Sometimes I Wish I Had Had an Abortion.
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A Note About Texas
Sometimes when I write for this blog, I feel like I'm just another noise in an already massive echo chamber. I get discouraged, I feel invisible. I think to myself, 'maybe it's okay to be invisible, maybe you shouldn't have a voice in this.'
I've been writing since I was ten, and as a junior I started a magazine at my high school called The Voice. But I've always been shy about my writing; my poems are all small, crammed into tiny spaces as if someone was going to come and take up the rest of the page. My first chapbook was called Shy Knees. I rarely share my writing with other people, I rarely reach out to publications to ask them if I can write for them. I rarely even post on this blog. Some of it stems from fear. I don't want people to think I'm a bad writer. I don't want to read the mean and cruel comments that can sometimes follow the bottom of a post. I don't want to talk about myself. As a white-presenting middle-class woman living in San Francisco, I'm sometimes the last person in the world who needs to have an opinion on something. It's better for me to step aside and let other people have the floor.
I think, too, it's hard to tell when writing has impact. I've always loved to-do lists and I still have a bucket list I wrote over ten years ago that includes the missive "change someone's life." I wonder if I've ever done that with my writing. I wonder if anyone has ever read something I've put to paper and walked away feeling different, or feeling anything at all. Internally, I wonder if my writing has any impact on me. I've journaled nearly every day for the past three years, all of it introspective and self-analyzing, and I still feel like I miss the forest for the tiny trees; that I've made the biggest mistakes of my life in just the past week, and that while I wrote about being stressed at work or fights with my partner, my journal rarely touches on my sexual assault or my brother's incarceration, two of the most traumatic things that happened to me last year. I wrote about petty fights with my boyfriend, using words to store my bitterness in instead of using them as tools to break apart my outer hardness to find my vulnerability and gentleness inside.
I feel angry with myself. I feel like I've wasted time, or not been productive. I hate that I use the word 'productive' as much as I do. I take stress naps and wake up exhausted, and I check my bank balances every day because I have an anxiety that what I have will be taken from me at any moment. I feel shame, and I don't know for what.
I think this is all called exhaustion. I think this is all called being stressed and overwhelmed and not dealing with grief and taking too much on and ignoring the important things and losing the essential things and turning into the worst part of your parents and then fearing you're not turning into anything worthwhile at all. I want to be more quiet. I want to stare out the window more, I want to read on my couch for hours without worrying that I'm missing something. I want to put my phone in a box and put that box into the closet for the weekend. I feel guilty for not doing any of those things, and no pleasure in the things I am doing.
This is a long intro. This was supposed to be a post about how Texas is shitty and how, since The Voice, I've written about abortion access and rights. I wanted to write about how planned parenthood saved my life twice, by giving me information about my pregnancy that was fair and good and put me forward instead of the conservative agenda my dad put forward, that saw me as a sin and not a person. They saved me too, by giving me access to birth control I couldn't afford. I wanted to write something about all the different ways writing hasn't gotten us any closer to convincing people that maybe women shouldn't have to carry fetuses to term if they don't want to, that they exist as more than just reproductive machines.
But I just feel tired. So I'm keeping this space small, and safe. I am posting below some abortion funds that people can donate to if they feel so inclined, to help people access abortion care if it is no longer safe for them to do so where they live. And I want to hold space for the people who are exhausted and discouraged. It is okay to be like this. It is okay to want to stare at the wall for a little while. Let others take up the mantle when you no longer have the strength to do so. We will be coming back.
Abortion Funds:
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Public Perceptions of Sex Work are Changing, but that Doesn't Mean Sex Workers are Safe
In the past two weeks, we've seen one of the biggest names in digital sex work, OnlyFans, first vow that they were going to remove all adult explicit content from the site, and then after a week of getting butt-fucked by the press, by the hundreds of thousands of sex workers who they were ostensibly and suddenly forcing out of work in the middle of a pandemic, and by the millions of subscribers and members of the public who think sex work is work, OnlyFans then magically reversed their ban, having miraculously figured out a way to make their bank/payment processors work after all.
