It is my simple and firm belief that the English-language VTubing industry has a rot. A rot that’s festered with transphobia, homophobia, racism, colorism, misogyny, and whorephobia.

Yes, many VTubers and VTuber fans are lovely people. But there are bad actors running rampant in the space, causing problems. Problems that have existed for years. Problems that cannot be changed without wider community consensus. Yet the contemporary ENVTubing community is too conflict-averse to address these issues. Until this mindset changes, bigotry will continue to be a major issue in English VTubing.

Additionally, it is my personal belief that the VTubing community has major problems with harassment, emotional maturity, healthy boundaries between viewers and creators, and a focus on popularity and profit over creation and community. With these things in mind, I would like to introduce a set of rules and guidelines for other creators to pledge to, under a specific name separate from VTubing.

This is called “The Virtual Persona Pledge,” with “Versona” or “VSona” for short. “Versona” / “VSona” is an identity that creators can use as an alternative to “VTuber.” They can also use it in conjunction with “VTuber.” The goal is to introduce a name and identity with a code of conduct that one holds themselves to, with a set of values and behavioral standards one promises to meet and maintain.

The Virtual Persona Pledge

As a Versona / VSona, I pledge to:

1. Create content that does not promote bigotry, including (but not limited to) racism, colorism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and whorephobia

2. Foster a community that is welcoming to marginalized viewers across races, genders, sexualities, classes, disabilities, religions, cultures, and various other walks of life

3. Treat my colleagues in the way I would like to be treated. If I have a disagreement with another, I will engage in good faith dialogue and honest communication. If our differences are unresolvable, I will refrain from gossip, rumor-spreading, sabotage, and other harmful behaviors

4. Moderate my community to the best of my ability. As a creator, I understand that I set the tone and standard for my fans. Viewers who express bigotry will not be tolerated. Fans who harass others on my behalf will be shown the door

5. Demonstrate healthy boundaries between myself and my fans. Parasocial relationships are normal in content creation, but I will create and maintain healthy boundaries with my audience. I will not encourage fans to obsess over me to the detriment of their mental health nor financial stability. I will inform myself of authoritarian cult behavior to protect myself, my fans, and others from manipulation

6. Protect minors from harm. If my streams involve mature, explicit, or otherwise sexual content, underage viewers will be banned. There will be clear, obvious, and unavoidable indicators that my content is 18+ only. If I am a lewdtuber, my Discord server will engage in age verification measures

7. Respect creators who walk a different path than my own. I will respect difference of religion. I will respect cultural differences. I will respect different content creation paths other than my own. If I am a SFW creator, I will not stigmatize nor disparage NSFW creators. I respect sex work as work, even if it is not the job for me

8. Listen to criticism from marginalized viewers and creators with compassion. I understand that no one is perfect, and if I struggle or make mistakes, I will make a good faith effort to understand marginalized viewers’ point of view

I invite others who use virtual avatars to hold themselves to a higher set of standards, ones that are not being met by certain parts of the contemporary ENVTubing community.

If you would like to commit to the pledge listed above, feel free to sign your name below along with your preferred socials, either on here or on the Bluesky post this will be shared in. Consider this a code of conduct to hold oneself to, one’s community to, and each other to.

Leave a comment

Thanks. And with love,

AV

the first crack in the veneer for me, the thing that began the slow and gradual exposure of my real self, was learning i was unfuckable

right when i was about to move, i started going to parties in brooklyn. weeby parties where we would all get sloshed and high and dance to 2000s anime music and go home crossfaded. it was casual and chill, classic new york millennial house party vibes. fun, fun, fun. i was one of the only transfems at these parties, one of two or three, but everyone treated me fine. no one acted weird toward me, esp not at the femme and nonbinary hang. everyone seemed happy to see me, enjoyed my presence. a floater who got to vibe and chill and joke and have fun

i felt like i fit right in. finally found my people

then. something changed when i started introducing my cis girl friends into the friend group. my friends got attention. i mean, i did too, but in the way you do when people like your jokes. these women, they got attention attention. people came up to them to talk to them. chat with them. seemed to spend a lot of time around them. wanting something from them

oh, i soon realized. they were trying to fuck them

huh

that happens here?

woah

that never happened to me

“i think it’s because youre a lesbian,” one of my cis girl friends said. “the guys there dont approach you because they know youre gay”

maybe, i thought. but i didnt buy it. the guys at these parties werent super woke, just the regular kind. like, you know, faux woke. pronouns in bio but two white claws and they started acting strange. if they liked what they saw, they would have made it a little more than obvious

i kept hanging out, kept going out to party. but now i was curious. i paid a little closer attention. started listening a little more intensely to peoples’ personal histories, keeping track of who dated whom and how it went down

a pattern emerged. a pattern that i shall now call The Weeb Party Rule. it pertains to guys dating girls and girls dating guys and girls dating girls and all sorts of other things. in the order of the rules’ formation

The Weeb Party Rule

1. first, women mostly dated men

2. second, if i brought a woman with me, they were guaranteed to get attention from somebody there. usually men

3. third, queer women there were likely to check out other women and gossip about being attracted to them. ditto toward nonbinary people

4. fourth, the aforementioned rules only pertained to cis women and AFAB nonbinary partygoers

5. fifth, transfems were welcome to engage in socializing, but dating was off limits

the Weeb Party pieces started coming together. cis women at these parties were mostly interested in cis men. their queer desires were mostly reserved for cis women and nonbinary people that they thought were AFAB

meanwhile, men did not approach trans women for sex or dating, but men did approach cis women and nonbinary AFAB people for sure. and while cis women tended to ogle the other cis women there (and by extension, force AFAB nonbinary individuals into the cis woman box1), they didnt seem to have much interest with transfems

it was like all the cis men and all the cis women were interested in all the other cis women and cis men and anyone they perceived to be a cis woman subconsciously

oh no, i thought to myself

i dont think i fit in

I don’t think I fit in at all.

Attraction

When I first moved to NYC (2016 - 2020), I was in a Brooklyn trans girl community made up of writers and musicians and other creators. A twinky, thin-ish blonde girl with curves in all the right places? Yeah, my first four years in New York were busy. A revolving door of sexual partners, one after another. Threesomes, couple swaps, sex parties, tgirls fucking me to compare notes with other tgirls. For the first time in my life, I felt hot. Attractive. Sexual. And not just sexually appealing, but sexually appealing to other women.

Yes, other trans women more specifically, but I assumed there wasn’t that much of a difference between cis women and trans women when it came to openly expressing queer attraction.2

The fun had to end eventually. 2020 loomed, and being ogled by other trans girls had worn out its welcome. I was typecasted as “hot journalist tgirl,” and I felt trapped in a setting where sexual availability was expected from me. Confused, oddly unsatisfied with most of the sex I was having, I didn’t know what to do. Was I ace? Increasingly, I was questioning whether I was ace.

It was clear I needed a sexual break.

When I made the switch to Weeb Party friends, I took it on spec that they were far less sexual. The opposite of a T4T space, a place where I was integrating with more cisgender people on purpose to become familiar with life outside of community.3 Socially mature, a curated friend circle of working professionals where everyone kept it in their pants. We were all either in our 30s or hitting our 30s, it felt like a great landing spot from my slutty 20s. I mean, I wanted to take a break from sucking and fucking, so I chose a place that seemed relatively tame.

But I think I drew an assumption based on the sucking and fucking available to me at the time. As I paid closer attention, I realized that I was having an asexual social experience. But others were not.

“Eh, Not Into Trannies”

I assume most trans women have read Them’s 2018 article on discrimination against transgender people in dating. According to a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, just a mere 12 percent of 958 surveyed said they were open to dating a transgender man or transgender woman. Nearly half of all queer and nonbinary participants were exclusionary toward trans partners, as were 71 percent of lesbian women.

Between trans men and trans women, the latter were more likely to face rejection from dating pools than the former.

While this data is seven years old4, it’s an important starting point for understanding the issue I had with Weeb Party. What I was going up against was prejudice in preferences: Cis women in Weeb Party were getting massive amounts of attention, but trans women were not.5

Let’s say there were roughly 50 people at Weeb Party gatherings from 2021 through 2024. Let’s assume very little changed in the social climate within that millennial friend group across those three years (although it’s safe to say a larger social climate antagonistic to trans people would also affect a social circle’s dynamics). Let’s also estimate that 4 partygoers at all events were lesbians and 5 were queer.

Based on the 2018 study, while attending the average Weeb Party party:

• Only 6 people in total at a party were open to dating a trans person

• Only 2 or 3 queer people at a party were open to dating a trans person

• Only 1 or 2 lesbians at a party were open to dating a trans person

If I was one of those 6 open to dating a trans person, one of those 2 or 3 queer people, and one of those 1 or 2 lesbians… no wonder why I was feeling so left out. Look how small my dating pool was! Most of the lesbians there were statistically unlikely to be interested in me, and a good chunk of the queer folks there would have passed as well. Even if I was open to dating men, 44 people would have said no to being with a trans person.

Statistically speaking, I was in a social climate where I was surrounded by cis people who looked me over and said “eh, not into trannies.” When faced with the real thing, they’d rather leave the dickgirl fantasy to futanari hentai.

