A Royal Pegging

CW: Discussions of sexual behaviour

Disclaimer: this does not detail the experiences of all Queer* people, but rather a commentary of the experiences of the authors.

Lust: hung top looking for sub bottom

Picture this: you’re 17, just come to terms with the fact that maybe you’re not so straight. You’ve heard so much about this great place for gay and bisexual men to meet up and get to know each other. The magical online realm of Grindr. You sign up, upload a cute pic of yourself to get the boys, and get excited. 5 minutes in, you get a message. OMG!? Is this the love of my life? You open the message: dick pic. Oh, well I kinda like dick I guess? Another message: dick pic. Another message: dick pic. Dick pic after dick pic. Your messages are flooded with many, so many dick pics. Is this modern dating for queer men? Sending dick pics till the end of time?

Then you have a blank profile send you a message: “hung top here, looking for sub bottom. You looking?” First off, what is a hung top and a sub bottom? A t-shirt that’s been hung up in a cupboard and the bottom half of a sub sandwich? And looking? Looking for what? Looking for love of course but I get the feeling they’re not talking about that. Another message appears: “53 year old daddy looking for younger.” *insert dick pic here*. This is all so overwhelming, you delete the app after 3 hours and go cry over how you may never find the love of your life.

Gluttony: please stop dating each other

I always forget I live in an echo chamber - that not all friendship groups are queer and chaotic. With inter-dating, constant flirting and mutual matching. On a least ten occasions I have received simultaneous screenshots from two gay friends with eachother’s dating profiles. “Do you think we’d make a good couple?” “You think he would be down to fuck, like casual, I know I could but…” “You know *insert gay friend here* right? We just matched!”

WANTED: GAYS IN CANBERRA! Don’t get me wrong I’m all for some good old hoeing - but please can more gays come to Canberra? The pool is too small and I’m stuck in hookup deja vu. My life’s complicated enough.

Greed: spicy unicorn wanted for fun loving couple

She’s beautiful, intriguing, social, academic and fashionable - there’s only one problem - she has a boyfriend - and she wants you to join. They all have one thing in common, unicorn emojis. And let’s be clear these couples are not looking for a polyamorous relationship, they are on the apps specifically for a sexual third, a girl, a unicorn. The obsession of thirds, women setting up dating apps to effectively con queer women into matching with them (and their boyfriends) is beyond frustrating. No I don’t want to sleep with your boyfriend, because surprisingly bisexual people are not walking sex machines who will sleep with anyone and anything. I don’t want to be fetishised into your relationship - there are surely apps for that. Nor do I want to accidentally match with a cute girl, only to be sent messages about her boyfriend’s sexual capabilities.

And it’s always the women who make the profiles, which is confusing in itself as what lesbian woman would want to sleep with you and your BOYfriend? As a bisexual woman (who avoids dating men), having sex with your boyfriend really defeats the purpose of swearing off men.

So leave us queers alone and go find your fetish somewhere else. And give us back the unicorn emoji - it’s cute, and gay.

Sloth: The Ghost of Insta DMs past

*ding* A Tinder notification appears on your phone. You have a new match! Oh, here we go. Another match with some random queer person at your university, never to be talked to. *ding* So and so has sent you a message Okay this is crazy. You’re actually messaging, and the conversation is… good? This feels wrong, something has to be up. You decide to move the conversation to Instagram… are they the one? Have I finally met the person I’m going to date?

You continue the conversation, send each other photos, tell each other “you’re so cute” while drunk on a night out. Things are going well.

Then, it stops. You barely talk anymore. Send two-word responses to questions. Don’t even swipe up on each other’s stories anymore. Then you start blanking each other on the street and on campus. Now you have to redownload Tinder and start the cycle again. This is so exhausting. The ghost has struck again.

Wrath: “We’ve run out of potential matches in your area”

“We’ve run out of potential matches in your area. Go global and see people around the world.”

Fuck. Off. I only swiped like 5 times, how have I run out of matches already?? Why are there literally no gays in Canberra?

I guess I’ll have to go back to Grindr…

Envy: To be or to be with?

The age-old question of same-sex dating - do I want to be with them? Or do I want to be them? Is there a reason I’m attracted to people who are just different fonts of me? Am I secretly harbouring a deeper desire to become them, to embody their life, to be a better version of me (which through my screen they somehow appear to be)?

Honestly I have no idea - maybe it’s just that we’re attracted to people with similar interests to us, similar life goals and values - and in a queer relationship, your identity becomes mixed with theirs. So how do you even attempt to navigate the treachery of being simultaneously attracted to and identifying with your partner?

If anyone figures this out please DM me - seriously. Love, Confused gay

Pride: Our bodies are our selling point

Twink. Otter. Bear. Wolf. Daddy. For those who do not know, these are terms used to characterise queer men… based on how much hair/muscles you have. We are literally divided into “tribes” entirely based on how we look. But more than that, those who are white twinks (skinny, petite, hairless) get most of the attention. We also have to post basically naked pictures on any app to get any attention at all. Sooooo in summary, the community looks at your body and then, only then will we get to know each other if we like how the other looks. So great. So healthy. How do we fix this? Actually dunno. Oops sorry.

