Why I Shame Tops On Instagram

I have a meme account on Instagram where I shame tops. Yes, it sounds silly (even to me) but would it still sound silly if I told you my memes are a tool to confront sexual power dynamics, and stereotypes in the queer community? Maybe even that also sounds funny, but bear with me. You may like what you read.

Before I get into it I want to set up the two cultural pillars that drove me to shame tops. First, it is undeniable that each of our lives are dictated by our proximity to power. We are given things and things are taken away from us depending on our relative access to power. Secondly, queer men categorize their sexual desires. The classic image of queer male sexuality is a triptych comprised of:

Tops, people who prefer being the insertive partner during anal sex.
Bottoms, people who prefer being the receptive partner.
Verses (short for versatile), people who prefer both.

Why I shame tops.

Here’s what I’ve noticed… tops’ identities are wrapped up in conceits of power, masculinity, and desirability. Topping is conflated with dominance, which is rooted in heteronormativity and sexism. When someone tops or is the insertive partner, on the surface, they are the more dominant partner and thereby have more power. Inversely, bottoming can be viewed as a submission. Someone who bottoms relinquishes power, so they say.

And, yes, power bottoms (dominant-behaving bottoms) and sub tops are out here thriving, but the aforementioned more simplistic ideas about topping and bottoming are deeply embedded in gay culture. They exist in the things we tell each other every day through the apps and in the clubs. We uphold tops’ power through upholding their desirability (“Tops are scarce”) and their masculinity (“I only have sex with masculine tops”). We say verses are just ashamed bottoms. We propagate stigmas associated with bottoming. We don’t question total tops who’ve never tried bottoming. It is my belief that these attitudes so saturated in our community create power structures that value certain sexual positions and desires over others.

To turn the power structure on its head, I shame tops. There’s a concept called “punching up” that I use in my account. The idea is that when a group with less power shames or, in my case, makes fun of a group with more power—the group with less power gains more than the group with more power loses. Tops don’t lose much when I shame them for their behaviors because “gay culture” supports them.

Now, things can get tricky when shaming desire. I am aware of this. It should be said that desire can be deeply personal, and that shouldn’t be questioned; but desire can also be social, which should always be questioned.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that tops, mostly total tops (tops who never, under any circumstances, bottom), have left me worse off than when they found me. I mean, I created an entire Instagram account which primary function is to shame tops. It’s not just me though. I made @versfirst to not only lift myself up, but for others in my community who have been devalued by tops. I was actually surprised when I connected with people who felt the same way as I did. Other queer people really were experiencing the same things as I was. I get messages all the time from people commiserating with me, laughing with me, and being a part of a community within a community that validates their experiences with tops.

Beyond top shame.

When I made my Instagram account, I was so sick of tops’ reductive attitudes about sex. My account was an outlet to vent my anger at the tops who sexually coerced me, who pressured me into compromising my own desires, who viewed me as powerless and took power from me. My reaction was to use memes to critique their harmful behaviors and the culture that promoted those behaviors. Using this light-hearted, yet direct medium to channel my frustration has helped me cope without emotionally wearing myself out. Without having to confront every top I met in person, I could address my top-based traumas. At first, my anger was directed solely at tops, but in the process of dissecting my anger through memes, I realized that tops were just the surface of my frustration. Power inequalities within sexual position identities is only one symptom of a larger problem.

The bigger picture.

Queer sexuality is stifled. We are so bogged down by stereotypes, categories, and misaligned associations. Through the stories my account’s followers have shared, I’ve learned so much about how the LGBTQ+ community exists within similar frameworks, and that this discussion extends to and affects us all. Queer women use similar language for topping and bottoming. Some queer women use the term “switch” instead of “vers.” I loved hearing that. Transgender men are pigeonholed as bottoms by cis gay guys. I hated hearing that.

I’ve also begun to write about race. As a mestizo Latino, I know a bit about racial stereotyping in the bedroom. Black and brown people are expected to top, and Asians are often expected to bottom. In American politics, these stereotypes have an origin way before gay people were allowed to come out and define their sexuality. In our current political environment, where it is entirely impossible to separate power from race and almost impossible to separate power from sex, it makes total sense that racial power dynamics would seep into our sex lives.

Going back to my original grievance, gay men have never really viewed sexual positioning as a spectrum. We view it like the triptych above: tops, bottoms, and verses. We don’t allow desires to shift, expand, or contract. We say people with big dicks are wasting their assets if they don’t top. We say masculine people always top. We say younger guys should bottom for older partners, and we say—get ready for this one—every gay man wants to have anal sex.

What I hope to do with top shaming is encourage people to question the motivations at play. In questioning our sexual desires we figure out where our desires come from and what factors influence them. As queer people, we are more free today than ever before, but we have more work to do. We must stop simplifying our sex and start de-socializing our sex.

To that end, I shame tops.

*You can join Miles Oliva’s movement on Instagram at @versfirst.

DoubleTap: Ariella Elovic’s Cheeky Illustrations

DoubleTap is an interview series highlighting artists whose work explores sex, body, and identity.

From plucking one’s nipple hairs to having anxiety about pooping while on vacation, Ariella Elovic’s illustrations look like they were ripped from the pages of a teenage diary; it’s no surprise her candid scribbles for her project, Cheeky, are quickly becoming an Instagram favorite.

Elovic draws inspiration from some of her most personal anecdotes, combatting societal shame with clever humor that’s laugh out loud funny. In this way, her illustrations serve as palatable commentary on body insecurities and the ways in which stigma can hold us back from living our collective truth.

In this interview, we speak with the artist about her work and what she hopes viewers will take away from seeing this project.

What inspired you to launch this project?