NEETcore

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that all rejection or lack of interest I faced in the Weeb Party friend circle was solely because I am a transgender woman. I think I was not a suitable candidate in that theoretical dating market for a wide assortment of reasons. A lot of people in that space were early 30s, working professionals, and lived pretty respectable lives. Drinking and dancing to anime music was one of the weirder things they did with their free time.

Compare that to an out and proud kinkster, someone who is pretty upfront about her interest in BDSM and prefers open relationships for that reason. A lesbian living a rather alternative lifestyle (you know, being a sex-working sex journalist), someone who speaks her mind pretty openly and brazenly. Some people probably didn’t fuck with my personality. Or maybe I wasn’t their type physically.6 And yes, for the record, I did know of some people who thought I was attractive within that friend group too. It didn’t necessarily mean we would date, it just meant I bumped into one of the other 5 people there who would consider being with a trans person.

That’s the problem though. “6 people open to dating a trans person” does not mean “5 potential partners.” You may not be into those other 5 people. Or there may be chemistry between you and one of the other 5, but the circumstances may not be right: They’re partnered, uninterested in sex or dating at that time, or your sexual orientations may be incompatible.

In other words, not all of my experiences at Weeb Party can be framed through my gender identity. But when cishet-leaning dating patterns emerge, and trans women seem to receive significant less attention than their cisgender equivalents or cisgender men? Yeah, it’s hard to believe that’s a space where trans women are truly treated as equals.7

This planted a seed in me that grew over a year and a half. Finally one day, it ruptured. I realized Weeb Party friend group had an undercurrent of transmisogyny within it that had gone unaddressed8. I looked for it, and I found it. My experiences with its dating pool (or lack thereof) was one such reflection of that.

I felt disillusioned and alienated after this conclusion, so I decided to take stock. I looked in the mirror and asked, “well, what was I getting out of Weeb Party?”

• I felt like I was looking for sexual attention that I wasn’t getting. I was looking for romantic and sexual partners again, and the space would not provide that to me because few people there wanted me sexually nor romantically. Even from men, there was no sexual validation, no feeling I was attractive

• I felt like I was running from my social anxiety and agoraphobia instead of accepting my disabilities. I was pushing myself to hang out IRL when my mind and body were begging for rest from a taxing social space

• I felt like I was dressing to look attractive and cool in a space where I was never going to be treated as desirable, as an equal. I was putting in effort wasted on others, because people didn’t care what I looked like. I was unfuckable

Something broke within me. What was the point of all this? What was I doing here? Why did I keep hanging out if I wasn’t really wanted?! The last party I went to, I wore a dress for the first time in a very long time. I traded in slacks and jeans for something pretty. Something form-fitting, pretty, feminine. No one noticed, no one complimented me on it.

My mood soured.

Dazed, confused, tired. Barely processing half of what was going on around me, I think I might have been dissociating a bit to protect myself from a social setting where I did not belong. I smoked some weed and went home early.

A dam broke within me. I wasn’t being respected. That’s what was going on. And well, if the world wasn’t going to treat me with respect, I wouldn’t treat it with respect either. I began adopting what I like to call NEETcore: Hoodies, sweatpants, anime shirts, whatever makes me feel comfy when I go out. An expression of anti, a fashion that isn’t fashionable. A statement that I appear as myself and prioritize my comfort over the preferences of anyone else. I can dress nicely again when I want to dress nicely for me. Right now, I want to dress like I just got out of bed. That means anime tees, baggy sweatpants, and Vans.9

It’s funny, reinventing yourself. It’s not very glamorous. The true me is frumpy and agoraphobic. She stays home and plays Deadlock all day and pretends to be a giant anime girl over the internet. To my utter bewilderment, this is considered very attractive to a wide assortment of people. Cis women, trans women, nonbinary people; I sometimes find myself laying in bed all day, ERPing with multiple play partners across 24 hours. It’s like I’m catching up for lost time hanging out with Weeb Party. Quite literally, as I’ve had more cis partners in the past three years than in the four before that.

Which begs the question. Why the fuck should a woman that dresses like this?

Get more attention than one that dressed like this?

It’s not a matter of appearance. It’s a matter of respect. As it turns out, being open-minded, generous, and kind to people who respect you tends to lead to good things with people who actually treat you as an equal.

Gen Z Vore

To explain this, I will introduce a counter to The Weeb Party Rule. I call this The Vore Rule.

After I left the Weeb Party friend circle, I began forming new friends from a mix of places: VTubing, lewdtubing, the size fetish world (that is, people into giantesses), the vore community, various kinky nerdy queer-adjacent spaces, and so on. The original metamorphosis that began during “Goddess Sex” completed; my new friends are best described as “gay nerdy kinksters.” Certified queer NEETs and hikikis, lesbo content creators and WLW VTubing sex workers, people who spent New Years Eve in VRChat or playing video games. I like my new friends.

In light of this, The Vore Rule emerged to explain my experience:

The Vore Rule

Your average queer nerdy kink, size, and vore online spaces are likely filled with people who

1. feel a bit estranged from offline life

2. have done a bit of questioning about the world because they feel estranged

3. are (relatively) more open minded about sexual and dating preferences after exposure to non-normative genders and sexualities in kink

4. are looking for non-traditional desires to be met and thus are open to non-traditional people and relationships

5. come from a wide assortment of life experiences but all seek out similar things online, making it a melting pot where millennial and Gen Z adults can interact

Weeb Party friend group was a millennial friend group. Everyone there was either a millennial, or more or less on the line between Gen Z and millennial. They were also relatively well adjusted to normalcy, to IRL socializing, albeit they also had varying levels of queer immersion and comfort. This produced a negative experience for me, and it reminded me of a few one-off poor encounters I had with millennial cis women in 2016 to 2020.

In other words, my experiences with being ignored or looked over in a dating space reflected negative experiences I had with cis millennials who wanted to reject me for my gender identity but couldn’t (a common theme in the 2010s and something I experienced as recently as 2020). This led me to believe it may be an issue, generationally, with how millennial cis women perceive trans women.

On average, Gen Z has treated me better than millennials. I don’t just mean that Gen Z adults are generally more open to having sex with trans women than their millennial counterparts. I mean that Gen Z cis women treat me as if I am an equal to them. While millennials are more likely to treat me like a third sex woman, a massive amount of Gen Z’ers view trans women as women. They have accepted transness as just another aspect a woman may have.

This has resulted in not just a lot of positive experiences with Gen Z queer women in my sex and dating life, but affirming experiences even when conflict happens. It never feels like my transness is at play if there’s a fight. It just feels like we’re two equals figuring things out.

I’m curious if there’s a huge gap between dating preferences for millennials and dating preferences for Gen Z. Moving from a T4T space to a C4C one was an immense form of psychological whiplash. But moving from Weeb Party to a collection of cis and trans friends sexually interested in me? That, too, gave me whiplash. And it solidified my feeling that Weeb Party’s vibe was not the right fit for me.

NEET Goddess Sex

“Goddess Sex” was a very difficult essay to write because it is about alienation, the occult, and the traumatic event that served as a catalyst to both. “NEET sex” was (is?) difficult too, but because it’s dramatic and intense in a quiet sort of way. It’s about the unfun part in changing yourself, the day-to-day pains of a trans woman figuring out her place in the world. When you realize you’ve found yourself in the same place that you were before: Trying to fit in, believing you’ve discovered the right place or right people, and then having the illusion come crashing down. There’s nothing that can be done except cut ties, move on, start over. The growth and change comes from accepting it’s time to go.

The hard and heavy feelings are still very raw for me, of course. This is one friend group breakup that I’ve had to do alone, without other people leaving, validating my experiences, saying, “hey, I experienced something messed up too.” It’s a very strange situation, too, in that I do believe something transmisogynistic happened… but I’m still friends with a number of people who do Weeb Party stuff. And I still have respect for the hosts, still have a lot of fond memories, feel like many of the people I met there saved my life during the course of Goddess Sex’s narrative.

Am I angry? I don’t know. Maybe just disappointed things worked out the way they did.

Weeb Party wasn’t good for me because the circumstances were wrong for me. One of those circumstances was being transgender, but not the only one. It was a friend circle where I was trying to fit in and be normal to my own detriment. A quiet kind of self-harm. And I hit a limit. For being a trans woman, a sex worker, a kinky dyke, all those things. There’s a ceiling for how much you can be yourself in a friend group. Patience runs out from some people.

So go find new people.

During those times when you're just stuck for an answer, making a mistake is one method of unsticking yourself. Madoka, you've grown up to be a good kid. You don't tell lies, and you don't do bad things. You're a girl who works hard at what she thinks is right. You get an ‘A’ as a child. So before you become an adult, you have to start practicing falling down.

I forget how it happened exactly, but I remember when it did. It was in the late days of winter, right before spring 2021. ______ had recently happened and I had to _______1. It was perhaps the second or third most fucked up thing I ever experienced in my life.

Like most trauma in my life, I didn’t register that it affected me, was affecting me, would continue to affect me. Even now, I can’t look at art about it without feeling a certain way. For two years after, I used to come home to my apartment and look for signs that ______ was still ____ or ______ wasn’t _____. It has been challenging and difficult to avoid writing about it, but I can settle for writing around it.

There is another thing related to it that I’ve been cryptic about. I would like to finally talk directly about it, because I can feel something is asking me to speak the truth.

