Let’s get right to it then with today’s shower thought. There are three types of type that qualify as horny:
The first category of horny fonts are wingdings or pictographs that are intentionally fetish art. For example:
“Karyna Feet” is straight-forwardly black and white pictures of lady feet. The author notes, “by Skulls: the first fetish dingbats artist,” which is a bold claim but not one that I can substantively contest. Good for Skulls!
The second category of horny fonts are genital and body humor fonts that are by default sexualized in the context of our culture. For example:
These whimsical “penis typography” and “vulva typography” sets by the same creator are the best I found for this category. These are subtle until they’re not, which is clever, since graphic design is about tricking the viewer into not immediately noticing that they are already thinking about your message.
There’s wacky boner clip art fonts out there, too, which you’re welcome to seek out, but I could see this pair on a tacky bachelorette party “gag gift” and the pages of a Slingshot Planner and a poster for a college theater production of the Vagina Monologues. Maybe even like a prostate cancer awareness ad that targets the aging Millennial population? Sure. That is range, and I respect it.
Finally, the third category of horny font are stylized ideological aesthetics or ideograms or whatever it is called when you abstract the living hell out of something and then try and make it visual or concrete again. These may be well-meant or not but they just feel intellectually horny. For example:
This font is called “Him Her It” (yes, it, not they, or xer, or… anything else that would imply subjectivity to what I can only describe as the “visibly trans letters” of E, I, S, U, and W—which please note is t4t—as well as X and Y).
My personal opinion about this font has nothing to do with the possible identity of the creator (although the fact that the person who posted this only has one other font, which is DIY bicycle themed, suggests “white queer punk, West Coast USA”). I do not care, in the truest most neutral way. The fact of the matter is that this font is baffling and hard to look at, much less read, yet it exists because of the charge of its intellectual content, for better or worse.
That it’s subject is gender is not the reason this is a horny font (that gender is sexualized, or whatever, will not be overtly explored in this newsletter now or ever, though it may be on my Twitter from time to time, when I can’t sleep and there’s another cycle of discourse that annoys me). No, it is an objectively horny font because it has Lowkey-to-Moderate Genderbread Person Energy. You know, a “I’m excited about what your body means for my political self image” sort of vibes. Conceptually horny stuff: I know it when I see it.
All that said, if you think it’s cute or radical or something, I sincerely hope that you follow your bliss with it to the inevitable Pride messaging it lends itself to! Will we even have Pride this year? Almost certainly not. Will we still argue about it online again? Starting as early as April, I expect.
That’s all for now.
Love,
Julian