Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: The Sex in “Bound” Changed Our Lives

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today, Drew and Kayla discuss the brain chemistry altering sex of Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Bound.

Kayla: Okay, hello, ready to talk Bound whenever you are, which is also an evergreen statement.

Drew: Lololol I am READY. I rewatched the scenes on my big TV, because for some reason it’s no longer streaming anywhere for free, but I DO own the Blu-Ray.

Kayla: I had to rewatch the scenes on a porn site for this same reason. Bound should really be easier to stream!

Okay, before we launch into discussing the film itself, I do want to share a quick story about meeting Lilly Wachowski this past summer. I met her at the after party for the Lambda Literary Awards. I wasn’t going to go up to her at first, and then I was like, wait, this is ridiculous, we’re in a room with a bunch of queer and trans writers, this is a perfect environment in which to approach her. So I did, and I don’t usually get starstruck or nervous in these situations, but I was! So I proceeded to basically thank her for…everything she has ever made…by title…I sounded like I was reading her imdb page.

Drew: Well, it’s a very good IMDb page.

Kayla: It IS! And amid my embarrassing rambling, I also managed to get out that Bound and Sense8 have some of the best queer sex scenes of all time.

Drew: They’re kind of another level tbh.

Kayla: They really are! They set a really high bar for queer art and erotic queer art.

Drew: And while it’s not explicitly queer and not as incredible the sex scene in Matrix Reloaded was the first sex scene I EVER SAW. I think we discussed this when we wrote about Resurrections, but my friend Josh had to fast forward through it for my parents to let me watch. But I still saw it. Just fast.

Kayla: YES, we are very much on the record about that Matrix sex scene being formative.

On that note, I’d love to know what your first experience of watching Bound was. Mine is…very specific and I want to hear yours first.

Drew: I have checked my records, and it appears I saw it for the first time in early 2016. I came out in May of 2017 and I sometimes forget how much queer art I experienced for the first time in the two years prior. Unsurprisingly, I was exploring my gender and sexuality with my movie watching before I realized I was doing it in my life.

Kayla: That makes total sense: gravitating toward certain art without quite knowing why just yet. I actually watched it just one literal year before you and around one to two years after you in terms of where I was in my coming out process. I was out, but it was pretty recent, and I was still very new to lesbian art.

Drew: Did it blow your mind?

Kayla: It really, truly did. I don’t get shy or embarrassed in this specific way anymore, but I was shy and embarrassed about watching it with other people! I felt like we were watching porn together, and I still had enough queer shame at the time to feel uncomfortable. But at the same time really giddy and delighted? It was an avalanche of emotions.

I’ll set the scene: The year is 2015. I’m living in Chicago. I’ve barely been out. I haven’t had any relationships other than a few “secret” ones with girls I met online that weren’t nearly as serious as I pretended they were. I’m living with two friends who are dating at the time, and I sleep on the futon in their living room because they’re letting me live there for free while I get my life together. One of these friends, Melanie, and I go through a phase where we’re just starting podcasts all the time…but not releasing them. I don’t know how to explain this any other way other than it was Chicago in 2015 and everyone was making podcasts. But hilariously, we were truly just making them and not releasing them.

There may have been a little bit of practicality to it; I think Melanie was working on her audio production skills. But mostly we were just in our early twenties and having a lot of fun making art that was just for us and not necessarily for consumption outside of our friend group.

Among these podcast concepts was one called Talk Jenny To Me. The concept was that we would watch a film starring a famous Jennifer (any famous Jennifer!) that at least one or both of us had never seen before and record live commentary tracks while watching. Bound was one of our picks for Jennifer Tilly. I had never seen it before! I had to react in real time to the film, out loud, in the company of friends. And I was basically losing my mind because it was so horny. I think the recording is lost forever, but somewhere out in the wasteland world of information data, there exists a recording of barely out me reacting to Bound in real time for the first time.

(Also, hi Melanie, who I know will read this, because she has a Google news alert set up for my name so she can stay up to date on my life/work.)

Drew: TALK JENNY TO ME. Wow I am so sad you don’t have that recording.

Kayla: When we talk about lost queer art, this is what we’re talking about.

Drew: It belongs in the lesbian herstory archive

Kayla: Archival work is soooo important. I’m sure most of the recording is just me going “oh my god” a lot.

Drew: I’m sure I was also uncomfortable watching it, because I had a whole complex about being turned on by lesbian sex “as a boy.” As a teenager, I only watched lesbian porn, but then I discovered feminism(?) in college and became very self-conscious of being perverted in any way. So I probably watched it while attempting to very clinically be like “ah yes the camerawork here really emphasizes the character development.”

This is also why I don’t get all that concerned about “Gen Z hates sex” discourse. Is it a generation thing or is it literally so many of us were uncomfortable with sex in our teens and early twenties??

Kayla: Right, I wasn’t really out here championing sex scenes publicly when I was younger, even if I did rewatch that Matrix scene over and over.

Drew: Once I came out, that pretense went away and while I can acknowledge the very good camerawork I also allow myself to hoot and holler and awooga. Especially when I rewatched during early pandemic and hadn’t had sex in like nine months.

