Dress Codes

Dress codes have been denounced for slut shaming and perpetuating misogynistic attitudes. As our society works towards a future accepting  all identities, people have gained the courage to express themselves as they wish, resulting in a much more nuanced political landscape than just male vs. female conventions. I argue that enforcing sartorial rules negatively affect everyone now more than ever. I am lucky to live in New York City and attend a liberal university inclusive of all races, genders, sexual orientations and beliefs. At the beginning of each class, it is common for professors to ask students what their preferred pronouns are to facilitate a comfortable environment for everyone. Of course, policing what students wear based on assumptions of their genders is out of the question. I recognize that this is a bubble and that the majority of the world isn’t as progressive.. In fact, I myself attended a high school with a strict dress code.

        I attended Christian school, meaning we had chapel service once a week and teachers shamed girls for wearing shirts that didn’t cover their collarbones or skirts that went past their fingertips. A dress code violation meant detention. The main qualm amongst students regarding these rules arose from the fact that girls’ rules were stricter than boys’. By setting particular conventions that separated girls from boys, young men were conditioned to believe that hypermasculinity was natural, and not a product of environment (they were not to grow out their hair or wear skirts/dresses). Meanwhile, young women were subject to greater scrutiny among peers. My school went from kindergarten to 12th grade, meaning the institution embedded this problematic ideology on impressionable minds.

        I did not adhere to the dress code throughout high school, and people talked. My friends would jokingly tell me that I needed to invest in longer skirts and more conservative shirts. They didn’t make these comments maliciously, but their remarks showed how ingrained my private school’s culture was. The perpetrators made no attempts to hide their intent to foster this type of community. At one point during my junior year, a male teacher stuck his fingers into a knit top that I was wearing, pulling me towards him as he told me I wasn’t to wear that article of clothing again. This occurrence was not rare. I witnessed teachers strategically standing in crowded hallways during passing periods like soldiers at their posts. Some went as far as asking young women clutching textbooks to move them so teachers could determine whether their chests were covered. Although my high school made the hackneyed argument that dress code promoted a learning environment free of distractions, by actively seeking out what the rules deemed as “offenses,” the administration promoted an environment where women were merely objects of the male gaze.

        The male gaze is a term coined in the 1970’s by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey to describe the way the media depicted women merely as objects to be looked at by men. Mulvey took her observation of cinema and applied it to the patriarchal society. Unfortunately, her theory is still relevant in many real-life contemporary settings, especially those that enforce sartorial rules. In the case of my high school, the administration projected what the male gaze would find sexually appealing and banned all forms of it from young women. Not only does this enforce the idea that women are obligated to cater to men’s needs, but it also tells cis-gender, heterosexual men that it’s natural to see women’s bodies as sexual, and nothing more than that. Men who don’t identify as such are not even considered in this problematic model. The issue here is that cis-gender heterosexual men are not even considered to be part of the issue, instead the blame is shifted onto their female counterparts.  

By deeming articles of clothing as “inappropriate,” adults overtly sexualize children. This allows us to pose the question of how has this issue gotten so out of control that women subject each other to this system? It is easy to see how twisted it can be when a male teacher corrects a female student on their attire. But what about women teachers who are supposed to be role models for these young children? This creates a never ending cycle of shame. Female teachers who support this intolerance are those who have become conditioned to accept it because society has normalized it. Normalization of sexist dress code is a slippery slope that ultimately promotes rape culture. By policing what women put on their bodies and promoting “modesty,” we strip women and young girls of the ownership of their bodies. When you teach young women and girls that their bodies don’t belong to them, you strip them of their agency to say no. And men become more accustomed to women’s bodies than women are of their own. In a school setting, this model is even more disconcerting because young people are more subject to environmental influences.

