Thread by @gravislizard

i read about the fuck button yesterday, chuckled along with all the usual twitter comedians, but as of this morning i decided i was a fuck button *concept* stan despite the product being dumb shit

like let's get this out of the way: phone app. it could be a phone app. this is like one of the best possible use cases for An App. it shouldn't be a $109 plastic thing. alright push that aside

now let's talk about the realities of human sexual relationships. shut up and listen

YES, the Hets have problems, and at a glance the marketing for this is super gross. "designed to get you laid" ennnnnhnhhhh hh h h h hh h that reeks of the straight man seeing sex as a thing a woman has and strategically witholds, the grossest and oldest story. so fuck that

you know who else has problems? the queers. the queers are chronically ill, and depressed, and anxious because of work. things that you don't need to "work on" - things that don't go away. for months. years.

my first boyfriend was up for sex once a month, if that. they were chronically ill, suicidally depressed, bipolar, and probably (in retrospect, years after the fact, based on my own observations) trans. They definitely were body dysmorphic, for whatever erason.

this was neither of our fault. we didn't need to "work on" anything. We enjoyed sex when we had it. Well, I was a teenager / young twenty-something at the time, and I didn't figure out the dynamics of this situation until nearly the end of our relationship.

I didn't realize at the time that asking him if he was up to have sex meant he had to say no every day. And there was no way for me to know if this was going to happen, and he hardly ever initiated even if he was actually up for it. So if I didn't ask, it wouldn't happen.

I was not The Hets, I was a gay man in a relationship with a gay man, we were extremely sexually open with each other, but he was sick, and sad, and our lives were complicated.

Sometimes you're up for sex but you don't want to talk about it. I am 30, I am extremely comfortable with my sexuality, I've been in a healthy relationship for years, and sometimes you just don't want to say anything at all.

So - the fuck button is a stupid waste of plastic and electronics, if you ask me. It should be a $1.99 app, and whoever makes this will probably see some success until it gets cloned by 9,000 app sweatshops. But maybe moderate what you say about peoples sex lives.

Basically, i see nothing The Hets about this other than the ad copy, which is dreadful to be sure. Sex is hard for a lot of people, even those who are in equitable relationships, because sometimes a relationships "health" is limited to the least common denominator of the partners

And this changes from day to day, hour to hour, month to month. Sometimes you're so emotionally crushed by work that sex is revolting; sometimes it's exactly what you need to feel better.

But I can tell you from experience that it sucks having to say no over, and over, and over, and over. A tremendous number of well adjusted adults are just so fucking sad and tired all the time that on any given night, someone has to say no. And then feel bad.

"you should learn to not feel bad about saying no" doesn't work. It's not that simple no matter how much you talk to each other, that glimmer of guilt sticks. People are complicated and they have complicated hangups that are *way fucking different* than the shit we call The Hets.

I see people talking about the leering boyfriend hitting the button over and over going WELL AREN'T YOU GONNA and like... that dude's going to abuse his partner anyway?? He doesn't need a gadget to do it?? This doesn't particularly escalate the potential???

So yeah in conclusion, The Hets, and Men in general have Problems, but a lot of your friends feel guilty or depressed about their relationship to sex as a concept sooooooo maybe think a little harder about your takes

fucking is difficult, approach it in whatever way makes you and your partner(s) happiest

okay i just scrolled further down on the kickstarter page and THIS IS COMPLETELY ACCURATE. i've been on both sides of every part of this gauge. the creators thought this through.

additionally, i've now realized that I was misled and the price is not $109, but actually $50, which is closer to reasonable. so fuck it, no pun intended, I'm a fuck button stan now. This thing's cool and the fact they want to bring it to market is great.

Their marketing is horse trash and needs to be completely redone to not be so cloyingly straight at the outset but the rest of this passes muster.

Additionally, I said it should be an app, but let's think harder about this. Two people in bed. Both on their phones. Your partner could easily identify the app out of the corner of their eye in a lot of cases. You could tilt your phone away from them, and that's also obvious.

A physical button is something you can stick down by the side of your bed and drop your arm down to press without it being noticeable at all, or hit it while you lean over to get a sip of water off your nightstand. I am now 100% on board with the fuck button.

I think this should be a lesson in cynicism. All I had to do was think about this positively instead of negatively and suddenly all the things I thought were bullshit turn out to be things I actually admire.

I think the failing here is that everyone looked at this thing according to the first image in its marketing drool, which makes it look like a thing for *getting more sex out of your girlfriend who hates fucking you*

If you instead look at it as a compassionate purchase made by a person who understands their own / their partners mental hangups, suddenly this all looks good instead of bleak and cynical.

Physical product kickstarters are untrustworthy messes but honestly, at this point, I endorse the fuck button. It's not much of a manufacturing moonshot, so here it is if you didn't see it. kickstarter.com/projects/loves…

https://twitter.com/BrittSabo/status/1095136587996897280

however this is the best riff on it