“A Song A Week” Challenge: Monthly Recap 11 of 12

Kate Sloan

Song 45/52: “What If?”

Lyrics:

You treat me so much better than my last love
I clearly carry scars from every past love
And though you buy me roses and ask me to dance
I can’t trust this sweet romance

I’m just as scared as ever that I’ll fall
I’m unprepared to tear down this wall
And though you spoil me with affection almost every day
I can’t trust the words you say, ’cause…

Chorus:
What if it’s all a lie?
What if you leave me alone like they all do?
What if you make me cry?
What if you block me so I can’t even call you?
What if you, what if you, what if you do?

You had to turn your phone off for a work thing
I couldn’t help but think that you were flirting
And though I don’t believe every feeling I feel
I can’t trust your love is real, ’cause…

(repeat chorus)

I once read a story about some spies
Who had to infiltrate communities in disguise
They must’ve done pretty well, ’cause they got the intel
After years-long relationships built on lies
Oh, what a nasty surprise!

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I pulled a couple tarot cards to inspire a song this week and they were the Knight of Cups (romance, charm, beauty, sentiment, expressiveness) and The Moon (illusion, fear, anxiety, intuition, uncertainty). This combination made me think about the recurrent fears I’ve had in most of my romantic relationships that my partner might only be pretending to be into me, whether because they’re just polite or because they’re planning something malicious. (This has never really turned out to be the case but probably stems from a traumatic experience I had in my teens where a mean girl “pretended” to ask me out and then revealed she’d essentially been trolling me for the lolz.)

I wrote a complete set of lyrics inspired by that card pull, and made an a cappella recording of how I heard the melody in my head while I was writing it. A couple days later, I sat down at the piano and worked out some suitable chords for the melody I’d been hearing, making some changes to it in the process.

The bridge section is referencing a real news story about undercover cops getting into relationships with activists under false pretences in order to spy on them. I talked about how this story fuelled my already-troubling delusions in this story on the Bawdy Storytelling podcast.

Song 46/52: “Sisyphus”

Lyrics:

Slow and steady wins the war
Don’t know what I’m fighting for
Moon is pink and sky is dark
Somehow, somewhere, lost the spark

Are you ever gonna hear my echoed words?
Are you ever gonna like the things you’ve heard?
Are you ever gonna love me, love me, love me, love me now?

Chorus:
I’m still so small; whose fault is this?
I swear I feel like Sisyphus
I yell and groan when I’m pushing the stone
Every day feels the same
Sisyphus – that is my name

History has much to say
On we who’d rather work than play
River man has lost his oar
Don’t know who I’m rowing for

Are you ever gonna borrow from the past?
Are you ever gonna do what I did last?
Are you ever gonna hear me, hear me, hear me, hear me now?

(repeat chorus)

Time has told me that there’s not much time
(Not much time, not much time)
It passes coldly, like I did mine
(I did fine, I did fine)
The conversation, the situation’s wrong
(It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong)
But I’ll be pushing until the hill is gone

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

Another tarot pull inspired this song: the cards were Strength (courage, determination, power, dedication) and the Eight of Pentacles (apprenticeship, repetitive tasks, skill development, hard work, “slow and steady wins the race”). This combination made me think about the myth of Sisyphus, who was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill over and over again forever.

I had been thinking about Sisyphus recently because I’d just finished reading a couple of books about Nick Drake, the British folk singer-songwriter who, like Van Gogh, was plagued by mental health issues and didn’t experience true commercial success until after he had already died tragically. Nick famously had a copy of Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus on his nightstand when he died, and many have theorized that he related to Sisyphus’s plight, seeing both his career and his mental health as a constant, grueling uphill battle.

I wrote some lyrics from Nick’s perspective, ruminating on his lack of success and calling forward to future listeners, begging them to hear him and to be influenced by him. (This did indeed happen; he’s widely considered a cult hero in the music world now and has been cited as an influence by huge artists like Norah Jones, REM, Beck, and Belle & Sebastian.)

