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Is the Rectum a Grave?

Author(s): Leo Bersani


Source: October, Vol. 43, AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (Winter, 1987), pp. 197-
222
Published by: The MIT Press
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Is the Rectum a Grave?

LEO BERSANI

to the memoryof Robert Hagopian

Thesepeoplehavesex twenty tothirtytimes


a night.. . . A man comesalong and goes
fromanus toanus and in a singlenightwill
act as a mosquito
transferringinfectedcells
on his penis. Whenthisis practisedfor a
year, witha man having threethousand
sexual intercourses,
one can readilyunder-
standthismassiveepidemic thatis currently
upon us.
ProfessorOpendra Narayan,
The Johns Hopkins Medical School

I will leaveyouwondering,
withme,whyit
is thatwhena womanspreadsherlegsfora
camera,sheis assumedtobe exercisingfree
will.
-Catherine A. MacKinnon

Le moi esthaissable ....


Pascal

There is a big secretabout sex: most people don't like it. I don't have any
statisticsto back this up, and I doubt (although since Kinseythere has been no
shortageof polls on sexual behavior) thatany poll has ever been taken in which
thosepolled were simplyasked, "Do you like sex?" Nor am I suggestingthe need
for any such poll, since people would probably answer the question as if they

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198 BERSANI

were being asked, "Do you oftenfeel the need to have sex?" and one of myaims
will be to suggestwhythese are two whollydifferentquestions. I am, however,
interestedin myratherirresponsibly announced findingsof our nonexistentpoll
because they strikeme as helping to make intelligiblea broader spectrumof
viewsabout sex and sexualitythanperhapsany othersinglehypothesis.In saying
that most people don't like sex, I'm not arguing (nor, obviously,am I denying)
that the most rigidlymoralisticdicta about sex hide smolderingvolcanoes of
repressedsexual desire. When you make thisargument,you divide people into
two camps,and at the same timeyou let it be knownto whichcamp you belong.
There are, you intimate,those who can't face theirsexual desires (or, correla-
tively,the relationbetween those desires and theirviewsof sex), and those who
know that such a relationexistsand who are presumablyunafraidof theirown
sexual impulses.Rather,I'm interestedin somethingelse, somethingboth camps
have in common,whichmaybe a certainaversion,an aversionthatis not the same
thingas a repressionand thatcan coexist quite comfortablywith,say, the most
enthusiasticendorsementof polysexualitywith multiplesex partners.
The aversion I referto comes in both benignand malignantforms.Malig-
nantaversionhas recentlyhad an extraordinaryopportunityboth to express(and
to expose) itself,and, tragically,to demonstrateitspower. I'm thinkingof course
of responsesto AIDS-more specifically,of how a public health crisishas been
treatedlike an unprecedentedsexual threat.The signsand sense of thisextraor-
dinarydisplacementare the subjectof an excellentbookjust publishedby Simon
Watney,aptly entitledPolicingDesire.' Watney's premise is that "AIDS is not
onlya medical crisison an unparalleledscale, it involvesa crisisof representation
itself,a crisisover the entireframingof knowledgeabout the human body and its
capacitiesforsexual pleasure" (p. 9). PolicingDesireis both a casebook of gener-
ally appalling examples of this crisis (taken largely from governmentpolicy
concerningAIDS, as well as frompress and televisioncoverage, in England and
America) and, most interestingly, an attemptto account for the mechanismsby
which a spectacle of sufferingand death has unleashed and even appeared to
legitimizethe impulse to murder.
There is, firstof all, the by now familiar,more or less transparent,and
ever-increasingevidence of the displacementthatWatneystudies.At the highest
levelsof officialdom, therehave been the criminaldelaysin fundingresearchand
treatment, the obsession withtestinginsteadof curing,the singularlyunqualified
membersof Reagan's (belatedlyconstituted)AIDS commission,2and the general

1. Simon Watney,PolicingDesire:Pornography, AIDS, and theMedia, Minneapolis,Universityof


Minnesota Press, 1987. The present essay began as a review of this book; page referencesfor all
quotations fromit are given in parentheses.
2. Comparing the authorityand efficiencyof Reagan's AIDS commissionto the presidential
commissionon the Space Shuttleaccident,PhilipM. Boffeywrote:"The staffand resourcesavailable
to the AIDS commissionare far smallerthan thatprovided the Challenger commission.The Chal-
lenger panel had a staffof 49, including 15 investigatorsand several other professionals,operating

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Is theRectuma Grave? 199

tendencyto thinkof AIDS as an epidemicof the futureratherthana catastrophe


of the present.Furthermore,"hospital policies," according to a New York City
doctor quoted by Watney, "have more to do with other patients' fears than a
concernforthe healthof AIDS patients"(p. 38). Doctors have refusedto operate
on people known to be infectedwith the HIV virus, schools have forbidden
children with AIDS to attend classes, and recentlycitizens of the idyllically
named town of Arcadia, Florida, set fire to the house of a familywith three
hemophiliac children apparentlyinfectedwith HIV. Television and the press
continue to confuseAIDS withthe HIV virus,to speak of AIDS as if it were a
venerealdisease, and consequentlyto suggestthatone catchesitbybeing promis-
cuous. The effectiveness of the media as an educating force in the fightagainst
AIDS can be measured by the resultsof a poll cited by Watney in which 56.8
percentof NewsoftheWorldreaders came out "in favourof the idea that 'AIDS
carriers'should be 'sterilisedand given treatmentto curb theirsexual appetite',
witha mere fifty-one percentin favourof the totalrecriminalisation of homosex-
uality"(p. 141). Anecdotally, there is, at a presumablyhigh level of professional
expertise,the descriptionof gay male sex-which I quote as an epigraphto this
essay-offered to viewersof a BBC Horizonprogramby one Opendra Narayan
of theJohnsHopkins Medical School (backgroundin veterinarymedicine).A less
colorfullyexpressed but equally lurid account of gay sex was given by Justice
Richard Wallach of New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan when, in
issuingthe temporaryrestrainingorder thatclosed the New St. Marks Baths,he
noted: "What a bathhouse like this sets up is the orgiasticbehavior of multiple
partners,one afterthe other,where in fiveminutesyou can have fivecontacts."s
Finally, the story that gave me the greatest morbid delight appeared in the
London Sun under the headline "I'd Shoot My Son if He Had AIDS, Says
Vicar!" accompanied by a photograph of a man holding a rifle at a boy at
pointblankrange. The son, apparentlymore attunedto his father'spenchantfor
violence than the respectable reverend himself,candidlyadded, "Sometimes I
think he would like to shoot me whether I had AIDS or not" (quoted pp.
94-95).
All of this is, as I say, familiarground, and I mentionthese few disparate
items more or less at random simplyas a reminder of where our analytical
inquirystarts,and to suggestthat,given the nature of thatstartingpoint,analy-
sis, while necessary,may also be an indefensibleluxury.I share Watney'sinter-

on a budget of about $3 million,exclusive of staffsalaries. Moreover, the Challenger commission


could virtuallyorder NASA to performtestsand analysesat its bidding,thus vastlymultiplyingthe
resourcesat itsdisposal. In contrast,the AIDS commissioncurrentlyhas onlysix employees,although
it may well appoint 10 to 15 in all, according to Dr. Mayberry,the formerchairman. Its budget is
projectedat $950,000, exclusiveof staffsalaries. Althoughthe AIDS commissionhas been promised
cooperation by all Federal agencies, it is in no position to compel them to do its work" (New York
Times,October 16, 1987, p. 10).
3. "Court Orders Bath House in Village to Stay Shut," New YorkTimes,December 28, 1985, p.
11.

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BERSANI
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Is theRectuma Grave? 201

pretiveinterests,but it is also importantto say that,morally,the only necessary


responseto all of thisis rage. "AIDS," Watneywrites,"is effectively being used
as a pretextthroughoutthe West to 'justify'calls for increasinglegislationand
regulationof those who are considered to be sociallyunacceptable" (p. 3). And
the unacceptableones in the AIDS crisisare, of course,male homosexualsand IV
drug users (manyof the latter,are, as we know,poor blacksand Hispanics). Is it
unjust to suggestthatNewsoftheWorldreaders and the gun-totingBritishvicar
are representativeexamples of the "general public's" response to AIDS? Are
there more decent heterosexuals around, heterosexuals who don't awaken a
passionateyearningnot to share the same planet withthem?Of course thereare,
but-and thisis particularlytrue of England and the United States-power is in
the hands of those who give everysignof being able to sympathizemore withthe
murderous"moral" furyof the good vicar than withthe agony of a terminalKS
patient.It was, afterall, theJusticeDepartmentof the United Statesthatissued a
legal opinion statingthatemployerscould fireemployeeswithAIDS if theyhad
so much as the suspicion that the virus could be spread to other workers,
regardlessof medical evidence. It was the American Secretaryof Health and
Human Serviceswho recentlyurged Congressto deferaction on a bill thatwould
ban discriminationagainst people infected with HIV, and who also argued
against the need for a federal law guaranteeing the confidentialityof HIV
antibodytest results.
To deliversuch opinionsand argumentsis of course not the same thingas
pointinga gun at your son's head, but since,as it has oftenbeen said, the failure
to guarantee confidentialitywill discourage people from taking the test and
thereby make it more difficultto control the spread of the virus, the only
conclusionwe can draw is thatSecretaryOtis R. Bowen findsit more important
to have the names of thosewho testpositivethanto slow the spread of AIDS into
the sacrosanct"general public." To put thisschematically:having the informa-
tion necessaryto lock up homosexuals in quarantine camps may be a higher
priorityin the family-oriented Reagan Administrationthansavingthe heterosex-
ual members of American familiesfrom AIDS. Such a prioritysuggestsa far
more seriousand ambitiouspassion forviolencethanwhatare afterall the rather
banal, rathernormal son-killingimpulsesof the Reverend Robert Simpson. At
the veryleast,such thingsas theJusticeDepartment'snear recommendationthat
people withAIDS be thrownout of theirjobs suggestthatifEdwin Meese would
not hold a gun to the head of a man withAIDS, he mightnot findthe murderof
a gay man withAIDS (or withoutAIDS?) intolerableor unbearable. And thisis
preciselywhat can be said of millionsof fineGermanswho never participatedin
the murder of Jews (and of homosexuals), but who failed tofind theidea of the
holocaustunbearable.That was the more than sufficient measure of theircollabo-
ration,the message theysent to their Fuhrer even before the holocaust began
but when the idea of it was around, was, as it were, being testedforacceptability
duringthe '30s by less violentbut nonethelessvirulentmanifestations of anti-Se-