Kayla: I do think I watched Bound at the perfect time. As mired in queer shame as I was at the time, I really do credit it with challenging and undoing some of that! And I think if it had come any sooner, I may not have been receptive to that.

Drew: That makes a lot of sense!

Kayla: It’s SO HOT; I’m not surprised about your awooga reactions early pandemic. And this is such a simple observation, but so much of why it’s hot for me has to do with how much agency both characters have, how it just sort of bucks in the face of a lot of standard or expected scripts for interactions, especially in a butch/femme dynamic. It also has to do with all the hands in mouths happening.

Drew: Yeah, we are also on the record about our oral fixations. And BOTH scenes — though they’re kind of two parts of one scene — have each character with the other’s finger in their mouth.

Kayla: I love cinematic symmetry.

Drew: You’re right about agency. I love the exchange: “I’m trying to seduce you.” “Why?” “Because I want to.”

I also like how Corky has this grin where she kind of knows she might be being played but also thinks it’s worth it

Kayla: Yes! Violet’s in control, but so is Corky. They’re both giving up and taking.

I love how that scene starts too, with Violet showing Corky her tattoo and talking about how long it took and the pain she felt after is something I love about it. That feels really specific and queer, this idea of an ache, which can feel like a memory but also a want. I’m going to be corny/cringe and quote my fiancée, but when Kristen Arnett wrote “When I write sex scenes, the ache is just as important as the orgasm,” in Vulture, I FELT THAT.

Drew: Oooo what a quote. It’s also really felt to me in that close up of their lips as they talk to each other all breathy. The ache of desire about to be fulfilled.

Kayla: I mean, Jennifer Tilly has one of the most identifiable voices in cinema, and there’s something about it that really works so well in these scenes. No one else sounds like that, and there’s something erotic about that singularity in and of itself to me.

Drew: Yes! I like that the dialogue itself is kind of porn-y, but it’s so beautifully shot and well-acted it works. Also because porn-y dialogue CAN work? Porn is often an accusation thrown at non-porn films to show they’re inferior but… what’s wrong with porn? We’re talking about queer art, we’re not arguing in front of Congress.

Kayla: Totally! I hate when porn-y is used as a way to insult art. It’s a compliment lol! Because to be honest, I actually usually find a lot of dialogue during sex scenes in films to be less realistic than dialogue in porn, because at least for me, sex talk in real life tends to be pretty simple and straightforward the way it’s presented in porn and not…trying to do all that, the way it sometimes functions in film.

Drew: Right and also there can be a sort of role play to sex even when not specifically doing a scene.

Drew: There are some other specific moments in the scenes I want to zero in on. Like when Violet says “You can’t believe what you see but you can believe what you feel” and puts Corky’s hand on her pussy to show how wet she is. LIKE!

Kayla: THAT! PART!!!!!! I was like oh this is a sex scene that fucks, which you know, is not always the case!

Drew: It’s not! We should note that famously the Wachowskis brought on Susie Bright to be lesbian sexpert. Only closeted trans women would be like “we don’t know enough about lesbian sex.” All the male directors in film history are like idk it’s four titties how complicated can it be.

Kayla: LOL.

Drew: Which, hey, is sometimes true.

Kayla: Have you ever seen the way the second scene is written in the script? I can’t remember which friend called my attention to it, but it’s incredible, practically poetry.

Drew: No!

Kayla: Here it is.

INT. CORKY’S APARTMENT – NIGHT
The sex.
There is nothing flower-scented or out-of-focus about it.
It is sweaty, slippery, body-grinding, bed-squeaking lesbian sex – –
Pungent and potent – –
And when it is over, neither woman can move.
Finally, Corky’s eyes flutter open.

Drew: !!! Wow. And it’s true! I love how Corky’s musculature is emphasized.

Kayla: I’ve never been able to get “pungent and potent” out of my head!!!! It’s so good!

Drew: And how sweaty they are in the scene.

Kayla: Yes, the sweat is so good. Whenever sweat is missing from very active sex scenes in film, I’m like are they fucking in the tundra?

Drew: Lmaooo. I also love how the bottom sheet has been ripped off Corky’s bed. That communicates so much.

Kayla: The after-sex glow is strong, too. You can tell the characters want to draw out this moment and sit with it longer, and we do too!!

Drew: Corky literally says I CAN SEE AGAIN.

Kayla: And I feel like that line can be read on multiple levels: the sex being completely mind altering/awakening but also just the idea of coming back into reality after being completely absorbed in the sex.

Drew: Ooo that’s true. I also like it as a sort of poetic declaration since Corky was so burned by her ex and she’s going to learn to trust Violet. She’s pulled out of isolation and toward new trust and new connection.

Kayla: Yeah, you can really see something shifting in this second scene (which I do agree is really just an extension of the first rather than something separate) for each of them and between them. Sometimes, sex scenes can just be sex, and that sex can still say something about the characters or the story or the context or the tone of a film, but here we do have a sex scene that is doing a lot at once. It’s a strong case for why sex scenes do belong in film and in queer art, even if I believe so strongly in that that I don’t think sex scenes should have to “prove” their value.

Drew: And closeted me was right: It’s so artfully shot! The transition from the car to the bed in a single move up is divine.

