Who Are You Fucking For?

We talk about unmasking at work, with friends, at home, in therapy. We talk about letting ourselves stim and communicate more directly. Wearing the clothes that don’t hurt. Leaving the party before we become a husk of ourselves. Admitting that eye contact costs something. Is this paragraph foreplay? Perhaps. If I’m honest, my brain would like to jump right to what I’m actually thinking about. But “the rules” say foreplay is vital. So here we are. Even when I’m here. Alone. Writing.

We talk much less about what happens when we take our clothes off.

And sex is a particularly strange place to talk about masking because almost everything most of us learn about sex equates to sexual performance. I don’t mean whether or not body parts work the ways we want them to in the moment we want them to. I mean that we—or our bodies, our pleasure, what sex looks like—are so often imagined as being for consumption.

We rarely get to observe ordinary, embodied, imperfect human sexuality. We learn from movies, television, pornography, books, advertising, jokes, other people’s stories—all forms in which sex is being performed, edited, narrated, exaggerated, or packaged for somebody else’s consumption. Even the sex we hear about from friends is often already a story about sex rather than sex itself.

So before many of us have enough experience to ask What does my body actually like?, we’ve already absorbed an astonishing amount of information about what sex is supposed to look like: what desire looks like, what a desirable person does, how often you should want sex, how often one should do it even if they don’t want it—don’t pretend that isn’t a cultural norm—what should turn you on, how quickly arousal should happen, what your face should do when something feels good, what sounds you’re supposed to make, what kinds of bodies are supposed to be desirable, and what kinds of sex count as adventurous, boring, vanilla, kinky, successful, or disappointing. And, of course, orgasm as the seemingly mandatory narrative conclusion proving everyone did sex correctly. Especially for cis men.

For neurodivergent people—especially those of us who have spent decades studying other humans so we could successfully be one—this is almost an absurd setup. We are being asked to locate our authentic sexuality using a map drawn almost entirely from other people’s performances.

Of course we might mask there too. Even the allistic people are.

Sex can become another elaborate exercise in getting the answer right. We monitor whether we’re responding enough, whether we look engaged, whether we’re taking too long, whether the other person is getting bored. We wonder if we should move differently, make more noise, initiate more, whether they think we’re attractive, whether they know that we find them attractive, whether we should be enjoying this more.

And suddenly there are three people in bed—or more, but the point here stands—you, your partner, and the version of you watching from somewhere near the ceiling, taking notes. That is a hell of a place from which to try to feel anything authentic.

What if unmasking during sex isn’t about doing more?

Maybe it’s about doing less. Less performing pleasure and more surrendering to the experience of it. Less trying to produce the correct reaction and more letting your body have the reaction it actually has.

Maybe the thing that feels incredible is pressure. Maybe you want the same touch in exactly the same place for much longer than seems interesting to anybody except your nervous system. Maybe the thing everyone says should feel incredible makes you want to crawl out of your skin.

Maybe you need the lights off—not because you’re ashamed of your body, but because you want to be inside it instead of watching it. Maybe you need to move your hands or laugh or stop suddenly. Maybe you need to know exactly what is going to happen next, or maybe you need to not know. Maybe you need socks, darkness, music, repetition, a particular texture, a particular pressure, a particular kind of touch, or a very particular Tuesday. Maybe you want to make the “weird” noise. Maybe you want to stop worrying about whether the face you make when something feels really fucking good is attractive.

None of those things make you bad at sex. They make you a person with a nervous system. And nervous systems are exquisitely particular things.

And then there’s masturbation (or first?).

Masturbation may be one of the most interesting laboratories for unmasking because, theoretically, there is nobody there to impress. And yet our masks still come with us. See what I did there? You’re welcome.

We can still carry ideas about what masturbation is supposed to look like, how long it should take, what we’re supposed to fantasize about, whether toys “count,” whether orgasm is the goal, whether we’re doing it too much or too little, whether the way our body seeks pleasure is sufficiently sexy. We can perform sex for an imaginary audience. Alone.

Which raises a fascinating question: If nobody were ever going to know how you experience pleasure, what would you actually do?

Not what looks erotic. Not what would make a good story. Not what you’ve seen represented as sex. What does your body reach for when there is absolutely nobody to accommodate?

Masturbation may not be only sexual release. Maybe it is one of the places we learn the language of our own bodies. This pressure. This rhythm. Slower. Faster. Stay there. Again. Not that. More of this.

