Hair Club for Men

Finally remembered to post the fifth and final musical détournement in my series on gender construction and socialization through the media.



Please support The Presets and Van She by purchasing this track through iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/are-you-one-van-she-tech-n.y.c./id200303697?i=200303719

This is my fifth musical détournement involving gender and the media, and the final in this series. This one is an investigation of the ties between hair and male virility, from the classical and biblical periods to today. It is a critique of consumer culture's attempts to play upon male insecurities and sell imagined masculinity.

The images and sounds in this video are the properties of the copyright holders. I mean in no way to infringe on their rights. The content is used solely for the purposes of criticism.

Teeth

It's not a film parody. It's a parody of a reading of film... the dominant, feminist psychoanalytical reading of horror films, steeped in good old fashioned Freudian castration anxiety. It's the Sarlacc pit from whence issues the laugh of Cixous. Zero point, where the pleasure principle meets the death drive.

I learned about this film from a former student, Mark Borison, who recognized the discussion we were having in my Horror Film course about vagina dentatae.

"Jon-Erik Hexum: A Brief Tale in Three Parts"

I. Patrick

I’m trying to jerk off to her Duran Duran poster, but there’s just so much goddamned make-up and hairspray on those guys. I mean, I may as well be trying to beat off to the airbrushed cover of one of the old man’s Oui magazines that he keeps tucked away in the rafters of the garage. I found them while snooping around at age seven and became disinterested just as quickly when I discovered them to suffer from severe dick deficiency. Every once in a while, though, I still climb up there and peek in on them, like you would your grandmother laying comatose in a nursing home, just to make sure she’s still there. You know, to see if there have been any new developments. There haven’t. Maybe he’s forgotten that those musty old sluts are up there. I’m sure he has forgotten about Gran.

God, I’m distracted. I wish Kimberly would forget that I’m here.

She’s been in the bathroom for a good twenty minutes now, I can only assume wrestling with a slippery diaphragm or something. My eyes close and a vision of her in the bathroom crystallizes before me, one newly-shaven leg planted up on the sink like she’s airing out something that she left in the rain overnight. The spermicidal jellyfish slips out of her fingers onto the dirty tiled floor. She picks it up, covered in newly-trimmed pubes, and shimmies it in.

This certainly isn’t helping, so I shove that little horror movie vignette out of my head and I pull more fervently. Concentrate. David. Oh, yeah. Lee. That’s it. Roth. Now I’m firming up in my hand. Concentrate.

“Boy, you sure are excited.”

I flinch, my eyes springing open like a window shade in a Saturday morning cartoon. Adjusting to the light coming into the room from the open bathroom door, I can’t really see because of the sparkles swimming in my vision from clenching my eyes. A blurry, nude silhouette is framed in orange fluorescent light. Jon-Erik Hexum.

“What did you say?”

Even in silhouette, she looks nothing like him. But I’m desperate now.

“Did you just say Jon-Erik Hexum?” She laughs and jumps on the bed next to me.

Did I? Out loud? She pushes my hand out of the way and takes hold of my again-limp hog. I gasp, more shock than pleasure.

I squint and turn back to Duran Duran. They’re better lit now as the bathroom light splashes them like a stage spotlight. They still look like women. Like middle-aged women in a hair salon style book. Even the drummer, and he’s the only one remotely resembling a dude on one of their best days.

God, she’s slinging it around like she’s trying to twirl a drumstick over her head.

I manage to bleat out “I said, ‘Can we have some music?’” and feel the release of pressure as she unhands me. Suddenly, she’s in the floor behind me, recklessly shuffling through LP’s. A pause.

“Duran Duran?”

“WHAT? NO! God no!”

“But Steve said you loved them,” a tiny, disappointed, girlish whine at the displeasure of this bit of possible misinformation from her older brother. 

His reaction, when I told him this lie after practice, was: “So does my sister, Kimberly. Come out with Danielle and me tomorrow night and I’ll bring her.”

It’s obviously not why I told Steve that I was into them, and now I am not so sure I am. All-male band, somewhat effeminate, with full wet lips, who ask plaintively, “Is there something I should know?” Yes, Steve. There is. You should know that I’m into cock. And if the way things are going so far with your sister, Kimberly, are any indication, I am still sure of that.

Even though he didn’t get the fuck-me message I was shining brighter than the bat-signal, it resulted in a night out with him, away from school, and I was not gonna pass it up. Never mind that they were with us the whole time—his girlfriend, Danielle, and sister, Kimberly. As I survey the glossy lithograph of the band, straining against the yellowed cellophane tape affixing it to the pink bedroom wall, it strikes me that his girlfriend bears an uncanny resemblance to the guitarist.

Jesus, I just can’t look at these guys anymore. So I turn my head to look at sister, Kimberly. “Not Kim. Never Kim.” I watch her naked 13-year-old-boy body squatting over a pile of LPs. There is nothing sexy about it. I prop my head up on my arm and look closer, inspect, really, her mole-speckled ass. I glimpse her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall in front of her and my attention is drawn to the roast-beef-sandwich-of-a-thing hovering over her records… like it’s surveying them, trying to decide for her.

