Ep 184: Kink at Pride

Hey what's up hello! This week we discuss a topic that comes up every year: is there a place for kink at pride? Is there any conflict between aspec issues and kink in such a forum? And the biggest question of all: what does "kink at pride" even MEAN?

Episode Transcript: www.soundsfakepod.com/transcripts/kink-at-pride

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Transcript

(0:00)

SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aroace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)

KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)

SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.

KAYLA: On today’s episode: kink at pride.

ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod!

KAYLA: Oh man.

SARAH: See, you could have been prepared. You could have been so prepared.

KAYLA: Hold on. M’icrosoft Word. Now I’m using the ones our friend Erin texts to us and using Erin’s instead of my own. 

SARAH: I just thought of one that Erin didn’t come up with. Jeff Bezos just bought M’GM.

KAYLA: That one didn’t work as well.

SARAH: I guess cause M starts with an E and not M. Like the em sound. What does the M stand for again? Metro? 

KAYLA: Which MGM? The TV—

SARAH: M’etro Goldwyn M’eyer. That one. 

KAYLA: Yeah.

SARAH: The MGM. Anyway, cool. Do we have any housekeeping? What’s the good word? What’s the word on the street?

KAYLA: There was a lot of really cool discussion in our Discord this past week from last episode. I always get nervous when I lead episodes and I expect the episode to not be good when I am the one leading it.
SARAH: And that’s on mental illness, which we talked about last week.

KAYLA: Bestie. Yeah but everyone had such nice things to say. It was really cool to hear everyone’s experiences so if you’re not in our Discord I recommend joining. If you just want to read, if you don’t even want to write anything. It’s just really cool to hear perspectives that aren’t me and Sarah’s.

SARAH: You don’t have to participate you can just lurk.

KAYLA: Yeah I love to lurk, that’s what I do most of the time. 

SARAH: I lurk sometimes.

KAYLA: Yeah.

SARAH: Yeah, cool. Okay. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?

KAYLA: This week we are talking about the very controversial and prevalent at the moment conversation of kink at pride. 

SARAH: Yeah so, there has been some online discussion on Twitter and I guess other places, mostly Twitter—

KAYLA: Shocking.

SARAH: Yeah. About whether or not kink has a place at pride. Apparently, this is a topic that pretty much comes up every year around pride.

KAYLA: Yeah I was looking stuff up and I found articles from May and June from pretty much every year so.

SARAH: Yeah it’s not a new thing but it does apparently come up around pride often. And so this particular discussion I saw most on Twitter was based off this one article in The Independent which I had to make a fucking account so I could read it.

KAYLA: Yeah I don’t know why you did because I just read it without having to make an account.
SARAH: How?

KAYLA: I don’t know. I just went on Google and I found it. 

SARAH: I even opened it on my phone and it wouldn’t even let me read it without an account there either. Now The Independent knows my identity. But I went and read this article after having seen a lot of discourse around it. 

KAYLA: Heads up before Sarah gets into this. We both did some reading but Sarah, as usual, did some hyperfixation and wrote out an entire essay to read to you.

SARAH: I Have a monologue.

KAYLA: Sarah basically wrote an essay to read to you at this time so I might be interjecting. We’ll see if Sarah will let me get some words in. But be prepared for Sarah to just go off at this time.

SARAH: Why do my job when I can hyperfixate on queer community drama? You know?

KAYLA: I mean. Yeah. 

SARAH: Yeah so this kind of article started the discourse this year. It was written by Skyler Baker-Jordan, who according to another tweet I saw is a self-proclaimed TERF, at least they were in 2018. So that’s just a bit of context going in.

KAYLA: Good to know, good to know.

SARAH: This article is called “BDSM and kink don’t belong in Pride celebrations. This is why.” And you can read the article if you wish. You may or may not have to make an account.

(5:00) 

KAYLA: Who’s to say.

SARAH: After I read it, having seen the discourse, mostly people disagreeing with this person, it was kind of strange to me because after I read it, I technically—technically—don't disagree with any of the individual points that are being made in this article.

KAYLA: I disagree with quite a few of the individual points personally.

