Jon Pollard points out an article by Will Self from Friday’s Independent, The love that will not shut up.
“…while we think of “gay” as an adjective applied to people, historically same-sex loving has not been perceived as being an attribute — essential or otherwise — of persons, but rather purely functionally. Taking the long-term view, gay is as gay does. Interestingly, this more entrenched perception of same-sex loving seems to have come full circle in the contemporary use of “gay” among teenagers, for whom it’s an all-purpose pejorative. My 12-year-old uses “gay” the way that I and my contemporaries used “naff”…
Both Jon and Ian from Blogadoon have (as yet unstated) misgivings about the piece, but I think it’s an brave attempt to deal with a problem inherent in the language used to discuss sexuality – with the emphasis on ‘attempt’ – and when a wordsmith of Self’s obvious (not to say ostentatious!) abilities has problems with language, what hope is there for most of the rest of us? Still, here’s a few thotz, recklessly advanced…
‘Gay’ has been, and continues to be a label for individuals to cling to, as they grow into a realisation that their sexuality isn’t quite how it’s described (or prescribed) in the brochures. As is the way with self-adopted labels, there is eventually an uneasy balance to be struck between the comfort (or sense of belonging) such labels provide and the inevitable distinctions they make between people “like us” and “not like us”.
Here’s a passage from a story called “Burning Sky” by Rachel Pollack (from Semiotext(e) SF), that I like to roll out on such occasions as these:
And so I left the City of Civilised Sex in one great rush on the back of a skindiver. Now that she’d preserved her record Louise lost interest very quickly, but at least she gave me some leads to “your kind of trick” as she delicately put it. I didn’t know whether she meant the lovers or the activities.
I discovered not only a large reservoir of women devoted to farfetched sexual practices, but several organizations, complete with buttons, slogans, jackets and conflicting manifestoes. After a while they all began to strike me as rather odd, not just for their missionary zeal, but their hunger for community. Had I left the City only to emigrate to another nation-state?
It wasn’t so much the social as the sexual conformity that disturbed me. Everyone seemed to agree head of time on what would excite them. I began to wonder if all those people in the Land of Leather really liked the same sort of collar (black with silver studs) or if each new arrival, thrilled at finding a town where she’d expected only a swamp, confused gratitude with eroticism, and gave up her dreams of finding leather clothes and objects of exactly the right colour, cut and texture.
As my imagination began to show me its tastes I became more and more specific with the women who tried to satisfy me. That first night with Louise she could have tied me up with a piece of filthy clothesline and I wouldn’t have complained. A few months later I was demanding the right ropes (green and gold curtain pulls with the tassle removed) tied only in particular knots taken from the Boy Scout Handbook.
And even that phase didn’t last. For, in fact, it’s not actions that I’m hunting. No matter how well you do them they can only approximate reality. City dwellers believe that fantasies exist to intensify arousal. Out here in the Territories the exiles should know better. I want to stand on a tree stump and yell through the forest, “Stop trying to build new settlements. Stop trying to to clear the trees and put up walls and lay down sewers”. I want them to understand. Sex exists to lay traps for fantasies…
It’s useful and comforting, of course, to have something to belong to in the context of a culture which militates against difference; a label “helps”, up to a point, but it ultimately becomes another exclusive club which actually reinforces cultural/political divisions, rather than breaking them down – which is where they come in very handy for people who seek to gain political capital from cultural distinctions, whether from the so-called “inside” (as with your standard issue fundamentalist bigot) or from the so-called “outside” (as with your standard issue tenured professor of Queer Studies) and where they become extremely problematic for those of us with more… anarchistic leanings.
Okay, let me just put on my flame-resistant trousers, here… now then, who fancies undertaking a similar critique of the word “feminist”…? Anyone?