Kayla: I was literally going to say closeted you was sooooo right about the technical aspects of the scenes. On a craft level, they’re fantastic! Artful but still so natural.

Drew: The whole movie is playing with noir as a genre and the way the initial seduction occurs and even the lighting of the sex itself is a big part of that. The movie’s primary thematic statement is like: not all femmes are femme fatales! #notallfemmes

Kayla: Yes! It’s a really great example of how it’s actually quite easy to be subversive. That’s a straightforward subversion!

Drew: With Lilly Wachowski moving away from sci-fi, I’d be so interested to see her make something like this again. I love an operatic sci-fi spectacle, but a gritty grimy grounded action movie is great too.

Kayla: And there are still virtually no lesbian action movies of this nature in the time since Bound was made. Which is a personal affront to me.

Drew: Bound was so ahead of its time it would still be ahead of its time if it came out today.

Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: “Multiple Maniacs” Has the Best Lesbian Sex Scene Ever

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today Drew writes about John Waters’ early perverted classic, Multiple Maniacs.

I want to start by saying that if you are a cis woman who exclusively has sex with other cis women and that sex exclusively involves kissing, fingering, and licking pussy that you are valid. Those are great ways to have lesbian sex. I enjoy them, I hope you enjoy them, I hope your partner or partners enjoy them.

But the great thing about lesbian sex — and queer sex in general — is its expansiveness. Even within so-called vanilla sex there are endless ways to kiss and suck and finger. Everyone’s bodies are different and different acts and approaches to those acts bring different people pleasure. This is true for all sex, but queer people are gifted with fewer expectations. Therefore, almost all of us are forced to consider what we want rather than falling into a routine.

And maybe what we want is to get fucked in the ass in church with some rosary beads.

John Waters’ early feature Multiple Maniacs is just as audacious today as it was in 1970. Opening with a guided tour through “The Cavalcade of Perversions,” Waters and his troupe of misfits push and push in their depictions of sex, violence, drug use, and sacrilege. One minute the legendary Divine is spitting out fabulous insults, the next she’s getting raped by a giant lobster.

And then there’s the rosary job scene.

This scene makes up about a sixth of the movie’s total runtime. It begins with Divine being led by the Infant Jesus of Prague (played by a literal child) to a Catholic church. Like the sequence as a whole, Divine is narrating this encounter, providing inner monologue and motivation to cut to a lo-fi retelling of Jesus’ miracles.

But as she prays, Mink Stole enters and gives her a “lewdly religious glare.”

Soon enough Mink has sidled up next to Divine and — even though Divine narrates that lesbianism has never really appealed to her — she trusts in the Infant Jesus of Prague leading her to this church. Mink instructs Divine to say the stations of the cross as Waters continues to cut to his own take on them. Meanwhile, Mink starts fucking Divine with her rosary.

After Jesus has been nailed to the cross and Divine has come, “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands” fills the soundtrack. Waters cuts to another misfit shooting up heroin elsewhere in the church just in case he hadn’t offended enough.

Divine and Mink leave the church together and Divine admits that was the most fabulous sexual experience of her life. Mink says most people call her The Religious Whore.

I’m not Catholic, nor was I raised Catholic. I come to this scene delighted by the sacrilege but with a different reaction to it than an ex-Catholic — or current Catholic! — queer person might.

For me, what makes the scene is the sex act itself — and who is doing it. As a trans woman, deeply underrepresented in the history and present of lesbian film and television, I love that this moment is between a cis female actor and a cis male drag queen. I don’t care that Divine wasn’t trans! If two straight women can be in a lesbian sex scene, then so can a drag queen.

And then there’s the sex itself. A lot of lesbian sex on-screen (outside of porn) is vague. At most, we’ll know someone is being fingered or getting head. There are not a lot of toys. There definitely isn’t a lot of anal. Which is absurd! Even queer women with vaginas have anal sex! The scene in Multiple Maniacs is clear: The words rosary and anal are interchangeable when followed by the word beads.

I want to see a wider variety of queer bodies have sex on-screen. I also just want to see a wider variety of sex acts. Porn is great, but something is lost as a culture when it’s the only place to watch the vast majority of ways people can fuck.

The scene in Multiple Maniacs is funny and hot all at once. Mink’s smeared lipstick, Divine’s loud orgasm, even someone spitting in Jesus’ beard if that’s what does it for you. It’s the work of a one-of-a-kind queer artist operating under total freedom.

Some would balk at me calling this the best lesbian sex scene of all time. Hell, some would be upset with me calling it a lesbian sex scene at all. But my hope — on-screen and in life — is that we are always looking to expand beyond ourselves and to expand ourselves.

Queerness should always include a cavalcade of perversions. If you want to keep your lesbian sex simple and sensual, I love that for you. Some of us will be in church bent over a pew taking a string of rosary beads.

We’re just following the Infant Jesus of Prague.

Remember to clean your beads.

Multiple Maniacs is now streaming on The Criterion Channel. The Multiple Maniacs sex scene begins at 34:28.

Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: “Carol” Finds the Kink in Age Gaps

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today Kayla and Drew discuss Carol, Todd Hayne’s film adaptation of the landmark lesbian novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith.

