The following blogs were produced after 2 months of inactivity from my research. Inactivity may be unfair to say as I was reading several books, but I was reading more to read rather than to apply the knowledge into an academically structured product. The two following blogs are dated 1/5/2022 and 1/20/2022. I thought I would just take you all along on a journey of my research because It has challenged me in several ways and has been an overall fruitful experience- even If I fail to create a final synthesis. Maybe, in honor of the queerness of it all, I don't want a finished synthesis. This project is ongoing; never ending; cannot be complete.
1/5/2022
I want to write more. I don’t know if anything I have to say will be worth reading by anyone else but me, but this is the first hurdle I have to overcome. I am constantly thinking about writing for others. Write for myself. I’m worried that my writing will just be information regurgitation. Do I have any original thoughts? I don’t know. I do know that I will not find out if I don’t write. Let this/these pages be the record for my (no) thoughts.
Where to start? What to do? Of course I have my fellowship topic- wild studies- wherein I am researching the ways in which the United State’s (Military) is penetrating the wild so as to control that which is wild. In other words, the United States through its vast military spending, neoliberal agenda, and individualistic culture, is destroying that which is wild through various processes of subjugation which ultimately control the wild. Sexual and Identity politics and ascriptions are wound up in these subjugation processes. Nay, they form the crucial centerpiece for which other mechanisms of control gather (circulate) around.
I’ll start with talking about the most recent book I finished, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men by Jane Ward. The book’s aim- for which I believe Ward did accomplish- was to argue that homosexuality is essential for bonding between heterosexual white men. For instance, Ward critically analyzed several settings that are ripe with (homo)sexual hazing rituals: fraternities, the US military, biker gangs (the Hell’s Angels), and public restrooms. While others have also noted the prevalence of homosexual sex acts between the men that occupy these spaces, these same researchers ascribe exceptionalizing scripts that work to explain away the potential eroticism between the men. As one example, an exceptionalizing script for homosexual sex acts in the military is a lack of access to women. Therefore, military (white) men, and their intense biological need for sex, have no where to turn but to other men for sexual gratification and release. Ward departs from these researchers and argues that these homosexual acts are not devoid of eroticism- but also not devoid of humiliation, disgust, and violence. In fact, the erotic potential of these homosexual acts between straight white men is essential to their heterosexual constitution. Constitution, the idea that one is born with a specific, unchangeable proclivity towards sexual object choice (different or same object, or both). Thus, the more bound to the idea of possessing a (hetero)sexual constitution the straight white man is, the more leniency he is given to engage in homosexual sex acts among his fellow white man- and feel pleasure in engaging among these homosexual acts. At the end of the day, he knows that he is straight, and the rest of the world will believe him.
Now, of course, Ward is attentive to the racial politics wound up in this homosexual sex between straight men. Which is why Ward makes it very apparent that homosexual sex between straight men is definable as “Not Gay” is and only if it is between white men. Ward draws on the historical linking between sexual fluidity and black/African Americans, and the surveillance of, specifically, black male sexuality. This is to say that black male sexuality is always under suspect, ascribed as wild, and if he does engage in homosexual sex acts accused of lying about his sexual identity. Furthermore, black males (and females of course) are fetishized in black-white sexual engagements. For homosexual sex specifically, this fetishization often takes the form of a master-slave role reversal: the black, muscular male dominates- and punishes with his penis and whip- the skinny, small white male. This role reversal further plays on the fetishization of black male bodies and penises (think how often we hear of the BBC- “Big Black Cock”- but rarely of the BWC- “Big White Cock”).
1/20/2022
Let’s see. I just finished All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks. I have begun to read Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. I have begun to realize in my life that I am reading for pleasure. I am reading the things I want to read as opposed to the things I believe are necessarily or beneficial to my research. Of course I wonder how I can bridge this new passion for reading what I want to read to my research, and thus make research a part of the passion. Right now, I have 0 interest to uphold the standards I have set because, maybe, my research doesn’t interest me. What is it about these books that I love? Let’s start with All About Love. Firstly, I love how hooks wrote (RIP). It is accessible- not bogged down in the citational mandates of “scholarly” research. This is not to say that hooks did not cite. Rather, she would not list off page numbers or compile a long bibliography. When she did speak of other works, she would, of course, tell where she got the information from and use quotes if necessary, but such specific citational devices- page numbers, publication dates, a recitation of the author- bogged down the flow of writing and more often than naught, distracted from what hooks was writing. This is nothing to say on the content of the book. The second reason I loved All About Love is that it was a mandate for us to actively love- to see love as a verb. Furthermore, hooks advocate a call for forgiveness, one that, though was meant to help ourselves love more and better, was empathetic to those we are forgiving. This is to say that forgiveness is a dual modem of empathetic love towards and from the self, to another. This kind of love engenders an atmosphere of accountability. Lastly, we cannot love others if we do not love ourselves. Love can be full of feeling but it is not originated from or just a feeling. To make love (all) about feeling- as opposed to active, intentional- is cathartic: a site of relief that devalues the humanity and agency of the object of love.