I threw in some references to Nick’s music throughout, including mentions of a “pink moon,” a “river man,” and the phrase “time has told me.” (Would strongly recommend clicking those links and listening to his music if you’re not already a Nick Drake convert; his songs are hypnotically beautiful and virtuosically played.) The line in the chorus, “Whose fault is this?” was also taken from a quote attributed to Nick by his producer Joe Boyd, as excerpted in Amanda Petrusich’s book Pink Moon (emphasis mine):

Boyd later described their brief interaction as grisly, telling the BBC: “His hair was dirty and he was unshaved and his fingernails were dirty and he was wearing a shabby coat. … He sat down and he immediately launched into this kind of tirade about his career, about money, and basically it was accusatory. And he said, ‘You told me I’m great, but nobody knows me. Nobody buys my records. I’m still living on handouts from the publishing company. I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Whose fault is this?’ And he was angry. And I tried to explain that there are no guarantees, that you can make a great record and sometimes it just doesn’t sell.”

Song 47/52: “Bad Girl”

Lyrics:

Late night, skin-tight dress gets caught on the
Windowsill mid-climb until it pulls
Free, like me, and off into the dark

My daddy is asleep; he doesn’t know
That he could not keep me dutiful
Doesn’t know I’m drinking in the park

Chorus:
I’m not a bad girl, I swear
Just want to let down my hair
When I’m a good girl by day
My other side just wants to play
And she gets carried away
She’s got a lot she wants to say

Beer and wine and kiss me in a tree
You are with the wildest part of me
Pulling you so close against my lips

Why do I feel so rebellious?
Wait, wait, strike that, no, don’t tell me, just
Block out all those questions with your kiss

(repeat chorus)

If I seem nervous
It’s ’cause I’m workin’
To be so perfect
When I feel worthless

If I seem stressed out
It’s ’cause I left out
All the realest parts of me
To be who they want me to be

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

Third tarot-inspired song in a row! I’ve been finding tarot cards really helpful lately because there is just an infinite number of topics I could potentially write songs about and it can be paralyzing to try to contemplate them all, so instead I pull two random tarot cards, meditate on their meanings, and write about whatever they remind me of.

For this one, I pulled The Emperor (authority, structure, a father figure, power, rules and regulations) and the Seven of Swords (betrayal, deception, getting away with something). That combo immediately made me think about teenagers rebelling against their parents, so I wrote these lyrics and then ended up putting them to music several days later when various other songwriting attempts that week didn’t produce results I felt were good enough.

While the verses of this song are about experiences I never actually had – sneaking out of the house unbeknownst to my parents to drink with friends in the park – I included some of my actual thoughts and feelings about the “good girl/bad girl” duality, something I’ve been discussing a bit in therapy lately. I have the phrase “good girl” tattooed on my thighs and even previously wrote a song called “Good Girl,” so it was interesting to explore the flipside of that goodness and how both of those girls exist within me.

Song 48/52: “Gun Control”

Lyrics:

Another shooting in the news today
Before the last one’s ink is dry
It’s getting old, getting so cliché
Everybody’s asking why

Why all they’ll give us is thoughts and prayers
Why it’s seeming like nobody cares
Give your local reps a ring
So they’ll get off their ass and do something

Chorus:
The devil wins – he’s on a roll
Let’s do him in with gun control
Use your conscience, search your soul
The time has come for gun control
Gun, gun, gun control (x3)
The time has come for gun control

It’s not as if the jury’s out
Read the stats; the facts don’t lie
I promise you can go without
So fewer kids will have to die

If I seem mad, it’s ’cause I am
‘Cause no one seems to give a damn
I feel unsafe at bars and malls
So give your local reps a call

(repeat chorus)

How many more lives will we have to lose?
How many more hearts will we break or bruise?
No amendment’s worth this pain
I feel like I’m going insane

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I was going to bed one night, checked Twitter (never a good idea before sleep), saw that yet another mass shooting had occurred – there have been over 600 in the USA this year – and felt so angry and sad and despairing that I wrote some lyrics because I didn’t know what else to do with my feelings.