Kayla: I find our parallel journeys with Carol to be very interesting!

Drew: Yes! The first time I saw Carol I was closeted. I went in as a Todd Haynes fan — even saw it at Lincoln Center with a Q&A — not as a lesbian. I thought and still think it’s just a remarkable piece of cinema. The cinematography and the score alone are some of the best of the last ten years and maybe ever.

But then when I came out my obsession increased. I wanted a Carol Aird to like my hat and whisk me into a life of lesbianism rather than, ya know, stumbling into it with my pre-transition partner. Once I broke up with that person and actually was dating and trying to date older women my love for the movie increased even more. I felt such an intense identification with Therese and her desire to be seen as older by Carol. But then… I actually did get older. And my romanticizing of the dynamic has lessened. NOT BECAUSE AGE GAPS ARE BAD. The last time I said this about Carol people thought I was upset about the age gap which lmao no. It’s more about their levels of experience. And it’s not that it’s abuse. I just don’t find it admirable or romantic. I think they’re providing very specific things for each other in that moment and that’s great but Carol is right to leave and I agree with everything she says in her letter.

Kayla: I wasn’t closeted when I first saw it, but I was in my first real long-term queer relationship that wasn’t shrouded in secrecy. And it was a much different relationship than the one I’m in now, and I really do think I latched onto or even interpreted aspects of the movie in a much different way than I do now. I also used to read a lot more romance onto the narrative, and now… well, now I read a lot more kink into it. But I also see way more of both character’s flaws now than I did then. I think it’s a film that can be easy to project onto. And some might mistake that for a hollowness, but I think it’s actually the opposite. It’s so rich, so whole. And just a fully queer gaze, aesthetic, and narrative. So I think it makes sense that we’ve read different things into it at different stages of our own queerness.

Drew: Yes!! I’ve loved growing up with it. I also read The Price of Salt somewhere in there. I think around when I was identifying most fiercely with Therese. It would be interesting to go back and reread and see if I’ve also grown up with the book.

Kayla: Yes to everything you’re saying about the age gap. I’m in a 12-year age gap, which I believe is a wider gap than the characters have in the novel but a smaller one than in the movie. Regardless, I obviously take no inherent issue with an age gap. But it was interesting to me to view the movie once I was in an age gap relationship and be able to identify the ways in which Carol and Therese both are aroused by their differences in age but also sometimes fail each other by projecting onto one another. Carol sometimes obscures Therese’s agency because she wants her to be this youthful little thing. And like you said, it’s not abuse. But there’s a level of control to it.

Drew: Famously… conflict is not abuse.

Kayla: I love how often you name drop Conflict Is Not Abuse without having read it lmao

Drew: LMAO

Kayla: CALLED OUT

Drew: I’ll read it !!

Kayla: Speaking of reading, I also read The Price of Salt after seeing the movie for the first time! I love the book so much. I think the men in it are better developed.

Drew: I agree the men in the novel are better developed which is funny because the movie is directed by a man. I sometimes find women artists are MORE generous to male characters!

Kayla: It’s true lol Todd Haynes really does love his women most, and I’m pretty okay with that, but there’s definitely some texture to those male characters missing in the adaptation.

Pivoting a bit, but I think this movie is sometimes regarded as chaste, which I disagree with!

Drew: That’s interesting! Do you think people are specifically referring to the sex scene or the film as a whole?

Kayla: As a whole. But I think there’s a difference between being chaste and having restraint. Carol and Therese do engage in physical touch quite a bit leading up to the sex scene. It’s not all just heavy eye contact. But there’s restraint, there are limits to the ways they can touch, especially publicly. And restraint can be really erotic in and of itself.

Drew: Yes absolutely. I wouldn’t describe the movie as chaste. Even if I don’t necessarily think the sex scene is hot?

I find the whole film to be really moving and emotional. Even in its eroticism. But I do think there’s an eroticism!

Kayla: I think the hottest part of the sex scene is right before they start fucking, when they’re kissing in front of the vanity and Therese abruptly says take me to bed. I feel like it’s simultaneously a bottom’s fantasy and a top’s fantasy, that like urgent desire of hers to be fucked. You can tell Carol loves to hear it.

Drew: Yes! Even the way Carol lets her robe open.

Kayla: There’s a clearly defined dynamic there, and they’re both giving each other exactly what they want.

Drew: They also voice their needs right before. Carol is used to Harge being busy with clients on New Years so she wants someone who SHE has more social power and control over. And Therese is usually lonely in a big crowd so she wants to be the center of someone’s attention.

Kayla: You also have some of the age stuff coming into play… Carol brushing Therese’s hair is quite the image. And then the way she’s very overt in her attraction to Therese’s youth when she first sees her undressed. And I love that Therese wants her to leave the light on.

Drew: The lights line is great. Especially because we often think of someone inexperienced as wanting the lights off out of shame or bashfulness. It shows a lot about Therese’s character even if she’s a sad little bottom in her dynamic with Carol lol

Kayla: Yes lol! She lacks confidence in certain parts of her life, but she really comes alive during this sex scene in a way I find surprising but also believable. She finally knows what she wants, at least in this moment.

