think of Emma Pillsberry from Glee, who deals with extreme OCD and germophobia. Or Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory, the former of whom might very well be acespec and is likely on the autism spectrum as well, but who is shown to be very antisocial with many difficulties forming interpersonal relationships and the latter of whom comes from a very conservative family and a mother who ensured she couldn’t learn social skills until well into her thirties. Or the “what if” episode of Friends that basically asserts that Monica would have been too fat to get laid. Or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I don’t wish to talk about. (Oof, all such problematic examples)

And yes, these characters are all white (I am not) and that’s a discussion for another post better made by someone who is more of a media expert than me.

These characters are all portrayed to have something that “explains” why they haven’t yet had the privilege of having sex. And we see in movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or a whole host of teen movies, that virginity is something to conquer--especially for male characters.

I don’t look how people expect virginity to look. I’ll be real--I have high self esteem. I think I’m awesome inside and out and I don’t see any reason why I should be shy about that. I know that if I wanted to have sex with a stranger, I could do it tonight (covid notwithstanding--be safe, friends).

And even if I were a different person who had less self confidence or looked different or came from a different background, that wouldn’t mean that I “deserve” to be a virgin or whatever it is media is telling us. Virginity still wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the other things that make up a person.

So, louder for the people in the back: being a virgin doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.

Next point. Being a virgin doesn’t mean that I’m innocent, a prude, or that I’m “waiting for marriage.”

Gosh, I’ve been asked if I’m waiting for marriage too many times. Two things. 1. No. I’d rather know my sexual compatibility with a partner before marriage and 2. I’m an atheist. So no.

Also, I am not innocent or a prude.

My lack of experience makes me feel infantilized. It does. That’s a personal issue of mine and, ya’ll, I don’t have many answers for how to overcome it. But I have done what I can to change that.

Guys, some of the best choices I’ve made in my adulthood are the things I’ve done to reclaim my sexuality (meaning sexualness not orientation) for myself. Not gonna get super nsfw here, but I’ve invested in about a dozen sex toys and I intend to buy more. They always makes me feel so much more adult and sexy. And I’ve done things with them that I feel pretty confident that many of my sexually active, allosexual friends haven’t done. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone acespec, but it helps me reclaim my worth as a sexual being, without needing a partner to validate that.

I’m also fully valid to write erotica! I love erotica and it’s another way I take back my sexuality. It is just as valid for me to write as it is for anyone else. I am capable of research--both on my own body and from resources, experts, and classes. I don’t need to have had sex for my opinion to matter.

Oh, and being acespec has nothing to do with my sex drive. It seems that I have a libido that is either average or slightly above average--I’m also a person that the more I’m engaging with my libido, the higher it gets.

This often feels like a curse. I, unlike many, but not all, acespec people, strongly desire sex. Like, I’ve bundled up a 35-pound weighted blanket on top of myself whilst engaging in self-pleasure just to try and make the activity feel more partnered (pro tip: that didn’t work.) The truth is that I’m really sick of having to take care of my libido by myself and would much rather have a partner.

But it’s not easy.

I’ve tried online dating, guys. Many times. I can’t do it. That’s not true of all acespec individuals, but it is for me, at least right now. For me, my demisexuality means that the idea and experience of going out, even on a casual date, with someone I’m not already interested in is nearly intolerable. And my current lifestyle, for many reasons, doesn’t lend itself well to me naturally forming crushes.

I’ve only had one major crush in my life. And it was 10 years ago. So you understand the difficulty.

I hate being demisexual, guys. I do. I wish that I could write this post with the intent of spreading pride and positivity, but I can’t. That’s not where I’m truthfully at yet. I’m lonely to the point of suicidal ideation. I’m too young for it, but I’m already making contingency plans for freezing my eggs or trying to imagine a future where I could be a single mother and...I can’t yet reconcile it. I know that part of this is my dreams being created in society’s image, but all I’ve ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. And it’s hard to see that future when I can only look at my past and see images of silicone and sexual repulsion.

Remember when I said I’ve never enjoyed kissing? I’ve had more stage kisses than “real” kisses and, I have to say, the staged ones were more enjoyable because at least I wasn’t forcing myself to do them. Forcing myself to try to kiss someone so that I could feel “normal.” Forcing myself to kiss someone just because I was curious about what it was other people were talking about. My first “real” kiss was at 20 years old and it was a night where I forced myself to do a lot of things for the sake of catching up with my peers and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with that experience ever since, and I can only be grateful that I stopped it as early in the evening as I did.

Everyone’s experience is so different, ya’ll. I haven’t heard a story like mine before, so in no way can I claim it to be an experience that widely represents demisexuality. It certainly doesn’t represent asexuality, nor how queerness (or many other things) intersects with either of those things.

But, at the same time, I’ve never heard a story like mine before. Do you know how helpful it would have been to have been able to see a story like this a few years ago? Ten years ago? It would have been life changing. Because even though, in the middle of all that self-confidence I spouted off about paragraphs ago, there’s this kernel of self-hatred stuck in my teeth, I would have felt validated. I would have felt seen. I would have been able to DM someone who could have told me, hey, it hurts and I know no one seems to understand you, but I do.

That’s to say, if anyone is going through something similar and wants to talk about it, my DMs are always open. I’m no expert, and I bet some of the things I’ve said here aren’t going to hit some people right, but this is my experience. This is the most intimate part of my life. It is a privilege that I’m sharing this with you all, so please, hold it with care. I hope this means something to someone.

Happy ace week, ya’ll.

Oh, and the rice purity test doesn’t mean shit. It’s good fun if you want, but if it makes you feel any kind of way because your number is too low or too high, throw it away. That’s not where any part of your value comes from.

[scriptlgbt]

My story is about pirates. The MC is a trans guy and the captain is a lesbian who is some sort of big sister/mother figure to him. It's quite violent. I was wondering if it could be problematic? I know it's problematic to show trans woman being overly violent in fiction but what about cis lesbians and straight trans guys? Also, do you know about real any queer pirates i could read about? And what did pirates think about homosexuality/transness?) How was it being queer in the pirate world?

A conversation that I had, that is relevant:

ME: [PARTNER], do you know anything about queer pirates?

PARTNER: I know that there were many, and they’d sometimes be like -

ME: Sea husbands kind of thing?

PARTNER: Yeah, and one would inherit from the other’s booty, and when it was divided up, they’d share their share of the booty.

ME: [mischievous grinning face]

PARTNER: [nodding] And they might share each other’s booty.

Disclaimer: This whole thing is going to largely focus on what is known as the Golden Age Of Piracy. I’m also not a historian, I just hardcore, love pirates with my heart and soul. This is going to be a long post.

So, this is super generalized, but pirates, and even sea-faring folks in general (see: - or sea, hahahahaha - the LGBT+ history of Brighton in the UK), have tended to have a much higher rate of LGBT+ folks and minoritized people in general, throughout history. As far as most research I’ve done goes. Being in a travelling situation and having the anonymity of being able to move around with chosen family generally has great appeal to folks whose existences are filled with oppression and a sense of not belongingness. This has also applied for racialized people, women in general, impoverished folks in general, a lot of different people who wanted to reclaim a place in the world that ostracized them.

Another fun fact, the use of the term “Friend of Dorothy” as a euphemism for gay folks was investigated by the US Navy. They misunderstood it as meaning that there actually was a woman named Dorothy who could be routed down and coerced into outing her “friends” to the military. Cruise ships and others have also used this phrase to covertly advertise that there were meetings for these folks. (Source: Wikipedia | “Friend of Dorothy”) 

But to get to the pirates, specifically.

Most pirate ships largely had their own code that everyone on their ship had to agree to. Some had things like, “you’ll be marooned with one knife, and no food if you are caught not reporting loot to be divvied up by the crew fairly” and things like that. But generally, whoever ran the ship, the Captain, would get to pick the rules. And with the partial-democracy that comes with the idea of mutiny, and the more notable reliance on the labour of it all, in general, things were able to be slightly more consensus-based than the on-land governments.

There are numerous women who became pirates to take ownership of their lives in ways that weren’t permitted on-land. Anne Bonny and Mary Read are historical figures that might be worth looking into. The two of them shared lovers, sailed together, had intense care for one and other and with their dressing up in masculine-coded attire and the like, there’s a lot to go off of in assuming they may have been romantically involved with each other. If not, at least they had some iteration of what a lot of contemporary folks might find comparable to a QPR.

The concept of “sea husbands” was also called matelotage (or bunkmate) depending on your crew. It was kind of the buddy system, but gayer. With little need to consistently explain it to outsiders, folks at sea were freer to explore the different ways a relationship with another person can be, without so much worrying about how it looks to others at a passing glance. And as pirates, there’s less concern that you’ll get shit from the law for gay stuff Of All Things. 