I. Shrooms

George Carlin once said LSD permanently rewired his brain. Psilocybin did the exact same thing to me as well.

I became disillusioned with the world at the end of 2020. I’ve discussed dealing with online harassment and a rupture in my professional circle during that year, but it wasn’t just that. It was realizing there was a drop in interest with the BLM protests, realizing that the average American would turn stagnant and choose denial in the face of a Biden victory. It was figuring out that the Trump era was just that: An era. People wanted to go back to normal.

I did not want to go back to normal. And I did not want to go back to whatever was on the other side of normal.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped playing shooters and I started wearing leather. I was having sex I didn’t want and doing sex I wasn’t into. I was reading books that were certifiably mid because other people said they were based. I was hiding my interest in nerd shit because it wasn’t cool to be at home, real queers touched grass, lathered lube and fucked.

One day, I woke up and realized that I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was trying to look punky because that’s what you did if you were a dyke in Brooklyn. I was trying to hang out in bars, events, and activist spaces that were cool. Hip. Sexy. Forcing myself to go to parties I didn’t enjoy, listen to poetry I didn’t like, jerk off writers I hated to read, wear clothes I didn’t feel comfortable in. And for what? What good came of any of it?

I had wrestled with the millennial New York spirit, the proto-Dimes Square, and there I found nothing. Nothing but appearance over substance, aesthetics over values. The token trans woman in a self-congratulatory circlejerk of radical aesthetics. Aging millennials jacking each other off so hard it made a bukkake scene in a futanari hentai look tame.

What the fuck was I doing?

“I was still doing people-pleasing. I was 30, and I resonated much more truly with the 20-year-olds. I was more in line with them than I was with these people I was entertaining in nightclubs,” George Carlin said in his last interview. “I began to be affected by it, and along the way, the judicious use of some mescaline and some LSD managed to accelerate the process. It gave me more of an insight into how false the world was I was settling for, and to see that there was something much richer and better and more authentic. And those changes happened, they just—they happened naturally and organically.”

Like Carlin and LSD, shrooms accelerated the process into course-correcting. The change would have happened regardless. But psilocybin sped it up. Then the occult pushed it into overdrive.

II. Occult

Cultist Simulator is a video game from a developer I will not mention due to reasons I was already well aware of at the time. It inspired my first game Blood Pact. And then I started playing it again around late 2020.

I can’t remember why I was drawn to Cultist Simulator the second time. I believe it was because of the psychological aspects, the social manipulation. I had recently dealt with a sociopath who had ripped through one of my industry circles, and a friend pointed out that her behavior mirrored the player’s in CS. No surprise, given what I referenced above. The mind of a manipulator, the need to grow in power, using and discarding others for personal gain — all while avoiding being caught. Cultist Simulator was a study of its creator, so for me, it provided a bit of closure.

But something about the game’s world started to affect me. In late 2020, I felt all the journalistic work I had written and the entire career I had built amounted to “a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high,” to quote Kurt Vonnegut. I had done what I set out to do in my writing and for what? I took my thoughts to the streets and for nothing. I kept company with people who fucked with my work and found they were fucking with me. Boring, vapid, miserable, I was falling out of love with the subcultures I found myself in. I wanted to ascend from whatever world we were building. Maybe escape from it.

I suppose I could see myself in the unnamed and unknown protagonist in Cultist Simulator. Not the urge to control, but the urge to surpass the mundane and emerge at a higher plane of existence. The spiritual version of my career as a journalist: Ascending from the shadows, going from a nobody to a powerful somebody. If I could do it in my career, I could do it spiritually. As below, so above.2

Like a true neurodivergent hyperfixating on her favorite new toy, I became really interested in what was going on inside Cultist Simulator (even though I was really bad at the game itself). I began digging into the lore. I purchased a tarot deck and started learning the cards. Hoping for something greater to reach my doorstep, something that reeked of grandeur. Hoping, deep down, that whatever was in the game was real. Or at the bare minimum, that I could make contact with the unknown.

III. Contact

I did not get to enter the cool video game world I was hyperfixating over. But I did get to meet something when I took my first shrooms dose in the late days of winter, about a month before spring 2021.

I learned a couple things during my first trip. There was the simple stuff, the type every OpenAI engineer wants to learn from dropping acid. You know, “All the books on my nightstand are because I’m running from myself instead of accepting myself for who I am.” The fun, introspective, therapyspeak stuff.

Then there was _____, and the strength I had to summon within because of ______. When I had to pull myself out of my own fucking trip so I could ________. I learned that day there is an incredible strength within me that should never be called upon again.

And then there was the occult.

In simplest terms: I had a trip where I experienced different dimensions of reality other than our own, overlaid on our everyday experience. It was a light trip (the dose was way too low for my body weight), so I didn’t really leave the physical world. I was present enough to, yes, exert control over my mind so _____. But I absolutely was tripping and seeing things.

Toward the tail end of the trip, when the psilo was starting to leave my system, a lasting connection happened. It’s hard to put into words, but it’s like a spirit— a daemon, in the traditional Greek term — decided to make contact with me. Revealing its presence, sparkling and dancing in the dying winter light. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. Reminding me that, if I wanted to, I could contact the spiritual world.

Four years later, I suspect this might have happened because of, you know, _______. I kept microdosing afterward, even took a smaller trip for New Years Eve in 2021, but I ultimately decided to leave behind psilo the following year. In the meantime? My dreams came true, and I was high on the sweet, spiritual vibes.

IV. Hellenic

I remember a couple things shortly after my trip. First, feeling warm inside for the next few weeks. Fuzzy, empowered, and ready to discover all the hidden secrets of the world.

Second, having to call _______ and go to _______ and having a lot of friends ask me if I was okay while I tried to keep it together. I was fine. It sucked but I was fine. I had this new path to explore, something incredible, this spiritual awakening to follow. It turns out I am stronger than most people and, yes, what I was searching for was real.

Now it was time to make some phone calls and get to work.

I spent the next few weeks trying to figure out what to make of everything, spiritually. What path would I choose to find the truth? Witchcraft was infested with a self-help vibe I was allergic to, so that wouldn’t work. Choose-your-own-path paganism felt like a form of Tumblr SJWism that I despised (“hello, AFAB here! introducing are all the trans women of yore to worship like gods instead of people”). The traditional occult was too vague for me; I wanted rules, ideas, and reasons that made sense. A path that provided values to follow and relationships to explore.

I considered exploring and understanding my own private pantheon, but I was nervous about falling too deep within myself. I wanted to worship gods others knew, gods I could compare notes on. A thought struck me: Well, if you want a series of gods you adore so much, what about Ancient Greece?

I was always interested in Greek mythology. I loved Hades, adored The Odyssey, and studied Ancient Greek statues and pottery as a teen. When I was a freshman in high school learning Greek myths, I was fascinated with Edith Hamilton’s conception of the Christian God as the literal spiritual successor to Zeus, something I always thought was true. So why not go for joining a revival religion?

I looked through the gods available in the Hellenic polytheist pantheon. I felt a strange pull toward Artemis. Virginal goddess, asexual but with homoerotic undertones. Guardian of womanhood with a cacophony of nymphs. Coded as a lesbian and, yes, a personal favorite in Hades. I was smitten. But was I ready to make contact with a goddess? Was I ready to go from a curious observer toying with the occult to an actual pagan worshiping the ancient gods?

I thought about it carefully. I met with a friend for a drink, and she encouraged me to follow my heart. Then I came home and played Hades. My run opened with a boon from Artemis. It felt like a sign. I prayed to Her. She responded. Positively, ready for me. It felt right. It was time.

V. ᾌ̷̭͒ρ̴͂͑͜͜τ̸̟̘̈͑έ̴̭μ̴͈̯̉ι̸̦̕ς̶̲͂ͅ

Artemis came on very strong after our first encounter.

An intensity, almost possessive.

I could feel her slipping in.

On the couch.

Wanting me.

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

What the fuck was happening to me?

Was I being violated?

Going insane?

I was losing control.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

VI. Confusion

I laid on the couch, confused and a little shaken. I spent the day learning as much as I could online, and I couldn’t find much. Most posts about Artemis involved anxiety about worshiping Her correctly. Everyone was scared of fucking up with Her. Very few people described an intense, nerve-wracking experience like mine with Her. Except for one other woman.

“Tl;Dr: new female pagan tries to connect with the goddess Artemis, has an intimate vision between her and the goddess, feels weird, apologizes to Artemis, asks for a sign to show she's forgiven,” an r/pagan user wrote. “Sees significantly less of the moon and more crows for a week. Wondering how to interpret and proceed.”

The Redditor said she met the Roman version of Artemis3, surrounded by Her hunters. Here, Diana embraced her, “and things got... intimate.”

“Like kisses and hugs and caresses, that sort of thing. Not necessarily sexual, just intimate,” the woman said. “I was embarrassed and kept pulling back and apologizing for being so forward, but she kept pulling me back in. I've heard stories where she's punished men for stumbling upon her or her nymphs naked. I'm female, but getting so close still felt like I was crossing a forbidden boundary. “

Gaia told the pagan that Diana “can be confusing like that sometimes." A worshiper of Artemis/Diana had a far more direct answer: Artemis wasn’t “confusing” (or “creative,” I should say). She approached Her female worshipers like a dyke.

