[lbo-talk] Re: Maoist cleanup drive hits Nepal gays

BklynMagus magcomm at ix.netcom.com
Mon Jan 8 10:00:16 PST 2007



> We are fiendishly clever in an animalistic, vulpine
sort of way.

No, it is more a self-protective cleverness -- an attempt to ward off the destabilizing reality of the sexual continuum.


> We lure the queers into a false sense of security

I think that is done unintentionally. Some non-queers sincerely believe in sexual liberation, but then place all sorts of qualifiers on it so that its chances of implementation are greatly reduced.

I remember when Karen Burstyn was running for Attorney General in New York as an out lesbian. All the polls had her ahead and then she lost by a mile. In the privacy of the voting booth, people expressed how they felt more honestly than they did when talking to a pollster.

Unlike other minoritizing traits, queerness cuts close to the bone. No one ever worries about waking up black if they are white or female if they are male, but since sexuality is a continuum upon which people fall, I believe that many people experience a low-grade anxiety that their non-queer status is vulnerable to shifting: sex talk is something best conducted under the cone of silence.

I think that once more non-queers embrace the reality of the mutable nature of their own sexuality, they will (hopefully) have a greater and more personal understanding of the need for sexual liberation and the protection of sexual rights. But just as a person cannot know hunger until she experiences it, the mutable nature of sexuality needs to be experienced and most non-queers live their sexual existence in comfortable, normative ruts.

Brian



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