I’ve been a victim of slut shaming as early as elementary school, when the school counsellor told my mother that I needed to stop wearing a denim skirt because “boys were talking.” I felt indecent for exposing my legs. As a ten-year-old, I didn’t realize the implications of the situation. Instead, I just felt ashamed to have elicited such indecent thoughts. The boys who were caught talking about my body in such a way weren’t punished. The double standard shows how men are valued over women; institutions recognize men’s desires while putting the blame on women. Thanks to the progressiveness of my generation, I’ve come to my own conclusions that I was never at fault, but rather my teachers and the institutions they were apart of, were to blame for seeing my undeveloped and even developed body as inherently sexual.

       

Who Gets To Decide?

Sitting down to dinner with family friends in Mexico a year ago, sipping piña coladas, we were joined by an ocean breeze. The scenery was something out of a movie, salt and wind in my hair and not a care in the world. Fast forward an hour at that very same dinner table and I was met by a brute remark that pulled me out of paradise. My host, a middle-aged mother, abruptly declared, “Bisexuals don’t exist. They are just confused individuals that need to choose if they’re straight or gay.” This offhanded comment struck me over the head like a dumbbell. And for months afterward, even a year now, I still revisit it.

In her book Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler poses the question, who gets to decide if someone is a woman or not? My host’s presumptive statement made me ask, who gets to decide to whom someone else is sexually attracted? Was this woman I had dinner with God, and I had not known?

I’ve been flirting with girls for as long as I can remember. In high school, under the influence, I would make out with my friends for fun. I started seriously considering the idea that I could be attracted to women when I moved to New York, the all holy mecca of sexuality and liberalness. Although up to this point I have only ever been in relationships with men, I have dated several women and have developed feelings for one.

The biphobic sentiments that the woman expressed at dinner were not too far from my Catholic High School community’s thoughts. Although my dad chose a Catholic education for me, I was surprised by his reaction to my attraction to women. Sitting at my kitchen counter, home for Thanksgiving, I told my dad I met a girl and I like her. He was shocked. “But
” he mumbled, “what about my grandkids? I didn’t know you liked girls? Are you sure?” I looked at him, equally shocked and said, “Are you serious? First of all, if I fell in love with a woman and married one, although I’m not looking to get married for AT LEAST 10 years, there’s plenty of options for having kids from in vitro fertilization to adoption. Secondly, my happiness should be the most important thing, end of story.” I marched upstairs. My dad followed and apologized, saying it took him by surprise.

I acknowledge that having family and friends who love me no matter what is a privilege. I do not face the same hateful prejudice many people do. But I do have an understanding, even if slight, of how hurtful it can feel to not be accepted by those you trust most, even if only for a moment.

I always find it part frustrating, part hilarious when straight people assume bi people are you are attracted to them. As a straight person, are you attracted to every person of the opposite gender? No. As a gay person, are you attracted to every one of the same gender? No. Same goes for bi people. I, in fact, am really picky. I think I’m even pickier with my choices in women than men. So no, if we’re friends, it’s not weird if we have a sleepover because I’m not sexually attracted to you. Sorry to burst your bubble. I remember when I was younger, this was an anxiety of mine. Will my straight girlfriends treat me differently if they know I like women? Will their ignorance overpower our friendship? I feel so blessed to say I have an amazing roster of loyal female friends, and my sex life doesn’t get in the way of that.

I do want to take this opportunity to mention that it is annoying when you ask someone who is bi or gay how they have sex. It’s intrusive and uncomfortable. Although, you may be genuinely curious, it comes off like you’re prying. I think you should only discuss someone’s sex life if they bring it up. And to approach it tastefully, don’t say “HOW DO YOU DO IT???!” If you want to know how they do it, there’s tons of resources online. You can even try looking at gay porn, but remember porn is made to entertain, not to educate. It’s unfortunate that our sexual education is so poor that we can’t fathom how sex can function outside of a heterosexual model. But guess what, queer sex not only functions, it’s awesome and no, I don’t want to tell you about it over coffee.

It’s no secret that bisexual people face derision not only from straight people but sometimes also, from the gay community. We are deemed as “confused,” as gay and ashamed, or for women, of doing it to please men and come off as “hot.” I am not confused. And I am most certainly not doing it for anyone but myself. In fact, I barely even talk about it. And up until this point, I’ve always been rather elusive about my sexual identity. Although, I am equally attracted to women and men, I believe that I am who I am, and that it doesn’t matter what I call myself.