AE: My work on Cheeky is inspired by the women in my life and the conversations we have about our bodies. Through connecting on shared and personal experiences, I began to feel a lot more at home in my skin—upper lip hair, jiggly thighs, period globs and all. I hope my illustrations spark similar conversations and help alleviate some of the shame and isolation so many of us feel in relation to our bodies.

How long have you been developing this body of work? How do you hope to grow this series in the future?

I launched Cheeky about five months ago, but I’ve been ruminating on these ideas for a while. Initially, I was working on a series of illustrations about my personal journey with IBS, and found that I kept wanting to go off on tangents. Poop became period poops and period poops became period leaks, long pubes, and nipple hair etc. I’d love to turn this series into a book, that’ll be my next big project. Some cute Cheeky pins would be fun, too.

What is your process for creating these illustrations?

Most of the work I make for Cheeky draws from my personal life, thoughts or insecurities I have—typically if it’s something I’m embarrassed to tell other people, it’s something I push myself to share. I was pretty embarrassed about my nipple hairs a year ago and now it feels (almost) as normal as having eyebrows.

Do you draw from real life? Do you make these digitally or by hand?

I paint everything by hand using gouache, and then scan and touch up a bit in Photoshop. All notes are handwritten in pencil. Painting myself also makes it pretty easy in terms of needing reference imagery. I’ve got a pretty incriminating series of selfies/mirror pics.

What has surprised you most about doing illustrations around body image and identity?

I’m surprised by how much I’m sharing in public—granted, it’s illustrations and not photos of my bare body—but a lot of what I paint has been on topics I would have never dared share in the past. This work has really helped me process and embrace my own insecurities.

How do you use your artwork to champion inclusion, diversity, body and sex positivity?

Sharing personal stories highlights how unique we all are, but also all that we share. We all have self-doubt, we all have felt rejection, we all have felt judged (either by ourselves or by others). When I use Cheeky to communicate a vulnerability, I hope it encourages folks to be kinder to both themselves and those around them. Empathy can be hard to practice, but it’s so incredibly important. Especially now.

What do you hope viewers will take away from seeing your illustrations?

I hope viewers relate to the work in some way, laugh, and feel less alone because of our shared experience. Ultimately, I want Cheeky to instill this sense of connecting to your body, yourself, and really owning it. Speaking to my personal experience as a teenage/college-age girl, I spent a lot of time making myself look the way I thought I should look (read: contorting my body to bleach all my dark arm hair and wearing spanx under jeans, both incredibly uncomfortable). Letting go of that pressure and stress is hard—and a process—but I’m getting there and Cheeky is helping.

You can follow Ariella Elovic on Instagram here and find more of her work at thecheekyblog.com.

Online/Offline

Growing up alongside a strong presence of social media, I’ve been aware of the contrast between people’s behavior online and in person for a long time, from watching Catfish to reading comments from keyboard warriors. The internet provides an escape from everyday life, desensitizing people to what it’s like to communicate face to face, and creating an incentive to say things that people may not have the courage to say to someone’s face. In addition to that, it’s so easy for words on a screen to get misinterpreted or lost in translation.

I’ve been especially conscious of this incongruity as I’ve started to explore the world of romantic relationships. Like many other young women and teenage girls, this behavior is pushed to its extreme in my Instagram DMs and on Tinder. I’ve never had a guy greet me in person with, “If I rearrange some of the letters in your name I can spell anal,” or “Wanna fuck?” But in online communication, it seems to be a regular thing. Most of these messages are from men who I’ve never met, so it’s easy for me to press the unmatch or block button and remove them from my life. What these men say can still bother me, but it’s easier for me to shake than in-person interactions because I know that I will never have to confront this person.

But not all unwanted messages online are from strangers. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I’ve received unwanted messages from my male classmates that made me feel uncomfortable, violated, and unsafe. Blocking them online may stop the unwanted online communication, but that does nothing to prevent them from behaving inappropriately in person or alleviate the stress of having to see them every day. I wish I could gain back the class time I spent in fear—afraid of how they would treat me in person, how they might react if I blocked them, and of being misinterpreted if I rejected them.

In middle school, these comments were encouraged in a way by the popularity of a website called Ask.fm, where people could anonymously ask questions by posting a link to your Facebook page. I quickly realized that this platform welcomed inappropriate comments—giving 13 to 14 year old boys the ability to send you anonymous messages gets really perverse really fast. These messages affected the way I felt at school. I’d scan the hallways and classrooms, trying to pair anonymous messages to faces, always wondering who had said what. I was suddenly aware that my school environment was not as safe as I’d thought.

In high school, boys left anonymity behind and started to comment whatever they wanted on my Instagram and Facebook posts. For years, I deleted the comments and never talked about them in attempt to be the bigger person—but also out of fear, because I didn’t want to confront these guys, not knowing how they’d respond. I’d been told that boys will be boys, and I wasn’t even sure if I could convince people they were wrong. So instead I went about my days trying to avoid all contact with anyone who said negative things about me online.

It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I changed the way I dealt with inappropriate messages. There was a person who continually left comments on my Instagram and sent me text messages, demeaning me physically and intellectually. He also attacked my friends, and got his friends to gang up against me. I was over it. I wouldn’t tolerate silently sitting across from someone in class who was extremely hostile to me online. Before I went to the administration, a teacher heard him threatening me in the lunchroom, starting the process of getting help in handling the situation. He got suspended for his online interactions with me. Getting one of the most “popular” boys suspended from school held unfortunate consequences for me, creating tension between me and people who were loyal to him. But it also had its benefits—I had to adjust who I spent time with, and by the end of high school, I felt like the people who I was friends with were not only loyal but shared the same values as me.