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202 BERSANI

mitism,just as our leaders, by relegatingthe protectionof people infectedwith


HIV to local authorities,are tellingthose authoritiesthatanythinggoes, thatthe
federal government does not find the idea of camps-or perhaps
worse- intolerable.
We can of course count on the more liberal press to editorialize against
Meese's opinionsand Bowen's urgings.We can, however,also counton thatsame
press to give front-pagecoverage to the storyof a presumablystraighthealth
workertestingpositivefor the HIV virusand-at least untilrecently-almost
no coverage at all to complaintsabout the elephantine pace at which various
drugs are being tested and approved for use against the virus. Try keeping up
withAIDS researchthroughTV and the press,and you'll remainfairlyignorant.
You will,however,learn a great deal fromthe tube and fromyourdailynewspa-
per about heterosexual anxieties. Instead of giving us sharp investigative
reporting-on, say, 60 Minutes-on research inefficiently divided among var-
ious uncoordinated and frequentlycompeting private and public centers and
agencies, or on the interestsof pharmaceuticalcompanies in helping to make
available (or helpingto keep unavailable)new antiviraltreatmentsand in further-
ing or delaying the development of a vaccine,4 TV treats us to nauseating
processionsof yuppie women announcing to the world that theywill no longer
put out for their yuppie boyfriendsunless these boyfriendsagree to use a
condom. Thus hundredsof thousandsof gay men and IV drug users,who have
reason to thinkthat theymay be infectedwithHIV, or who know thattheyare
(and who thereforelive in daily terrorthat one of the familiarsymptomswill
show up), or who are already sufferingfroman AIDS-related illness,or who are
dyingfromone of theseillnesses,are asked to sympathizewithall thoseyuppettes
agonizing over whetherthey'regoing to risk losing a good fuck by takingthe
"unfeminine"initiativeof interruptingthe invadingmale in order to insistthat

4. On November 15, 1987-a month after I wrote this-60 Minutesdid, in fact, devote a
twenty-minute segmentto AIDS. The report centered on Randy Shilts'srecentlypublished tale of
responses and nonresponses-both in the governmentand in the gay community-to the AIDS
crisis (And the Band Played On, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1987). The report presented a
sympatheticview of Shilts's chronicle of the delayed and half-heartedeffortsto deal with the
epidemic, and also informedviewersthat not a single officialof the Reagan Administrationwould
agree-or was authorized-to talk on 60 Minuteson the politicsof AIDS. However, nearlyhalfof
the segment-the firsthalf-was devoted to the murderouslynaughtysexual habits of Gaetan
Dugas, or "Patient Zero," the French-Canadianairline stewardwho, Shiltsclaims,was responsible
for 40 of the first200 cases of AIDS reportedin the US. Thus the reportwas sensationalizedfrom
the verystartwiththe mostrepugnantimage of homosexualityimaginable:thatof the irresponsible
male tartwho willfully spread the virusafterhe was diagnosed and warnedof the dangersto othersof
his promiscuity.I won't go into-as of course 60 Minutes(whichprovidesthe bestpoliticalreporting
on Americannetworktelevision)didn't go into-the phenomenonof Shiltshimselfas an overnight
media star, and the relation between his stardom and his irreproachablyrespectable image, his
longstandingwillingness,indeed eagerness, to join the straightsin being morallyrepelled by gay
promiscuity.A good deal of his much admired "objectivity"as a reporterconsistsin his being as
venomous toward those at an exceptionallyhigh riskof becomingafflictedwithAIDS (gay men) as
toward the governmentofficialswho seem contentto let them die.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 203

he practicesafe sex. In the face of all that,the shrillnessof a Larry Kramer can
seem likethe simplestgood sense. The danger of not exaggeratingthe hostilityto
homosexuality"legitimized"by AIDS is that,being "sensible," we maysoon find
ourselves in situationswhere exaggeration will be difficult,if not impossible.
Kramerhas recentlysaid that"if AIDS does not spread out widelyinto the white
non-drug-using heterosexualpopulation,as it mayor maynot do, thenthe white
non-drug-using populationis going to hate us even more-for scaringthem,for
costing them a fuckingfortune,for our 'lifestyle,'whichtheysay caused this."5
What a morbid,even horrendous,yetperhapssensiblesuggestion:onlywhen the
"general public" is threatenedcan whateverthe opposite of a general public is
hope to get adequate attentionand treatment.
Almostall the media coverage of AIDS has been aimed at the heterosexual
groups now minimallyat risk,as if the high-riskgroups were not part of the
audience. And in a sense, as Watney suggests,they'renot. The media targets
"an imaginarynationalfamilyunitwhichis both whiteand heterosexual" (p. 43).
This doesn't mean that most TV viewersin Europe and America are notwhite
and heterosexualand part of a family.It does, however, mean, as Stuart Hall
argues, that representationis very differentfrom reflection:"It implies the
active work of selectingand presenting,of structuringand shaping: not merely
the transmittingof already-existingmeaning, but the more active labour of
makingthingsmean" (quoted p. 124). TV doesn't make the family,but it makes
the familymean in a certain way. That is, it makes an exceptionallysharp
distinctionbetweenthe familyas a biologicalunitand as a culturalidentity,and it
does thisby teachingus the attributesand attitudesbywhichpeople who thought
theywere alreadyin a familyactuallyonlybegintoqualifyas belongingto a family.
The great power of the media, and especiallyof television,is, as Watneywrites,
"its capacity to manufacturesubjectivityitself" (p. 125), and in so doing to
dictate the shape of an identity.The "general public" is at once an ideological
constructand a moral prescription.Furthermore,the definitionof the familyas
an identity an exclusionaryprocess,and the culturalproducthas no
is, inherently,
obligation whatsoever to coincide exactly with its natural referent.Thus the
familyidentityproduced on American televisionis much more likelyto include
your dog than your homosexual brotheror sister.

The peculiarexclusionof the principalsufferersin the AIDS crisisfromthe


discourseabout it has perhapsbeen feltmostacutelyby those gay men who, until
recently,were able to feel that theycould both be relativelyopen about their

5. Quoted froma speech at a rallyin Boston preceding a gay pride celebration; reprintedin,
among other publications,the San Francisco lesbian and gay newspaper ComingUp!, vol. 8, no. 11
(August 1987), p. 8.

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sexualityand still be thoughtof as belonging to the "general public," to the


mainstreamof American life. Until the late '60s and '70s, it was of course
difficultto manage both these things at the same time. There is, I believe,
somethingsalutaryin our havingto discoverthe illusorynatureof thatharmoni-
ous adjustment.We now know, or should know, that "gay men," as Watney
writes,"are officially regarded,in our entirety,as a disposable constituency"(p.
137). "In our entirety"is crucial. While it would of course be obscene to claim
that the comfortablelife of a successfulgay white businessmanor doctor is as
oppressed as thatof a poverty-stricken black motherin one of our ghettoes,it is
also true thatthe power of blacks as a groupin the United Statesis much greater
than thatof homosexuals. Paradoxically,as we have recentlyseen in the vote of
conservativeDemocraticsenatorsfromthe South againstthe Bork nominationto
the Supreme Court,blacks,by theirsheer numberand theirincreasingparticipa-
tion in the vote, are no longera disposable constituencyin those verystatesthat
have the most illustriousrecord of racial discrimination.This obviouslydoesn't
mean thatblacks have made it in whiteAmerica. In fact,some politicalattention
to black interestshas a certaintacticalutility:it softensthe blow and obscuresthe
perception of a persistentindifferenceto the always flourishingeconomic op-
pressionof blacks. Nowhere is that oppressionmore visible,less disguised,than
in such great American citiesas New York, Philadelphia,Boston, and Chicago,
althoughit is typicalof the Americangeniusforpoliticallydisplaced thoughtthat
when whiteliberal New Yorkers (and whiteliberal columnistssuch as Anthony
Lewis) thinkof racial oppression,they probably always have images of South
Africa in mind.6 Yet, some blacks are needed in positions of prominence or
power, which is not at all true for gay people. Straightscan veryeasilyportray
gayson TV, whilewhitesgenerallycan't get away withpassingforblack and are
much less effectivethan blacksas models in TV ads forfast-foodchains targeted
at the millionsof blacks who don't have the money to eat anywhereelse. The
more greasythe product,the more likelysome black models will be allowed to
make money promoting it. Also, the countryobviously needs a Civil Rights
Commission,and itjust as obviouslyhas to have blackson thatcommission,while
there is clearlyno immediateprospect for a federal commissionto protectand
promote gay ways of life. There is no longer a rationale for the oppression of
blacks in America,while AIDS has made the oppressionof gay men seem like a
moral imperative.
In short,a few blacks will alwaysbe saved fromthe appalling fate of most
blacks in America, whereas there is no political need to save or protect any
homosexualsat all. The country'sdiscoverythatRock Hudson was gay changed

