But the thread has reemerged with a vengeance after Nathan posted his piece. In the throw-away line of his posting, with his reference to the classic line 'the personal is the political,' he unwittingly pointed to a important issue which lies at the center of feminist and gay/lesbian politics. It is precisely the literal, absolutist reading of that precept which 'authorizes' much of what is wrong in this 'over-exposure' of Sullivan.
Take Kelley's defense of her position against Nathan:
>this isn't about gossip but about the rhetorical use of naturalized sex
>and sexuality and it was, when i raised the barebacking issue, an attempt
>to have an adult conversation about sex panic politics and safer sex
>campaigns. there was no attempt to talk about some one person's private
>life, nathan.
This is too transparent for words. Kelley was not responding to an essay by Sullivan, in which he publicly advocated "naturalized sex," a case which had to be critiqued in terms of issues of safer sex and other important public goods. Far from it. Rather, she has jumped in, with some consider relish and gusto, if not glee, in pontificating about the moral failings of the private, informed and consensual acts of Sullivan, acts which are now public only because his privacy was violated for malicious political purposes. We have railing against a 'sexual ideology' which is nothing more than a private preference, exercised only in a private context. At least most folks who tarry with the subject just admit that they find pleasure in salacious gossip, which is a pretty harmless vice as vices go, but Kelley insists that her comments have a higher, more noble political purpose.
I think Nathan is right to draw the connection between the Sullivan case and passing on Supreme Court justices. By way of example, IMHO, the reason why Clarence Thomas did not belong on the US Supreme Court was (1) he was eminently _un_qualified by any reasonable professional standard, and (2) his judicial philosophy was extraordinarily reactionary, hostile to rights and equality for women, people of color, labor and gays and lesbians. It had nothing to do with his penchant for watching pornography, or his offensive attempts at off-color humor in the workplace setting. I have no doubt that Anita Hill told the truth; but I don't believe that her account was what should have been the issue in proceedings of Thomas' fitness to sit on the Supreme Court and make decisions which impact on our rights on a daily basis.
The personal is _not_ political, if what we mean by _is_ in this formulation [yes, the formulation is self-conscious] follows its common misunderstanding as a relationship of identity, of one-ness, of a singularity. The notion that the personal is the political in this sense is a profoundly totalitarian notion, the total colonization of the 'personal sphere' by the political sphere, the total eradication of any space in which a person can exercise personal choice and preference free of political, public norms, regulations and law. Every personal act is a political act, and thus, subject to political inspection, evaluation and judgment. Even personal thought and fantasy itself become the subject of the political confessor: just as the Catholic Church constructs a sin of 'impure' thoughts, one has 'politically correct' fantasies. Fantasies constructed around, let us say, a 'natural' sexuality are reactionary, and must not be indulged, but battled and purged.
However one wants to conceptually construct and understand a sphere of personal autonomy, a sphere of privacy outside of the appropriate purview of the public, be it via some fiction of original [natural] rights, as the classical liberal philosophers did, or as a simple social construction and product of social consensus, in a more pragmatist vein, or just as a necessary legal category in a liberal constitutional state, its existence and protection is essential to placing limits on the power of the state, to ensuring individual rights and to the promotion of a healthy political and cultural pluralism.
The personal _is_ the political only when we understand by _is_ a relationship of articulation, of reciprocal influence, shaping and pertinence -- one might say a dialectical combination, not a simple unity, although not runs the danger of its own misinterpretations. Our personal and sexual lives are profoundly interconnected with the public world, and we need to understand those relationships of interconnection. Sexual politics involve the reconfiguration, the re-negotiation of the boundaries of public and private, political and personal -- not their abolition or collapse. What was once a matter of public law, such as the very acts of interracial sex or gay/lesbian sex, are reconstituted as perfectly legitimate choices within a pluralist, democratic culture and society, and what was once a matter of personal whim, such as spousal abuse, becomes a matter of public law. Feminists and gay/lesbian activists seek an articulation of private and public based on the equality of men and women, and on the equality of different sexual orientations. That is an altogether different notion from the idea that we need to enter into the very substance of sexual fantasy and practice, and establish and enforce a singular norm of what constitutes 'politically correct' sex -- which would, at least as far as Kelley is concerned -- leave out such 'incorrect' practices as sex without condoms between two men.
Leo Casey
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