The following day, I grabbed a ukulele and set those words to music. The song was really simple musically so I felt it would be bolstered by some clips of politicians talking about gun control, which I edited in. I’ve long admired the powerful (and often hilarious) songs that people like Jonathan Mann and the Gregory Brothers can create with political clips, so it was an interesting challenge to take a crack at it myself.

Can Demisexuals Enjoy Porn?

Kate Sloan
A blurry still from a porn scene I once performed in for Spit

One of the most striking changes in my sexuality as I’ve grown older is how much more demisexual I’ve gotten. I went from being a horny, flirty 23-year-old who could spot my next fuck from across a crowded swimming pool, to being a grizzled, grumpy 30-year-old who needs to have a 3-hour conversation with someone before deciding whether she wants to hold their hand. (That’s a slight exaggeration… maybe…)

I’ve seen the question of demisexuals’ porn consumption come up in a few of the online sex discussion spaces I participate in, and I think it’s an interesting one. If the primary purpose of pornography is to arouse the viewer, and the viewer is someone who is far more aroused by brains than bodies, and far more interested in intimacy than insertions, can porn really do its job? I have a few points I’d like to make in response to this question.

Quick refresher before we hop in: Demisexuality is an identity on the asexuality spectrum. Demisexuals find it difficult or impossible to experience sexual attraction until and unless they’ve developed an emotional connection to, or at least an emotional familiarity with, the subject of that attraction.

 

Point 1: Sexual attraction and sexual arousal are not the same thing.

Sexual attraction, generally speaking, is the visceral pull you feel toward someone you want to kiss, touch, and/or fuck. It is aimed at particular people; if someone said to me, “Do you feel like having sex right now?” my answer would be rather different than if someone said to me, “Do you feel like having sex with James Dean circa 1955 right now?” (My answers at the moment, respectively, are “Ehh, not really, ask me again after I’ve had my coffee” and “OMG, yes, give me 10 minutes to throw on some red lipstick for him to mess up.”)

Sexual arousal, on the other hand, is the physical (and, arguably, also mental) state of being horny. It can involve noticeable changes in your physiology, like engorged genital tissue and a quickening heartbeat, as well as more psychological effects, like the pressing desire to be imminently touched by yourself and/or by someone else.

These two things are different. Certainly one can facilitate the other – and for many demisexuals, sexual attraction precedes sexual arousal and is itself preceded by emotional attraction – but fundamentally, they are separate, and don’t always occur at the same time, in the same situations.

Without trying to speak for other demisexuals on this matter, I’ll say that I can become sexually aroused by porn without feeling sexually attracted to the people in it. It certainly helps if I’m attracted to the people in it (more on that below), but just witnessing certain sexual acts can rev me up, especially if they’re acts I’m already intimately familiar with and/or acts I already fetishize to some extent. And so, yes, I can jerk off to porn, and often find that it adds measurably to my arousal and pleasure, just as it does for many allosexual people (i.e. people who are not on the asexual spectrum).

 

Point 2: Porn can become familiar.

In an age of OnlyFans feeds and live sex cams, it’s easier than ever to follow the careers of porn performers you enjoy. Whether you become a fan of theirs because you think they’re cute, because they remind you of someone you used to date, or because your favorite sex acts and kinks are fairly aligned with theirs (or all three!), you can definitely develop an “emotional connection” – albeit a one-sided, parasocial one – to certain performers over time.

This noticeably increases my enjoyment of porn, as a demisexual person. Of the porn performers whose work I follow closely, what they all have in common is that there’s a lot of personality infused into their work, so that I get a sense of who they are (or at least, who their porn persona is) on a deeper level than I would if I’d just watched them get fucked once. This creates a sense of heightened connection and therefore generates heightened sexual attraction on my end.