6. The black brothersand sisterson behalf of whom Berkeleystudentsdemonstratein Sproul


Plaza are always fromJohannesburg,never fromEast Oakland, although signs posted on Oakland
telephone poles and walls, which these same studentshave probablynever seen, now announce-
dare we have the optimismto say "ominously"?-"Oakland is South Africa."

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Is theRectuma Grave? 205

nothing:nobody needs actors' votes (or even actors,forthatmatter)in the same


way Southern senators need black votes to stay in power. In those very cities
where white gay men could, at least for a few years, think of themselvesas
decidedlymore whitethan black when it came to the distributionof privilegesin
America,citieswherethe increasinglyeffectiveghettoizationof blacksprogresses
unopposed, the gay men who have had as littletroubleas theirstraightcounter-
partsin acceptingthisdemographicand economic segregationmustnow accept
the factthat,unlikethe underprivilegedblacksall around themwhom,like most
otherwhites,theyhave developed a techniquefornot seeing,they-the gays-
have no claims to power at all. Frequentlyon the side of power, but powerless;
frequentlyaffluent,but politicallydestitute;frequentlyarticulate,but withnoth-
ing buta moralargument--noteven recognized as a moral argument--to keep
themselvesin the protectedwhite enclaves and out of the quarantine camps.
On the whole,gay men are no less sociallyambitious,and, more oftenthan
we like to think,no less reactionaryand racistthan heterosexuals.To want sex
withanotherman is not exactlya credentialforpoliticalradicalism-a factboth
recognizedand denied by the gay liberationmovementof the late '60s and early
'70s. Recognized to the extent that gay liberation,as JeffreyWeeks has put it,
proposed "a radical separation . . . between homosexuality,which was about
sexual preference,and 'gayness,'whichwas about a subversivelypoliticalway of
life."7And denied in thatthisveryseparationwas proposed by homosexuals,who
were therebyat least implicitlyarguing for homosexualityitselfas a privileged
locus or point of departure for a political-sexualidentitynot "fixed" by, or in
some way traceable to, a specificsexual orientation.8It is no secret that many
homosexuals resisted,or were simplyindifferent to, participationin "a subver-
sivelypoliticalway of life," to being, as it were, de-homosexualized in order to
join what Watney describes as "a social identitydefined not by notions of sexual
'essence', but in oppositionalrelationto the institutions and discoursesof medi-
cine, the law, education, housing and welfarepolicy,and so on" (p. 18). More
precisely--and more to the point of an assumptionthat radical sex means or
leads to radical politics-many gay men could, in the late '60s and early '70's,
begin to feel comfortableabout having "unusual" or radical ideas about what's
OK in sex withoutmodifyingone bit theirproud middle-classconsciousnessor
even theirracism.Men whose behaviorat nightat the San FranciscoCauldron or

7. Meanings,Mythsand ModernSerualities,London,
JeffreyWeeks, Sexualityand Its Discontents:
Boston, and Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, p. 198.
8. Weeks has a good summaryof that"neat ruse of history"by whichthe "intentof the earlygay
liberationmovement . . . to disruptfixedexpectationsthathomosexualitywas a peculiar condition
or minorityexperience" was transformed,by less radical elementsin the movement,into a fightfor
the legitimateclaimsof a newlyrecognized minority,"of what was now an almost 'ethnic' identity."
Thus "the breakdownof roles,identities,and fixedexpectations"was replaced by "the acceptance of
homosexualityas a minorityexperience," an acceptance that"deliberatelyemphasizesthe ghettoiza-
of heterosex-
tion of homosexual experience and by implicationfailsto interrogatethe inevitability
uality" (ibid.,pp. 198-199).

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the New York Mineshaftcould win five-starapproval fromthe (mostlystraight)


theoreticiansof polysexualityhad no problem being gay slumlordsduring the
day and, in San Franciscoforexample, evictingfromthe WesternAdditionblack
familiesunable to pay the rentsnecessaryto gentrifythat neighborhood.
I don't mean thattheyshouldhave had a problemabout such combinations
in theirlives(althoughI obviouslydon't mean thattheyshould have feltcomfort-
able about being slumlords),but I do mean thattherehas been a lot of confusion
about the real or potentialpoliticalimplicationsof homosexuality.Gay activists
have tended to deduce those implicationsfromthe statusof homosexuals as an
oppressed minorityratherthanfromwhatI thinkare (except perhapsin societies
more physicallyrepressive than ours has been) the more crucially operative
continuitiesbetween political sympathieson the one hand and, on the other,
fantasiesconnected with sexual pleasure. Thanks to a systemof gliding em-
phases, gay activistrhetorichas even managed at timesto suggestthata lustfor
other men's bodies is a by-productor a decision consequent upon political
radicalismratherthan a given point of departure for a whole range of political
sympathies.While it is indisputablytrue thatsexualityis alwaysbeing politicized,
the ways in which having sex politicizes are highlyproblematical. Right-wing
politics can, for example, emerge quite easily from a sentimentalizingof the
armed forcesor of blue-collarworkers,a sentimentalizingwhich can itselfpro-
long and sublimate a marked sexual preference for sailors and telephone
linemen.
In short,to put the matterpolemicallyand even ratherbrutally,we have
been tellinga few lies-lies whose strategicvalue I fullyunderstand,but which
the AIDS crisishas renderedobsolescent.I do not,forexample, findit helpfulto
suggest, as Dennis Altman has suggested, that gay baths created "a sort of
Whitmanesquedemocracy,a desire to know and trustother men in a type of
brotherhoodfar removed fromthe male bondage of rank,hierarchy,and com-
petitionthat characterisemuch of the outside world."9 Anyone who has ever
spent one night in a gay bathhouse knows that it is (or was) one of the most
ruthlesslyranked,hierarchized,and competitiveenvironmentsimaginable.Your
looks,muscles,hair distribution, size of cock, and shape of ass determinedexactly
how happyyou were going to be duringthose fewhours,and rejection,generally
accompanied by two or threewordsat most,could be swiftand brutal,withnone
of the civilizinghypocrisieswithwhichwe get rid of undesirablesin the outside
world. It has frequentlybeen suggested in recent years that such thingsas the
gay-macho style, the butch-femlesbian couple, and gay and lesbian sado-
masochism,farfromexpressingunqualifiedand uncontrollablecomplicitieswith
a brutal and misogynousideal of masculinity,or with the heterosexual couple
permanentlylocked into a power structureof male sexual and social mastery

9. Dennis Altman,The Homosexualization oftheHomosexual,New


ofAmerica,The Americanization
York, St. MartinsPress, 1982, pp. 79-80.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 207

over female sexual and social passivity,or, finally,with fascism,are in fact


subversiveparodies of the very formationsand behaviors they appear to ape.
Such claims,whichhave been the subject of livelyand oftenintelligentdebate,
are, it seems to me, totallyaberrant,even though,in termsprobablyunaccept-
able to theirdefenders,theycan also-indeed, mustalso-be supported.
Firstof all, a distinctionhas to be made betweenthe possibleeffectsof these
styleson the heterosexual world that provides the models on which they are
based, and theirsignificanceforthe lesbiansand gay men who performthem.A
sloganesque approach won't help us here. Even Weeks, whose work I admire,
speaks of "the rise of the macho-styleamongst gay men in the 1970s . . . as
another episode in the ongoing 'semiotic guerilla warfare' waged by sexual
outsiders against the dominant order," and he approvinglyquotes Richard
Dyer's suggestionthat"by takingthe signsof masculinityand eroticizingthemin
a blatantlyhomosexual context,much mischiefis done to the securitywithwhich
'men' are defined in society,and by which their power is secured."10 These
remarksdeny what I take to be whollynonsubversiveintentionsby conflating
them withproblematicallysubversiveeffects.It is difficultto know how "much
mischief"can be done by a stylethatstraightmen see--if indeed theysee it at
all--from a car window as they drive down Folsom Street. Their securityas
males withpower may verywell not be threatenedat all by that scarcelytrau-
matic sight,because nothingforces them to see any relation between the gay-
macho styleand theirimage of theirown masculinity(indeed, the veryexaggera-
tions of that stylemake such denials seem plausible). It may, however,be true
that to the extent that the heterosexual male more or less secretlyadmires or
identifieswithmotorcyclemasculinity,its adoption by faggotscreates,as Weeks
and Dyer suggest,a painful(if passing) crisisof representation.The gay-macho
style simultaneouslyinvents the oxymoronicexpression "leather queen" and
denies its oxymoronic status; for the macho straightman, leather queen is
intelligible,indeed tolerable, only as an oxymoron--which is of course to say
thatit mustremain unintelligible.Leather and musclesare defiledby a sexually
feminizedbody, although-and thisis where I have trouble withWeeks's con-
tention that the gay-machostyle "gnaws at the roots of a male heterosexual
identity""-the macho male's rejection of his representationby the leather
queen can also be accompanied by the secret satisfactionof knowingthat the
leatherqueen, forall his despicable blasphemy,at least intendsto pay worshipful
tributeto the styleand behaviorhe defiles.The veryreal potentialforsubversive
confusionin thejoining of female sexuality(I'll returnto thisin a moment)and
the signifiersof machismois dissipatedonce the heterosexualrecognizesin the
gay-machostylea yearningtoward machismo,a yearningthat,veryconveniently

