consent

My Weird Relationship with Foot Fetishism

Kate Sloan

Content note: This post contains some non-explicit, not-super-detailed descriptions of times that I was sexually creeped on by adults when I was a teen.

 

I’ve always had a complicated relationship to the foot fetish community. Some of my earliest memories of feeling creeped out and sexually taken advantage of are related to foot fetishism, unfortunately. But that just means I have to work harder to overcome my biases and embrace kinksters who approach this fetish in fully consensual, 100% respectful ways – unlike those who started harassing me online when I was 14.

I’ve been posting outfit photos on-and-off since 2006, and one thing that happens when you post outfit photos to an audience of any significant size is that you attract people who fetishize the stuff you wear. People flocked to my Flickr page to fawn over my leggings, my corduroy shorts, the leather gloves I’d occasionally put on for fancy events. Pretty much anything I ever wore, there would be somebody who’d fetishize it.

But unfortunately it was often the foot fetishists who were the most extreme in this behavior. Even when I was literally 14 years old, I would receive comments and messages from them regularly, demanding that I post more barefoot pics, wear more sandals, or even send them my old and unwanted pairs of shoes. Some of them would lie to me in order to achieve the result they wanted; I’ll never forget the one who told me he ran a “recycling plant” for old sneakers and would be happy to accept my donations. Even at 14, I saw right through that shit and called him out – but it made me feel deeply uncomfortable and violated nonetheless, to be so intensely sexualized by strangers who clearly just saw me as a body for their visual consumption.

It’s been 16 years since I first started posting outfit photos online, and I have a lot more perspective on human behavior now – not to mention, a lot more knowledge about the shame and secrecy that run rampant in fetish communities. It actually makes total sense to me that people who’ve had their deepest sexual desires shamed and stigmatized for many years would turn to unsavory tactics to get their needs met. I’m not saying it’s okay – it’s deeply, deeply not okay at all – but I do understand where the impulse comes from. It’s just not a good impulse, because it involves prioritizing your own pleasure and gratification over someone else’s personhood and safety – and that’s never acceptable, no matter how difficult it may have been to live with the fetish that you have.

 

These experiences have made me extra appreciative in adulthood of fetishists who are straightforward and respectful, e.g. those who politely request sexy feet pics from me with the clear knowledge that money will need to be exchanged in order for those photos to materialize. (If that’s something you’re interested in, by the way, you should click here.)

It’s not that paying for foot-related media is the only way to access it respectfully; it’s just that it’s the only way for an internet stranger to get foot-related media from me, specifically, and I know many others feel the same. That’s why websites like FunWithFeet.com are so cool – they connect people who want foot content with people who are willing to provide it, for an agreed-upon fee.

I always wished for something like this when I was in my late teens/early twenties, because it frustrated me to no end that random men would demand I post more pics of me in sandals, or whatever, and not even offer to buy me the sandals in question. I longed for platforms where consensual, ethical fetishism could be expressed and enjoyed by anyone who wanted to participate, and where no one would ever feel even remotely pressured into doing something they didn’t want to do. So it’s pretty awesome to me that FunWithFeet and other such foot-focused hubs exist.

 

Another aspect of all this is the way foot fetishism manifests in my personal life, as opposed to my professional life. I’ve had a few partners who were into feet to some degree, including my current partner. It was educational and weirdly cleansing to satisfy real-life partners’ desire for foot pics after having been lied to, used, grossed out and taken advantage of by so many foot fetishists as a teen.

A beloved partner politely requesting pictures of my feet felt completely different from a faceless internet stranger one-handedly and irately demanding I post foot pics for free. It still made me nervous at times, but in different ways: I was nervous about whether my feet were pretty enough to be fetishized, whether they needed a pedicure, whether they’d somehow be a turn-off instead of a turn-on.