SARAH: I mean, I would say I do disagree with some of them but not in like a “you’re a horrible person” kind of way that a lot of other people are reacting to it with. This person was just talking about how kink is about consent and if there is a lot of kink on display at pride you’re not including the consent of people around you. They were saying also that unlike sexual or romantic or gender orientation I guess, you know what I mean—identity—kink and BDSM is a choice which is correct. But the problem with the article for me at least is that the implication is that there is no place for kink or BDSM at pride which I don’t think is true. Before I dive into my monologue, Kayla, I’m curious to see what your thoughts were after reading the article. 

KAYLA: Yeah so the article kind of lays out this person’s points and to me there were kind of two points they were making of why kink shouldn’t be at pride. And one was about consent saying that part of healthy and ethical kink is getting the consent of everyone participating and if you’re doing something involving kink you need the consent of everyone spectating around you, whatever. That I find a much more interesting point that we can get into. The other point the person was making was basically saying that, literally there was a sentence that said “no one who is kinky is oppressed” and you don’t face any issues when you’re kink, which to me I don’t find true. This goes back to queer theory which doesn’t ever—it doesn’t always necessarily relate back to the queer experience but when I was in school in my queer theory classes, then we talked about the original it’s not called the Sacred Circle, it’s called—do you know what I’m talking about?

SARAH: No.

KAYLA: Basically there was this queer theorist that put forward the idea of something called a sacred or privileged circle, so it was basically like white people, straight people, cis people as well as people who were vanilla. So anyone outside that circle be they queer, a person of color, not conforming to binary gender, as well as people who watched porn, were involved in kink were outside that circle because the people in that circle were privileged, were represented, had the power in all situations. And everyone outside of that didn’t. To me reading the article and seeing literally this person’s argument saying that people who are kinky aren’t oppressed in the same way as queer people or aren’t oppressed at all. A) I don’t think that’s true, I think people with kinks are underrepresented or misunderstood and it does make them oppressed. But that’s the same argument that gets used against ace and aro people. This person was basically saying kinky people aren’t oppressed and shouldn’t be in pride celebrations, which we know and have talked about a lot that’s not how the queer community should work.

SARAH: Yeah, yeah that’s fair. I think the author was making a point of, okay this is a choice you make to participate in this, it’s not part of your identity there’s nothing you can do about it—it’s a choice in the way that your sexual or romantic orientation isn’t which is true. 

(10:00)

KAYLA: But also, is it?

SARAH: That’s where it gets complicated.

KAYLA: It’s a choice to say you get turned on by BDSM. It’s a choice to participate in BDSM. It is not a choice to like it. You like what you like, you know? So the points that the author was making about, being kinky is not necessarily the same as having a certain sexual orientation or having a certain gender, it’s a preference rather than an orientation, I do think that’s true. 

KAYLA: Kink is so closely tied to queer culture and queer history. The first people to start pride parades. The first people to really be involved in activism. People who lived through AIDS. Not every kinky person is queer but there are such strong ties that to say it’s completely separate isn’t true.

SARAH: Yeah, that’s definitely fair. Even when you hear about cishets who are into kink it’s definitely viewed as a queer thing for them, like a queer community for them to be a part of, even though they themselves are not queer.

KAYLA: Yes but using the word queer more broadly, not as an orientation but as a mindset of queering something. It’s a separate idea, like okay let’s queer the way we read this book. That’s not an orientation, it is still a way of thinking of things, you know?

SARAH: Yeah. The conclusions I think we’re going to come to in this podcast is that it’s complicated and that there is no strong definitive answer that has zero caveats.

KAYLA: Cause either way you go, saying kink should be in pride or kink shouldn’t, there are so many pros and cons to both and so many nuances. 

SARAH: Yeah there are valid critiques to both. And so it’s about weighing the two things. I don’t  want our listeners to think—we think you’re a bad person if you disagree with us. It’s just a complicated issue and we’re not experts on it but we wanted to talk about it because it’s been in the internet. 

KAYLA: Well I think there’s a lot of points in it that relates specifically to the ace and aro experience that makes the whole conversation different for us in some ways, especially sex-repulsed people. 

SARAH: Yeah.

KAYLA: It gets down to what kind of kink you’re talking about, what kind of display of kink you’re talking about. When you say no kink at pride—

SARAH: Yeah what does that mean?