“Hey don’t worry, Diana/Artemis is actually a Lesbian goddess,” that user wrote. “The ancients just didn’t understand that or had a different way of understanding it and called her Virginal. I was dedicated to Diana for a year (I am also a female) and she pursued the same romantic/sexual relationship with me. She LOVES women!! These experiences for women are very normal with her. So you can relax and know nothing untoward is happening.”

Maybe this was Artemis’ way of saying hello.

VII. Prayer

Some worshipers don’t hear gods. I do. Not literally, through voices and visions. But I can feel them when I talk to them.

For me, speaking to a god is embodied. It feels like a great, powerful being slipping Her hand into my heart and activating my emotions, tugging and pulling on them like harp strings. Like my emotions are an instrument for the gods. I then have to interpret these sensations to understand their answers. What strong agreement feels like. How disagreement appears. Assurance. Love. Compassion. Rejection. Gods are surprisingly patient with the learning curve — and are OK with repeat questions. I imagine it’s hard to annoy a deity.

Different gods tug on my heart differently. Each one’s presence feels unique. Artemis is like the woods, wilderness, quiet solitude, comfortable in being alone. She comes strongly, but encourages a sense of emotional independence. Aphrodite is loving, passionate, seductive but motherly. She is quick to wrap Her arms around me and take care of me. Hestia, virginal and grounded, is warm like a fire. Hecate is cool and practical; with Her, it’s work. Athena comes serious, stern, and direct. If I want to pray to Her, I have to do it by the book, or She won’t come.4

Artemis and Aphrodite are the easiest to contact. I sometimes pray to them together. You would assume these two goddesses are opposites, even in conflict. But they describe my separate halves well. Aphrodite, my loving, seductive, sexual side. Artemis, my solitary, lesbian, asexual tendencies. Aphrodite protects my heart; Artemis, my mind. Everyone has an Apollonian and Dionysian side, but doesn’t every woman have a bit of Aphrodite and Artemis inside her too?

VIII. Psychosis

I once read about a Hellenic pagan who could see the gods. It didn’t come easy. She had to do a lot of ritual, a lot of work, set a lot of expectations, and prepare her mind for it.

But yes, she was romantically involved with Dionysos, and He would visit her. This was not in her head, but the equivalent of a loved one randomly popping into your house. If she wasn’t careful, a roommate would catch a glimpse of Him and ask “who that strange guy was in your room.” So their encounters had to be discrete.

I always wanted that to happen to me. But I know why Artemis, Aphrodite, Hecate, no goddess would ever come. And I do not want them to anymore, I think.

When I was working on Kharis, which was a fictional distillment of what this essay discusses, I quickly came to realize that some minds cannot hear or feel gods because it isn’t good for them. My relationship with paganism works because, deep down, I’m not a woo person. I compartmentalize strong feelings, traumas, pains, pleasures. Fantasy and reality don’t necessarily cross circuits.

It’s funny, because I do believe fictional worlds are real things, whispered to us by the Muses, existing in parallel universes. And yet, ironically enough, I’m struggling to create a fictional world for myself, a self-indulgent creation with fun self-inserts. It’s like there’s a wall in the way; my own art is there to observe, to create but not touch.

Ironically, to surrender to fantasy is to surrender control.

Deep down, I am a solitary individual who struggles with emotional intimacy. I need privacy. I need safe places to retreat to, quiet and alone. I need to stay uninvolved with the people I live with or see regularly, because whenever I get too close, I get hurt. My favorite barista doesn’t even know my name. I need to know I can back out every time I have to. I need to know I can disappear somewhere and be alone.

If a goddess visited my room and poofed Herself into existence on a whim, the walls would come crumbling down.

I do not use the term “psychosis” sensationally, but to describe a simple reality: I do not talk to all my friends about my beliefs, because many of my friends over the years have had brains built differently than mine. So I don’t like to talk about my belief system except in very contained and controlled circumstances. Besides, I am lucky to be privileged with a mind that works the way it does, that allows for the spiritual experiences I can explore. Experiencing schizophrenia and psychosis are my greatest fears.

IX. Sex

The exact memory is blurry to me, but during those early months, Artemis and I began having something akin to sex. We would kiss. We would caress. We would make love. It would be difficult at times, as the idea of a lesbian Artemis sexually engaging with my body felt at odds with Her virginal and asexual mythology. But what I was feeling was real, and was with Her. She wanted it. And I could sense early on that the way She liked having sex was just as unique as my own preferences (later, I would figure out Her desires were more ace-oriented, again, not unlike myself)5.

I met other queer pagans, other trans pagans. They confessed that they, too, had sexual experiences with gods. I learned of queer mythology readings and how non-Athenian Greek myths shed more light into the homoerotic aspects of a god or goddess. Artemis and Callisto’s lore suggested a complex attraction between the two. Academic interpretations of Artemis, Her nymphs, and Her relationship with other goddesses revealed a hidden lesbianism among other immortals. It became clear to me that Artemis is more than just a “dyke-coded virginal goddess.” If you’re a gay girl, and if the vibes are right, She will fuck you.

Early on, I knew Artemis was my matron goddess, my main goddess, my primary deity. I did not expect our sexual encounters to become so integral to our early months together, but I was still processing my aceness and asexuality, and still discovering intimacy beyond sex; I had to have sex in order to be reached. I began to understand my sexuality as ace and complex as I spent more time with Artemis. And so as I matured sexually, we did not need to have sex so often.

As time went on, sex with Artemis became more abstract, less traditional in approach and act. It became obvious to me that Artemis enjoyed, even preferred, Dominating Her lovers by controlling them and their body. Activating certain emotions, feelings, or responses. Perhaps Artemis’ preference is for kink, for fetishism, for BDSM that has less to do with penetration and more to do with exerting power over her worshipers. The distant goddess who touches but doesn’t fuck. Even now, I’m unsure.

I do not think I will receive an easy answer. About a year after I began my practice, Artemis began encouraging me to become independent from Her, comfortable with the up’s and down’s of life without needing to call on Her for help. My time triaging what happened with _______ was done, and it was time to learn how to figure out the future on my own.

But the sexual undertones never truly went away. Around this same time, Artemis planted an idea in my head: To submit to Her as Her pet, Her dog, Her servant. In return, She would be my Owner and Huntress. The idea rattled in my brain, would follow me as I walked around Brooklyn and searched through occult libraries. Was I calling on a fantasy, or was Artemis bringing the thought into my head? I do not know.

Finally, I woke up one morning, bowed, and submitted as Her dog. Artemis became not just my matron, but my ur-Domme, my ur-Owner. It solidified the simple fact that my Goddess undeniably controls my very soul.

I suspect this decision was made for me many lives ago, and I am the last in a long line of versions of myself to find out.

Is kink innate to god sex? It’s hard to say, as BDSM and paganism go together like Guilty Gear Strive and 4mg/day estradiol. Raven Kaldera has written much about BDSM with the gods, although gods tend to reach us where we’re at, not vice-versa. So, do the gods engage in kink to teach us things and make themselves approachable to us? Or do they enjoy D/s for the same reasons as you and I? I do not expect easy answers. The D/s undertones in my own relationship with Artemis have waxed and waned ever since I began actively seeking out 24/7 D/s relationships with other (human) women again.

But even as I write this, I can feel the pull of Her on me. The invisible collar around my neck, the spiritual leash tied to Her hand. If She wanted to take me for a walk, I would have to obey. It’s what dogs do. They yield to their Master. And I suspect the joy is shared mutually, not just because I am wired to serve a goddess.

X. Erotics

I didn’t really fully understand what was happening when Artemis first approached me for sex. Just that something was taking over me, almost possessing me. It felt good and it felt scary and it made me feel afraid that I was going to be turned into a sex toy for a god — or a demon.

God sex is different than human sex. For me, a god plays with the inside of one’s body. Does things to it. Makes me feel a certain way. I suppose to Her, my body is filled with emotions, nerves, and pressure points to engage with, and She touches them as She pleases to make me feel certain things. Good. Aroused. Hard. Overstimulated. It’s like a simulation of sex. An exercise in control. It was scary at first (and it sometimes still is), but nothing is done without the end goal of a lesson. Or some fun.

Some experience and practice has better contextualized god sex.

First, you can say no. Gods might even proposition sex just to have you practice saying no to them. Saying no to a god, and knowing it won’t affect your relationship with them, is a good and important thing. Gods want worshipers who choose them, not cowering prey who fear them.

Second, it is sex, although sometimes gods are more actively fucking you — and sometimes they’re just making you feel good through access to your body. There is a difference. Some gods like having literal sex, others, not so much. Some gods do not want to have sex at all. Or, I think it’s more accurate to say, some gods are less likely to seek out sex with you than with others. Don’t take this personally. Hecate rejected my request for a sexual relationship, but I know other worshipers have been sexually involved with Her.

Third, different gods respond to prayer in different ways, and different gods have sex in different ways. Aphrodite is the most traditional: Loving, passionate, the most like mortal sex. Apollon is precise and strong, a bit less gentle than His sister, and not afraid to present as a sun goddess to bed me6. Dionysos is undeniably T4T, with all the love and pain and sisterly longing it demands; I often use She/Her pronouns for Her, as She tends to come to me as a trans woman. Of them all, Artemis is the most unique, and the most likely to engage in Domination and submission with me (although Aphrodite also loves to Dominate me).