Luckily, though, all my foot fetishist partners have been incredibly complimentary about my feet and have never made me feel the way those online strangers did – like my feet were my entire value and the rest of me didn’t matter. Even now, when we’re lying on the couch together watching a movie at night, my partner will sometimes sweetly ask if they can remove my socks and massage my feet while we watch – and though it still sometimes feels vulnerable, or embarrassing, or tickly, I usually say yes.

It can be healing to encounter something that used to make you feel scared, sad, used, and unimportant, and to find ways to feel exactly the opposite about it. I’m reminded, once again, of one of the central lessons I’ve learned about sex as a whole: consent makes all the difference.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

7 Reasons Masturbation is the Safest Kind of Sex

Kate Sloan

I’m sure some of you read the headline of this post and thought, “Yeah, Kate, I was trapped inside alone for most of 2020 – I know all about the benefits of masturbation, thanks!!”

I hear you. And I’m grateful for any sacrifices you may have made in service of public health, even if sometimes those sacrifices came in the form of, say, staying home with your rabbit vibrator in lieu of hopping on Tinder to get inadvisably railed by an unvetted, unvaccinated stranger.

While 2020 had a lot of downsides (obviously), I think one minor silver lining is that so many people spent so much more time masturbating than they ordinarily would. It’s a great way to get to know oneself better sexually, and to focus on one’s own priorities, desires, and pleasure, in a world that sometimes makes that difficult. It’s also, as previously discussed, almost always the safer option than partnered sex – and not just during a global pandemic! Here are 7 reasons masturbation may just be the safest sex you’ll ever have…

 

1. You can’t contract or transmit an STI

Sexually transmitted infections are part and parcel of human sexuality. In a world where you can stock up on condoms at any drugstore and buy PrEP online, we’ve got a better handle on STIs than we did decades or centuries ago, but acquiring or transmitting an STI is still a risk of partnered sex nonetheless.

With STI stigma being gradually reduced by the hard work of sexual health activists, and effective medical treatments now available for most STIs, it’s true that many of us (especially those of us with financial privilege and no preexisting conditions) wouldn’t suffer nearly as many consequences from getting an STI nowadays as we would’ve in ages gone by. But it’s still nice to know that when you jerk off (provided your hands and toys are clean!), you likely won’t be jeopardizing your own health.

 

2. You can’t get pregnant

I’ve definitely been through periods of life when I was oddly paranoid about getting pregnant, sometimes to the point of avoiding penetrative sex despite being on birth control and using condoms… An unexpected baby is a very scary thought, particularly when you know you’re physically and/or financially not up to the task of child-rearing quite yet (or at all)!

The good news is, masturbation can’t get you pregnant (again, provided that your hands and toys are clean, i.e. that they don’t have someone’s recent semen on them!), so you can go to town on yourself without fearing future babies.

 

3. There are no consent issues to worry about

Although I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule (probably having to do with trauma triggers), generally you’re not going to run into consent-related snafus when fucking yourself. After all, you know on a moment-to-moment basis what you’re okay with and what you’re not – or if you don’t actually know those preferences, masturbation is an ideal way to figure them out.

As someone who likes to involve intoxicants (e.g. weed, alcohol) in sexual scenarios, I also appreciate that drunk/high masturbation is overall much safer than drunk/high partnered sex. I’m not going to push my own boundaries or take advantage of myself, even when pleasantly buzzed.

Some people think it’s a consent issue to masturbate while thinking about someone who hasn’t consented to be thought about in that way. I disagree, because I don’t believe in policing people’s thoughts – but keep in mind that it can be a violation to share those thoughts with the person in question, so I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless your relationship with that person is such that it would be acceptable.

 

4. No travel is required

Sounds silly, maybe, but I’ve been in a long-distance relationship for 3+ years – just think how many bus accidents and plane crashes I’ve risked to get laid! The odds are low, of course, but on a bad anxiety day, I’d much rather skip any potential risks and just stay safely tucked into my bed, with an armful of sex toys.

Naturally, this also means masturbation can be more accessible and safer than partnered sex for people whose travel is limited by disability, financial status, pandemics (of course!) and other factors.

