Who Is Sleeping with These Men?

Pondering sex, power, and privilege in America

I woke up on January 6th with a borderline migraine — not an auspicious start to the day. I took a sick day, stayed in bed, and watched The Good Place for the thousandth time.

As you can guess, my sitcom indulgence was soon replaced with NPR. And when they didn’t publish new information fast enough for my panic-induced compulsion for more, I started watching videos on CNN, and then (god help me) on Twitter.

Images poured across my computer screen: mostly white men in camo, sweatshirts, beanies, and the now-famous buffalo-horned headdress. Many of these men had long, scraggly beards, or abundantly hairy chests — we know the latter because so many of them felt the need to bare their torsos in what I assume were attempts at masculine displays of power. They wore scruffy boots, sported dour, intimidating, or cocky expressions, and carried all kinds of props, restraints, and weapons.

I spent most of next few hours crying and stress-eating chocolate. And a piece of carrot cake. As night came and I realized that there likely wasn’t going to be further escalations of violence, as I had feared, I relaxed a little, had some more chocolate, and kept watching the news obsessively.

One question kept circling in my mind: Who the hell is fucking these guys?

Yes, that question crosses my mind. To be clear, this is not an attempt to be funny, kinky, or cutesy about a traumatic event in American history. January 6, 2021 will forever live in my memory somewhere near the pockets that house the memories from September 11, 2001, October 1, 1987, January 28, 1986, and November 8, 2016.

I’ll never forget lying in bed, stress-eating that chocolate while fearing reports of a bomb or mass shooting that would begin a second civil war or worse, signal the beginning of a dictatorship that would turn America into a dystopian YA novel.

Eventually, as the drama died down, my thoughts turned to sex. Not because I find situations like this or people like that to be some kind of perverted turn-on, not because I’m horny all the time (I’m not), but because I am fascinated by the psychology of sexuality. I see our sexuality as an iteration of our power —…

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