Lastly, I’m not sure if everyone can have sex with gods.

I feel like some part of my body was designed to communicate with deities in a special and even scary way. Like there is a spiritual hole in my chest, a divine orifice. A glove a god can easily slip on and access.

Trans pagans are likely to be possessed and ridden by deities.7 I have felt it at times. Artemis slipping in, feeling things out, rearranging the interior of my mind. Getting things in order. The feeling is beautiful and scary. She and the other gods know I’m not ready yet. But one day, it’s going to be asked of me. To give my body and mind to them for short stints of time, 10 or 15 minutes, and do some bidding.

Perhaps this is why I can have sex with gods. There is something built inside me, designed for an additional purpose. But like using an inguinal canal to muff, this feature can also be used to fuck my body and mind.

XI. Time

I put off writing about god sex for two reasons. One, it’s embarrassing. People are likely to feel you’re insane, like you’re making a dirty fantasy into a religion or are retreating into a world you’ve created for your own desires.8

It’s an open secret though that plenty of queer pagans have had sexual encounters with gods. It’s also a closed one. Many middle-class pagans hide their spirituality because they work in places where worshiping Hades could get you fired. Imagine if your local he/they twink H&R Block accountant admitted to fucking Dionysos as well.

But I no longer work a white-collar job. I’m a sex worker. My day job is pretending to be a giant anime girl that eats small people and rubs her big round gurgling tummy as her prey digests in her stomach. I have far less shame now than I used to, and the topic of god sex itself seems to come up more and more in conversation whenever I discuss paganism in queer erotic circles.

Two, god sex is highly stigmatized in the pagan community. I find that silly, of course, given polytheistic mythology is filled with deities fucking humans. It seems obvious to me gods would still be doing the same thing in 2024. I mean, there was literally a whole book just written about lesbian sex between Hades and Persephone. I’m pretty sure lesbian Hades is also out there fucking lesbian worshipers of Hers in the spiritual realm — or lesbian Persephone, is I don’t know, consensually roleplaying with women in their dreams, devouring them and making them feel good.

But look, many pagans grew up in religions like Christianity, where sex was seen as shameful and antithetical to religion. The idea that religion has nothing to do with sex is a strong one in American culture. So, I get it. That is an uphill battle and it’s not a fight I really want to get involved in, because I have no interest in becoming a pagan influencer. I am skeptical of pagan content creators as a whole.

So, why to choose to write about this now?

It’s been four years. I have distance and perspective from my baby pagan days. The last shrooms trip I did, I wanted to have a spiritual experience with the gods. Instead, I felt them pushing me back down to Earth. “No, no,” they said, “you’re not doing that. You have to clean your room first.” And I’m still cleaning my room.

With time, I’ve realized that paganism, like all things before it, could be a way to run from myself and not really face the things I needed to. That meant accepting religion as something that won’t necessarily let me ascend to the heavens, but maybe help me cope with death and loss. After all, Artemis asked me to let go a little and be independent, so I did. I used to pray every day; now I pray rarely. I don’t use my tarot cards to access the Real Life Version of Cultist Simulator anymore, but to help me navigate life.

I look at my religion in the way I was always supposed to: Reach enlightenment, carry water, chop wood. Make peace with the world one lives in, or don’t. Either way, god is not an escape.

XII.

It’s just—

A couple months into VTubing, I asked Artemis and Aphrodite: Should I keep doing this? Is this wise? Do I have Your blessing? I asked, and they said yes. Do it. We’ll protect you. You’ll be okay. It will be successful.

The gods did not tell me it would be easy. Just that they would watch out for me. And they have.

It’s always the same signs. I walk into stores, and my favorite music plays. I check the time, and the clock reads 11:11. My fiction work on goddesses open eyes, my tarot game introduces new people to god sex.

Every time I pray to Artemis and Aphrodite for help, they wrap themselves around me and tell me not to worry. They will watch out for me. It will be okay. Like clockwork, when I ask for help with money, hundreds of dollars suddenly appear at my door. New fans, new gigs, a 401k, a generous donation.

It is a beautiful thing, being liked by a god. It is intoxicating, mesmerizing, their control around your neck an incredible addiction. It is also very, very frightening. The fear and horror of knowing there is an ancient power watching over you, controlling you, exerting its power to guide your fragile mortal body. I can’t tell whether it arouses me or frightens me, where my religion ends and my desires begin.

Sometimes I wonder if the general outline and plan of my life has been decided for me. All the things I am supposed to do, all the people I am supposed to meet, all the lives I am supposed to influence (for good or bad). Then I wonder if my soul was bartered for. Maybe I paid for something eons ago, promised eternal servitude to the gods, and every lifetime they find me.

Or maybe it’s not that deep. I nearly pissed my pants on the subway once, and I promised the gods I’d do whatever they wanted if I just made it to the bathroom at home in time.9 Maybe one day, a goddess will show up and cash that check.

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I’d mind. Not like I would have a choice.

I’ve been looking for work in media for the past couple weeks now. Particularly games journalism. And, surprise, surprise, it’s been a complete waste of my fucking time.

Take a look at the positions available on the "Video Games Journalism Jobs" site. As of this article, six are posted. Four of them are unpaid.

Of the two positions that offer compensation, both are freelance, and one of them is only offering three to five pounds per SEO article. That’s nowhere near a livable wage for the work involved in researching, fact-checking, and writing a search engine-optimized work of games journalism. But hey, if you’re that desperate, go get it! Five pounds to write 1,000 words about the best Tokyo Ghoul characters. What a steal!

What else is out there, you might ask? Well, you can contribute SEO content to GAMURS’ Dot Esports, but the job listing on Indeed only promises "$16 to $90 USD per article," which is kinda low (not to mention "pay rates may vary for international candidates based on location”). If that doesn’t sound so hot, you could try Game Rant or Hardcore Gamer at Valnet, but, like GAMURS, that network is equally known for paying freelance writers at low rates for SEO churn.

No good, right? Yeah. The good news is that you can still land some respectable freelance gigs in the games journalism industry. Maybe some steady work contributing guides at IGN, or you can write a feature story here and there for PC Gamer. Maybe you know the folks at Paste Games and they want you to write for them now and then. Or perhaps Wired is open to a reported games feature (and hey, Condé Nast pays nicely!). It helps to know people, and if you have experience, you likely know enough people to get some money into your bank account as a freelancer. With a little hard work and a lot more luck.

But freelancing is stressful. What about a job? You know, something that will let you go to the doctor and retire one day? Well, just like our friends on the game dev side of things, games journalism is a mess right now. Every other publication has shuttered and laid off staff. Those that remain are just barely getting by, with a tightened budget that has little room to budge (translation: no new hires, sorry!). Even GAMURS and Valnet aren’t looking for many full-time positions on the content side of things, instead electing to largely contract freelancers to write content these days.

There are basically three ways you can land a full-time position in games journalism at the moment:

1. You know somebody, and there’s an opening somewhere. You’re basically perfect for the role, everyone loves you, and you get the job

2. You sent in a job application from the cold. And by the mercy of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (hallelujah), you somehow impressed an editor, middle manager, or managing editor / EIC enough to get chosen. This is the job equivalent of rolling a nat d20. Buy a lottery ticket

3. You already have a job, and, realizing games journalism fucking sucks, continue to stay at your current job. Congratulations, you have a job

In short, if you work in games journalism and are out of a job right now, you are fucked. Also, if you currently have a miserable job in games journalism but enjoy eating food, you are fucked. Yes, there are permalance positions, part-time gigs, and you can staple a bunch of ragtag freelance invoices together into something that resembles a just-taxable-enough income.

But something that will give you health insurance and a W-2? Those exist in very short supply, and games journalists that have them are hanging onto them for dear life. Because, just like the rest of us, they know the job market is abysmal. That the rest of us are hungry for a break.

So when a job does open? It’s in high demand. Very, very high demand.

On Aug. 28, Vox’s Polygon opened a Games Writer role at the site. Senior reporter Nicole Carpenter was the first to announce the news on Twitter, right before 6pm New York time. Five and a half hours later, there are 30 replies and over a dozen quote tweets. Most are either comments from interested games journalists, Twitter users tagging potential writers, or non-American applicants discussing their interest in applying (and subsequent disappointment, as the position appears to be limited to U.S. applicants). I expect more responses as the work week continues.

Now, I need to stress. Applying to work at Polygon would be competitive in any environment, even a bustling games journalism industry. Polygon is over a decade old now, and it is one of the most high profile media sites in the Western games journalism industry. Translation: Working at the ‘gon is exciting, pushes careers forward, and looks good on any resume. It’s a plum position.

It’s also the last of its kind, a relic from the 2010s where a full-time writer was expected to contribute what’s required on the news and SEO beat, but was also allowed to contribute reported stories and opinion columns on subjects they were personally passionate about. Working at Polygon today, in other words, means reaching for a dying past and grabbing onto it. It also means securing a future on the road ahead in media and games, wherever that may be.