KAYLA: Kink is a blanket thing for so many other specific. Are you talking about fully having sex in public or are you talking about wearing leather and putting on your leather daddy outfit, you know?

SARAH: Don’t worry Kayla, I’m going to get into that.

KAYLA: I got to talk for like five minutes and I’ll let you have the rest. 

SARAH: Thank you. I guess jumping off of all of that and kind of what I said before, the implication that there is no place for BDSM at pride, I just don’t think that’s right but I do think we just need to be thoughtful about how it’s included because as those in the kink communities know, it is all about consent and I don’t care about what cishets in corporations think. I don’t give a fuck what they think. But I do think it’s important to consider other members of the community because pride is for them too. And I want people to have their spaces, celebrate pride the way they want to but I don’t want it to be at the expense of other queer people. And obviously as like Kayla mentioned sex-repulsed aces, we can’t avoid every trigger a person could have at pride. That’s literally impossible. What it does come back to at the end of the day is how you define including kink at pride and as Kayla was kind of getting at, is including kink at pride allowing leather daddies to rock some harnesses and free the nip? Or is it kink, as the author of this Independent article “overtly sexualized displays—or in more extreme instances, public sex and nudity.”

KAYLA: It’s such a wild spectrum.

SARAH: It really is.

KAYLA: Is it an organization of people promoting awareness and education about kinks walking in the parade or is it someone fully jerking off on the street? Those are very different things with very different implications.

(15:00)

SARAH: Exactly. And I also think the term they used for the less extreme was “overtly sexualized displays,” to that I ask, how are we defining overtly sexualized displays?

KAYLA: That’s the whole thing about the ruling on porn by the supreme court, it’s like “I know it when I see it.” Overtly sexual, what does that mean? Is that a dude in a thong? Is that fully nude? Cause I also saw some great points by people saying a lot of these people aren’t more sexual than your average perfume ad or like, people on TV or what you see on a beach where people wear bathing suits. You know?

SARAH: For me, as an aspec, we’ve talked about sexualization at pride, there are some overtly sexual parts of pride that do make me a little uncomfortable to a certain extent but I also reject that kink is overtly sexual. Because there are plenty of kinky aspecs that participate in kink. They don’t view it as a sexual thing. It’s an intimacy thing but it’s not by default sexual. And there are plenty of kinky aces who can speak to this much better than we can but I think to imply kink is inherently sexual is a false play. So that brings me to one of the first threads I saw regarding this. It’s from Twitter user @dreadpiratejene. This person says, “Look folks. The 80-year-old leather daddies that you see marching in our Pride parade in MPLS with a huge Leather Pride flag watched a ton of their friends die while our government and our society laughed at them. Their Leather families were sometimes their only families. People who are too young to remember AIDS need to take several steps back and learn some queer history. Those folks deserve our respect, and deserve our collective joy that they can be who they are now, and our collective grief that so many of them are gone. All across this country, the first Pride parades saw a ton of violence and push back. Many of them were radical, unpermitted events. Stonewall was a riot. The corporatization of pride is a very new thing. It's not because they care about us, it's because they care about our money.” Etc., etc., etc. “Pride is the only time where we get to collectively publicly celebrate our queer elders who died so that we could stand here, and take advantage of the full freedom they fought for, such as it is. Erasing kink and especially Leather from Pride erases parts of our history. If you don't like it, don't go. If you don't want to have conversations with your kids about our dead elders and why those leather daddies are dressed like that, don't go. There are kid-friendly events all over the place. But corporate Pride is not our history.” They said a couple other things but those were the main ones that I wanted to hit on. Because I mean this person’s right. They make a lot of good points. But to that a lot of people responded, it’s not about the leather daddies vibing, it’s about the public acting out of kinks and public sex to which some other people were like, “I’d literally never seen that.” So, again it’s just, it’s complicated because everyone has a different understanding of what kink at pride means. 

KAYLA: To me I think a larger, an overarching problem too is, a lot of people aren’t sure what pride is anymore. Because it has been so taken over by corporations that in my lifetime and especially when I have been part of the queer community, all I have ever known is a commercialized pride. When I think of pride, I think of a giant parade with floats and rainbows everywhere.

SARAH: If you asked me what is pride, I would be like, it’s a parade and a party I guess. But what events happen at pride? I don’t know. 

