Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen

I am currently reading a book that my friend J lent me, called "Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine" by Peter Hennen.

The basic idea is that three uniquely gay/queer male cultures, in particular the Radical Faeries, the Bears, and the Leathermen cultures, have partially been constructed as responses to, reactions against, and/or repudiations of the ways that gay male sexuality has historically been linked with effeminacy.

These three groups engage the 'problem' of stereotypic gay male effeminacy in three different ways. For the Radical Faeries, it has been through a deep embrace of the feminine through adorning dresses, communal-Goddess worship, female-kitsch (e.g. the sacralisation of Barbie dolls), etc. For the Bears, it has been the embrace of a 'regular joe' type of masculinity, with the fetishisation of larger, hairier, beer-drinking bodies, and with the Leathermen, it has been through the re-appropriation of costumes and sometimes sado-masochistic impulses historically associated with violent masculinity.

Hennen is careful to avoid pathologising any one of these response-styles, and is quite clearly grateful for having been given the opportunity to participate in the various social spaces and rituals of belonging that each community has constructed for its members. At the same time, Hennen hints at a deeply troubling dialectic that underlies the ways that these gay male communities and identities have been constructed. In particular, with regard to the fact that they, at least in his North American experience, these three groups tend to be disproportionately White, and are concurrent with many other male-centric movements that organise around the 'reclamation' or glamourisation of masculinity without either questioning the fear of the feminine or any other unconscious roots of their undying loyalty.

I am personally troubled by hegemonic masculinism in gay culture(s). I am nervous about the way that gay male culture in general has conflated manhood with the repudiation of the feminine, and indeed, with the repudiation of even our own association with 'gay,' as it has historically been linked with effeminacy. Thus the ubiquity of "str8-acting" as a self-descriptor or as an identity deeply invested with gay male desire.

Secondarily, I am also interested in the way that whiteness is also hegemonic in these communities in the USA which, unlike masculinity, Hennen has largely not interrogated. White masculinity seems far less rooted in ironic play or reclamation.

Questions/Crises of masculinity have occupied me for awhile. In a Euro-centric hierarchy of masculinity, the Grecian male model has been somewhere at the top, whereas, in my experience, the hairless Asian body has been feminised and placed somewhere at the bottom.

I long for spaces I might comfortably exist in. Spaces which do justice to my gendered/racialised identity and body, and in which I can explore a self-communal expression with others in a shared, sacralised experience of sexuality. Spaces which allow for and embrace my capacity & need for critical awareness...

A monastery for colonised whores?

Buddho-Erotik

an old post...

1
Dancing as religious ritual, the slow uprooting of anxieties (self-consciousness, other-consciousness) into endorphin blissful rush of collapsing dualisms. Drug-free Ecstasis! Body as its own narcotic, all capacity for empowerment and godhead rushing forth from within, neither monotheistic nor pantheistic, neither solely under the jurisdiction of aboriginal cosmologies nor postmodern psychonautic fetishisms of altered states of consciousness. Dance as the primordial movement, the Soul (if indeed, it is YOUR convenient metaphor) as shaken And stirred. Drink That!

2
Or else the surprise a man has, after 20 years of marriage, in finding out his wife has professional, emotional, spiritual, and yes perhaps even Sexual desires beyond his capacity to fulfill. The tragic misnomer of (civil)Marriage mistakenly Romanticised without thought to its materialist history (woman as property of man, man as 'breadwinner,' utilitarian legalisms with little care for the romance behind courtship). Forget MARRIAGE, we need a generation of Lovers!

3
The phenomenon of wanting to know more about a porn star: When objectification (primarily root-chakra sexual orientation) isn't enough. When personality needs to be thrown in the mix. When love must become involved. Or worship. Porn stars as our contemporary Gods and Goddesses, sex celebrities, all springing forth from the same imaginations that created Zeus, Inanna, Kali.
Ejaculation as the Anti-climax, if indeed there was no Play prior, nor love between lovers. Surely we are not only bodies, as we are not only minds, nor even only souls. Dissolve dissolve, and we no more need porn stars as we might need a caffeine fix (some addiction necessary to fuel some other addiction, to Manhood? Productivity? Or even our attachments to secret shame!); Forget it! We might imagine a new myth!

4
Music as love making, the melding of players that transcends Sexual orientation. Instead, music taps into the latent masculinities/femininities hidden under sexed bodies, transmutes the urge to orgasm into lovemaking. Plays on aggression and submission, sound and silence, assertions and refrains, repetitions and innovations... Hence: The Bliss of making music as PROCESS, rather than performative product. Nothing wrong with theatre, clearly, for indeed that is a catharsis in its own right. But within the privacy of a relationship, there is generative power in music as interpersonal communication, rather than preparation for Objective display. "Let's jam!" I say, from the Me that is Lovemaker-Sage... I let the Bard speak his truth at some other convenient time.