 

5. You can accommodate your own physical needs

This unfortunately isn’t true for everyone – there are, for example, disabled folks who are unable to masturbate and who may hire sex workers or sex surrogates to address this – but for many people, masturbation may allow for more of their access needs to be met than partnered sex. You can use your comfy ergonomic pillow or convenient suction cup dildo or relaxing heating pad without any fear of judgment.

For example, when I’m alone on a bad pain day, I can wrap a heating pad around my sore knee without worrying if someone else thinks it’s unsexy or unwieldy, keep my body still in particular positions so as not to overexert myself, and adjust the room to a temperature that I (and only I!) find agreeable. While I’m lucky enough to have a partner who’s always eager to make adjustments according to what I need, I know not everyone is that fortunate, and so sometimes masturbation can be a blessing.

 

6. You can accommodate your own mental/emotional needs

I can’t even count the number of times a random hookup teased me about something they didn’t know was a sore spot, made a body-shaming comment that stung more than I let on, or called me a triggering name during a kink scene.

Some of these incidents weren’t intentionally hurtful – they may not have known better, and I may not have known enough about my own brain and trauma history to be able to fill them in – but nonetheless, sometimes masturbation feels like a safer choice when you’re in a fragile frame of mind or going through a difficult time. If you trigger or upset yourself somehow, at least you can deal with it without also having to manage someone else’s reaction at the same time.

 

7. You won’t break your own heart

Sad but true: many times in my life, I’ve had sex with someone I loved (or just really, really liked) who I knew didn’t feel the same about me. It could almost be a form of emotional self-harm at times, returning over and over again for empty sexual experiences with people I wished would date me, but who only thought of me as their fuckbuddy.

While it would’ve been almost impossible to talk me into it at the time, I wish I’d spent some of those nights at home by myself instead. Probably I’d’ve had more orgasms and cried fewer tears. But hey, you live and you learn. Now I know that calling masturbation “self-love” isn’t just a cheesy euphemism – it’s also a true description of the healthy, healing pleasure you can give yourself whenever you need it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

On Bad Teachers, “Naughty” Fantasies, & the Awkward Space In Between

Kate Sloan
Me on my last day of high school in 2011.

Content note for this one: sexual assault/abuse/exploitation of minors.

 

Recently a media arts teacher at my old high school was arrested for sexually assaulting and exploiting two of his female students.

You know when you hear a piece of news that ought to be surprising, even shocking, and yet somehow it just… feels true, completely and immediately? That’s what happened to me when I heard about Mr. Field.

It’s not that I’d ever seen him being overtly creepy in school – after all, many long-term abusers get good at flying under the radar, operating on such subtle levels that their victims can never quite tell for sure whether they’re being manipulated and mistreated or not. But as I reflected back on my time at Rosedale, I remembered that he had “favorites” every year – students, usually girls, who he spent extra time with, heaped extra praise onto, and had extra expectations for. A close friend of mine was one of these girls, and I saw the micro-level boundary-overstepping time and time again – most notably, an occasion where Mr. Field needed something from my friend’s locker for some art project, and she wasn’t at school at the time, so she just texted him her locker combination. I shudder now to think of what he could’ve done – what he maybe did – with that information.

The reason behavior like this went unremarked-upon at Rosedale was that odd relationships between teachers and students were sort of the norm there, especially since it was an arts school whose student body and staff lineup alike were always packed with nerds and weirdos. Not all of these relationships were abusive or problematic by any means – in fact, feeling able to trust some of my teachers in a way I’d never trusted a teacher before was one of the major things that helped me get through high school as a person with chronic depression and anxiety. I felt supported and cared for in a way most schools would frown upon. But I can see how that core belief Rosedalians held – “Our teachers are cool teachers, and it’s cool to be friends with them” – could easily devolve into grooming and exploitation in the wrong hands.