Before this point it seemed completely foreign to me to reach out for help regarding unwanted messages. I feared that I’d get in some sort of trouble, or I’d be told “boys will be boys” for the billionth time, so I kept it private. This helped me realize that it’s not only okay, but extremely important to hold people accountable for their actions online. There might always be a gap between the way people behave online and in person, but online actions have no less weight than their actions offline.

My most recent experience with unwanted messages was different from the rest. For most of my second semester at college, this guy in one of my lectures wasn’t even on my radar. He usually sat far behind me in the fifty-person lecture class and had never said a word to me. One day he friended me on Facebook and I accepted, just as I would anyone else who went to my college. Almost immediately, he messaged me asking about how the class was going and if I wanted to hang out sometime. It seemed like a perfectly friendly message on the surface, but something about it really freaked me out. I didn’t know him; what motivated him to suddenly reach out to me? I responded politely, telling him a bit about the paper I was writing and deflecting his invitation to hang out, saying maybe another time. I hoped he’d notice that I wasn’t interested and stop messaging me. Over the next few weeks, he continued to send me random messages and asking me to hang out. I was at a loss for how to deal with it.

I had a lot of anxiety about rejecting him over Facebook Messenger. It’s easy to misinterpret the tone and intention of words on a screen. I’ve had my fair share of rejection, and I didn’t want him to assume there was a personal reason that I rejected him, or that I rejected him because of his appearance. The lack of personal connection with him made me fear that he’d read my rejection as harsher than it actually was.

So instead, I stopped responding completely. I felt paralyzed, and even though this person seemed nonthreatening, I still feared going to class. I didn’t know how he interpreted my silence, and then the silence lasted so long that I was worried how he’d interpret a response from me and what it’d warrant. Sitting in a room with someone who had extensively reached out to me online but had never spoken to me in person felt mysterious and terrifying. The messages continued even after I returned home for summer, which finally motivated me to end the interaction. I wish I could say that I stood up for myself and explained what was wrong to him, but I ended it by letting him know that I was transferring schools and moving to another state.

I feel that it’s somewhat unfair that I ignored him and didn’t tell him clearly that I wasn’t interested right away, but I stand firm in my belief that the frequency of his communication crossed a line. His relentlessness was so shocking to me, mostly because it seemed to be the exact opposite of what I would do if I were in his position. I’ve taken the risk of being the first person to initiate a relationship, and I’ve faced rejection a few times and even no response. Either of those outcomes are enough cause me to hide under my bed for a week and never try to interact with them again. This classmate and I might be examples of two extremes, but I feel that the disparity between the way that men and women behave online and in person is extremely vast.
In these three very different experiences with my male classmates and social media, I notice a common theme of entitlement. Those 13 and 14 year-old boys thought it was their business to ask me what my breast size was, with no regard to how violated that made me feel. My high school classmate thought there was no problem with commenting horrible things about me on my own posts. My college classmate made it seem like he was entitled to my time, even after I showed no interest. The relevant platforms for communicating online have changed so much during my lifetime, and are evolving faster than I can comprehend. The freedom that social media gives you makes me really excited for the future, but also afraid, because I really have no idea what kinds of interactions I will have ahead of me as I continue to navigate my relationships.

My Boyfriend Likes Her Pictures

There is something to be said about trust in the digital age.

Trust is a small, glittering fish that slips through your grip if you are careless. I have watched my own little fish dart from me, no matter whose hand was held in mine. I have even fantasized about crushing my little fish with a rock—an expulsion of scales and guts and the last of my ability to be truly vulnerable.

Relationships are tricky. Especially in a current climate where social media rubs its dark hands over our heads. Images are piled in front of us every day, bright and terrible in their consistency. Instagram is like a bazaar in some fantastical kingdom: here there be girls, a menagerie of babes with skin as lustrous as candy shells! If you type “my boyfriend follows models on Instagram” into Google, you’ll find pages and pages of results. It would appear the girls are worrying about the girls. Love has a razor-sharp smart phone at its throat.

I doggedly check my boyfriend’s Instagram. I heave myself through his followers, through who he is following. It’s an exhausting exercise in compulsion and fear. There are hundreds of babes. Beautiful blondes with savage teeth, their backs arched like greyhounds. He likes the photos of the babes. He paints the Insta hearts red. He used to leave stray comments, bits of acknowledgement like flower petals over a body. There was a hot babe in glasses, so he left the smiley face with glasses emoji. A babe in a hat was smiling holding a bee, and he commented “that hat!”

He doesn’t know these babes. They don’t follow him back. I would screenshot these moments and send them to girlfriends, is this ok? No, they would wail, this is despicable! I scrolled some more. Eventually my little trust fish nosed itself out of my hands and slimed through my fingers. I lost it. I imagined his direct messages, the invented strings of communication he must be having with these women—is that normal now? Have our expectations become so thin and starved that they huddle together instead of rallying against social media’s onslaught of instant gratification?

There is a hell of a lot of choice nowadays, or at least it sure looks like it. Twenty years ago we had to be visually satisfied with whatever we saw in the flesh, or whatever looked good on cable. Today, we carry the Kingdom of Lost Babes around in our hands. I wonder sometimes, if it’s good for the brain, all these curves, these bottom cheeks bruised against the camera lens—so that you aren’t sure if you’re indeed looking at an ass or a squashed ball of mozzarella. Is the accessibility to the Insta babes too tantalizing to ignore? With one tap you are instantly connected; it’s as delicious as sorcery.

I asked him, why do you follow the babes?

Wouldn’t you prefer I fantasize over an attractive girl on Instagram instead of porn?

No. Social media has become a safe tower for the voyeur.