And did I mention the pay? Most games journalists make awful salaries. My first salary was in the $40k range; I’ve met writers who wrote full-time in the U.S. for lower. Vox, meanwhile, states the Games Writer position’s range is $70,000 to $77,000. To give you a frame of reference, when I was a Managing Editor at GAMURS, I started at $65k. By the time I left, I worked as an Editorial Strategist, where I was paid $68k. I have never made that much money in my life before, and I suspect I never will again.

In short, Polygon offers the opportunity to earn the highest paycheck most games journalists will ever receive in games, all while getting some very nice perks (like making sure your teeth don’t fall out thanks to dental insurance!).

This further expands the competition in a market where jobs are already rare. Everyone wants a shot at the ‘gon. The gainfully employed. The not-so-gainfully employed. The miserably unemployed. The weary vet (“back in my day, The Escapist had Yahtzee…”). And yes, the desperate freelancer who really, really needs this job to make rent.

In short, every other person in games journalism is applying to work at Polygon before the job application window closes on Sept. 11.

“Good luck in the hunger games lmao,” a friend of mine, Overwatch League reporter Liz Richardson, wrote over Discord. “I’m tempted to apply but I can’t even imagine the competition.”

I’ll admit, I was curious about this job. It sounded like a good fit for me. I even reached out to Carpenter (an old friend and former coworker) about working at Polygon these days, and anything else worth knowing about the job.

But it only took me a few hours to decide not to apply for this job. Because, simply put, I already know I am not going to hear back for an interview.

I’m going to let you in on a secret about the media industry. In 10 years, I have written many cover letters and many resumes for full-time jobs. I’ve never heard back for any of them. Not once. Despite being a prolific writer, reporter, and even a published author, no one has asked me to chat for a call. No interest from Jezebel. None from Motherboard. Gizmodo? HA. Just a rejection email.

In media, I have only ever secured a full-time job through networking and connections. Every single time, I either freelanced somewhere and was (somewhat informally) offered a job, or I had a prior connection that resulted in an (equally informal) invitation to come on full-time. For most games journalists, this is the norm, and it will almost certainly dissuade many of my colleagues from applying to Polygon. Not enough to temper the sheer number of applicants this job will get. But it’s certainly lowered expectations for myself, as well as many of my colleagues.

“I'd also like to note that I genuinely think I'd have a better chance if I WAS in an arena with weapons at this point,” Richardson told me.

That said, if this was the only obstacle I faced, I would still apply for the Polygon job anyway. But it’s not. I know why I have never received an interview before after sending out a job application. Even for roles where I was a perfect match. It’s because the cards are stacked against me as a trans woman.

Let’s be real. It’s very hard to get hired in games journalism as a trans woman. Most trans women are simply not brought on as full-time hires at games journalism publications; most mastheads are painstakingly cisgender. The higher you go, the more cis and straight it all looks.

I mean, yes, I do know trans women who have landed full-time work in games journalism, including high level positions in management and/or writing for major publications. But most of these trans women in games media were recommended for the role because someone personally vouched for them. Or maybe they were already working at a publication and transitioned. Or maybe someone knew someone and said, “hey, consider this writer, we’re moots on Twitter and she’s sweet. Trust me.” Among other reasons, if not a mixture of all of these.

For those who are in no such position (openly out, have few connections for a job, and/or have no one to vouch for them except angry trolls on Twitter), most trans women face an enormous, transmisogynistic glass ceiling in games journalism. Everyone wants to pay us for a hot take or a feature story about trans stuff, but very few hiring managers want to bring us into their workplaces. Or rather, they tend to relate more to the cis people that apply, while treating trans women as angry, passionate one-off contributors who can write a good feature about all that culture war stuff, but aren’t worth the salary cost.

Whorephobia has similarly held me back. That is to say, I believe the fact I am actively doing sex work means a games journalism publication is less likely to hire me.

It’s strange, because this was not always the case. Once, my experience as a sex worker was a vital career asset. Back when I was a reporter specializing in online censorship, sex workers’ rights, and sex tech, being a sex worker was a career benefit. It was a sign that I knew what I was talking about: I offered lived experience, intuition, and a digital “gonzo journalist” vibe that made me trustworthy in and out of the sex working community. It’s one reason why, again, I was able to write a book, invited to do talks for universities, and so on.

Now, writing about adult content, sex work, and online sexuality is seen as taboo, as Google may ding a domain covering these topics. So my experience as a sex worker is an additional professional liability, at least in the eyes of your average civilian. Why risk bringing on a sex worker? What kind of baggage does she bring?

This pains me, because I’m proud of my work in the adult industry. Immediately after leaving GAMURS, I became an adult VTuber, an 18+ voice actor, an adult scriptwriter, and an NSFW video journalist. I create fetish content where I roleplay as a giant woman, and I create TF/F audio erotica for lesbians. It’s very rewarding, my content is rather popular in both niches, and my initial success has given me a pathway forward for a long-term future as an adult content creator. But I also need additional income to support my career, as rookie lewdtubing only pays a couple hundred a month. Hence the job search.

But fuck, how am I going to support my current career when my prior industry is on fire? I turned to media to support me, and I was ready to work a 9-to-5 again. But a full-time job? It’s nowhere to be found in games. I’ve found more monetary success taking commissions where I roleplay things I’d rather not share in mixed company.

I feel like giving up on the job hunt. Because I sit there and wonder, well, do I have the cards stacked against me? Do people avoid interviewing me because I’m a trans woman? Do they throw me onto the reject pile because I’m a sex worker? Now that I’m more openly advertising my adult content, I suspect my career path as an adult VTuber will prevent me from ever working a full-time job in media again. Especially games media. Because I am read as too controversial, too risky, too unprofessional, all for being an opinionated trans woman that educates other trans women about sex, that creates adult artwork for a queer audience, that thinks sex isn’t something to be ashamed of.

This has sat with me for a long time now. Because I look at all the past rejections I’ve faced, and how the only path forward for me in media is, once again, hitting up old connections and former colleagues for freelance opportunities, the lion’s share unrelated to games journalism. I’m blessed to have that luck, to have those opportunities, to be clear. But when it comes to applying for a job at a dream publication, doing something I’d legitimately love? Well, I know it’s a waste of precious time, energy, and resources. I know I will inevitably lose to someone more well known in games journalism, better connected to Polygon, or just more respectable as a candidate.

So, dear reader. What makes more sense? Blowing a whole day preparing a resume and cover letter that will never land me a first-round interview? Or recording an audio where I pretend to be a giant woman that eats people, because it will help me make a couple hundred dollars this month?

I think the answer is obvious. Giant woman it is. Let’s get this bred.

Peter Burka/Flickr

Even now, I have a hard time defining my last relationship.

A and I met in 2022. If I’m being honest, we crossed paths because of a classic Ana Valens-themed twist of fate: I was bored and horny, so I decided to search for the term “VTuber” on an adult website. A video of A’s popped up, where she was watching a hentai video, and I was mesmerized.

“Hey,” I thought, “you can just do that? Be an anime girl and comment on hentai during a stream? That’s cool. Why don’t I try making lewdtuber content?”

A quickly became my personal inspiration. I followed her on social media, and to my surprise, she followed me back. When she posted a selfie, I was smitten. Like a true reply girl, I left a flirty tweet, and she responded back. We started talking regularly, as much as time allowed for both of us, and just a few short months later we entered into a Domme-sub relationship.

It quickly became one of the happiest and most important intimate connections of my life.

It’s hard to describe the amount of joy our relationship gave me. It taught me many things. What it’s like to be in a long-term D/s arrangement serving a Domme. What it’s like to have healthy communication with an intimate partner. That trans and cis women can come together and be vulnerable with one another in ways that are beautiful, that can heal old wounds.

But most of all, A taught me that I don’t want normalcy. I am kinky. I am a sub. I need to be involved with someone in an all-encompassing way, where I am always someone’s sub, they are always my domme, and I live to carry out their whim. Whether romantic or something else, I crave 24/7 BDSM in a long-term commitment, where deep love exists between two individuals in a beautifully perverted power dynamic.

A and I ended up breaking things off last fall, but we remain very close. She is special to me, someone I would do anything for, someone who can cheer me up on the roughest day — I love her, she loves me, and I look back with fondness at the special configuration we had for those 12 months.

But even now, even with all this written out, I have a really hard time describing what, exactly, the two of us were.

This isn’t for lack of mindfulness or knowledge. I’m very aware of how our relationship functioned. We were not girlfriends, nor were we romantically involved — but we did love each other. And we still love each other.

“That’s just a D/s relationship,” you may say.

And yes, of course, that’s true. A was my Domme, and I was her sub, and we were in a Domme/sub relationship. But D/s is not a full descriptor of a relationship, it is just a flavor, a texture. It is like pointing to ___ _____ and calling it “chocolate.” Many things can be chocolate; what’s missing is the noun: “ice cream.”

“You two were in love, though?” another may ask. “So weren’t you basically romantic partners?”

Well, no, that’s not true either. I loved A, still love A, but from the start I never wanted to be romantically involved with her. In fact, I loved being in love with her, in this way that blurred the lines between “platonic” and “romantic,” that didn’t quite fit comfortably in either distinction. With A, what I wanted was… its own thing.

“Aha!” the ace reader says, their hand shooting in the air. “Sit down allos, let an asexual handle this one. You, my friend, were in a queerplatonic relationship.”

And to you, only one word.

