![]() ![]() ![]() For some it was a movie, or a book, or even the entire 1960s. It’s why, for so many of us, we speak of different experiences as being a sexual awakening. Oh, you like football? You’re probably straight. And yet all genders are attractive to someone, despite the narrow view of sexiness that society upholds.įor men, this confusion is further intensified when they must contend with the limiting conventions of masculinity that encourage clear divides between things that are heterosexual and things that are gay. In visual media, we have a pretty good idea of what the male gaze looks like, but the female gaze is yet to be so concretely described. Furthermore, media outlets and society at large treat male and female bodies very differently, encouraging us to think differently about them in a way that can make it confusing when you find both attractive, but in different ways. Language is a powerful tool for allowing us to be a certain way: I assumed I was straight so I made myself sexually available to women, which went on to support the idea that I was straight. But it begs the question, why did it take me so long to realise? Once again, the accepted notions that you’re either gay or straight, man or woman, are misleading (not to mention harmful). It was by no means an ordeal, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was intruding on the sexual identities of other LGBT+ people, a little bit like crashing a party several hours in and claiming you’d been “invited the whole time, actually”.Įventually, I had it mostly figured it out. It was still a while before I had it sorted out in my head enough to admit that I was attracted to people other than women. Naturally, it was these steamier moments that got me thinking I wasn’t wholly residing in camp hetero. That’s what I told myself, anyway, as I pretended I wasn’t a little bit excited to see some skin. But for me, I felt it was my responsibility as a critic to experience the artwork uncensored. It’s also worth pointing out that for those more interested in the game for the fun, rather than the funny business, Coming Out on Top can be played in a mode that removes the more explicit material. For context, when I played this game I was reviewing it for the gaming section of my university’s student magazine. You will see plenty of erections being handled in one way or another. While there are many dating sims that are happy to keep things PG, Coming Out on Top is not one to shy away from the male form. What follows is the gay male equivalent of an American Pie movie, with equal parts cringe, comedy, and sex. The game opens with Mark coming out as gay to his closest college friends and making a pledge to make the most of his final year of college. To be able to have that control, to basically see what I wanted come to life was amazing.” “ a world where I didn't have to hide or pretend to be interested in marrying a girl. It may not sound like much, but good writing and character design makes all the difference. These goals are achieved by prioritising time spent with one potential partner over another, and by choosing suitable responses to the scenarios and conversations that play out. Dating sims are typically dialogue-driven and visual, where the goal is to find romance or, sometimes, get laid. Fittingly, this revelation occurred thanks to a game called Coming Out on Top.īy little known developer Obscura, Coming Out on Top is a dating sim in which you play as Mark Matthews, a gay college student. It was the year when, at the age of 27, I realised I was bisexual. In 2015, I found myself having a second sexual awakening a sequel that I hadn’t imagined, yet it made perfect sense. But as many of us learn over the course of our 20s, teenage me didn’t have it all figured out like he thought he did. ![]() And to this day, all the people I’ve had to get over have been women. Are you gay or are you straight? Into ladies or men?įor me, I always thought of myself as straight. ![]() It often feels like we're being asked to ‘choose a side’, and bi-erasure can often make it feel like everyone has. For those of us who find ourselves attracted to more than one gender, this already complicated process can be even more mysterious. I’m sure most of us have awkward stories from our teen years as we grappled uncomfortably with our hormones, our weird new bodies, and some strange, powerful new urges we felt around certain people. Gay or straight, most young people go through a period of figuring out their sexuality at some stage. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |