I don’t think people realize just how lame the world can be. I don’t even mean bad, it often materializes that way for reasons i’ll talk about, but just how many squares and losers and dorks there are who have such an aggressive issue with reconciling with their own demons and flawed upbringings, and make it everybody else’s problem. This takes shape in a ton of different ways that are much more harmful than what I’m going to talk about, but I believe that they all share the same root and require the same level of braindead to not understand. That subject is sex - more specifically, how sexuality is perceived in media through the lens of intensity.
Being on hte internet can trick the average person through sheer exposure into believing that the world is more sexually charged than it ever has been despite every study about people having sex that has been had in the last 10 years. The amount of horny posting and sexual content that can be accessed at lightning speed can trick braindead people into believing that everyone is much more sexual now than in the past, but my pre widespread internet example to the contrary has always been the famously homoerotic Top Gun. Top Gun is awesome, it’s military propaganda that takes the shape of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer making the fuck me eyes at one another for 110 minutes, and it’s great; but what is it about Top Gun that is so sexual? The content itself isn’t sexual, it’s actually a decidedly unsexy movie on paper - Tom Cruise flies planes and is cocky and then his friend dies. There’s a love interest, but it’s secondary to the flying planes and the dying friend, but, still, the movie has always been the subject of jokes about how intensely homoerotic it is, especially between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer. The answer to this is actually fairly obvious - if we ignore casual homophobia and general gay panic, the truth is that intensity is very easy to read as sexual, and the macho posturing of Cruise and Kilmer in Top Gun, as they talk about how dangerous they are, is the pinnacle of that. You’ll see this impression in most things, and while a lot of the time it’s directed at men (Because the cultural understanding of intensity = sexual mixed with generations of homophobia manifests in men having to be intense with one another), it’s also baked into the generally understood idea that if a boy and a girl are arguing with each other all the time, there is an underlying sexual element; “Just kiss/fuck already” is a common response to two people arguing because of this property.
Now, this begs the question - is this bad? I don’t think so, sex and sexuality is a natural occurrence, and big feelings triggering the brain into feeling sexual feels like a logical progression (i’m not a scientist), but I have been exposed to some people who, for different cultural reasons, just seem to check their brain at the door when this subject comes up.
I peruse twitter now and then, and I came across a clip from TNA, showing two women’s wrestlers, Masha Slamovich and Killer Kelly, becoming a tag team by putting a chain around their necks that join then and walking out staring into each other’s eyes. The response to this has been overwhelmingly positive, mostly from people who praise how intensely horny it is… only for one guy to come in and talk about how much this sets wrestling back. For context, we have two elements - In this century, female representation in wrestling in the west has generally been extremely bad. The WWE very much leaned into the fetishistic nature of women kissing and existing to be hot, but they were also joined by TNA in its early days, with women dancing in cages and also being named Tits n Ass Wrestling. It’s extremely heavy baggage that still plagues women’s wrestling to this day because when a hot girl exists, all they need to do is be aware of it and then say that they are a “diva” and it gets big heat. The second is that, recently, AEW wrestler Anthony Bowens was on tv in a segment where a girl hit on him, and he proclaimed that he was gay on the mic to a cheer from the crowd, and this segment, while seemingly benign to very dumb and self centered people, was met with overwhelming joy because, similar to the baggage of women in wrestling, gay representation in wrestling has historically been extremely bad, so for a proclamation of being gay to be met with such a positive reaction demonstrated that things had come a long way… that brings us back to TNA’s Masha Slamovich and Killer Kelly segment, and some guy saying that this was bad because of how progressive the Bowens segment was and how TNA is “always 2 decades behind”.