Maybe it is a place to discover whether you actually like novelty or have simply learned that novelty is what makes someone sexually interesting. Whether you like fantasy. Whether your body wants movement or stillness. Whether the sensation you keep returning to isn’t boring at all—it is simply yours. Maybe checking the items off a to-do list really is that hot. Maybe there are things you’ve been told aren’t okay.

What happens when orgasm isn’t the assignment? Or it is. However your body wants it. However often. However many times? What happens when curiosity replaces performance?

And maybe masturbation isn’t always—or only—about sexual desire.

Candice Christiansen has written specifically about masturbation as sensory seeking in autistic people. She notes that masturbation could function as vestibular sensory seeking because of repetitive movement and describes it as often involving tactile sensory seeking as well. More broadly, she describes stimming as foundational for many autistic people: repetitive movement, sound, or sensation can help with focus, regulation, and sensory overwhelm.

For those of us who work in this field—especially those of us who do assessment—we sometimes hear about sensory-seeking behaviors through a thick layer of adult shame. Sometimes the adult observing the behavior has already assigned a sexual meaning that the person experiencing the sensation may not have assigned to it at all.

And that distinction matters. If nobody has yet taught a child that a particular sensation is shameful, they may simply repeat something because it feels good or regulating. That doesn’t mean adults ignore privacy, consent, development, or context. It means we get curious before we pathologize.

Is it sexual? Is someone scratching your back sexual? Wildly depends on context.

That feels important here because we have been taught to divide sexual behavior from autistic behavior, as though we take our neurotype off with our clothes. We don’t.

Sometimes sexual movement is sexual movement and stimming. Sometimes repetition is the point. Sometimes the same motion, pressure, rhythm, sound, or sensation feels good precisely because it is predictable. Sometimes our bodies want to return to it again and again—not because our sexuality is unimaginative, but because repetition can be regulating, pleasurable, and deeply embodied. And there is nothing lesser about that pleasure.

We don’t have to turn every sexual experience into novelty to prove that we’re doing sex correctly. And we don’t have to keep sexual stimming solitary. If there is a rhythm, pressure, movement, sound, or sensory experience your nervous system absolutely loves, you can tell someone. You can show them. You can invite them into it. We can choose to stim together.

There is something deeply intimate about saying: This is what my body does when it feels good. Come closer. I’ll show you. Not merely allowing someone to witness the ways your body regulates and seeks pleasure, but trusting them enough to participate.

Maybe one of the possibilities of unmasked sex is that we stop asking, Does this look like what sex is supposed to look like? and start asking, Does this feel good in my body—and would I like to share it with yours? That, too, is sex. That, too, is connection. And that, too, can be unmasking.

And unmasking sex is Queer.

Not simply because Queer people have Queer sex, but because there is something inherently Queer about asking whether the rules were ever ours to begin with.

So much of what we are taught to recognize as sex has been organized around the male gaze: whose body is looked at, whose pleasure is visible, whose desire drives the action, what bodies should look like while experiencing pleasure, and even what acts supposedly constitute “real” sex. We inherit a sexual vocabulary shaped by heterosexuality, patriarchy, pornography, gender roles, and a remarkably narrow imagination about what bodies are for.

You don’t have to be having sex with a man for the male gaze to be in the room. You don’t even have to be attracted to men. Or anyone.

The gaze can become internalized. We learn to watch ourselves through it—to wonder how our stomach looks from that angle, what our face is doing, whether our body looks desirable from the outside at precisely the moment we’re supposed to be experiencing it from the inside.

That is one of the strangest violences of sexual performance: being turned into the spectator of your own body.

And this is where unmasked sex can become explicitly Queer. Because unmasking can strip the male gaze of its authority over the body actually having the experience.

Not Do I look sexy doing this? but Does this turn me on? Does this feel good? Is this what my body wants? Not Is this the kind of sex I’m supposed to want? but What does my body reach toward when nobody else gets to write the script? Not Am I desirable from over there? but Am I here?

Queerness has always held the possibility of refusing inherited scripts. It asks us to question which bodies belong together, which acts count as sex, who gets to desire whom, what gender is supposed to mean inside intimacy, and whether pleasure needs to organize itself around penetration, orgasm, reproduction, dominance, femininity, masculinity, or anybody else’s idea of a successful ending.

Unmasked sex can carry that same refusal. It can say: your gaze does not outrank my sensation. Your script does not outrank my nervous system. Being desirable does not outrank being present.