KAYLA: And there are a lot of events that do happen at pride. A lot of organizations put out talks and panels and more educational things but they don’t get as much publicity. But I think what pride began as, which was as a protest and about queer history is not what pride is anymore.

(20:00)

SARAH: Yeah, pride has become capital pride. I was kind of just looking through the replies to this thread and I saw someone named Alex @twilightvulpine say, “Why is this even coming up now? I get the impression teens are being tricked into doing the homophobes' dirty work just like some feminists were tricked into doing the transphobes' dirty work.” and then @briandecesare say, “For some reason there seems to be a very anti-sex mindset with some of the younger generation. Some of it might be in response to our society's hypersexualization of certain things, some of it might be personal trauma, but some of it seems to be pure contrarianism.” Then Alex says, “I wouldn't blame kids for wanting to avoid all the sexual content out there. But sure it is funny that out of it all, Pride is where the crosshairs go to. Meanwhile all the largely straight sex in the media and events like Carnaval and Mardi Gras don't seem to catch this flak.” Which, another good point. 

KAYLA: The conspiracy theorist in me is almost like, did some corporation plant this idea, you know what I mean? I can’t think of many teens who—I don’t think of Gen Z being a generation that has an issue with sex. I don’t know where that’s coming from.

SARAH: They value consent more than previous generations because it’s a better understood thing in society and maybe people are taking that as, they don’t like sex. I don’t know. As someone who as a teen, did not give a shit about sex, I can’t see the difference.

KAYLA: I feel like Gen Z and newer generations are much more understanding of how sex and someone’s sexuality can be exploited I guess. Is that where it’s coming from? To it doesn’t seem like an overarching generational thing,  I’ve seen people of all ages talking about this. 

SARAH: Yeah and I also think it’s interesting this people referred to it as an anti-sex mindset because it doesn’t seem to be coming from a religious or a moral place and if it doesn’t seem to be coming from a religious or moral place, I don’t think that’s an anti-sex mindset. I just think they’re less interested in sex. I don’t think those are the same thing.

KAYLA: No. But as someone who spends a lot of time on TikTok and sees sometimes what the straight side or the mainstream side of TikTok looks like, it’s still a very sexualized place.

SARAH: Oh for sure.

KAYLA: So I don’t even know that that theory is anything. I don’t know, it’s very bizarre to me.

SARAH: I don’t quite understand it. Then, I have another tweet for you Kayla. Jumping off what the other one said about Mardi Gras, about how, you know there’s equal amount of sexualization in straight celebrations but those aren’t getting hated upon, this is from MajorPhilebrity on Twitter and they’ve said, “The “no kink/pup/bare asses at Pride” discourse is hilarious this year particularly because it’s watching our very own queer people weaponize the exact same talking points we JUST watched conservatives do for an entire week over a Lil Nas X music video. Further many of you are using something that makes you uncomfortable as a evidence that it’s HARMFUL and it’s dangerous. Cishets have used their discomfort with gays kissing, holding hands and existing as license to do ACTUAL harm to us for centuries. Stop.” Which is an interesting point. Cause this person writes that we’re weaponizing the exact same sorts of things that were used against us because they are things we don’t like or are uncomfortable with. And just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s bad, and a lot of that may be coming from a place of internalized homophobia. But at the same time, there are also supposedly these more extreme things that happen at pride, I can’t confirm or deny. I haven’t spent a lot of time at pride to be able to pass judgment either way, although I did see an unhoused person shooting up heroin at pride if that counts for anything.

KAYLA: That happens everywhere.

(25:00)

SARAH: Yeah but supposedly these things happen that maybe triggering for people, aspec or otherwise. It’s not exclusively an aspec issue, things to trigger people. But as Twitter user @FingerBlaster said—

KAYLA: Excellent.

SARAH: They were like, “why don't the "No Kink At Pride" people freak out about tits at mardi gras?  what, oh what, could be the difference? well I guess we'll never know.” And then they were like, “and let's be real, at 99% of the pride parades in the country the kinkiest thing you're gonna see is someone in a chest harness or a puppy hood. people aren't pissing in each other's mouths on the sidewalk at the Omaha pride parade.” 

KAYLA: I feel like the most you see is maybe a penis.