In the wake of the allegations against Mr. Field, I started hearing rumors about other teachers at Rosedale. I don’t know anyone who goes there anymore, but lots of people I know have younger siblings or friends who still go there, so I hear things through the grapevine sometimes. I heard a male English teacher got fired for having a mental breakdown at school and acting erratically toward his students (which he was already doing when he taught me in the 10th grade); I heard a civics teacher who I always disliked had been dismissed from his job for making creepy comments toward teenage girls; I heard one of the heads of the music department was kicked out for trying to kiss a student; and, most terrifyingly for me, I heard that the man who’d been my very favorite teacher – let’s call him Mr. J – had (maybe) gotten fired for (maybe) having sex with a student while (maybe) high on cocaine.

Now, granted, rumors are rumors, and it’s hard to know for sure what’s real and what isn’t. (I reached out to Rosedale’s administration for comment/confirmation, but as of this writing, they had not gotten back to me after four full weeks.) But like most people of my feminist ilk, I believe that the immense bravery and difficulty involved in coming forward with sexual abuse allegations are a sturdy enough barrier that false accusations of this sort are vanishingly rare (and the research bears this out). I tend to think that if the rumor made its way to me – particularly from multiple sources, which was the case with this one – that it contains at least a kernel of truth. And that fucking sucks. My heart goes out to every victim of every perpetrator of abuse and exploitation at that school and everywhere else.

This favorite teacher of mine, Mr. J, was an upper-level humanities instructor who brightened my days and changed my life. Ever-cheerful and ridiculously smart, he taught me things I still think about on a near-daily basis, made jokes that made me cry with laughter when I was supposed to be doing my readings, and wrote notes in the margins of my essays that made my heart jostle jubilantly in my chest. I became one of his “favorites,” I guess, and while I’d often been a “teacher’s pet” throughout my days as a nerdy, anxious goody two-shoes, this felt different; it felt like he actually liked me as a person, not just as a student. He took me aside before class on occasion to ask what I’d been reading lately (“I know you share my love of the written word!”) or what I’d been writing (“Did I hear that you won a poetry award?!”). He praised my answers in class discussions until I blushed and slunk down in my chair, too shy to talk to most of my classmates but never too shy to talk to him.

The memory that stands out the most to me about Mr. J is the time I was standing in the cafeteria line and I suddenly realized the two girls behind me were talking about him. They were a year or two younger than me, and were enthusing at each other about how cuuuute he was and how they wished they were taking one of his classes. Just then, he appeared, as if by magic. He greeted me, we bantered like we always did, I blushed like I always did, and then – without consulting me, without making a big deal about it – he quietly told the lunchlady to put my pasta salad on his bill. I didn’t fully realize what he’d done until he’d already paid and was out the door, and by then I had a free container of pasta salad in my hands, two jealous girls staring at me, and a brain soaked with syrupy infatuation and looping the thought, “Did that really just happen? Did that… really… just happen?”

I’ve been wanting to write an essay about this since I first heard the news about Field in August, and I thought the main point of the essay would become clearer in my mind the more that I thought about it, but it hasn’t. And that’s because… this is complicated. I had a crush on my teacher Mr. J, obviously. He thought I was cool, obviously. But what’s less obvious is: Was he grooming me, or was he just friendly and supportive? (Nothing overtly creepy ever happened; what I’ve described here is the closest he ever got to anything like that with me.) Are the rumors about him totally true, or totally inflated, or totally false? Should I be drastically revising my mental image of him?

The other thing that makes this complicated is that some of my biggest kinks first showed up in those interactions with Mr. J all those years ago. I mean, there’s a reason I talk about him in my “I’m a good girl” blog post. The idea of being “teacher’s pet,” of being “the favorite,” of being smart and good and celebrated and praised – these all loom very large in my present-day sexual psyche and they have for a very long time. Part of the reason I had a crush on him was that he inadvertently put me in a role that is, I now realize, kind of an erotic one for me. And yeah, that creates a weird dynamic where maybe I was (unbeknownst to him and even to myself) getting some kind of gratification from our relationship that he hadn’t necessarily consented to. But then, if these rumors are true and he’s a predator, maybe he was also getting something from me that I didn’t know about or consent to. Honestly, it makes my head spin to think about it.