It was a cop out that everyone saw from a mile away. OnlyFans had long been hinting that they wanted to distance themselves from the very people that the majority of their profit comes from (99% of their top earners are sex workers) because of the stigma of being part of the adult industry. However, OnlyFans would be nothing without the sex workers who use it, and most importantly, the sex workers who started creating content on it during the pandemic, which established OnlyFans as one of the giants of the digital sex world industry. However, it was clear from the start that they were uncomfortable with the sex workers who used the platform, often banning or freezing accounts with little explanation given, and last year when Bella Thorne infamously started an OnlyFans account only to back out and explain it all away as some sort of joke or flimsy attempt to support sex workers, OnlyFans used it as an opportunity to change their terms to make it harder for sex workers to get paid out; which stymied the income of thousands. With the soft launch of their app earlier this year, OnlyFans saw the stringent ToS of the iOS store as a chance to once and for all get rid of those pesky sex workers that they made their fortune on. (Don't worry Apple, we haven't forgotten you and what you did to Tumblr and all the other apps like it. Your Draconian approach to gentrifying the internet via our phones won't work forever).
Any idiot with half a brain could've told you that yanking the rug out from under your biggest earners was not only a bad business move for your company, but that turning out thousands of vulnerable people and removing their sole source of income in the middle of a global pandemic was, ummm, not a good look. OnlyFans went from being a platform in which sex workers could reclaim economic independence and power to being reviled as a money-grabbing, selfish and cruel website that never cared about anyone but their own bottom line. And that was definitely true. In statements following up their initial announcement, they explained that the move was an economic one, motivated by how difficult it is to get banks and other financial entities to fund and process sex work payments/subscriptions. It's not impossible though, on Pornhub you can pay for premium content, give creators tips, subscribe to channels and all of that. Chaturbate, ManyVids, and other contemporaries of OnlyFans also show that it's not impossible to support and host adult content on your site. It took less than a week for news sources to find out that OnlyFans was just using money as a cheap excuse to cover up the fact that they didn't want to stand up against pressure from anti-porn groups that were campaigning against OnlyFans to take down adult content because "OnlyFans is host to the most trafficking of anywhere on the internet" (an unverified and completely false claim). Rather than stand up for the stigmatized and vulnerable, OnlyFans made the decision to lose out on millions, possibly billions in revenue to bow to the pressures of the conservative minority, and to reinforce negative stereotypes about the sex work industry, conflating it with trafficking and child abuse rather than doing the basic work to support and understand the members of the industry they were serving.
In the year of our Lord and of Covid variant delta 2021 however, public perceptions about sex work have changed. Increased exposure to sex workers through social media and news sites have led more people to understand that sex work is work, and that sex workers are just like us, people who are trying to eke out a living despite the iron hand of capitalism trying to crush us all. There is more understanding that sex work does not equal sex trafficking, and that for many, turning the patriarchal structures of objectification and sexualization into something empowering and economically viable can be very healing. The reaction to OnlyFans' decision to boot sex workers was swift and harsh. Thousands of people publicly condemned the company for betraying the very people who made them such a successful company in the first place, and after merely a week, OnlyFans was forced to abruptly turn around and change their mind. Many saw it as a victory, seeing it as David defeating Goliath, but by no means does it mean that sex workers are safe.
Many sex workers on Twitter complained that within the week of uncertainty, they lost hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers, costing them a significant amount of income. The abruptness with which OnlyFans magically found ways to process payments/deal with banking systems proved that it was never an insurmountable problem, just an inconvenient one. And OnlyFans has still not promised to never ban sex workers from the platform. They've 'suspended' the exodus, but by no means cancelled it. Sex workers online have been telling one another to move to other platforms, to publish their content upon multiple websites so that the cancellation of one platform isn't as devastating, and finally to try to offload their content entirely, and to move back to private websites by which subscribers can reach them personally. They are surviving the turmoil, not because OnlyFans is 'saving' them, but because sex workers are resourceful, resilient, and ever-determined to not be erased.
