There is a particular pornographic photo that I adore—in it a pile of large, bearded men, are cuddling, stroking cocks, and generally lost in bliss. The tint of the photo suggests it was taken in the 1970s, but the classic “bear” look sported by all the men appears crafted, intentional, and contemporary.

When people describe bear culture as dumpy and uncrafted, caught up in conforming to “masculinity,” I think about this photo, imagine the perfume of musk, cigar smoke, sweat, and ass filling the room, the camaraderie experienced in a pile of bears, the pride in body, desire, and that particular hairy look and also the neatly shaved bald heads and magnificent beards, the taut, well-played nipples, the abounding fur, the glorious deep rich laughs and titillating giggles, and the diversity of gender expression represented in a bear pile.

While many folks read fat, hairy bodies as “manly,” “natural” and “unkempt,” I prefer to think of them as wild-crafted, excavated from the elements, unbound to singular notions of gender, disobedient to the capitalist commoditization of the body.

I think of my femme friends with gloriously hairly legs and armpits and wonder how voluptuous bodies and quaffs of body hair can be pigeonholed into “masculinity.” I think of my own sissy spirit, the lovely laughter, tears, and hugs of my bear friends, our effeminate voices, and our delicate smiles. I think the entire notion of bear culture as a site of masculinity is a farce.

As I struggle to understand my own complex relationship to bodies, gender, and desire, I resist the notion that I am fixated on “manly men” and am appalled by the idea of being attracted to “straight-acting men.” I like people transgressing expectations while residing on the extremes of gender or ambiguously residing in the in-between spaces.

I hereby declare my love of the hairy femme, the sissy bear, the androgynous, the flaming biker (yeah, like motorcycles), and the rugged queen. I situate my desire and attraction not within the conventional notions of sexual preference but rather gender expression and I find myself attracted to those whose expressions  simultaneously defy my own expectations and thereby relate to my own experience of gender.

In thinking about sexuality as a psychological approach towards the self and the other, I am most attracted to those who openly express gender ambivalence and reside across rigid poles of “the masculine” and “the feminine” and instead of crafting themselves with cologne, smell and look like people and fuck and love with confidence in their own self-expression and wild desire.

You dear reader are sitting in the park. A well-intentioned, progressive, politically minded hotty comes up to you. You give them the eye.

They say, “Hey sexy! Wanna fuck?”

You say, “Yeah, but just so you know, I’m polyamorous.”

They say, “Oh groovy, I think it would make a great statement about our commitment to social justice, economic theories based in abundance, our refusal to participate in dominant cultural patterns of heteronormative, monogamous, slavery-based relationships and our willingness to challenge our own internal sense of entitlement and culturally constructed desire to ‘own’ an other.”

Suddenly, boner wilted into a soggy mess, pussy withered into labia jerky, you look away searching for a reasonable lay that doesn’t give you the jeepers creepers.

Why?

For you, fucking, polyamory, and relationships aren’t serving a political commitment to progress.  Sure you’re radical. Sure you like to care. Through free will, you carefully navigate matters of the heart by the principle of self-care and autonomy, refusing to conform to a political, philosophical, or theoretical mandate to practice open relationships.

You, dear liberated reader, don’t have to feel shame when you’re jealous, possessive, or awkwardly shy and sluggish to forge new relationships. Hard emotions say nothing about your commitment to social justice other than, “Look at me Stalin, I have feelings, I won’t fucking build Gulags for progress. I’m strong enough to know I don’t have to be perfect to appease the Politically Polyamorous Judge-In-The-Sky who views pain as a sign of personal weakness and underdevelopment.  If the revolution depends on me breaking my heart in ways I don’t want to, fuck the revolution.”

You sweet friend are fully open to the vast array of emotions, even the horrific ones, that you choose to enjoy because you want to be open to the possibilities afforded selfishly to you via polyamory. If you decide you don’t want to deal with those emotions anymore, you say, “Fuck it.  Today, I’m going to do what I want with my life. Perhaps I’ll try monogamy or celibacy.”

Your individual will to decide what you want to do is radical, hot, and sexy. You’re in charge of your shit and you own it.

You look up. I’m there. You give me the wink. I wink back. We romp around like horny horses. The evening ends with whiskey and cuddles.

Fantasy over.

Jerking off to this new you who is committed to matters of the heart and body for personal pleasure and growth rather than a doctrinaire radical position, I cum all over myself, engaging in the only autonomous, fully non-coercive, politically expedient form of romance—masturbation. Next day, I see you. We awkwardly say, “Hello.” Who knows what happens next…

Brutes ostracize, ridicule, beat and malign young queers everyday. Thrown into the edges of society, these victims of homophobia and transphobia often engage in self-destructive behavior in their quests for meaning. Recently, I encountered a mid-twenties bisexual, transgender-identified person who had aligned herself with the Nazi party. My heart broke when I realized in her attempt to deal with social ostracism regarding her sexual and gender identity she grasped for power in whatever she could find—German Nationalism, the National Socialist Party, and a tiny swastika pin to be precise.

