2020 was a weird time for all of us. The excessive time spent inside led some of us to venture into… darker depths of the internet. At the ripe age of thirteen, a prime age to be in quarantine in my opinion, I found myself exploring and indulging in the wonderful world of fanfiction culture. Having already been a fan of anime for a few months, I was getting a little tired of purely imagining romantic scenarios with my favorite characters. I still remember the first day I downloaded Wattpad; opening the app on my blue Samsung while on vacation, a religious retreat, ironically. I flipped through the virtual pages all evening, venturing through as many fandoms as I could cover. My eyes had quite literally been widened. Not just from the late-night glare of my screen, but from the new perspective thirteen-year-old me had just gained. And honestly, I think that exposure is quintessential to who I am as a person. I consider myself to be a sexually liberated person. My mother has worked in gynecology for most of her life and educated me accordingly. I am aware of my body, and its changes, and I am not afraid of what it needs. Not to mention that I spent four years of my life writing my own fanfiction that no one read. Sexual desire and drive do not scare me, and I believe that is because I was exposed to a culture where I was not shamed for it. But in this day and age, with the rise in social conservatism, not only has sexual education among certain social circles dropped, but so has the fear of so-called sexual immorality. It made me wonder, is it truly doomed yuri, or has yuri truly doomed us?
Humble Beginnings
Truthfully, sexual media has always interested me. No, I am not a pervert; I was simply curious about the mental and physical philosophies attached to it. My mother made me aware of my body at an early age, not only for safety reasons, but for my own health as well. Women’s health is several underlooked and understudied, not to mention Black women’s health. And with her influence, I have always held my sexual wellness in high regard. In the eleventh grade, a gynecologist visited my class, and the questions I asked made my classmates look at me and wonder if I had already taken a course on this before. So, erotica and its implications were never foreign or wrong to me. Until I was thirteen, however, I did not have an outlet. Wattpad was the gateway, leading me down a pathway of debauchery that could make God blush. But the thing was, I was not alone. As I got older, I discovered that all of my girlfriends felt the same. Some of them had even gone down different avenues, such as art or more officially published books. And it was not just either! All over my social media, there were spice reviews for books, fanfiction recommendations, and fan-made and even original erotic artworks. At first, I thought it was just a product of the time. But then, I asked my mother how she first came across erotica. She was around the same age that I was when she stumbled upon a book in my grandmother’s garage. She started reading, and when my grandmother, who had also studied gynecology, saw my mother reading, she said:
“Where did you find that?”
“The garage,” my mother replied.
“Do you understand what you’re reading?”
She nodded.
“Alright.”
And that was the end of it. The acceptance, and even the celebration of sexual media, is generational, among women, that is. Part of the problem surrounding social conservatism is that men do not often understand women’s interest in sexual exploration due to societal and systematic outdated stereotypes.
Always a man…
Due to the rise in content from…The Manosphere…the idea of women having sexual ideation or autonomy being accepted is quickly fading. The evidence is everywhere, but there are two places where I have found it to be the most evident. Let’s begin with the Male Loneliness Epidemic. Far be it from me to debate its existence. However, it is also important to take into account the role that men have to play in it, mainly the sexual aspect. I am reminded of the 4b movement sparked by the women of South Korea. The core tenets include bihon (비혼): Rejection of marriage with men, bichulsan (비출산): Rejection of giving birth or raising children, biyeonae (비연애): Rejection of dating men, and most importantly, bisekseu (비섹스): Rejection of sexual relationships with men. The last tenet stems from South Korean women feeling used and disrespected in sexual situations, and more often than not, having their needs go unmet. Content from The Manosphere just further reinforces this harmful narrative. People (as they are far from men) like Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines are teaching their audience that women are supposed to remain relatively prudish, but still be able to rock their sexual worlds if they ever find themselves in such a horrid situation. Seriously, I had to look up the Fresh and Fit Podcast for the research of this article, and just seeing Gaines’ face made me nauseous…and he thinks he is a catch. Not too much of a surprise, actually; his expectations of women already prove his delusion.
It is also important to note that a lack of sexual education screws with everyone before they get a chance to screw themselves. If no one knows what they are doing, then no one has a good time. It is for that reason, actually, that some women are also deciding to keep away from men, particularly American women. Let’s think about the past few years. Roe V. Wade was repealed, a man who has been caught on tape saying that stars can just “grab [women] by the p***y” was elected into office, and for those of us who are interested in true crime, the idea of a man leaving us for another woman, killing us and disposing of us and our potential children in an oil tanker does not sound particularly appealing. Suffice it to say, “men” are some of the scariest creatures to walk Planet Earth. Additionally, a fair number of men do not care to educate themselves for the sake of their sexual partners, let alone themselves. Many of them think the urethra and the vaginal opening are the same holes, and don’t even get me started on the clitoris. It is important to encourage sexual education as a culture. Not only is it helpful, but it saves lives. Sexual education is not only penis + vagina = intercourse, but it is also STIs, how to identify sexual assault, the importance of consent, and where to go for sexual wellness and health. The troubles do not merely extend to adult women; adolescent and teen girls have had to deal with similar struggles. The only things that are possibly worse than “men” are boys. They can be mean, crass, rude, and just downright awful. So, who would not be more inclined to turn to the fictional man who cannot hurt them, meets all of their standards, and can do anything they want through the gift of imagination?
Purity vs enjoyment
So why the shame? Well, a lot of it stems from purity culture. Resounding from the 1990s, purity culture is defined as “a movement in the 1990s within Christianity which emphasized sexual abstinence before marriage, modest dress for women, strict gender roles, and discouragement of dating and masturbation (of women more than men), tying sexual behavior closely to spiritual identity and communal belonging.” Basically, this comes from people who believe God does not want us to have fun. Rooted in sexism, purity culture sinks its vampiric teeth into every source of sexual liberation for women and sucks it dry. At first, it started with what women have been historically shamed for: indulging in sexual desires, wearing skirts above the knee and tops that show our shoulders, having more than one boyfriend, or even a girlfriend. But as time has gone by, purity culture is making a resurgence in pop culture. Take Nara Smith, for example. Married at eighteen, dressed in white against her all-white kitchen, making food from scratch for her husband and their four children, and somehow having just enough time to study the gospel and be the perfect disciple of God, the epitome of a pure woman. Compared to myself, who I would like to believe is the average young woman; unmarried at nineteen, a freshman in college, sitting in bed listening to a Shanspeare podcast and snacking on Cheetos as I write about sex on the internet. This is not to say that either of our lifestyles is wrong; both of us are relatively happy spending our days doing what we want. The problem is that more people may potentially shame me for this article than people would shame Nara for posting a TikTok of her making bread, both of which are arguably controversial along the lines of womanist advancement. Nara and I have the right to do whatever we want. There is merit in both. We both express the wide range of femininity and the choice that both of us deserve. And the thing is, both of us explore sexuality in our content. She is just much more reserved than I am. I am blatant in my language, while she might post a video of a romantically tense dinner date with her husband, Lucky. Neither of these makes either one of us immoral. The fear of sexual immorality is extravagantly overdramatized. Sexual immorality is only reserved for the worst of the worst. Kissing your husband in a gorgeous kitchen and posting it online does not make you immoral. Writing about sex does not make you immoral. Reading Killing Stalking does not make you sexually immoral. It makes you a weirdo, but there is no shame in being a weirdo. Watch that fanfic, buy that smutty book, draw a picture, watch that questionable anime, and leave me a recommendation in the comments.