Accountability is important. Accountability and public shaming forced OnlyFans to reverse their decision on banning explicit content. But that doesn't mean that sex workers are safe. It doesn't mean that we've built a world that thinks about their needs, that offers them protection from predators or the religious conservatives who wish they didn't exist. Sex workers are still as marginalized and uncertain as ever, forced to continue using platforms like OnlyFans that they know will drop them at any moment. So while the OnlyFans reversal is a small victory, it is by no means a permanent change. We still need to be vocal and persistent, that sex work is not something that will go away or disappear or turn its head in embarrassment, but it is an intrinsic and important profession, one that carries its own risks, and that by consistently normalizing it can we really help protect and support sex workers.
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Thank You Furry Much
Last weekend, my best friend visited me in the city by the bay. It was the first time she had come to see me since I moved her, and it was nice. It's been a long time since we had spent this much time together, just the two of us, and I was looking forward to it. Even though we are nothing alike, we are also so similar that we've been mistaken for sisters before. So don't let anyone ever tell you that girls aren't complicated.
Saturday morning we were at the farmers market looking for ingredients to make a blue cheese tomato cobbler because we're gentrified dickheads who love to recycle and support local businesses, like the good ex-Christians we are. And while we took a break in the shade watching the cool boys on skate boards that we used to think were too old for us and now looked way too young, a literal parade of fucking furries walked past. There were foxes and mice and bunnies and a dragon, there were animals we didn't recognize, and some that we were pretty sure Disney had not given the license to recreate. It was great. Many a tail was being carefully held to avoid it being dragged along the dirty waterfront, and the faces of each character, frozen in a look of joy or blissful eagerness, made me feel like I was in a baseball stadium getting ready for a t shirt cannon.
Obviously, we immediately began speculating about whether *all* of the costumes were present.... i.e., if you fucked a furry would it be a human dick or a animal one? If a deer had a vulva, would it be au natural, and did that mean it bright pink fur? Our jokes immediately went to sex because that's what culture has grasped first and foremost; that furries were just people who wanted to be animals, primarily so they could fuck other animals.
But later that weekend I did a deep dive into the world of furries; visited some chatrooms, stalked some websites. Primarily, to be totally honest, it was out of a sexual curiosity. Out of all the kink and sex parties I've ever been to, I had never seen a single furry. Are furries part of the kink community, or were they something else all on their own? When I started to do my research, I found out they were a community all of their own; that people had been doing this since the 70s (and some even before that) and that it was so much more than just fucking someone in a mascot costume. People in the furry community carefully cultivate 'fursonas' which are animal figures or personas. They often have very specific avatars and personalities, and furries often make very complex and engaged stories surrounding their fursonas, and there's a LOT of furry art online. A LOT. Many furries make their own fursuits/costumes, which was often incredibly detailed and even include moving parts like swishing tails, blinking eyes, or twitching ears. A lot of furries participate in super active online chat rooms and often go to conventions. There are a lot of furry communities all over the world where people can share their interests in safe spaces, and play out being their fursonas without judgement.
When we don't understand something, we feel like we have license to make fun of it. We find ways to other it, to make it more maligned than it needs to be. We shame people for pursuing their interests, because they are not our interests. We often use sex to achieve these means, because sex is already such a shame-filled and taboo topic in our society. So many of us had crushes on characters in the Lion King, or Robinhood, or any other countless Disney movies. We call ourselves brave as lions, hungry as bears, lazy as house cats. We have no problem anthropomorphizing animals by calling them our fur children, and we have no problem acting ourselves like animals. We just have a problem with people who love it more than us, because we feel uncomfortable around things we don't understand, or don't identify with. So here's to the gorgeous furries of San Francisco, the confurence goers who see themselves as foxes or mice or lions or more. Here's to you guys living your best lives; I see you now, and I'm so happy that you've found a passion that makes you feel happy, and that makes you feel like you belong. Our planet may be a small one, but there's enough room at the table for everyone to have a seat.
What Does Love Need?
I’ve been having some hard conversations with my primary partner last week. The wounds are still raw, with emotion still oozing out painfully with every breath.
The last time I saw him was in February 2020 in New York. We took the subway, went to bars, partied in a huge warehouse with hundreds of strangers, and in general acted like the virus that was currently exploding across China wasn’t going to affect us. I remember us seeing a man in a full hazmat suit sitting on the subway and we laughed to ourselves, thinking man, this guy is being a bit paranoid isn’t he?