Buccaneer Alexander Exquemelin wrote: ‘It is the general and solemn custom amongst them all to seek out… a comrade or companion, whom we may call partner… with whom they join the whole stock of what they possess.’  (Source)

It was just normal. They also had a version of health insurance where someone was compensated if they ended up disabled from battle. The compensation of death of your partner also works into this.

As for transness, these kinds of things have had fickle definitions and historically, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint specific people as fitting cleanly into contemporary cultural definitions of transness, because frankly, the past had different culture to now. When it comes to writing canonically trans characters in contexts where the language might have been different, it’s important to focus on making sure that a trans reader can identify the personal connection with that character’s experiences and feelings, just as much as it is to use language to name folks as trans. 

Representation can go deeper than surface terminology and the like, and in cases where the terminology doesn’t necessarily match, it has to. Language like, “I never really felt like a [assigned gender] - I see myself more like [desciption of actual gender identity or name for it].” - is as good as just saying the character is trans in my opinion.

Depending on where the character is from, they also may have just outright had a word in their language for their identity. 

Gender presentation was significantly freer with pirates than it was for folks on land. Things like earrings, frilled sleeves, varied hair length and similar, were not uncommon, although the gendered coding associated with these aspects of appearance had different implications than they do now. Gold earrings on seafarers were there to fund a proper burial if someone’s body washed ashore. Gendered clothing was also coded in more binary ways on land. Folks who wanted to be coded as men could do so by wearing pants and folks who wanted to be coded as women could do so with skirts and dresses. (Tangential but fun fact yet again: dressing in those big poofy skirts usually included massive pockets. They were generally not physically attached to the skirts, but if you wore it all properly you would easily be able to reach into them.) 

Pirates and other seafarers also had clothing referred to as ‘slops’ for cleaning (if they were of the rank that cleaned anyway) which were pretty wide-legged pants that could almost pass for a skirt. 

Material that pirates used for clothing was largely what they stole, but it was cut and sewn into the same shapes a lot of other seafarers wore. At the time, it was largely illegal (under English rules anyway) for people who weren’t the bourgeoisie to wear anything made with nice fabric. Rich people saw this as deceitful, and these laws enabled richer people to not mingle on an equal level with those of a lower socioeconomic status.

As pirates, if you’re already shunning the law, may as well wear full calico suits. (Like Calico Jack Rackham.)

There’s more info on pirate and privateer clothing here. (The link is to a free book in HTML format, complete with illustrations and talk of materials, and how the clothes worn at sea varied from clothes they wore when they came into shore and towns.)

I could write a book on this and still not have covered enough. But the gist is that pirates were a big counterculture of outsiders living their lives. LGBT+ people and racialized people got thrown into the mix (and jumped right in) and experienced much more liberated lives than they might otherwise. That isn’t to say they were flawlessly inclusive - there still definitely were a lot of things people thought of in congruence with colonial beliefs. There was racism and homophobia - but it looked a lot different, and was a lot lighter than you’d think. And there were some ships which banned women, but mainly I think that was because they typically didn’t have the background to hold their ground on the ships, and were considered more of a plus one to certain crew members (who brought them - the rules were specifically about bringing them onto the ship rather than them being there of their own accord) than part of the crew. Sometimes women were part of the crew.

Notably, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were in a polyamorous triad with Calico Jack Rackham. (I think a cis + het historian might argue about this but that would seem like denial to me tbh. There is much, MUCH more evidence pointing in this direction than against it, and it would be extraordinarily hard to argue otherwise.) I would definitely do some research on them!

I also recommend this book (link is the free text on WikiSource), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. It is perhaps the most famous contemporary record of the lives of a number of pirates from the time, including Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

As for the sensitivity aspect of this ask, I’d say that what you are describing is completely fine. As long as the violence isn’t used to dehumanize or completely demonize, I would even say that I don’t have any warnings for you about it, or precautions to advise on.

Thank you for this opportunity to infodump about LGBT+ pirates. I hope this is not overwhelming, but I’m also happy to parse out segments of this better upon request. (Our ask will be open eventually, I promise.)

- mod nat

[itslmdee]

Fic: No Pride in Exlusionism

This month's theme is 'gatekeeping'. Today's piece looks at gatekeeping within the LGBTQ+ community.

"You're home early," Roger said. Mae sat heavily on the sofa next to him, kicking off her heels. She leaned over to kiss his cheek and then leaned back, staring at the ceiling.

Roger muted the tv. "You okay?"

"I dropped out of the planning committee."

"Why?"

Mae shook her head, took a deep shuddering breath. "This party...Gays for Halloween. I wanted a different name from the start. What does that even mean? Gay people support a holiday that many people think is an American import? Pumpkins in pride colours?"

Roger shifted to look at her. "Actually I can see paper pumpkins in pride colours."

Mae gave a wry smile. "Me too. That's not why I quit. It was Josie mostly, her and Jane and Peter. I was filling up the urn in the kitchen before we got started and I heard Josie talking by the serving hatch. Saying they were so glad John had joined us, an actual gay. She was feeling the committee was being overrun by bihets."

"She said that?" Roger took Mae's hand.

"I had three serious relationships with women before we got married," Mae said. "I'm bisexual. Marrying you doesn't change that."

"I know." He squeezed her hand. "I know."

Mae squeezed back. "Me and Tim and Desiree are all bi. Laura's lesbian but Josie is suspicious of anyone who's ever dated a man though she gives Dan a pass for a past girlfriend. Anyway Jane was giggling and agreeing because I think she fancies Josie - only reason she agreed to be vice chair when Rachel said she needed fewer responsibilities this year. And Peter...my God."

Roger waited patiently. One of the cats wandered over to inspect Mae's discarded shoes.

"I'm not that much older than most of them," Mae said. "But they don't seem to know anything about the history of the gay rights movement. Queer history, except Josie says queer is a slur despite it being reclaimed and used to push for greater awareness. And so they're trying to force out anyone who isn't a gay man or a good enough lesbian. Peter had a lot of opinions on the right kind of trans people who should be allowed to participate. The group has become increasingly exclusionary."

"So you quit?"

"Yes. I will not gatekeep," Mae said. "I will not tolerate bihet being thrown around to try and exclude bisexuals, or cishets to exclude asexuals, or get involved in the dysphoria debate to try and debate the rights of trans people. Josie doesn't want LGBT let alone Q, I, and A. Josie and Peter want L and G and screw everyone else."

Roger sighed. "Maybe there's another group you can join. A more inclusive one."

"Maybe." Mae let go of Roger's hand and got to her feet. "I'm making coffee, want one?"

"Please."

Roger knew Mae had found kinship, friendship, and purpose over the last six years she'd worked with the LGBT+ community group. She'd miss it. But he also knew she was principled and wouldn't regret quitting rather than supporting exclusionism.

"Did you talk to Maggie about this?" he asked when Mae returned with their drinks.

"I told her I quit, apologised that she'd probably have to pick up my role in organising the Halloween party."

"What about Peter? Is Maggie the right kind of trans woman according to him?"

Mae shrugged. "Maggie can take care of herself," she said. "My only regret is that if Peter talks out of turn like I heard him doing with Josie is I won't get to watch Maggie rip him a new one."

Notes and further reading

A lot of this gatekeeping takes place online; people say they've only experienced being excluded from online spaces and not groups in real life. However there are some people reporting being harassed at Pride for being seemingly straight while being bisexual, trans, or nb in a heterosexual relationship. The people who say the A in the LGBTQA is for ally not asexual to gatekeep are probably the same ones trying to gatekeep anyone who doesn't look 'gay' enough from participating in Pride.