I begin to superimpose on it diagrams from freshman-year health class that I had committed to memory for multiple choice exams. Where in all those folds of skin do you put your penis? I cross-reference these with half-imagined glimpses of the Oui photo spreads my father had at some point used to pleasure himself. Is that the clitoris?

I had better remember fast. That thing looks like it’s about to make its mind up on a music selection and then it’s going to turn its rapturous attention toward me. I should just do it. And do it right.I bet the walls of her vagina are tight, constrictive. I may even bring her to orgasm. Maybe even make her ejaculate.

Nope. That kind of talk is too clinical, academic. It’s not working, though my free hand is. Furiously. At my dick trying to bring it back to life.

What made Steve think that I would be a good match for her? It couldn’t have just been the poppy, British New Romantic music. My eyes clench again. Even tighter this time.

Sting.

In Dune.

She’s grown impatient with her record collection, I hear with a harrumph, followed by her walking across the room and flipping on the FM receiver. static. The Pretenders. static. Fabulous Thunde—static. The Police. Oh God. Leave it here. She does. And I’m firming up again.

I open my eyes to find her bald cunt staring me right in the face, I mean right at eye level at the edge of her bed. Her clit, at least I think that’s what it is, points at me accusingly, as if to say, “I know what you are.”

How did I end up here, peering into her womb?

I’m pretty sure I smell gin. And I am nowhere near her breath.

A terrifying thought thrusts its way into my flaccid mind: What if I miss and it goes in her urethra? Is that even possible? It can’t be good. I can’t do this. There’s just nothing to work with down there.

My brain’s performing even more poorly than my hog, but I manage to ask “Got any grass?”

“Grass?” she repeats, drawing the word out.

“You know, marijuana.”

“I know what you mean. Just who calls it that? Are you from the sixties?” She’s clearly impatient now. Her tone is surprising, considering just how much she seems to want to fuck my brains out, “No. Steve usually does, but I don’t think he’s coming back from Danielle’s…”

“Where’s he keep it?”

“His closet. But he might have taken...”

“Let’s check,” I’m already digging around in her A-ha sheets to find my briefs.

“He doesn’t like me being in his room-- anyone in his room. And he’s gonna be pissed if we smoke up his pot.”

“You just said he won’t be back,” there’s no talking me out of it. Now, I have to be in his room… his bed… his underwear drawer. I’ve pulled my own underclothes on and throw Kimberly my white, button-down shirt, “Here.” Cover up that accusatory, gin-soaked, music-loving pile of medium-rare roast beef.

But now, even though it’s hidden behind my one good shirt, I still can’t get the image of it out of my head.

“Awwww,” she’s admiring herself in the mirror, stroking the collar of my shirt at her neck and fingering the embroidered monogram.

I am up and at her bedroom door, “Where’s his room?”

Third musical détournement on gender and media

Please support Fake Blood by purchasing this track through iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/air...

The latest album, Cells, is also available through iTunes:https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/cel...

This is my third musical détournement involving gender and the media. This one is a critique of advertising's role in manufacturing "standards" of feminine beauty and socializing children into them.

It's make-up ads and toy commercials from the 1950s through the 1980s.

The images and sounds in this video are the properties of the copyright holders. I mean in no way to infringe on them. The content is used solely for the purposes of criticism.

Musical Détournement II

Please support The Black Ghosts and Switch by purchasing this track through iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/switch-remixes-ep/id472535698

This is my second musical détournement involving gender and the media. This one is a critique of irrational phallic fear, a field of responses developed in reaction to images of transgressive gender positions.

The images and sounds in this video are the properties of the copyright holders. I mean in no way to infringe upon them. The content is used solely for the purposes of criticism.

Possibility of legal polygamy thanks to same-sex marriage opponents

My clever and creative roommate, Freddy, in the course of discussing my project has determined that, due to same-sex marriages not being recognized in every state, in certain circumstances polygamy can technically be legal. That requires a bit of a qualifier, however, in that there are conditions under which bigamy is technically legal and illegal simultaneously. This is really an exercise in logic, or more precisely, the illogicality of not universally recognizing marriage between same-sex partners across every state of our fine union. His argument goes like this:

A same-sex couple marries one another in a state in which their union is legally recognized. They then travel to another state, possibly their home state, in which same-sex marriage, even that performed elsewhere, is not recognized. Their union, from a legal perspective, is null—it never even took place in the eyes of the state. Now that their union is void, one or both are free to marry, in this state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, an opposite-sex partner.

While illegal in the states that recognize same-sex marriage, this second, opposite-sex union would be the only legal marriage in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex unions. The relationship, then, is both legal (in some states) while simultaneously illegal (in others).

In order for this paradox to occur, the marriages have to take place in this order. Because opposite-sex marriages are recognized throughout the U.S., if already in one first, you can’t marry someone else of either sex. The same-sex marriage must be first.