And perhaps this is where neurodivergent unmasking and Queerness have something particularly beautiful to offer each other. Both can ask us to interrogate the seemingly natural rules we inherited and discover that many of them were constructed long before we arrived. Both can ask: What if we don’t do it that way?

And then comes the much more vulnerable—and perhaps much sexier—question: What if we find out what our way is?

Because taking off the heterosexual script, the gendered script, the neuronormative script, and the performance of desirability doesn’t necessarily leave us with an obvious answer. It leaves us with ourselves. And then we have to listen.

Unmasking also changes consent.

Because “I can tolerate this” is not the same thing as “I want this.” “I know my partner enjoys this” is not the same thing as “I enjoy this.” “I usually say yes” is not the same thing as desire. And being capable of performing pleasure is not evidence that pleasure is happening.

For people who have spent years overriding sensory discomfort, suppressing impulses, accommodating expectations, monitoring other people’s emotions, and learning that successful relationships require being understandable to everyone except ourselves, this distinction can be enormous.

Unmasking sexually may mean discovering that some of our yeses were actually I can do that. And then learning to ask a different question: But do I want to?

It may also mean discovering bigger yeses. Louder yeses. Full-body, embodied yeses. And what’s hotter than that?

Not merely the absence of a no, but the body leaning toward something. The yes, that. The reaching instead of accommodating. Pleasure that is less aesthetically convincing and much more real. Desire that doesn’t arrive on schedule. Bodies that need accommodations rather than apologies.

It can mean sex that involves explicit instructions instead of hoping somebody intuitively knows, where stopping isn’t failure, changing your mind isn’t rejection, and sensory needs aren’t interruptions to intimacy but part of the information intimacy requires. The truth is deeply intimate.

Sex where nobody is grading the performance. Including you.

Maybe this is the pinnacle of nakedness.

Because taking off your clothes is not necessarily the most naked thing you can do with another person. Taking off the performance might be.

Unmasked sex asks us to be present enough to notice what is actually happening inside our bodies, and honest enough to let someone else know: this feels good; that doesn’t; I want more; stay there; I changed my mind; I don’t know what I want yet; I want you, and my body needs something different than what we’ve been taught wanting someone is supposed to look like. I want you to squish me back into my body. I want to want it. I want you. I want you to do whatever you want because I want to turn my brain off. I want you to stop if I cry. Please, dear god, don’t stop if I cry unless I ask you to. I want to be everything, all of me. All of you. All of us, together.

There is enormous vulnerability in that. Maybe more vulnerability than there is in taking off every piece of clothing you own. Because bodies can be exposed while people remain carefully hidden.

There is nothing small about letting someone see what actually turns you on, what doesn’t, what your body does when you stop managing it, what sounds escape when you aren’t deciding which sounds are acceptable, what you reach for when you stop wondering how reaching looks.

Especially if masking has helped keep you safe. Especially if being readable, agreeable, desirable, easy, responsive, or sexually competent has been part of how you’ve learned to maintain connection.

There is nothing small about letting someone see you without the choreography. And sometimes that exact choreography has made you feel good about yourself. That’s worth honoring too.

A mask is not automatically a lie. Performance can be pleasurable. Being looked at can be pleasurable. Feeling desirable can be pleasurable. Sometimes we choose the choreography because we genuinely fucking like the choreography.

The question isn’t whether performance is bad. It’s whether we know when we’re performing—and whether we are free to stop.

Unmasked sex may be the pinnacle of nakedness precisely because there is so little left to hide behind. It is presence without performance. Desire without proof. Pleasure without choreography. Honesty without knowing how that honesty will be received.

And that kind of vulnerability isn’t something to balk at. It certainly isn’t something to turn into another demand: Great. Now I have to unmask during sex too.

No.

This is vulnerability worthy of enormous tenderness.

Perhaps sexual unmasking isn’t becoming some freer, wilder, more sexually adventurous version of yourself. It isn’t achieving some higher, more authentic form of sex. It is allowing yourself, when there is enough safety to do so, to become increasingly present inside your own experience.

Learning the difference between the sex you’ve learned to perform and the pleasure your body actually recognizes.

Letting another person meet you there. Or not.

Perhaps discovering that the most naked you have ever been has very little to do with whether you were wearing clothes.

Maybe, if you’re lucky while getting lucky, the mask gets lost somewhere along the way. Looking for it afterward? Check the chandelier.