10. Weeks, p. 191.


11. Ibid.

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forthe heterosexual,makes of the leatherqueen's forbiddingarmorand warlike


mannersa perversionratherthan a subversionof real maleness.
Indeed, ifwe now turnto the significanceof the macho-styleforgay men,it
would, I think,be accurate to saythatthisstylegivesriseto tworeactions,both of
which indicate a profound respect for machismo itself.One is the classic put-
down: the butch number swaggeringinto a bar in a leather get-up opens his
mouthand sounds like a pansy,takes you home, where the firstthingyou notice
is the complete worksofJane Austen, gets you into bed, and-well, you know
the rest.In short,the mockeryof gay machismois almostexclusivelyan internal
affair,and it is based on the dark suspicionthatyou may not be gettingthe real
article.The otherreactionis, quite simply,sexual excitement.And thisbringsus
back to the question not of the reflectionor expression of politicsin sex, but
rather of the extremelyobscure process by which sexual pleasure generates
politics.
If lickingsomeone's leatherboots turnsyou (and him) on, neitherof you is
makinga statementsubversiveof macho masculinity.Parody is an eroticturn-off,
and all gay men know this.Much campytalkis parodistic,and whilethatmaybe
funat a dinnerparty,ifyou're out to make someone you turnoffthe camp. Male
gay camp is, however,largelya parody of women,which,obviously,raises some
other questions. The gay male parody of a certainfemininity, which,as others
have argued, may itselfbe an elaborate social construct,is both a way of giving
vent to the hostilitytowardwomen thatprobablyafflictseverymale (and which
male heterosexuals have of course expressed in infinitelynastier and more
effectiveways) and could also parodoxicallybe thoughtof as helping to decon-
structthat image for women themselves.A certain type of homosexual camp
speaks the truthof that femininity as mindless,asexual, and hysterically bitchy,
therebyprovoking, it would seem to me, a violentlyantimimeticreactionin any
female spectator.The gay male bitch desublimatesand desexualizes a type of
femininity glamorizedby movie stars,whomhe thuslovinglyassassinateswithhis
style, even though the campy parodist may himselfbe quite stimulatedby the
hatefulimpulsesinevitablyincluded in his performance.The gay-machostyle,on
the other hand, is intendedto excite otherssexually,and the only reason thatit
continuesto be adopted is thatit frequentlysucceeds in doing so. (If, especiallyin
itsmore extremeleatherforms,it is so oftentakenup byolder men,it is precisely
because theycount on it to supplementtheirdiminishedsexual appeal.)
The dead seriousnessof the gay commitmentto machismo(by which I of
course don't mean thatall gaysshare,or share unambivalently, thiscommitment)
means that gay men run the risk of idealizing and feeling inferiorto certain
representationsof masculinityon the basis of whichtheyare in factjudged and
condemned. The logic of homosexual desire includes the potentialfor a loving
identification withthe gay man's enemies. And thatis a fantasy-luxury thatis at
once inevitableand no longerpermissible.Inevitablebecause a sexual desire for
men can't be merelya kind of culturallyneutralattractionto a Platonic Idea of

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Is theRectuma Grave? 209

the male body; the object of thatdesire necessarilyincludesa sociallydetermined


and sociallypervasivedefinitionof whatit means to be a man. Argumentsforthe
social constructionof gender are by now familiar.But such argumentsalmost
invariablyhave, for good political reasons, quite a differentslant; they are
didacticallyintendedas demonstrationsthat the male and femaleidentitiespro-
posed by a patriarchaland sexistculture are not to be taken for what theyare
proposed to be: ahistorical,essential,biologicallydeterminedidentities.Without
disagreeingwiththisargument,I want to make a different point,a point under-
standably less popular with those impatient to be freed of oppressiveand degrad-
ing self-definitions. What I'm saying is that a gay man doesn't run the risk of
loving his oppressoronly in the ways in which blacks or Jewsmightmore or less
secretly collaborate with their oppressors-that is, as a consequence of the
oppression, of thatsubtle corruptionby which a slave can come to idolize power,
to agree that he should be enslaved because he is enslaved, that he should be
denied power because he doesn't have any. But blacks and Jews don't become
blacks and Jews as a result of that internalizationof an oppressive mentality,
whereas that internalizationis in part constitutiveof male homosexual desire,
which,like all sexual desire,combinesand confusesimpulsesto appropriateand
to identifywith the object of desire. An authentic gay male political identity
thereforeimplies a struggle not only against definitionsof maleness and of
homosexualityas they are reiteratedand imposed in a heterosexistsocial dis-
course, but also against those verysame definitionsso seductivelyand so faith-
fullyreflectedby those (in large part culturallyinventedand elaborated) male
bodies thatwe carrywithinus as permanentlyrenewable sources of excitement.

There is, however,perhapsa wayto explode thisideological body. I wantto


propose, insteadof a denial of what I take to be important(ifpoliticallyunpleas-
ant) truthsabout male homosexual desire, an arduous representationaldisci-
pline. The sexistpower thatdefinesmalenessin most human culturescan easily
survive social revolutions;what it perhaps cannot survive is a certain way of
assuming,or takingon, that power. If, as Weeks puts it, gay men "gnaw at the
rootsof a male heterosexualidentity,"it is not because of the parodisticdistance
that theytake fromthat identity,but ratherbecause, fromwithintheir nearly
mad identificationwithit, theynevercease tofeel theappeal ofits beingviolated.
To understandthis,it is perhaps necessaryto accept the pain of embracing,
at least provisionally,a homophobic representationof homosexuality.Let's re-
turn for a momentto the disturbedharmoniesof Arcadia, Florida, and tryto
imagine what its citizens- especially those who set fire to the Rays' home-
actually saw when they thoughtabout or looked at the Rays' three boys. The
persecutingof children or of heterosexuals with AIDS (or who have tested
positive for HIV) is particularlystrikingin view of the popular descriptionof

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such people as "innocentvictims."It is as ifgay men's "guilt" were the real agent
of infection.And whatis it,exactly,thattheyare guiltyof? Everyoneagrees that
the crimeis sexual, and Watney,along withothers,definesit as the imaginedor
real promiscuityfor which gay men are so famous. He analyzes a storyabout
AIDS by the science correspondentof the Observerin which the "major argu-
ment, supported by 'AIDS experts in America,' [is] against 'casual sexual en-
counters.'" A London doctor does, in the course of the article,urge the use of
condoms in such encounters,but "the main problem . . . is evidently'promis-
cuity',with issues about the kinds of sex one has pushed firmlyinto the back-
gound" (p. 35). But the kindsof sex involved,in quite a differentsense, may in
factbe crucial to the argument.Since the promiscuityhere is homosexual prom-
iscuity,we may, I think,legitimatelywonder if what is being done is not as
importantas how many times it is being done. Or, more exactly,the act being
representedmay itselfbe associated withinsatiabledesire, withunstoppablesex.
Before being more explicitabout this,I should acknowledgethatthe argu-
mentI wishto make is a highlyspeculativeone, based primarilyon the exclusion
of the evidence thatsupportsit. An importantlesson to be learned froma study
of the representationof AIDS is that the messages most likelyto reach their
destinationare messagesalreadythere.Or, to put thisin otherterms,representa-
tionsof AIDS have to be X-rayedfortheirfantasmaticlogic; theydocumentthe
comparative irrelevance of informationin communication. Thus the expert
medical opinions about how the virus cannot be transmitted(informationthat
the college-educatedmayorof Arcadia and his college-educatedwifehave heard
and referto) is at once rationallydiscussed and occulted. SueEllen Smith,the
Arcadia mayor'swife,makes the unobjectionablecommentthat "there are too
manyunansweredquestionsabout thisdisease," onlyto conclude that"if you are
intelligentand listenand read about AIDS you get scared when it involvesyour
own children, because you realize all the assurances are not based on solid
evidence." In strictlyrationalterms,thiscan of course be easilyanswered: there
are indeed "many unansweredquestions" about AIDS, but the assurancesgiven
by medical authoritiesthat there is no risk of the HIV virusbeing transmitted
through casual contact among schoolchildrenis in fact based on "solid evi-
dence." But what interestsme mostabout the New YorkTimesinterviewwiththe
Smithsfromwhich I am quoting (theyare a genial, even disarmingcouple: "I
know I must sound like a countryjerk saying this," remarksMr. Smith,who
reallyneverdoes sound like a countrybumpkin)is the evidence thattheyhave in
fact received and thoroughlyassimilatedquite differentmessages about AIDS.
The mayor said that "a lot of local people, including himself,believed that
powerfulinterests,principallythe national gay leaders, had pressuredthe Gov-
ernmentinto refrainingfromtakinglegitimatesteps to help contain the spread
of AIDS."12 Let's ignore the charmingillusion that "national gay leaders" are

