Columns

Before anyone assumes anything. I am a (gender)queer guy who also loves vaginas. I think they are amazing and powerful. After all without the gifts of generations of women none of us would be here in the first place. I really hate the rubbish that some gay bois express around women’s bodies/people with vaginas. I have overheard/participated in horrific misogynistic conversations in my time. I can now clearly say that I think it is really important that as queer masculine people we step up and show that we have learned the lessons of our own struggles. The denigration of all bodies must stop. We must start by honouring the sacredness of everyone’s genitalia. (And FYI when I say everyone that means trans and intersex folks too.)

Besides vaginas I love cocks and ears and fingers and arse-holes. I love that bit of your arm that is on the opposite side to your elbow. I love frenula and perieums. I love hairy bodies. I love the clothes that go on and come off bodies, the ways they are perfumed and cared for. I love sex toys and porn. I love gorgeous, generous plump bodies and currently am living with/loving a person with a hot skinny body.

I love the transformative potentials of sex when we talk about it (or have it) publicly. Not being able to talk about sex in public can contribute to people feeling that the sexy things they do alone or together are shameful, embarrassing or unnatural. It can lead to certain people being left out of wider understandings of ‘being sexy’ or even possessing a sexuality altogether, like young people, and older people and people who live with disabilities. Not talking about sex and sexuality can lead to people making uninformed decisions about their bodies - whether this be decisions around their sexual health and reproduction, or around the kinds of relationships they do or don’t get into/out of.

What I really want to do is shout, and sing and dance and celebrate all of the different bodies in the world, and the diverse ways that these bodies come together intimately and pleasurably. I want to celebrate the bodies that reproduce, and those that don’t. I want to honour the decisions of the people who have abortions, and those who don’t. I want to high-five the people who decide that sex is not for them, at this time, or into the future, and those who want to have it all the time. Most of all I want to fly a plane up into the sky over Dunedin on a clear and windless day and bomb this city with ‘love your body’ stickers and quality lubricant.

Dame La Di Da