SARAH: Yeah, and then they said, “oh no little Caidence saw two otters in thongs doing pelvic thrusts to We Are Family on the JP Morgan float.” Which is funny. It’s just difficult because on one hand people are all right. On the other hand, no one has described what “no kink at pride” means. And to me the hard part, and I will be offering no solution at the end of this, I have no thoughts on what the solution is but when people are uncomfortable in something and using that to say it’s bad, I think that’s incredibly true. But for some people it could be harmful.

SARAH: It could be triggering!

KAYLA: Yeah if some people are triggered by that, if they’re repulsed by sex, it could be. And at the beginning like you said you can’t make something that’s not going to trigger anyone, that’s just impossible to make an event that’s safe for literally every person and every person’s trigger, it just doesn’t work that way but it’s hard because you want pride to be simultaneously be a place that’s safe for people who might have sexual trauma and be triggered by that or people who are sex-repulsed, people who are uncomfortable with displays of partial nudity or anything like that. But at the same time, I still think that kink has an inherent tie to queer culture and the queer community. Both of those groups and all those types of people have a place. But how do you navigate that at the same event?

SARAH: I agree. On one hand, I do think kink and BDSM have a place at pride. On the other hand I can’t fully put my entire being in that camp because I know that there are certain things that might be harmful or triggering to other queer people. I don’t want people to celebrate pride at other queer people’s expense. It’s difficult. There was a response to this tweet from our beloved Finger Blaster. @KaiChelena. They said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, this is a genuine question. But a lot of the complaints I’ve seen ab that is bc ppl like to bring their kids to pride events & the issue of consent; do you think those complaints are rooted in homophobia/transphobia or are you addressing a diff thing?” And it was interesting seeing some of the responses to this. @BlackoutVulture said, “It’s rooted in homophobia while it may not be overtly the reason. Mardi Gras is marketed as a family event, for example. Kids can and do attend.” @GDelscribe said, “The continually pushed narrative that sanitization is necessary for queer spaces bc of the "children" is itself predicated on a common "conservative" tactic. Its fake. Its supporting what is essentially the suppression of and sanitization of our identities for kids who aren't real.” And then @hedgedragon1 said, “To answer your question: there is a difference between wearing kink clothing and kink play. A gay couple holding hands isnt a consent issue unless you conflate it with gay sex. Wearing a harness or collar isnt a consent issue unless you conflate it with a kinky sex scene.” Which again, brings up the question, what is kink at pride? 

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: What is kink at pride? What does it mean? 

KAYLA: The thing about the kids to me is like, if your kid is old enough to be understanding what they’re saying, they’re probably a child who watches TV or goes on the Internet. They see a lot of things, they’ve probably seen a lot of straight people being sexualized in the media. So the only thing really different about this if it’s not, you know, people full on having sex in the street or whatever, there is really no difference other than the gender of the people. 

(30:00)

SARAH: And there was another thread that I saw. I won’t read out the whole thing. It was from @Becca_ValentineBEK and apparently some people have also started going the no drag at pride situation. What the fuck is that? But this person goes on to explain kink isn’t inherently sexual, nor is drag. See also our episode with the drag queer Venus Envy.

KAYLA: Yeah if you want any evidence that drag is not inherently sexual.

SARAH: But that’s just also absurd. We’re not going to dive too deep into this. I didn’t read as much about that. There’s stuff to be read there. But, I guess when I think how I would describe for myself, “okay what does it mean to include and welcome kink in pride?” I think in general, what including kink at pride means is people dressing how they want to. Honestly, I think that’s  kind of it. And you know, people will often take isolated incidents and other things and try to retrofit those things onto every person at a pride parade who’s wearing leather. And I do think that’s fucked up. And that probably is rooted in homophobia and it’s like, if everyone viewed kink at pride as that, we wouldn’t be having that conversation. People I feel want to put people and kinky people into some bad dirty category and that’s why what seemed to be more rare cases, of sex in the middle of the street, and they’re just trying to retrofit it to the entire kink community and that’s why they get a bad rap and that’s why they’re saying we shouldn’t include these people, do you agree with that? I’m just spitballing.

