Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.
It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.
On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.
I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"
That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.
Never.
These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.
And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.
Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.
You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.
But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.
That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.
It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.
Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.
Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.
Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.
They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.
But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.
I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."
(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.
Fucker.)
But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.
I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.
But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.
The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.
That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.
The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.
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aware of his bisexuality steve (steddie, buckingham)
“Is that a hickey?” Comes out of Steve’s mouth without permission. But there it is, bright purple and red against the slope of her neck. She’s been walking kind of funny this morning, too. He’d assumed her period came early, but… “Rob, did you—“
Eddie fumbles the coffee mug he was pulling down. Chrissy freezes, face turning white with fear. Robin whips around, face bright red, and slaps a hand over her neck.
“Bathroom!” She yelps. “Bathroom now!”
“Wait,” Eddie says, setting the mug down with trembling hands. “It was me. Sorry, man.”
Steve stares at him, unimpressed. Why the fuck would he lie about—
He looks at Chrissy again, who takes a nervous step back, and it clicks.
“Right,” he says, nodding quickly. “You. You gave Robin a hickey. Had totally awesome sex that she didn’t even tell me about.” He directs that last bit at Robin pointedly. He told her almost immediately when he lost his guy-ginity. Traitor. “Yep. Sure. Got it.”
Eddie blinks, confused. Robin buries her face in her hands.
“Oh my god, calm down,” she groans. “That’s not going to work. Steve’s cool.”
“Cool?” Chrissy asks, still looking ready to bolt.
“Super cool,” he assures her. “The coolest. So incredibly cool, even if my best friend didn’t even tell me when she lost her virginity.”
“Steve!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “But I am going to need details, Buckley. We can go over what worked, and what needs more oomph.”
“Oh my god, can we talk about this anywhere else,” Robin groans, at the same time Eddie asks, “What, so you can get off on it later?”
“What,” Steve says.
“You think two girls are hot, is that it?” He’s got a sneer on his face now, but Steve’s more observant than Dustin gives him credit for. Even if he wasn’t, it’d be hard to miss how hard his hands are shaking, the nervous tilt to his mouth.
“Ew.” Steve’s face screws up. “Dude, no. It’s Robin.”
“Hey, fuck you,” Robin breaks in, from where she’s started comforting Chrissy. “You thought I was hot for at least a summer.”
His mouth drops open in betrayal. “We agreed to never talk about that again!”
“Can’t help being sexy,” she coons. Chrissy giggles wetly. “You wanna get married, Harrington? Have my babies? Stay home and raise six little nuggets while I bring home the bread?”
“I hate you,” he informs her. “Hate you so much. We’ll have a nice, heterosexual wedding and share a sad, heterosexual kiss, and you’ll carry me over the threshold of our nice, heterosexual house, and we’ll have boring, heterosexual sex that gives us nice, heterosexual babies, because we are so heterosexual and happy in our suburburban house in our nice little heterosexual town.”
He’s honestly kind of proud of himself for saying heterosexual so many times. Usually he fumbles words with that many syllables, especially after that many times in a row.
Chrissy is outright laughing, now, endearing little snorts making their way between giggles. Eddie is looking between them like they’re a puzzle he can’t piece together. Robin grins.
“I’ll cuck you with the secretary.”
“Not if I cuck you first. You’ll be away all day in that office of yours, and I need someone big and strong to carry all the new furniture I ordered.”
“I knew it! I knew Timmy wasn’t mine!”
“Oh, but I couldn’t help myself,” he swoons. “Mark was just so sweet, with his bulging biceps and hand flexes, all hot and sweaty from helping poor little me while you were away! You know I’m weak to curly hair and brown eyes, Rob, how’s a man supposed to resist?”
“Fag,” she says, not without affection.
“Dyke,” he shoots back.
“Cocksucker.”
“Carpet—“
“Okay,” Eddie breaks in, clapping his hands. He and Robin both startle, and so does Chrissy from where she’s been watching them like a particularly interesting tennis match. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Robin lost her virginity and didn’t even tell me,” Steve says immediately, like he’s tattling to the principal.
“Steve doesn’t seem to understand the concept of waiting,” Robin retorts.
“I told you when I had gay sex,” he whines, and Eddie chokes. “I hate you. See if I ever give you tips again.”
“Oh, is that what you meant?” Chrissy asks. “Please don’t stop. They were good tips.”
Robin flushes all the way down to her toes.
“You like boys?” Eddie wheezes.
“Oh,” Steve blinks. “Yeah? I thought you knew.”
“You thought I—how would I know?”
The fuck is that supposed to mean? Steve’s been flirting with him for months!
“Robin always says we can sense each other! You sensed her.”
“You told him?” Eddie’s mouth drops open, and Robin looks sheepish.