Drew: I feel like the camera really stays with her too. This feels like her sex scene more than Carol’s. Which makes sense since this is presumably Therese’s first time and Carol is her whole world. Whereas Carol’s daughter is her whole world and Therese is just a temporary fill-in.

That’s mean. It’s not that harsh. But it’s also not not that.

Kayla: Yeah, it’s not not that! That’s something I also grew in my understanding of… my understanding of what it really means for Carol to be a mother.

She’s taking huge risks to be with Therese, but there are also limits to the ways she’s able to take those risks. And she’s always going to chose her daughter first, something Therese seems to struggle to understand. And that goes back to this idea of projection and also needing to understand an age gap isn’t just about numbers. Carol has a whole different life than Therese does.

It’s hard not to see the mirroring of Carol brushing her daughter’s hair earlier in the film and then her brushing Therese’s hair in the lead up to this scene.

Drew: Right it’s all there. haha

I like this scene in contrast with our first entry in this series where we discussed Disobedience. Because that scene is very hot to me and has substance but I still love the Carol sex scene even if I’ve never been turned on by it per se.

It shows the value of sex scenes. Sure being hot is enough value in itself IMO. But it can also communicate so much about character and just be beautiful art! God the score!!!!!

Kayla: The score is so good and is perhaps why I DO think it’s hot. It’s interesting, because neither Blanchett nor Mara do it for me really. But there’s something aesthetic about the scene that does turn me on, and I think details like the score are part of it. And the dialogue! It’s rare to have good, realistic, and weird (in a good way) dialogue in a sex scene, but this one does in my opinion.

Drew: Yeah that’s a good point. I love all the dialogue in the scene. It’s awkward but not in a way that reduces the eroticism.

Kayla: Yes! And it’s not outright dirty talk but there’s still a sense of them wanting to devour each other and stay in this moment. Again, the request to leave the lights on. I love it.

There’s also a lot of hair lol. Extremely femme for femme vibes.

Drew: So much hair! Relatable content.

I like how the scene doesn’t just fade to black but sort of fades into a pattern. The whole thing has this aura of emotionally important, drunk sex of youth. It’s like a memory of a sex scene. Which I think sex often can feel like when it’s not with someone you’ve been with before/will be with a lot in the future. Grasping onto it is like grasping onto a dream.

Kayla: That fade is something I hadn’t thought of too much until I was rewatching the scene for this conversation, and it really stood out to me. Because it again tied into my idea of this being a rich queer tapestry of a movie that’s easy to project onto. We’re not even quite sure what part of the body we’re looking at by the end of that pan into fade.

Drew: I think Carol has kind of become… dare I say… underrated because of how memed it’s been? Maybe underrated is the wrong word but I think it gets dismissed as a certain kind of stodgy lesbian movie when its craft is insanely good and there’s so much going on in terms of character nuance. ALSO you’re right! It is kinkier than people give it credit!

Kayla: I agree! I think it’s a super well crafted film, and I think the sex scene in particular is well crafted, too. And in general the film is surprisingly kinky and weird when you really pay attention to its details and, most importantly to me, not at all catering to a straight spectator. I know it’s directed by a man, but he’s gay obviously, and I think we’re both well on record about Todd Haynes’ deftness for writing queer women and just queerness in general. I think it’s such a strong adaptation of a brilliant novel.

The memes make me laugh, but they have also sort of flattened the film, which I suppose is exactly how memes are supposed to function.

I don’t think period pieces are for everyone, but I do really enjoy how this film makes use of its specific setting.

Drew: The Carol memes on this very website is what made me a fan of Autostraddle so no complaints. But also… I do think it’s time for a reassessment of the film from queer people to be like okay this is just a really good FILM.

Kayla: And a really nuanced portrayal of queerness at two very different stages of life — young adulthood and middle age. You don’t often get both of those things in one queer movie.

Drew: Yes! It’s a very good age gap movie! Even if it’s not the ideal age gap relationship. lol

I do love how comfortable Therese looks the morning after the sex scene. She’s so cozy.

No idea what’s about to happen. Just planning her little life with Carol in that young head of hers.

Kayla: Sooo cozy, still living in the soft snow globe of that sex scene.

Drew: This is such a random reference very specific to my youth but I feel like Therese would like the Bright Eyes song “Take It Easy (Love Nothing)”:

Left by the lamp, right next to the bed, on a cartoon cat pad you scratched with a pen, “Everything is as it’s always been. This never happened.
Don’t take it so bad it’s nothing you did. It’s just once something dies you can’t make it live. You are a beautiful boy.
You’re a sweet little kid but I am a woman.” So I laid back down and wrapped myself up in the sheet.
And I must have looked like a ghost because something frightened me and since then I’ve been so good at vanishing.

This is literally Carol.

Kayla: Wow that is so spot on.

Drew: Everything goes wrong SO QUICKLY after the Carol sex scene !

Carol is now streaming on Netflix. The sex scene begins around 1:14:26.

Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: “The Handmaiden” Has More Sex Scenes Than You Realize

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today Kayla writes about The Handmaiden, Park Chan-Wook’s film adaptation of the iconic lesbian novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.