KAYLA: Yeah I would love to hear the opinions of people who are kinky and want to celebrate that at pride what their ideal situation is. If you were to go to pride and celebrate your community and being kinky in the way you want to, what would that look like? I can’t imagine that the majority of those people would be saying they want to do those more extreme things. Some of them might but to me I can’t imagine the entire kink community is going to get behind someone having the most public sex ever.

SARAH: And also to, if you want to have spaces for the more kinky of the kinky shit, like the more kinky stuff at pride, you can make specific spaces for that at pride. It’s not like anyone’s telling you, no you can’t have a gathering of just kinky people.

KAYLA: Oh yeah I’m not telling you you can’t have a full orgy or sex party and celebrate pride. Please do.

SARAH: Do it, I just don’t want to attend.

KAYLA: Right. There’s, I don’t know. It really—

SARAH: And again, it kinda comes back to the consent thing. If you have this thing, even if it’s a sanctioned pride event, cool. As long as everyone who is present for it is accepting and cool with it then yeah. By all means. I think there’s just this idea that all of the kinky people in the world, they just want to have sex in front of their children. And I don’t think that’s it.

KAYLA: That’s what we’ve been saying this whole time - what is kink at pride and also that kink isn’t always sexual. This has just proved that the majority of people, us included, don’t really fully understand what kink is. There are so many types, so many different ways to be kinky, the community is so broad and it really does get this bad rep.

SARAH: People are just like 50 shades of grey and that’s their only conception of it because that’s kind of what we have in our social order. That’s the only mainstream reference we really have. I mean it makes sense that people would think that but there’s so much more to it than that. And also that’s kind of a toxic relationship anyway. 

KAYLA: Yeah, I mean it’s kind of like sex workers or strippers, it’s a bad rap of this is something dirty, this is something bad, like and there’s so much that goes into that too of just like purity culture and how uncomfortable people are with sex in general. There’s just people who are not willing to educate themselves and pride which would be an excellent way for people to get educated into having open conversations, it’s not happening.

(35:00)

SARAH: Well and people think if you know what kink and BDSM is, that means that all the children are now going to immediately do it and hail satan. And just because you know what something is, doesn’t mean that you’re going to do it. And also if they do do it, who cares?

KAYLA: As long as it’s safe and consensual I don’t give a shit. 

SARAH: Consent and consent is so central to so many aspects of kink and BDSM in a way that honestly it’s not always central to your cishet vanilla sex.

KAYLA: From everything I’ve read, all of the videos I’ve watched and everything, the thing I’ve really gotten from the kink community is how respectful it is.

SARAH: It’s about trust.

KAYLA: How caring it is. Yes. Far more than your average vanilla or straight sex is. There is so much more tension and care and respect and consent that goes into it.

SARAH: Aftercare is a whole thing. That’s a word.

KAYLA: Yes it is. It just gets this bad rep of you’re disgusting, you’re doing something dirty but really this is a more pure way of doing things.

SARAH: I love when people are like sex is dirty but also sex is holy. And we need to do it for god but also it’s dirty. But also if you do it up the ass it doesn’t count, you’re still a virgin. But also if people do it up the ass that’s dirty.
KAYLA: There are some people going back in the comments of one of the reels I posted recently, someone said that Jesus was trans and someone’s getting super pissy about them saying that. 

SARAH: Trust me, I know. Kyla’s been reading them aloud to me. She did text me at the beginning of this podcast recording saying she likes your new reel.

KAYLA: Oh thank you. 

SARAH: She was tempted to comment something dumb and old millennial like “you guys have such good content” “but then stopped myself—” I’m just reading this text. “Because I feel like the teens in the comments will bully me for being a dork. I need to reactivate one of my finstas and utilize it as an SFBO hypebot” so thank you to Kyla for your contribution.

KAYLA: Thank you to Kyla, Sarah’s roommate for being our biggest Instagram fan.

SARAH: She loves reading our hate comments aloud it gives her so much entertainment.

KAYLA: I love that. Anyway, I don’t know if it was in that string of comments or a different one but—it was something about how Jesus was a virgin but technically ace people are sinning when it comes to the Bible because we are supposed to get married and have kids for god but then here’s what I don’t understand. If that’s true, why didn’t Jesus get to be a virgin? He’s sinning then. This has nothing to do with anything.