"With the advent of queer theory and the launch of Queer as Folk, “queer” became used online as a more concise umbrella term than the full LGBT+ acronym (which, depending on who you ask, is LGBTQQIP2SAA). Today, interpretations of “queer” go a step further, and its acceptance generally splits along generational lines. Many young people — myself included — view “queer” as a term defining all nonstraight, nonbinary identities. “Queer” addresses the fluidity of gender and sexual orientation" - https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/8/02/21-words-queer-community-has-reclaimed-and-some-we-havent#media-gallery-media-2

3 Differences Between the Terms ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’ — and Why It Matters - https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/difference-between-gay-queer/

"The word "queer" has only recently been identified as a slur because of TERFs and exclusionists. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) and radical gender/sexuality bianarists are flooding social media and blogging sites with propaganda smearing the word queer in the hopes of silencing all of us who don’t identify with their hate politics. Queer is the one word that doesn’t worship exclusion." - https://aminoapps.com/c/lgbt-1/page/blog/history-of-the-word-queer/BQ4p_GxRHwu5Xz35RWB31oKMLp8XJ8r7Ybo

Tumblr repsonse to "What does bihet mean" - https://bisexual-community.tumblr.com/post/93798259302/this-probably-sounds-stupid-but-what-does-bihet

On ace discourse and exclusionism on the internet vs in real life - https://medium.com/@meganhoins/the-rhetoric-of-digital-ace-discourse-4a690792f0bc

"According to 2013 Pew Research Center data, about 84 percent of bisexual adults who are in “committed relationships” are with “opposite-sex partners.” Within a broader LGBT community that too often guesses someone’s sexual orientation based on who they happen to be with at the moment, that statistic means many bisexual people get read as “straight”—or, at least, something less than fully queer." https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-bisexuals-feel-ignored-and-insulted-at-lgbt-pride

"Transmedicalism is a term for a wide range of beliefs in the transgender community that are critical of transgender people who haven't medically transitioned and/or don't experience major dysphoria. Many transmedicalists (or "transmeds" for short) focus on gatekeeping....Although the debate has been going since the '60s, it has gained more notoriety in the Internet age, particularly on Tumblr. Transmedicalists may be called "transmeds" or "truscum," while anti-transmedicalists may be called "tucutes" or (often erroneously) "transtrenders." " - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transmedicalism

[satans-tiddies]

reclaiming a slur means using it for yourself. you can't just say calling other people queer without their permission (incl. using it as a blanket term) is ok just because it "has a history of being reclaimed", that doesn't change that it's a slur. it's no different from the f slur. how is some people being fine with it more important than the people who are Not fine with it? if you forcefully call OTHERS the word, thats not reclaiming it, it's just calling others a slur

I assume you’re talking about this post. Well done on missing the entire point, I guess?

Let’s see how your ask holds up when we replace queer with another reclaimed homophobic slur: gay.

reclaiming a slur means using it for yourself. you can’t just say calling other people gay without their permission (incl. using it as a blanket term) is ok just because it “has a history of being reclaimed”, that doesn’t change that it’s a slur. it’s no different from the f slur. how is some people being fine with it more important than the people who are Not fine with it? if you forcefully call OTHERS gay, thats not reclaiming it, it’s just calling others a slur

Oh no, no one is allowed to say “they gay community” anymore because you might accidentally include men attracted exclusively to men who don’t identify as gay! /sarcasm

If you want the long-form, researched and sourced answer to your frankly insulting, asinine ask, it’s under the readmore, but tl;dr:

When I say “queer people”, I am (shockingly enough) referring to people who identify as queer.

If you don’t identify as queer, I am not talking about you.

If you’re going to police queer people about their identity because it’s a slur, but not any of the other IDs that are also reclaimed slurs (gay, bisexual, fag, etc.) or that have a pathological history (homosexual, lesbian, trans, etc.), all you’re telling me is that you’re being hypocritical and perpetuating exclusionist/REG/radfem rhetoric.

I have never directly called specific people “queer” if they hadn’t let me know that they aren’t uncomfortable being called that, so I must conclude that:

You’re telling me that I cannot use “queer” as an umbrella term for my community.

Even though it is the most widely preferred umbrella term among LGBTQ+ individuals.

Even though there IS a community that calls itself “the queer community”, which has ideological, political and historical distinctions from the “gay rights movement” and “LGBT”, and includes people who are openly uncomfortable with being called “gay” or “LGBT”.

Fine. Dandy. But what do you propose I use as a blanket term instead?

“LGBT” is a popular acronym, but it’s highly limiting. Only four letters. But that’s not the only issue here. Do you see the G in LGBT? G as in “gay”? If you sent me this incredibly ignorant ask, you’re probably not aware that it is also a reclaimed slur.

The biggest irony is that the “queer is a slur, use gay instead” sentiment has already happened in the past, but in reverse. “Queer” was adopted by American MLM in the early 20th century because they considered “fairy”, “invert” and “gay” too derogatory. Like the other two, “gay” had connotations of prostitution, promiscuity and “deviant” gender expression.

What inevitably happened is that mainstream American culture picked up on this and started using “queer” as an insult instead.

When people started to mobilize under the word “gay” in the 1930′s-60’s, older queer men expressed their disapproval at a younger generation, who hadn’t been targeted by the word “gay” as an insult, using it as an identity. They disapproved of the names “gay rights movement” and “gay community”. BUT, they recognized that it was important for the new gay generation, and didn’t throw hissy fits when it became the new popular term. 

The term gay began to catch on in the 1930s, and itsprimacy was consolidated during the war. By the late 1940s, younger gay men were chastising oldermen who still used queer, which the younger men now regarded as demeaning. As Will Finch, whocame out into the gay world of Times Square in the 1930s, noted in his diary in 1951, “The word‘queer’ is becoming [or coming to be regarded as] more and more derogatory and [is] less and lessused by hustlers and trade and the homosexual, especially the younger ones, and the term ‘gay’ [is]taking its place. I loathe the word, and stick to ‘queer,’ but am constantly being reproved, especiallyin so denominating myself.”

Younger men rejected queer as a pejorative name that others had given them, which highlightedtheir difference from other men. Even though many “queers” had also rejected the effeminacy of thefairies, younger men were well aware that in the eyes of straight men their “queerness” hinged ontheir supposed gender deviance. In the 1930s and 1940s, a series of press campaigns claiming thatmurderous “sex deviates” threatened the nation’s women and children gave “queerness” an even moresinister and undesirable set of connotations. In calling themselves gay, a new generation of meninsisted on the right to name themselves, to claim their status as men, and to reject the “effeminate”styles of the older generation. Some men, especially older ones like Finch, continued to prefer queerto gay, in part because of gay’s initial association with the fairies. Younger men found it easier toforget the origins of gay in the campy banter of the very queens whom they wished to reject.

—George Chauncey, 1994. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, p.19 (emphasis mine).

Some older gay people who were hurt by “queer” are uncomfortable with being called “queer”. But older queer people—as well as younger ones like me—were hurt by “gay”, and some of us are also uncomfortable with being called “gay”. (I’m not, but I personally know some guys who are.)

Oh, did you forget the entirety of the 2000’s, when the use of “gay” as a slur by homophobes was so frequent and widespread that there were entire awareness campaigns to try to cut that shit out? I remember. I remember very vividly, because in all the traumatic incidents of homophobic violence I faced, the word that was shouted at me was “gay”.

Not to mention that the word “bisexual” used to not even refer to sexuality, but to intersex people. It was used in a similarly deriding way as “hermaphrodite”. And yet, it was adopted for an entirely different purpose.

Your assertion that queer “is no different from the f slur” is also funny to me as someone who hangs around cis gay men a lot. It seems that you’re completely oblivious to the enormous number of guys who call themselves and their peers “fags”. It’s commonplace. If you wander around cis gay male Tumblr, you can see dozens of blogs doing this.

“Fag” and “faggot” are considered by most to be much more inflammatory than “queer” (you yourself used it as an example of a bad word you shouldn’t use at other people!), but…where are all the people going to “fag” blogs and saying “don’t you know that f*g is a slur?”.

Oh, right. You only bother to attack “queer” because it specifically benefits people who aren’t white, conformist, perisex cis gays and lesbians.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s run down a list of alternative umbrella terms, since you find a reclaimed slur so offensive.

Oops, “LGBT” features a reclaimed slur. Same for variations of it.

“Gay community” ah damn, again.

“QUILTBAG” hell, it has at least two.

“MOGAI” checks out, no reclaimed slurs! But if I use this, internet exclusionists and anti-queers such as yourself will rip me to shreds.

It seems that I cannot find a single umbrella term that won’t offend anyone.

I have a proposal for you: when I call myself queer, and say “queer people” or “queer community, whoever doesn’t identify as queer can quietly exclude themselves. I am not talking about you. Queer people who don’t want to be called “gay” or “LGBT” already do this all the time, when people say “gay community” or “LGBT community”.

Stop listening to radical feminists and LG separatists for Christ’s sake.

And if you’re going to continue going to queer people’s inboxes to tell them that their identity is so dirty that they have to keep it as a dirty secret all to themselves, stop being a raging hypocrite and never fucking call a single other person the word “gay” ever again. 