5
"The Matrix" as theology. Neo as Bodhisattva figure, realizing the futility of samsaric existence within The Matrix of the mundane. Morpheus as Buddha-figure (the first to discover the truth of samsaric-Matrix), transmitting his teaching to those who may be prepared to forgo this illusory world for the higher consciousness, breaking free from the bonds of cyclic existence. BUT THIS IS NOT BLISS! Neo is not Happier with Truth, simply Ennoblised by this. But is this ENOUGH? Like the dude who WANTS to return, to taste the steak, to feed on illusion; We too are addicted, we forgo truth everytime, no matter what our intuitions may tell us, simply because it is TOO DAMN HARD. What support might we look for? How may we Re-program, so we too might dodge bullets with ease?

6
Language is the original colonizer, with its grammatical pressures, its dogmatic vocabularies, its limits within the technologies of throat or papyrus. We must learn to speak if we are to interact, but then we forever lose our touch with the solitude of silence. But even here I have been thoroughly colonized, for that I have even a CONCEPTION of silence is conditioned by my capacity for Language. There is no PRE, no prior, no before language. And any mystic would dare tell us that there is no During, nor After, even. Language itself cannot be spoken of (nor kept silent on) without continued inculcations into further illusion. So forget the goal, and just play with poetry!

7
Where does loneliness reside in the body? Is it in the heart? Or perhaps in clammy extremeties, hands wrung in nervous tics, The Longing to Grasp, without the wisdom to learn the freedom of the Ungrasp (for there is nothing beautiful to be Held without our fathoming equally the beauty of Letting Go). The foolishness in us that wants a Love Permanent is the same foolishness in us that takes all we already have for granted!
Unconditional Love? There is no-thing unconditioned, no-thing without cause. I cannot HAVE unconditional love for another; I can only invest, indefinitely, in creating the causes and conditions from and in which love might more easily arise, 'effortlessly'! I must not, however, mistake those rare, precious moments of spontaneity as springing from some romantic Unconditioned!

8
In a prior life, I was a Diamond. But a single carbon atom wanted individuation, wanted to break free from the boring familiar, wanting to procreate instead with exotic elements, wanting to form new molecular civilizations, wanting new bondage (double-bondage? triple?).

9
Why make love? Love can make itself! My only job is to breathe as much as I can, consciously, until finally I expire.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

The Solution indicates the Problem

I love this video.

In it, Zizek suggests that the systems we have created around charity are contingent not only on 'working with' the existing capitalist economic superstructure which sustains inequities in the first place, but indeed, in a significant way, may well strengthen or support this very system!

I am reminded of this event:
I occasionally sit Zazen and do walking meditations at the Zen Open Circle, a Zen meditation/discussion group based in Camperdown on Friday nights.

One evening, the teacher Susan spoke about the non-duality of Good and Evil (something I believe Zizek is hinting at), and the importance of non-attachment to either extreme in this respect. Any idea of the Good is intimately dependent on an idea of the Evil, and the two are thus inseparable.

One of the group members then raised the question or paedophilia. About how there is no way, absolutely no way whatsoever, to think of a "paedophile" as someone with any redeeming qualities. Immediately, the group was triggered into this chaotic groupthink of uncritical agreement.

"Paedophiles are disgusting."

"Sick."

and so on.

Now, I have no love for paedophilia as such, but I feel far less hateful toward the "paedophile." In Buddhist terms, all phenomena are empty of their own inherent existence, and require the right causes and conditions before they can even arise. Concerning paedophilia, and this is a line of thought first brought to my attention by manoverbored, I started to wonder about the causes and conditions which sustain paedophilia, and the ways that we are complicit in maintaining these causes and conditions.

For example, here in the industrialised, Anglo-phonic "first world" (Australia, USA, as examples where the authors now live), if any of us WEARS SHOES, then the chances are very high that these shoes were made possible through the exploitation of child labour. The factories and, of course, the wider global economic structure that gives rise to these factories (for example through the outsourcing of labour from American shoe companies), have incredibly fucked up and problematic conditions which exploit the bodies of children.

Is this NOT paedophilia? If I wear shoes, does this not make me complicit in the tragedy of the exploitation of children's bodies for the purposes of my own (adult) consumption?

So what is Zizek's proposed solution?