Of course, this argument hinges on a state’s legal wording for conditions under which opposite-sex marriage can occur. It also hinges on the interaction of federal law with these state laws. However, if it is the federal government’s policy to allow states to determine the legal definitions of marriage for that state, then it should not interfere in state matters of opposite-sex marriage, either.

Anyway, I am no legal expert, so if anyone reads this and has a reason why it would not work, please respond. I would like to know the viability of this argument.

The Work of Felix Gonzales-Torres (1957-1996) as Discursive Critique

Untitled (Perfect Lovers) 1991

           In his revisionist history of homosexuality in America in the 1970s, Beyond Shame:  Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality, Patrick Moore deals with the legacy of that period’s greater visibility for homosexuality as it ripples through the social, artistic, and political institutions of the 1980s, 1990s, and today.  In the book, Moore details what he sees as a systematic posthumous erasure of the sexuality of gay artists in the ever-developing art-historical and art-critical discourse.  Citing Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) as one example of a deceased gay artist whose oeuvre is currently undergoing such erasure, Moore blames the artist for not being vocal enough about his sexuality during his life and thus creating a market-oriented legacy that increasingly hides the artist’s sexual identity.  He implies that Gonzalez-Torres was not open in interviews about having AIDS or having a partner who died of AIDS because of shame and fear.[1]  This criticism of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his work is very short-sighted in that it does not fully take into account the nature of the work and the aims of Gonzalez-Torres’ project of discursive and institutional critique.

Gonzalez-Torres engaged in a kind of subterfuge, creating visually-pleasing works that appropriated form and technique from several traditions, including Duchampian readymade, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, to express subjects and sentiments firmly rooted in the artist’s sexual identity.  Whereas artists like Robert Mapplethorpe created confrontational images that explicitly pushed gay sexuality out from behind closed bedroom doors into the public eye, Gonzalez-Torres wanted to “trick” the art world into accepting such sexuality unbeknownst to most.  A larger art-going public will more readily accept “beautiful,” non-controversial objects into the museum or gallery institution setting based solely on their superficial aesthetic level; meanwhile, the gay artist “sneaks in” his accompanying social and political agenda, like a Trojan horse, embodied in often-idyllic, even saccharine forms.  Some critics, like Moore, might argue that this is just making excuses for the artist and his at-times closeted public persona, trying to inject sexual identity where it was not intended by the artist but should have been.  However, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ own words reveal his agenda:

I want to be like a virus that belongs to the institution.  All the ideological apparatuses are… replicating themselves, because that’s the way culture works.  So if I function as a virus, an imposter, an infiltrator, I will always replicate myself together with those institutions.

- Felix Gonzalez-Torres[2]

Patrick Moore need only have looked closely at the artist’s own words, such as those excerpted above, and a small but significant body of literature dealing with his project of discursive critique to understand Gonzalez-Torres’ approach to dealing with sexual identity in his art-making.

Untitled 1991

            For example, while still an M.A. candidate in Art History at Washington University in St. Louis, Elliott Zooey Martin published an essay on Gonzalez-Torres’ investigation of the public and private spheres in his work.  In “Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the Interrogation of the Public Sphere,” Martin restates the artist’s questioning of a clear division, as has been often institutionally imposed, between “public” and “private” and details his utilization of Minimalist techniques to expose the inconsistencies within that discourse.[3]   Gonzalez-Torres appropriated forms of public address, such as advertising billboards or even the public art museum, in order to “broadcast” images of an intimate nature, showing the arbitrary line between the two.  His billboards depicting a bed and two pillows with near-identical indentations where heads once rested reiterate the very public nature (through legislation discriminating against homosexual activities or same-sex marriages, for example) of a once-assumed private realm:  the bedroom.

            Similarly, Suzanne Perling Hudson tackles Gonzalez-Torres’ critique of the complex interrelationship between art and criticism in her essay, “Beauty and the Status of Contemporary Criticism,” which was published in October while she was still a doctoral student at Princeton University.  Hudson identifies a certain tendency in artistic production of the past couple of decades, along with its attendant counterpart in criticism—a “return of the aesthetic,” as she phrases it:

Beauty, that most conciliatory of philosophical rubrics and justifications, is back with a vengeance, while beautiful writing about beautiful objects and their beautiful makers additionally denotes the triumph of academic philosophy as well as the democratization of the no-longer autonomous and privileged realm of the aesthetic.[4]

Hudson argues that Gonzalez-Torres was able to subvert a critical and moral backlash against his AIDS-activist art by cloaking his work in beauty during a period of art discourse when work was being valued for its aesthetic merits, rather than its meaning.  Continually making reference in the essay to the inextricable relationship between the artist’s sexual consciousness and his art regardless of the surface appearance of that art, Hudson disproves Moore’s claim of erasure of Gonzalez-Torres’ sexual identity from art-historical discourse.