I would rather he salivate over deliberate babes, the girls with the rabid loins, the ones who purposefully swallow cocks and splay their bodies to the eye of the camera. The girls with brave brown limbs, ridden as prize racehorses, skin shiny with fluids. They are there to be seen and to be enjoyed. The Insta babes have no courage in their crotches, they just want little red hearts and the most they will give in return is a sly peak of areola.

He protests as if it’s something he has to do, something undeniable that comes from being male, something that I just have to learn to accept or to turn my attention from. But it’s feels like watching your boyfriend blow a kiss to a girl on the street. It’s something that makes your guts burn.

Inevitably, I compare myself to the babes. I stand in the bathroom in my underwear, my skin silver and uncorrupted from any filters. I wonder if he too compares me to the babes. If when his zombie eyes pass over their haunches, he remembers the everyday weight of my own limbs. I pinch the screen and zoom in on their pretty faces. I have a lot of friends. I love girls. I think, you would like me more than him, we could be friends! But he has hunted you, trapped you in his phone and now you are his idea to drool over.

At wild, terrible moments, I fantasize about messaging a babe and asking her if she and he communicate, of liking one of her photos, of showing him that I too can play the game.

I went for a beer with a friend of mine the other night. He blithely tossed me his phone and asked me to look something up. I held it in my hands, horrified, as if it were a disembowelled animal.

You’re giving me your phone?

He laughed at my incredulity. He pulled at his mustache and wiped the beer scum from his chin.

You’re better at writing than me anyway, reply to that message would you?

He doesn’t have Instagram or Snapchat. He says he doesn’t have time. I thought of my boyfriend, who holds his phone close as if it were his last secret left. He has told me he would never show me its contents as that is breaking a boundary. My brain heard there are truths in there that would break your heart. My little fish was a sliver of tarnished gold.

Am I insecure? Do I have trust issues? In reality, I am happy with my body, my face, my mind. I am not threatened by connectivity, and I love meeting new people, especially babes; they have great clothes you can borrow. Another male friend assured me that not all men do this, some men tie themselves to the mast and avoid the sirens’ howling. Some men do not succumb to base temptation. A girlfriend declared following pretty girls that you don’t know when you’re in a relationship is tacky, like having a Porn mag from 1980 under your bed.

If anything, watching your boyfriend rack up the number of babes on his Instagram followers list has been a lesson in self-control. I peruse a new babe, scroll through her photos to check which ones he’s liked. I follow his actions, I nose after him, blood on my lips—the little fish is torn to pieces at my feet.

I wonder if it will ever stop, if this is a compulsion he will enjoy for the rest of his life. And the babes will remain timeless, trapped in plastic like insects in amber, flawless wings and thin as whispers. I will age, and hopefully be past the want or need to validate myself online. It’s already becoming dull. It’s already beginning to hurt.

DoubleTap: Eromatica

DoubleTap is a monthly interview series highlighting artists whose work explores sex, body, and identity.

You have probably seen some of Eromatica’s erotic illustrations on your feed — but never the same way.

The multi-medium artist is taking inclusivity to new heights by offering feature-flexible graphics of people in love and lust. With the apps Colormatica and Teematica, the viewer gets to play artist and alternate each subject’s gender identity, hair color/style, and skin tone. Not only does this ensure diversity, but it grants viewers the autonomy to reflect themselves in the artwork. Once you’ve curated a love scene that satisfies you, Eromatica gives you the option to print the graphics on pins, t-shirts, postcards, and more. Additionally, the artist/brand has launched a set of original Bluetooth vibrators with remote control settings, allowing a partner to operate the intensity of your session from any where in the world. Talk about upgrading your phone sex.

While Eromatica’s sexy illustrations can sometime feature alien or mystical individuals making love, their appeal is based not in fantasy, but in embracing the reality of love’s diversity.

We had the opportunity to chat with the coder, illustrator, and visionary.

What inspired you to create interactive illustrations which allow the viewer to change the subject’s skin tone, hair, etc.?

E: I believe art is only art when the viewer feels something for what they’re seeing. At first my illustrations were colorless, but I started [to] learn that these drawings would be more pleasant for the viewer if they’d resemble, in any way, the viewer. Art has to be done so the viewer feels connected to it, and this is the way I found to connect to them.

If a chef would cook only food that he likes, he probably wouldn’t have that many clients. But if he cooks personalized dishes, he’d probably have way more clients.

Your work often depicts people in intimate situations—are these fantasies or do you draw from your own experiences?

E: I combine fantasy with [my] own experiences. But mostly they are all fantasy and random scenarios made up for the drawing.

Have you ever felt pressure to censor your artwork?

E: More like, have I not felt pressure to censor my work? Instagram is an open platform, therefore anyone can access any account, no matter how old the person is. My main account had more explicit images, but Instagram kept censoring them and ended up disabling my account.

Since then, I opened a second account and started all over with a less explicit theme. Censoring body parts with clothes, hairs and hands. It’s hard to keep it “clean” when it’s such a subjective topic. I would think nipples and butts are okay to show, but Instagram thinks the other way around.

So, as long as I keep using Instagram as a platform to get to know my art, I’m keeping it within the rules of Instagram. Would be way better if I didn’t have this constrain, but Instagram is a really cool platform to work with so let’s keep it cool for them.

How has your work evolved over time?

E: It all started in March 7th, and it began with only simple lines and incomplete drawings. It was something new for me so I couldn’t go that complex. With time I started learning new techniques, getting better and getting lots of insight from my followers. And voilà, Eromatica started evolving and is still evolving. At the moment, all my posts have 10 variations of the illustration, some are turned into wallpaper format, some are uploaded to my Coloring Book app, and some are used for prints.

The biggest evolution of Eromatica has been the personalization of the illustrations, letting my followers customize the drawing so it looks more like them. I can tell right now Eromatica is starting a new phase of evolution, but cannot talk that much about it. Still a secret.