Non-duality of Solution and Problem

From a Zen perspective, a first step is to break out of the victim-perpetrator dualism... Of course victimisation happens, and there are people who perpetrate victimising attitudes and behaviours that impact all of us very negatively.
At the same time, it is important to do the hard, spiritual labour of dancing between identification and dis-identification with the solution and problem, victim and perpetrator. There are no ultimate victims as such, nor ultimate perpetrators.

Thich Nhat Hanh clarifies this point in his poem "Call Me By My True Names"...


Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Suicide and alienation

The pattern of young queer suicides continues in the news, a deadly erratic drumbeat, summoning... what?

It seems to me these suicides are an extreme form of the escapism and self harm that homophobia and transphobia drive us to. It seems to me these suicides are an inevitable result of the alienating machinery of patriarchal capitalism and colonialism, a social human sacrifice, that our culture believes is acceptable and necessary to keep the gears of production and reproduction moving. It is the same hand that ties nooses around our children's necks, that pushes them out of airplanes into war, that chains them to factory floors performing endless muscle tearing tasks, that hands them their first and, much later, their last cigarette, that pumps them full of desire and disease, that slams them against walls and humiliates them for something they've said or thought, that closes the door on them in forgotten cells in forgotten islands for long forgotten reasons.

Unlike the acceptable escapisms of consumerism, alcohol, narcotics, overwork, and beating your children, suicide is a clarion crisis call. Its fatality is its fatal flaw. If one could survive suicide, it would be just, as the expression goes, another cry for help. And what, we wonder, stops children from literally crying for help, and what, we should ask, stops us from hearing those cries?

No form of escape is as illusory as suicide, though they are all illusory. Suicide also holds out another promise - that of real change, which is not an illusion, but is nevertheless tragic in its implication.

Those who commit suicide successfully will never see the better world they could catalyze. The classic fantasy, to be present at one's own funeral post-suicide, neatly captures this paradoxical but human desire. To make them sorry, to wake people up from the inhuman devaluing of young life that doesn't quite fit into the the machine, this is another desire imperfectly expressed through suicide. To be a martyr means never making it to the promised land. For the suicides to stop, we must need no more martyrs, and we must instead seek only miracles.

What kinds of miracles are needed? Compassion is one, and hope is another. Compassion for the suffering of the bullied and the bullying, who, regardless of age, are as much victims as those they target. Hope for each other that refuses to die, despite our seemingly individual failures, and despite the overwhelming omnipresence of the machine. Because of course, that machine is us, and, as, one by one, erratically, we withdraw our consent, its cruel grinding will stop, and there will be no more young bodies, there will be no need for the blunt instrument of the ultimate "no."

Coffee at Night

A naughty pleasure:
Coffee at Night...

Coffee in the morning has the quality of a 'maintenance' drug... One drinks it in order to be productive: I wake up, drink coffee, go to work, behave as an upright citizen would...

But coffee at night? Ah...
that is for ruminating, scheming,
poetry...
Coffee at night is for old friends,
acquaintances,
new lovers.
Coffee at night is for imagination,
music and mayhem...

Coffee at night is a guilty pleasure,
but how quickly my guilt fades as inspiration spills clear thoughts
onto a canvas made of darkened skies.

respect

my mind draws a blank.

no need to judge. no need to rush thoughts. no need to force inspiration. still... there is the fear... the wish to impress. my spiritual colleagues. my brother. my friends. the fraternity inside my mind whose approval i seek.

in my mind is a posse of intellectual gangsters who watch from Foucaultian panopticons that are buried deep in bubbling, murky waters of my eternal subconscious. they discipline and punish me with royal pronouncements threatening Action, if i do not participate in self-imposed, self-flagellatory hazing rituals of ever-smart delivery...

who are these bullies? they are my internalised patriarch, voice of my 1st generation university educated father: hard-hearted, strict, punishing. they are my scientist-mother: exacting, skeptical. they are my university peers, the queers who battled politics while drunk on booze and skunk. they are the san francisco hipsters who always had more tattoos than me. they are the suburban white kids who blitz bmezine.com with a litany of lazy canadian cool... they are my older brother whose grades were always higher, more gifted, whose smarts set the benchmark for years of my own savvy teenage angst.

these are the bullies that elicit both my awe and my envy...
and in turn, i move beyond their panoptic gaze when i transmute this emotional fizz into respect. respect. respect.

to cultivate respect from awe
and respect from envy.
to rejoice in my own gifts
and not succumb to defeatedness... this is the goal of this erotic psychonaut. whose project is to see that my talent and my need for improvement are not two, not two. to see that these bullies and my own subjectivity are not two, not two.

that poetic transformation of raw drivel into Truth comes from the drive of this warrior, this witch, this wuss. these are not three, not three... they are but a few facets of me.

come in and see!