At the edges of society, we often suffer from a need to identify with powerful counter-cultural elements. For me, growing up queer meant I identified with the Southern white working class. While I actively fought the racism considered integral to that culture, I appreciated the rebellious, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian attitude espoused by the sexy, bearded men in the Waylon Jennings T-Shirts. Proudly, I listened to country music, rebelling against the prim-and-proper ruling class tolerance surrounding me, moving from Christian towards liberalism, socialism, and ultimately anarchism.

In my bisexual, transgender identified Nazi acquaintance, I hear her express a similar tendency to retreat towards a marginalized, loathed culture, to feel power in rebellion, and to refuse the dominant culture’s capitalism, faux-Democracy, and culture of violence. Despite unsound political logic, her perspective reveals the depressing trend of oppressed people uniting in violence to oppress others.

For years I fought hate groups—Nazis, the Klan, World Church of the Creator, the Minute Men and the John Birch Society. I actively confronted members of these groups at their rallies, demonstrations and protests and struggled to disrupt their uncontested access to the media and the public. I never argued that the state should repress their views but I did argue that the police had no obligation to protect them from anti-racist opposition.

What I never considered, in those years of anti-fascist demonstrations, is that many of those violent racists might be retreating into a powerful subculture because of the ridicule they experienced as children. I wonder how many of them are closeted; I wonder how many identify under the queer umbrella.

My heart breaks when I think of the damage a homophobic/transphobic/misogynist society unleashes on us daily. I wonder how many acts of violence have occurred by a person forced into the closet, ridiculed because of their identity, and unable to cope.

I long for a day when victims of violence refuse to build terrorist nations ala Israel, Germany, and the United States, ascend to power, and engage in acts of genocide. I long for a day when those who might have journeyed from oppressed to oppressor rather choose to maintain their own liberation by striving for liberation with others.

Friendships, while often burdened with similar problems as relationships, rarely end with the clear-cut breakup. Rather they often slowly shrink into nothingness and nobody says a word.

The nice thing about breaking up is that you know where you stand with someone. Typically breakups happen between lovers. New series of rules are negotiated: you can go to the Eagle on Friday nights if I can have Saturdays; you can’t talk to me but don’t hug me; never speak to me again, etc…

Through the breaking up process, the space needed to create a healthy or desirable situation can be built up intentionally. As feelings mend, new rules can be negotiated.

In friendships we often play things by ear, make assumptions, fail to communicate. It is within our inability to communicate broken trust, hurt feelings, jealousy, and other difficult emotions and thoughts that we slowly degrade our friendships into nothingness.

Without a social contract, similar to the relationship breakup and understood across community, a friendship can become a never-ending bout of painful emotions, hurt, and anger that spreads horizontally throughout community through gossip, assumptions, and indirect communication. This situation sucks.

Perhaps we could learn something about clear communication from our relationships and translate that into our unhealthy friendships. Perhaps we could learn to break up and move on with clear rules about communication defined.

Rather than having long, painful, drawn-out friendship deaths, I’d prefer to know where I stand with someone, feel the pain, mourn the loss, and move on. Trying to save a friendship when one half has given up is not worth the damage that it does.

It’s not everyday I put up a blatant AD for something I love on this website…but today’s one of those days…

In a gorgeously sexy poster commissioned for Code Pink and launched at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, badass, brilliant artist-activist Favianna Rodriguez declared “Make Out Not War.”

Celebrating femme anti-war resistance, sensuality, and sexual empowerment, these posters are as joyful, lusty, and sexy as they are righteously  rebellious.

She just announced that she’s selling shirts and posters and as a HUGE fan of her work, I thought all you Q.R. readers with money (yeah…yeah…I know…) should get yourselves some of her merch!

Dear Q.R.

My balls ache something terrible. What’s going on? Do I have an extended case of blue balls? I asked my lover to suck me off. He said “no;” I said “please;” and now he’s pissed. What’s wrong with my balls? What’s wrong with my man?

Dull Ache Down Under

Dear Dull Ache Down Under,

The only thing sucking is your attitude. Don’t blame your lover. All too often, men complain about their “blue balls” as though it is some sort of excuse to get their sweetheart to bend over and give it to them. “Urgh, you’re making me ache. Look what you’re doing to me. Blah Blah Blah.” This behavior more than sucks–it blows.