I believe in a spectrum of sexual attraction. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, but we put ourselves into a box because that’s what society tells us we must do to be accepted. Sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey argued beyond a heteronormative understanding of sexuality more than half a century ago. He devised a tool called the Kinsey Scale, which was revolutionary not only because it recognized homosexuality as legitimate, but also because it treated sexual orientation as a continuum rather than as a binary. The scale ranges from zero to six, with zero representing only heterosexual attraction and 6 representing only homosexual attraction. It also included an additional point on the scale X, representing asexuality. He and his research team interviewed thousands of subjects about their sexual histories and concluded that significant percentages of both the male and female sample groups landed between 1-5 on the scale meaning they were neither straight nor gay.

If you were a part of the study they wouldn’t just ask who you’ve slept with or dated. They would want to know who you find attractive, who you have crushes on, sexual and romantic fantasies, even dreams. Kinsey’s published studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953) are associated with a change in public perception of sexuality and considered some of the most successful and influential scientific books of the 20th century. Since then, researchers such as Fritz Klein have developed hundreds of methods to chart the range of human sexuality.

 Even though the findings showed that many people did not fit into exclusive heterosexual or homosexual categories, six decades later, few people openly identify as bisexual. Since the 50’s things have undoubtedly gotten better for lesbian, gay and bisexual people in America.* Queer activism has made huge strides, but we still live in a heteronormative culture, which doesn’t accept or understand anything other than straight relationships. Bisexuality, understood as attraction to two or more genders, is not just the inverse of heterosexuality, it challenges the categories we cling to
 categories some of us might be happy to leave behind all together.

 So what can I pass to you as a young woman living in New York who I guess, if you have to call me something besides Eileen, is bi? Well, be who the fuck you are and love it. If people can’t accept you for your authentic self, then to hell with them. Life is much too short to not enjoy the rainbows that show up every now and then.

 *Transgender activism has also made great strides. I didn’t discuss trans issues here because I am focusing on sexual orientation rather than gender identity/expression.

 To learn more about the Kinsey Institute’s studies of human sexuality check out http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/research/ak-data.html

 Try charting yourself on the Klein Sexuality Grid

http://www.americaninstituteofbisexuality.org/thekleingrid/

 

*  Photo by Chadwick Tyler

Save an Uber, Ride a Cowboy: Trip to the Frat House

 

Save an Uber, Ride a Cowboy is a column exploring queer millennial sex culture. The stories presented here are based on true events. Identities have been changed to protect the privacy and reputation of those involved.

 

“Do you want anything?” Fratboy asked Riley.

“Nah, I’m good.”

6AM on New Year’s Day in a McDonald’s somewhere on the Upper East Side with sweaty hair and cum still drying on his torso, Riley tried to process the past few hours as Fratboy ordered his second XL diet coke of the night.

It wasn’t so much the twilight hour or unceremonious post-hookup behavior that needed processing… these were fairly routine for Riley, whose sex life had not quite evolved into the glamorous spectacle Sex and the City had promised — although, it should be noted that Fratboy did have a bed frame, an upgrade from the usual mattress on the floor. Less routine was Fratboy’s supposed heterosexuality, which was only divulged after Fratboy’s first and very premature orgasm.

* * * *

Riley hadn’t been particularly eager to ring in the New Year with a stranger, but after the countdown had finished, the combo of booze and a need for touch made Fratboy’s Tinder profile start to look more promising. The stranger had a cute face and since his bio didn’t read “never been with man,” Riley figured he could do a lot worse.

So he began a (cis male) queer pre-date ritual: selecting a crop top, choosing an earring, and contorting oneself on the bathroom floor to insert an enema — because nothing makes you feel beautiful like flushing your anal cavity before a seduction.

Once Riley felt confidently clean (or as confident as one can feel when ass play is imminent), he did as generations of Brooklynites did before him: hopped on an uptown train in pursuit of getting laid.