I remember the moment I got into the cab that would take me to the Penn Station. I kissed him and hugged him and told him I would see him soon. We had our wedding to look forward to in May, a honeymoon in Japan in July, and countless other plans. It was going to be a month at most until I saw him again, just how it’s always been. But February 2020 was fifteen months ago, and I haven’t seen him once, outside of zoom, the occasional selfie, and the plethora of childhood photos that his parents sent me as a funny Christmas present.
Despite running a magazine about sex and culture, and despite being someone who constantly talks and thinks about sex, I realized recently that it had been months since we had sent each other big compliments or risqué texts, months since we had tried to have a digital movie night or a fun zoom dinner. It was horrifying for me, and I was so disappointed in him and in myself. How did we get to the point where we weren’t caring for each other in such basic ways?
It’s easy, we were spending our time just trying to survive. The pandemic made it almost impossible for anyone to think of anything else besides where to get pasta or toilet paper. We became occupied with the immediate in front of our faces, in the present moment of every day as we saw death tolls rising, and in the intimate details of our apartments; the only thing that was keeping us safe from a world that felt very dangerous and very real.
Recently, we’ve started a process of conscious uncoupling, even though that’s a term that both of us loathe. It is trying to figure out how to break up with someone you still love tenderly, who didn’t cheat on you, who didn’t start snoring or stop cleaning up after themselves. It’s made me ask a lot of questions about what relationships need to survive. Because ours survived for so long without sex or even physical proximity. Hell, I would’ve given a lot just to be on the same continent as him. It’s forced me to rely on conversation as the sole means of emotional connection, and in so many ways we are realizing that we needed more than that.
It’s in the end of relationships that you often think about defeat; about failures to launch and about the embarrassment and shame and anger of feeling; everyone else is getting it right, so why didn’t you? We are going through that though, with all the tears and resentment that go with that. Why can’t we make it a little longer? Push a little harder, wait for a little bit more? But I think sometimes when we push love, love pushes back. It’s understanding that you’re not entitled to someone’s love and attention, and that learning to appreciate it daily will go a long way in supporting them when they can’t always give it to you. Love is sometimes not demanding more from someone, but being satisfied when you get less.
Dick Pics and Why I Want Them
The only thing that’s been giving me hope during the pandemic is dick pics, a story.
In a time of quarantine, sexting has made a raging comeback. It’s easy to see in terms of the raging increase of the use of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, as more and more people turn to socially distanced outdoor hangouts, or zoom dates, Netflix shared streaming and texting marathons. Everyone needs a dedicated friend to shelter in place with, and you gotta admit, there’s something kinda sexy about the end of the world.
I hopped on Bumble before the shelter-in-place order came down, and stayed in touch with two or three guys after it started. It felt dangerous to feel like there was a person in the city who was into me, and that I couldn’t have them. Or, for the one who lived by himself, it was comforting to know that if all hell broke loose, I had someone to save me. (ahem, I’m a feminist, but if the purge is about to happen, I’ll take the guy with muscles, please and thank you).
For the most part though, I’ve spent lockdown alone in my apartment with my computer and my vibrator. Before, it was so easy to invite guys back and watch them leave in the morning while I sipped my coffee, but now, not so much. Now, I felt like I have taken fifteen years off of my life and reverted to being the geek I was back in high school. I can no longer rely on body language or facial expressions to read a man. Now, I had to hang onto every single word of his text messages, which were always timed a strategic two or three hours after I had sent mine. The weeks stretched into months, and I was glued to my phone, waiting for the next ;).
I was climbing up the walls and I needed some relief, and that came in the form of dick pics. Almost all of them were unsolicited, and some sent around the distasteful hour of 3am, but each one was received with delight and immediate, careful examination. I’m dating men who are solidly in their thirties, and I’m impressed with the exponential improvements in penis photography since the last era I got dick pics, which we will not mention except to say it was the before times.
No longer is there dirty laundry in the background, or a stack of pizza boxes just beyond his thigh. Now, there were tasteful rugs and private bedrooms (not private apartments, mind you… who are we kidding, I still live in San Francisco). Now, I’m getting mood lighting. Now, I’m getting Armani boxers pulled down, and manscaping.