The horniest parts of The Handmaiden aren’t the film’s climactic sex scene — a moment we see twice, context and perspective bending our experience of it — or its final sex scene set to melodious bells. The horniest parts of The Handmaiden wouldn’t really be called sex scenes by the average viewer and certainly not by the vast majority of straight viewers. But to me, they are sex. And to merely call them moments of sexual tension or erotic foreplay is to not only subscribe to a narrow view of sex but also to deny how queerness historically and continually blooms right under the watchful eye of the heteropatriarchy. Push us to the margins, and we’ll find ways to fuck in those margins.

I had sex with women before I had sex with men, but I still considered myself straight. Not bisexual. Not uncertain. I thought myself staunchly heterosexual, these sexual experiences with other women self-erased, downplayed as somehow not real. When I came out, I turned my queer self-discovery into a simultaneous anthropological exploration in the field and academic exploration at the desk. What I mean is I started fucking a lot and reading queer theory.

It didn’t take long into these dual processes for me to realize this self-erasure had been rooted in an internalized rigid and heteronormative understanding of what sex is. I learned new definitions of sex, created new definitions of sex. I unlearned the rules of before: that sex required penetration, that sex required orgasm. (In truth, a lot of the sex I’d had with women I thought “didn’t count” actually did meet these markers of certified normative straight sex, and yet, I still dismissed the encounters as somehow unreal.)

After coming to better understand these previous sexual experiences, I queered my own memories even further, coming to understand all the ways gaze and touch allowed me to access my latent desires without even realizing it. All those backrubs that lingered a little too long, all those sleepover games that required close mouths and tickle-pricked skin. There were so many ways girls could touch each other without it being deemed deviant or wrong.

In The Handmaiden, there are two significant instances of erotic touch and gaze prior to central characters Lady Hideko and her handmaiden Sook-hee fucking by conventional standards. (I’m not going to delve too specifically into the film’s plot in this essay, but my review from 2020 does so if you’d like more context.) In the first, one of my favorite erotic movie scenes of all time, Sook-hee files Hideko’s too-sharp tooth down with a thimble, inserting her thumb into Hideko’s mouth while she’s giving her a bath. Sook-hee takes her time with the tooth, and her eyes move down to Hideko’s tits perched just above water level.

Later, Hideko dresses Sook-hee up as a lady, a sort of class-based cross-dressing. In the privacy of Hideko’s bedroom, she tightens Sook-hee’s corset, powders her face, does her hair in an elegant bun. A shot from behind the two women shows their twinned hairstyles in close proximity, a doubling of sorts. The boundaries between them set by society are collapsing. It’s in this moment that we get another instance of erotic touch. Sook-hee undoes Hideko’s dress, and we hear her internal monologue, which leaves no room for interpretation as to just how intimate Sook-hee views this form of touching Hideko:

“Ladies truly are the dolls of maids. All these buttons are for my amusement. If I undo the buttons and pull out the cords, then, the sweet things within, those sweet and soft things…If I were still a pickpocket, I’d slip my hand inside.”

Period dramas that contain romance often confront and disrupt categories of class and power, and it’s impossible to consider the dynamics between Sook-hee and Hideko outside of the context of the film’s historical setting of Japan’s occupation of Korea. While other characters frequently regard Sook-hee as expendable or otherwise underestimate her for being not just poor but also Korean, that derision never comes from Hideko, whose very first observation about Sook-hee is her beauty. Hideko is pedestaled by other characters — men, especially — for her beauty, for her wealth, for being the pinnacle of Japanese femininity in their eyes. Sook-hee and Hideko’s love is socially forbidden in more ways than one. And yet, both women find ways to transgress their social positions and the heterosexual expectations forced upon them.

To an outside, oppressive gaze, Sook-hee is perhaps merely only fulfilling her handmaidenly duties by inserting her thimbled thumb into Hideko’s mouth or by unfastening her many buttons. But Hideko and Sook-hee’s body language in the bathtub scene and Sook-hee’s narration in the dressing/undressing scene highlight that, for them, they’re stepping far outside these expected roles. They’ve found ways to access erotic touch that not only are imperceptible to the detection of others but perhaps even hidden to themselves.

And that tension doesn’t detract from their agency or desire. Neither Hideko nor Sook-hee are passive in the ways other characters think they are. They know what they want, just like the girls whose hair I braided and who braided mine knew what we wanted, too. But sometimes that type of carnal, urgent knowledge is still at odds with how we really think of ourselves.

Lesbian period dramas, specifically, are often mocked for this suffusion of erotic tension in “safe” forms of looking and touching. Heavy eye contact made across a room, extended hand holding, the unbuttoning of a complicated garment, such as the scene of this exact nature we see in The Handmaiden. These moments get derided for being too tame, for lacking explicit sexuality. They’re held up as proof a film ultimately tempered its queerness, softened the edges of its lesbian erotics in order to present something more palatable to a wider (straight) audience.

Now, one would be silly to lodge this complaint toward a lesbian erotic thriller like The Handmaiden, which does indeed contain explicit sex scenes, too. And despite all my waxing poetic on these other scenes, I do find the film’s central sex scene incredibly worthy of dissection. It’s hot. It’s sex so nice we see it twice. Jokes aside, the differences in how we see the same sex scene unfold at two different points of the film deepen the dynamics and meaning of the sex itself.

