The Quietly Coercive Nature of “Vanilla” Sex

Sex is a buffet of endless, diverse options — and none of them are required.

Two queer men in leather at Folsom Street East 2007, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve gotten a few really great, conversation-provoking questions about sex & kink in my anonymous Tumblr ask box recently, so I’m taking a moment here to organize all my responses together.

And since I get so many questions about sex, BDSM, cruising, and kink these days, and find discussing these topics so intrinsically rewarding, I’ve decided to make it a regular feature on my Medium page. For now, I’m going to be calling this new feature Sex Liberation, or Sex Lib for short — because my writing pushes for us to collectively liberate our sexualities from oppressive forces such as transphobia, patriarchy, white supremacy, and ableism — but also because I want to see us free up our notions of what sex and pleasure even are.

Sex can encompass everything from rubbing one’s genitals against a stuffed animal, to writing giantess erotica, to roleplaying a kidnapping scenario with a partner, to watching two other people have sex, to licking someone else’s feet, but you don’t often hear people acknowledge it. Unconventional forms of sexual expression are so under-discussed that people with unusual kinks and highly specific squicks rarely believe they are “allowed” to just be who they are and pursue…