Most of your illustrations depict sexy and tender scenarios. Would you ever consider exploring the darker side of human sexuality in your work?

E: If by darker side of human sexuality you mean evil dark side… no, I don’t plan to go on that area. My account is about [a] couple’s love, sexual situations, healthy lust, self-love and inclusivity. One of my goals is to erase the gender gap and empower women in any possible way, and going to the “dark side” of human sexuality kinda goes against this. I’m here to empower and reach sex equality.

Your brand’s vibrator can be controlled through an iPhone at any distance (which, by the way, we think is a game changer for people in long-distance relationships). What gave you the idea to marry the virtual and physical realms for pleasure?

E: I’m actually a coder, not an illustrator, so my entire life has been dedicated to making software and hardware. I built my first websites and video games when I was 11 years old. I found a perfect mix of my techie-knowledge with my art project, and built this long-distance controlled vibrator.

It’s one of the multiple side projects that are starting to bloom from Eromatica. Still working on some more, and some are already out there on the site, like the Coloring Book app and the site to build your own T-Shirts with your own colors. I believe I can reach Eromatica’s goal easier if I take advantage of my techie skills, so here I am trying it.

In your wildest dreams, what does the future hold for Eromatica?

E: My very first goal is to make women feel powerful and confident enough to achieve anything in any aspect, either sexually speaking, or life-wise, job-wide, career-wise, etc. I’m sick and tired of having a world ruled mostly by men, we need powerful women doing powerful stuff. There is a lot of work to be done, and I hope I’m on the right path to do it.

What’s the future for Eromatica? Any future that leads to achieve my goals. What I’m doing right now [is] working on multiple apps for women, new illustrations, a blog/forum for women, networking with women in the industries, looking for collaborations, [developing] a clothing line, and doing research.

You can follow Eromatica on Instagram here, and buy their products at www.eromatica.com.

Assault Within The Scene

Hardcore and punk music have attributed a lot to my character, my values, and the ways in which I treat my counterparts. I’m unconditionally grateful for the female artists who have shaped how I look at myself and the other women in my life. I was looking forward to seeing a woman I admire deeply talk about her experiences in recovery and music.

I went to a reading of Patty Schemel’s autobiography, Hit So Hard, in New York City. After Patty read about her band, Hole, and her struggles with substance abuse, she asked us if we had any questions. I raised my hand and asked her if she thought that women in the punk and hardcore scene are treated better today than they were in the 90s. She looked at me and said, “No, I don’t think they are being treated better by any means.”

That was the answer I was expecting.

The hardcore community that I know resides in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In the winter of 2017, and in the spring of 2018, local bands and musicians came together to raise money for Planned Parenthood. Wilkes-Barre was the first place to show me what it looks like to attend shows with hopes to achieve a better life through music. Wilkes-Barre’s shows are full of many different people who are more or less there for the same reasons: friends, music, community, and to feel like they belong somewhere that matters.

Shows can be a tough place for women.

There is a saying that often pops up on online hardcore messenger boards, “no clit in the pit.” There is a fear of being intentionally hit, touched, grouped, or harassed while in the mosh pit, because you are a woman. There is also the fear that any of these things will happen and nobody will care because you came here on your own and are thereby responsible for whatever happens to you. Violence against women is happening everywhere in venues across the country. It’s happening in the places where women are told they are the safest. It’s an epidemic that has grown out of control.

Audience and band members are rarely held accountable for their actions. Sexual abusers are constantly being forgiven. Harry Corrigan, the drummer of the New York-based band REGULATE, sexually assaulted a woman in summer of 2012. Fans called this assault “alleged,” because they don’t want to believe that their friends and favorite musicians are abusers. This “innocent until proven guilty” approach contributes to the stigma that women are dishonest about the behavior asserted by their aggressors. Corrigan made the following statement two years later:

I’d like to address the event on July 23rd, 2012. I feel extremely remorseful about what happened that night. I am not apologizing because of public scrutiny, but because I treated someone incorrectly. I was insensitive and I was wrong….. This event has forever changed my view of what consent is. I was 19 at the time of the event and I’ve spent the last three years confused as to why people were upset with me because I knew in my heart I would never do anything to intentionally hurt someone…. I take full responsibility for being insensitive and misjudging the situation. I believed it was a consensual occurrence between two adults and in the heat of the moment I should have been more responsible and conscious of the parties involved.

(Corrigan, 2015).

REGULATE continues to house Corrigan, even with the knowledge of his past behavior. This speaks volumes of the character of his bandmates, as well as those who continue to book and support the group. This summer they are playing This is Hardcore Fest, an annual punk music festival in Philadelphia. If the hardcore community doesn’t care about booking a rapist then doing so becomes relatively acceptable; ignorance breeds ignorance. It’s unfathomable to think that those who know what Corrigan did are still feeding his career. Celebrating REGULATE’s music is disgraceful. To openly allow a rapist to perform in a space that is supposed to be safe is shameful. It seems as if there is no pressure to take accountability.

Most men often get to speak from a place of safety, a place that women are not fortunate enough to occupy. It’s devastating to think about the how the woman Corrigan assaulted must feel. Once people started to stand up for Corrigan and accept his unspeakable actions, her community was lost. How safe can a show be if rapists and aggressors are welcome there? The victim is often forgotten because that is what is easy. It’s easy to ignore what has happened in order to allow the community to carry on unchanged.

The hardcore music scene is truly not a safe place for women. I say this because the evidence presented suggests that fandom prioritizes their image over individuals’ safety. Women are welcome at shows until their rapist or aggressor is playing the gig. While I would like to speak up for all women in the hardcore scene, I will not speak for them.