But I have my reasons for wishing to focus more intimately on these alternative sex scenes, the ones you might think don’t depict sex at all. These reasons are personal: I want to give myself permission to cast a new lens on my own memories of early erotic touch and gaze. But my reasons are cultural, too. I think critiques of lesbian period dramas are sometimes too broad, too dismissive of the power and radical nature of queer eroticism that looks acceptable to a heterosexual gaze and yet functions on a different level for the characters themselves. It’s why I want to take things to an extreme place and say these scenes from The Handmaiden aren’t just sexual; they are sex. Mainly because my reading is that the characters engaging in the touch would certainly think so. And sometimes, the truest definition of sex is the one we write ourselves.

Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: Disobedience Made Us Horny for Spit

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today we are discussing 2018’s Disobedience, starring Rachels Weisz and McAdams, and its controversial spitty sex scene.

Kayla: I wanted to talk first, briefly, about our decision to create this series, which is going to deep dive on different queer sex scenes from film. It won’t always be structured as a conversation like this. More often than not, we’ll take turns writing essays, depending on the scene and our thoughts about it. But I wanted to kick things off with a conversation!

Basically the origins of the series is that as soon as I found out you were going to become an editor here, I was like I want to collab on a series and then the thought that quickly followed was it should be about sex scenes.

Drew: Sex scene discourse has been so pervasive on Twitter since, well, I joined Twitter. But it does sometimes feel like going in circles where someone tweets something fairly puritanical and then a bunch of horny nerds like us say ACTUALLY SEX SCENES ARE GOOD. So I like the idea of moving beyond that and really celebrating the artistry, depth, and, yes, horniness of the best queer sex scenes.

Kayla: Totally! And the way I’ve envisioned the series, we might even be talking about BAD sex scenes. I want to consider a whole range of scenes. And I intentionally wanted to start with the sex scene from Disobedience, because it’s…apparently controversial!

Drew: That is so wild to me, because I think it’s the best part of the film. I like the movie, but for me it’s definitely a case of 5 star sex scene, 4 star film.

Kayla: I agree with that assessment! I like the movie for the reason I think a lot of people don’t. It’s slow, it’s quiet, there aren’t really a lot of dynamics to it. But I’d put it at a solid 4 as well, whereas the sex scene is an easy 5! I was worried before rewatching it that I maybe was remembering it in a more glowing light but nope it held the fuck up.

Let’s set the scene up a bit: Ronit (Rachel Weisz) has returned to her Jewish Orthodox hometown following the death of her father, who was a very influential spiritual leader in the community. Ronit left a long time ago. When she returns, she learns her secret lover from her youth Esti (Rachel McAdams) has married her cousin Dovid and remained in the closet. One thing leads to another, and Ronit and Esti end up escaping to the city one day to fuck.

Drew: I do think it’s worth talking in detail about the moments right before the scene. Because one thing I love about the scene is it’s not kiss out in the world, smash cut to fucking in hotel room. There are several minutes (or at least it feels like several minutes) where the two of them are walking, taking public transit, living in the anticipation of the sex they’re about to have.

It’s an example of slowness, quietness, actually being quite thrilling. And it makes the sex scene itself feel like the sort of relief sex IRL can sometimes hold after a lot of build up.

Kayla: It feels so realistic! That almost youthful nervousness and anticipation! And this is not the first time they’re going to sleep together, but it also almost is, because it’s their first time as adults, it’s their first time since Ronit left and started living this whole new life. That lead up does such a good job of complicating their intimacy! They’re so familiar with each other but also nervous in the way sleeping with a totally new person feels.

Drew: Yes! And then the anticipation is so well-fulfilled. Their kissing is so hungry. We talk a lot about the spit but there’s a natural build up to it. Even the first hotel kiss when Ronit is removing Esti’s sheitel she’s really leading with her tongue.

I don’t remember is that the first time we see Esti’s sheitel removed? I wonder how that read for people who aren’t Jewish and don’t know about Orthodox women covering their hair?

I don’t think there’s anything inherently liberating about removing a wig or hair covering, but I do think for this character who feels trapped in her religion and community, it’s an excellent — if obvious — moment. McAdams really sells it too. She looks like she’s transforming.

Kayla: I feel like the scene is largely regarded as “the spitplay scene” and while the spit is part of why I enjoy it, people have really overplayed how much space the spit takes up! It’s a long scene! Multiple positions! The spit is just one part lol.

I think one of my greatest achievements in life is when one of my besties told me she finally enjoys not only the Disobedience sex scene but also the concept of spitplay itself, after many years of being appalled by how much I love this scene. It’s also just so funny to me, because spitplay seems like such a mild kink! And look, it doesn’t have to be for you, but I think it’s so well done in this scene! But people sure do have feelings about it!

Drew: They really do! I was about to say I’m generally a fairly oral personal sexually, but I also think a lot of people are? And we just don’t often see it represented on-screen outside of porn because it’s the hardest thing to fake. If an actor is licking another actor’s nipple usually that’s actually happening, it’s not a prosthetic.

