Know Your Status

It was a Monday. I went to the Bryan Center to participate in the Know Your Status program. I’ve done this before. Ever since I became sexually active, I have gotten tested for HIV and other STI’s; however, this time was different. I was not going for a regular check-up. I did not go into it assuming that the test was going to come out negative. I went because one of my past sexual partners had contacted me. He told me that he just tested positive for HIV and that it was advisable that I do the same. I was scared. So many thoughts were running through my mind.

HIV does not discriminate. I know that as an educated college student who practices safe sex and who is not a drug user, I have felt removed from the virus. It is something I have read much about and am fully aware of the statistics, but I never thought that it would hit so close to home. I took the obvious precautions to be safe, but always felt that they were at times unnecessary.

It is extremely important that as sexually active individuals, we know our status and the status of those we are engaging in sexual intercourse with.

While I was sitting waiting for the results, my mind was racing. We were safe. We thought we knew each other’s statuses. We did everything “right,” yet here I was in a situation that was only supposed to happen to people who did “wrong.” While my test did come out as negative, my life has been forever changed. This has been one of the scariest weeks of my life and no one should ever have to go through this fear. I urge everyone who reads this to go out and get tested and continue getting tested for the rest of your life. There is no excuse not to and there is never a reason to stop getting tested.

Sex, Sex, Sex and More Sex

This semester I'm in a class on sex work. The class is divided into four sections: prostitution, sex trafficking, exotic dancing and pornography. Throughout the semester we have exclusively talked about sex work in the context of heterosexual individuals. However, when we got to the section on pornography, we did extensive work on gay pornography, including watching clips and documentaries that showed explicit scenes of anal and oral sex between two men. We had seen many of these sorts of clips between heterosexual couples, so it only seemed logical that if I have to be subjected to watching heterosexual sex, then the rest of the (presumably straight-identified) class should have to watch gay sex.

I was looking forward to analyzing a type of sex that I am used to, yet was also worried that the class reception would be overtly homophobic and only serve to invalidate my own sexual desires. As the clip was starting I held my breath. The two boys start kissing. I look around the room. Everyone is still watching and no one is squeaming in their seats yet. Clothes start coming off. People are still watching. The oral sex begins. Everyone is still watching. I am shocked. Even the straight-identified men in the room are still looking. However, there's still more to go. The anal sex starts. People are still watching with their academic eye. Not at all the reaction I was expecting. Then one of the boys sucks on another ones toes. The class erupts in an expression of disgust.

Gayle Rubin, in her transformative essay "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," describes a hierarchy of sexual acts with heterosexual, monogamous sex on one end and fetishistic sex on the other. She states that "as a result of the sex conflicts of the last decade, some behavior near the border is inching across it." Has our society advanced to the point where gay sex is seen as an appropriate form of sex?

While I do think the positive reception in my class is due to the progressive nature of my classmates and not an overall societal advancement in sexual thought, I do think that we have come a long way in destigmatizing sex between members of the same sex. In the six years since sodomy was deemed unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas our society has gradually become open to all types of sex between consenting adults. I hope that in the future, we will only an increase in the acceptance of all types of consensual sex acts.

"Oh Hell No! Grrl, hold my earrings."

I wear earrings. Not studs. Not diamonds. Earrings. Big gold hoops, loud peacock feathers, pearls, the stuff you see hanging from the ears of prostitutes and high-fashion models (or at least that’s what I channel when I wear them). They are flashy, gaudy and, in a word, extra. Do I wear them for attention? Maybe. But do I genuinely believe that they are hot and that I look fierce as hell in them? Hell yea. They are how I want to present myself to the world. However, they are not how many in the world believe I should present myself. I get the most glaring of stares from many people on campus.

I never understand this. If, as a society, we are so attached to gender roles why would we cast out the gay individual who identifies with a non-normative gender? In an odd way, that almost completes the circle and normalizes the individual. I am attracted to men. I have a gender expression that is largely feminine. That is fairly normative within the crazy bounds that society is enforcing. While I find this intriguing, I am simply stating an observation and not making an argument for the normalization of non-normative sexualities and gender expressions as long as they still uphold traditional male and female roles. I personally believe that gender and sexuality are not linked in any way and that both are fluid and do not fit into any kind of binary. I sense that the general public is beginning to grasp an understanding of sexuality outside of the binary that we have created and to not believe that one sexuality is more "natural" than others. Yet gender is still seen as a largely biological category. That it is not. Gender is a performance, and I for one am no back-up dancer who is relegated to the standard role.

Everyone on campus knows I’m gay. I am very vocal about it and anyone who’s talked to me knows that my gay identity is central to my personhood. While I do hear disparaging remarks and slurs directed at me on a fairly regular basis, they are usually unoriginal and uninspired and I simply brush them off. However, the attacks I receive about my gender expression are much more extreme. These are difficult to ignore. These are the ones that make me lose sleep at night. These are the ones that make me second guess myself in the mirror every morning, pondering whether or not to “butch” up my image.

When it reaches that point of the day that I have had enough of the stares and the snickers and I am seconds from calling out the person on the C-1 for giving me their stank face, the sorority girl turns to me and goes “cute earrings, where did you get them?” Then I talk to the cashier at Chick-Fil-A who compliments me on my new pair and we have a short conversation about fashion and shopping. At the end of the day many people see me as the raging homosexual who is deviant from the natural laws of the penis that define the boundaries of my masculinity. However, there are also many who see me as a trend-setting genderqueer with a social message to bring to the Duke community. It is these conversations that come out of the most unlikely of situations that reassure that progress is being made and that despite all of the negativity in the world, we can construct communities of positivity and love.