The blog home of erotic fiction author, Jacqueline Applebee. Black sexuality, smutty snippets and more. Contains adult concepts. For Over 18's only. My main writing website is at Writing in Shadows. *
Poem: Personal Ad Hell
No butches,
No bis,
No blacks.
No fat chicks,
No trannies,
No chaps.
Must be athletic;
a real girl, no prosthetics.
Long hair,
Very queer,
Good in the sack.
But I’m easy going,
If you’re young, hot and boring.
Why not give me a tinkle?
Cos for some reason I’m still single.
London preferred;
Brighton inferred.
Must drive,
Must drink,
Must not support Spurs!
Must own at least two cats.
Must put up with all my crap.
Must be delightfully ironic.
Must not be an alcoholic.
Must be seriously in love with the Stereophonics!
No kinky girls need apply.
No girls who wanna bit on the side.
No Asians, no straights,
No girls full of hate.
No one on the planning committee of London Pride.
I’m not into drama,
But I love Lady Gaga.
If you look like her, you’re in
(As long as you don’t wear that meat-dress thing)
You see, I think we’d make a good fit,
If you’re young, hot and rich,
So why not give me a tinkle?
Cos for some reason I’m still single.
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Back when I was a closeted bisexual, I’d secretly look at newspapers and magazines like Loot, Pink Paper and Time Out. Most of these publications had lots of Personals in their classified section. I found it all quite disheartening to read row upon row of text, where each one would say, “No bisexuals” or “No butches.” It was rare to see, “No blacks” but the wording of most ads spelled it out in other ways. I think the butch excluding confused me the most, but hey, femmes can be bigots too, I guess. Now that things have moved online for the most part, I still see wording like this. The only exception to this situation is on OK Cupid, where if you put that you’re a bisexual woman on your profile, zillions of men will flood your mailbox (with what, I don’t even want to know…)
Photo: J. Applebee, The Bisexual Stall at London Pride 2010
A Poem: I Can’t Be Bi. I’m a Man.
I was saddened by the biphobia that’s on twitter. The sexist assumptions, the implied violence, and the awful spelling are just staggering. This is one of my ways of coping with it all.
All bi’s are girls.
All bi’s are ho’s.
They may look well fit
but my dick ain’t touching one of those.
No men are ever bi.
No blacks are ever queer.
Say different & you’re a liar;
nuthin I wanna hear.
Ain’t insulting at all,
to call something rubbish, “gay.”
I know plenty of battymen. They don’t mind.
But I ain’t one. No Way!
Bi’s are just looking for attention.
Bi’s think they’re smokin’ hot.
Buy a clue, greedy bitches;
everyone else knows when to stop.
I ain’t never looked at another man.
Don’t you know, I’m dead straight?
I like beating queers up.
Put ‘em in their bloody place.
Messing about that one time don’t count.
I’m not queer, no way!
He was drunk. I was horny,
but that don’t make me gay.
Don’t you call me a bi boy.
I’m with the studs, not the ho’s.
Cos everyone knows all bi’s are girls
and I ain’t one of those.
Inspired by some very nasty comments on twitter re-posted by @biphobic_bigots,
@biphobic_bigots: “Collecting hate speech and outing biphobes and bigots on Twitter. Don’t troll the bigots. Just because they’re idiots, doesn’t mean you have to be.”
Black Pride was good but the rain made me want to run and hide. Everyone looked in a great mood and to be enjoying themselves. The surprise of the day was that Stonewall were actually stocking ‘Some people are Bi’ badges! Wonders will never cease.
Looks a bit empty to start with, but the article page is definitely worth a look as it is full of interesting things. They also have a discussion forum and personals. Seems a bit male biased, but I still think it is a good resource.
Let’s hope people respond better to this than they have to past efforts. I love this following bit in particular:
“Please note: while it is great if people of colour who are part of the bi community (or even those who aren’t!) are willing to share their experiences and explain the problems they have encountered, it is not their responsibility to do that, to educate others or do the work of changing the community themselves. It’s everyone else’s responsibility to put the effort in. Otherwise we are just asking people who already have to deal with racist behaviour directed at them to spend their time and energy helping out the very people behaving offensively.”
Hurt
If half of me gets stabbed, all of me feels the pain.
I don’t often read the papers, because I end up getting very depressed, very quickly. However I did hear about the Ugandan queer rights activist found dead on 27th January 2011, and also about a lesbian threatened with deportation from the U.K to Uganda. When I opened the Guardian newspaper, I was shocked to see the photo above. I’ve heard plenty of people, both gay and straight talk about how bisexuals are sick, sad and evil, but it’s not often I’ll see the words in print. With such a powerful and unpleasant photo I was struck at how many myths were being enforced. Plus the woman above really hates bis. I mean she’s even hyphenated and shortened it just to be extra spiteful!
