Similarly, my androgynous girlfriend resented the fact that just because she wore boys’ clothes, people assumed she wanted a penis. In the years that followed, I found it insulting when people would ask me, “But don’t you miss dick?” As if the penis is the holy grail of pleasure.

It was my first same-sex relationship, and I was like, “This is what lesbians do, right?” As it turned out, we used the strap-on only like four times in our three-year relationship-partly because it quickly dawned on me that I didn’t need to imitate heterosexual sex in order to validate my queer sex. When I met my ex, one of the first things I did was run to a sex store and buy a large purple dildo and leather harness. I wondered if I should resurrect my strap-on from the junk box under my bed, where it’s been in exile since my breakup with my now ex-girlfriend four months ago. She made it sound so bizarrely appealing. Before Jim, I’d always thought of myself as submissive, but through that experience I accessed a totally different side of myself.” You have a lot of control, and that became very sexy to me. You have to listen to their physical cues and gauge if they’re having pleasure or if you’re hurting them. “The person has to be very trusting of you. It’s some Freudian bullshit, but it just feels so fun and powerful to have a penis.” This wasn’t the “feminist” answer I was expecting.īeyond the thrill of the power shift, what Claire didn’t expect was how intimate the sex would be. “Even though my dildo is bright pink and it’s this laborious process to strap yourself in, something about it still feels real.

“I love wearing a strap-on,” she said, casually flipping her long curls behind her shoulders. Lori sipped her green juice and rolled her eyes. Like, ‘Does shaving my armpits make me a bad feminist?’ And, more pressingly, ‘Is my strap-on a symbol of male supremacy?’ And if so, should I set it on fire as a performance art piece?” But we’re also being forced to ask ourselves some serious questions. I was saying something like, “Sure, it’s cool that we live in this post-everything world where gender is over and hetero-normativity is off-trend and all the rules of sexuality have been thrown out the window. On the receiving end of my rant was my friend “Lori,” a 23-year-old MFA student studying queer theory. Last week, I found myself at Cafe Gratitude in Los Angeles, eating a gluten-free scone and fuming about gender, as one does in 2016.

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