            It is clear in the article that Hudson recognizes Felix Gonzalez-Torres as strategically working within systems of institutionalized power, such as the museum, commercial printing, or mainstream advertising billboards, in order to appropriate them for his own purposes.  This process reflects the artist’s knowledge of the writings of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), one of the originators of contemporary discursive critique.  For Foucault, power is not something exerted from an external source in order to oppress, but a complex interrelated web of relationships that require manipulation from within.  Many of Foucault’s writings chronicle the development of social and political institutions such as medical clinics and prisons, reveal how those institutions dominate the flow of discourse, and uncover the relationships of power inherent in each.  Gonzalez-Torres read Foucault, a fellow homosexual intellectual who died from an AIDS-related illness, passionately and the French philosopher’s theories can be found at the heart of the later, Cuban-born artist’s project.

Untitled (America) 1994

            In general, though, writings of a more art-critical nature eschew discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work in favor of surveys of formal consideration and technique, with only casual mention of the artist’s sexuality, if at all.  For example, Robert Storr’s article “Setting Traps for the Mind and Heart,” published in Art in America around the time of the artist’s death, never refers to “institutional analysis” or “discursive analysis.”  It is not clear in his writing if Storr even recognizes the artist as having engaged in such an approach with his work.  Rather, Storr attempts to anchor the artist within established artistic traditions, most notably Minimalism, in order to authenticate and legitimize the work.[5] 

Jan Avgikos’ article “This is My Body,” published in Artforum in 1991 relies on a similar survey strategy tying Gonzalez-Torres to the Minimalist lineage, and yet is very forthright about the artist’s sexual orientation.  She, in fact, sees the artist and others of his generation working in the legacy of Minimalism as veering significantly from “first-generation” Minimalists of the late 1960s and 1970s such as Donald Judd and Richard Serra by “fetishizing the ‘body’ of the Minimalist object as gendered and erotic.”[6]  Avgikos, like Hudson, disproves Moore’s claims of erasure of sexual orientation in the discourse surrounding Gonzalez-Torres by viewing his art as inseparable from his sexual consciousness.  Thus even less academic writing, published through more popular channels like Art in America and Artforum, deals directly with homosexual identity as central to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

            To attack the artist for allegedly hiding his gay sexual identity, such as Patrick Moore does, is not only futile but possibly ethically questionable, as the artist is no longer alive to defend himself.  An ever-growing monument to the artist, the sexual component of his work, and his project of discursive critique, the art-historical and art-critical writings published concerning Gonzalez-Torres stand alone as defense against such misperceptions.  From survey pieces focused on the form and technique of the work, like those of Jan Avgikos and Robert Storr, to more theoretically-charged works like those of Elliott Zooey Martin and Suzanne Perling Hudson, all writing about the artist ultimately serves his own purposes of enmeshing himself and his work deep within the institution of art discourse, where he can posthumously dismantle and rework it from within.

---

[1] Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2004), 168.

[2] Felix Gonzalez-Torres in Ad Reinhardt, Joseph Kosuth, and Feliz Gonzalez-Torres. Symptoms of Interference, Conditions of Possibility (London, United Kingdom: Camden Arts Centre, 1994), 76.

[3] Elliott Zooey Martin, “Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the Interrogation of the Public Sphere,” Chicago Art Journal 15, (2005): 18.

[4] Suzanne Perling Hudson, “Beauty and the Status of Contemporary Criticism,” October no. 104 (Spring, 2003): 117.

[5] Robert Storr, “Setting Traps for the Mind and Heart,” Art in America 84, no. 1 (Jan., 1996): 76.

[6] Jan Avgikos, “This is My Body,” Artforum 29, no. 6 (Feb., 1991): 81.

---

Selected Bibliography

Ault, Julie, ed.  Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Göttingen, Germany:  Steidl, 2006.

Avgikos, Jan.  “This is My Body.”  Artforum 29, no. 6 (Feb., 1991):  79-83.

Clearwater, Bonnie.  Defining the Nineties:  Consensus-making in New York, Miami, and Los   Angeles.  Miami, Florida:  Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996.

Elger, Dietmar.  Catalogue Raisonné.  Ostfildern, Germany:  Cantz, 1997. 

Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Felix Gonzalez-Torres:  America.  New York, New York:  Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2007.

Ho, Christopher.  “Within and Beyond:  Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s ‘Crowd.’”  Performing Arts Journal 23, no. 1 (Jan., 2001):  1-17.

Horn, Roni, ed.  Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  Munich, Germany:  Sammlung Goetz, 1995.

Hudson, Suzanne Perling.  “Beauty and the Status of Contemporary Criticism.”  October no. 104 (Spring, 2003):  115-130.

Martin, Elliott Zooey.  “Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the Interrogation of the Public Sphere.”  Chicago Art Journal 15, (2005):  16-29.

Moore, Patrick.  Beyond Shame:  Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Beacon Press, 2004.

Reinhardt, Ad, Joseph Kosuth, and Feliz Gonzalez-Torres.  Symptoms of Interference, Conditions of Possibility.  London, United Kingdom:  Camden Arts Centre, 1994.

Robinson, Deborah.  “in memoriam.”  In in memoriam:  22 November 2000 – 21 January 2001.  Walsall, United Kingdom:  The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2000.

Spector, Nancy.  Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  New York, New York:  Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1995.

