Real love -- I'm, like, searchin' for that Queer Love -- LGBTQIA+ Love // A Thread for the Real Ones

I struggled a lot with the idea of not being queer enough primarily when working in queer event spaces, but I kind of figured out that (for me) it was a drive to be visibly queer enough to outsiders to justify my visibility and leadership of a queer event. In that case, it was literally to be visibly queer enough to be visible as queer to straight people who had no fucking idea what queerness ultimately was anyway, they just had sponsorship money.

Greatly appreciate Kate's take (and thank you for sharing it, Kate) because it echoes a lot of both what I feel and what I *want* to feel

i like going full butch drag when i dj, it's me at my queerest i guess. tho when i'm beaming and singing along to "your love is my drug" by kesha with the girls up front, there are two poles represented there and it feels like me at my most authentic.

Instead, I manage expectations in advance, making sure to mention the most positive aspect: if things are going well erotically, I can stay aroused for aaaaaaages and aaaaaages (and who wants an orgasm race anyway; it's the other 99.5% of the encounter that I'd rather focus on).

― mike t-diva

oh i used to be the same way, the few people i fucked seemed to really appreciate my stamina. i'm really glad those days are over, though. it's super gratifying to me that PIV of any sort of physically impossible for me now.

honestly, one of the things that convinced me of the nonexistence of a benevolent god was seeing some of the dicks trans women have. for god to make dicks that amazing and then put them on women who have no interest in or use for them just seems like wanton cruelty.

This too, most definitely. ("What are you into?" "I don't know, we haven't started yet!")

― mike t-diva

i will say for me that it's a little bit more complicated than that. primarily this is because my approach to intimacy is fundamentally kink-based - one of my big things is "all consent must be negotiated". negotiating on the fly can have problems when one of them gets into, for instance, subspace. so when d/s dynamics in particular get involved, it's pretty much necessary for me and any partners i might have to have at least a rough understanding of what is and isn't on the table before starting. it's surprisingly easy to get someone into a headspace where they will do literally anything you ask of them, even things they are _really really not ok with_.

if kink isn't involved, though that approach is fine. more than fine, honestly. what you're talking about is actually one of my favorite things about queer sex, which is that there really is no "default". there has to at least be that "what are you into?" question, whereas with cishet sex, the question can just be "so, you wanna do it?" and for me, that's just a recipe for rote, boring sex, sex as a _routine_. again, i'm really glad that's physically impossible for me. as a lesbian i _don't_ have sex that often - before this weekend i hadn't had sex with anyone in a good three months. i'm fine with that. all that means is that i'm getting rid of all the mediocre sex and _only_ having the really great sex.

thanks for yr response about asexuals, Kate. i think that i just get a little miffed by a lot of discourse that feels like oppression olympics.

― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table)

the challenge is that we're all under a lot of pressure to define ourselves in terms of suffering and oppression. to be accepted by cishets you have to have these respectability narratives. respectability narratives suck. nearly every queer person i know hates them. unfortunately in a practical sense i find that i _do_ need cishet acceptance. that's why i transitioned in 2019 and not in 1996. talking about what i actually did last weekend, which i think is amazing and i'm really proud of and was a really positive experience for me, if i talk about it to cishets they're just going to be aghast. if my christian co-worker tells me she's dropping by my place to pick up some of my old wigs for her sister with cancer, ok, i have to change out of my t-shirt that says "skip school! take hormones! kill god!" and i have to make sure that the vibe and all of the rope and something that says on it "Hustler Spank Stick" (it was free), all that stuff has to be out of sight.

and the main way that gets done is by centering queer suffering, and not only that _certain acceptable kinds_ of queer suffering. so we talk about gender dysphoria and never gender euphoria. gender euphoria is the real reason i transitioned. gender dysphoria alone _never_ would have been enough to push me to transition. but "i hurt less" is more acceptable to cishets than "it makes me feel really good".