12. Jon Nordheimer,"To Neighborsof Shunned FamilyAIDS Fear OutweighsSympathy,"New

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Is theRectuma Grave? 211

powerfulenough to pressurethe federalgovernmentinto doing anythingat all,


and focus on the really extraordinaryassumptionthat those belonging to the
group hitmostheavilyby AIDS wantnothingmore intenselythanto see it spread
unchecked. In other words, those being killed are killers. Watney cites other
versionsof thisidea of gay men as killers(theirbehavior is seen as the cause and
source of AIDS), and he speaks of "a displaced desire to kill them all-the
teemingdeviant millions" (p. 82). Perhaps; but the presumed originaldesire to
killgays may itselfbe understandableonly in termsof the fantasyforwhichit is
offeredas an explanation: homosexuals are killers.But what is it, exactly,that
makes them killers?
The public discourse about homosexuals since the AIDS crisisbegan has a
startlingresemblance(which Watney notes in passing) to the representationof
female prostitutesin the nineteenth century "as contaminated vessels, con-
veyancing'female' venereal diseases to 'innocent' men" (pp. 33-34).13 Some
more lightis retroactivelythrownon those representationsby the associationof
gay men's murderousnesswithwhatmightbe called the specificsexual heroicsof
theirpromiscuity.The accounts of ProfessorNarayan and Judge Wallach of gay
men having sex twentyto thirtytimesa night,or once a minute,are much less
descriptiveof even the most promiscuousmale sexualitythan theyare reminis-
cent of male fantasiesabout women's multipleorgasms.The Victorianrepresen-
tationof prostitutesmay explicitlycriminalizewhat is merelya consequence of a
more profoundor originalguilt.Promiscuityis the social correlativeof a sexual-
ityphysiologicallygrounded in the menacingphenomenon of the nonclimactic
climax. Prostitutespublicize (indeed, sell) the inherentaptitude of women for
uninterruptedsex. Conversely,the similaritiesbetweenrepresentationsof female
prostitutesand male homosexuals should help us to specifythe exact formof
sexual behaviorbeing targeted,in representationsof AIDS, as the criminal,fatal,
and irresistibly repeated act. This is of course anal sex (with the potentialfor
multipleorgasms having spread fromthe inserteeto the insertor,who, in any
case, mayalwaysswitchroles and be the inserteeforten or fifteenof those thirty
nightlyencounters),and we must of course take into account the widespread
confusionin heterosexual and homosexual men between fantasiesof anal and
vaginalsex. The realitiesof syphilisin the nineteenthcenturyand of AIDS today
"legitimate"a fantasyof femalesexualityas intrinsically diseased; and promiscu-
ityin this fantasy,far from merelyincreasing the riskof infection,is the signof
infection.Women and gay men spread their legs withan unquenchable appetite
for destruction.14 This is an image with extraordinarypower; and if the good

YorkTimes,August 31, 1987, p. Al.


13. Charles Bernheimer'sexcellentstudyof the representationof prostitutionin nineteenth-cen-
turyFrance will be published by Harvard UniversityPress in 1988.
14. The factthatthe rectumand the vagina, as faras the sexual transmissionof the HIV virusis
concerned,are privilegedloci of infectionis of course a major factorin thislegitimizingprocess,but
it hardlyexplains the fantasmaticforce of the representationsI have been discussing.

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212 BERSANI

citizensof Arcadia, Florida,could chase fromtheirmidstan average, law-abiding


family,it is, I would suggest,because in looking at three hemophiliacchildren
they may have seen-that is, unconsciouslyrepresented--the infinitelymore
seductiveand intolerableimage of a grown man, legs high in the air, unable to
refusethe suicidal ecstasyof being a woman.
But why "suicidal"? Recent studieshave emphasized that even in societies
in which,as John Boswell writes,"standards of beauty are oftenpredicated on
male archetypes"(he citesancientGreece and the Muslimworld)and, even more
strikingly,in culturesthatdo not regardsexual relationsbetweenmen as unnatu-
ral or sinful,the line is drawnat "passive" anal sex. In medieval Islam, forall its
emphasison homosexual eroticism,"the positionof the 'insertee' is regarded as
bizarreor even pathological,"and whileforthe ancientRomans, "the distinction
between roles approved for male citizensand others appears to center on the
givingof seed (as opposed to the receivingof it) ratherthanon the more familiar
modernactive-passivedivision,"to be anallypenetratedwas no lessjudged to be
an "indecorous role for citizen males."'5 And in Volume II of The Historyof
Sexuality,Michel Foucault has amplydocumentedthe acceptance (even glorifica-
tion) and profound suspicion of homosexualityin ancient Greece. A general
ethicalpolarityin Greek thoughtof self-domination and a helplessindulgenceof
appetites has, as one of its results,a structuring sexual behavior in termsof
of
activity and passivity, with a correlative rejectionof the so-called passive role in
sex. What the Atheniansfindhard to accept, Foucault writes,is the authorityof a
leader who as an adolescentwas an "object of pleasure" forothermen; thereis a
legal and moral incompatibility betweensexual passivityand civicauthority.The
only "honorable" sexual behavior "consists in being active, in dominating,in
penetrating, and in therebyexercisingone's authority."16
In other words,the moral taboo on "passive" anal sex in ancient Athensis
primarilyformulatedas a kind of hygienicsof social power. To be penetrated is to
abdicatepower.I findit interestingthatan almost identicalargument--from,to
be sure, a whollydifferentmoral perspective-is being made today by certain
feminists.In an interviewpublisheda fewyearsago in Salmagundi,Foucault said,
"Men thinkthat women can only experience pleasure in recognizingmen as
masters"7- a sentenceone could easilytake as coming fromthe pens of Cath-
erine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. These are unlikelybedfellows.In the
same interviewfrom which I have just quoted, Foucault more or less openly
praises sado-masochisticpracticesfor helping homosexual men (many of whom

15. JohnBoswell,"Revolutions,Universalsand Sexual Categories," Salmagundi,nos. 58-59 (Fall


1982-Winter 1983), pp. 107, 102, and 110. See also Boswell's Christianity, Social Toleranceand
Homosexuality,Chicago, Universityof Chicago Press, 1980.
16. Michel Foucault, The Use ofPleasure,trans.Robert Hurley, New York, Pantheon, 1985. This
argumentis made in chapter 4.
17. "Sexual Choice, Sexual Act: An Interviewwith Michel Foucault," Salmagundi,nos. 58-59
(Fall 1982-Winter 1983), p. 21.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 213

share heterosexualmen's fear of losingtheirauthorityby "being under another


man in the act of love") to "alleviate" the "problem" of feeling"that the passive
role is in some waydemeaning."'8 MacKinnon and Dworkin,on the otherhand,
are of course not interestedin makingwomenfeelcomfortableabout lyingunder
men,but in changingthe distributionof power both signifiedand constitutedby
men's insistenceon being on top. They have had quite a bit of bad press,but I
think that they make some very important points, points that-rather
unexpectedly-can help us to understandthe homophobic rage unleashed by
AIDS. MacKinnon, for example, argues convincinglyagainst the liberal distinc-
tion between violence and sex in rape and pornography,a distinctionthat, in
addition to denyingwhat should be the obvious factthat violence is sex for the
rapist,has helped to make pornographysound merelysexy, and thereforeto
protectit. If she and Dworkinuse the word violenceto describepornographythat
would normallybe classifiedas nonviolent(for example, porno filmswith no
explicitsado-masochismor scenes of rape), it is because theydefineas violentthe
power relation that they see inscribedin the sex acts pornographyrepresents.
Pornography,MacKinnon writes,"eroticizes hierarchy"; it "makes inequality
into sex, which makes it enjoyable,and into gender, whichmakes it seem natu-
ral." Not too differently from Foucault (except, of course, for the rhetorical
escalation), MacKinnon speaks of "the male supremacistdefinitionof female
sexuality as lustforself-annihilation." Pornography"institutionalizes the sexual-
ityof male supremacy,fusing the eroticizationof dominance and submission with
the social constructionof male and female."'9 It has been argued that even if
such descriptionsof pornographyare accurate, theyexaggerate its importance:
MacKinnon and Dworkinsee pornographyas playinga major role in construct-
ing a social realityof whichit is reallyonlya marginalreflection.In a sense-and
especially if we consider the size of the steady audience for hard-core
pornography-this is true. But the objection is also somethingof a cop-out,
because if it is agreed that pornographyeroticizes-and therebycelebrates-
the violence of inequalityitself(and the inequalitydoesn't have to be enforced
withwhipsto be violent:the denial to blacksof equal seatingprivilegeson public
busses was rightlyseen as a formof racial violence), then legal pornographyis
legalized violence.
Not only that: MacKinnon and Dworkinare reallymakinga claim for the
realism of pornography.That is, whetheror not we thinkof it as constitutive
(rather than merelyreflective)of an eroticizingof the violence of inequality,
pornographywould be the most accurate descriptionand the most effective
promotionof that inequality.Pornographycan't be dismissedas less significant
sociallythan other more pervasiveexpressionsof gender inequality(such as the

18. Ibid.
19. CatherineA. MacKinnon,Feminism Unmodified:Discourseson Lifeand Law, Cambridge,Massa-
chusetts,and London, England, Harvard UniversityPress, 1987, pp. 3 and 172.