Storr, Robert.  “Setting Traps for the Mind and Heart.”  Art in America 84, no. 1 (Jan., 1996):  70-77.

Woo, Janice.  “Indexing:  At Play in the Fields of Postmodernism.”  Visual Resources 10, no. 3 (1994):  283-293.

Buddhism and Liminal Sexuality

Tilda Swinton as the eponymous character in the film adaptation of Orlando (dir. Sally Potter, 1992).

The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast:—“THE TRUTH!”  At which Orlando woke.  He stretched himself.  He rose.  He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth!  Truth!  Truth!  we have no choice left but confess—he was a woman.

-- Orlando, Virginia Woolf, 1928

            At the beginning of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Prince Orlando is a sixteen-year-old boy in Elizabethan England, but midway through the story, Orlando wakes up to find that he has become a woman.  For many Western, male readers at the time of the book’s publication, the story must have seemed much like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes one day to find himself transformed into a giant insect.  Given the lower social status of most women in the West from the Elizabethan period to the Modern, the notion of a change in physical sex would have been very frightening and akin to that of becoming vermin.  Losing maleness would mean losing power.  In her novel, Woolf dealt with some of the aspects of historical male privilege which her protagonist must concede when he becomes she.  For example, upon becoming an unmarried woman, Orlando has no right to property and must give up her land and home—the same possessions that were rightfully hers as a man.  Woolf imaginatively draws attention to the arbitrary nature of physical sex and the privilege produced from the power imbalance inherent in a binary understanding of physical sex.

            One might postulate that in a culture where biological sex was thought to be capable of naturally changing during the course of one’s lifetime this male privilege would not exist.  India at the time of the Buddha was one such culture, as evident in the early Buddhist texts, and yet women still did not enjoy the same status as men.  To complicate matters, there is no clear distinction at the time of the Buddha between biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation.  The latter two are modern developments in thought, stemming from psychology and describing behavior rather than what is physically apparent.  Instead, the early Buddhist texts conflate what was viewed as biological deformity, sexual dysfunction, and “non-normative” sexual behaviors and gender roles into a single term: pandaka.  As Buddhism moved into various cultures such as China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet, each seems to have had its own difficulty in untangling the knot of meaning in pandaka and has thus interpreted, glossed, and commented in different ways.  Peter Harvey in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics relies heavily on the work of Leonard Zwilling and José Cabezón in attempting to unpack this confusing term for the West, but, at best, comes up with only a metaphorical meaning as a male who lacks the “normal” characteristics of maleness.

            Given Western dualistic thought, this can only mean a male who acts as a woman:  an effeminate man or perhaps even a transvestite.  In the West, too, these kinds of gender behaviors, however inaccurately, are conflated with issues of sexual orientation.  At least one study (Docter and Prince, 1997) found that the majority of cross-dressers are, in fact, heterosexual.  We prefer, however, to operate on our religious- and socially-conditioned assumptions about sexuality and gender, which reinforce a clear binary pair of categories:  man and woman.  Every person must fit into one of those categories and must perform the gender roles assigned to that category.  Any proposed liminal state of sexuality conflicting with those categories makes many people uncomfortable, just as the pandaka did in pre-modern India.  This problem is so fundamental and so powerful that historically even Buddhism, with its methodology to overcome dualistic thinking, has not been able to overcome the divide between masculine and feminine.  Thus, the Buddha barred the pandaka from ordination, and most cultures into which Buddhism migrated adopted the term and its subsequent stigmatization for people of more liminal sexuality within those cultures.

            How is it that Buddhism has served to reinforce, rather than break down the deceptive duality of sexuality?  As David Loy has argued in his article “What’s Wrong with Sex?”  Buddhist attitudes toward sexuality developed out of a concern for the effective maintenance of the monastic sangha.  This required celibacy and stringent rules against all sexual activities.  With no effective contraception at that time, heterosexual activity could produce children, the raising of whom would reduce the time needed for spiritual development.  Prohibitions also arose against oral, anal, and manual sexual activity, also precluding homosexual activity, so the possibility of producing children was not the only concern.  Anything which distracted from the pursuit of enlightenment was to be avoided.  How practical is such avoidance for laity, however, both then and today?  In our more sexually permissive culture, are we then to just ignore Buddhist writings on sexuality as historical socio-cultural artifacts with nothing to say about our contemporary lives?  Dr. Loy suggests that Buddhism can be useful in helping us to find a Middle Path between outmoded attitudes toward sexuality and our current seemingly endless pursuit of sensual pleasures.  The Buddhist emphasis on non-attachment draws attention to obsessive behaviors, like sexual addiction and co-dependent relationships, and provides a methodology for overcoming them.

Jakucho Setouchi, a contemporary Buddhist nun from Japan.