[darkshrimpemotions]

Tbh the most frustrating thing about the queer debate for me is that I'm only in my 30s and yet still old enough to remember entire decades where 'queer' had been reclaimed without an issue. You cited this a couple of times in your posts, but 'queer theory', 'queer history', 'queer studies'? All terms widely used and accepted by the community from about the late 80s/early 90s to well into the 2000s. Having all these people tell me my own lived experience is irrelevant is... deeply disturbing

And for the sake of clarity, i want to point out that i was a munchkin in the 90s, raised in a deeply conservative area, by moderate parents, and i was STILL at least peripherally aware of the use of queer as a fully reclaimed slur by, like, the age of ten. It happened, and i really don't understand why people keep saying it didn't

RIGHT?! I was raised a literal fuckin’ hillbilly, by parents so far right that they couldn’t see moderate with binoculars, and I was STILL aware of queer as reclaimed. Hell, queer wasn’t even the dominant pejorative for us where I grew up. It was f*g. Or gay, actually. I heard gay a lot more than f*g growing up, and I heard both far more than I ever heard queer.

It’s especially frustrating to me when 9 times out of 10, someone comes out of the woodwork to argue with me about the use of the word queer, I go to their blog and they’re like, 22. Or even younger. And totally ignorant of our community’s history. Queer has been reclaimed on a mainstream level longer than they’ve even been alive, and they just...refuse to acknowledge that? Or learn anything about the community beyond their own experiences?

And like...I do know that just because we did something a certain way at one point in history doesn’t automatically mean it was right or that it should never change. But what kills me is that the same kids arguing that we shouldn’t say queer are almost never the ones arguing for any positive change within the community.

Instead, they’re baby TERFs and other exclusionists, buying into authoritarianism, assimilation, and respectability politics. Trying their damnedest to bring back some of the worst intra-community issues we’ve had in the last fifty years, with no understanding--or desire for understanding--of the kind of damage the ideas they’re espousing have done to the most marginalized members of the community.

Instead of approaching older queer people with complex identities with compassion, an attempt at understanding, or god forbid a bit of humility, they mock them, calling them “tucutes” and “transtrenders” and “mogai tumblr” and “kweers,” and “bi-hets,” etc. Constantly claiming we’re all pretending to be something for popularity points...while simultaneously actually treating the community like an exclusive high school clique themselves.

Which is honestly where I lose my patience, because sure, young people have every right to dialogue with older generations about how we as a community do things. But it will be a cold day in hell before they get to tell someone who’s been queer longer than they’ve been alive “hey, you’re not welcome in your own damn community, you’re making a space you created unsafe by existing in it.”

That is un-fucking-acceptable, and I will fight ugly against it until the day I fucking die.

[poetryasf-ck]

Good Grief #4 - Lloyd Robinson

Lloyd Robinson has almost twenty years of performance experience as an actor, poet, and musician. He is one of the few performers holding the title ‘Bad Boy Of Spoken Word’, is a multiple slam winner, the reigning Axis slam champion, and qualified for the Scottish National Slam Championship the last three years running.

Lloyd is the host and co-organiser of Edinburgh’s most exciting new-material poetry night, ‘The God Damn Debut Slam’ in the Scottish Poetry Library. He has been featured at many of Scotland’s more popular spoken word events, in particular Hidden Door Festival and StAnza literary festival. He has also independently released an album of spoken word and music, ‘Reclaimed Memories’, has a degree in Creative Writing & Drama, and a diploma in psychotherapy.

Image credit: Perry Jonsson

1. Why, if there was a reason, did you write this poem/these poems?

Catharsis. Therapy. As a tribute to my brother in law who took his own life, and to raise awareness of the very real issue of Male suicide. I have a compulsion to try and ‘fix’ bad situations, but obviously this was unfixable, so writing about it was the closest I could get.

2. Why, upon writing this poem/these poems, did you perform them?

To raise awareness. And to be totally honest, to shock the audience. I want them to be uncomfortable. I want them to remember this material out of everything else they see, and have a newfound respect for the gravity of the subject. Not only that, but suicide is still socially permissible to joke about, and I want people to think twice next time they laugh at it.

3. How does performing this piece change how you look at what happened to you?

It makes me feel more in control after something very chaotic. I like to think that he would like the piece and be proud of me.

4. How do you separate artistic performance from lived personal experience?

Focus entirely on replicating my more successful rehearsals, improving performance and heightening audience reaction. I am making art for public consumption, so I choose that as my focus. Also, quite subconsciously I (for the most part) avoid the ‘I’ pronoun, instead using ‘we’, which gives me a little more distance.

5. Do you find yourself affected negatively by performing this piece? If so, how do you look after yourself?

When I started performing it, I would be somewhat exhausted afterwards. These days though, not so much. It can depend on the audience. If they’re clearly very emotionally affected that has fed into my performance before. I’ve never lost control and become tearful, but I have felt intense.

6. Do you practice any aftercare after performing this piece (either for yourself or audiences)? (E.g., talking to audience members who are upset, taking some time out after your performance to ground yourself, ensuring you perform in places where you feel safe etc.)

I try and be around post-show; I reliably get at least one audience member come up to me afterwards who has been affected by suicide. They always thank me because being bereaved in this manner can completely alienate people and make them feel alone. For that reason I consider it important to perform this piece and make the time for them, so they realise they are not.

7. Do you do any content warnings for this piece? Why?

Depends on the night. If it’s a night with a more therapeutic lean, or it is specifically designed to be a safe space, or friendly to vulnerable people then yes. Really, in that context I probably wouldn’t perform it anyway unless it was actually requested or on theme. If not, then no. When people go out to see live entertainment, the performer should work in service of entertainment. Theatre isn’t supposed to be 100% safe, and performance poetry IS theatre. If an audience has come to a poetry show on purpose, the implicit relationship is that there will be emotional themes addressed, you don’t have to know anything about the scene to realise that. People watch theatre to be elevated and catharsis through experiencing challenging performances is a big part of that. Content warnings, unless handled very carefully, can break the rhythm and illusion of the show, as well as creating preconceptions about a piece.

EG; I have been in the audience when someone has started a poem with ‘trigger warning, suicide’ which IMMEDIATELY put me on edge. However, the poem itself was really comforting and I’m glad I ignored my instinct to leave.

THAT BEING SAID context is important, I’m not about to blanket damn trigger warnings. A LARGE part of serving the entertainment of the night is the ability to read the room, spot when something isn’t appropriate and make a call. If I’m doing the poem as part of a longer set, I will usually do a brief intro to it, not specifically making a content warning (although one is implied), but to steer the audience into a different energy. In reality you can never 100% tell which way a performance will go. Someone could be fine hearing a poem about suicide, but get upset with a poem about food because they have a history of eating disorders. There does come a point where you have to acknowledge all audience reaction as valid even if the audience straight up walks out. Sometimes trigger warnings are very necessary. Sometimes putting a trigger warning in front of a piece is actually more about giving yourself an illusion of control that you don’t, in reality, have.

8. Does the artist owe any kind of protection or safeguarding to their audience?

Yes and no. The artist owes organisers and programmers an accurate representation of their performance practice and general content so they can be booked for appropriate nights. They owe it to the audience to create art to the best of their ability. If their art is massively triggering, though, they have to be prepared to not be booked very often, or only for specific nights, or to have to put on their own shows. It is the organiser’s job to keep the audience safe, especially at curated nights, where they should know their regular audience well enough to bring in acts that will succeed. When there is an open mic element, the responsibility is a little more shared. Again, you have to read the room but you also have to acknowledge that you are a part of a community. If you are unfamiliar with the nights setup/it’s your first time, you should either scout it out first or bring a backup piece in case your chosen material isn’t going to work. There is no ‘don’t be an asshole’ rule, but there is an understanding that you should ‘try not to be an asshole’. Still, ultimately it is the organisers responsibility. They have to serve the needs of their night, and if someone steps to the mic and directly works against those needs, they have to be able to stop it.

BUT AGAIN this is not a hard and fast rule. Art practices don’t exist in a vacuum and absolutes are rarely sufficient to support the balance between safety and progress. Nuance exists.

For a scene in rude health, there needs to be a wide variety of event types. The safer spaces need to exist, because vulnerable people deserve entertainment and self-expression, but they ideally would exist in parallel with middle-of-the-road-pop-Poetry for the newcomers, and a more extreme end of the spectrum where limits can be tested, because such testings are VITAL to the evolution of the artform. ‘Saved’ by Edward Bond featured the stoning of a baby onstage and it resulted in a court case that DESTROYED the Thatcherite censorship of British theatre. ‘Shopping & Fucking’ featured drug abuse and violent rape, but broke new ground, opened doors for today’s pioneers of queer theatre and predicted the neo liberal society of today. ‘Ubu’ by Alfred Jarry was considered so nonsensical and artless that it caused TWO FUCKING RIOTS on opening night, but it spawned numerous artistic movements, without which we wouldn’t have Monty Python or Mighty Boosh. Nights need to exist where decency is malleable, simply for the evolution of the artform. Great art is not impossible when subjects are considered ‘off limits’ or ‘inappropriate’ BUT there are great things that can be achieved by breaking perceived barriers.

