It seems like gay people are more sexual, no? Every piece written thus far has had a few common denominators: sex and god. Curious. 

This week I stumbled across my friend’s TikTok discussing the dating and hookup culture within the queer community. You see, our community is sexual. Queer people are not only seen as sexual deviants, but the ways in which our community discusses and promotes sex is, in fact, deviant to the societal expectations towards sex. The expectations of any person in our society are based on the norm, that is: the cisgender heterosexual experience of life. Regardless of if a person fits this demographic, it is expected for them to align with those set expectations. Of course, those expectations allow cis-hetero people to have sex and discuss sex; however, that demographic appears silent in the sex conversation when comparing them to the queer and trans experiences. 

The queer community, my community, was founded upon the notion of deviance. We have sex – not for the purpose of reproduction, but for the purpose of pleasure. This is deviance. This deviance is compounded, relying not only upon the expectations of the cis/hetero, but on the expectations of the normative religion: Christianity. Christianity, and in my own experience, Catholicism, guide their followers to have sex for the purpose of reproduction, for the purpose of expanding and strengthening god’s congregation. God goes so far as to critique even desiring pleasure, with lust and greed among the deadliest of sins. Queer people have sex for fun, to feel good; we pleasure ourselves, we please others, and we allow others to pleasure us.

Queer people are bound by the expectations of people that are not like us. 

I acknowledge that there are queers who do idolize these expectations. There are queers that want to settle down, get married, have kids, and have a life that reflects the ones that most often envelop them. While I respect that everyone has differences in their ideal life, it is certain that we question: is assimilation into normative culture beneficial to our community? My answer is a staunch: no. 

There is an un-refutable difference between the inherent and the traditional. It is traditional for couples to get married, have kids, and build a life together because it is a part of our societal structure. For generations, families have functioned this way. Marriage is built into our governing structures: our income, our taxes, our insurance, and our careers. Marriage has been ingrained into the normative population. This cornerstone, however, is not inherent. Our society built marriage into our structure. Our structure now depends on marriage, but the structure did not create it. Marriage is a tradition. The sexuality of the queer demographic is innate. 

Queerness, like I previously mentioned, is founded upon sexual deviance to the normative. Though the normative is based on the traditional, their traditions have become concrete tenants of opposition within our community. This again, is not to suggest that all queer people are sexual beings. Many queer people have less sex or even no sex, but they still deviate from what is sexually expected from normative members of our society. Our deviance is inherent to our community. 

Whether subconsciously or consciously, queer people are abiding to this innate deviance/opposition. I know sexual deviance to be innate in my own experience. I discovered men kissing on YouTube, in videos that have since been removed, at age 7 or 8. Though I had not yet achieved any sexual maturity, I understood my excitement towards those videos, without realizing I was performing my innate desire to be deviant. Within a few years, I would discover gay porn, furthering my deviance. I masturbated for the first time before age 11, and understood what pleasured me even earlier – discovering the singular jet in my above-ground pool at my childhood home. My senior year of high school – after all things chicago – I found myself on Grindr: the gay hookup app. Prior to downloading Grindr, I had sent a plethora of nudes to strangers on Kik (an online anonymous messaging platform), so strangers were not new to me. What was new was meeting a stranger for the purpose of sex. 

One night, I told my parents that one of my friends was depressed, and needed me to stay the night with her. My parents understood, letting me leave home around 10PM on a school night. I left with an overnight bag and Grindr and Google Maps open on my phone. I was en route to Emporia, nearly an hour away. Shortly after getting on the highway, I called my older sister. 

‘Serena I need to tell you something and I need you not to freak out’, she obliged. 

“I am driving to Emporia to meet up with this guy Travis for the first time. I am sending you his address and his information but I just wanted someone to know where I was headed. I told mom and dad that I was going to a friend’s”

Though certainly un-eased, Serena advised me against it but understood she couldn’t change my mind. When I arrived in Emporia, Travis and I watched a movie, picked his friends up from a party, went back home, gave each other head, and went to sleep. I left as the sun was rising, to get back home in time for school the next day. I never saw Travis again. I was scared that night, but I am happy I went; I am proud I went. I found out later that I nearly sent Serena into full blown panic. She thought that was the night her younger brother would be murdered. Certainly, a terrifying thought. What neither of us understood at that point, was that this was something deeply innate in me – something that was never taught to me. I was never told that gay people have more casual sex; I discovered this on my own, as a means of experiencing it. In the year that would follow, the year I moved to college, my body count would double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and sextuple. Perhaps more if I cared to keep track of the timeline. 

Most people have sex in high school; that is not what is uncommon. The difference is the casualness. The normative population more often has sex with people they know well, or know intimately. Queer populations have sex casually, with people they are not so intimate with – only attaching emotion to sexual pleasure when purposeful. Is this innately deviant? No. Humans, as a species, are sexual creatures. We have the intellectual capacity to recognize our pleasure and act upon that. 

I argue that queers should continue to deviate, to have pride in our deviation to the norm. Queers should continue to have sex, and be vocal about the sex they have – especially now. I believe assimilation is critical in progressing the equality of sexualities. It is wholly understandable that for so long, the queer battle was for marriage equality. Let us not forget though, that before queer marriage was legalized, the battle was for the legalization of sodomy. Our culture was previously constituted of being just as deviant to criminals. The battle for the trans members of our community continues. 

Queer people were legally allowed to have anal penetrative sex in the year 2003. I was 2. 

Queer people were legally allowed to marry in 2015. I was 14

Anal Penetrative Sex & Gay Marriage were legalized 12 years after one another, to the day.

With the affirmation of marriage, queers are now afforded the same legal and financial benefits that the normative population has always received. This is equality; This is not equity. The normative population is benefitted by their demographic characteristics. If our society was equitable, non-normative populations would also be benefitted by their demographic characteristics. Instead, we are expected to conform to the standards of the normative. I dream of the day in which my community will be provided the means of achievement in promotion of our differences; not in their silencing. 

Queer people are not more sexual beings; simply, we allow ourselves to be sexual in the way that normative populations do not. Hookup culture is an innate part of our culture. Queers have always had sex and been vocal about it: Bathouses, Clubs, Cruising, Arcades, Dating Apps, Hookup Apps – it is clear that hookup culture changes forms… the tradition of how a hookup occurs has changed. Clubs are tradition; Apps are tradition. Our desire to be sexual is innate.

A stark difference in the culture between hetero- and homo-, an existence based upon the singular or the multiple, for the multiple and the singular, respectively. My sister has often feared the repercussions of the hookups I partake in; and I understand that from her perspective, this is rightfully so