            In the past, though, Buddhism appears to have done little to overcome the basic dualism of masculine and feminine.  While it is true that the Buddha, after the encouragement of his trusted friend Ananda, allowed women to establish a separate monastic order, they were still not seen as equals.  Monastic rules were different for the two sexes and nuns were still subject to the authority of the monks.  In effect, while offering liberating alternatives to women not available to most lay women, Buddhism has still maintained the dualism of male and female.  This duality is at the core not only of relations between men and women, but also the other conflated issues of gender roles and sexual orientation.  For, in any duality, there is an inherent imbalance of power as one of the pair is given preference over the other.  In order for true equality to exist, that pair must be pre-empted by a concept that is neither masculine nor feminine but encompasses both.  In so doing, other related dualistic pairs of self-constructed or externally imposed identity will break down, such as hetero- and homo-sexuality. Buddhism has the power to deconstruct these dualities, but has thus far not been effectively used to do so.

            As Buddhism infiltrates the West, we have a new opportunity to call it to task for its past iniquity in dealing with the dualisms of sexuality.  Sexual orientation and gender are just constructed categories of identity used to maintain ego—either through self-identification (in order to try to understand our illusionary “selves”) or through imposition upon others (in order to separate “them” from “us” and impose illusionary control over others.)  In relying upon these lexical and conceptual categories, we are maintaining a delusion that keeps us from liberation.  This may seem counter-intuitive for those of us who self-identify as gay or lesbian.  We think we have been liberated by being able to come out as such; the greater visibility of liquid and liminal sexual identities by those who have openly self-identified as gay, lesbian, and bisexual has eliminated much social dukkha, as noted by Dr. Loy.  These terms, though, are still categories of identity and may be doing as much harm in maintaining the illusion of individual egos as good.  Indeed, many Westerners of liminal sexuality have attempted to diminish this effect by appropriating an all-encompassing term, “queer,” to pre-empt binary thinking about the categorization of individual sexual orientations.  Until “queer” is a self-identifying term employed by “straights,” as well, the delusive binary is maintained.  How many people who consider themselves predominately heterosexual today are willing to self-identify as “queer” in order to help eliminate the dukkha of others?

            To stop coming out as “lesbian” or “queer” runs the risk of losing the ground we have gained in the fight for equality, a frightening prospect for those of us who have suffered due to difference.  We seem to be caught in a paradox, encouraging separate identities while attempting to overcome the illusion of separateness.  Dualistic thinking is at the core of such paradox.  Until we gain some insight into the complex interrelationship of all things, we will remain troubled by this apparent paradox.  Although Buddhism does not seem to have yet provided answers to the problems at the heart of sexual identity, it should not be dismissed as a tool in the journey to find those answers.  Already, many gay Westerners are calling upon prominent Buddhist figures to clarify their positions on sexual orientation in an attempt to understand how practice can improve their lives and relationships.

            The Dalai Lama has thus far espoused a position unsatisfactory to many queer Buddhists, citing monastic prohibitions against “non-normative” sexual activity and yet denouncing violence against others due to sexual orientation.  He has, however, stated that a consensus among the current sangha could change the direction Buddhism has historically taken in relationship to sexual orientation.  I would argue that we will never reach such a consensus until we realize the inextricable nature of the interrelationship between sexual orientation, gender roles, and biological sex.  This is not to say that one determines any of the others in a cause and effect relationship, as has been commonly misperceived.  Instead, if we work to eliminate the dukkha others experience when privilege is afforded to one aspect of these constructed intertwined pairs, we work to eliminate the dukkha associated with the others.  Our society devalues homosexual men because it associates homosexual men with femininity.  It devalues femininity because it devalues women.  It devalues butches because it cannot accept women who it perceives to have "appropriated maleness."  And so on. These relationships continue to multiply and cross one another and endless others with no clear beginning and no clear end; it seems the only means we have to eliminate suffering, then, is to work on all fronts simultaneously.   How can we do this without exhausting ourselves?  Exhausting our “selves” is just what we must do:  eliminate our egos and we eliminate the conflicts that arise from ego.

More husband hijinx

I haven't had much success in crowd-sourcing a new ad for my husbrand. My friend, Ryan, has helped with some wording, but I was hoping for buy-in from a lot more people. I need people to believe.

So, until I can raise enough interest to complete a second ad, I have created an Amazon wishlist to make it easy to gift me with exactly what I want. Mail order spouses are a thing of the past, now that the Internet makes shopping such a cinch!

A preview of my Amazon wishlist.

Cisco Disco

Sunday, February 8, 1993 1:41 a.m.

Tonight's entertainment comes in the form of a Cisco Disco party, thrown by the girlfriend of my buddy J_____ from work, at her Old Louisville apartment. Mostly girly-girls and athlete dudes there; J_____ plays football and this is his milieu. Everyone is drinking a cheap, fruity, thick wine called Cisco and dancing poorly to bad 70's music. The steam heat of the top-floor apartment has everyone stripping off their winter wardrobes, even with a living room window cracked. Maybe it's the pheromones.