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214 BERSANI

abominable and innumerableTV ads in which,as part of a sales pitchforcough


medicine and bran cereals, women are portrayedas slaves to the normal func-
tioningof theirmen's bronchialtubesand large intestines),because onlypornog-
raphytellsus whythe bran ad is effective:the slavishnessof women is erotically
thrilling. The ultimate logic of MacKinnon's and Dworkin's critique of
pornography-and, howeverparodisticthismaysound, I reallydon't mean it as
a parody of theirviews-would be thecriminalization ofsexitselfuntilit has been
reinvented.For theirmostradical claim is not thatpornographyhas a pernicious
effecton otherwise nonpernicious sexual relations, but rather that so-called
normal sexuality is already pornographic. "When violence against women is
eroticizedas it is in this culture," MacKinnon writes,"it is verydifficultto say
that there is a major distinctionin the level of sex involved between being
assaultedby a penis and being assaulted by a fist,especiallywhen the perpetrator
is a man."20Dworkinhas taken thispositionto its logical extreme:the rejection
of intercourseitself.If, as she argues, "there is a relationshipbetween inter-
course per se and the low-statusof women," and ifintercourseitself"is immune
to reform,"thenthere mustbe no more penetration.Dworkinannounces: "In a
worldof male power- penile power- fuckingis the essentialsexual experience
of power and potencyand possession; fuckingby mortal men, regular guys."21
Almost everybodyreading such sentences will find them crazy, although in a
sense theymerelydevelop the implicitmorallogic of Foucault's more detached
and thereforemore respectableformulation:"Men thinkthat women can only
experience pleasure in recognizingmen as masters." MacKinnon, Dworkin,and
Foucault are all sayingthat a man lyingon top of a woman assumes that what
excites her is the idea of her body being invaded by a phallic master.
The argumentagainst pornographyremains,we could say, a liberal argu-
mentas long as it is assumed thatpornographyviolatesthe naturalconjunctionof
sex with tendernessand love. It becomes a much more disturbinglyradical
argumentwhen the indictmentagainstpornographyis identifiedwithan indict-
mentagainstsex itself.This step is usuallyavoided by the positingof pornogra-
phy'sviolenceas eithera signof certainfantasiesonlymarginallyconnectedwith
an otherwiseessentiallyhealthy(caring,loving)formof human behavior,or the
symptomaticby-productof social inequalities(more specifically,of the violence
intrinsicto a phallocentricculture). In the firstcase, pornographycan be de-
fended as a therapeuticor at least catharticoutlet forthose perhaps inescapable
but happily marginal fantasies,and in the second case pornographybecomes
more or less irrelevantto a political struggle against more pervasive social
structuresof inequality(for once the latterare dismantled,theirpornographic
derivativeswill have lost theirraison d'etre). MacKinnon and Dworkin,on the
other hand, rightlyassume the immensepower of sexual images to orient our

20. Ibid., p. 92.


21. Andrea Dworkin,Intercourse,
New York, The Free Press, 1987, pp. 124, 137, 79.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 215

imaginationof how politicalpower can and should be distributedand enjoyed,


and, it seems to me, theyjust as rightlymistrusta certainintellectualsloppinessin
the catharsisargument,a sloppinessthatconsistsin avoiding the question of how
a centerof presumablywholesomesexualityever produced those unsavorymar-
ginsin the firstplace. Given the public discoursearound the centerof sexuality(a
discourse obviouslynot unmotivatedby a prescriptiveideology about sex), the
marginsmay be the only place where the center becomes visible.
Furthermore,althoughtheirstrategiesand practicalrecommendationsare
unique, MacKinnon's and Dworkin's work could be inscribed withina more
general enterprise,one which I will call the redemptive reinvention of sex. This
enterprise cuts across the usual lines on the battlefieldof sexual politics,and it
includes not only the panicky denial of childhood sexuality,which is being
"dignified" these days as a nearlypsychoticanxietyabout child abuse, but also
the activitiesof such prominentlesbian proponentsof S & M sex as Gayle Rubin
and Pat Califia,neitherof whom, to put it mildly,share the politicalagenda of
MacKinnon and Dworkin. The immensebody of contemporarydiscourse that
argues fora radicallyrevisedimaginationof the body's capacityforpleasure-a
discursiveprojectto whichFoucault, Weeks,and Watneybelong-has as itsvery
conditionof possibilitya certain refusalof sex as we know it, and a frequently
hidden agreement about sexualityas being, in its essence, less disturbing,less
sociallyabrasive,less violent,more respectfulof "personhood" than it has been
in a male-dominated,phallocentricculture. The mystifications in gay activist
discourseon gay male machismobelong to thisenterprise;I willreturnto other
signsof the gay participationin the redemptivesex project. For the moment,I
want to argue, firstof all, that MacKinnon and Dworkin have at least had the
courage to be explicitabout the profoundmoralrevulsionwithsex that inspires
the entire project, whether its specificprogram be antipornographylaws, a
returnto the arcadian mobilitiesof childhood polysexuality,the S & M battering
of the body in order to multiplyor redistributeitsloci of pleasure,or, as we shall
see, the comparativelyanodine agenda (sponsored by Weeks and Watney) of
sexual pluralism.Most of theseprogramshave the slightlyquestionablevirtueof
being indubitablysaner than Dworkin'slyricaltributeto the militantpastoralism
of Joan of Arc's virginity,but the pastoral impulse lies behind them all. What
bothersme about MacKinnon and Dworkinis not theiranalysisof sexuality,but
rather the pastoralizing,redemptiveintentionsthat support the analysis.That
is-and thisis the second, major point I wishto argue- theyhave given us the
reasons why pornographymust be multipliedand not abandoned, and, more
profoundly,the reasons for defending,for cherishingthe verysex theyfindso
hateful.Their indictmentof sex -their refusalto prettify it,to romanticizeit,to
maintain that fuckinghas anythingto do with communityor love-has had
the immenselydesirable effectof publicizing,of lucidlylaying out for us, the
inestimablevalue of sex as-at least in certain of its ineradicable aspects-
anticommunal,antiegalitarian,antinurturing, antiloving.

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216 BERSANI

Let's begin with some anatomical considerations.Human bodies are con-


structedin such a way that it is, or at least has been, almost impossiblenot to
associate masteryand subordinationwith the experience of our most intense
pleasures.This is firstof all a questionof positioning.If the penetrationnecessary
(untilrecently. . .) forthe reproductionof the species has mostgenerallybeen
accomplishedby the man's gettingon top of the woman,it is also true thatbeing
on top can never be just a question of a physicalposition-either forthe person
on top or forthe one on the bottom.(And forthe woman to get on top isjust a
wayof lettingher playthe game of power forawhile,although-as the imagesof
porn movies illustratequite effectively-even on the bottom,the man can still
concentratehis deceptivelyrenounced aggressivenessin the thrustingmovement
of his penis.)22And, as thissuggests,thereis also, alas, the question of the penis.
Unfortunately, the dismissalof penis envyas a male fantasyratherthana psycho-
logical truth about women doesn't reallydo anythingto change the assumptions
behind that fantasy.For the idea of penis envy describes how men feel about
havingone, and, as long as thereare sexual relationsbetween men and women,
thiscan't help but be an importantfactforwomen.In short,the social structures
from which it is often said that the eroticizingof masteryand subordination
derive are perhaps themselvesderivations(and sublimations)of the indissociable
nature of sexual pleasure and the exercise or loss of power. To say thisis not to
propose an "essentialist"view of sexuality.A reflectionon the fantasmaticpo-
tentialof the human body- the fantasiesengendered by itssexual anatomyand
the specificmoves it makesin takingsexual pleasure- is not the same thingas an
a priori,ideologicallymotivated,and prescriptivedescriptionof the essence of
sexuality.Rather,I am sayingthatthose effectsof power which,as Foucault has
argued, are inherentin the relationalitself(theyare immediatelyproduced by
"the divisions,inequalities and disequilibriums"inescapablypresent "in every
relationfromone point to another")23can perhaps most easilybe exacerbated,
and polarized into relationsof masteryand subordination,in sex, and that this
potentialmaybe grounded in the shiftingexperiencethateveryhuman being has
of his or her body's capacity,or failure,to controland to manipulatethe world
beyond the self.
Needless to say, the ideological exploitationsof this fantasmaticpotential
have a long and inglorioushistory.It is mainlya historyof male power, and by
now it has been richlydocumented by others. I want to approach this subject
froma quite different angle, and to argue thata gravelydysfunctionalaspect of
what is, afterall, the healthypleasure we take in the operation of a coordinated