There is a huge lack of female visibility at shows. Lineups at shows and festivals rarely feature women, which makes it appear like there aren’t many female-fronted hardcore bands. But this is because many aren’t granted any kind of platform, resulting in a lot of hardcore girl bands going unnoticed. Knock us around in the pit, and don’t let us perform.

I recently listened to a music podcast called The Callout. It featured the story of a young woman named Emily who spent a lot of time in the Richmond, Virginia hardcore scene. After she graduated from college she toured with her friend’s band and met a guy she was interested in. An acquaintance warned her that he wasn’t a very good person, and that she shouldn’t hang out with him. Emily ended up letting him and his band stay at her apartment one night while they were on tour. He slept in bed with her and they started kissing. It started off consensual, but Emily soon grew uneasy due to the fact that his bandmates were sleeping just outside of the bedroom. Once she announced her discomfort, he got up and locked the door. They eventually fell asleep. Emily woke up to him touching her. She pretended to remain sleeping in hopes that it would end quickly. Emily said, “I was very uncomfortable with it and [was] hoping that he would just stop on his own. And eventually he did after, like, I guess he got what he wanted out of it. And it’s like ruined, like, that – it’s just stuck in my head, in, like, my body and my skin.”

His band had a lot of influence and power in the scene. Emily assumed that regardless of what she said, her abuser would be backed by his friends and fans. Years passed before Emily eventually decided to use the internet to call out her aggressor, which inspired several other women to come forward and share their own abusive experiences within the scene.

I’ve noticed that it’s difficult to ask other women about the lack of representation, respect, and the sexual violence happening in our music community. There is a very obvious hesitation about discussing these topics, as if they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Fear of retaliation is a huge contributor to the silence surrounding abuse within the hardcore fandom.

It’s common to be dismissed for being both female and resilient, but women do not need to adjust their feelings or repress things that happened to them in order to preserve the reputation of others. The values that surround the music we love are inconsistent with violence. So, the fact that violence against women is a common occurrence in the hardcore scene is deeply unsettling.

If we don’t continuously address this issue and have open conversations about it, then those who have never been through it or felt the weight of its devastation might forget that it’s even an issue. It is pivotal to make those who carry the burden of sexual assault aware of the fact that they have support and love.

Hardcore is about doing the right thing in the name of social justice. If we want that justice to be both honest and efficient than it must begin with those within the community. It may cost something to do the right thing, but you should do it anyway. Speak up if it feels right and call out those who hurt others. The only way to get through pain is to address it.

Non-Starters And Not-Quite-Exes

We were sitting at a bar and I had knocked back an entire pint of Guinness while he was nursing something paler. I had a lump in my throat as I searched for literally anything to say that would break the silence between us. In less than two weeks’ time, he would be moving across the country. We had been dating without a label for a few months, and while we agreed that we would stay in touch after he moved, I knew that stuff between us was going to change drastically.

I didn’t want it to; we really, really liked each other and he knew I was taking his impending departure pretty hard. “Would it be easier if I were a jerk to you now?” he asked, smiling. I was unsure, I told him. We laughed.

When long term relationships end, there’s usually some period of time leading up to that point where things are going south. You start to see the cracks getting bigger and bigger until the foundation finally collapses. In the days, weeks, months after the breakup, you can take (some) solace in remembering all the things about your ex you didn’t like. You can remind yourself of why it didn’t work out—why it wouldn’t have worked out. But when a relationship ends before any negative feelings have a chance to develop, you don’t get any of that closure. You realize you never knew the person well enough to find out what you don’t like about them.

While some of my other non-starters have ended for tangible reasons like geography, most ended simply because the other party lost interest. One day they would stop texting back, and once I realized it probably wasn’t because their phone was dead, I’d lose any sense of hope about what lay ahead for us. We were never going to pore over the Sunday New York Times while drinking coffee he made for us. I would never take him to meet my friends for drinks after work. We would never rent movies or make dinner together or any of that gross stuff.

I was talking to a well-meaning person after one of these non-starters ended about how much I missed my almost-but-not-quite ex boyfriend, and she said, “Well, you never really had him.” She wasn’t wrong, but I think that the pain we feel when non-starters end could be lessened if we gave ourselves permission to go through them like we go through more traditional breakups. Instead of pressuring ourselves and our friends to simply “get over it,” what if we admitted it was okay to take some time to grieve?

Whatever grieving looks like to you: hide them on social media. Delete all text, email and app exchanges. Delete their number. Delete pictures. Cry in the shower. Go out dancing with your friends. Stay in on a Saturday night to watch bad TV and order a pizza. Dye your hair. Say you’re going to join a gym. Go once and decide you hate it and just start walking everywhere instead.

It’s painful to feel a connection with someone and then not be able to see where it goes, and pain that goes unacknowledged isn’t good for anyone. So don’t try to tough it out. Don’t try to get over it immediately just because it seems silly to be so upset over someone you were never really “with.” Feel it, and then remind yourself that there’s at least one thing about this person that would’ve driven you up a wall. In fact, probably more than one thing. You just never got to see any of it, and maybe that’s a good thing.

My Pledge Sister Is Dating My Assailant

The title makes me laugh and I know it shouldn’t… but it does. Anyways, the title is pretty self explanatory so I don’t need to write much, which is good in my opinion.

“Honey, no…” are the first words that came to mind when my boyfriend informed me that my pledge sister (a girl I went through the new member process with when I was rushing my sorority in college) is dating the boy who sexually assaulted me freshman year.