I’ve noticed that this effect can also occur even if I’ve just seen a particular porn clip several times. It’s like the raunchier version of how I feel more attracted to Jennifer Beals every time I re-watch one of her sex scenes from The L Word…

If you’re not sure where to even find porn performers you might develop a fondness for, I’d suggest scrolling through clip sites like ManyVids, or flipping through the pages of free adult webcams listings, and clicking on anyone whose aesthetic or vibe provokes a positive response in you. Follow that little glimmer of potential attraction and see where it leads you.

 

Point 3: You can make porn that’s familiar.

Now, granted, not everyone wants to set up a camera to film themselves while fucking. You may have concerns about this related to cybersecurity, future employment, etc. and that’s fine.

But if you are willing to make your own porn, I think this can be one of the best solutions for demisexuals who want wank fodder but don’t connect with much/any of the porn they see online. After all, what could be more demisexual than jerking off to the sight of a person you know IRL and already have a deep connection with?

I’ve made amateur porn with a few partners over the years, and it’s always served me well when incorporated into my spank bank. It reminds me of hot sex I’ve had, because it depicts… hot sex I’ve actually had! And it’s therefore a lot easier for me to get turned on by it and get off to it.

 

Fellow demisexuals, what’s your experience with porn? Does it turn you on? Bore you? Or does it depend?

 

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

Whimsical Toys at Wacky Prices: Fun Factory’s Cyber Monday Deals!

Kate Sloan
All images via Fun Factory

Sometimes people say that they feel like “a kid in a candy store” the first time they enter a sex shop, and I’ve never felt that more strongly than I do about Fun Factory toys.

I mean, look at them. They’re colorful, playful and evocative. They’re the very essence of whimsy, in shapes you can fuck yourself with. They’re what would happen if Willy Wonka designed a line of sex products. (Insert “everlasting cocksucker” joke here.)

It may seem extraneous to comment on a toy’s appearance, when (as I’ve said myself in many of my toy reviews) the way it feels is ultimately way more important. But that’s the best part about Fun Factory: their toys look cute and feel fantastic. This combination is alarmingly hard to find in the sex toy biz. And because the Fun Factory aesthetic is so friendly, bright and (yep) fun, I think these toys are especially wonderful picks for people who are often put off by the way sex toys look, whether because they’re grossed out by veiny dildos, intimidated by heavy-handed Fifty Shades-inspired products, or gender-dysphoric about pastel pinks and purples. Fun Factory has the guts to make strange-looking toys galore in shades of lime green, atomic orange, lemon yellow, and many more.

I’m writing this post because the company wanted me to tell you about their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, which are just stellar this year. Here are the deets:

  • Toys on Fun Factory’s website are up to 60% off right now. Check below for my recommendations, but trust me, these are great deals regardless of what you decide to get. ✨
  • You’ll get a free mini vibrator with any purchase of $120 or more. So you’re getting, quite literally, more bang for your buck. 😍
  • You’ll get store credit to spend on a later order: $25 when you spend $125, $45 when you spend $175, and $65 when you spend $225 or more. I love when stores do this close to the holidays, because it means you can selflessly buy gifts for your loved ones now, and then selfishly get some extra cash to spend on yourself later. 😎

What’s worth getting from Fun Factory? Honestly, a lot of things. But here are my top recommendations at the moment:

  • The Stronic Petite ($112.49 with the current sale) is my latest love. Fun Factory’s self-thrusting Stronic toys are much-loved but are all on the larger side, so I was glad that the brand decided to release a smaller version of their signature thrusters. It’s aimed at folks going through menopause, who might find its 1.38″ max diameter more comfortable, but really it’s suitable for anyone who wants a thruster but can’t handle a ton of girth. (Keep in mind, though, that it’s not anal-safe.)
  • The Manta ($104.99) is one of my favorite penis vibes, and is super fun to use on a partner (or, I would imagine, on oneself). It’s rare to find a vibe as perfectly suited for penile pleasure as this one is; its silicone wings wrap around your shaft, regardless of size, and add some delicious vibration to whatever else you’re doing – or you can even use this toy by itself, concentrating the vibrations on your frenulum or wherever else feels good.
  • The Magnum dildo ($44.99) is an all-around excellent dildo that works well for lots of different purposes, from solo sex to strap-on play to bathtime fun. It’s got a small-to-average diameter, maxing out at 1.26″, and a longer-than-average length (6.69″ insertable – nice), so it’s comfortable to use in many different positions and holes. Its angled head makes it feel lovely against the G-spot or prostate, too.
  • The Bootie ($26.24) is an ideal butt plug for anal newbies. It’s small, comfortably shaped, easy to insert and remove, and made of silicone that flexes and bends with your body. I used to suggest it several times a week to would-be anal lovers when they would come into the sex shop I worked at, asking for recommendations.
  • The Big Boss ($104.99) is a must-have for people who like a lot of sensation. It packs powerfully rumbly vibrations into its overwhelmingly girthy body, such that your G-spot won’t be able to elude it. I love the looped handle, too, as someone who struggles at times to thrust toys as hard and as fast as my greedy G-spot would prefer.