HOWEVER. NUANCE AGAIN.

We can’t have a blanket ‘anything goes’ approach, even at the most basic level. You have to restrict hate speech for a start, because one confident speaker given a platform can convert others to a cause. You have to no-platform predators and abusers because they will pretend to be innocent and use a platform to find more victims. This, as far as I can tell, is the most pressing responsibility an artist and an organiser has. It’s not a service to the artform, it’s a service to society, so in this case, yes, the artist, and to be honest EVERYONE is responsible for bombarding hatespeech, bigotry and abuse with poison until it dies like the fucking cancer that it is.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

9. Do you believe writing about areas such as grief, loss or trauma is a form of healthy catharsis or memorialisation?

Yes. NEXT QUESTION.

Alright, alright;

Writing stuff down can allow you to recognise and acknowledge your feelings much more clearly. Also, there are three poems that, whenever I perform them, will make me feel like the lost are still here with me.

In fact, every year on the anniversary of my brother in laws passing, I meet with my family, we chat, we support each other, and I perform two poems; the one I’m writing this survey about entitled ‘jump’, and another, more personal one that I rarely perform in public. Before I started organising this, we were stuck with ‘just getting through the day’ when it came around. It’s still the worst day of the year for us, but we have something to focus on that brings us together.

However, once again, we should be wary of absolutes. People can process grief in many different and utterly unexpected ways. This works for me and a few folk I know, but it could be catastrophic for others. Grief is one of those things where you have to acknowledge every possible emotion, no matter how illogical, as valid. If the bereaved responds by instinctively picking up a pen, whether to memorialise or seek catharsis, then writing is a valid response to grief. Therapy and/or seeking advice from medical professionals are also valid responses. It’s a simple case of ‘you do whatever makes you feel better’. If that includes enrolling in clown college and riding a unicycle everywhere; valid response.

10. What kind of warnings signs would you point out to someone new to poetry or performance who was performing about their traumas?

First of all, unless they specifically asked me, I don’t think I would. In this hypothetical I’m going to assume they are an adult presenting as neurotypical. They have a right to explore their own trauma/reclaim their narrative in whatever fashion suits them and I wouldn’t want to patronise them by giving the impression that I thought they needed help (see my question 9 chat about valid responses; we mustn’t tell people how to or how not to grieve). Humans are much hardier than they often give themselves credit for. The only context in which I would intercede would be someone clearly exhibiting signs of severe anxiety/depression, & I had even the slightest suspicion they might be a danger to themselves. However, these conditions make it very difficult for new voices to leave the house, let alone sign up for an open mic, so while I acknowledge there’s a risk, it isn’t a particularly likely scenario. I feel like that’s not the sort of answer you’re after, though.

I do think there is a bit of a danger (the extent of which I’m unsure of) that a new poet could see performances on YouTube and in slams that lead them to think they have to mine their own trauma to get material. The warning signs of this would be asking yourself ‘what can I write about’ and the answer being ‘ooh, that horrible thing that happened’.

When rehearsing the poem, it is perfectly normal to cry (or similar emotional release) even a few times. If you well up during a public performance, also fine AS LONG AS THE PERFORMER FEELS IT HELPS.

If, however, you have an uncontrollable emotional response EVERY TIME you perform it, I’d start to question whether you should.

If the idea of performing it causes anxiety above the usual pre-show nerves, and that anxiety reduces when you decide ‘oh I’ll perform something else instead’ then that’s a CLEAR indication.

It is hard to point to specific warning signs other than the above and feeling peer pressure to perform grief-motivated poetry, because everyone’s responses can be incredibly varied. All I’d really say is some advice I was given when I started writing;

“There are two types of writing; what you send out into the world and you do for yourself. The first type needs to flexible so you can improve it based on the responses you get. You have to learn that constructive criticism is valuable and not a personal attack. The second is imperfect and often messy, but it helps you learn about the craft and your own mind. Always remember the two are flexible. You can start writing something personal and realise it’s for everyone. You can send something out into the world and then entirely take it back upon realising that this was just for you.” 

lloydcarltonrobinson.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.patreon.com/poetryasfuck

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm curious for your thoughts on this subject. I dislike the way antis use the term "yaoi" and "fujoshi" since I feel like these terms were created to mean specific things (in Japanese culture) and antis often apply it without considering differences between slash and yaoi. Also, I dislike the way they use yaoi to pretty much mean fetishizing mlm/content, and fujoshi as fetishizing women since both terms are from Japan and I feel weird seeing these terms associated with fetishizing.

I also am really bothered by the way English fandom has adopted genre words from Japan to mean ‘the worst version of [x]/fans of [x]’. it feels like a form of looking down anything coming from Japan/Japanese culture and treating Japanese culture as the source of these ‘worst versions’.

(a lot of what follows is from light research I’ve done over the years and personal experience. It’s my opinion and experiences rather than a closely researched and heavily sourced essay.)

I think the reason for this weird English-speaking take is two-fold:

Americans/western culture interprets the Japanese subgenre ‘yaoi’ and its Japanese creators & fans through the lens of American/western culture and finds them wanting

the reinterpretation of the concept of ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ in American/western culture and the unfortunate associations created as a result

Without going into historical depth, any western - particularly American - interaction with Japanese culture is an unequal one. Besides the ignominious end of WWII, the American army was the means of forcing Japan to reopen their borders in the 1850′s. And frankly: western culture has been obsessed with Japanese culture (and other East Asian cultures) for literal centuries. and we’ve been taking their cool shit and appropriating and bastardizing it for just as long.[$] 

the way that the words ‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ are being treated now is, in my opinion, an extension of this.

(this post was heavily updated on August 2-3rd, 2018, to add a lot more about the word ‘fujoshi’: it originally focused more on ‘yaoi’. huge thanks to blogs like @rottenboysclub​, @oh-suketora​, and @satans-tiddies​ for all the information they’ve put out on tumblr about these words.[%] )

American understanding of yaoi in Japan & its Japanese fans

Americans don’t understand yaoi or fujoshi in their original Japanese context, but we belittle and denigrate it as if we do.

BL (Boy’s Love) and its subgenre ‘yaoi’ seem to have a similar relationship to Japanese fans as ‘slashfic’ and mlm fiction does to American fans. But that doesn’t mean we understand yaoi/BL in the context of Japanese culture or that we interact with yaoi/BL the same way Japanese fans do.  Same for the word ‘fujoshi’ - a term that seems to have been coined in a derogatory context but was ‘reclaimed’ by the very female-aligned fans that it was meant to denigrate. (but more on ‘fujoshi’ later.)

In Japan, the word ‘yaoi’ is more equivalent to a Japanese acronym for the English ‘pwp’ (plot? what plot?) than a word referring to mlm. Like ‘pwp’ in its original usage, ‘yaoi’ indicates a fanwork or small-time/one-shot original work (doujinshi) that has little to no plot and/or focuses almost exclusively on the sex part of a fictional ship, though ‘yaoi’ is specifically applied to mlm-focused ‘plotless’ fanworks*.

(*it’s worth noting that - as mentioned in the wiki link above - the word ‘yaoi’ does not, on its own, have a meaning attached to BL. it has more to do with who adopted the acronym for common use: specifically, BL doujin writers.)

‘yaoi’ has fallen out of use in Japanese fan circles. ‘BL’ - ‘boy’s love’ - is the word which is more of an umbrella term for mlm in the way ‘slash’ is in English-speaking fandom, covering everything from explicit sex to soft pre-romance hand-holding. however, ‘yaoi’ was the word that became known as the Japanese-equivalent mlm fan genre to ‘slash’ in English-speaking circles, which had the unfortunate effect of leading English-speaking animanga fans to compare only the most tropey, explicit mlm content from Japanese fandom against all varieties of mlm ‘slash’ content from English-speaking fandom.

This was comparing apples to oranges; a more equivalent Western fandom comparison to Japanese ‘yaoi’ would probably be silly oneshot crackfic and kinkmeme fics. But the misapprehension was already in place and only got worse as some of the tropes of the explicit versions of yaoi genre doujinshi became increasingly known - the ‘seme’ (’top’) and ‘uke’ (’bottom’) and their supposedly male/female-like roles, the ‘rapey’ tendency to show the uke as crying and reluctant under an aggressive seme, etc.

These kinds of tropes don’t sit well with a modern American audience. And Japanese bl fans have had their own conversations about whether bl/yaoi is harmful to or supportive of Japanese gay culture (and long before Western / English-speaking fandom circles were having them, at least in a widespread way.)