“She didn’t have to,” Steve snarks. “You’re flagging in Hawkins, man. Was I supposed to miss it?”
“You know what flagging is?”
“Again, in case you missed it, I fuck men.”
“Fuck,” Eddie mutters. “Fuck! Christ, I can’t believe this. You’re, like, the epitome of heterosexual. I spent half of high school having to hear about how much pussy you were getting. Why are you not straight?”
“Wow, Eddie,” he deadpans. “Are you saying just because I like men and woman, I’m not queer enough? That’s kind of homophobic of you, man.”
“Yeah, Eddie, wow,” Robin says. “I thought you were better than this.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie says. “I feel like I need to lie down. My entire worldview just shattered.”
“I have a couch?” Chrissy offers shyly. “Or a bedroom, if you need a minute away.” Fuck, Steve kind of adores her. Especially since she’s apparently vicious n bed, if the five other hickies he counts just from Robin bending down a little to whisper in her ear are any indication. Good for her.
“Don’t worry, Eddie,” Robin says, with a glint in her eye that means he’s either going to love or hate what comes next. “If it helps, Steve’s never fucked a man in his life.”
Eddie’s brow furrows, looking between the two of them. “So…you’re just making fun of me?”
He looks a little angry now, and Steve can’t make heads or tails of this conversation because, “What the hell, Rob, yes I have—“
“Oh, so suddenly you’re the one doing the fucking?”
“Stop making fun of me for taking it!”
Eddie lets out an honest to god moan that he immediately slaps his hand over his mouth to cover up. “Right,” he says fervently. “Okay. I need to lie down, like, for real.”
They watch him stride down the hall, so fast he’s almost running, and slam the door closed behind him.
“I could totally top,” he mutters to Robin as something that sounds vaguely like muffled screaming echoes down the hall. “I top girls all the time. It’s not my fault prostates are a gift from God.”
“Uh, you top because all the girls you fuck are from small town Indiana. If one of them brought out the strap you’d drop to your knees so fast—“
“That’s—I like topping!”
“Your favorite position is cowgirl. Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“I will show Chrissy your baby pictures,” he hisses. Robin makes a face at him. Chrissy nods excitedly from where she’s still tucked under Robin’s arm.
“Oh what’s that?” Robin practically shouts. “You like being pressed against walls and ravished? You want someone to tie you up and have their filthy way with you? Is that what you said, Steve?”
Another noise from the bedroom. He narrows his eyes at her. “What are you doing?”
“Helping,” she says sweetly. “You’re both hopeless.”
“I told you he’s shy!”
“Eddie?” Chrissy asks. “Shy?”
“Yeah, okay, I was confused too, but I figured it was the romance! He told me he hasn’t actually been in a relationship before, I assumed he was nervous to take that step.”
“Yeah, but dingus,” Robin says sweetly. “You’re missing a puzzle piece here. He thought you were straight. He thought he was flirting with his straight best friend he didn’t have a chance in hell with, and then he finds out that said best friend likes taking it up the ass and men with brown eyes.”
“Oh,” Steve says, realization dawning. “Oh, fuck. What if he doesn’t like me like that?”
Robin smacks the back of his head. “Why are you stupid?”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Chrissy says. “Like, really don’t have to worry about that.”
“I’m not coming over tonight,” Robin says. “I’m gonna stay with Chrissy again. Er…if that’s okay?”
“That sounds amazing.” Chrissy beams, and Robin turns red again.
“Yeah, I’m going to stay with Chrissy again tonight. You are going to invite Eddie to stay the night when he gets done with his little crisis, and then we’re getting lunch at the diner tomorrow and you can tell me about it before our shift.”
“Right,” Steve says. “Right, I can do this. I’ve invited guys over before, how hard can it be? It’s just Eddie. But that was hotel rooms, not my house and my bedroom with my shitty wallpaper. And it’s Eddie. Fuck, what if I’m shit at it? Robin, what if I’m actually bad at sex and everyone who’s ever said I was good was lying because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings? Oh my god, I’m totally bad at sex.”
“Woah, dingus, slow down. I think we took the mind meld too far, you’re turning into me.”
“If it helps, I don’t think you’re bad at sex,” Chrissy says. Steve and Robin look at her, and she flushes. “Because of the tips! Not because—I’ve never slept with you, but some of my friends did, and I got three orgasms out of last night, so…”
“Oh thank God,” he breathes. “I was worried for a minute.” Then he raises an eyebrow at Robin, and holds out his hand for a high five. She slaps it, begrudgingly proud of herself, and then takes the hand to pull him into a headlock that’s honestly more of a hug than anything.
“You’re fine,” she whispers in his ear. “You’re great at sex, as you keep telling me. What’s more, you’re funny, charming, handsome, brave, caring—“
“Aww, Robin, are you getting sappy on me?”