 

Check out the Fun Factory Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals for yourself, and see whether there’s something you’d like to get for a friend, partner, or just to add to your own collection!

 

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

Why I Love the Ukulele

Kate Sloan

Ukulele, small and fierceful
Ukulele, brave and peaceful
You can play the ukulele too –
It is painfully simple
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“

I’ve been writing songs since before I knew how to play any instruments; it’s baked into me how yeast is baked into bread. But instruments are a big part of how you bring music into the world, and convey to listeners the way you’re hearing your songs inside your head, and so I always wanted to learn to play an instrument, long before I ever did.

A year or more into piano lessons (which I enjoyed, though I begrudged having to practice my Bach and Chopin), I started listening obsessively to indie folk artists on a website called PureVolume (it was sort of like the MySpace of the music industry at the time) and, in particular, found myself drawn to songs written on acoustic guitars. I had an old violin, inherited from a relative and missing a string, and I would sit in front of the family computer plucking out simple chords on this creaky old instrument and sing over them into a USB microphone. Once, my dad walked by while I was doing this, and he remarked aloud, “We gotta get this girl a guitar.”

Playing my first guitar, circa 2008

He did, and it’s still one of the most meaningful acts of love I can recall in my life. He took me to Long & McQuade, arguably the best music shop in Toronto, and I told the salesman I wanted an acoustic guitar. (Electric guitars weren’t really on my radar; the artists I cared about then were all writing on acoustics.) The salesman asked me if I wanted a steel-stringed guitar or a nylon-stringed one, and I didn’t know, so he grabbed one of each. “Nylon-stringed guitars are usually used for classical music,” he explained, playing a bit of fingerpicked flamenco on the one he’d chosen, “whereas steel-stringed guitars are used in folk music.” He played a few bars of music that sounded like folk-rock to me – like the music I’d been listening to on PureVolume – and I said, “That one, please.” My fate was sealed.

I loved my guitar, and took lessons for a few years from a chill-as-hell Irish hipster named Eoghan (pronounced like “Owen”) who was getting a degree in jazz guitar. One December, my mom sent along a box of cookies for me to give him as a Christmas gift, and he was so surprised and flustered by this that he gave me a huge book of jazz standards he happened to have in his guitar case that day. I treasured that book, and still have it.

No matter how many guitar lessons I took, though, it just never felt as natural to me as singing or playing the piano. My fingers weren’t strong enough to play barre chords, or nimble enough to swap quickly between different chords. True, I could have (and should have) practiced more than I did, but it felt like I was hitting an insurmountable wall, limited by my level of physical ability.

My guitar teacher worked out of a music school on top of a music store, and so I would walk through their rows of instruments every time I went to a lesson. And sometime around age 16, I began to notice the ukuleles hanging adorably in a back corner. One fateful day in 2008, I took a couple friends with me to the shop and picked out a bright green Beaver Creek ukulele, paid approximately $40 for it, and walked out holding my musical future in my hands.

It was just so clear to me, so quickly, that I was meant to play the ukulele. I fell in love with it the way I fall in love with human beings: quickly, obsessively, and all-consumingly.