I entered college in 2014. When I arrived on campus I felt cultured and sophisticated from frequent travel, yet somehow depressed because I now found myself in a small college town. I went to a rush event; however, I do not need to explain why I chose to smoke and drink and I refuse to explain why I pointed to my assailant and said, “He’s cute I kind of want to get with him,” to my friend. What does matter is that I remember my consciousness going in and out while in my bedroom and having my phone pushed away from me as I tried to read it and text my friends for help. I remember saying no and hearing the reply, “Why? You’re so beautiful?” I had never felt uglier.

The negative comments I received over the next year and a half were heart breaking. Very few people believed my story and wanted to believe that it was a cry for attention. Let me ask the public: why would I, or any woman want that kind of attention? Please fill me in because if I could go back I would not have told a single soul. In fact, it was HIM who told everyone why he was being suspended for two weeks and it was him who told several people that I was “crazy” and a liar. The counseling I received helped me significantly, as did the support from my true friends. Some of those friends included my sorority sisters. I pledged with 14 extraordinary girls who came from diverse backgrounds and had a lot to offer the sorority. I opened up my wounds a full year later with these girls, and felt at peace with everything that had happened.

Now as a 23-year-old kick ass woman, I find myself on my typical early 20s Manhattanite path. I attend graduate school in NYC, go to brunch on Sunday’s, attend overpriced workout classes, and student teach with some of the best educators the state has to offer. One day I wondered: “Why I am blocked (yes, there is an app for that) on Instagram by one of my pledge sisters?” I turned to my boyfriend and shrugged. “I guess she is over me then,” I said, laughing it off.

The next day my boyfriend found out why she blocked me on Instagram (oh, and Facebook too): she is dating that boy from the paragraph I JUST FINISHED ANGRILY TYPING ABOUT. My first thought was “Honey, no…” then my brain did that thing where it processes information (how dare it). I got angry. I got flashbacks of what happened freshman year, and I got angry at HER. I cannot blame him for being interested in her. She’s blonde, has a cool nose piercing, and is pretty alternative. But she also used to be one of my close friends, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why I was more mad at a fellow woman than I was at the man who violated me.

Then it came to me: she is a hypocrite.

This girl was an orientation leader, a tour guide, a sorority sister and an advocate for social justice. The boy who violated me was a hermit who did nothing but grow his hair to an ungodly length and a mustache that did no benefit to his face. He did nothing to make anyone else think that he gives a shit about anyone other than himself. Sure, he was an athlete *slow clap* but he convinced the rest of his team that I was a liar and that I made everything up. But this girl I considered a friend had the audacity to BLOCK me. It is not about losing a follower and it is not about losing her as a friend, because frankly I don’t want to know someone like her. It is about her assuming that she has the authority that she can block me from finding out what she is doing. On top of that, she does not have the right to decide that I cannot handle seeing his face. That is not up to you and it never will be.

To my former sorority sister: you are not an advocate for anyone or anything but yourself, and that is fine, but don’t you dare try and say you respect women if you are dating someone who calls your pledge sister a liar.

*This post is co-published with Bitter Blush, a platform that strives to discuss topics that traditionally make people blush. You can follow the blog on Instagram at @bitter.blush.

Oppose SESTA-FOSTA

Written with Annabelle Schwartz

This week, the Senate is expected to vote on FOSTA-SESTA, a bill-package that will put sex workers’ lives on the line- especially transgender sex workers. The bill is designed to prevent sex trafficking by making websites liable for their online speech. Online platforms are currently protected by a law referred to as Section 230. The proposed legislation would force sites to censor any posts that allude to sex work. The issue with this is that there will be no differentiation between sex trafficking and consensual sex work. If this bill passes, websites that help sex workers screen clients will be shut down increasing the danger for a job that already sees high rates of violence.

Due to the dire economic situations many trans individuals find themselves in because of discrimination in education and the workplace, many trans people engage in underground sex work as a necessary means of survival. According to The National Center for Transgender Equality, people who are transgender are more than twice as likely to be living in poverty than the general population. Despite the prevalence of poverty and low incomes, less than 13% of trans individuals who participate in sex work receive any public aid.

Transgender people who struggle to support themselves financially are often placed in harsh situations due to the stigma, discrimination, and violence they face on a day to day basis. Many turn to sex work to sustain themselves, where they can fall victim to violence and arrest. All sex workers participate in the trade for different reasons. However, every sex worker deserves to be safe from harassment and assault.

By defeating this bill, the transgender community, as well as all sex workers, will have the necessary tools to screen clients, report violence, and find safer employment within this industry. If online sex work communities are shut down, more sex workers will have to move onto the street. And to escape arrest, they often move into alleyways and cars where the rates of violence skyrocket. According to The National LGBTQ Task Force, 30% of U.S. sex workers homicide victims were transgender.

According to The National Coalition of Anti-Violence, the transgender community experiences the highest levels of harassment and violence, often at the hands of police. 72% of hate crimes against LGBTQ people were against trans women. And 90% of those were transgender women of color. Trans people are 3.7 times more likely to experience police violence compared to cisgender survivors, and transgender people of color are six times more likely to suffer physical abuse from the police. We need to call attention to the violence the transgender community faces and protect these internet spaces that allow for a vetting process and ultimately more safety within this line of work.

We’ve created a sample letter for you to sign and send to your senator, or you can use our list of senators (with their D.C addresses) who we believe are the best targets to reach out to about protecting these vulnerable communities. You can also use this letter as a script if you want to call or email your legislators to get in touch with them as soon as possible.

You can download our sample letter to Congress here:

You can also reach your senator by calling the senate switchboard 202-225-3121 and tell them who you want to be connected to.

Please find below a list of senators and their addresses. We chose a diverse list of senators, including eight Republicans, thirteen Democrats, and one Independent. They represent many states because we wanted to reach out to both those that we know already support trans rights and those we need to be working hard for their transgender constituents.