“Stop”

I don’t want you to say that. I would not use that term. Using that term would be like pointing at soft serve and calling it “ice cream.” It’s close, but it’s wrong. So very, very wrong.

Women: Very gay for each other, but not always horny

Queerplatonic, or homoerotic? Regardless, women act like this over each other. A lot.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad the term queerplatonic exists. When I read Ace by Angela Chen in 2022, the word unlocked something in me. Slowly, I realized that you could have a partner who was not sexual, not romantic, but something else. A secret third thing.

So we’re all on the same page here, Chen defines “queerplatonic partner” as a term for “the social space between ‘friend’ and ‘romantic partner.’” Per Ace, “the bond between queerplatonic partners is not sexual, nor does it necessarily seem romantic to the people in such a partnership.” Rather, QPRs “transcend the bounds of what is typically found in friendship alone, even when ‘romantic’ as a descriptor seems wrong.”

“Queerplatonic resets from the unspoken expectations of either friend or romantic partner and forces the relationship into a new place, with the ability to build new obligations and new expectations together,” Chen writes (italics hers). “Instead of letting labels like romantic and platonic (or friend versus partner) guide actions and expectations, it is possible for the desires themselves to guide actions and expectations.”

Queerplatonic became a more relevant term in my life when I started to reexamine the ways non-platonic, non-sexual, and non-romantic intimacy permeated through my friendships with other women. Or more specifically, when I became aware of the fact that women are very gay for each other, but not always horny for each other.

First, I identified the fact that homoeroticm between women is generally erased and misunderstood in society at large, despite the fact women tend to grow “too close” to one another during formative years (i.e.: a “16-year-old bestie” who suddenly finds herself crazy jealous over her BFF’s new boyfriend). (For a larger history on non-sexual erotic intimacy among women in Western history, and the emergence of lesbophobic anxiety among women in the 20th century, I highly recommend Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman.)

Second, I recognized that lesbians (like me!) tend to seek out passionate, intense intimacy with their female friends, often resulting in uniquely homoerotic friendships that, again, straddle the line between “platonic,” “romantic,” and “sexual.” This is best understood as the dyke who has two drinks and spouts out “I’m attracted to all my friends” (just as much a stereotype as it is true!). However, unlike their straight counterparts, many lesbians knowingly engage in these homoerotic relationships and enjoy them. Quite frankly, they are very fun for an ace dyke like me, where everyone knows the rules, and we’re just having fun.

And lastly, I opened my mind to the idea that there are many, many ways to intimately relate to others, that there are many relationships that can provide ecstatic belonging and sheer bliss. You do not simply need a girlfriend for that, and you can discover new and erased ways of relating with others to achieve this end.

This is where I started to identify some, let’s say, “queerplatonic patterns” in my relationships with my friends — and I started to see these patterns among friends and acquaintances, too. This is normal, like homoeroticism among women. It just happens when people become close, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. But like homoeroticism among women, queerplatonic patterns are often erased, ignored, or misunderstood. If left unacknowledged and unfulfilled, they can balloon into jealousy, resentment, and conflict.

This is where I started to have a problem with queerplatonic, because quite frankly, the line between “homoerotic” and “queerplatonic” is, uh, blurry. As blurry as “homoerotic” and “erotic” (using the traditional allo definition here).

Chen tried to write off the former by stating “the bond between queerplatonic partners is not sexual,” but that just isn’t true. Even queerplatonic’s original coiner, s.e. smith, says “a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual.” As long as the QPR is not romantic, and as long as it involves a deep connection, sex is fair game.

But what about the fault lines between homoerotic and queerplatonic? Between homosexual desire and queerplatonic longing? What resides there, in the murky areas that are not platonic, not sexual, not friendship, not romance, but there is… something… gay happening? It doesn’t satisfy me to claim all that territory for queerplatonic, just as it doesn’t satisfy me to claim romantic or sexual desire is the cause.

Which brings me to my main concern with “queerplatonic.” It has become a catch-all, overly generalized term for “third relationship.” It does not allow me to accurately describe my relationship with A, nor does it allow me to describe that “homoerotic-ish-but-not-sexual” tension I sometimes see among women. Worst of all, it has turned into this bizarre intermediary between “platonic” and “romantic,” instead of emphasizing the fact that there are many, many different kinds of committed relationship structures beyond “platonic” and “romantic” — including ones that will never qutie fit the “queerplatonic” structure at all, or reside between “queerplatonic” and “romantic,” or “queerplatonic” and “platonic.”

This calls for a correction.

“Aegosexual,” or: “I want to swallow you whole and feel you in my stomach, but I’ll pass on the blowjob”

I prefer sexual scenarios over bodies. Like devouring my fans. (Artist: isthatyourmain)

To get a better understanding of my problem with the queerplatonic umbrella, you need to understand the anatomy of my identity, as well as the beliefs it’s led me to. So let’s strip me bare.

I MEAN, let’s strip my sexual/romantic/erotic identity down bare. I’m keeping my clothes on for this.

So. I am a lesbian. I am kinky, and I cannot be simultaneously emotionally and sexually intimate with someone in a purely equal circumstance. I am alloromantic and ace, more specifically aegosexual. And lastly, being with A taught me that I am also demisexual.

For those of you who don’t understand a lick of what I’m saying, let me break it down for you:

1. I am a lesbian: I crave intimate relationships with women for romantic and erotic purposes, as well as sexual ones in the context of my ace orientation

2. I am kinky: I crave power dynamics in my sexual, erotic, and romantic relationships. I prefer to have some aspect of D/s in these, preferably 24/7 (i.e.: I am always the sub, she is always the Domme, etc)

3. I am alloromantic: I experience romantic love and attraction. I want to have a girlfriend that I am romantically involved with

4. I am ace: I do not experience sexual attraction without additional qualifiers. I need to have an intimate connection with someone before I can feel sexual attraction to them. I do not feel sexual attraction to others’ bodies in and of itself

5. I am aegosexual: I am more attracted to perceiving sex, viewing sexual content, and engaging in sexual fetishism than having sex purely out of sexual attraction. I enjoy looking at porn and masturbating to my preferred fetishism (obvious if you know me, giantess, vore, feederism, etc), but without the appearance of these fetishes, I am not interested in having sex just for its own sake. If I choose to have fetish sex with a stranger, it is because of the presence of the scenario, not sexual attraction to the individual

6. I am demisexual: I do not feel sexual attraction to strangers. I feel stunned and amazed by their beauty (aesthetic attraction), sometimes desiring emotional intimacy with them (eroticism). But do I feel this sudden, burning urge to engage in sexual contact? No. I only feel that with people I’m close to

Now, I am not a fan of putting myself into concrete labels. Yes, absolutely, labels are important for expanding our minds and introducing us to new ideas (“you can feel sexual attraction, have a libido, but not want to date?!”). But I believe labels exist to help communicate certain parts of ourselves in a general sense. They should not taxonomically describe queer people. Otherwise, you run into a situation where a person becomes their labels, which ends up dehumanizing them — fitting them into neat little boxes, then placing them on enormous pedestals with tiny platforms they eventually fall off, causing them to plummet to the ground.

That said, we are talking about labels, and in queerplatonic Rome, one must do what the queerplatonic Romans do. Get some labels. And when it comes to the queerplatonic label, it is not just an aroace relationship label. It is the aroace relationship label. It is largely the root term and categorization for all non-romantic, non-friendship intimate relationships that have since been coined, and there are no alternatives to queerplatonic.

So, why do I dislike “queerplatonic”? I actually don’t. What I dislike is how it’s ballooned out of proportion into a bloated, one-size-fits-all mess of an umbrella.

Originally, s.e. smith defined queerplatonic as “relationships that are not romantic, that are also not friendships, and that play an important role in your life.” There’s no doubt in my mind that smith did not intend “queerplatonic” to become “the word we all use.” But it has, and in that state, the “-platonic” in “queerplatonic” has been forced to bench more than it can handle.

Let’s be blunt. When someone hears “platonic,” they think “affection seen within a friendship.” Sure, queerplatonic expands beyond the realm of mere friendship by nature, but the emphasis on “platonic” suggests certain key elements, i.e.: an implication of “non-sexual” and “non-erotic” engagement. In this way, Chen’s incorrect definition in Ace is better understood as a logical conclusion, even if an incorrect one.

In other words, the QPR is great for describing deep, soul-nourishing emotional intimacy with another person, where social and emotional connection is key, and physical intimacy exists but may be relatively limited. That’s easily communicated by the term, even to those who “don’t get” queerplatonic. When you’re cuddling with the Partner and just want to peck their cheek, QPR is perfect.

But what happens when you’re cuddling with the Partner, and that deliciously sick, diaboloically twisted thought sneaks into your head? The one that makes your girldick twitch, that makes your heart pound, that makes your face turn scarlet? You know the one.

I want my Partner to shove their fingers down my throat.

I want them to smile as I choke on their eager flesh.

I want them to look me in the eye, spit on my face, and call me their pathetic, disgusting slut

In that moment “queerplatonic” feels… like it’s not painting the full picture.

Yes, you may reply, queerplatonic is meant to queer the very definition of “intimate relationship” and “platonic.” It has room for any immensely strong connection (even ones with sexual and erotic elements) as long as these aren’t romantic. So it can and should include “my Person is my everything, and they should stick everything in my mouth right about now.”