As he emerged from the subway station, he was greeted by the January cold and the characteristic silence of the Upper West Side (even the holiday couldn’t shake the affluent neighborhood’s mode of restraint). Like a thrift store rat trapped in Saks Fifth Ave., Riley fiddled with the broken clips of his faux fur jacket while his earring twisted in the breeze.

He walked a few blocks to find Fratboy waiting on the stoop of his apartment building. A lost social nicety that caused Riley to be more nervous than appreciative. Niceties were out  —  didn’t Fratboy know? Millennial dating isn’t bogged down by gendered normatives like modesty or chivalry. Instead, today’s dating is a competition of casualness, a game of dodging texts and making plans to “hang.” Mere seconds into meeting, Fratboy had already thrown off the equilibrium.

In hindsight, there had been a lot of clues that Fratboy was straight.

For one, he was a lot fitter in person than his Instagram initially led Riley to believe. Straight men, radical in their lack of fucks given about crafting a social media persona, are not preoccupied with aesthetic and angles. In short, they dare to take front-facing photographs. Oh, and he was also wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt.

“What’s up?” asked Riley.

“Not much, just got back from a Phish concert at Madison Square.”

Straight.

Riley took a moment to recover. “How was it?” Fratboy bobbed his head enthusiastically and replied, “Dope. I’ve actually seen them two nights in a row.”

Flaming hetero.

They went upstairs and began the pre-coital dance. Where are you from? What brings you to the city? Have we mutually decided that we’ve made enough small talk to get on with it? Turns out Fratboy went to school in the Midwest and was being groomed to become the next president of his university’s top (he emphasized this distinction) fraternity, and that was about all Riley could gather before he dived in.

Fratboy was a shit kisser, but there’s an oddball charm to shit kissers, Riley thought, a rhythmic puzzle that, when solved, will reward both parties with a make-out sesh for the books. Plus Fratboy had a taut torso, so Riley tongued on.

Then came the hands. At first clumsy, then awkward, Riley guessed they were more a product of the late hour rather than a reflection of Fratboy’s sexual prowess. But as Riley straddled him, something felt markedly off.

Fratboy was holding his middle, several inches above his hips. Perspective has since supplied Riley with the answers. Fratboy was used to wider, female hips. While they kissed, his arm wrapped dramatically around Riley’s head. Because Fratboy was used to keeping longer, female hair from falling in his face.

Yet the real zinger was the early climax.

Now, reader, there is no inherent shame in a premature ejaculation. In fact, for those whose self-esteem is volatile at best, a premature ejaculation from time to time can serve as a much needed confidence boost. However, there is cumming fast — and then there’s cumming fast. Lips around cock and few bobs up and down was all it took for Fratboy to tense and grunt, signaling that round one had promptly ended. It was then, through the clarity that only comes post-orgasm, that Riley pieced it together. Phish, the fraternity, the uncertain hands


“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you ever been with another man before?”

Fratboy shook his head. Round two followed promptly, because nothing is hotter than honesty.

Round two served more as a cultural experiment, a chance for Riley to play out the title of Pornhub video: Fraternity Bro Digs First Gay Blowjob. 15min 24sec. 3/5 stars  —  and to see if all those sexual stereotypes about hetero guys in the bedroom were true. 

They were.

With a sense of entitlement only institutional masculinity can breed, Fratboy lied back with his arms behind his head while Riley was at work. During a breather, Riley asked him if there was anything he wanted to try during his first time touching another man. “This,” Fratboy responded after Riley repeated the question three times, finally utilizing those communication skills heterosexual men are so well known for.

They didn’t fuck. Partly because Riley didn’t think Fratboy was entirely ready for the complexities of male-on-male anal sex, but mostly because there was no lube. Not eager to get another hemorrhoid, Riley took a moment to mourn the minutes wasted cleaning his ass then returned to sucking dick.

In a move that broke script with the PornHub mode of operation, Fratboy returned the head. He kept this up for a minute before resorting to a gruff, tensely-fisted handjob.