the same way, we have trans day of remembrance, but there's only certain things it's acceptable to remember. if a trans person gets murdered, _that_, that's worthy of remembering. if a trans person commits suicide, though? cishets are like "well they shouldn't have transitioned, then." the suffering they inflict on us only _counts_ if it's literal physical violence.

i don't want to perpetuate that narrative. i didn't want to acknowledge that i was trans, for a long time. why? because i thought being trans was a fate worse than death, literally, the absolute worst thing in the world, and in fact for me it is the fucking _best_ thing in the world. cishets act like, again, me going out and saying "being queer is amazing, not everybody can be queer i know but if you can possibly figure out how to be queer you should definitely do that", they call that social contagion, that we're _corrupting their morals_, and fuck their morals! their morals are bullshit! their morals inflict suffering and violence and make them and everybody else miserable!

but saying shit like that isn't going to keep us from being killed. saying "well yeah, i think attacking and dethroning god is a pretty rad idea", that's not going to keep us from being killed. what keeps us from being killed is centering narratives about us on suffering and pain and victimhood.

tl;dr don't hate the player, hate the game.

I'm in the process of writing a piece for a zine about gender/queer euphoria, queer joy rather than queer suffering and it's so much an epiphany to focus on my thoughts about that. I'm nb, I started coming out in '97, and I hate people thinking I'm exotic for feeling pain. Kate, you're hitting everything dead center. Thank you for that.

sorry, turning the convo back to gay sex here for a min. i started typing this post out a few hours ago & then had some work distractions

i identified as, essentially, anti-anal for all of my 20s and into my 30s. part of this was a baseline fear of STIs (not HIV but the other stuff), a desire to not go on further medication (prep), and a desire to not wear condoms (which made it difficult for me to get/stay hard & thus top, tho maybe there was mental stuff going on too). but i also rarely if ever watched porn of people having anal sex & it was never something i fantasized about while jerking off. i just thought it was a part of the menu that i didn't ever want to order off. i too was excited when i found out about "side" nomenclature. we exist! i also ended up hooking up w/ a lot of guys who also said they didn't care much for anal. i always felt a certain special kinship w/ these men.

and then i met my current partner, for whom anal penetration is a part of the menu that he is always focused on. he in a way taught me how to top, or at the very least put me in a low pressure space where my hang ups about fucking could dissipate & i could learn to enjoy it on my own terms. (the barebacking helped). now i love topping & often desire it on my own... i even consider myself a good top which is funny to think about. there is an aspect of bodily closeness and the rhythm of fucking that i've found really appeals to me -- the gasping and panting directly into an ear, the whiff of an armpit, things of this nature that can/do exist during other sex acts but feel heightened to me when fucking. but i think my enjoyment of it is also heavily tied to my love for him & for each other & our relationship. i feel like my lust for him comes out in other sexual acts -- the ones that i used to express my lust to random hook ups of the past -- but when we fuck (which is to say, when i top), even when we fuck really hard, i feel like i'm conveying something closer to love. (i'm trying not to get too heteronormative here.) and even tho i have been in a long term relationship w/ someone i loved before this, i don't feel like i ever achieved that synergy between love and sex the way i do w/ my current partner.

the wonderful thing is that i've also kinda gone on a similar journey w/ bottoming, by which i really mean subbing bcuz i still don't really enjoy the feeling of anal insertion (tho we're making progress :]). but i do love "bottoming" in the purely power dynamic sense. i actually prefer it & i've had some really great sexual relationships in the past based on that power dynamic but i've learned so much more about my own body, what turns me on, what bottoming/subbing can encompass, how far it can go etc w/in this relationship. i honestly thought that my asshole just wasn't a pleasure center for me, wasn't connected to the wires in my body that connected to my brain and my dick. turns out -- i was very wrong! but i needed someone i was into in a real way to put me on all fours and really show me that. which isn't to say that ppl hadn't tried before, or that i wasn't receptive to those efforts, but there is something about the emotional closeness of the relationship that opened that world up for me. even when we were still in the "lust" phase having met a week previously, i knew that i was in love with him, and that feeling of sexual and emotional excitement crashing into each other was the most powerful sexual experiences i've had.