But Americans are ill-equipped to judge the situation from the sidelines. To provide a few examples of things we generally don’t have cultural context on to truly understand yaoi (BL, tbh) and its Japanese fans:

LGBTQ+ culture in Japan

the Japanese flavor of gender essentialism

social and societal pressures on Japanese people, particularly women (trans, cis, and intersex) & nb ppl who identify as femme-aligned

what it means to be ‘feminine’ in Japan

strongly gendered roles in the bedroom (sex in Japan)

Without knowing all this, how can we understand why yaoi (or BL) is constructed the way it is? how can we understand what draws people to it, or how it sits with Japanese LGBTQ people?

But because many yaoi tropes don’t sit well with Americans in the context of our own culture and increasing openness to LGBT+/queer people, and because we’ve given yaoi a false equivalence with a western genre of fiction that has a much wider range of subject and form, we’re apt to look down on yaoi as ‘bad mlm’ and on its ‘fujoshi’ fans as genuinely ‘rotten women’.

The international reinterpretation of ‘yaoi’ & international yaoi fans

the other way the word ‘yaoi’ is used by many people in fandom-centric tumblr - anti and non-anti alike - is in reference to how Americans/Western fans ‘initially’ interacted with Japanese-sourced mlm (’initially’ being when yaoi became well-known enough for a noticeable interaction to appear in American/western geek subculture).

Manga and anime had a popularity boom in the US around 2003/2004 thanks to improving internet speeds and the 24-hour cartoon channel Cartoon Network looking for fresh animated content to air. Media companies caught on and a glut of manga and anime were officially licensed, translated, and sold overseas.

As the popularity of Japanese media grew, the word ‘yaoi’ became more popular and widely used in fandom circles, usually as a substitute for ‘slash’ or ‘gay’ (fictional mlm) when the source material for the fannish subject was Japanese in origin. I think this hit its peak around 2006-2007; at that time many teenage and young adult anime fans (primarily female/femme) who enjoyed slashfic/mlm fic called themselves ‘yaoi fans’. 

Why was ‘yaoi’ so popular in America/western culture? and why did its fans get such an awful reputation over time?

as for popularity, here’s a few aspects: 

Just another word for ‘slash’ - it wasn’t so much that yaoi as a publishing genre was popular as that there were a lot anime fans in fandom using the word ‘yaoi’ for their mlm fan content instead of the word ‘slash’. (and it still is used this way in some circles.)

male-attracted teen’s first fanservice - because of the size of the boom and the comparative diffidence of American marketers to young (male-attracted) people, a young anime fan’s first published media experience with the sexual ‘female gaze’ directed towards men was more likely to be sourced in Japanese BL content.

American gaze on Japanese male companionship - manga geared towards young men / perceived men in Japan (such as Shonen Jump titles) features a lot of male companionship and tight bonds of friendship. So does American media, but American male culture rarely allows men to touch one another in friendly ways (any gentle touch from a cis man is treated as expressing sexual interest).  Japanese male friendship culture lacks this physical distance. Guess how it was interpreted, and guess what kind of effect it had on American anime/manga fandom.

relatedly, this LGBT/queer read on Japanese-sourced masc-centric content, plus the willingness of works aimed towards femme audiences to present all-but-canon mlm relationships, probably functioned as a poor man’s substitute for the lack of LGBT representation in American media in some cases.

and some reasons for the terrible reputation ‘yaoi fans’ garnered:

American ‘yaoi fans’ in the mid-2000′s were mostly teenage girls/femme-aligned young people, and it is an American pastime to shit on teenage girls for being teenagers and girls at the same time.

10 years on, those teenage girls are young adults in their 20′s looking back on their younger selves with embarrassed disgust. That is: the word ‘yaoi’ started to garner its sour taste in the 2010′s because that’s when most of the teenagers of the 2000′s outgrew that particular flavor of immaturity.

a lack of LGBT/queer culture awareness and education in America. Yaoi or slash fanworks may have been Baby’s First Gay Content. It also might have been the entire extent of their knowledge about non-straight anything because America had by no means the same level of LGBT/queer visibility that it does now and certainly didn’t (doesn’t) educate about it. people said and did some awful stuff out of sheer ignorance and lack of thought.

fandom got better about it because resources improved and visibility increased, which was itself in some measure because of the popularity of mlm fiction in fandom circles leading to people doing more research and queer fans educating those who knew less. BL wasn’t necessarily intended as queer rep, but it did act as a gateway to queer culture for people who discovered things about themselves through BL.

socially inappropriate behavior of many, many kinds - including those who refused to separate fiction and reality and treated real mlm like live fanservice (‘omg real life yaoi!’). But as an icon of ‘yaoi fan in the 2000′s cringe culture’, perhaps nothing is so prominent and well-known as the ‘yaoi paddle’.

why is the yaoi paddle so illustrative and iconic? Well - the paddles were sold at anime conventions as a silly novelty item. Anime convention attendees tended (and still tend) to skew young, particularly compared to other nerdy social gatherings.  And as you would expect of a bunch of (a) overexcited young people (b) relatively lacking in supervision and (c ) surrounded by things liable to raise their excitement levels even more, they did a lot of foolish things when handed wooden oars that were easy to swing around and hit people with.

At about the same time that anime fandom was truly exploding in size and the yaoi paddle craze was hitting its peak, the internet was juuust about bandwidth friendly enough to allow people to take videos and upload them to this awesome new site ‘youtube’.

I’d say ‘you can imagine what kinds of videos people uploaded’ but you don’t have to imagine. you can see for yourself. The human interest news articles practically wrote themselves. And while yaoi paddles were quickly banned from conventions and their popularity dropped almost as fast, it was an impression to linger. particularly, IMO, combined with other invasive social behaviors that were somewhat more tolerated at anime conventions back then: ‘glomping’, ‘free hugs!’ signs, awkwardly following relative strangers around conventions as nominal ‘friends’, cosplayers publicly ‘making out’ as ‘fanservice’, etc.*

so this is the image of the ‘yaoi fan’ today - a young, white American cis girl at an anime convention in 2007, lacking self-restraint, social grace, and the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. and though this image has little to do with the original Japanese concept, we use the Japanese word to conjure it.

*these behaviors weren’t limited to young female / perceived female ‘yaoi fans’ by any means, but partially because of yaoi paddles, ‘cringe culture’ and ‘yaoi fangirls’ were inexorably linked to one another.

International (mis)use of ‘Fujoshi’: a Brief History

In contrast with ‘yaoi’, the word ‘fujoshi’ has a comparatively short history in American culture. It had a brief rise to popularity in the early- to mid- 2010′s, but for the past year or two it has been heavily invoked by the (so to speak) ‘fandom police’ as an invective against (perceived) women who ship fictional mlm and/or create explicit fictional mlm fanworks.

‘fujoshi’ (  腐女子 ) is a compound word composed of the kanji/hanzi for ‘rotten’/’fermented’ (腐) and ‘woman’ (女子 ) and is a homonym with an old Japanese word for ‘respectable woman’ (婦女子 ).  It was coined on 2ch (a Japanese text board popular with men) to insult (perceived) female fans who ‘queered’ media content written for & centered around men: re-imagining (canon straight) male characters as queer/gay/bi, shipping them with one another, and discussing/creating explicit, sexual work around those ships. (sound familiar?)

In its original insulting context, a ‘fujoshi’ was woman who was no longer a desirable marriage partner because of her interest in BL. She had ruined herself by marinating in sexual fantasies - and not even normal sexual fantasies about having sex with a man herself. Instead, she had fantasies about men having sex with men! Not only had a fujoshi woman lost her cute naivete and innocence: she’d also turned into a sexual deviant. She was fermented, overripe, disgusting, undesirable.

I don’t know how long this meaning had any clout, because Japanese BL fans - BL fans from all over Asia, in fact - embraced the ‘fujoshi’ label. to me, the implication of the ‘fujoshi’ reclamation reads like a giant, queer ‘fuck you’ to the kind of dudebros who hated them: ‘you find me undesirable because i like gay/queer content? That’s hilarious, because I never wanted you in the first place.’ 

And to this day (mid-2018), 'fu’/ 腐, ’fujo’/ 腐女, and its varieties (腐男子, 腐人, etc) have positive connotations in kanji/hanzi-using fandom circles.

The word ‘fujoshi’ reached English-speaking Western fandom eventually (I want to say in the late 2000′s/early 2010′s). It came to us already reclaimed and was picked up as a positive self-label. In those earlier days, Western fandom called themselves ‘fujoshi’ in a way much more similar to how Eastern fandom still uses it: 

It’s not my job to please you.

I’m allowed to enjoy taboo things like queer fanworks, headcanoning canon straight male characters as gay, and sexually explicit content.

