Identity Politicking Part I

Tuesday in my History of Sexuality class, I had to introduce the day’s reading and give some points for us to talk about. The selections were under the heading “Sexology/Perversions” and came from Sexuality Ed. by Nye and Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. I prepared two main points knowing full well that in all likelihood the first would be met with quiet diffidence.
The first point I raised concerned an excerpt by Sander Gilman taken from his book Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. This excerpt, I noted, was the first selection we have read this semester in which sexuality was racialized. Gilman introduces the idea that in the 19th c. we began to view sexuality as occurring in progressive stages. This inherently racist evolutionary worldview reinforces the system of Cartesian binaries (under which we still operate) in which the white European male is seen as the most advanced stage and the black woman is seen as the primitive stage. Thus a binary is set up between self (white) and other (black) in which the Other is seen to embody the lower more primitive type. This, of course, is a paradigm which continues today. For further investigation in which the man continues to exploit and profit off of fantasies of the hypersexualized black person see Byron Hurt's documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes or simply look around you and pay attention.
To my professor’s credit, he was very excited that I had raised this point, encouraged me to speak further, and tried to provoke the class to join in the discussion. However, as I predicted, we were met with a sea of placid speechless white faces and my black friend on my right staring down into her notebook. Of course, it is not the responsibility of the two sole people of color to take up the topic and preach to a bunch of disaffected white liberal arts kids so I hold no ill will for her silence. Especially since as of late I have been too tired to speak up and out in class as well. As one of my mentors once said, “I get tired of educating whiteness.”
So I moved on to my second train of thought in which I recapped another overarching theme of the readings. In the 19th c., we witness the advent of sexology and hence the medicalization of sexuality. Instead of religion defining the correct way to have sex (heterosexual missionary procreative married) we now have sexology. Not surprisingly, medicine was in collusion with the Judeo-Christian ethic in terms of the proper way to relate sexually to one another. Therefore, previous sinful sexual acts were now medically defined as perversions. Not only that, but those who practiced these acts were classified and identified as perverts. (There were some exceptions of course as Krafft-Ebing explained. According to him, depending on what led up to the perverse act(s) one could be classified as a dyed in the wool perv or not. He wrote: “In order to differentiate between disease (perversion) and vice (perversity), one must investigate the whole personality of the individual and the original motive leading up to the perverse act.”) Thus began the process of sexual behavior defining ones identity and therefore step one in identity politics as identities were formed by the so- called perverts (see also homosexuals, masochists, sadists, etc) around these classifications in resistance to the power held by the medical establishment.
What is also interesting about this moment in history is the shift from so much attention and analyzation of hetero married relations to a sole focus on the classification and specification of perversions. Suddenly, “legitimate couples”, as Foucault calls them, have more right to privacy and discretion. I see this continually manifested today in terms of the ways in which desire is codified and negotiated within the queer community. (Tops, Bottoms, Switches, Bottoms, Daddies, Ponies, etc, etc.) Moreover, in the ways in which straights will not even hesitate to ask us who puts what where and who gets on top, in such a way as they would never off handedly question a fellow straight person or expect a queer to ask of them as if they had some sort of right to this information. I find it so odd and not at all enviable that there is such a silence concerning what straights actually do. Outside the realm of kinky sex or BDSM there doesn’t seem to be any explicit declaration of which sex acts one prefers or what end one would prefer to be on and certainly there is no identity formed around these preferences, as if “straight” covers the entire plausible expression of sexuality in terms of what happens between hetero lovers. Honestly, I don’t know how heteros who like the same kind of sex manage to find each other. I’ve had a total of one straight identified male-bodied lover with whom I really got on with sexually.
Although I have a problematic relationship with identity politics – I’m not so sure that I want the sum total of my being determined by what I like sexually- however there needs to be a way of identifying and negotiating desire that will facilitate pleasure more easily for everyone. I am all about bringing the hanky codes back. Even for straights. C’mon guys, let’s all get in on the fun!