 

* * * *

 

After Riley’s first and the Phish enthusiast’s second cum, Riley became acutely aware that he was in bed with a straight guy. Afraid that Fratboy, now no longer driven by lust, would be angry with him for initiating him into a new kind of brotherhood, Riley addressed the pussy-loving elephant in the room before Fratboy could.

“But you’ve been with girls and enjoyed it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve had sex to completion with girls?”

“Yes.”

“Am I asking too many questions?”

“I’m an open book.”

And he was. In a refreshingly reverse narrative, Fratboy seemed at ease — satisfied even, with no apparent societal guilt weighing on him. He told Riley that while he’s always been attracted to women, he noticed two years ago that maybe his attraction might also extend to his own gender. So he decided to do something about it.

“That’s brave,” said Riley, hugging his knees to his chest.

Maybe for Fratboy getting off was just getting off. Even so, Riley couldn’t help but admire his attitude. How many people have gone their entire lives suppressing sexual desire, opting for normalcy over sexual truth? Not Fratboy, for here he was, in the most intimidating of cities, taking matters into his own hands, clumsy as they were.

Fratboy blinked at the queer boy in pink H&M briefs who was lying in his bed. Riley met his gaze, searching for a change, a shift, or something profound. But that’s not life and that’s not sex. It’s not always out of body experiences or aha moments; sometimes you’re very much in your body, confused and fumbling, and you don’t necessarily come out the other side wiser for it.

“My sister is going to wake up for work soon, but we have a minute to chill,” said Fratboy. Apparently this was her apartment.

“And she doesn’t know anything about you
?”

“No.”

“So I should go.”

“Well, we have a second — ”

Riley began finding his clothes, not eager to be part of a coming out skit at 5:30 in the morning. Fratboy seemed discouraged, “But I’ll walk out with you. I could go for a diet coke.”

The McDonald’s employees didn’t give the two disheveled boys a second glance as they waltzed into the establishment in the twilight hour. Then again, who is more seasoned in the varieties of humanity than a 24-hour McDonald’s employee?

After they talked for a bit and Fratboy had quenched his thirst, Riley thought it best to begin the return journey to his borough. His presence was due at the restaurant in only a few hours. They walked together to Riley’s train. How does one say goodbye to a straight man? A kiss seems presumptuous, a hug too affectionate. Fratboy settled for a thank you and a stiff wave. He sent Riley a text later in the night, but Riley had already fallen asleep.

At work the next day, Vanilla Ice yelled at Riley. Apparently he had not delivered the celebrity-customer service the 90’s one-hit-wonder thought was appropriate. Riley apologized, but struggled to contain his giggles at the server’s station as he fetched Mr. Ice’s hot coffee. His coworkers asked him what was so funny. Nothing, he told them, it just really was a new year.

 

 

Original artwork by Scott Walker. 

Finding Empowerment In Oppression

Lately, it feels like a silent revolution is stirring inside of me. I’m continually becoming more and more comfortable with my experience as a queer, black girl. I couldn’t imagine myself here a couple years ago but feeling safe and free in my black body in the midst of homophobia + misogynoir feels revolutionary.
When you’re a person of color and the “wrong” sexuality for heteronormative standards, you learn very early on that this system was not made for you. And if you don’t have someone who has felt that same pain, who’s felt unloved and unwanted, telling you otherwise, you start to believe that this world wasn’t made for you, either.
That is the farthest thing from the truth.
It doesn’t feel like it all the time but this world was made for all of us. We were placed on this earth to feel safe-uninhibited-loved-connected (the list goes on and on) but there are systems in place that are directly correlated to our internalized feelings of unworthiness. I like to objectify those feelings. By placing them outside of myself and looking at them for what they are, it always dawns on me that the hatred I, and my community face has nothing to do with us. Hatred is not a passive act. It might be insidious and tricky to pinpoint but a person makes a conscious choice to hate rather than to understand. That person’s bigotry is not on the victim.
A person of color is born and there are already systems preying on our self-esteem. With that in mind, the only thing poc can do to overcome these obstacles is to love ourselves deeply- and unapologetically, in a world that deems us unloveable. The same goes for people who identify with anything other than being straight.
Our oppression takes on different forms but the feelings of inferiority they plant in us are universal. For me, being black and queer is power. I won’t speak for others but I’m sure they feel the same sort of inexplicable pride in their community’s resilience to withstand all the obstacles we face. We saw that unbreakable power of activism recently with #NoDAPL. With any sort of collective pain, community and solidarity will bloom from it and their victory shows how much can be done when we protect one another from injustice. As Trump makes his way into the White House, we need to actively remind ourselves that we are not the narratives that bigots try to force on us. We are more than the hatred this country has normalized.
Being black with a soft heart is activism.
Not allowing society’s skewed view of my blackness and sexuality to determine my own perception of myself, is a form of activism.
Creating space for the generation after me so they won’t have to feel the same insecurities as much as I have is also a soft, yet effective, sort of activism.