The way the two actresses here lick each other’s bodies and mouths is very hot and just feels very real!! And Esti putting her fingers to Ronit’s mouth after they finger each other… it is good.

Kayla: So many mouth moments!!!!!

Something that stood out to me on this viewing was how clothed they actually stay for the scene. I love nudity, no problems with nudity over here! But I think the scene operates as great proof that a sex scene can be really hot and horny without just falling back on showing a lot of skin.

Drew: Yes! I did learn this at a young age because as a teen I was too scared to go on porn sites so I just watched “girls kissing” on YouTube which was often the like plot parts and kissing while clothed parts of porn.

Kayla: And it highlights the urgency of their desire for each other, too. They’re like yeah I don’t need to bother with undressing you, I’m still going to consume you.

Drew: YES! I do think the specificity of the hands is also very good and very gay. So much gay sex on screen (especially with straight directors) is very confused. This is specific.

Kayla: Very specific. You can tell they both already know how to get each other off.

Drew: The spit wasn’t entirely spit right? I remember reading it was some sort of juice.

Kayla: REALLY? I must investigate now. Whatever juice they used really does a good job of looking like spit lol.

Drew: It does! I love how Esti’s tongue quivers in anticipation. And then when it hits her mouth there’s an immediate reaction of pleasure.

Kayla: “The makeup department tested out different flavors of lube the night before to use as the spit. We settled on lychee-flavored!” – Rachel McAdams

Drew: Beautiful. I love a lychee martini, and I imagine I’d love it even more spit into my mouth.

Kayla: LOL. It really is so artfully and organically done.

Drew: I like how they’re in the same frame in every shot until the end when Esti orgasms while Ronit is presumably going down on her.

Kayla: Yes, and that’s also an example of how you can show a lot without showing! It’s the first time Esti’s pleasure is genuinely centered. We don’t get a moment like that between her and Dovid.

Drew: That slow push-in as Esti comes is so beautifully done though.

One of my only big issues with the film is the detail that Ronit hasn’t been with a woman since they were together because I feel like it confuses her character and their dynamic. And this moment especially would hit even harder for me if Ronit has been experiencing queer pleasure out in the world and Esti was the only one denied it between the two of them.

Kayla: Well, this is somewhat related to that but something I actually like. I noticed even more during this viewing that Esti initiates physical contact most of the time. I think it really plays with our expectations of who might be the more forward between them, who might have the most agency. Because Esti is presented as this Orthodox woman who has decided to stay in the church, and Ronit has left. But it’s Esti who really directs a lot of the initial flirtation and touch. Dovid tries to say Esti is being manipulated by Ronit, but that is never once shown to be true.

Drew: Yes! I really love that detail. To me it communicates that as much as their love is mutual, for Ronit there’s a world of possibility, for Esti Ronit IS her world of possibility.

Kayla: Yes! And then in the sex scene, we do see Ronit taking on the more toppy role, especially with the spit. But they also both seem a little switchy to me! Or at least like Esti is sometimes topping from the bottom lol.

Drew: Yeah, she’s more forward even if her role in their dynamic is bottom-y.

I also love that this happens after they were already caught kissing. The history of lesbian cinema has a lot of stories where there’s passion between the women until they’re caught and then one of them is like NO I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE. This subverts that, where Esti is like we’re caught so we need to fuck NOW before things escalate and we’re apart forever.

Kayla: Yes, there’s a desperation to it. It’s why I think the scene is hot but also…tinged with a bit of sadness, which is probably true of a lot of my favorite sex scenes lol. It’s not tinged with TRAGEDY or TRAUMA, but there is an undercurrent of sadness. And also nostalgia! They’re accessing past versions of themselves. And nostalgia is usually a little sad.

Drew: Absolutely. At the very least, the desperation of impermanence.

Kayla: I mean pretty much right after, they reminisce on the time Ronit’s father walked in on them hooking up lol.

Drew: Yes! That’s a really good point. I love that we spend time with them right after. And the moment of Ronit taking Esti’s photo is swoon-worthy. This really excels at the before, during, and after of a sex scene.

Kayla: Yeah! We get all of those beats, which is super rare for queer sex scenes.

Drew: There’s usually at least a bit more of a time jump. The after in this case starts when Ronit is still resting between Esti’s legs.

Kayla: The movie really does take its time, and I appreciate that about it.

Drew: I’ll always have a love for this movie, because I saw it at a matinee when my nails were matching my shoes, and I felt so fabulous as I experienced immense horniness and melancholy. Top tier movie going experience.

I’d never really done spit play at the time either!! I’d only been out of the closet for a year and my sex life was pretty boring.

Do I love the Disobedience sex scene because of how I have sex or do I have sex the way I do because of the Disobedience sex scene? Who can say!

Kayla: I hadn’t done spitplay when I first say it either! I was in a relationship when the movie came out, but we weren’t really having sex anymore. As soon as I was single again, I made spitplay a priority! Now I barely remember a time before!!!!!

Drew: The greatest trans allyship of the director of A Fantastic Woman was actually giving ME this scene.

Disobedience is now streaming on Hulu. The sex scene starts around 1:01:20 if you need to rewatch it for research purposes.