>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.
That is very strange because I don't recall him saying anything about this.
>My point is that "sex positive" or "erotophobic" are
>so undialectical as terms as to make them useless.
Are you elaborating on a point you made? Or, is what follows an elaboration of the sentence above? Or is that sentence just supposed to stand alone, convincing me?
>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?
I didn't read Y oshie. If it has her name in it, it goes in the trash. Hence, I didn't read Anthony's response. Now I've just searched the archives, but my patience waned. I cannot find anything in there about regimentation. if you could just give me the date/time/thread title of anthony's reply, I'll look it up.
Even so, I don't get the impression that he's into all this literary theorizing. Maybe Anthony doesn't know what it means to say that the body is a site of regimentation. Dunno. I'm not insulting him, no, b/c there are plenty of over edjamacated folks on this list that wouldn't know what the fuck it meant.
I would also suggest that even if A did mean to say that and did know what it meant, that maintaining that the body is a site of pleasure exclusive of regimentation does not mean he wants to build a political ontology on rimming or sexual positions or whatever. No, he'd be about as naive as Joanna if that were the case, but it doesn't follow that anything he's typed has suggested that he wants to build a political ontology on sexual positions, specifically rimming.
Nor do I think he's merely using this as an opportunity to crow about how advanced he is sexually.
>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).
Rubbish. No one here is demanding that sexuality/pleasure/whatever become THE 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 this what he did in this para: I am not saying that their main professed concerns about nonconsensual sexual acts and everyday boorishness about sex are not legitimate and worthy of action. (Indeed, as a working sex radical and a progressive, I share the very same concerns as they do about rape, abuse of children, coerced prostitution, and unwanted pregnancy, particularly among adolescents.) Where I part company with the erotophobic Left (and their allies on the Right and Center), however, is in their conclusions that suppression and censorship of consensual erotic expression and behavior is the ideal solution. I also take great exception with their viewpoint that the erotic medium is inherently oppressive to humankind (especially to women), and that all men who view the erotic medium are automatically predisposed to acts of violence and/or beliefs of subordination toward others.
Or the following paragraph where he argues that sex positive 'theories' could be advanced and strengthened by sound left analyses? I read something like that call for more left analysis of sex/uality and figure he's talking about political economy, class analysis. and stuff like that.
>is impossibly vague. According to Freud, eating
>fruit is sexual--does that make me an erotophobe for wanting to stop
>production of GM bananas?
The bogeys that you see! They are everywhere Christian. We must bust them!
I'm no more fond of those who spend their time suggesting that transgression is where it's at than you are. I bitched at Annalee and others for this for years at Bad Subjects. But, I think you're reading an incredible amount into this conversation that simply isn't there. You gotta problem with people who say the above, then have at them, but no one here has said any of the above to you.
You sounded reasonable in your first response to this thread but then started seeing as many bogeys as Anthony sees here. You're both talking to people who really aren't here on this list.
Kelley
Who Ya Gonna Call? BogeyBusters!