the anti sex left

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Wed Oct 23 09:11:09 PDT 2002


On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 20:36:03 -0400 Kelley <jimmyjames at softhome.net> wrote:


> ok. so who on this list is actually arguing for
sexual positions as political ontology. because that was, after all, your claim: _This_ discussion is about orifice fashion: I'm for rimming and proud of it! Let's build a political ontology!

Well, Anthony, for one. My point is that "sex positive" or "erotophobic" are so undialectical as terms as to make them useless. Anthony said in response to Yoshie that the body isn't a "site of regimentation but of pleasure and desire" (or something like that)--that's a perfect example. So what does that mean? That if the body is a site of pleasure it isn't also a site of regimentation? Or, more likely, as is the fashion, that it _exceeds_ regimentation?

That maybe true "ontologically," but it's a crappy political argument because it reifies "pleasure" or whatever (orifice, desire, subreption, take your pick of the hot, counter-regulatory fantasy- terms) as the ground of counter-political identity (even while appearing not articulate a ground of anything). So you get to have it both ways. But to call someone erotophobic b/c they aren't crazy about NAMBLA or b/c they look at the way that sexual fantasy is itself produced by class identities, etc. (i.e. there is no fully conscious sexual "choice") is impossibly vague. According to Freud, eating fruit is sexual--does that make me an erotophobe for wanting to stop production of GM bananas?

Christian



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