Saturday, June 25, 2011

violette time

this morning feels quiet, but really it's not. there's cars and planes and wind through the leaves of plants. there's noises of people on the street below. i wonder how violette leduc would capture this moment.

she would give the leaves and planes some motivation for moving the way they do. they're competing. they're restless. or perhaps they're dying; falling from the sky. she would place her own withering onto them. or she may locate her joy in them. or in the sound of the dog barking, or the stacking of crockery next door. there's a rhythmic pulse that she disentangles from her surroundings. she bleeds into this chair, this paving, these plants. each time she touches earth she is digging inside herself, looking for a lost feeling. she is beyond self. at this moment i understand.

for a few seconds i felt alone, despite the sounds and plants and the sun that strokes me. then the cat arrives. she sits on the table directly in front of me. she says "i am not alone". she surveys the moving plants and her ears move sideways and forwards to capture the many sounds. she falls into the sunshine. she folds into me.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

fucking monogamy

last night, when we should have been having sex, we talked about monogamy. the best way to not have sex is to talk about sex. yet we need to talk because he's a monogamist. and we've been spending a lot of nights in each others' beds.

there's much that i like about him. in our musical and intellectual tastes we are alike. politically we are aligned. and so there's a lot of groundwork that doesn't have to be done here, as we consistently find each other on the same page. but then there's this.

i feel reluctant to write about him as i'm aware that some readers might know him (or might come to know him). i've made an effort not to talk about him here. but this blog is my therapeutic space and i feel the need to process/write this. and i feel that this issue reflects many conversations i've shared with many friends. so here i will continue that thread.

he believes that monogamy is radical on the basis that in queer culture it's not the norm. he doesn't like cruising culture that prioritises sexual gratification at the expense of broader and less personal goals. nor do i (despite partaking from time to time). but i don't think that non-monogamy is all about sex, or cruising, or sexual gratification at the expense of all else. for me it has been a useful method to explore bodies, intimacies, desire, and self. it's about being open, experimental, and yes, it's about being sexual. it's about reducing limits placed on the body and thereby falling into situations where you otherwise might not. situations where you learn valuable lessons about the culture you inhabit. (for me, anyway)

he seems to think that non-monogamy privileges sex as immensely important. i disagree. i prefer to think of sex as potentially mundane, something that we just do from time to time, like eating, bathing, drinking coffee, or masturbating. sometimes we want it and sometimes we don't. sometimes we do it because we want pleasure. there are different ways to do it, and different people with whom to do it with. alone, in the presence of another, in groups, online... anyway, surely to cordon this pleasure practice from all others, and to relegate it to the space of the couple 'at the exclusion of all others' is to suggest that sex is immensely important (and immensely private). surely the best way to de-privilege sex would be to avoid monogamy. it might also be the best way to de-stress the couple relationship (so that two people are not made exclusively responsible for each others' sexual happiness). i'd argue that a culture of monogamy (or attempted monogamy, as is often the case) is itself an example of the prioritisation of sex as a pleasure practice above all others.

i don't think this is comprehensible to him. he is staunch in his beliefs, much like me. he argues that non-monogamy is an individualist pursuit to control your own pleasures whereby sex is only ever about you and your body. but this argument does not stick. monogamy is also all about you in its subjective aligning of self with another. it is about constructing a new cellular identity in which you move between self (me) and the couple (us). that movement is ongoing because the self is never fully swallowed by the couple, yet i would argue that there's less room for other intimacies when involved in that particular dance. of course many intimacies belong to friendships, but monogamy can put a strain on these too, particularly when monogamy funnels itself into co-dependence.

and i guess that's a deeper (and personal) concern that i have - that i might find myself in that space once again.

as someone interested in collective politics, and the political possibilities of bodies and intimacy, i don't like the suggestion (or accusation) that my belief in non-monogamy is due to me being a self-focused individualist. rather, i believe that shared intimacies, made more possible by non-monogamy (whether sexual or otherwise) are powerfully disruptive to particular systems/regimes that feed into global misery. if you believe that traditional formulas of coupling, families, and property ownership are destructive (which i do), then avoiding (and dismantling) traditional regimes of love, patriarchy, and propriety seems key. and what better way to start than by saying yes to non-monogamy.