One photo in particular, is one of my favorites I’ve ever received. Taken from mid thigh, it’s a tasteful upshot of the bottom of the shaft all the way up to the head, with a tuft of tissue paper placed in anticipation on his stomach. His shirt is pulled up to crop-top level, and gloriously, part of his face is peeking out from the right side of his glorious dick. This was not a hastily taken photo, it was a carefully staged shot that had taken an extra layer of dexterity, most likely a timer, and care. I was absolutely delighted. It meant he cared! And more than that, it meant that he cared about what turned me on.
These dick pics hit different during quarantine. They aren’t a taste of things to come, but a careful and vulnerable exploration of what that man things I would find attractive. There was no text that accompanied any of them that told me exactly what holes he wanted to shove himself into, because gross. Rather, they were tentative offerings of themselves, saying, ‘this is how I see myself, this is what I like about myself, and I hope that you like it too.’ They are feminine, and thoughtful in a way they never were before.
In a world in which many guys will ask girls for nudes, no matter what, and have the nerve to get annoyed when girls don’t comply, it’s been nice to be on the receiving end. Maybe in some ways quarantine is the great equalizer. While I’ve sent a number of nudes myself, I no longer feel the pressure to do so, and I almost always ask for compensation in the form of a dick pic. With ample amounts of time at home, the men in my life have no excuse except to finally, carefully, pose. I wanna see the family jewels, boys.
When the pandemic ends, who knows if I will see dick pics in the same way again. Will they go back to the drunken and frenzied, aggressive and unwanted photos of before? I hope not. I’ve grown to love these dick pics for their nuance and care. Let’s create the space where men can send a sexy nude, where they can be the object of desire. I want to sit back and see.
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Mulan Shouldn’t Have to Act Like a Man to be a Hero
A review of Disney’s live action version of Mulan…. Did we really need a woman to act like a man to prove that women can be heroes?
My mom and I used to watch the original Mulan all the time. As a chinese immigrant, there were very few movies or cultural figures that my mother and I could bond over that were Asian, or were suitable for children, or ideally, both. Mulan was one of our favorite movies to watch together because it not only bridged that gap, but it went one step ahead and provided a disney princess at last that was strong, smart, independent, and doesn't need a prince to save her. She actually saves the prince. Hell, she saves all of China.
Last night, a lovely lover of mine came over for a night of takeout and to watch Mulan. I'd already had my misgivings about a movie that was going to cost 30 dollars on top of needing a subscription to Disneyplus, in the middle of a pandemic, with unemployment at 10%, but I was willing to give it a shot considering all the fanfare this movie had received. It seemed like a low blow for a corporation that had already bullied its way into reopening many of its theme parks despite high Covid infection rates, and that sits on top of money like a brooding chicken. I get it that they wanted Mulan to have a huge release in theaters, but was punishing their loyal fans with theater-prices the best way to do it?
When the movie starts out, there's a familiar scene involving some chickens and a younger Mulan, except this time she also has a sister. The colors are rich and vibrant, and gives a cheerful and gorgeous salute to the brightness of the animated movie. I was entranced, but I have to say it all went downhill from there.
What happened to you Mulan? The original movie was funny, clever, kind and caring and full of scenes that showcased her moments of kindness and individuality, like pulling the strand of hair from her updo before meeting the matchmaker, of giving her dog little brother his bone, or of taking care of her lucky cricket. All of those iconic bits gave us a sense of Mulan as a person whose courage and bravery lies not in masculine strength, but in emotional depth and intelligence. In the new movie, there is no sense of her wit or resourcefulness. Instead, what we're given is a Mulan who is quiet, sullen, and does her best to match up with the boys in terms of manly strength. Her chi, which is what they call her innate fighting skills, are really a poor prop to disguise the sad truth of so many action-hero movies that try to be more inclusive by making their heroes women. We don't want a female hero who acts like a man. We want a female hero who shows that women who act like women can be heroes too.