22. The idea of intercoursewithoutthrustingwas proposed by Shere Hite in TheHiteReport,New


York, Macmillan,1976. Hite envisaged "a mutuallyingtogetherin pleasure,penis-in-vagina, vagina-
covering-penis,withfemale orgasm providingmuch of the stimulationnecessaryfor male orgasm"
(p. 141).
23. Michel Foucault, The HistoryofSexuality,vol. 1, An Introduction,
trans. Robert Hurley, New
York, Vintage Books, 1980, pp. 93-94.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 217

and strong physical organism is the temptationto deny the perhaps equally
strongappeal of powerlessness,of the loss of control. Phallocentrismis exactly
that:not primarilythe denial of power to women (althoughit has obviouslyalso
led to that,everywhereand at all times),but above all the denial of the value of
powerlessnessin both men and women. I don't mean the value of gentleness,or
nonaggressiveness,or even of passivity,but ratherof a more radical disintegra-
tionand humiliationof the self.For thereis finally,beyondthe fantasiesof bodily
power and subordinationthat I have just discussed,a transgressingof that very
polaritywhich,as Georges Bataille has proposed, may be the profoundsense of
both certainmysticalexperiencesand of human sexuality.In makingthissugges-
tion I'm also thinkingof Freud's somewhatreluctantspeculation,especiallyin
the ThreeEssayson theTheoryofSexuality,thatsexual pleasure occurs whenevera
certain thresholdof intensityis reached, when the organization of the self is
momentarilydisturbedby sensationsor affectiveprocesses somehow "beyond"
those connected withpsychicorganization.Reluctantbecause, as I have argued
elsewhere,this definitionremoves the sexual fromthe intersubjective,thereby
deprivingthe teleologicalargumentof the ThreeEssaysof muchof itsweight.For
on the one hand Freud outlines a normativesexual developmentthat findsits
natural goal in the post-Oedipal, genitallycentered desire for someone of the
opposite sex, whileon the other hand he suggestsnot onlythe irrelevanceof the
object in sexualitybut also, and even more radically,a shatteringof the psychic
structuresthemselvesthat are the preconditionfor the veryestablishmentof a
relationto others.In thatcuriouslyinsistent,ifintermittent, attemptto get at the
"essence" of sexual pleasure-an attemptthat punctuatesand interruptsthe
more secure narrativeoutlineof the historyof desire in the ThreeEssays-Freud
keeps returningto a line of speculationin whichthe oppositionbetweenpleasure
and pain becomes irrelevant,in which the sexual emerges as the jouissance of
exploded limits,as the ecstatic sufferinginto which the human organism mo-
mentarilyplungeswhen it is "pressed" beyonda certainthresholdof endurance.
Sexuality,at least in the mode in whichit is constituted,may be a tautologyfor
masochism. In The Freudian Body, I proposed that this sexually constitutive
masochismcould even be thoughtof as an evolutionaryconquest in the sense that
it allows the infantto survive,indeed to findpleasure in, the painfuland charac-
teristicallyhuman period during which infantsare shattered with stimulifor
which they have not yet developed defensive or integrativeego structures.
Masochism would be the psychicalstrategythat partiallydefeats a biologically
dysfunctional processof maturation.24 From thisFreudian perspective,we might
say that Bataille reformulates this into the sexual as a kind of
self-shattering
nonanecdotal self-debasement,as a masochismto which the melancholyof the

24. See Leo Bersani, The FreudianBody:Psychoanalysis


and Art,New York, Columbia University
Press, 1986, chapter II, especiallypp. 38-39.

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218 BERSANI

post-Oedipal superego's moral masochismis whollyalien, and in which, so to


speak, the self is exuberantlydiscarded.25
The relevance of these speculations to the present discussion should be
clear: the selfwhich the sexual shattersprovides the basis on which sexualityis
associated withpower. It is possible to thinkof the sexual as, precisely,moving
betweena hyperbolicsense of selfand a loss of all consciousnessof self.But sex as
self-hyperboleis perhaps a repression of sex as self-abolition.It inaccurately
replicatesself-shatteringas self-swelling,as psychictumescence.If,as thesewords
suggest, men are especially apt to "choose" this version of sexual pleasure,
because their sexual equipment appears to invite by analogy, or at least to
facilitate,the phallicizingof the ego, neither sex has exclusive rightsto the
practiceof sex as self-hyperbole. For it is perhapsprimarilythedegeneration ofthe
sexual intoa relationshipthatcondemns to a
sexuality becoming strugglefor power.As
soon as personsare posited,the war begins. It is the selfthat swellswithexcite-
ment at the idea of being on top, the self that makes of the inevitableplay of
thrustsand relinquishmentsin sex an argumentforthe naturalauthorityof one
sex over the other.

Far fromapologizing fortheirpromiscuityas a failureto maintaina loving


relationship,farfromwelcomingthe returnto monogamyas a beneficentconse-
quence of the horrorof AIDS,26 gay men should ceaselesslylamentthe practical
necessity,now, of such relationships,should resistbeing drawn into mimicking
the unrelentingwarfare between men and women, which nothing has ever
changed. Even among the mostcriticalhistoriansof sexualityand the mostangry
activists,there has been a good deal of defensivenessabout what it means to be
gay. Thus forJeffrey Weeks the most distinctiveaspect of gay lifeis its "radical
pluralism."27Gayle Rubin echoes and extends thisidea by arguing fora "theo-
reticalas well as a sexual pluralism."28Watneyrepeatsthisthemewith,it is true,
some importantnuances. He sees that the "new gay identitywas constructed

25. Bataille called thisexperience "communication,"in the sense thatit breaks down the barriers
that define individual organismsand keep them separate from one another. At the same time,
however,like Freud he seems to be describingan experience in whichthe verytermsof a communi-
cation are abolished. The termthuslends itselfto a dangerous confusionifwe allow it to keep any of
its ordinaryconnotations.
26. It mightbe pointed out that,unlessyou met your lover many,manyyearsago and neitheryou
nor he has had sex withanyone else since then,monogamyis not thatsafe anyway.Unsafe sex a few
timesa week withsomeone carryingthe HIV virusis undoubtedlylike havingunsafesex withseveral
HIV positivestrangersover the same period of time.
27. Weeks, p. 218.
28. Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in
Carole Vance, ed., Pleasureand Danger:ExploringFemaleSexuality,Boston, London, Melbourne,and
Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 309.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 219

throughmultipleencounters,shiftsof sexual identification, actingsout, cultural


reinforcements, and a pluralityof opportunity(at least in large urban areas) for
desublimatingthe inheritedsexual guilt of a grotesquelyhomophobic society,"
and thereforelamentsthe "wholesale de-sexualisationof gay cultureand experi-
ence" encouraged by the AIDS crisis(p. 18). He nonethelessdiluteswhat I take
to be the specificmenace of gay sex forthat "grotesquelyhomophobic society"
by insistingon the assertionof "the diversityof human sexualityin all itsvariant
forms"as "perhaps the most radical aspect of gay culture" (p. 25). Diversity is
the keyword in his discussionsof homosexuality,whichhe definesas "a fluctuat-
ing field of sexual desires and behaviour" (p. 103); it maximizes "the mutual
erotic possibilitiesof the body, and that is whyit is taboo" (p. 127).29
Much of thisderivesof course fromthe rhetoricof sexual liberationin the
'60s and '70s, a rhetoricthat received its most prestigiousintellectualjustifica-
tion fromFoucault's call- especiallyin the firstvolume of hisHistoryofSexuality
-for a reinventingof the body as a surfaceof multiplesourcesof pleasure. Such
calls, for all their redemptive appeal, are, however, unnecessarilyand even
dangerouslytame. The argument for diversityhas the strategicadvantage of
making gays seem like passionate defenders of one of the primaryvalues of
mainstreamliberal culture,but to make thatargumentis, it seems to me, to be
disingenuousabout the relationbetweenhomosexual behaviorand the revulsion
it inspires.The revulsion,it turnsout, is all a big mistake:whatwe're reallyup to
is pluralism and diversity,and getting buggered is just one moment in the
practice of those laudable humanisticvirtues.Foucault could be especiallyper-
verse about all this: challenging,provoking,and yet, in spite of his radical
intentions,somewhatappeasing in his emphases. Thus in the Salmagundiinter-
view to which I have already referred,afterannouncingthat he will not "make
use of a positionof authoritywhile [he is] being interviewedto trafficin opin-
ions," he delivers himselfof the highlyidiosyncraticopinions, firstof all, that
"for a homosexual,the best momentof love is likelyto be when the lover leaves
in the taxi" ("the homosexual imaginationis for the most part concerned with
reminiscingabout the act ratherthananticipating[or, presumably,enjoying]it")
and, secondly,thatthe ritualsof gay S & M are "the counterpartof the medieval
courts where strictrules of proprietarycourtship were defined."30The first
opinion is somewhatembarrassing;the second has a certaincampyappeal. Both
turnour attentionaway fromthe body-from the acts in whichit engages, from

29. A frequentlyreferredto study of gay men and women by the Institutefor Sex Research
founded by AlfredC. Kinseyconcluded that "homosexual adults are a remarkablydiversegroup."
See Alan P. Bell and MartinS. Weinberg,Homosexualities: A StudyofDiversity amongMen and Women,
New York, Simon and Schuster,1978, p. 217. One can hardlybe unhappywiththatconclusionin an
"official"sociological study,but, needless to say, it tells us very little-and the tables about gay
sexual preferencesin the same studyaren't much help here either-concerning fantasiesof and
about homosexuals.
30. "Sexual Choice, Sexual Act," pp. 11, 20.

