ive been studying japanese since i was a teenager, and im not happy with the amount of progress ive made rn. feeling cranky about it.

blew off most of my work yesterday, and i feel a little better in my head today.

thinkin about my sexuality.

i was mulling over thoughts about sexual identities being about your relationship to sex and attraction, and like how that can put people at odds or bring them together - stuff like:

1. pride is meant to bring together and celebrate the differences and unity of a huge group (that includes & is arguably centered around sexual identity), arguments about it basically just being an assimilationist event notwithstanding
   1a. Taking pride in your sexual identity means taking pride in your relationship to sex, and you also have to do so for your neighbor, even if they are different from you.
   1b. An obvious conflict is between sex-negative and sex-positive groups, but both feel entitled to pride, because they both have a deviant relationship to sex that craves protection and solidarity from other deviants
   1bi. e.g. a sex-repulsed person usually doesnt draw a lot of respect from fag & freak "youre not queer unless youre having weird sex" spaces, unless they can frame their sexual repulsion as like "stone" or "gray-ace" or something that conveys "im sexual but don't touch me".
   1bii. likewise, puritans kick up kink at pride discourse (haven't seen any this year and i don't want to, inshallah), presumably (Big Presumably) because they want to feel represented and attached to pride, and there's a threat and tension when they feel pressure to conform to a concept of horny.
   1c. another obvious conflict, i think, is between, idk how to phrase this, queer-active and queer-passive identities, and i think the same desire to be entitled to pride exists in both groups.
   1ci. thinking of queer-active being like the "visibly a faggot" thing, where queer-passive would be the "bi girl brought her straight boyfriend to pride" strawman. (probably not good terminology tho, cuz i feel like queer-passive may convey the common bi complaint of "just because im dating an x, doesn't mean i'm not bi")
   1d. so many people still show up to huge pride events, and the worst that usually happens is a fist fight here or there, a bunch of heatstroke and alcohol poisoning, the same shit as any festival; as if the above conflicts don't really bear out in reality as much
   1di. How is that possible? Is this like a disability-invisibility thing, where the groups that are excluded are just not there to conflict with / be accommodated for?
   1dii. Or does is there actually a kind of unity there, even if it's fraught?
   1e. why the fuck did my friend's gay manager rat them out for calling in sick so they could go to pride? (rhetorical question, i'm still pissed about it).
   1ei. wild that poverty selects who can or cannot be represented in public life.
   1f. i get unprompted harrassment for gender reasons, sometimes in philly, not so much for weird sex.

thinking about the arc of my sexuality in whole:

1. Ages 5-8: specifically aware of and drawn to beautiful women in a variety of weird ways (no labels, no understanding of anything, presumed straight)
2. Ages 9-13: puberty hyperdrive, lots of internet porn, learning about masturbation, & hiding it. (bisexual)
3. Ages 14-20: sexually active online and in person, fairly exploratory and destructive in equal measure. smut, sex, kink, cybering, all A Lot (tortured bisexual)
4. Ages 21-29: same as above just less destructive. stableized, sexually. lots of dating around and hooking up, less risk-taking. (bisexual, lesbian, bisexual-lesbian)
5. Ages 30-32: post bottom surgery degradation of my libido to Low. the cravings for sex basically gone at this point, rare dates or hookups. cubering/sex is mostly a social, bonding activity aside from rare flares of libido. service-sexual, i guess.

i'm rereading some smut that i was crazy for when i was in middle school, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, and it's nostalgic, funny, interesting. There's a lot going on in it that wouldn't appeal to a 2020+ audience, but there's a bunch of cool tech that like, reminds me that people are just crazy horny. idk. nikolaos rules.

anyway, done thinkin.

things i did today:

• finished watching the Fishman Island arc of One Pace (it was good, i liked it, i cried as usual, it could have been better tho)
• ordered grocery store delivery from a local grocery store that had really powerful butcher package deals and a free palestine sticker on their flyer
• attempted to pay my mortgage, we'll see if my bank gets really mad at me tomorrow
• cleared out the old apartment of all remaining items and brought here them to my house.

now im gungry