Gaydar

Hi gals. What's up?

Something interesting happened once I started posting about my sexuality. Many women responded that they’re going through the same thing, which is phenomenal. I think every woman should come out of their closet, whatever that looks like. There’s just one thing…

No one is actually coming out.

I heard a lot of praise for talking openly with my husband. One person passive aggressively admonished me for falling for the trap of relationship happiness. Well, for whatever it’s worth, I guess I want to respond publicly to women everywhere that we should feel empowered to change our situations to accommodate our fantasies, AND that dudes can ingest a lot more of our swirl than we give them credit for.

And I get why. There’s a lot of frustration from women with male partners, and of course many people are frustrated with all men everywhere. It’s practically the most universal cliché, but let’s take that cliché into consideration: it is 2024. What the heck. We should be above this by now yah? Not only because women can do better than tolerating toxic masculine b.s. in this ripe era of humanity but because we can move past gender tropes altogether.

I’m too tired to formally quote our philosophers, but bell hooks talks about the lost opportunity to love men. Even Salvoj Zizek says something about men’s social castration being a false negative. Y’all know what I’m talking about. Go read the books.

So there’s an opportunity to love men. There is always an opportunity to love men. Should we take an opportunity to love each other? I dunno. I mean shouldn’t we try? I’m sorry this is so cringe-corny, but I know I’ve been openly experimenting with the “fairer gender” because it lights up something I can’t ignore. If it can happen once it can happen for an eternity, and if it can be for all time, then it can be at any time.

*Cue the Carrie Bradshaw voice*

I heard from the smartest women I know, sad stories of lackluster partners, and I couldn’t help but wonder: is there a sigh of relief in the idea of loving women because we are simply tired of teaching ourselves how to communicate in gender (as in gender is the language)? Is that what we need as women: a break from translation? What does love without words look like?

I wrote an essay about manga and gender recently that will be published next year in a catalog for an exhibition, which I hope you all get to read. I’m quite proud of it. I admit to beginning its draft with a chip on my shoulder, however. People usually ask me about gender in Japanese art so that I may apologize for it. To passively admonish the culture from which it arises. In my missive, I remind us as fans of gay manga and fans of any erotica or genre fiction—any narrative that is visibly unrealistic—that the danger is the point. The violence, the subjugations, the risks of raw dogging, the banal intrigues of mono-gender narratives. That is the exact point of this. We do not need to rationalize it. The danger is our optimism.

Tangentially, I heard something at a board meeting last week that seems relevant. Our executive director Caitlin quoted Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny and this opening salvo specifically:

“Do not obey in advance.”

Snyder’s saying we shouldn’t cede to the assumptions of authoritarianism just because the bad players do such a great job of selling us on the potential for dark futures. I’m interpreting this plea as a reminder not to get weighed by the chip on my shoulder. I would add that we should not be scared of our fantasies. Do not obey your inner cop in advance.

And yes, this was all in Carrie Bradshaw voice lol.