What this ultimately points to, for me, is a fact I already know and would do well to keep learning until it’s completely drilled into my head: Fantasy is different from reality. I am sure that many predatory teachers’ “favorites” have, at some point or another, entertained fantasies of a romantic or sexual sort about their teachers. Abusers of this type actually work to create that feeling in their victims, often through horrible psychological manipulations that bear some resemblance to pickup artist techniques (neg them, play them hot and cold, keep them guessing, et cetera). But fantasizing about something doesn’t necessarily mean you want it. Or maybe it means you want it in fantasy but know it’d be a bad idea in reality. Or maybe it means you think you want it, but if it ever happened for real, it would horrify you and traumatize you.

I’ve felt very conflicted about my past feelings for a teacher who may or may not have preyed on my fellow students, but when I look at it through a consent-first framework, I can see that there’s nothing I need to feel guilty about. Having ached for some kind of relationship with Mr. J in fantasy does not mean I wanted one in reality, or that it would’ve been acceptable for either of us to pursue that. I was his student. True consent cannot exist in that situation; the power dynamics are too, well, powerful.

I still don’t know whether the rumors I heard were true. I still don’t know whether I need to denounce my past crush even though it was such a formative experience for me. But I do know that this experience has made me even more aware of the divide between fantasy and reality, between desires and behavior, between whims and decisions. I wasn’t wise enough back then to know that stuff, so I felt guilt for no reason about dreamily “wanting” things I didn’t actually, literally want. But the only person who ought to feel guilty, in situations like this, is the person in power, the person doing the victimizing. The atrocities they enact should only ever, at most, exist as fantasies inside their heads – and they ought to know better than to impose those fantasies on people too vulnerable and scared to even understand what’s being done to them.

In Defense of Wearing Socks During Sex

Kate Sloan

Recently, I asked my partner to write mini reviews of some lewd self-portraits I shot in Agent Provocateur lingerie (yep, I’m needy as fuck) and, in one of the shots, it became evident that I had teamed this very expensive, sexy ensemble with a pair of blue calf-high socks. Rather than do what most people would do and either wish they weren’t there or not even notice them, my partner noted that the socks “show me that you want to come, and they’re the only thing that will be left on you once I get my hands on you.” I giggled, blushed, and nodded. Exactly.

If you’d be mystified receiving a sext like that, let me explain. A study done in 2003 in the Netherlands, on the neural processes that contribute to orgasm, found (among numerous other things) that wearing socks increased female participants’ rate of orgasm from 50% to 80%. Innnteresting.

This makes sense to me, given what I’ve learned from sex researcher Emily Nagoski about how women can be more sensitive than men to the presence of “sexual brakes,” i.e. factors that inhibit sexual arousal both physically and psychologically. (For the record, I’m not really sure how this information relates to trans women or nonbinary people, or whether gender-non-conforming people were included in any of the relevant studies, although my past experiences reading sex research lead me to believe they probably weren’t sampled significantly or at all.) Having cold feet in the literal sense could give women cold feet in the metaphorical sense about having sex, because in some cases it’s a distraction significant enough that it prevents or slows down the arousal process – at least, for me, and seemingly for other women as well. This is likely compounded by the fact that women’s extremities, on average, run colder than men’s. (Again, I assume the research here refers only to cis people, but would be pleasantly surprised if that was not the case.)

In the many years since I first read about the socks study, I’ve cited it to multiple sexual partners when asked why I tend to keep my socks on during sex, or (in the cases of a few foot fetishists) when lustily asked to remove my socks. It’s interesting how just explaining “My feet get cold,” like I used to do before I knew about the science, was typically met with more resistance than the more recent and more airtight “Studies show wearing socks during sex helps with having orgasms.” It’s almost as if… people trust male scientists more than they trust women about women’s own bodies?! Gee, who’da thunk.