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220 BERSANI

the pain it inflictsand begs for-and directsour attentionto the romances of


memoryand the idealizationsof the presexual, the courtingimagination.That
turningaway fromsex is thenprojectedonto heterosexualsas an explanationfor
their hostility."I thinkthat what most bothers those who are not gay about
gaynessis the gay life-style, not sex acts themselves,"and, "It is the prospectthat
gays will create as yet unforseen kindsof relationshipsthat manypeople cannot
tolerate."3l But what is "the Is thereone? Was Foucault's life-style
gay life-style"?
the same as Rock Hudson's? More importantly, can a nonrepresentableformof
relationshipreally be more threatening than the representationof a particular
sexual act-especially when the sexual act is associated with women but per-
formedby men and, as I have suggested,has the terrifying appeal of a loss of the
ego, of a self-debasement?
We have been studyingexamples of whatmightbe called a frenziedepic of
displacementsin the discourseon sexualityand on AIDS. The governmenttalks
more about testingthan it does about researchand treatment;it is more inter-
ested in those who may eventuallybe threatenedby AIDS than in those already
strickenwith it. There are hospitalsin which concern for the safetyof those
patientswho have not been exposed to HIV takes precedence over caring for
those suffering froman AIDS-related disease. Attentionis turnedaway fromthe
kinds of sex people practice to a moralisticdiscourse about promiscuity.The
impulseto killgayscomes out as a rage againstgay killersdeliberatelyspreadinga
deadly virusamong the "general public." The temptationof incesthas become a
national obsession with child abuse by day-careworkersand teachers. Among
intellectuals,the penis has been sanitizedand sublimatedinto the phallus as the
originarysignifier;the body is to be read as a language. (Such distancingtech-
niques, for which intellectualshave a natural aptitude, are of course not only
sexual: the national disgrace of economic discriminationagainstblacks is buried
in the self-righteous call for sanctionsagainst Pretoria.) The wild excitementof
fascisticS & M becomes a parody of fascism;gay males' idolatryof the cock is
"raised" to the politicaldignityof "semioticguerrillawarfare." The phallocen-
trismof gay cruisingbecomes diversityand pluralism;representationis displaced
fromthe concrete practice of fellatioand sodomy to the melancholycharmsof
eroticmemoriesand the cerebral tensionsof courtship.There has even been the
displacementof displacementitself.While it is undeniablyrightto speak-as,
among others,Foucault, Weeks, and MacKinnon have spoken-of the ideologi-
callyorganizingforceof sexuality,it is quite anotherthingto suggest-as these
writersalso suggest-that sexual inequalitiesare predominantly,perhaps exclu-
sively,displaced social inequalities.Weeks, forexample, speaks of erotictensions
as a displacementof politicallyenforcedpositionsof power and subordination,32

31. Ibid., p. 22.


32. See Weeks, p. 44.

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Is theRectuma Grave? 221

as if the sexual-involving as it does the source and locus of everyindividual's


original experience of power (and of powerlessness)in the world: the human
body-could somehow be conceived of apart fromall relationsof power, were,
so to speak, belatedlycontaminatedby power fromelsewhere.
Displacementis endemic to sexuality.I have written,especiallyin Baude-
laire and Freud,about the mobilityof desire,arguingthatsexual desire initiates,
indeed can be recognized by, an agitated fantasmaticactivityin which original
(but, from the start,unlocatable) objects of desire get lost in the images they
generate. Desire, by its very nature, turns us away from its objects. If I refer
criticallyto whatI take to be a certainrefusalto speak franklyabout gay sex, it is
not because I believe eitherthatgay sex is reducibleto one formof sexual activity
or thatthe sexual itselfis a stable,easilyobservable,or easilydefinablefunction.
Rather, I have been tryingto account for the murderous representationsof
homosexualsunleashed and "legitimized"by AIDS, and in so doing I have been
struckby what mightbe called the aversion-displacements characteristicof both
those representationsand the gay responsesto them. Watneyis acutelyaware of
the displacementsoperative in "cases of extreme verbal or physical violence
towardslesbians and gay men and, by extension,the whole topic of AIDS"; he
speaks, forexample, of "displaced misogyny,"of "a hatred of what is projected
as 'passive' and therefore female, sanctioned by the subject's heterosexual
drives" (p. 50). But, as I argued earlier,implicitin both the violence towardgay
men (and towardwomen,both gay and straight)and the rethinkingamong gays
(and among women) of what being gay (and what being a woman) means is a
certainagreementabout what sex should be. The pastoralizingproject could be
thoughtof as informingeven the most oppressivedemonstrationsof power. If,
for example, we assume that the oppression of women disguisesa fearfulmale
responseto the seductivenessof an image of sexual powerlessness,then the most
brutal machismo is reallypart of a domesticating,even sanitizingproject. The
ambitionof performingsex as onlypower is a salvationalproject,one designed to
preserve us froma nightmareof ontological obscenity,fromthe prospect of a
breakdown of the human itselfin sexual intensities,from a kind of selfless
communicationwith"lower" orders of being. The panic about childabuse is the
mosttransparentcase of thiscompulsionto rewritesex. Adult sexualityis splitin
two: at once redeemed by its retroactivemetamorphosisinto the purityof an
asexual childhood,and yetpreservedin itsmostsinisterformsbybeing projected
onto the image of the criminalseducer of children. "Purity" is crucial here:
behind the brutalitiesagainst gays, against women, and, in the denial of their
verynatureand autonomy,againstchildrenlies the pastoralizing,the idealizing,
the redemptiveproject I have been speaking of. More exactly,the brutalityis
identicalto the idealization.
The participationof the powerlessthemselvesin thisproject is particularly
disheartening.Gays and women must of course fightthe violence directed
againstthem,and I am certainlynot arguingfora complicitywithmisogynist and

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222 BERSANI

homophobic fantasies.I am, however, arguing against that formof complicity


that consistsin accepting,even findingnew ways to defend, our culture's lies
about sexuality.As ifin secretagreementwiththe values thatsupportmisogynist
images of female sexuality,women call fora permanentclosingof the thighsin
the name of chimericallynonviolentideals of tendernessand nurturing;gays
suddenly rediscover their lost bathhouses as laboratories of ethical liberalism,
places where a culture's ill-practicedideals of communityand diversityare au-
thenticallyput intopractice.But whatifwe said, forexample, not thatit is wrong
to think of so-called passive sex as "demeaning," but rather that thevalue of
sexualityitselfis to demeantheseriousness to redeemit? "AIDS," Watney
of efforts
writes,"offersa new sign for the symbolicmachineryof repression,makingthe
rectuma grave" (p. 126). But if the rectumis the grave in which the masculine
ideal (an ideal shared-differently-by men and women) of proud subjectivity
is buried,thenit should be celebratedforitsverypotentialfordeath. Tragically,
AIDS has literalizedthat potentialas the certaintyof biological death, and has
thereforereinforcedthe heterosexualassociationof anal sex witha self-annihila-
tionoriginallyand primarilyidentifiedwiththe fantasmaticmystery of an insatia-
ble, unstoppablefemalesexuality.It may,finally,be in the gay man's rectumthat
he demolishes his own perhaps otherwiseuncontrollableidentificationwith a
murderousjudgment against him.
That judgment, as I have been suggesting,is grounded in the sacrosanct
value of selfhood,a value thataccounts forhuman beings' extraordinarywilling-
ness to kill in order to protectthe seriousnessof their statements.The self is a
practicalconvenience;promoted to the statusof an ethical ideal, it is a sanction
for violence.33If sexualityis socially dysfunctionalin that it brings people to-
gether only to plunge them into a self-shattering and solipsisticjouissancethat
drivesthemapart, it could also be thoughtof as our primaryhygienicpracticeof
nonviolence.Gay men's "obsession" withsex, far frombeing denied, should be
celebrated- not because of its communal virtues,not because of its subversive
potential for parodies of machismo,not because it offersa model of genuine
pluralismto a societythatat once celebratesand punishespluralism,but rather
because it never stops re-presentingthe internalizedphallic male as an infinitely
loved object of sacrifice.Male homosexualityadvertisesthe risk of the sexual
of losingsightof the self,and in so doing it
itselfas the risk of self-dismissal,
proposes and dangerouslyrepresentsjouissanceas a mode of ascesis.

33. This sentence could be rephrased, and elaborated, in Freudian terms, as the difference
between the ego's functionof "reality-testing"
and the superego's moral violence (against the ego).

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