JJ Wright’s ideas around queer and trans sexual joy dig a little deeper…
By Paul Gallant
In 1968, a year before Stonewall in New York, US activist Frank Kameny coined the term “Gay is good,” riffing on civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael’s slogan, “Black is beautiful.” Both simple phrases were meant to turn existing negative stereotypes upside down – not only are 2SLGBTQI+ and Black people just as good as their straight and/or white counterparts, there is value in being queer and/or Black. The world is better because of us.
For 2SLGBTQI+ people in particular, “Gay is good” rejected ideas that our sexuality and our way of moving through the world was not only inferior, but sick or immoral. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the American medical establishment until 1987. In 2013, “gender identity disorder” was replaced with “gender dysphoria” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a rephrasing that was seen as de-stigmatizing trans people while giving them a diagnosis that would grant access to medical services like hormones and surgery.
Even with ideas of “sickness” falling away, ideas around immorality and inferiority continue to be pushed by right-wing thinkers who try to convince the world that drag is indoctrination, same-gender marriage is a pale imitation of straight marriage and trans identity is merely trendy or worse.
One approach to countering this demonization would be to tone down 2SLGBTQI+ culture, make fewer demands on government and society. Another is to dig more deeply into our own inherent sense that what we have to offer (including sex) and what we want (including sex) is delightful and worthwhile, even as each queer has their own unique way of finding joy. Celebrating queer sexual expression itself – taking pleasure in our bodies and their desires – is both a defence and a balm against hate.
Into this battleground comes the work of JJ Wright, an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies at Alberta’s MacEwan University. Last year, collaborating with the Public Health Agency of Canada and national queer lobby group Egale Canada, Wright released the findings from their project Learning from Queer and Trans Sexual Joy: Cultivating Just, Pleasurable and Affirming Sexual Cultures. The project includes six recommendations for creating a queer joy-centred approach to education about gender-based violence prevention. The message struck a chord. In the year since the project was published, Wright has been fielding interest from all over the world.
“It often happens in academia that we get really passionate about a particular topic and aren’t sure how it will resonate with the general public,” Wright says. “But there’s been response from across the world: South Asia, the United Kingdom, the United States. I spoke at Vanderbilt University [in Tennessee], where I was invited to share the research. It reached all the way down to Australia, where a school counsellor contacted me because they want to implement the lessons into their sexual health programming. I’m also going to do a fellowship at the University of Sydney to build on the work with some folks down there.”
Though so many artists, promoters, venues and online spaces these days declare themselves to be sex-positive, Wright’s ideas around queer and trans sexual joy dig a little deeper. Embracing sex positivity without considering ideas around consent, safety and boundaries has led, in some situations, to people being pressured to engage in sexual acts they don’t want to engage in, smiling as they do so. Going along with a sexual partner just so as not to kill the vibe can prevent us from accessing our own sexual joy.
“We have this move towards sex positivity that has caused us to talk about pleasure more in sex education and be more comfortable with having sexual desire and expressing it openly,” says Wright. “Historically, when women have expressed desire, they’ve been labelled as whores or sluts. But if it’s about women just giving men more sex, lesbian feminists would say that this is not revolutionary. Yes, women deserve embodied pleasure. But the rates of sexual violence haven’t gone down in over 30 years. I do fear that this simple emphasis on sex-positive sex education doesn’t really get to the heart of the deeper issue, which is that cis heteropatriarchy is maintaining women’s and trans people’s subordination.”
A couple of the project’s six youth-led recommendations seem like no-brainers: teach an understanding of bodily autonomy, and how to improve communication around sex. A tad more controversial is teaching sexual pleasure – knowing what feels good emotionally and physically, as well as providing practices to “to navigate compulsory cisheteronormativity which teaches us to dissociate from our bodies.”
By this, Wright is suggesting that some queer people become disembodied by how society and their sexual partners treat them – they lose touch with their own physicality. “In my thesis project, one of the participants just literally could not feel touch on her body. We go in and out of our bodies. And that has to do with the culture that we live in, this hustle culture that tells us to push ourselves, beyond what might feel [to be] our limits, which doesn’t lend itself well to ethical, healthy sexual relations. But embodiment to me is being in tune,” says Wright.
Trauma is one of the ways we become disembodied, but the impossible beauty standards and the one-size-fits-all sexiness of social media might also play a part. “We get these messages that tell us we need to look certain ways. When we don’t and we’re with a partner, we can feel not good enough. That doesn’t make us want to stay in our bodies.”
One of the interesting concepts in the recommendations is the idea of “containers for safety,” that is, creating conditions where consent, pleasure and joy are given the space and the value that they deserve. The idea reminded me of the concept of “right to privacy” that was developed by gay activists in response to police raids on gay bathhouses in Toronto in the 1970s and ’80s. A right to privacy, in the context of gay male sexuality, suggested that as long as participants in sexual activity made sure they weren’t bothering anyone who didn’t want to be involved, they had a right to be left alone; their consensual sexual escapades were nobody’s business but their own.
Rather than necessarily creating spaces like saunas and sex clubs that have the condition of privacy, Wright is suggesting that there are a range of ways to create conditions of safety that allow queer people to bring their entire selves, not just their body parts, to sexual experiences. Communications through words and building trust through actions before sex might be the key method of creating a container for safety, but it could also be about being in a comfortable physical space.
“We have to be able to feel safe in a space in order to have a consensual experience,” says Wright. “If we’re very afraid or we’re disembodied, it’s difficult to connect to our intuition and know that we’re okay with what’s happening.”
Wright’s research found that polyamorous and BDSM communities often have knowledge and strategies about creating containers of safety while pursuing sexual experiences that others might perceive as outré or risky. But that boundary pushing is exactly what prompts polyamorous and kinky people to do their due diligence to ensure all parties feel safe and comfortable. One participant who was interviewed for the project described going to a sex party where they grew impatient with a queer woman who was interested in sex but taking too long to make a physical move: “In my head I’m kind of like, ‘Damn, let’s get started, like, what are we waiting for?’ but I was like, ‘Actually, wait, this is how it’s supposed to be.’ People should be taking 20 minutes before you even think about touching another person.”
As valuable as wisdom from polyamorous and kinky communities might be, Wright admits it might be a tough sell in some jurisdictions, particularly their home province of Alberta. The government there is doubling down on legislation that allows parents to opt their children out of any lessons dealing primarily with human sexuality, gender identity or sexual orientation. The legislation also requires that the education ministry vet any resources or third-party speakers related to these topics. The current political climate doesn’t seem especially warm to celebrations of queer sexuality, especially kinky queerness.
Yet the ideas Wright is putting forward in the queer and trans sexual joy project would be equally applicable to straight people. The message of queer sexual joy could be particular empowering to straight women, who are on the front lines of grappling with porn-trained cis male sexuality. Is there really an argument against communication, safety and pleasure being important parts of a sexual experience? If people are having sex, why not give them the tools to have great sex?
PAUL GALLANT is a Toronto-based writer and editor who writes about travel, innovation, city building, social issues (particularly LGBT issues) and business for a variety of national and international publications. He’s done time as lead editor at the loop magazine in Vancouver as well as Xtra and fab in Toronto. His debut novel, Still More Stubborn Stars, published by Acorn Press, is out now.
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