I should note here that many people have a legitimate aesthetic issue with the whole idea of socks during sex. Either they think it looks silly and weird (which is their prerogative – I know even ultra-busty pouty-lipped sex dolls would look kinda odd wearing woollen hiking socks and nothing else) or they’re turned on by feet and/or full nudity. When I fuck someone who feels this way, my partners’ orgasms may be inhibited almost as much by me wearing socks as mine would be by me not wearing socks – so I’m sometimes willing to bend my policy and work a little harder for my orgasms, knowing I can wriggle back into my nice warm socks when we’re done. I do, after all, want my partners to enjoy having sex with me!

But luckily for me, I’ve had about as many paramours who loved socks as ones who wanted to ban them from our bedroom. This, I think, can be attributed mostly to my interest in DD/lg – there are a lot of visual tropes within that fetish, and knee-high and thigh-high socks are high on the list for many kinksters. I still remember the time I settled into bed for a nice long phone-sex sesh with a daddy dom years ago: he asked me what I was wearing, I told him “a T-shirt, underwear, and some knee-high socks,” and he moaned/growled/grunted with such ferocity that I knew I had made the right choice even though he couldn’t even see my outfit.

Sometimes when I talk to other women about wearing socks during sex – and, yeah, my life is sufficiently weird that this topic does come up in conversation with friends sometimes – they seem slightly mystified by my decision to put my comfort first in a sexual scenario. I think this is sadly emblematic of our sexual culture. Mainstream porn, for example – while I adore much of it and think it is necessary and important – is full of messaging which suggests that hot sex and comfortable sex are basically mutually exclusive, especially for women (can you IMAGINE doing reverse cowgirl, while standing, for 20+ minutes straight?! I simply cannot). And indeed, there are some sex acts I enjoy greatly which could not be considered “comfortable” by any stretch of the imagination (getting paddled and getting throat-fucked come to mind), so it’s not like discomfort is incompatible with arousal for me. But for some reason, socks are one place where I draw a line. I’m rarely up for being uncomfortable in this particular way even though I’ll happily be uncomfortable in various other ways during sex from time to time.

I will say, too, that this has sometimes been a litmus test of sorts for how a new partner reacts to boundary-setting or mid-bang communication. Are they really so committed to their porn-borne sexual scripts that they’re going to insist on full nudity at the expense of my comfort? Are they really going to argue with me about this perfectly reasonable boundary I have set for my own body? Or are they going to say “Huh,” shrug it off, and move on like nothing is wrong (because nothing is)?

Despite being a foot fetishist, my current partner is so devoted to and interested in my pleasure and my orgasm that they’ll often encourage me to keep my socks on during sex. And this makes it all the more delicious for both of us when – after giving me a partly socks-enabled orgasm or two – they crawl down my body, rest their hand gently on my ankle, and ask so so sweetly, “May I take these off and look at your feet?”

Respecting sexual partners’ boundaries is so, so important, even if those boundaries don’t totally make sense to you. Every time a partner respects one of my boundaries without question, it becomes easier and more fun for me later on to bend my more flexible boundaries in the name of pleasure. Heeding my “no” now is likely to get you a “yes” later, for something else. I’m glad science exists to back me up when I set this particular boundary, but the truth is, I shouldn’t need a scientific citation to state what I want and have that be respected.

So when my partner compliments the socks I’m wearing in nudes ‘n’ lewds, I know it’s more than just a compliment. It’s an affirmation that my choices are valid, my boundaries are important, and I am beautiful regardless of which clothes I do, or don’t, remove.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 8 Brilliant Books

Kate Sloan

This instalment of 12 Days of Girly Juice used to highlight my favorite things I tweeted all year, but you know what? I’d rather talk about books. (However, if you were wondering, my favorite tweets of the year were definitely this one and this one.)

I read 40+ books this year and loved lots of them, so this is hard – but here are my 8 top picks!