See what happens when you muzzle a person’s creativity
And do not let them sing and scream
And nowadays, it’s worse, ’cause kids have automatic handguns
It takes about an hour to teach someone to play the ukulele
About the same to teach someone to build a standard pipe bomb
You do the math!
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“

If you’re not familiar, the ukulele differs from the guitar in a few key ways. It’s smaller, and tuned higher; it’s cheaper, and has a thinner but more playful sound. And, crucially, it has only four strings instead of six, so chord shapes are simpler, requiring less nimbleness and coordination of the player’s fingers. Its strings tend to be made of nylon or similar materials, so it doesn’t require as much strength as pressing down on steel guitar strings, which can bite into your fingertips like knives if you haven’t formed callouses there yet.

I wasn’t diagnosed with fibromyalgia yet at that time, and who knows when I actually developed that illness – but the struggles which led me to prefer ukulele over guitar have only deepened over the years, in large part due to my fibro. My hands are weaker than I’d prefer, and often sore. I’m clumsy and prone to dropping things, stumbling, hitting wrong notes on the fretboard. I’m frequently frustrated by an inability to translate the songs I hear in my head into an audible, tangible result that I can share with others. The ukulele, therefore, is perfect for me.

With the barrier of insufficient hand strength removed from the equation, I’ve gotten much better at ukulele than I ever got at guitar, even though I took guitar lessons for years and am mostly self-taught on the ukulele. I can play complicated chord changes from jazz or musical theatre, and never (okay, almost never) get so frustrated that I want to throw my instrument across the room. I can strum chords or finger-pick, write songs or learn other people’s songs. It feels easy and natural to me in a way that guitar never did.

There’s a term I love, “access intimacy,” which I learned from some kink workshop at a conference long ago. (I can’t recall who introduced me to this concept, or I would credit them.) It refers to the intimacy you can have with people who recognize and meet your access needs – whether those needs are related to physical disabilities, such as requiring ramps and access to handicapped bathrooms, or mental-emotional issues, such as needing to avoid certain PTSD triggers or needing a slow approach to task-switching due to ADHD.

I genuinely feel that I have “access intimacy” with the ukulele. It meets me where I’m at. It enables me to make music, write music, and feel like I’m a part of the music-making community, even though virtuosic guitar-playing is beyond my grasp.

The cheapness and accessibility of ukuleles is also highly democratizing. As singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer points out in her “Ukulele Anthem,” beginner ukuleles are usually pretty affordable (you can find ’em for $20-50, although I’d recommend spending at least $40 if you want a decent-sounding uke), and the chords are simple enough that you can pick up many of them in just an hour or two of practicing, especially if you have some music knowledge under your belt already. I love knowing that even if I suddenly needed to spend a lot of time away from home – as Amanda Palmer did when she got stuck in New Zealand toward the beginning of the pandemic – I could walk to a local music shop and be reunited with my favorite instrument for less money than a meal at a mid-tier restaurant. It makes me feel safe and secure, knowing I can take my music with me anywhere I go. One of the deepest and truest ways I know my spouse really loves me is that they keep a ukulele in the corner of their living room, even though they don’t play any instruments, simply because they know I’m calmer and happier when there’s a ukulele nearby that I can pick up whenever the whim strikes.

Nowadays, even as I’m mired in seasonal depression and fibro pain and general 21st-century millennial malaise, I keep a soprano ukulele on my bed so it’s always there when I feel like reaching for it. Not next to my bed, not near my bed, but on my bed. It’s small enough that I can do that. And many days, having it there is the difference between feeling sad and listless, and playing songs until I find my smile again.

I’ve taught ukulele lessons, I’ve bought ukuleles for friends, I’ve evangelized about ukuleles to all who would listen – and the reason for all this is simple. The ukulele has changed my life, made it brighter and bolder and easier and more fun. It has made music feel delightful instead of soul-sucking and painful. Every time I hold this little instrument in my arms, I feel grateful to be able to pluck its four strings.