“Plus Eddie literally moaned in front of you when he found out you bottomed. I really don’t think there’s a way to fuck that up.”
Steve grins. “He did do that. I’m going to make so much fun of him later.”
“So,” Eddie says with a smirk, “men with brown eyes?”
“Hey man, don’t look at me. Blame Jonathan.”
Now Eddie looks stunned, mouth dropping open. “Byers?” He says, sounding betrayed. “You have a crush on Byers of all people?”
Steve feels offended on Jonathan’s behalf. “What’s that supposed to mean? Jonathan’s a good guy!”
“I guess.”
“What do you mean you guess? He’s sweet, passionate, good with kids, nice eyes. Can pack a punch. I mean, what’s not to like?”
“Uh, didn’t he steal your girlfriend?”
He waves that off. “That was, like, years ago, man. We’re cool now.”
“Right, okay,” Eddie mutters. “Well have fun with Byers, I guess.”
It clicks. “Oh,” he says. “Oooh. You’re jealous.”
Eddie splutters. “Jealous? I’m not—I don’t—you’re jealous!”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yes,” Eddie says resolutely, not looking at him.
“Right,” Steve agrees. “Well, if I am jealous, maybe I should know that I got over Jonathan years ago, and have since moved on to brighter, hopefully more attainable pastures than my ex’s ex.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“A different man with brown eyes?” He suggests. “Who is also good with kids, and passionate, and…” he trails off, suddenly realizing all those times Robin made fun of him might not be based on nothing. “Oh my god, I have a type. Shit, I have to tell Robin she was right.”
“I figured that was a common occurrence.”
“Shut up. Where was I going with this? I had a point.”
“You were telling me how awesome I am?”
“Oh, suddenly it’s you we’re talking about?”
“I mean,” suddenly Eddie looks shy, and Steve can’t help but think even with the change in context he might have been right when he told Robin Eddie was nervous about being in a real, romantic relationship, “isn’t it?”
He feels himself smile, slow and wide and probably more revealing than he means it to be. “Yeah,” he says, in a tone he knows Robin would call soppy, “it is.”
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To all the new, young MCR fans out there who are just finding them during this tour - you will never know what it was like to be a fan back before and during the hiatus.
And that's a good thing.
I have been following My Chemical Romance since I was ten years old. MCR was the band that the freaks liked. The band that young queer kids were called fags and dykes for liking. Someone once called them the "poster child for suicidal depression," and they aren't wrong. We watched the band struggle with drugs and drinking and idolized how much they were able to do while blackout on tour, because if they could do something so powerful at such a disadvantage, then maybe we could, too. We watched the popularization of "guyliner," because having a term for men wearing makeup could make it an ironic fashion statement instead of a deliberate choice that would get you left bloody and unconscious on the floor of a gas station bathroom. We watched these guys destroy themselves, and we saw ourselves in them because we were destroyed, too. We wanted to believe that we could be just as important, no matter how broken we were, and we found shared experiences at concerts and cafeterias and skate parks and libraries, with other fucked up kids that wanted to listen to the guys that didn't care if people called them gay. The guys that made out on stage to the jeers of thousands of people and got bottles of piss thrown at them but kept doing it anyway. The guys that played with gender and sexuality and everything on the fringes of acceptability, in their lyrics and their performance and the way they treated each other.
This was important. It was life-saving. It provided a comparatively safe space in an unsafe cultural environment for the freaks to find comfort in. It was also hugely and dangerously unhealthy.
I've talked at length to my friends about how healing and lifechanging this tour has been for me, and I want to illuminate that for these young fans that are falling in love with MCR like I did when I was their age. When we were kids, most of our heroes were already dead. They died young, had tragic lives, and we saw ourselves in them. I fully believed MCR would end up the same way. It would have been so easy to be martyrs - to die young and beautiful. Gerard said it himself, back in the day, that MCR was destined to die young in a car crash and stay beautiful forever, and I think he truly believed that.
So they broke up. And, like a miracle, things started to change. They got clean. Got married. Had kids. Not just Gee, but the lot of them. They aged out of the 27 club, and then out of their 30s, and they only seemed to continue to thrive. Today, in 2022, Gerard Way is 45 years old. He has wrinkles. He has a daughter who is older now than I was when she was born. And they are touring again.
The cultural change from when I was a teenager to now, when you guys are, is monumental. It's insane. It's fantastic. Back in the day, Gerard made some occasional comments about playing with gender presentation (that all us trans people, including those of us that didn't even know yet, hunted down and cherished and kept in our chests for safekeeping), but the idea of doing something so flagrant as headlining Riot Fest in a dress was ludicrous. It would have gotten him booed (still did, even now). It could have gotten him killed. The fact that Gerard Way has stepped on stage three separate times this tour in a dress (so far! it's not over!) is such an incredible, monumental change from when I was a kid and I am so, so happy for you to be experiencing it as kids.