You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian

From the author of the viral story “Cat Person” came this tour de force, a collection of short stories about the complexity of consent. Within these pages are several tricky fictional situations centering around sexual sadism, relational autonomy, erotic humiliation, and more. Several times while reading this book, I had to put it down and ponder: What do I think this character should have done, ethically? What decision would I have made in this situation? This book is so timely, what with the concept of consent being debated and dissected all over the place due to the #MeToo movement, and I think these stories are useful thought exercises for those of us concerned with parsing what consent and non-consent really mean, and what their limitations might be.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

When I first read Esmé’s essay “Perdition Days” years ago, I thought it was one of the most striking things I’d ever read. It chronicles her time living with Cotard’s delusion, a belief that (in her case) one is dead, and that the people in one’s life are merely purgatory’s facsimiles of their living counterparts. Esmé painted an incredibly affecting picture of what this delusion felt like from the inside, and how it impacted those around her. She went on to write The Collected Schizophrenias, a collection of essays (including “Perdition Days”) which discuss her life with chronic mental and physical illness, and the various dilemmas and struggles therewith. I found myself crying on the subway while reading Esmé weigh the decision to have kids or stay childless; I marveled at her reporting on chronic lime disease and the way its sufferers are frequently dismissed and disbelieved; I revelled in the bravery it must have taken for her to write about these things, and the artfulness with which she has done so. This book has stuck with me in ways I can’t even articulate, and I’m so glad it exists.

High Heel by Summer Brennan

You won’t read a more thorough history of the high heel than this – but this book is so much more than that. It discusses the iconic shoe in relation to politics, gender, sexuality, pain, music, film, fashion, and more. I notice people’s shoes a lot more now than I did before reading this book – and I’m more intentional about my own choices in that regard, too. I like Summer’s nuanced conclusion that high heels aren’t necessarily oppressive and evil like many feminists argue – they can instead be a freely chosen expression of identity that many people find affirming and uplifting.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

I saw this book retweeted onto my Twitter timeline and my interest was immediately piqued. A gorgeously illustrated story about queer high-school heartbreak? Yes please! I cried multiple times while reading this immensely beautiful graphic novel, because the feelings of rejection, insecurity, unworthiness, and ultimately resilience were so familiar to me, from both my queer relationships and my “straight” ones. The pleasure of reading this book was equal parts emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and tactile – a rare thing!

Building Open Relationships by Dr. Liz Powell

If you read only one book on non-monogamy, make it this one. Dr. Liz lays out all the common pitfalls of this relationship style and how to deal with them. Their book is written with compassion and vulnerability, and is full of useful stories from Liz’s own dating life that illustrate the principles they teach. I feel much more equipped to handle non-monogamy after reading this book, and I’ve recommended it to countless people. It’s just that good.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

I love a good murder-mystery, and that’s exactly what this novel is. An investigative journalist sets his sights on figuring out why and how the daughter of a prominent horror movie director died. In the process, he picks up a couple of sidekicks, wanders through revered movie sets, chats with a drug-addled movie star, breaks into abandoned buildings, swans around Manhattan penthouses, sneaks onto an estate in a canoe, and basically just gets up to some good old-fashioned hijinks. Marisha Pessl is a gifted (and often hilarious) writer, and I was captivated by this story from beginning to end.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

This book got a lot of attention around its launch, and for good reason. Tolentino’s painstakingly constructed essays dive into precarious topics like the wedding industrial complex, the absurdity of reality TV, activewear as capitalist fetishwear, and more. Every piece in this book is incisive, witty, evocative, and meticulously researched. Reading it probably made me smarter, and definitely made me feel smarter.

The Wagers by Sean Michaels

I’m biased because Sean is my cousin, but this novel is really extraordinary. It’s primarily about luck – what does it mean to be lucky, and how can one become moreso? – but is also about love, and family, and fame, and privilege, and the grocery business. I love a twisty plot, and this one frequently made me shout “OH SHIT” while reading in cafés or on the subway (whoops). I fell in love with the characters of this strange novel, and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen to them next.

What were your favorite books you read this year?