So play your favorite Beatles’ song
And make the subway fall in love
They’re only $19.95; that isn’t lots of money
Play until the sun comes up
And play until your fingers suffer
Play LCD Soundsystem songs on your ukulele
Quit the bitching on your blog
And stop pretending art is hard
Just limit yourself to three chords
And do not practice daily
You’ll minimize some stranger’s sadness
With a piece of wood and plastic
Holy fuck, it’s so fantastic, playing ukulele!
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“

Mourning Twitter, a Hellsite for the Ages

Kate Sloan

I’ve been very depressed this last week, and I’d be lying if I said it had nothing to do with the imminent demise of Twitter as we knew it. There are other factors, of course, but Twitter is a big one.

It’s been hard explaining this to people whose brains aren’t as broken by Twitter as mine is. I’ve been a user of the site since 2007, when I was 15 years old. I have never been an adult in a world without Twitter, and never really considered the possibility that I would have to. So it’s disorienting, to say the least, that an inept and egomaniacal billionaire is dismantling the site I’ve long considered my digital home-away-from-home.

Don’t get me wrong: Twitter isn’t perfect and never has been. Abuse has always run rampant on it, including a lot of homophobic, biphobic, misogynist and antisemitic abuse, which has felt viscerally frightening to me as a queer Jewish woman. It’s been a hub for disinformation, doomscrolling, and unsettling DMs. It has enabled racists, excluded sex workers, and let hate speech abound unchecked. And that’s just listing a few of the things that were (and are) wrong with Twitter.

But it’s also the place where I met my spouse, and my best friend/podcast cohost, and several other good friends and past partners. It’s the place where I’ve connected with editors, clients, and sources. It’s the place where I’ve shared my silly thoughts, my hot takes, my pain, my fury, and my joy.

The linguist Gretchen McCulloch argues in her book Because Internet that sites such as Twitter are the digital equivalent of a hallway at a high school or in a college dorm; they’re a place where casual, ambient socializing happens – as opposed to socializing that you have to specifically seek out and plan – and they therefore allow you to connect with people you might never have met otherwise. This feels very true to me – where else but Twitter could I chat with Tokyo-based game designers, London escorts and Texan law professors about current events in the course of a single hour?

Twitter was also, notably, one of the more sexually permissive mainstream social media sites. True, I know many people who got shadowbanned or outright kicked off the service for posting about sex work or BDSM, but nudes and porn are specifically allowed on Twitter and that automatically made it feel like a more welcoming place for me and my sex-nerd pals than, say, Facebook or Instagram, where we still have to self-censor with bastardized “words” like “seggs” and “secks” just to keep our accounts up-and-running.

I also maintain that Twitter is one of the best dating sites for demisexuals like me, because it allows you to get to know someone through their words first and their face second (if at all). I have far more Twitter crushes than Instagram crushes (or even IRL crushes) because I crush on people’s brains first and foremost, and Twitter made it easier than any other site for me to connect with people whose brains made my own brain tingle.

I loved Twitter, despite its many shortcomings and mistakes. I won’t be jumping ship immediately, especially since self-promotion is a big part of how I stay afloat professionally/financially so I can’t afford to leave the place where my biggest platform is. But if you’d like to follow me elsewhere – which I’d really appreciate, since I love y’all – here’s where to keep up with me:

  • This blog, obviously. I’m more convinced than ever that maintaining a self-hosted personal blog is the way of the future, given how many social media websites keep betraying us.
  • I’m @girly_juice on Instagram and that’s where I’m most active aside from Twitter.
  • My newsletter, where I send out a little essay on love, sex, and other random topics every week to my premium subscribers (it’s $5/month or $50/year). If you can’t afford a premium subscription, you can still sign up as a free subscriber and you’ll get free dispatches from me a couple times a year or so.
  • On Mastodon, which some people think will be Twitter’s major replacement, I can be found at @girlyjuice@mastodon.social – go follow me!

I love you, I’m glad you’re here, and I’m trying to look forward to whatever comes next.

 

This post contains a sponsored link, ’cause a girl’s gotta eat. As ever, all writing and opinions are my own.