Now, on to some of the reasons your balls might ache…

As one dear friend I took to the hospital learned, balls ache for all sorts of reasons. Here are several:

1) Kicked in the Balls: Sounds like you have a smack in the nuts coming. Whether you’re kicked, head-butt, racked, or whatever, if you took a blow to the family jewels they’re going to hurt. Your balls can bruise and swell..

2) Microorganisms: Yep. All sorts of tiny little creatures struggle to find a home in your balls. Bacteria can go from your urinary system to into your nuts, and if they do, antibiotics are recommended.

3) Swollen Veins: The veins in your testicles can become varicose (you know, like the veins on your Grandpa’s swollen legs…). Try wearing supportive pants or a jock strap to cut down on the pain.

4) A Fluid Bag: You can also develop a bag of see-through liquid around the testicles that if large enough may need to be surgically removed.

5) Testicular Torsion: Sometimes your testicles get all twisted up and blood supply gets cut off. Everything swells—which sometimes corrects itself. If the twistiness does not correct itself, the balls can die within 6 hours without blood.

6) Blockage (blue balls): Sometimes getting horny without getting off creates a blockage in the sperm-delivery-tubes creating a dull, thumping ache. Don’t be an asshole and demand a blowjob if this happens to you. Jerk-off. You’ll feel better.

Other possible diagnoses include hernias, kidney stones, and testicular cancer.

Long story short, if you have ongoing pain in your balls, don’t be afraid to get it checked out. Nobody wants to bury his balls at a young age.

Yours in Balling,

Q.R.

I have never liked the idea of “sexual orientation.” The implication is that we were born desiring in a certain, irrevocable, unalterable direction and that our sexuality is fixed and rigid. Many advocates of the concept pragmatically argue that sexual orientation is not a choice. “Why would we choose to be this way?”

Why would we not?

Me, I like the idea of sexual preference—living life in a never-ending series of choices, exploring various configurations of beauty, love, attraction, body, and desire. Some might argue that my open-ended, flexible, and fluid relationship to sexuality is indeed a sexual orientation.

Ann Tweedy of the California Western School of Law in San Diego has recently published an article examining the idea that polyamory be protected through employment discrimination statutes by defining polyamory as a sexual orientation.

I like the idea of job protection from those wearing the ermine collar and the powdery wig and judging and punishing our queer lives filled with abounding love. The idea that the legal system confines my sexuality, a multidimensional compass exploding, into a limited, legalistic notion of sexual orientation makes me queasy.

Why? Simply put, many poly people find themselves shifting between open and monogamous contexts. If today I prefer to be mono and tomorrow poly, I would prefer my preference to be respected. If today I want to fuck a man and tomorrow a woman, I don’t want my place of employment questioning the veracity of my sexual orientation.

All nausea aside, Tweedy’s article opens up possibilities for policy makers to consider expanding employment discrimination laws to allow poly people to be safely out of the closet in the workplace without fearing retaliation. This idea sounds wonderful.

Two friends have recently commented on how difficult it is to keep from gawking at people’s boobs and cocks. Both friends sneak quick peeks and turn away. After an onslaught of critiques of objectification, many struggle to know what to do with their nagging desire to stare at the bulging flesh of people surrounding them.

What I’m talking about is “the gaze” and the power of looking: how we see, what we look at, and what our stare implies.

There are many who’d loudly proclaim, “look at my eyes, not my boobs.” Others frame their breasts with tight, low-cut shirts and their cocks with tight, hip jeans begging others to steal a quick peek.

I fear that both the cold objectification of the body and the puritanical demand to shift the focus of the gaze from the body to the eyes represent a mind-body split damaging to a holistic sexuality.  Why should we avert our eyes from others’ boobs and cocks? Should our erotic gaze be destroyed entirely, shifted towards the eyes, or simply repressed into darting, accidental glances at the wonder of the body? Should the beauty of our bodies go unseen by those who fall outside our intimate circle of lovers?

The trouble with being looked at, gazed upon, stared at in all our physical beauty and cultural shame is that we often find ourselves forced to question the broader dynamics of power, privilege, and the right to feel sexual inscribed on our bodies through patriarchy, conventional beauty standards, and heteronormative culture.  When we first acknowledge those dynamics, we lose our desirability within the violence of dominant culture.

Confronting those oppressive values head-on, gaze wandering, and bodies on display, we may find ways to see and be seen without the violence of the system snuffing our desires. I sure hope so.