Mulan spends almost none of the movie showing watchers how its her cunning, and her ability to subvert male expectations of what strength looks like, that are her biggest strengths. Instead, she spends much of it moodily isolating herself from her peers, hiding her talents, and feeling guilty about her indescribably brave act of defiance. If I wanted to watch a movie of someone doing that, I would watch literally any Christopher Nolan movie and call it a day. I missed the sense of playful camaraderie and friendship of the original film, the clever tricks and tactics she uses, the light banter. This movie wants to be taken seriously so badly, that even hints of lightheartedness are whisked away before the watchers have time to blink. You don’t get to know the personalities of any of her friends or loyal sidekicks. Even Cricket is now a person in her battalion, but still has less than a tenth of the personality of the voiceless animated insect. The only character that could possibly be argued to have gotten more complex is the antagonist of the film. Mulan's new villain is no longer Shan Yu, a Han chieftain, but Xian Lang, a powerful shapeshifter and exiled witch. So powerful, in fact, it's hard to see why on earth she plays the simpering, downtrodden ally to the much more predictable and mundane bad guy of Bori Khan. While there is a more deep and emotional connection between Mulan and Xian Lang (hey, the one thing we have in common is that we are both female, and therefore always going to be exiles!) her character spends the majority of the movie being miserably one-dimensional and then, in her moment of much-needed triumph, instead of fighting she shows the backbone of a block of tofu and falls all to easily, because god forbid a woman be alone without also feeling suicidal.
Not to give too much away, but the live-action hardly sticks to the script of the main movie. There are glaring plot holes that took me out of the viewing to wonder out loud how that made any sense, and that was even after I accepted at face value the random phoenix (which is greek mythology, by the way) and the removal of her family dragon (although I will give them a point for not having Eddie Murphy in it this time around). But at the end of the day, this is still supposed to be a disney film that the whole family can enjoy. What happened to all the amazing songs that I could sing along to with my mom? What happened to all the funny jokes and hilarious moments? What we were given was a movie that took itself too seriously that was grim, unsympathetic, and downright boring that lacks entertainment value in its quest to try and force us to believe that women can be plausible heroes. Seriousness does not equate plausibility.
One of the other cruxes of the film is that Mulan cannot access her full chi until she is honest and true about who she is. That is a noble idea; but it makes it feel like being a woman is a shameful secret that she needs to out, and even when in one on one combat with her adversary, her reluctance to admit to her secret shows less about her need to keep her identity hidden and felt more like a moment of shame or embarrassment. I get it though, she’s worried about jeopardizing her family and whatnot, but did she really need to unleash her hair for one of her most hardcore battle scenes? Why can’t women warriors have their hair in ponytails?
Of course, I suspect most of most likely already know about the hot water Disney is in for filming parts of Mulan in the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has held Muslim ethnic minorities in detention camps. Apparently, if you look closely there are certain shots where you can see the detention camps in the background, but I didn’t want to watch the film again to try and find them, but I’m sure you can do that yourself. Finally, though, in the spirit of trying to find the silver linings because I want Disney to make more Asian-related content, I will say several good things about the film. Firstly, I thought that the costume and set designs were great. I really enjoyed the bright colors, rich details, and soft nods to traditional Chinese garb. I also really enjoyed how they made several nods to classic kung fu action movies in the styling of the choreography etc, and the sound track, which borrows heavily from the original, and it was lovely to see them actually choosing Chinese actors (goodbyeeee Eddie Murphy) as well. So, I guess it wasn’t a total wash?
All in all, the new Mulan teaches us that being a girl who does all the manly things will bring you success. If you're not a chi-wielding kung fu boss though, never you fear. You can still make a good match like Mulan's sister, whose sole purpose in the film is to be afraid of bugs before finally getting married to someone who will take care of the spiders for her. So being a woman will still work out fine for you! Really though, I'm so sad that this movie didn't live up to its potential. How could you fuck up the baseline plot of a woman who is so cunning, so resourceful, and so brave that she subverts the cultural narrative that war is a man's job, and that only men are strong, to save her entire country? Why make her a hero by forcing her to act like a boy? Because feminism isn't saying that women should act like men to be heroes. It's saying that being a woman is enough.
The Whorticulturalist is the mother of this magazine. She is a sex-positive blogger and creative who enjoys rock climbing, dancing, and camping. In her spare time, she’s probably flirting.
Reap what you hoe.
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