CW: Discussions of sexual behaviour and kinks

Like many others, my early August news feed became filled with the rumour that his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, had cheated on Kate Middleton, engaging in a certain act with his unidentified mistress. Like many, I was unable to stifle a giggle. ‘The prince of pegging’ is an undeniably memorable nickname and points to the ludicrousness of the continued pretense that the British monarchy maintains any sense of superiority over the average citizen. Nevertheless, after a solid amount of taking the piss and laughing with my friends about this incident, I descended into a philosophical spiral of the moral implications of what I had realised is actually an issue worth discussing.

Prince William literally cheated on his wife. The heir to the English throne, the figurehead of hundreds of years of sanctimonious superiority, slavery, exploitation and elitism- everything wondrous Britain and its empire stands for - has once again proven it’s Royal Family are essentially the glorified Kardashians. All they have to do to continue receiving millions in taxpayer money for well, existing, is maintain some sense of public dignity through a positive family image. Despite such millions, Prince William can’t even not cheat on his wife. Instead of this being an opportunity to question the integrity and relevance of the entire British monarchy, the main focus of the whole debacle has become about the fact a posh man enjoys being pegged. I’m not gonna lie, it’s absolutely hilarious, however, it does raise some serious questions about how we talk about sex.

As youth culture moves to embrace sex positivity, our conversations have leaned more into discussing the whacky, weird and wonderful things that come with it. From jokes about toe pics or calling people ‘daddy’; to more graphic sexual preferences, such as peeing on people; or just things that make us laugh (like Prince William enjoying being pegged) - kinks are everywhere. As young people set their sights on being more sexpositive, we have become more and more open about sex, and it is undoubtedly an increasingly common topic of conversation (sometimes quite graphicly) than it was even ten years ago. This naturally means that kinks also form a part of these conversations, particularly as a subject of laughter. And some kinks are funny. I don’t want to pretend for a second that somebody wanting to be pissed on is not at least a little bit amusing. People enjoy some funky shit.

However, the central tenet of sex positivity resolves around removing shame from sex and classifying it as an enjoyable and beneficial experience we should be open about. Creating a sex-positive society isn’t about making everybody sex-crazed nuts who talk about it all the time. It is about acceptance. Furthermore, if we really want people to feel positive and safe talking about and engaging in sexual activity, is making

fun of people for enjoying something out of the ordinary the best way forwards? People have a right to not feel invalidated by what they might like as long as all involved parties are consenting and not causing anybody unwanted harm.

The reality is that a decent proportion of kinks are rooted in basic human biological explanations. Foot fetishes remain one of the most common ‘out of the ordinary’ sexual preferences for people. Indeed, this phenomenon is backed up by human physiology. In the fifties, neuroscientist Wilder Penfield began mapping how human sensations were linked to particular areas of the brain using electrodes placed on volunteers’ heads. Surprisingly, Penfield found that sensory perception for the feet was adjacent to that of the genitals, meaning it was not a far reach for these signals sometimes to cross over or get mixed up. Scientific explanations like these highlight that kinks do not present abnormalities or flaws but are a simple reflection of our biology.

If we really want to move towards sex positivity, shouldn’t we shift away from laughing about kinks and only fuelling the stigma that prohibits people from moving beyond unnecessary shame and secrecy? In a true climate of sex positivity, we would advocate for embracing the diverse ways that people have sex. The more we solely label kinks as something to be laughed at, the more we are attaching shame to what is supposed to be an enjoyable, fulfilling and safe experience. Particularly where this poking fun at sexual preferences intersects with humour based in homophobia or the mocking of queer experiences in general. If we can’t get past someone’s desire for something that has zero impact on us, are we really embracing their freedom to live their life as they please? This is not to say there is no room for more serious conversations about kinks and preferences, particularly where they act to reflect and reinforce harmful social norms or are in and of themselves a disturbing thing to enjoy. Labeling something awful as ‘kink’ does not suddenly justify its practice. This particularly comes to mind when notions of ‘necrophilia’ or other dubious phenomena that deem themselves excused merely through the label of being a kink. The central component of engaging in any sexual behaviour will always revolve around consent and the enjoyment of both parties.

Further to this, there are valid debates about the social consequences of certain sex acts or sexual preferences. For example, debates surrounding degrading talk in the bedroom in light of the potential for this to allow sexism to further permeate people’s lives. Nevertheless, we can simultaneously acknowledge the need to have serious conversations about potential issues while refraining from promoting a culture of shame around what are for the most part harmless preferences.

What two consenting adults do in the bedroom, no matter how odd, is nine times out of ten, completely harmless. If we really want to promote a culture of sex positivity and openness, then making fun of people for their innocuous albeit possibly ridiculous sexual preferences is somewhat counterproductive. A modern culture truly embracing of sex positivity might have a quick giggle at the ‘prince of pegging’, but ultimately acknowledge its irrelevance in comparison to the immorality of William cheating on his wife. Acceptance and tolerance should be practised broadly and with enthusiasm, in all aspects of life, including sex. I see no reason why the ‘live and let live’ tenet of modern liberalism should not be extended to furries, pissers and shitters.