I understand why this very dumb point is mentioned - this guy saw a segment of two women hornyposting on main and immediately began to believe this was just TNA being sexual, citing the crowd being losers and a (relatively) recent storyline with a wrestler who’s storyline goal was to bring sex appeal back to wrestling (under different management and sexual assault allegations but hey it’s very cool that don callis is working still he’s a heel it’s okay we hate him), but like… come on dude. I don’t know what TNA is doing REALLY, but I did see one show, Under Siege, and in that show, Masha and Killer Kelly were part of a big 10 person hardcore shitshow where they killed one another, and since then, the two participated in a dog collar match - it doesn’t take a genius to realize that is the symbolism of the chain, the two rivals bonded in blood and are literally linked together, physically and metaphorically, by the violence they inflicted on the other. The segment was not them being gay to be hot, it wasn’t them being sexy to pop boners, it wasn’t even then being attracted to one another! I read it, from second one, as an example, and a really fucking good one, of Top Gun level intensity that is also inherently sexual, and that’s awesome! The only way to have an issue with this is to be so bogged down in the baggage of women’s wrestling that you miss the forest for the trees and decide to comment on something you clearly do not watch and do not understand - I understand it 1% and it’s a great segment and formation of a tag team. These two are not The Beautiful People, a tag team from the late 2000’s featuring Angelina Love and Velvet Sky who played very sexual mean girls who were very tease heavy… but EVEN THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE are contextually significant, because they are LITERALLY the parody of how the WWE portrayed women, and stood in contrast with the rest of the division, which was largely very serious and good. TNA has had by far the best track record with women’s wrestling and their portrayal for western wrestling that aren’t exclusively women’s promotions, so maybe, instead of making accusations like “TNA is always 2 decades behind”, maybe google one thing ever and also realize that your one reference for TNA portraying women poorly in Don Callis’s Scarlet Bordeaux story features all parties not present and also Don Callis is accused of being sex offender. Your baggage is not TNA’s problem. Shut up.
I had this conversation with a friend, and I noticed that both of us did a similar thing - in our defenses of this segment, we both really tried hard to avoid saying that the moment was sexually charged, as if the admitting of sexual energy to the segment was proving that it was bad inherently, and that’s when I realized that is an entirely separate problem. Whether or not the segment is sexual has nothing to do with how it portrays women, or how good it is - Sexuality is a neutral factor, at least when it’s an undertone. The content is not erotic, but sexually charged? Sure, but I think that’s just a byproduct of the cultural association with intensity and sexuality. There are people who understand this in wrestling - Rhea Ripley is probably the best example, as she has avoided the sexual aspects of her being a strong woman, and it stands out and makes her significantly more likeable, because the previous generation of women’s stars have had to fight very hard to not be viewed as sexual objects, so people like the Four Horsewomen were very aware of not portraying themselves like that and undercutting their work, but Rhea is fine with the “dommy mommy” jokes, at least for now, and that’s cool! It would also be cool if she wasn’t! I remember reading something to the effect of “My body becomes sexual when I get aroused, not when you do” in regards to women’s bodies, and at the time i think i just glazed over it, but I think that, as I get older and realize how few people comprehend the boundaries of sex appeal and sex in general and make it other people’s problem, it’s something that has stuck with me. Nudity and Sex and Sexuality being things that have to be hidden and hinted at and shamed for being in public is probably the most archaic weapon of oppression that still exists, because it is the same weapon that is wielded against Gay and Trans people to discriminate against them on the grounds that how they exist is unnatural and perverted and must be suppressed to keep children safe. The same cultural horror that sees some guy on twitter express disgust with the Masha Slamovich and Killer Kelly segment is the same as conservatives weaponizing puritan fear of progress against marginalized groups - it is the insistence that being gay cannot be normal, thus it must be performative to corrupt. This is a problem with sex education in the world not being in line with the exposure the internet provides, this is a problem with generations of bigotry still existing and simply changing its language to appeal to very stupid people, and it’s a problem person to person when they refuse to contextualize or understand situations for what they are because they are so scared of sexuality that they have to try and suppress it by any means necessary.
It’s not all your fault, but until you address your own baggage and shame, you are part of the problem.
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