There are strong myth of all black people hating queers, and if, god forbid, we are actually queer ourselves, then we must be copying white folks. There are other stereotypes and lies: bisexual people don’t face the same stigma as gays and lesbians, which would be laughable if not for the little voice in my head that says, ‘if something bad happens because of my sexuality, just say homophobic, not biphobic, because no one will understand you.’ And then there’s the myth that says, If I act straight then nothing will happen. Well, could I look away if someone else were being hurt or threatened because of their sexuality? No, I could not. And in Uganda straight people don’t escape either, as failure to report a known queer person to the authorities can bring you the same grief as what will happen to them.
Things like this doesn’t just happen in Uganda. Black LGBT people are both highly visible (to bigoted straights) and invisible (to bigoted queers). I cannot and do not want to hide or look the other way. Even if I feel hurt so much of the time.
Writing: cause and effects
I use my real name when I write smut. I never want to hide a big chunk of myself away (small chunks are fine, but writing is a huge part of my life) so I am happy to have my full name used at the top of my stories. But as time passes, and my pay-the-bills job has becomes more treacherous, I find myself starting to have mixed feelings about things. I imagine a prospective employer typing my name into a search engine, and looking at what I do, what I love to write about.
I’m not ashamed, but I do try to be practical about things. This is hard when I know that as a black bisexual woman with a disability, I’ll already have prejudices and phobias stacked up against me before I even walk in the door for a job interview. I’d love to walk through said door feeling reasonably relaxed; that I won’t be a box-ticking exercise in equal opportunities, and that I’ll be hired because I’m a good worker who can demonstrate her skills in fifteen minutes of talking to strangers. I have never felt this way, especially when most interview panels consists of three people who are all white, usually all male. I’ve been prepared to lose out on jobs and promotions for the entirety of my working life. My writing erotic fiction is just one more thing to add to the list.
I cannot stop writing smut, and I don’t want to either. Writing is one of the things that increase the quality of my life. Writing is the reason why I’ve made most of the friends I currently have. Writing smut is activism that doesn’t make me gag.
This isn’t the end of it. A disabled woman wrote a review of one of my stories a few years ago. She said that she’d never seen someone like herself in an erotic story. She said that she started crying, because at long last she could identify with someone else who was going through the same thing she did. Another woman wrote me an email saying that one of my novellas gave her hope that she could accept all the different parts of herself. Hope through smut. I would never have thought anyone would have felt this way. Anyone but me that is. And this is the thing that I love. Writing, reading, and engaging with my readers gives me hope too. Hope doesn’t pay the bills, but it feels real good. It’s something positive to hold on to.
“I was only a little girl when I started following the fascists home.”
My story, Skinheads, appears in Best Women’s Erotica 2011. I received my author copy yesterday, and was surprised at seeing my story actually in print. I looked at the lines and remembered why I was so nervous about sending this story off. It’s all well and good to say that we as consenting adults are free to desire whoever we like regardless of gender, race or sexuality, but when I wrote Skinheads, I was petrified. You see, this story gets very close to home for me. I used to follow skinhead boys around as a little girl, just like the heroine of the story. But unlike her I never felt I could do much about it until very recently. I never dared to tell anyone of my attraction because it felt beyond taboo. Black women and girls were expected to keep their thoughts to themselves. We were there to be used by black men, and not to dare venture outside that barbed-wire fence.
When I read Skinheads out loud to friends I was surprised that they understood and identified with the main character. So many had wanted something they thought they couldn’t or shouldn’t have. As for me, I wouldn’t want to bump into a fascist on a dark night, but not all skinheads are fascists. Those who take on the skinhead look don’t necessarily take on the politics of hate. Well not always.
There are many types of people who do something special to me. But I am still attracted to skinheads; the suede fuzz as I stroke my hand over pale skin feels incredible. A pair of shiny Doctor Martens; so tall that they seem to go on forever is a thing of bliss for me, no matter the gender of the person wearing them. When the great look is combined with a genuine smile, twinkling eyes, and a willingness to bend over and take it like a… Well let’s just say those are plus points too.
Best Women’s Erotica 2011 is published by Cleis Press edited by Violet Blue
Photo: Doctor Marten’s Nina Boot
“I can’t understand why more people aren’t bisexual. It would double your chances for a date on Saturday night”– Woody Allen.
Bisexuals do not have twice the chance of a date on Saturday night. Believe me when I tell you that for many of us, we have twice the chance of being isolated and lonely when the weekend comes around. We have twice the chance of being written off and ignored by both queers and straights. When I tell someone that I’m bisexual I will generally not be believed. I have more than twice the chance of being told that it is just a phase. As a black bisexual woman I stand a strong chance of having unwanted sexual advances made on me; of others assuming I’m up for anything because I’m twice as exotic. As a bisexual woman with a disability, the odds are I won’t get what I need when I try to get some help. I’ll be unwelcome in support groups, invisible in resources that others can access. I’ll be the odd one out in the room full of assorted freaks. I’ll have to explain myself more than twice. I’ll have to dodge hate and threats and outright violence more than twice as much as you, Mister Allen. Personally, I can’t understand why people have to be so bigoted. I can’t understand why there’s so much hate.
