your friendly neighbourhood vampire

The straights aren't okay

It's likely that none of the young, straight people talking about this are having good sex.

Okay @syntheros-artemidos, this is the rundown in as neutral a way I can write it:

A man and a woman went on a date. The man says on the first date that sexual compatibility is a priority for him, and that he's interested in having sex early on. The woman says she doesn't know if that's what she wants.

Apparently things went well enough though for the two to plan a second date, which is apparently to happen at her home.

Since the woman said she wasn't sure if she wanted to be physically intimate, he feels like he's getting mixed signals being invited over, so he sends her a voice memo. In the voice memo, he reiterates that he wants to have sex, and that if she's not interested in that he doesn't see the point of continuing. He says it's okay if that's not what she wants, and if that's the case they shouldn't keep seeing each other.

Then, the woman shared the voice memo with a friend, and the friend uploaded that voice memo to the internet.

Because nothing is allowed to be private in the modern panopticon.

There are two prevailing interpretations of this situation.

One, which is the one I tend to agree with, is that he got mixed messages, made his wants clear, and sent them to her when there was physical distance so she wouldn't feel pressure to not turn him down. It was literally just a potential second date and they started as strangers, so he was pretty much saying "hey, we shouldn't waste each other's time if we don't want the same thing." She clearly didn't, and beyond the weird need to violate his privacy, it was the optimal outcome for these two people to just part ways.

Like was he the smoothest when he said what he said? No. But it was a pretty straight forward. I should note that this is the interpretation that most queer creators seem to be going with too.

Because, uh, the second interpretation is kind of wild.

You see, the other group of people think he was being entitled asking for sex. That somehow, him leaving the voice mail is an act of coercion (even though he has no power over her and there is no implied threat of violence -- since he was making sure he talked about it while he was literally nowhere near her). Also, people are wildly claiming that if he got her to say yes to sex in a text that somehow it would be considered consent in a legal case in case he raped her. Which is, y'know, not how consent works.

(I honestly think a lot of people were projecting their own trauma onto things)

There are also a bunch of people effectively shaming him for wanting to have a casual sexual relationship at all, and that somehow there was something wrong with him for not wanting the same thing that she wanted. People saying that folks looking for hookups shouldn't be using dating apps (as if someone looking for a romantic relationship might not be prioritizing sex too). Mostly just a bunch of puritan culture weirdness, and some people wanting to date for the performance of dating over the desire to find a compatible partner, etc.

And it's been going on for a couple of days.

gnoll for initiative! It's more Sweet Pea.

We're four chapters in and already Trazyn is wearing one of Orikan's tiles as a trophy AFTER EXPLICITLY SAYING HE WANTS TO KEEP HIM AS AN EXHIBIT NO LESS

Regarding economic coercion, that's called having a job. But also I promise you there is a world of difference between trying to buy a person (for the love of fuck will you people ever aknowledge its not only women in porn and work conditions are a concern for EVERYONE involved) and someone making a career in porn.

To help trafficked and coerced sex workers we necessarily must end the demonization of sex work or else you are giving traffickers the literal tools to force unwilling people into it!

One of my family members was sex trafficked. Her case became a part of state legal precedent because her trafficker's conviction resulted in an expanded definition of one of the terms used to define trafficking (kept vague for the sake of my family's anonymity.) You know what one of the biggest barriers was to her getting help?

The fact that everyone she reached out to saw her as a stupid meth head "whore" and not a person who was fucking afraid for her life.

her: porn degrades women!!

us: ..

us: um, so how does that work when there's no women in it?

If porn is universally degrading and it is all rape and you can never truly consent to sex work etc etc etc WHERE IS THE CONCERN FOR MALE VICTIMS. Not simply just when there are no women are involved, but in hetero porn settings if those women are being raped by the men then *the women are also raping the men*.