i'm really one of those ppl where sex in my 30s has been so much more fulfilling than sex in my 20s. i love that my tastes have changed, and continue to change. at the same time, the idea of a quick dirty random bj does hold a lot of appeal to me. maybe even more so than ever? i have some friends who have been going to this sex party here & i wanna go w/ them. but the sex i've had in the best relationship of my life is also the best sex i've ever had in my life. coincidentally or not. idk

Great posts, everyone

Despite being "demisexual" I'm very much a fucked-or-be-fucked kind of sexual being, penetrative p-in-a sex has always been the primary currency of my sexual exchanges, whether I'm topping or bottoming. I've "seen the light" and I hope to receive communion by having my guts reamed or proselytise the same belief in others by reaming guts. Just, personally, not with a stranger. The thought of a loved one's penis flexing and spraying semen within me is immensely appealing, the thought of a stranger doing the same would be immensely upsetting. The same vociferousness by which I reject any label of "demisexual" being used to define my preferences, I apply the same vociferousness to defend those who are promiscuous to engage in acts that I myself find unappealing. As kate said, ones identity and preferences should not be a burden (or even a label, afaic).

ugh j0rdan that's a beautiful post and i'm really happy for you. thank you for sharing that.

I like your post J0rdan S

while i'm oversharing (is it queer oversharing or autistic oversharing? is there a difference?) i guess i'll talk a little bit about anal.

it has been interesting and surprising to me how transition has changed my sexuality. pre-transition i was kind of repulsed by anal. i had this kind of "ewwww, why would anybody want to do _that_?" judgemental attitude towards it.

at some point after starting hrt - i don't remember when exactly, probably no more than a year - i thought to myself "well, that was silly of me. what on earth could be wrong with anal?"

it's not, like, my most favorite thing ever, but since nature has blessed me with an enormous honkin' prostate (seriously, i've had my dick and balls cut off and i still need to take a pretty high dose of flomax) i don't see any reason not to take advantage of it. i'm actually not super fond of prostate orgasms but stimulation is nice enough. i haven't yet had a flesh and blood dick in my ass - i'm not averse to it but it's not something i particularly crave either. i like anal reasonably well enough that it's one of the reasons i didn't feel it was important for me to get a full-depth vaginoplasty, in the sense of "hell, if i want to get fucked, i already got a perfectly good orifice for it". a lot of trans women feel differently!

i do actually enjoy anal topping! maybe it doesn't really count since i don't top with my dick (for obvious reasons). the stereotype about trans women is that we're all bottoms, and it's not true - i'm vers, myself. maybe it's just that everybody wants a trans woman who tops with her dick and most of us have terrible dysphoria about the stupid thing and would really prefer not to top with it. i do have a harness and i do like anally topping that way. i can see how it might seem weird, if you look at a strap-on as nothing more than a substitute penis, but i don't look at it like that, myself. not only do i not get dysphoria from it like i did from my factory equipment, i actually get euphoria from it. it just feels, i don't know, _right_.

oh you guys are sweet xp you all sorted my thoughts out

i also liked that post, J0rdan. it gets at what i love about topping, and bottoming, too. tho admittedly i think might like getting smacked around a lot more.

kate, i agree with you in many ways re: oppression olympics

So this is a weird thing to talk about and I didn't expect to do it here.

Me and my girlfriend fell in love this past weekend.

It wasn't some kind of meet cute, out of the blue thing. We've been together for six months. We've actually worked really hard to try and have as healthy a relationship as we can. We both got a serious history of codependency and enmeshment. For us to get together was an objectively stupid idea. We both recognized it and went in with pretty low expectations. For the first couple months pretty much all we did was hold each other and cry. The whole thing... we've worked really hard to respect each other's boundaries, allow each other autonomy, express our needs without expecting the other person to meet them and have just slowly grown to trust and care about each other more through that process. Going into the weekend, we loved each other and had long-term plans to be together (technically she's sleeping on my couch in my tiny apartment now, but that's a temporary thing, half of us are homeless and can't afford Portland rents and don't have anyplace to stay, she's moving out in a couple months). We've certainly spent lots of time together, done lots of things together.