If you think that makes me gross, then fine: i’m gross. your opinion doesn’t hurt me. in fact, I embrace it.

(now go away and let me ship.)

this connotation of ‘fujoshi’ enjoyed a brief period of popularity. There was a fandom ‘sweet spot’ for slash in 2011-2012: shifts in public opinion meant shipping gay ships wasn’t utterly taboo anymore and AO3 was a safe space for sharing slashfic. ‘Fujoshi’ came to semi-replace ‘yaoi fan’ in the English lexicon, at this time, becoming synonymous with ‘ships gay ships in animanga fandoms’, with the added bonus of partially shedding the connotation of loving old yaoi doujin tropes in one’s slashfic.

But in the last few years - starting in around 2014/2015, I want to say - there was a shift in the attitude towards shipping mlm here on tumblr. 

mlm fans who are seen as women - whether they are or not - are increasingly told that shipping fictional slash ships or creating fictional content about men in love with/having sex with men is terrible. mlm shippers/fanwork creators who aren’t mlm themselves - especially perceived-female mlm shippers/fanwork creators - are apparent no different from the ‘yaoi fangirl’ stereotype above: the 2007 cis white socially awkward fangirl, holding a yaoi paddle and screaming with excitement about real life yaoi!!! whenever two real gay men kiss.

the word ‘fujoshi’ - still tied to the English-speaking concept of ‘yaoi’ by both words being Japanese in origin and related to mlm fan content - was about to get unreclaimed with a vengeance … by American/Western fans with hardly a drop of knowledge about Japanese culture, fandom, or language.

And it’s been every bit as ugly as you can imagine.

‘yaoi’ and ‘fujoshi’ on tumblr today (mid-2018)

fandom on tumblr, deeply into policing everyone’s fannish interests in the name of social awareness, invokes ‘yaoi’ in a two-fold way:

‘yaoi’ as a doujinshi subgenre in Japan: featuring fictional mlm in sexual situations for titillation written by Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people) for Japanese women (& femme-identifying nb people), and the distasteful feelings American/western culture bears towards its tropes as being unacceptably unrealistic and ‘backwards’ by modern progressive American standards.

‘yaoi’ as ‘cringe culture’: an imperialistic American/western read on Japanese media content + exposure to Japanese BL, blending unfavorably with a lack of education on real LGBT/queer culture, a lack of alternative LGBT/queer media representation, and teenagers being teenagers

Tumblr fandom police, feeling that ‘fujoshi’ was equally bad as ‘yaoi’ by dint of being adopted as a label by animanga slashfic fans & as another Japanese word relating to mlm shipping, proceeded to co-opt, redefine, and ‘un-claim’ the word ‘fujoshi’:

‘fujoshi’, but literally. having gotten wind of the literal meaning of the word ‘fujoshi’, but completely lacking the context under which the word was created, invoked, and reclaimed, fandom policers designated their own negative meaning for ‘rotten girl’. ‘fujoshi’ means ‘straight girl that’s rotten because she fetishizes gay men!’ fandom policers say - even though that has literally nothing to do with ‘fujoshi’ in its proper context.

telling East Asian fujoshi they can’t call themselves fujoshi. having decided the word ‘fujoshi’ is tied to being homophobic (by ‘fetishizing’ gay romance), and that its derogatory of women because they rely on their own re-take on the literal, negative meaning, American fandom policers start attacking East Asian fans that proudly call themselves fujoshi. (I wish I was joking.)

In summary, English-speaking fans are using their own twisted, ill-informed, and imperialistic treatment and understanding of Japanese concepts to turn those words into pejoratives for use in petty ship wars.

(And when you put it like that it kind of starts to look a little … well … racist.)

[%] This post was never intended as an exhaustive resource - as noted at the beginning of the post, it was based on my absorbed knowledge from being in animanga fandom as an American for many years - but thanks to the blogs I listed, who have a much more thorough knowledge of kanji / hanzi-using fan spaces such as Japan/China/Taiwan, Korea (in part), etc, I learned a lot about the current usage of ‘yaoi’ (or lack thereof) in Japan & how fujoshi was adopted as a popular label over the last 9 months.

If you’re ever looking for more information on these topics, I would especially point you to @rottenboysclub, as their blog is focused on educating English-speaking fandom on Japanese queer/LGBT+ and fandom terminology.

[$] regarding western tendency to appropriate Japanese culture - Japan is eager to export the unique aspects of their culture. but how many times have you seen an English article with titles like ‘10 Reasons Why Japan is So Weird’ or ‘25 Weird Things About Japan that will make you say ‘buy why?’’ (the literacy rate in Japan being nearly 100% is #3 on this list). and okay - Japanese culture is remarkably different from American culture. But this ‘Japan is so weird’ talk is often accompanied by a tone of mild superiority.

consider how we treat Japanese cultural products such as movies. The recent Death Note debacle is only the latest in a long string of this kind of nonsense (though thank goodness it’s getting the reputation it deserves.) Remember The Ring? American remake of Ringu. And of course there’s dozens of other examples of Americans buying or taking things from its original Japanese context and trying to make it ‘better’ for a mainstream American audience, even though the American audience liked the original Japanese product just fine. (Dragonball Z comes to mind.)

(On the flip side you have ‘weaboos/weebs’, the contemporary word for ‘Japanophiles’, putting Japanese culture on a pedestal, which is not any better, and disgust with ‘weebs’ tends to be extended to the aspects of Japanese culture they worship.)

[gossipnetwork-blog]

'Ethical Slut': Polyamory, Open Relationships, Non-Monogamous

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/ethical-slut-polyamory-open-relationships-non-monogamous/

'Ethical Slut': Polyamory, Open Relationships, Non-Monogamous

In 1994, sexual educator Janet W. Hardy, was bedridden for a month with a bad flu that had evolved into bronchitis. She was, as she recalls, “high off my ass on Codeine cough syrup” when she caught a showing of Indecent Proposal on TV. Married couple David (Woody Harrelson) and Diana (Demi Moore) are faced with a moral dilemma when a billionaire named John (Robert Redford) offers them a million dollars in exchange for spending one night with Diana. Hardy, who is now 62, had herself been in a marriage that had ended about a decade earlier, and had not been in a monogamous relationship since. At the scene where the couple hesitates over the billionaire’s offer, Hardy wondered if she was having a fever dream.

“I was sitting there going, ‘What’s going on here?'” she tells Rolling Stone from her home in Oregon. “A million dollars and Robert Redford, and they have a problem with this? It made no sense to me. I really got it at that point, how distant I had become from mainstream sexual ethics.”

Hardy reached out to her friend and sometimes collaborator, the psychotherapist Dossie Easton to work on a book about non-monogamy. The pair had already coauthored two books on kink which were read in BDSM circles, but not much elsewhere. Both Easton and Hardy identified as queer and polyamorous, and Easton wanted to reclaim the word slut. They combined their own experiences with both casual sex and open marriages, navigating orgies and battling jealousy. In 1997, under Hardy’s own indie sex-ed publishing house Greenery Press, they published The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities. It would go on to sell 200,000 copies.

The the first usage of the word polyamory is credited to pagan priestess Morning Glory Ravenheart Zell in 1990. Though different forms of non-monogamy have presented themselves in various cultures for millennia, in Western culture in the early 1990s it was still seen as an alternative practice, the kind favored by, well, pagan priestesses. Today, polyamory is less tied to one specific subculture or identity. In the two decades since the first edition of The Ethical Slut has been published, polyamory has expanded into a practice that, if not outright mainstream, is at least much more widely accepted and understood. According to a 2014 article from Psychology Today, at least 9.8 million Americans are in some kind of non-monogamous relationship.]

“Twenty years ago, I used to get calls from show producers all the time, and the call would go, ‘Can you point me towards a poly family that’s not either old hippies or screaming geeks?'” laughs Hardy. “I would say no, because A, that’s most of my rolodex, and B, that’s who was doing poly back then. But these days, when I speak to poly audiences, they’re young professionals, all shiny and new. It’s very different.”

Heather is a 35-year-old mental health advocate who lives with her husband and two kids in Toronto, Canada. (Her name has been changed to protect her privacy.) She and her husband started dating when they were 17 years old, a couple of years after the first edition of The Ethical Slut was published. The two Canadian teenagers didn’t yet have the language for what it is they wanted.

“This was pre-Internet forum, pre-all of that stuff. We really were going by gut,” she says. “I didn’t know the word polyamorous. I didn’t know that there were tons of other people that had ethically non-monogamous relationships.” The models they saw for longterm relationships, such as their parents or friends’ parents, were monogamous, but didn’t seem that satisfying. All that she and her then-boyfriend knew was that they liked each other a lot, and they didn’t feel the need to be exclusive.