SARAH: Anyway. Even just stepping away from the BDSM of it all and talking about oversexualization, that’s hard too. A lot of the oversexualization of pride was born out of trying to shock the cishets and say no fuck you.

KAYLA: Yeah as a protest.

SARAH: We won’t hide ourselves to make you comfortable. And with that in mind of course I don’t have any issue with some level of sexualization of pride. But at the same time, pride needs to be a place where all queers can feel comfortable and that could include sex-repulsed aces, people who regardless of what their queer identity is may have had trauma, I don’t fucking know. And again, we can’t make it a completely non-triggering safe space for everyone cause that’s not possible and we don’t want a sanitized pride. But at the same time, we want a welcoming safe pride and it’s hard to just find the balance.

KAYLA: To me, like you said, a lot of the overtly sexual things in pride, what people wear and everything like that does come from a protest of saying I don’t think you’re uncomfortable seeing two men kiss, you’re going to see me look like this, whatever. To me, I have not asked every single person who goes to pride the intention behind their outfit. But to me it’s kind of like, is that the reason people are dressing sexy at pride now? Or do they want to look hot and take an Instagram picture? That’s where I’m currently at with the sexualization of pride, like let’s absolutely do it, if there is an intention behind it. I feel like a lot of pride there isn’t a lot of strong intention behind why we do anything for pride anymore and it used to be a protest and a statement and education and history and now it’s kind of like, yeah it’s June so we do it, put on a hot fit, take a picture for the Gram, whatever.

(40:00)

SARAH: Yeah at the same time you have people being just as nakey at a beach and what are those—not techno-concerts, it’s not 1980.

KAYLA: A rave.

SARAH: Rave culture is very nakey and glitter. I just, on one hand I want you to dress like you want to dress.

KAYLA: I’m not saying you have to have an amazing reason behind your outfit or anything. But yeah it’s very complicated.

SARAH: Yeah it’s complicated. I don’t give a fuck about how the cishets and corporations feel about pride. I do not care about them because it’s not for them. The only people pride is for is for the queers. And you know it might be hard to find the right balance between the kinky, really sexual queers who want to honor that part of themselves and that part of the queer culture and sex-repulsed aces. But we’re just going to have to do it, aren’t we? We’re going to have to figure it out. And if that makes certain parts of pride more family-friendly by your conservative definition then so be it but that’s not why we did it. And in terms of kids, it’s not complicated. If a kid says “Mommy why is that man wearing a harness?” you say, “because he likes it and it makes him feel good. Some people dress differently and that’s okay.” If you can’t explain that to your kid, that’s on you.

KAYLA: It’s like what one of the people said on Twitter. If you’re not willing to have your conversation with your kid, what is the point of bringing your child to pride if not to start conversations like that?

SARAH: Yeah and if you’re bringing your kid to pride and saying we accept all of these people, except from that one in leather. Hello?

KAYLA: That’s not really teaching the lesson your kid should be taught by bringing them to pride. 

SARAH: Yep. And if corporations want to sanitize it, fuck you. Pride is for people, queer people and as much as Citizens United would like to think, corporations are not people. So I don’t give a fuck what’s best for your bottom line. And to me at the end of the day, if you’re fucking in the middle of a sidewalk, I don’t care if it’s hetero, vanilla or queer or kinky as shit, I don’t want to see it. But from what I understand, the vast majority of the kink community isn’t asking for that, so why are we trying to exclude them? That’s just my kind of—the conclusion I come to. It’s complicated but it’s not at the same time.

KAYLA: People are making it more complicated than it is. 

SARAH: Than it needs to be. Yeah. That’s kind of all I had to say in my manifesto/monologue. And I even let you contribute. Congratulations. Do you have anything else to add?

KAYLA: No.

SARAH: Okay. What’s our poll for this week?

KAYLA: I don’t know. This is a scary can of worms to open. 

SARAH: I was going to say, “does kink have a place in pride?” Yes, no, or it’s complicated but then I feel like a lot of people are going to say it’s complicated as a cop out.

KAYLA: Maybe it’s best to have an open-ended poll like, what are your thoughts about kink at pride? We’ll just have to deal with the consequences of people yelling at each other on our Twitter. 

SARAH: I love those notifications. Okay. Kayla what’s your beef and your juice this week?

