INSIGHT
SOCIAL MEDIA
HAS MADE US BLUNTER TALKING ABOUT SEX, BUT ALSO MORE LIGHTHEARTED TikTok has introduced a new nonjudgmental, conversational style for sexuality By Paul Gallant
I knew the short-video social media app TikTok was doing something weird to the culture when I started seeing videos of teenage guys shamelessly joking with their mothers about getting “wrecked” by their boyfriends as their mothers either rolled their eyes at their sons or egged them on.
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
The videos – so short, so simple – presumed a lot about these people: that these young gay guys were not only out to their families, but out about their sexual activity to their families and out about exactly which sexual activities/positions they were down with. The videos also suggest that the parents are comfortable wondering aloud about what might have caused their son to be walking funny. And all participants involved seemed not only to be casual about the mechanics of anal sex, but also unashamed at having millions of viewers see them chatting and joking about it.
to think about it. So I’d categorize sex and relationship gurus as “elites,” no matter how many dirty words they use. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have done little, in my opinion, to evolve sex talk. Twitter contains both the educational and the pornographic categories of it – too much of both, probably. But TikTok has introduced a new lighthearted, nonjudgmental conversational style for sexuality. The easy-going approach often comes across more like people are talking about a meal, bad drivers or amateur softball than, say, pegging, masturbating or negotiating threesomes. Watching 15-second TikTok videos for a couple of hours can provide a map of the steamy side of contemporary queer life more vividly than a TV series, movie or novel.
Over the course of history, human cultures have vacillated back and forth between being uptight or explicit in how we talk about sex. In Volume 1 of his History of Sexuality, the late philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that at the beginning of the 17th century, “sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit.” Then, in the Victoria era that dominated the 19th century, “silence became the rule. The legitimate and procreative couple laid down the law.”
TikTok is not where you’d predict this would be happening. Owned by a Chinese company, it’s one of the most censorious social media platforms. But I think it’s the very constraint of that censorship that has forced content creators to frame queer sexual content in different ways. They have to be clever, they have to be playful, and then the algorithms push that clever and playful content to the top. Creators communicate their ideas in such a devious way that, even if a creator doesn’t use a single word related to his genitalia, he can, at the end of the video, look at the camera, shrug and leave the viewer to come to the conclusion: “Oh, he’s saying he has a dick so big that his boyfriend dumped him!”
I would sort modern sex talk into roughly three categories: sex talk of the streets, which can be vulgar and salacious, often more about showing off than expressing real desire or wisdom; sex talk of the sheets, that is, between people having sex and therefore more functional than conversational; and sex talk of the elites, which is the clinical talk of educators, officials and counsellors, where “facilitating lubrication of the rectum” has all the lusty thrill of “during congealing, soot particles begin to stack,” from an automotive repair manual.
There is a learning curve to interpreting all the subliminal exhibitionism. When the #marrymejulietchallenge of last year started to show up on my “For You Page,” I first thought, “These guys are being corny with this old Taylor Swift song.” When Taylor sings “pulled out a ring,” the guys in the videos do a pantomime gesture like they’re opening a ring box. Then I noticed the pelvic thrusting part of #marrymejulietchallenge and how so many of the guys doing the dance were freeballing in their grey track pants. A TikTok’s purported purpose isn’t always the reason it’s popular.
Even in the era of the internet, and its supposed ability to empower TikTok censorship has produced mysterious phrases like “g4y” (easy people to share ideas and feelings previously considered unshareable, to decode), “Charmander” (a reference to a Pokéman character that these categories have held sway, though they sometimes overlap one creator substitutes for “cock”) and “babies” (in place of, um, in the realm of fan fiction, when misguided writers use grandiose cum). The literal words are usually innocent, but if you know the clinical language while grasping for erotic effect, and in the realm of code, the images placed in your head can be explicit and visceral. pornography, where functional sex talk becomes bravado, e.g., “Take that massive dick, bitch!” Modern advice columnists can be a little “When you consume your own seed,” says the text on Stevenstemjr69’s raunchy, sure, but always have an ethical POV: certain behaviours TikTok. “Don’t you feel silly, don’t you feel stupid, don’t you feel a are framed as “wrong” and others are “right.” The Dan Savages little ashamed.” Then he gives a “tiny bit” hand gesture. In another, and Daniel M. Laverys of the world never just put something out Stevenstemjr69 “wakes up ready go hard at the gym,” then “gets there to allow readers or listeners to decide for themselves what cheeks clapped instead.” In yet another, the text says, “To all the 44
IN MAGAZINE