I am a little uncomfortable because, while there are a couple of soccer players here who I recognize from a gay bar downtown, I really only know two people including J_____. His girlfriend is not the other-- J_____ is the one who invited me, probably without her knowledge. She's cordial in a "I'll put up with you being here because you're his friend and I have to for the sake of the relationship" sort of way. I respond in the way most natural to me: I drink. Quite a lot. To a point where eventually I have to plant myself on her hand-me-down couch, bottle of strawberry Cisco in hand. I sit there for the remainder of the night watching the sweaty, off-beat, writhing mess of libidos permutate before me.

The other person at the party who I know is also a co-worker. Jason P_____, who works in the kitchen at Spag, plops down on the couch beside me and says, charmingly, "Your primary directive is to get drunk. Your secondary-- to get laid." We had both already become highly accomplished in the first directive. He is working stealthily on the second, his eyes stumbling around the room and bumping into every girl there. My own rapid survey of the room confirms that I won't be meeting the second directive tonight, at least not with anyone at this party. 

None of the girly-girls-- all make-up, inebriation, and hairspray-- do a thing for me. My work buddies are the most attractive people here: Jason P_____ is good-looking, small with dark hair and J_____ is all muscle, ginger hair, and visible charisma. But, they're both out of the question and neither has ever expressed any interest in me, anyway. I look over at the two soccer players I've seen drinking and dancing at the Connection and speculate briefly on the viability of taking either home tonight. I quickly dismiss the idea, as it seems likely they're together. They're not making out or anything-- it's just that they haven't separated since they got here, and I suspect their close proximity to one another is going to continue through the rest of the night, on into the bedroom.

I take a swig from my bottle. It tastes like a strawberry Slush Puppy, minus the slush, plus medicated cough syrup. I resign to sneak out as soon as Jason P_____ moves from the couch and no longer notices me. But, he's been sitting here a while and now I'm wondering if maybe he can't get up. Wait, what if I can't get up? I had better try. I pull myself to my feet.

"Are you leaving?" Jason P_____ stands, surprisingly easier than I expected. Easier than me, in fact.

"Yeah. I have to get up in time to do some homework tomorrow before I work dinner."

"You taking that bottle with you?" I hand the half-full bottle of strawberry mouthwash to him, which he downs in a single gulp, "I work dinner, too. See you there."

------

I don't see him at work that night. The back of the house manager says he's in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Wonder if he met his secondary directive before landing there. Or maybe while.

Tony

Sunday, December 3, 1995 1:36 a.m.

I drink at Jeff's last night after band practice for Aster. We've all had a few and A_____ says she's taking Tony home, asks me to ride with them. I accept, because I'm a bit bored and there is always the prospect that A_____ has weed. She does. The three of us enjoy a joint, each other's company, and the chilly night drive to Tony's place.  She parks and they get out for a lengthy goodbye kiss in his driveway.  Spotlighted by the car's headlights, I can see steam curling up from their nostrils, which causes me to look away. When they break apart, I get out of the car to wish Tony goodnight and move to the front seat for the ride back to my place. I start to hug him and say goodbye, but only get a couple of words out before Tony's mouth is on mine in a full-on kiss that lasts a couple of minutes. A_____ is already back in the car and, although I assume the headlights are now on us and it's our warm breath dancing out of our nostrils, I am not conscious of any of this. There is only my friend, Tony.

It's bold and unexpected, but this isn't a kiss of seduction or even curiosity. It's not a kiss that's intended to lead anywhere else. It isn't a delirious, drug-induced, out-of-your-mind kiss. Though it isn't close-mouthed, there are no exploring tongues or inadvertent clanking of teeth. It's not particularly wet or aggressive. There are no passionate grunts and it is not accompanied by roaming hands. It's something spontaneous and beautiful and reflective of his unique, loving nature. It's not something friends, even close ones, do; however, now I am not so sure that I understand why friends don't. It's an act of happiness and presence without self-consciousness.

"Your breath tastes like smoke," he laughs as he pulls away and walks to the porch.

"You kiss pretty good. For a drummer," is my retort.

Bionic Guānyīn - Musical Détournement I

Please watch my musical video rumination on the construction of gender in media and technology.

The New Gay Marriage Map

Post-election social cartography:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/updated-map-new-state-marriage-equality-america

Washington is no longer a state in which "ceci est un mariage parce que vous l'avez fait ailleurs."

The Precepts

Takes me two and a half years to commit to the third precept, and one evening to commit to the fifth.

Sexual Taxonomy

I'm so glad you asked these questions. They're not just questions about sexuality, but questions about semantics and taxonomy-- all of which are some of my favorite subjects! Let's parse them.

First, let me say that the "G" in my ad, describing myself as "GWM," stands for "generous" and doesn't speak to my sexuality at all. It is a natural assumption that the "G" would mean gay, for a number of reasons:

1. The ad, although posted in the Gigs category of Craigslist, is clothed in the form of a personals ad and so, based on this taxonomy, we apply a set of assumptions particular to personals ads in determining meaning.
2. The presence of the word "straight" in the headline of the ad influences how we read the rest of the ad. Would one really feel the need to use that word unless one needed to set it apart from "the other." The same might also be said for the "W."
3. The letters "GWM" appear in the same sentence as the letters "SWM," another convention of personals ads, and seem to be set in opposition to them.
4. The project draws attention to the issues surrounding same-sex marriage, which is another cue that would lead one to read "G" as gay.
5. Subsequent information might be used to assign meaning retrospectively to this statement. I recently denied that the project was about gay marriage but said that it was, instead, about opposite-sexual-orientation marriage.

