The Erotic Power of A Fuckboy
“You’re rolling the dice with your ovaries.”
Audre Lorde took the word erotic and in her essay, “The Power of the Erotic,” redefined it as an internal power source in women. It was written as part of the Second Wave Feminist debate over pornography and oppression in 1978. Audre believed that there was power in recognizing desire that could be harnessed in all areas of life, out of the sexual, and into the political and spiritual realms as well. This is not a power over other people, but a power that comes by actively using one’s talent and creativity. The reason it is suppressed in women, she surmises, is because of its potential for change. Instead, this female power is “psychically milked” and women are trained to distrust this resource to maintain the status quo. In this paper, her definition of women and gender regards to “women identified women.”
But I wanna talk about men. Specifically, the fuckboy.
When I was first researching this topic I read a lot of think pieces in an effort to try and find a concrete definition of a fuckboy. My understanding had been formed by shit encounters with shit men and memes that validated my feelings BUT I couldn’t write you a definition. So I was reading Slate’s piece, and Vanity Fair’s, and some listicles, and then Kara Brown at Jezebel rightly points out that all these think pieces are white af and neglected the contribution of the black community! Yes, language evolves, “But the problem is that these pieces almost completely ignore black people from the equation.” These definitions are also very straight because the earliest use on record is from the gays in 1997! As a black lesbian, Audre Lorde would be so disappointed in me if I went and used some straight white shit that didn’t give credit where it’s due.
Originating as gay slang, fuckboy meant an effeminate and easy hole to use. Ok.
Kara says: “To call someone a fuckboy is to insult them. It falls into a similar category of terms like bitch-ass or scrub. A fuckboy is a man who is lame, who sucks, who ain’t shit,” and cites Cam’ron’s 2002 “Boy, Boy” as the first utterance of it in hip hop. In “No Scrubs,” 90’s girl group, TLC, says: “A scrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly/He’s also known as a busta/Always talkin’ about what he wants/And just sits on his broke ass.” So now, it’s not the referring to the used but to the user. OK.
I’m going to focus on the heterosexual fuckboy because I’ve been doing straight things lately. I don’t know enough about the socio-sexual interactions of gay men to write about them. I have been told that the lesbian equivalent of the fuckboy is the stud but studs don’t seem posses the same level of entitlement within lesbian lore.
In 2015, the first episode of the “Inner Hoe Uprising” podcast (A smart & funny podcast about sex, love, and dating from a black feminist 20 something and her weekly cohoes), debuted with the episode “Fuckboys.” I want to focus on them, Shanika Powell and Samantha Riddell, and their experience because I feel like Audre would be so proud of them! Their working definition at 42:36, is: “Fuckboys care more about fucking than they care about you so they will always be after you and looking out for themselves, or looking out for their nut and like, many women will come and go so they don’t care what happens to you ultimately.”
They revisited the topic in 2017, this time in the episode “The Fuckboy Roundtable,” with three men on the panel, Goose, Ford, and J.P.. While going through great pains to not call themselves fuckboys (because no one ever admits to being a fuckboy), they explained, “Fuckboy is extreme, why can’t it just be a guy enjoying free agency, why do I have to tell you directly and ruin a good thing. . . If being a fuckboy gets you what you want, which is sex with no strings attached at any moment that you want, then people are gonna take part.”
Audre argued that pornography was negative because it emphasized the sensation without the feeling. Her paper advocated for the erotic to be separated from the body, but I don’t agree. I think that the female body-especially the clitoris, and the orgasm are all part of a woman’s power and that part of the reason that women are denied this resource is due to womb envy. It’s not or, its and. Her paper is set in a world where men have that and women are denied that, and it’s still that way today. I think that the modern fuckboy is the perfect example of erotic power as a driving force. “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial (58).” They have decided that their power is culminating in that sweet, sweet nut so that is their mission.
The fuckboys are operating with the idea that women aren’t down to hook up. Part of a fuckboy’s M.O. is casting a wide net. For example, they text (or dm you but they won’t call you) but don’t follow up, and it’s most likely because they’re talking to someone else. It’s a “paradox where you’re lazy, but try so hard,” Sam explains in the podcast. They cite Alana Massey, “Fuckboy is not a dating style, so much as a worldview that reeks of entitlement but is aghast at the prospect of putting in effort.”
Shanika details an encounter in 2015 that culminated in this interaction, that took place over text:
Him: “I think you’re cool and very fuckable, but I’ve seen you handle alcohol irresponsibly and it makes me feel like you’re a loose cannon. That was my main reason for falling back. I said I was too old but really its cause you’re too young cause only young people act like that when drunk if you feel like you can promise me you won’t get weird or clingy and you won’t embarrass either of us in public we can quietly fuck around.”
Her: “I was mad, but I didn’t want to burn this bridge because he worked in my industry so I just responded with, No thank you”
Him: “ugh bye Shaniqua” and 20 minutes later he’s like, “So you ask to be fuck buddies then act weird, I explain how your weird behavior made me second guess it. Try to come at you with an agreement and you say no thank you?”
This particular exchange displays the kind of entitlement that Audre wished dreamed of for women. Except it’s mean and condescending.
Ironically, the only women that are equipped to handle these men are the empowered women that embody their own erotic power. “But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense (58).” While fuckboys will not accept the responsibility that they hurt someone, their own erotic power lets them sleep at night. Satisfied.
But Shanika and Samantha are operating with, “this is gonna happen one time, maybe twice if you’ve got a good d…I also don’t care how many people you’re with,as long as were having protected sex.”
Audre would be so proud.
