Who Gives a Fuck?
Jamie Clarke (he/him)
When is fucking an ass gay? The answer is more complex than you may think.
Straight, cisgender people love to divide sex into two catagories: sex and gay sex. You’re either a man and a woman having regular ol’ sex, or you’re a man having gay sex with another man—or, a woman sleeping with another woman (scissoring only, of course). But, just as there is so much more to gender and sexuality than the binaries of man and woman, and gay and straight, there is so much more to sex than what goes in what hole.
How people have sex is incredibly diverse, and often does not fit into these ‘straight’ vs ‘gay’ boxes. Restricting sex to these rigid categories is not only arbitrary, but it stems from a place of homophobia. By grouping all sex that isn’t ‘straight’ into one category, it implies that there is a normal way to have sex, and everything else is different (and scary ooOooO). Of course, queer people like me do have sex differently than cishets—but exactly how this goes down is dependent on each individual and their preferences, desires, and yes, anatomy. This is not to say that describing sex as either straight or gay is an inherently bad thing, rather that it is crucial to recognise that we should not be restricting our language and understanding around sex to these labels. Even just the term “gay” can have a wide range of meanings depending on who you’re talking to—for many of us in the rainbow community, the word “gay” is often a stand in for “queer” or the community as a whole, while many of those who may not be as familiar with rainbow indeities still have a more binaristic view of the word, or reserve it just for a relationship between two men.
Our bodies are not just dicks or vaginas. I’m a trans guy. I identify as a man, get testosterone injected into my butt cheek every three months, and I’ve had my tits chopped off. But to many, because I was assigned female at birth, the sex I have with my boyfriend is still ‘straight’. While I can assure you it is anything but that, I have found myself wondering at what point my butt became a gay butt, and so on. I’ve come to recognise that there isn’t a correct answer to that question, because what our heteronormative society perceives as ‘straight’ and ‘gay’ is socially constructed—just as what we consider a ‘man’ and ‘woman’ is.
This stigma and misunderstanding around queerness and sex is even worse for those who do not fall within the sex and gender binaries, where their very existence is often denied, let alone the legitimacy of their sex lives. Intersex people are as common as those with ginger hair, yet society acts as if they simply do not exist. In addition, those who identify outside of the gender binary face constant erasure at a social and legal level.
The decision to separate people into binary categories is a Western, colonial construct that is used to perpetrate racist and sexist stereotypes and erase indigenous cultures. Gender identities that exist outside of, or in addition to, the binaries of male and female were present in many cultures throughout the world for thousands of years before colonialism spread it’s poisonous ideas. *B, who is Māori Pasifika and non-binary, spoke to me about this:
“Pre-colonial sexuality has acted as a template for a Utopian future for Takatāpui across the Pacific, spurred on by stories of fluidity, Fa’afafines, and Wairua defining the person, not the genitalia. If I am to believe in my Whakapapa, my body is ethereal, human, but I spent a large majority of my adolescent life with that (too familiar) sense of inherent wrongness. It made my mother happy when I wore pink. It made her upset when I would use different names for myself, Male and Female. This refers to the reality of these solidified colonial myths, as they have left no protections for Takatāpui, only the practice of condemnation, for protection.”
The idea that all sex that isn’t between a cis man and a woman is gay is also, in a large part, tied to the media—especially porn. Gender diverse people, in particular trans women, face fetishisation in the porn industry. This porn often puts a great emphasis on the genitals that the people in these videos have, with the implication being that this is not normal. Even though, of course, this content is meant to portray these people as ‘hot’, the othering of trans people like trans women as simply a category on porn sites is incredibly dangerous. By sexualising trans people in this way, it purportrates the narrative that we are nothing more than our anatomy.
A man sleeping with a trans women can have a different experience than if he were to sleep with a cis woman, yes, but that doesn’t inherently make it ‘gay’. Of course, as we’ve established, defining sex by these categories is ultimately pointless. However, the fact that we keep defining sex in this way is due to the fact many straight people are terrified of becoming victims of the homophobia that is perpetuated. Trans women face unprecedented levels of violence against them, often by men whose masculinity is so unbelievably fragile that they’re afraid that the very act of being attracted to a trans women would somehow make them be percieved as ‘gay’.
At the end of the day, trans women are women no matter their anatomy, or the stage of their transition— same goes for trans men like me, of course. And no, JK Rowling, I’m not saying that straight people need to sleep with trans people or they’re transphobic—I’m just saying that for those who do, we need to stop trying to figure out whether this makes them ‘gay’ or not. It not only erases the identities of the trans people they’re sleeping with, but also heavily implies that if this sex were gay, that would somehow (negatively) change something about that person and their relationship.
I like to fuck and be fucked, I just don’t want to be someone’s fetish. Everyone deserves to be able to feel sexy, no matter their gender identity. I think there’s a massive misconception about trans people, even among the trans community, that we have to hate ourselves and want to hide our bodies at all times. This stems from the fear of not being ‘trans enough’; shoutout to the bullshit narrative of transmedicalism—the belief that trans people need to experience dysphoria and medically transition in order to be trans—for that one. One of my friends pointed out that since transitioning and entering a new relationship, “it feels good to enjoy sex more, now I’m more in tune or knowledgeable about my gender and identity. I think a lot of discussions around sex as a trans person focus on dysphoria and the negatives. But it is important to know you can still enjoy sex and enjoy your own body, even if it’s not totally congruent with your mind’s conception of what you should look like.”
Another gender diverse friend of mine pointed out how during sex “it’s necessary to give yourself the space and acceptance to no longer enjoy things you used to as your relationship with your body and identity changes.” I’ve certainly felt trans panic and guilt because, pre-transition and pre-top surgery, my boobs bouncing around during sex didn’t really phase me like they did once I began to understand my gender better. On a more positive note, gender euphoria during sex can present itself in weird and wonderful ways as we discover our identities—that same friend pointed out that “looking at my grown- out armpit hair makes me horny x”.
The sex I had with boyfriend before I transitioned used to be ‘straight’ (*shudder), and now it’s not. But that really is besides the point. Gayness and straightness are labels that work for some, but are unhelpful and even harmful for others. Queer and gender diverse people having sex doesn’t have to be a seperate category to the sex that straight people have. So, no matter how you have sex, keep doing you—as long as it’s legal and consensual, it really doesn’t matter how you bone. It’s time to fuck and let fuck.
Everyone deserves to be able to feel sexy, no matter their gender identity