perhaps i'm less focused on pleasure than intimacy, and as we spoke about it more this morning, i found myself spiking a vein of my phd argument. my final chapter has the working title of 'pleasure', but in a sense, my goal is to rescue pleasure from sex. in sexual health discourse pleasure is constituted as risk because it's seen as an always potential corruption of health; a powerful force that one falls prey to. here, pleasure leads us blindly into unhealthy actions (eg. sex without a condom). but i'm arguing that pleasure stretches well beyond sex acts, into spaces of friendship. when we have sex and talk about it with friends, comparing notes etc, this too is a practice of pleasure. then there's the pleasure in health practices as well; that is, one's ongoing pursuit to control one's body. there's also pleasure in relinquishing control. i suggest there (and here) that pleasure is not purely sexual, nor is it always about momentary gratification (ie. do it now, think about it later). it's about setting boundaries as much as its about crossing them. it's about the ongoing negotiation of sharing time, intimacy, experiences and stories. it's amorphous. and to think that it lies at the core of the sex act (beyond all other action) is to support the idea that sex is the most important thing we have.

sex is mundane. my thesis is boring. but i guess i do think it's a conversation that needs to be had. but it's a difficult line to walk, because i'm not saying i think there's a freedom in talking about sex (the sexual confession does little but reinforce that sex is core to human existence). but i guess i'm saying that it would be nice to conceptualise sex differently (as mundane), and perhaps one of the nice side effects of this would be to make negotiations of 'sexual health' (or healthy and ethical sex) a little bit easier. perhaps.

and while things remain unresolved between 'us', i guess i can thank him for pushing me back into the headspace of my thesis. and also for the swift realisation that my thesis arguments are entwined with my bodily practices. once again, my sexual politics exceed 'me', and i find myself in an unexpected situation.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

homo-identity-phobia

is it wrong to not care about the little furore over the removal of gay posters in brisbane bus shelters? because i really couldn't give a fuck.

i guess what makes me care less (and also feel quite agitated), is that people are getting angry, emotional, and somewhat 'activist' over this. but it's a kind of activism that means you have to 'like' and 'post' rampantly on facebook. it's a sad activism. she who posts loudest is the one who feels the most, right?

and i'm annoyed that it's quite militant. and i'm (just a little bit) aware that my response might also be militant. fighting anger with anger.

like in many segments of the social world there really is no discussion here. you're either a redneck or a progressive. you have no choice not to be outraged or supportive of such devastating oppression. oh please!

as a man who fucks men i guess such ads are aimed at me. but i don't identify with these images; if anything i quite despise them. i don't need to see posters of two people in love while i'm waiting for the bus. i don't need to be reminded that 'my people' are a species that prioritises fucking. and i don't enjoy the gay poster boy aesthetics used by acon/qahc/vac. there's a certain brand of fag here, and it's not appealing to me at all. so sure, take the posters away, i don't mind. and maybe ask some questions about what's being marketed here. what does it mean to sell gay sexuality back to the gays?

what does it mean to sell (predominantly) white, clean, middleclass sexuality to the queers on the street? i'm not suggesting that i'm not these things; i am suggesting that these are not the standards that i wish to salute, protect, or even 'tolerate'. gay health advertising is not my favourite thing, so the more that posters are defaced and challenged (and rendered unsatisfactory), the better. but who has a moment to contemplate this amongst the shouts of homophobia?

an instantaneous politics of 'shut it down now' cannot have time to reflect on what's being sold by a dominant discourse of 'rights' and 'protection'. do we have the right to disagree? do i have a right not to care? must i always be a traitor? in a loud politics of victim vs. oppressor, where our sexual preferences (as in what we 'like') define our being, then maybe i can't be constructed any other way.