I mean, for me, it's enough to love somebody. I don't need or, well, particularly _want_ to fall in love. It's temporary, it's a distraction, but you know, fuck, it feels _so good_ to be in love. I'm not sure if I was in love with my ex. It was a long time ago. The memory cheats.

I've just been kind of sitting here waiting for the con drop to hit, everybody gets con drop, and it hasn't, and it's not until today that it hits me that oh, wait, I'm in love. Of all the ways to fall in love. I'm just imagining trying to explain to friends the circumstances in the future. I'll, uh, spare y'all too many details.

One of the things that I think people... misconstrue about kink is to think of it as some sort of Venus in Furs thing, that it's some sort of dark, doomy, _edgelord_ shit. I mean, it's not that "Venus in Furs" is _wrong_ about kink particularly, that's certainly part of it for a lot of people. Some dark, heavy shit does get involved. I saw (and in some cases did) things that, I mean, I'm not going to describe because a lot of people would be horrified by them. A lot of trauma too, a lot of healing from trauma happens through kink, which again _isn't therapy_. It's just something people do.

But it's like... you know, just with gender, what gets centered isn't the euphoria, it's the _dysphoria_. People center the pain and don't talk about the joy. I went into the room where the really extreme stuff happened, and one person, some stuff was happening to them and the way they were experiencing it was as something fun and playful, just kind of smiling and laughing about it. You go meet some of us and a lot of us aren't stern and gloomy, we're just, like, _nerds_, and this is something we're nerdy about. I'm just about the least cool person you could ever imagine.

Anyway, next to them, I saw someone who was very concentrated, stoic, but then when the scene ended they just had this look of utter serenity, and the partners who were doing those things to them just hugged them. There was emotional catharsis, closeness, _intimacy_ in what they were doing, and even though it's not stuff I would particularly want to do just feeling that _joy_ vicariously, it was infectious. Shadows and light, you know?

My experience with my girlfriend was much closer to the former. We weren't out to do anything super intense or heavy. Just, you know, trying stuff out and seeing what happened.

One of the things that hit me today (FIGURATIVELY) at my regular Thursday morning coffee group is that... I'm not sure it was even _sex_, honestly. I mean, in a physical sense, of course, sure, I'm not trying to rules-lawyer what we did into something pure and chaste. It absolutely wasn't. What I mean is, I'm not sure I processed it _neurologically_ as sex. At a certain point, and for me, in the right environment, it can be a pretty low point, I stop processing pain as pain, it just turns into pure undifferentiated _sensation_, just like a sine wave of feeling. It never occurred to me that this implies that... I don't experience pleasure in the sense that I do when I'm, I don't know, not doing the "no thoughts head empty" thing. It didn't feel like sexual pleasure, I wasn't ever going to cum from it. It was... like I'm not going to say "better" than sex, that's a stupid value judgement, but that sort of experience is way more _valuable_ to me than sex. From what I can tell a lot of people don't get to feel that way, like, ever. It certainly wasn't anything I ever felt before transition.

And I don't know, ever since the weekend we've been all moony-eyed over each other, just disgustingly cute. It's a nice change of pace. It's been kind of a hard year in a lot of ways.

i don't mean this to sound flip, but i feel like i'm reaching new heights of gentle, loving connection ..... with my cat.

love you, sarge

My essential queerness, I've realized, is my preference for aloneness with constant refreshment: friends, a trick or three for a few months. But I've wondered recently to what degree these habits are borne out of fear of sexual commitment? When I fuck around it's mostly oral; when it's top to bottom I almost always top. I've avoided relationships in anticipation of assuming that sooner or later I'll have to bottom, but, as I wrote yesterday, when I consider it I still feel the stench of death in my nose.

