Sex on Thursdays Column Graphic
January 29, 2025

SEX ON THURSDAY | Want a Whiff?: Poppers and the Hijacking of Gay Culture 

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Poppers. They are everywhere on campus, from most of your gay boy’s rooms to even the spread of recreational substances at one of the parties of my favorite group of musically inclined sorority girls. While I am happy that everyone can whiff away to their heart’s content, I fear we have lost the focus on why we whiff in the first place.

For those out of the loop, amyl nitrite — AKA poppers — is a medication that is usually prescribed to relieve chest pain. But when people who aren’t in pain use them, they get a buzz that gets you lightheaded and you feel your worries melt away as the rush washes into you. The effect only lasts for about a minute or so. But far more useful, the poppers relax your blood vessels and muscles, including a certain back door where someone’s sausage might come knocking. 

I love taking a whiff when things start to get more heavy. I love “feeling the rush” of a sudden lightheaded feeling when my heart begins to beat to a faster rhythm. I love that I can let loose and truly allow the other person to pound away. Especially if I am playing fast EDM type music while doing it, I get to time my movements to the rhythm. 

One guy I was hooking up with last semester described it as getting the start bonus on Mario Kart — except there is no music — but there are a wHOLE lot of possibilities that open up for you and your partner. 

As always, I will also tell you not to go to the nearest sex store and buy a bottle of poppers after reading about my infatuation for the fumes. They do come with certain added risks. According to the CDC, poppers are not safe to ingest or inhale and can result in “difficulty breathing, extreme drops in blood pressure, decreases in blood oxygen levels, seizures, heart arrhythmia, coma, and death.” So sniff cautiously.  

However, poppers have become a mainstay of modern party culture, from party girls who use them to feel a light headrush on the dancefloor, to even straight guys who were asking me for a whiff at a club over break. Everyone is taking a big long whiff. And I am ok with that — they are more than welcome to share the joy of feeling the fumes with the community.  

However, I do have a line that I want to draw — or rather issue a warning. My main issue with the proliferation of poppers is how gay culture can become diluted as time goes on and as the general public embraces them as their own. We might forget the queer origins of our preferred whiffing enhancers. 

And I know what you would say — I am overreacting and there is some reason to believe this wouldn’t happen. After all, we still have our relics of cruising and leather culture. But I do vividly remember how “twink” became a general term that no longer refers to a gay guy, but got “democratized” and commodified as a new aesthetic that you can just pick as a costume. 

More recently, there was the jarring refute of the long-acknowledged history of the Village People’s “YMCA” since one of its members decided to allow himself to sell off to the Trump campaign. Thankfully, the gay history of both the group and the song is well documented, keeping written records of the queer influences that made the hit so controversial when it came out.

Attacks on gay rights across the country by Republican state legislatures in places like Idaho are rampant, not counting the sudden backslide of gay rights in certain aspects of our lives in the name of “individual freedoms.” We must not become commodified by the crowds that crave the rush and the joy we spread to stab us in the back at the voting booths. I know I might seem like a bitter gatekeeper, but now more than ever, we must rely on our communities to develop networks of solidarity and find self-reliance while resisting efforts to erase us from history and the realm of public opinion.

Stay queer and freaky. 

And take a deep whiff, it’s been a long week of a long four years.

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