We make assumptions based on categories of convenience, applying the characteristics of the category to those individuals who appear, to us, to fit the category. It's a form of shorthand for knowledge, and, while labeling is a natural inclination for humans, not always accurate or fair.

So the question about my sexual orientation still stands.  My question, in response, is: "Who gets to determine it and how?" Is the label based on what someone else says (or speculates without saying) I am?  If so, I might be gay in the sense of "homosexual" or in the sense of "weird, bad, stupid" in the eyes of those who wield the word in that way. 

If the intended sense is "homosexual," is the label based on some particular social/medical/psychological definition? Am I gay if I have sexual contact exclusively with members of the same sex? 

If not exclusively, then does the label gay still stand? Or would I then be deposited into the category, bisexual?

If the social/medical/psychological definition is the one given the most weight, would it still apply to me even though I have been celibate for almost three years? Can someone be both nonsexual and gay? If not, then is someone gay only when engaged in a sexual act, and then not gay when not having sex?

Or, is the definition based on attraction, rather than sexual activity? Then, again, the question of exclusivity comes into play. Does the attraction have to be sexual, lead to a sexual feeling? Or can the attraction just be an appreciation of beauty?

Is the label based on self-identification. If I were to exclusively have sexual contact with members of the same sex, but call myself straight, does that make me straight or is that just lying? What if it isn't so much a lie as just something I say without meaning it? What if it's just bullshit, as so much that is said turns out to be?

Could marriage be a similarly clouded concept? Clouded by some people claiming the authority to define something that is not theirs to label. Is there a legal definition of sexual orientation? Is there a legal definition of attraction? Is there a legal definition of love? 

Even so, are these definitions the same as religious definitions? And, if so, which religion's definition is the one that stands? Is it the religion of the majority? The religion of the state? Isn't it strange that America was colonized by the Puritans, a people seeking to free themselves from a religion that attempted to define the limits of marriage? Doesn't freedom of religion also include freedom from the religious definitions of others?

There is no question as to my sexual orientation because my sexual orientation is not yours to question. You do not have the authority to do so. At most, you can speculate, accuse, condemn.

Now please don't get me started on how you have quantified sexual orientation, dividing it into degrees of gayness and straightness.

This just in

Whoa, wait a minute. Who said anything about gay marriage? What I am proposing is opposite-sexual-orientation marriage.  And I propose it because it already exists and has for centuries. Either to hide their sexual orientation, to produce children, to take advantage of the socio-politico-economic advantages of marriage, or just because it was what was expected of them, gay men and women have been marrying straight people since recorded history.

Same-sex marriage does not open the door for these "abuses" of marriage. The door, if there ever was one, was wrenched off its hinges and splintered into a billion pieces by opposite-sex marriage long ago. If these are "abuses" of marriage, then they are abuses that are irrespective of the gender and sexuality of those involved.  They seem, to me, more like "reasons" and they are reasons that already exist. Security. Companionship. Working together to make the world a better place for yourself and others.

Number 2

If I was trying to take advantage of the government, I would have placed an ad asking for someone to form a corporation with me.

And only one response to the ad so far

Not unless divorce is already on the horizon, and even then I don't want to be in the middle of it. Again. My father and his family were Mormons, but they didn't practice polygamy and it isn't in my genes. Good luck to you and your family. I hope you get whatever you need to take care of them.

Only two responses so far on Reddit

The marriage industrial complex

Ryan Conrad of Against Equality discusses the complexities of same-sex marriage and the discourse in which it is enmeshed.  In particular, very compelling is the argument that marriage is a raced, classed issue. For example, take note of what he says about healthcare.  Concerns of class, privilege, and access are central to my project because I am in a position where I have something I cannot use (domestic partner benefits through my employment, a reliable automobile, a weekly paycheck) that I can share with someone who needs them. This is central to my selection criteria of future husband-- need.

I was born into a lower-class, farming family that moved gradually into the lower-middle-class after my parents physically moved from our rural town to the suburbs of a larger city. Through education (courtesy of mammoth student loan debt) and near-constant employment (at times in three jobs simultaneously) I have moved into the central middle class, where I enjoy privileges I could have never imagined in my childhood. I have a job in academia that, most days, doesn't even seem like work. And, most days, I feel I don't deserve it.

What I had not considered are issues of race that complicate the same-sex marriage movement. Even embedded in my Craigslist ad are signs of internalized racism: the fact that I said I am seeking a "Straight White Male," for example. I chose these words only cursorily, influenced by my own minute experience with personal ads and, perhaps even with a specific candidate in mind. This was not intentional, but, of course, the best of intentions...

Thank you to Ashlie Sandoval for sharing this video on Facebook.  Keep fighting the good fights, Ashlie!