“You’re So White”

I don’t remember a time when people didn’t attempt to strip my ethnicity from who I was. I heard it from friends, classmates, and even their parents. In their minds, it isn’t possible to be so intellectual, so “articulate,” so aspirational, while also being Black. As though the only way to accept me was to carefully measure me by how much I complied with a stereotype. In retrospect, I’ve noticed that as I grew older, the type of racism I experienced became more and more implicit, occurring on a micro level.* In middle school, I remember telling my mother about how my classmates called me an “Oreo” during recess. They told me that I was “white” on the inside because I didn’t talk like a “regular” Black person. My mother turned to me and told me not to accept the pseudo-complement. She said that being African American and speaking “proper” English were not mutually exclusive, and that the way I spoke was not a result of me being internally “White”- it was a result of my first-rate education and intellectual capability.

As I grew older, the way people enacted racism was more complex than comparing my personality to a popular snack. The message, however, was always the same: “You’re so white.”  Why anyone, with positive or negative intentions, would say that to a person of color is something I never really understood the root of until attending a predominantly white University. In conversations about racism with other Black woman undergraduates about their experiences with racism, the phrase “you’re so white,” and how much we’ve heard it throughout our lives, always comes up. The women I spoke to all had something distinct in common: they were high achieving, intellectual individuals. To me, this isn’t unusual, so I was perplexed by all these people who found it to be so.

I have been surrounded by a support system of high achieving Black men and women all my life. However, given that many of my peers and their parents were only exposed to stereotype, they saw me as an anomaly, but I never saw the contradiction. I still don’t see a contradiction. It took me a long time to understand that people saw a discrepancy between how I spoke and how I looked. Strangely, they felt a need to tell me so. My embodied Blackness didn’t fit their perceptions of what Blackness should be.  When confronted by the existence of someone who does not fit into that understanding, instead of expanding their conception and understanding of Blackness, they labeled me as “white.”  

I grew up believing in myself and my abilities, not because I wanted to be the exception to the stereotype, but because I never registered one in the first place. My peers called me an Oreo because the person they saw in front of them clashed with their preconceived ideas of who they should have been seeing at their magnet schools, their NHS meetings or their research labs. But what they didn’t realize is that those things were never “theirs” in the first place. No one group can claim ownership of intellect, achievements, taste in music, or personality type. There is not one “type” of Black person, and there is no one “type” of any person of any ethnicity. We are all individuals with diverse backgrounds, interests and aspirations- not cookies to be boxed into a misrepresentation of our respective cultures.

*What are Microaggressions?

Microaggression theory was originally developed by a psychiatrist named Chester M. Pierce in 1970, and has been elaborated on by several psychologists and psychiatrists since then. Derald Wing Sue of Columbia University has categorized different types of “microaggressions” into 3 groups: Microassaults, Microinsults and Microinvalidations. According to Sue, microaggressions are “everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them.”

DeAngelis, Tori DeAngelis. “Unmasking ‘racial Micro Aggressions'” American Psychological Association. 2009. Web. 10 Oct. 2016. <http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/02/microaggression.aspx>.