I had a cry about this at a P!ATD concert in 2018, after seeing preteens running down the halls in pride flags, and I feel even more strongly about it now than I did then. That you're able to talk openly about Gerard's gender performance without fear, that you're able to hear them go by he/they pronouns, that you're able to interact with other young fans in the wake of MCR's revival in a safe environment and take in the messages that are at the core of what they stand for? These are beautiful fucking things.
You can't know what it was like, growing up with MCR back in the day. But you get to know what it's like to grow up with them now. Cherish that. In Detroit, Gerard told us to take our meds, and reminded us that we made it. They made it. They fought through the hard parts, fought the demons, and came out the other side better for it. As you watch them put those demons to rest from concert to concert, know that there are older fans cheering you on, so fucking happy to see you sharing this experience with us, and so excited to see what way this changes you. We know it changed us.
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[“Why not identify as bi? That’s a complicated question. For a while, I thought I was simply being biphobic. There’s a lot of that going around in the gay community. Most of us had to struggle so hard to be exclusively homosexual that we resent people who don’t make a similar commitment. A self-identified bisexual is saying, ‘Men and women are of equal impor- tance to me.’ That’s simply not true of me. I’m a Kinsey Five, and when I turn on to a man it’s because he shares some aspect of my sexuality (like S/M or fisting) that turns me on despite his biological sex.
There’s yet another twist. I have eroticized queerness, gayness, homo- sexuality – in men and women. The leatherman and the drag queen are sexy to me, along with the diesel dyke with greased-back hair, and the femme stalking across the bar in her miniskirt and high-heeled shoes. I’m a fag hag.
The gay community’s attitude toward fag hags and dyke daddies has been pretty nasty and unkind. Fag hags are supposed to be frustrated, traditionally feminine, heterosexual women who never have sex with their handsome, slightly effeminate escorts – but desperately want to. Consequently, their nails tend to be long and sharp, and their lipstick runs to the bloodier shades of carmine. And They Drink. Dyke daddies are supposed to be beer-bellied rednecks who hang out at lesbian bars to sexually harass the female patrons. The nicer ones are suckers who get taken for drinks or loans that will never be repaid.
These stereotypes don’t do justice to the complete range of modern faghaggotry and dyke daddydom. Today fag hags and dyke daddies are as likely to be gay themselves as the objects of their admiration.
I call myself a fag hag because sex with men outside the context of the gay community doesn’t interest me at all. In a funny way, when two gay people of opposite sexes make it, it’s still gay sex. No heterosexual couple brings the same experiences and attitudes to bed that we do. These generalizations aren’t perfectly true, but more often than straight sex, gay sex assumes that the use of hands or the mouth is as important as genital-to-genital contact. Penetration is not assumed to be the only goal of a sexual encounter. When penetration does happen, dildos and fingers are as acceptable as (maybe even preferable to) cocks. During gay sex, more often than during straight sex, people think about things like lubrication and ‘fit’. There’s no such thing as ‘foreplay’. There’s good sex, which includes lots of touching, and there’s bad sex, which is nonsensual. Sex roles are more flexible, so nobody is automatically on the top or the bottom. There’s no stigma attached to masturbation, and gay people are much more accepting of porn, fantasies, and fetishes.
And, most importantly, there is no intention to ‘cure’ anybody. I know that a gay man who has sex with me is making an exception and that he’s still gay after we come and clean up. In return I can make an exception for him because I know he isn’t trying to convert me to heterosexuality.
I have no way of knowing how many lesbians and gay men are less than exclusively homosexual. But I do know I’m not the only one. Our actual behaviour (as opposed to the ideology that says homosexuality means being sexual only with members of the same sex) leads me to ask questions about the nature of sexual orientation, how people (especially gay people) define it, and how they choose to let those definitions control and limit their lives.
During one of our interminable discussions in Samois about whether or not to keep the group open to bi women, Gayle Rubin pointed out that a new, movement-oriented definition of lesbianism was in conflict with an older, bar-oriented definition. Membership in the old gay culture consisted of managing to locate a gay bar and making a place for yourself in bar society. Even today, nobody in a bar asks you how long you’ve been celibate with half the human race before they will check your coat and take your order for a drink. But in the movement, people insist on a kind of purity that has little to do with affection, lust, or even political commitment. Gayness becomes a state of sexual grace, like virginity. A fanatical insistence on one hundred percent exclusive, same-sex behaviour often sounds to me like superstitious fear of contamination or pollution. Gayness that has more to do with abhorrence for the other sex than with an appreciation of your own sex degenerates into a rabid and destructive separatism.”]
pat califa, public sex: the culture of radical sex, 1994, 2000
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