uardito

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a religion to believe in.

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In defense of taking and sending nudes

Big budget pornographers and pretty much all advertisers have oddly similar and narrow views on sexy.

These kinds of muscles in these places. These skin colors. These eye colors. Unless we’re doing one of the exotic angles: Can you do the bear? The I-swear-this-isn’t-pederasty twink? (No judgments.) The submissive Asian? The aggressive Black top? Can you do Latin heat, papi?

And honestly, I never could.

As a kid, this would really bother me. I’d beat off to Corbin Fischer-type crap that left me feeling sexually inert, incapable of creating a sexual response in someone. I’m too dark for mainstream stroke material, not Latin enough for the fetishists. Plus, I was never in as good of shape as them. While acne and life’s other peculiarities left their marks on my skin, they somehow never touched theirs; how could I possibly think I was sexy?

I wondered how to find other young gay guys and Corbin Fischer filled the boy I was with such fears of isolation. If that’s who I was looking for, I knew they were nowhere to be found, nowhere within my experience anyway.

If you think about it, that’s a weird place to be in: desexualized, filled with sexual desire and nowhere to put it. I wonder what the fallout from that might be?

The Fall of the Power of Porn

Today, pornographers are going out of business “No one wants to pay for porn anymore.” Honestly, for me, money has less to do with it; I’m just not beating off to their videos. I don’t think they’re hot. I’m not feeling their models. I’m not feeling their videos’ shallow, surreal sexual hookups. It fetishizes sex that’s impossible to have with people who barely exist.

More shallow than Grindr? Yes. Much. Next to porn, even next to the normalizing and desexualizing mainstream gay political discourse, online dating or cruising in general is a thought-provoking and radical reclamation of sexual power.

It starts with writing our profiles. It starts with taking sexualized pictures of ourselves. It becomes dangerous and radical when we send those pictures.

They often play a role in how we negotiate sex with each other. And suddenly we’re not looking to unreal and exaggerated bodies of porn–we’re sexualizing the people we’re actively trying to have sex with as opposed to trying to push our sexual partners and sex to look more like porn.

Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/598/

Outside that, it empowers us to see ourselves sexually and have that reaffirmed by other people’s sexual attraction, even if we have no intention or even ability to touch those enjoying our digital depiction. Don’t think for a moment that I’m above this. People have either seen me naked or masturbated with me, people as close as down the street to some on the other side of the world. The latter case was particularly important when I was living in a part of the country where I wasn’t seen as that attractive. I could hop online and be reminded that I had sexual power, though I felt mostly powerless at my digs in Georgia at the time.

Cock blocked by sexual panic

Of course, abandoning the sexual institutions of old doesn’t mean that they’ve abandoned us. Respectability, fear, modesty, shame: they’re all hallmarks of this discussion.

Watch, by way of an example, RJ Aguiar’s Dick Pic Etiquette which in the course of only seven minutes manages an advertisement for a new dating platform AND provides a tour of heteronormative sexual pathology and anxiety. (I pick on RJ here only because I’m a big fan of his work, but what he says there echoes idiotic stuff said on national and international television by every other reputable person in news.) He alternates between classist tropes — like the idea that our sexual propositions not be exclusively sexual but also include some bourgeois notion of artistic value — to cataloging every way sexualizing ourselves could lead to disaster, including legal peril and the fear of exposure should any of our pictures stay on any networkable devices…

Me impersonating RJ safeguarding his erotic self-portraiture in one of the only non-networkable devices in my apartment.

Listening to him and other pundits go off, I’m reminded of the history of hysteria regarding sex that’s haunted us for centuries: The sometimes comical, sometimes downright horrifying efforts to prevent children from masturbating in the 18th and 19th century (Buzzfeed article, MentalFloss article); various sexuality-inspired hysterias in the 20th century like the McMartin trial (about sex abuse in education at the end of the 20th century); and the modern day paranoia about transfolk who need to pee.

Not to say that the anxieties of RJ and his hysterical kin are entirely unfounded, but it’s so easy for him and other people doing the committed monogamy thing to be terrified by the lives of people who are doing things differently. They have no skin in the game. They don’t have to cruise for sex or love when they’re horny or lonely. This fear mongering justifies decisions that they’ve already made and distances themselves from parts of their lives they’re eager to forget. Their hysteria encourages heteronormativity, encourages traditional values, encourages pursuing relationships just like your probably-miserable straight parents did and protects boring porn and a hateful ad industry.

Rejecting this sexual morality and hysteria is not always easy. That rejection threatens pillars of American society (probably only nominally). But by rejecting that we gain power over our sexual fantasies and capacities.

If you’re capable of sexual fantasy, you’re capable of sex. If you’re capable of sex, you’re capable of being sexy, of being seen sexually by yourself and others.

If you’re this far and have a camera phone, you’re a few short clicks away from me and a bunch of other deviants masturbating to you.

Relish that power.

And with it, find sex and love on your own damn terms.

-Santi

Santi fell in love for the first time as a child in Georgia and for the second time as a young man in Brooklyn. Today, he lives in Miami where he’s convinced that derechistas are ready to run him out of town. Santi continues his love of photography, both in the area of auto-erotic portraiture and otherwise, on Twitter and Instagram at @uardito.

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character development

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I read like Jaden Smith. Fight me

Jaden Smith just woke my game up with this 😳

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I really hope someone finally takes the time to address Steven’s feelings in all of this instead of immediately using him as a therapist for other characters like he’s been doing for…. 5 seasons now…

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Let that bitch know 

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As critical as I am of "Love, Simon" and it's romanticization of the closet, I will give it this: I think it sets a good standard of how straight parents and families should treat kids who come out. And imurdad: you're trash. You and your weeping wife are trash.

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Lol I'm sold!

Thought I would just share this beautiful spideypool moment with you all.

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thor ragnarok fight scene but holding out for a hero is playing

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#JusticeForRoxana #DismantleICE

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ok fuck the pope n all that obviously but this is literally SO fucking funny in so so many ways

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Stephen: I have to protect the time stone

Stephen @ Stephen: Fuck the time stone, protect Tony

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Lmfaaoooo who’s responsible