A dear friend sent me Jasbir Puar’s intriguing editorial from the July 1rst Guardian, Israel’s Gay Propaganda War, about the Brand Israel Campaign, a public relations (aka state propaganda) campaign designed to bring positive attention to the state of Israel by boasting the “gay friendly” nature of the country and contrasting it to the homophobia the Israeli state claims is inherent amongst Palestinians. In claiming to have a progressive stance on LGBTQ rights, Israel attempts to justify and “pinkwash” its genocidal aggressions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The last paragraph of the article sums up neatly the trouble with Israel ‘s use of tolerating LGBTQ people to justify mass brutality, particularly the state’s recent attack on the humanitarian-aid boat, the Freedom Flotilla:

While Israel may blatantly disregard global outrage about its wartime activities, it nonetheless has deep stakes in projecting its image as a liberal society of tolerance, in particular homosexual tolerance. These two tendencies should not be seen as contradictory, rather constitutive of the very mechanisms by which a liberal democracy sanctions its own totalitarian regimes.

What is brilliant about the article is not simply its analysis of Israel but rather Puar’s observation that liberal democracies justify their violence through tolerance. Since the dawn of the U.S. War in Afghanistan, initially waged as an international policing action against rogue terrorists, White House officials have cited the liberation of Afghan women as a motivating factor in continuing the brutal occupation. In escalating propaganda wars against Iran, the United States media, which often turns its head at the murder of LGBTQ people of color at home, widely publicizes images of violence against LGBTQ people suffering under that Islamic regime.

As people who have often been the victims of totalitarian regimes, as queers we have a obligation and historical debt to refuse to let violent states justify their terrorism with our liberation. Our ethical duty to fight for the liberation of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan weighs heavier upon those of us LGBTQ people benefiting from those  Muslims, Jews, and others who have fought and risked their lives for our security.

LGBTQ liberation in the Middle East is inextricably linked to the liberation of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Violent occupations, colonial regimes, and apartheid states should never be favored because they extend tolerance to our communities.

Dear Queer Radical,

What are your favorite lubes? My Mom’s drunk boyfriend recommends KY Jelly, but somehow, I don’t trust everything he says. Any ideas?

Yours Dryly,

Discouraged

Dear Discouraged,

Way to get greasy. Condoms, gloves, and dental dams all require a healthy amount of lube to be both effective and pleasurable. Hand-jobs and fisting all benefit from the pleasures of lube.

A quick note about lube: if you’re using it with latex it needs to be water-soluble. That will keep the latex from disintegrating. So if you’re running short on lube at home, whatever you do, DON’T USE olive oil, vegetable oil, or Criso with your rubbers.

All that old school KY Jelly that your Mom’s drunk boyfriend recommends prove he’s a drunk. Throw that shit out. It’s nasty.

Go to the nearest sex-toy store you feel comfortable at. While I can get off on the shady corner sex-stores in what’s left of red-light districts, they’re often staffed by folks who know more about porn and poppers than lube. Many cities have LGBTQ and women-friendly, sex-positive, and sexucationally oriented sex-toy stores with friendly folks working who love to share their knowledge. These are my favorite stores for finding out new info.

If you’re in an area without access to a sex toy store or are intimidated by going in (something I encourage you to overcome), I recommend getting your lube online at Good Vibrations or Babeland.

Good Vibrations sells my favorite glycerin-free, creamy lube, Liquid Silk. Free from animal testing and animal byproducts, this lube is compatible with latex, plastics, and rubbers. I’ve used it for both anal, vaginal, and hand-jobs and love it for all. One partner boasts Liquid Silk to be particularly grand for the cunt.

Babeland carries my favorite Anal Lube—Maximus. Maximus is thick, wet, and long-lasting. It’s my favorite for ass-play, toys, etc…As a biostatic lube, it keeps bacteria, yeast infections, and fungi spores from spreading. Yippee.

Some people like using Silicone Lube because it is longer lasting and they use less. The trouble with silicone lube is that it shouldn’t be used with silicone toys—they can meltdown.

When I’m hot and heavy in the haystack, I hate to interrupt my delight trying to remember if a toy is plastic, silicone, or hell—even rope. If I’m using toys, I use water-soluble lube. If you’re using a silicone toy with silicone lube, wrap it up with a condom. It’s a good idea anyhow as it will minimize the risk of bacterial infections.

Some folks like Warming Gels. I find they burn my urethra and irritate my skin. Other folks use the controversial desensitizing gels. I don’t and while I believe you have the right to do what you want with your body, I find the idea unpleasant, dangerous, and unnecessary when approaching sex cautiously and holistically. For me, feeling what my body is doing is critical. Pain teaches us infinite lessons.

If you’re jerking off or are fluid bound with a partner, oil-based lubricants such as Crisco can be a lot of fun. Prior to HIV, fisting clubs used Crisco as their lube of choice. Again, DON’T USE IT WITH LATEX!!!

The reality is that I haven’t tried every lube under the sun. If Queer Radical readers have a lube you recommend or want to send me a sample of something you’re manufacturing, well, I never refuse advice or a gift.

All this said, get lubed and get off!

Yours,

Q.R.