“We had a conversation where we both realized, ‘I don’t care if you flirt with other people,'” she says about the beginning of their relationship. “‘Actually, it’s kind of great. I love that side of you.” She and her boyfriend were both extroverted, social people, and flirting with other people just felt natural. Heather, who identifies as queer, liked that she could continue to explore that side of her sexuality with other women. They moved in together at age 19. Her boyfriend started to date a woman he worked with at a restaurant, and when Heather met her at a holiday party, she realized she was attracted to her, too. The three of them entered a relationship together that lasted just under a year. The Ethical Slut describes this relationship model as a triad, but at the time neither Heather nor her partners knew that.

“That was one of our first experiences that wasn’t a casual or one-time thing,” she says. “The three of us were pretty sure we were inventing the wheel.”

Eventually, Heather says, the culture that surrounded her began to catch up. She credits this to living in a progressive city like Toronto, and the Internet’s ability to “bring people outside the mainstream together.” She finally read The Ethical Slut at age 30, while she was already well into developing what she describes as her “own kind of community of poly, kinky, queer awesome people.”

Like Heather, both Hardy and Easton had to figure out their own ideal relationship models as they went along. Easton, who is 73, was coming out of a traumatic relationship in during the summer of love in 1969 and decided that the only way for her to live from thereon out was by “being a slut. I was never going to be monogamous again,” she says. The idea of a communal lifestyle appealed to her, so she took her newborn daughter and found a home in a queer community in San Francisco. She joined a group called San Francisco Sex Organization and taught her first class on unlearning jealousy in 1973.

Hardy, 62, was married for 13 years when, in 1988, she realized that monogamy no longer appealed to her. Her marriage ended that same year. A few years later, in 1992, she met Easton through a BDSM group in San Francisco called the Society of Janus. Easton was teaching a class called “Pain Play with Canes from Psyche to Soma” and Hardy volunteered to help her demonstrate. Two years later, the pair gave a presentation on S&M in Big Sur at a Mensa gathering. (“Of all things,” says Hardy.)

“Dossie went home because it was so hetero, she couldn’t stand it,” says Hardy. Later, she ran into another friend who relayed an overheard conversation from the conference. “She said, ‘Did you hear about that S&M workshop this afternoon? There were these two women, they were talking about stuff they had done together, and one of their boyfriends was right in the room!'” Kink was no big deal to the Mensa crowd, but non-monogamy could still shock in 1994.

Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, authors of ‘The Ethical Slut.’ Stephanie Mohan

Amber – whose name has also been changed – was born around the same time as that Mensa gathering, and today works at social justice non-profit in Brooklyn. At 23, she is barely older than the first edition of The Ethical Slut. Her vocabulary is comfortably peppered with terms that took Hardy, Easton and Heather years to start using. She prefers the term “polyamory” to “open relationship” because the latter implies a hierarchy to the people she dates, and she doesn’t have a primary partner. Friends she has sex with but doesn’t date she calls “paramours,” while “metamours” are friends that she has a romantic partner in common with. “I’m really lucky where most of my metamours and I get along,” she says. “I learned a lesson recently where you’re not always going to like your metamour, and that’s OK.” Liking your metamour can lead to “compersion,” which The Ethical Slut describes as “the feeling of joy that comes from seeing your partner sexually happy with someone else.”[2]

Her sibling, who is 18 and genderqueer, also identifies as poly, and Amber is out to her parents. “The way I told them, was I said, ‘Yeah, I’m dating this person, and this person, and this person,” she tells me. “I explained this to my mom, and her first concern was, ‘Well, what if you say the wrong name during sex?'”

Though Amber has only been identifying as polyamorous for a few years – she was 19 when she asked her boyfriend if they could open their relationship – she speaks with the confidence and authority of someone who has been allowed to experiment with her sexuality her entire adult life. She emphasizes the need for communication in all relationships, particularly when it comes to hurt feelings.

“I’m sure you’re waiting to ask me the big jealousy question,” she tells me. “Of course polyamorous people deal with jealousy, it’s just that we see it as an emotion to be acknowledged and talked about and work through.” Jealousy usually comes from insecurity and fear, she says, summarizing a large portion of The Ethical Slut, and can require “self reflection and metacognition” to work through. She is active in the New York poly, kink and queer scenes, and goes to several events a week including BDSM play parties and swingers mixers. I ask her if all her partners are part of the same community, and she laughs. “Yeah, whether they like it or not,” she says. “Even whe you break up with a partner, you’re still in each other’s peripherals.” There is little separation between her sex life and social life. Amber is unapologetic about this, and why shouldn’t she be? The word “slut” no longer has the same connotations it did when Hardy and Easton were 23.

As polyamory is treated less like a novelty and more of a valid relationship model, modern entertainment is learning to reflect that. In the eight-episode web series Unicornland, Annie (Laura Ramadei) is trying to explore her sexuality after the dissolution of her marriage. She does this by “unicorning” – the term given to women who join couples in bed for threesomes. Every three- to seven-minute episode introduces Annie to a new couple: straight, lesbian, kinky, longterm married couples looking to spice up their sex life. It depicts one very specific subset of polyamory, but in doing so manages to explore much of the richness and complexities of modern relationships that go ignored in most mainstream media.

“I was always in these long relationships, and they always had this goal of marriage and longevity,” says the show’s creator, Lucy Gillepsie, 32. Like Annie, Gillepsie got married young, at 26, and split from her husband about four months later. “Part of the reason I got divorced was I didn’t know how to communicate in my relationships, and sort of felt my needs were secondary to my partner’s,” she says. “Then I realized I didn’t have to do that to myself.” Post-divorce, she went on “a kind of tour of relationship options,” she says, and became involved in the New York fetish scene. “For the most part, it’s full of very interesting, very conscientious people who are creating and sustaining and maintaining very high functioning ethical polyamorous relationships.”

Gillepsie read The Ethical Slut two years ago, and started writing Unicornland about six months later. The idea of unicorning appealed to her as a narrative device because the evolution of her own sexuality felt like such an internal, mental process. “In Annie’s unicorning, she’s really able to try out other people’s relationships and see how they function from within,” Gillepsie tells me. “I felt that the couples were sort of the best way for Annie to try out all these different facets of polyamory.” The eight episodes take viewers through a crash course of many of the issues polyamorous couples face, such as jealousy, or navigating boundaries of what is and isn’t OK. In episode six, Kim (Ali Rose Dachis) returns from the bathroom to see Samara (Diana Oh) and Annie making out on the bed. “We have rules,” she says. “No French kissing on play dates.” It’s a simple line that shows how much work can go into creating and maintaining a healthy poly relationship, without the high stakes drama of Indecent Proposal.

“We’re seeing some TV shows that are specifically about poly,” says Hardy, when reflecting on whether things have gotten better since Indecent Proposal. She cites an episode of Crazy Ex-Girfriend in which protagonist Rebecca Bunch finds herself in love with two men and can’t decide between them. “She goes and interviews a poly triad to find out how to deal with this, and finds out that what she’s actually doing is just being a person with very bad boundaries.” I ask Hardy if she can think of other mainstream examples of polyamory. She mentions the not-exactly-recent 2001 movie Bandits, and Big Love, the HBO drama about Mormon polygamists. The pickings aren’t exactly abundant, but the critical success of shows like Unicornland and Broad City (in which Ilana Glazer’s character dates Hannibal Buress for the show’s first three seasons while continuing to pursue sex with other people) indicate that younger audiences are ready and open for more.

The 20th anniversary edition of The Ethical Slut, out September 15th, has been significantly updated and expanded from its humble debut, including sections to poly pioneers, black poly activism and yes, shifting attitudes towards polyamory within a new generation. They acknowledge that millennials reading the book today will not have been raised in the same context that Hardy and Easton were – before the sexual revolution, when saving oneself for marriage was considered the norm.

The essence of Hardy and Easton’s book, though, is the same as it was two decades years ago. “One of the things that’s radical about The Ethical Slut is that we wrote it in conversational English,” says Easton. “Most of the earlier books about sex were written like you’re supposed to have a white coat on, with a stethoscope around your neck, or you’re supposed to be writing about what those other people over there are doing.” The new Ethical Slut will sit on bookshelves beside other recent releases, like Amy Rose Spiegel’s Action and Emily Witt’s Future Sex, two books put out by mainstream publishers that combine a conversational tone with personal experience to challenge conventional attitudes about sex.

“It becomes a very intimate book for people, and we worked really hard to be affirming of everybody’s experiences,” says Easton. “The places where we get scared or embarrassed, any of that stuff, it gets in the way. People can find validation in there.”

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