{"id":77350,"date":"2019-01-18T20:25:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T01:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/how-did-a-boy-from-rural-georgia-become-the-king-of-kink\/"},"modified":"2019-01-18T20:25:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T01:25:42","slug":"how-did-a-boy-from-rural-georgia-become-the-king-of-kink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/how-did-a-boy-from-rural-georgia-become-the-king-of-kink\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did A Boy From Rural Georgia Become the King of Kink?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Did A Boy From Rural Georgia Become the King of Kink?<\/b><\/p>\n

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Alexander Cheves isn\u2019t entirely comfortable being called a sex<\/a> advisor because he lacks a formal clinical education or sex<\/a> therapy certification. But for the thousands of young gay<\/a> men<\/a> who know him as The Beastly Ex-Boyfriend he\u2019s a touchstone for understanding their kinks and desires from the explosion in popularity of \u201cpup play\u201d to, well, use your imagination<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cheves started writing about his own experiences and everything has sprung from that. \u201cA college class required me to start a blog and maintain it the entire semester. At the end of the class, I was graded on content, use of media, and so on. I loved it so much that I continued blogging. The blog was filled with personal confessions and stories about my sex<\/a> life and my gay<\/a> identity. People working at a digital queer magazine in Chicago found the blog and asked me to be a columnist, and the rest is history. That blog has morphed into a sex advice blog<\/a>, and I still get questions every week from readers.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cheves\u2019 advice is sage and de-stigmatizing for someone who\u2019s only 26. <\/p>\n

As a recent profile of Cheves in <\/a>Plus<\/a><\/em> magazine said, \u201cThe gay<\/a> Georgia native dives deep into the role that sex<\/a> and sexuality plays in LGBTQ history. An enthusiastic member of the kink and leather communities, Cheves also dispenses guides for newcomers that are helpful and humanizing for those in these subcultures. His pieces that address the hanky code, cruising grounds, or \u201cpublic displays of affection that straight people take for granted,\u201d educate readers about how queer people have been persecuted \u2014 and yet have managed to still find each other and maintain vibrant communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheves confesses that he had some messy relationships in college, which was the catalyst for him writing about his own experiences. \u201cI dated a guy<\/a> who was pretty judgy and slut-shamed me for my past promiscuity. I cheated on him, of course, and lost all my friends, because they were his friends. He spread some rumors about me, or maybe his friends did, and that made me mad. I was proud of my sex<\/a>. I decided I had to own the slut label.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheves came to the realization that he couldn\u2019t let someone shame him for something he wasn\u2019t ashamed of himself.<\/p>\n

That started Cheves on a journey of self discovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore that, my whole life was shame, particularly shame around sex<\/a>, as it is for most queer men<\/a>. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Georgia with very religious Southern Baptist parents. I\u2019d memorized scripture and hated myself for my desires, and it took a bad breakup in college to reject all that shame, and I had to write about that. I began reading about non-monogamy and queer sex<\/a> culture and worked through the great sex<\/a> writers like Ana\u00efs Nin and Henry Miller, and that\u2019s when I realized I wanted to be the Ana\u00efs Nin of my generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the few years Cheves has been writing, queer media has changed and become somewhat less friendly to provocateurs and smut, and that makes him uncomfortable. \u201cEarly on, I knew I would have to wear the label of \u2018sex<\/a> educator\u2019 before I could be a \u2018smutty provocateur,\u2019 but the reality is that I collect vintage dirty gay<\/a> rags like Drummer<\/em> and Honcho<\/em> and STH<\/em> and that\u2019s the caliber of work I aspire to. When I really get in a rut, I remember something Cate Blanchett said in an interview a couple<\/a> years ago in W Magazine<\/em>, which is the closest thing to an \u201ca-ha\u201d moment I\u2019ve had and one I have over and over: Art is meant to provoke, not instruct<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheves hit his stride doing what he loves best working for the sex<\/a> toy company Fort Troff.<\/p>\n

A couple<\/a> of years ago, he wrote a slideshow piece, 39 Sex Toys Every Gay Man Should Try,<\/a> for Sexy Beast, his digital sex<\/a> and relationships column on The Advocate<\/em>. \u201cSome of those toys I wrote about were Fort Troff toys. Someone at the company, which is based in Atlanta, noticed hits coming from the site, contacted my editor, and asked about me. Coincidentally, I had just moved back to Georgia from L.A. and was looking for a job. They took me on as copywriter and director of social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stigmas around kink and BDSM stem from the same place most stigmas do \u2014 shame, religion, and lack of education Cheves says. \u201cI\u2019m an anti-theist partly because religion has played such a devastating role throughout history in the development \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 of human sexuality. The Abrahamic faiths generally consider sexual excess and sex<\/a> outside specific religious confines to be among the greatest sins a person can commit. That unhealthy view of sex<\/a> and pleasure pervades nearly every world culture and is a cornerstone of patriarchy. My work is intended to combat that. If sex<\/a> and pleasure are relegated to sin and temptation, I\u2019m the devil. \u201c<\/p>\n

Cheves adds \u201cI saw Towleroad<\/em> reported<\/a> on the University of Michigan study that LGBTQ people are more likely to have problems with smoking and drinking. I have a problem with certain substances, and substance abuse is something I want to talk more about. I try hard not to pathologize queerness, and I don\u2019t think being gay<\/a> or lesbian<\/a> or bisexual<\/a> makes you inherently more problem-prone, but queer culture is pretty druggy. We\u2019ve always had a drug culture and some awesome things \u2014 awesome music, designers, and artists \u2014 have come out of it. But some less-awesome things have come out of it too, and that\u2019s something we need to talk about. If we\u2019re going to popularize the fun parts of our culture, we also need to popularize the language of care and harm reduction and create a stigma-free zone in which anyone can ask for help without getting shamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lastly Cheves laughs when I ask why \u2018pup play\u2019 seems to have exploded in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you and I call<\/a> puppy play is a mild, modern iteration of an older, more intense fetish practice \u2014 dog play \u2014 and it\u2019s the most accessible scene to people discovering kink for the first time,\u201d says Cheves, \u201cIf I was taking a beginner on a tour of kink, I\u2019d start with puppy play. I\u2019ve started with punch fisting and it didn\u2019t go so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post How Did A Boy From Rural Georgia Become the King of Kink?<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad Gay News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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How Did A Boy From Rural Georgia Become the King of Kink?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n