But I think I speak for many queer people invested in queering relationships when I say: It’s incredibly hard to use “queerplatonic” for an intensely intimate sexual, erotic, and non-romantic relationship because the word “platonic” is not built to describe this aspect of the relationship. The intimacy involved when a woman suddenly turns to me, sticks her fingers down my throat, and calls me a good girl, that kind of intimacy requires another explanation. It’s not going to be properly communicated under “queerplatonic” (although I guess I could try “queerplatonic mouthfucker.”)

Queering “platonic” simply seems better suited for things like, you know, stressing non-romantic and non-familial commitment in one’s life, engaging in rich (even sensual!) physical intimacy, or having “unionship commemoration” ceremonies with a life partner. I am not disparaging these things or making fun of them, by the way. I want a queerplatonic partner. I see myself getting involved in queerplatonic relationships. I am built to live queerplatonically. I know what it’s like to love queerplatonically.

But.

BUT!

I just can’t say, in good faith, that “I need A to come to my apartment, kidnap me, and never let me escape her clutches” is a queerplatonic feeling. Under smith’s definition? Yeah, it technically can be. But calling it a queerplatonic vibe feels like a band-aid solution. It prevents me (and others) from coming up with new, better words that get to the heart of the matter, which is:

Sometimes ace people are kinky, have sex, have erotic urges, and want hot women to beat the shit out of them for filthy perverted reasons

An umbrella is an umbrella. But if one word is doing heavylifting for 3,942 various configurations, if everyone is forced to use “queerplatonic” and derivatives that point back to “queerplatonic,” if everything that’s “more than friends, but not romantic” is “queerplatonic,” then… what even is queerplatonic?

It’s everything, so it’s nothing.

Leaving queerplatonic to this fate waters down its strength. It makes “queerplatonic” into a catch-all for a “third relationship” structure. This hurts the ability to meaningfully communicate and describe how queerplatonic relationships are rightfully queerplatonic. And it prevents us from accurately conveying all the different ways that people relate to each other (and expect things from one another) beyond “platonic” and “romantic.”

Plato: “You define eros as WHAT?!”

I experience love in many different ways. I have love for my friends. Love for my family. Love for romantic partners. Love that fits neatly into the queerplatonic label. And love that defies labels, like my love for A. Love that can best be described as “undefined.”

Five different kinds of love, all with some similarities, but all distinctly different. That struck me as curious. I needed language to better describe love, to compare and contrast these different kinds of loves, and to find some words to define the undefined.

So I turned to Plato.

Why? Plato’s conception of love is far more complicated than simply “romantic affection.” And while anyone familiar with the Athenian philosopher knows there are many parts of his work that do not stand the test of time (let’s be frank, a core part of his philosophical writing on eros has to do with pederasty in ancient Athens), we can learn a lot by correcting the record on what Plato’s “erotic” actually is.

The original Platonic iteration of “eros” isn’t about seeking out and celebrating sexual desire. Yes, for sure, “eros” had connotations of sexual longing in Ancient Greece, just as it does now. But Plato looks down upon relationships involving sex for sex’s sake. Rather, his conception of “eros” has more to do with passionate desire brought about by overwhelming beauty, where one seeks out the cause of their erotic feeling to obtain human happiness and fulfillment.

In other words, Platonic eros guides the individual to spiritual ascension, so one must choose to desire that which lifts them to the heavens (i.e.: philosophy!!), not that which drags them down to Earth (i.e.: meeting people just to get laid).

“I think if we think about eros as referring really to any sort of intense or passionate desire, then we can at least begin to get a sense of why Plato considers such radically different objects in the Symposium, for example, to be objects of eros […] beautiful bodies, beautiful laws and practices, and even a form, an ideal intelligible object,” Frisbee Sheffield says in “History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.” “[W]hat we're sort of groping towards in that kind of desire is a desire for happiness. That's the real aim of this desire. And the desire for happiness is a desire that can be manifested in many different activities in life.”

If we divorce “erotic” from its contemporary use (“of, devoted to, or tending to arouse sexual love or desire”) and instead use “eros” or “erotic” to describe any relationship in which immense emotional, physical, and/or sensual intimacy with another provides meaning and fulfillment, then we can use “erotic” to relieve some of the pressure that “queerplatonic” is forced to take on.

Even better, the Platonic definition further reinforces the concept of ace erotics, decentering romantic love and sexuality from the equation, all while building off Audre Lorde's definition of the erotic ("the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual,") and Cristina L.H. Traina's "eroticism" ("a quality of attraction to another person that desires intimacy with her on multiple levels: physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual," where sexual desire can exist, but isn’t necessary).

Hate Plato’s eros? That’s fine. Ancient Athens isn’t the only inspiration we can turn to for new terminology. We can look at queer sociologist John Lee's "Color Wheel of Love," which views love as a spectrum with various intersecting parts (for example, you can engage in Eros, Storge, and Storgic Eros). “The Triangular Theory of Love” by Robert Sternberg provides similar complexity to pick apart, alllowing us to view love and desire as complex, multifaceted, and up for interpretation.

In figuring out how to fix the queerplatonic umbrella issue, we first have to accept that love, desire, and intimacy do not exist in simple binaries. It is not “romantic or platonic,” “sexual/erotic or non-sexual/non-erotic,” nor is it “queerplatonic or platonic/romantic.” There must be room for flexibility, for the creation of new vocabulary to better describe the different kinds of non-romantic intimate relationships out there (or aro and ace relationships), and we must allow for alternatives that break from “queerplatonic” as the only categorization. In the long run, this will help everyone better describe their needs and desires without confusion.

Activity time! Create a word to describe whatever is going on with these two fruits:

(Honestly I love how you can read them as queerplatonic as well)

Ace theory work is stil pretty cutting edge, so I think it’s important to provide a sign post for where we may be able to go next. Here are some terms I’ve come up with after looking at some of these psychological and philosophical works. They’re more of a starting point than an end. If you like something here, use it, break it, improve it.

I think some of these terms can neatly fit into queerplatonic. No problem with that in my opinion. I just want to make sure someone can sit down and say “I consider myself more eroqueer than queerplatonic,” while another can say “I’m in a queerplatonic relationship, more specifically an eroplatonic one.”

To that end, it’s also important to let people debate and disagree on whether a word does or doesn’t fit into the queerplatonic umbrella, as this is part of making meaning and figuring out how to create effective categories that communicate who we are as individuals.

Ace erotic terms

• Erotic relationship: Umbrella term for any relationship with intense intimacy in a spiritual, emotional, and/or physical way that does not have a romantic component. Not necessarily sexual (although it can be)

  • Challenges: We run into the same problem as “queerplatonic,” i.e.: a prior definition already exists for “erotic” that would have to be challenged, expanded, and could become bloated

    • Also, many people already use “erotic relationship” to mean “any relationship with sexual undercurrents, esp subconsciously”

• Eroplatonic: A relationship characterized by an intense non-romantic love or affection, particularly as it pertains to seeking significant spiritual, emotional, and/or physical intimacy. Implies more of a sensual element than “queerplatonic”

  • Challenges: “Platonic” may still imply “friendship-adjacent” in a way that doesn’t feel “quite right” for some

• Erophilic: A descriptor for an erotic friendship, or a behavior related to an erotic friendship. Might not necessarily have a component of “love,” but there’s a desire for intense intimacy in a spiritual, emotional, and/or physical way

• Eroqueer: A relationship or relationship structure that defies traditional conceptions of the erotic and of physical intimacy. This involves a desire for intense physical, emotional, and/or spiritual intimacy, engagement in sensual physical behavior, and arranging one’s life and behaviors in ways that go against traditional heteronormative norms

  • Examples: A “Boston Marriage” relationship between two women who engage in sexual intimacy, but are not romantically engaged. A non-sexual D/s relationship between two men with non-sexual physical elements. A polycule where people cuddle and make out but would not define their interactions as sexual. Two individuals in a committed relationship who have sex regularly, live together, and have a sexual subtext to their relationship, but are not romantically in love

  • A similar version of this already exists under “Queerotic,” albeit under the queerplatonic umbrella

• Storgic relationship: A relationship characterized by intense love between two peers / equals / sibling-like individuals — one that is not a friendship, but neither romantic nor erotic

  • Challenges: “Storgic” already exists in Color Wheel Theory, and “storgic” is generally used for a specific kind of familial, friendship-like love

• Erostorgic relationship: A relationship characterized by an intense love between two peers / equals / sibling-like individuals — one that is not a friendship, but desires intense physical, emotional, and/or spiritual intimacy. May be sensual or sexual in nature, but neither of these are necessary

It’s also important to stress that a label is not, in and of itself, necessary for a relationship. When it comes to A and myself, I admittedly don’t really want nor need a label. That is not the problem. The problem is that I have no true point of comparison to communicate our former D/s structure beyond “queerplatonic.” And “queerplatonic” leaves too much unexplained, unsaid.

Additional terminology is necessary to accurately compare and contrast what occurred. Aesthetically, linguistically, sexually. And diversity in word choice never hurts. Let 3,000 different erotic aro, ace, and aroace relationship structures bloom, that does no harm to me.

Special thanks to Ashley Louis Yeo Payne and Jacqie for their generous Sex-Haver tier contributions.