Elizabeth Warren – D – Massachusetts – 317 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Ron Wyden – D – Oregon – 221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg. Washington, D.C., 20510

Bernie Sanders – IN – Vermont – Dirksen Senate Office Building, 332 2nd St NE, Washington, DC 20510

Patty Murray – D – Washington – 154 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

Ted Cruz – R – Texas – Russell Senate Office Bldg 404 Washington, DC 20510

Marco Rubio – R – Florida – Russell Senate Office Building, 2 Constitution Ave NE #284, Washington, DC 20002

Kamala Harris – D – California – 112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

Cory Booker – D – New Jersey – 359 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Tammy Duckworth – D – Illinois – 524 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Doug Jones – D – Alabama – 326 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

John Kennedy – R – Louisiana – SR383, Russell Senate Building Washington, DC 20510

Catherine Cortez Masto – D – Nevada – 204 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Maggie Hassan – D – New Hampshire 330 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Todd Young – R – Indiana 400 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Chris Van Hollen – D – Maryland 110 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Kristen Gillibrand – D – New York – 478 Russell Washington, DC 20510

Mitch McConnell – R – Kentucky – 317 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Chuck Schumer – D – New York 322 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

Pat Toomey – R – Pennsylvania – 248 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510

Lisa Murkowski – R – Alaska 522 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Susan Collins – R – Maine 413 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Brian Schatz – D – Hawaii – 722 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING Washington, DC 20510

Is Grindr A Subculture?

*The featured photos are selections from gaytona.beach, a project highlighting photographer Andrew Harper’s experience on Grindr in Daytona Beach from the age of 19.

In 1979, the British sociologist Dick Hebdige published an extra-thick wad of social science on similarities between subcultures in a book called Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Don’t worry, I read it for you.

If you want to know whether the crowd of people you’re looking at belongs to a subculture, look out for these things: inventive language, distinctive dress, a common favorite music genre, an exclusive media channel, and, most importantly, a bold philosophy that explains their opposition to mainstream culture. In most cases, the subcultures Dick Hebdige studied had at least one other thing in common: heterosexuality.

Mainstream culture has always been a very serious threat to gay men. Masculinity is the norm, heterosexuality is the law. Disobeying either can threaten your livelihood, if not your body. Years ago, you’d get beaten and/or killed. Today, the abuse is more often psychological than physical. And so, for gay men, repressing our identities has always been an act of self-preservation such that the only place gay men can find acceptance, free from the threat of the mainstream, is in an all-gay space.

At least for younger generations, those all-gay spaces are increasingly virtual – they’re supplements to the physical spaces gay subculture has long inhabited (i.e. clubs, bars, bathhouses, community centers).

Enter Grindr, “the world’s largest gay social network app.” Yes, it’s a media channel for gay subculture, but now it’s also a subculture of its own.

This makes perfect sense when you realize that not every gay man uses Grindr and not every Grindr user is a gay man. The ability to self-select into Grindr is part of what makes it a subculture. Those who choose to use it get to know their sexuality in a space that’s intentionally separate and safe from mainstream culture. Curiosity has a place there. Sexual-expressive freedom is Grindr subculture’s philosophy. And those who use the app quickly realize that its users have a language of their own.

On the platform some key terms were carried over from gay subculture – terms like “top,” “bottom,” and “versatile” that describe a gay man’s sexual preferences (the “top” likes to penetrate, the “bottom” likes to receive, and the “versatile” man likes both). But Grindr users often abbreviate them to single letters which are faster and easier to type: T, B, or V.

Among Grindr’s host of custom (sometimes NSFW) emoticons that have their own sub-textual meanings, there are bunk beds – one depicts a man on the top bunk (for the tops) and one depicts a man on the bottom bunk (for the bottoms).

Of course, that library contains a purple eggplant (an emoji that now cross-culturally represents a penis), but there’s also one that’s brown, one that’s white, one shown through a magnifying glass for the less-well-endowed, and one displayed in a polaroid (sent as a substitute for requesting nudes). There’s a peach and there’s a peach with a phone over it for a booty call. There’s a set of handcuffs, a man with a bear paw for the “bears” (those are hairy, bulky, older men), a man in leather chaps wearing aviators, and the lower half of a man wearing a jockstrap.

Grindr users message each other “looking?” or “DTF?” – shorthands that ask whether the person on the other end of the chat is looking for sex right now. Some users even change their profile name to a “looking eyes” (👀) emoji to reach a wider audience.

“Grindr tribes” offer an even deeper dive into a user’s identity and sexual preferences. Bear, Clean-Cut, Daddy, Discreet, Geek, Jock, Leather, Otter, Poz, Rugged, Trans, and Twink describe the physical and psychological categories a gay man identifies with and/or is looking for in a partner. After all, Grindr exists for sexual exploration.

So, Grindr is a subculture that is also its own exclusive media channel. As a subculture, it also has a philosophy and an original language.

To be sure, Grindr’s place and purpose are complicated by its neighbors – Scruff, Growlr, Hornet, etc. I suspect that technological shortcomings are not why the gay community loves to hate Grindr. I think it’s more about our relationship with shame and our relationships with one another. On some level, we love to hate ourselves. What we see in one another reminds us that mainstream culture taught us to hate homosexuality. If you need proof of that, consider the fact that there’s not a homo among us who hasn’t been asked, “Why are gay people obsessed with sex?” or wondered it themselves in a critical tone.

For gay men, the act and topic of sex is not just a rejection of the idea that we ought to hate our sexuality, it’s a rebellion against the idea that we ought to hate ourselves for it. And that’s why there’s hardly a Grindr user I’ve met who hasn’t deleted the app (often seeking out another) and returned to it because gay sex has never been so freely discussed between so many of us as it is there.