Maybe my reluctance to commit rests on my reluctance to -- my fear of -- submit, in many areas.

Sorry if this is awkwardly expressed.

it makes sense to me alfred! i think it's one of those things where only you know the answer, but also one of those things where asking the question is necessary before an answer is possible, so it's cool that you're asking the question!

It makes sense to me too. I have had a lot of good sex, but have had a life-long desire for - and simultaneous fear of - sexual intimacy

hey so farm banker from fruita has been feeding us a lot of exciting thruple energy the last few days. we're mailing underwear to each other.

dear queers, you're going to a sunday tea dance. what songs do you want to hear?

Happy birthday to Morbius/Bill in gay heaven. P.S. To map, Bucks Fizz: "I Hear Talk."

oh nice!!!

Jamie Principle -- "Waiting On My Angel."

hell yeah

The U.S. Remix of Talk Talk "It's My Life", please.

I'm writing a paper on death disco for Pop Conference and it figures heavily. I never get tired of it. xpost

i loooooove “i hear talk”!!!

i would love to hear this gorgeous nugget that i rank up there with erasure’s best singles tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goHXRs4haS0

perfecto!

I played a sequence tonight that I would TOTALLY tea dance to:
I’m Not In Love - Scherrie Payne
If You Could Read My Mind - Viola Wills
In The Name Of Love - Sharon Redd

💋

omg hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what a shit show of a month. anyone with me?

mine was pretty good, but tell me about yours.

are we feeling pride this year or nah?

i'm busy djing during pride week here and definitely not going out voluntarily lol even though i would like to see crystal waters.

i'm a little tired of the pride posturing i see in my city. a certain person doing an alternate pride called 'riot'. hon it isn't a riot, it's a clout and moneymaker thing for your personal career with local business sponsors instead of bud light or whoever.

like i just want to stayyyy innnnn or get out into the boonies, fuck all you exhausting people lmao

there’s a big pride concert in weho this year with good headliners but i ultimately don’t want to deal with the festival thing. i’m sure i will attend the usual pride social events here though. my fave is dyke day which is taking place at the park next to my house again this year, which works out beautifully for me lol. this weird ginned-up culture war thing that’s happening all over right now is so depressing/irritating tho and i can’t shake the feeling it’s just gonna somehow escalate over the next month and cast a pall over everything. i mean i guess it kinda has already.

i’m flying solo for pretty much all of june - husband is doing a biking/writing trip in NY state for the whole month. considering a little weekend trip somewhere while he’s off, like to long beach or san diego or something for a night or two.

i sure don't know what my thoughts on pride are! i guess i always have a decent time? i'm kind of a cheerleader at heart so i think people appreciate the morale boost when i'm around lol.

well map i don't even know what to tell you, work got insane and then i was hit with one of the worst anxiety / depression spells i've had in a while. i think i am JUST NOW sliding past it, with all hope from the galaxy.

love hearing everyone's updates!

donna i love your ideas for june while the hubby is away!

hai gays

I'm gay camping this weekend. I just arrived.

oh that sounds nice, where does one gay camp in florida?

surm hon i'm glad you're sliding past it. donna, little trips are on my list for the summer too and feeling very necessary.

Things like this are certainly exposing the rhetorical limits of the corporatization of Pride: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/business/target-lgbtq-merchandise-pressure-trans/index.html

But I'm not entirely sure what the (non-anarchic) alternative is in this particular culture war?

xp <3 <3

how's everyone's romantica adventures?

husband and i are going to western co this weekend to "hang" with cute farm banker, who i have mentioned previously in this thread :D

omg "hang" he said

how fascinating!

do you think you'll like make out?

possibly ;)

i sent him an old jock in the mail last week 🤫

omg lol

we sexted about it while i was eating hamburgers on sunday night. anyway i think it's probably game on. i'm more worried about outdoor activities together since we all like to do different things.

Saludos from Clewiston!

https://i.imgur.com/zjaPXRH.jpg