Have you been missing Miko?  Need some new sex toys, but don't want to brave the seedy Amazing superstores?  Wish Miko hadn't closed her doors forever?  The Brown Daily Herald reports today that there's about to be a new sex store on Wickenden Street: Mister Sister will be replacing Miko with a gay and lesbian-friendly sex shop that will continue the mission of Miko, with a community learning room, but reports say that the classes will be much more affordable for college students: with prices starting at $15, which means that you can learn all you need to know about your sexuality... and probably more than you wanted to know, too.

Will the fact that it's gay and lesbian-oriented alienate the straight community?  Let's hope not, but let's be honest: it just might.  I don't know what it is about gay-friendly establishments, but I'm noticing more and more that straight people just aren't welcomed with the open arms.  Is this because straight is accepted everywhere?  I guess so, but I hate how everything's so divisive: it's never let's go out to a bar with the queer community (except on Guerilla Gay Bar Nights), it's let's go out to a gay bar, which is fine -- I mean, I'm glad that are places that welcome alternative lifestyles, but I worry that things will never change over all if people keep accepting the separatist language... why can't it just be a fabulous bar?  a great restaurant?  an awesome place to chill?  My friends don't go to karaoke; they go exclusively to gay karaoke.  Next we'll see gay museums, where all of the artists are queer, or gay aquariums, where all of the animals are...

well, you get my drift. 

Don't get me wrong:  I am the most queer-friendly, alternative-lifestyle accepting chick on the block.  I've explored my sexuality with men and women, so it ain't that I'm little miss sheltered lifestyle either.  I lived with gay men my sophomore year of college, both of whom explored their desire to drag it up, and my best friend of many years is a fabulously gay fella by the name of Slickster.  I pride myself on being open-minded.

I think coming years will show a change in things.  When I talk with the students I teach at local high schools, they seem to take everyone's sexuality with a grain of salt.  There are kids in my class who are openly gay, and never have I heard a derogatory remark about the practice.  I have friends a few years younger than me to whom sexuality is just what it is -- who gives a crap what you do in your own time is how I look at it, and I think a lot of people my age and younger view it that way as well.   I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who still have problems with the gay lifestyles, but I'm equally certain that their numbers are steadily dwindling with each generation.

Anyone have any thoughts on the issue?