KAYLA: My beef is that, well my family and Dean’s family were here visiting us this week so that was super nice but we went out to eat for every meal because we wanted to take them to all our favorite restaurants and everything but we live in the south so everything is heavy southern food. Now, after a week of doing that, I feel disgusting. I woke up at like 4 am with the worst stomachache. So that’s not fun. And I’m going to the beach this weekend. Not a great time to eat a lot of food and go to the beach. But, here we are. My juice is Sour by Olivia Rodrigo. It is a very good album, very early 2000s pop punk.

SARAH: God, it’s brutal out here.

KAYLA: It’s brilliant. It’s just very good. It is technically a breakup album.

SARAH: She will not rest until that man is in witness protection.

KAYLA: Yes, but it’s also a very good album. I’ve seen people talk about how this is a song that could be applicable to a friend breakup or even family issues or whatever. Even if you haven’t had a breakup or aren’t interested in romance, it’s just so good.

SARAH: Yeah, and hope ur ok, oh my heart.

KAYLA: Oh her heart.

SARAH: My heart, my heart. Great. My beef is all of it. I’m just noting that the official stance of Sounds Fake But Okay is Taiwan is in fact a country.

KAYLA: Is that up for debate at the moment?

SARAH: John Cena apologized to China because he called Taiwan a country.

KAYLA: Oh bestie, it definitely is a country. Sorry China if you’re listening.

SARAH: China I don’t give a fuck you don’t give me money.

KAYLA: I’m actually not sorry.

SARAH: I don’t give a fuck, Xi Jinping. Okay. My other beef is FIG. 6.6 star value for yurchenko double point? Fuck you, don’t fucking punish her because she’s better than everyone else. Make them catch up. This is about Simone Biles and gymnastics. I tweeted this but FIG repeatedly undervaluing skills that only she is the equivalent of the NBA being like this player is too good at three pointers so from now on all three pointers they make will be only valued at 2 points, fuck you.

KAYLA: Wow.

SARAH: That’s my beef.

KAYLA: Okay.

SARAH: And my juice is, “help that guy stole my pogo stick.” You can tell us your beef, your juice, your thoughts on FIG on our social media @soundsfakepod. You’re just going to let that go? You’re not going to ask questions?

KAYLA: I wish you could have seen my face because I did an absolute double take.

SARAH: Good. Please help, that guy stole my pogo stick. Soundsfakepod! We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod where you can steal our pogo stick. The $5 patrons we are—I said the wrong are, I said our—wow the English language.  The $5 patrons we are promoting this week are Daniel Walker, Livvy, Madeline Askew, Lily and James. Not Lily James although if she would like to become a patron we accept her money.

KAYLA: I would love that.

SARAH: Our $10 patrons are Sarah McCoy who would like to promote Podcast From Planet Weird Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Haven and Cass who would like to promote The best of luck on the journey of self identification. Our other $10 patrons who do not get to promote anything this week, sorry, are Arcnes, Benjamin Ybarra, Anonymous, Doug Rice, H. Valdis, Purple Chickadee, Barefoot Backpacker, The Steve, Ari K, Mattie, Derek and Carissa, Aaron, Khadir, Potater, ChangelingMX, Sarah Kujawa, David Jay, The Stubby Tech, Simona Sajmon, and Rosie Costello. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote free mom hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One is, Leila, who would like to promote love is love also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth, Dia Chappell who would like to promote twitch.tv/MelodyDia, Sherronda J Brown, who would like to promote that guy not stealing your pogo stick, Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote Minnie, Leia, and Loki, that was weird I read them in the wrong order. That was weird, I read that in the wrong order. Andrew Hillum would like to promote their loved ones getting vaccinations, and Dragonfly who would also like to promote please don’t let that man steal your pogo stick. Our $20 patrons are Sarah T who would like to promote long walks outside. There’s only one $20 patron. I don’t know why I made it plural.  Thanks for listening, tune in not next Sunday but the following Sunday for more of us in your ears.

KAYLA: And until next time, I guess, don’t steal his pogo stick? 

SARAH: Yeah, please.

KAYLA: I don’t know what’s happening.

SARAH: Take good care of your cows and don’t let the pogo stick get stolen. Also happy pride. Byeeee!

KAYLA: I’m confused.