"heterosexual"/"homosexual" (was Re: debates was guilty / innocent was debates)

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Oct 19 09:09:32 PDT 2000


In message <SIMEON.10010190953.A at kenneth.utoronto.ca>, kenneth.mackendri ck at utoronto.ca writes
>
>On Thu, 19 Oct 2000 03:10:03 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
>> as well as categories "heterosexual," "homosexual," "bisexual," etc., will
>become obsolete
>
>Departure for Mars and Venus, leaving in 15 minutes. Go figure. The moment the
>"queer as fuck" movement begins to demand subjectivity and rights, their
>categories get flushed.

Mars and Venus seem like the best places for the categories heteosexual, homosexual and so on, both mythologically and in space.

But I take Ken's point that one wouldn't want to abolish homosexuality on the basis of denying it, only to remove the oppression concomitant upon its characterisation. In that way we could never truly transcend the distinction but on the basis of realising it.

Marx got into similar difficulties raising the demand 'abolish the wages system' on a demonstration for higher pay. His intention was to show that even increased wages would leave us wage slaves, but it was easy to misconstrue the demand, as in 'you're not abolishing my wages!'.

-- James Heartfield



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