Exploring our humanity and expression
Reading of the death
of Professor Leo Bersani
which occurred a few weeks ago at the age of 90, got me thinking of an area of
study defined as queer
theory that I have not before explored, yet on perusal suggests many of us
of a homosexual persuasion might have lived. To codify the lives of homosexuals
and sexuality in academic terms definitely makes for an essential area of
research. [Advocate:
Leo Bersani, Author on Gay Identity, Dies at Age 90]
Only recently, I was
reading up on Anti-LGBT
rhetoric which to many extents has been to those of the LGBT persuasion
lived rather than rhetorical, in discrimination, in ostracism, in queer bashing, sometimes
resulting in death, in legislation that delegitimises and dehumanises our
person in the pursuit of some nebulous family or culturally based ideal that
seeks to set us apart for repudiation and castigation.
The corruption of
conformity
Obviously, at once in
our suffering and then in our understanding, we are caught in a situation where
our difference from heteronormative structures set us up in conflict with family
and relations, in community and society as we seek to have a human voice to exist
in a humanity is more diverse than the conformity that is expected of us.
For instance, sex to
me has always been utilitarian for the simple reason that my first experience
of it was from the age of 7, the innocence I lost has had consequences and it
would not have mattered whether I grew up for be heterosexual, bisexual, or
homosexual, once that childhood naivety was given the fruit of the knowledge of
good and evil, my eyes, as much as anyone else exposed to child sexual abuse
were opened.
What at first seemed
coercive became immersive and the pleasure it provided was natural and
untainted by philosophy, religion, or morality. Sadly, the criminality of such
was rarely prosecuted, rather, it was hushed up in shame and embarrassment with
the hope that the child would outgrow the memory of it. They never do.
Understanding how
different we are
Then within the conflicts
of appreciating, understanding, and accepting one’s sexuality against the
requirements to present as ‘normal’, in that one should subsume sexuality for
the heteronormative and fulfil all the necessities of such.
This morning, on my
walking exercise, I thought about the many males from adolescence with whom
sexual relations have been explored who now deploy their heterosexuality in marriage,
procreation, and the profession of faith and creed that supports that existence
in their collective amnesia of the past. Grandfathers they are today even as
some preach the gospel in various forms.
Yet, as Leo Barsani
wrote in his 1987 essay, titled, Is
the Rectum a Grave? he lambasted as quoted in the Advocate article
referenced above, “the tendency among some gay activists to respond to AIDS by
downplaying their sexuality and emphasizing the need to replicate bourgeois
heterosexuality.” The point, we are not heterosexual, we have never been, we have to define ourselves as who we are, not in the context of others who have no idea of our lives. [Amazon:
Having sex without
angst
In that is the
tendency to rail against the apparent promiscuity of homosexuals, but
fundamentally, once we begin to understand that homosexuals are not governed by
heterosexual constructs and norms, we can also deconstruct the viewpoint of
seeing homosexuals only through the lens of sex, lifestyle, and inclination,
for we are just as valid an expression of our humanity that has existed from
the beginning of humankind.
What seems to dog the
homosexual is the tendency to want to ape the heteronormative, and so we read personals
that include straight-acting, moralising the concept of monogamy, even though
polygamy has defined many human relationship until it was morally and legally
constrained by recent Judeo-Christian hegemonies seeking to decide the use and
utility of sex, whilst removing from public knowledge the pleasure and enjoyment
of sex.
We are schooled to
think sex as nothing to derive any stimulation or pleasure from except for the
sake of procreation, yet, in our private places, we all know that sex is
considerably more pleasurable than we are told it is not.
A remembrance and
celebration of lives
Amongst us
homosexuals, the enjoyment of sex cut a swathe of death in our population with
AIDS for almost 20 years when we lost men in their prime at never nearly 40
into the mid-1990s and the AIDS Memorial Instagram
page speaks of lives of men who we have refused to forget, for What Is
Remembered Lives. We stopped enjoying sex, seized by fear and loathing, exacerbated
by bad faith actors depicting a human disaster as divine wrath. Yet, it is human
progress and advancements in medicine has contained this epidemic.
I lost a partner and many
friends, I mourn some still, though for the society I lived in, I mourned
alone, because until 1995 we had no effective long-term treatment and therapies
for HIV. I also was touched by the scourge of AIDS, I survived, and I am
grateful for the gift of life.
My AIDS encounter has
however not diminished my appetite for sex, for it is essentially part of human
nature and it is only those in denial that would suggest we do not have that
need. Our world presents us with exploration along with some caution and care,
but to become puritanical about sex is to censure human expression.
We were never the
same in outlook
When for the
heterosexual, it might define uniquely lifelong bonds, it would for the
homosexual be once of tryst to which you do not need to attach any emotion. It
is very possible to separate the act which is practically animal expression
from the higher human state of intelligence. That ability to compartmentalise
the functions of the physical, the body, the mind, and the heart, devoting the
right attention to the fleeting from the significant is something that probably
takes the mimicry of the heterosexuality out of homosexuality.
It does not mean we
do not understand commitment, it is just not predicated on sex, either through
objectification or deification, its utilitarian function is just that, and where
intimacy between partners is involved, there is a totally different dynamic at
play than when there are liaisons with strangers.
Through generations,
we have been on the margins of society, the only thing we have ever asked for
is not to be persecuted or prosecuted, to be able to live our lives equally as
part of our diverse humanity, contributing to the advancement of our
civilisation all around the world.
For that, we can be
grateful for the likes of Leo Barsani, Paul-Michel Foucault, James Baldwin, and many
more helping the discourse about sexuality and its full expression.
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