calloutqueen:

Aren’t simple desires dead yet? Are we still so obsessed with the hegemonic body? Why do scenes from 20 years ago or even 40 years ago playout just like scenes from 20 minutes ago? Why are we all so stuck talking about fagsex and leather and bodyhair and sweat like it’s a revolution? Why are things like pleasure and bodyfluid still so predominant in discussions about ecstasy and emotion and love and lust? Why is power so reduced to testosterone and money and the phallus? Where are the tricksters, and the sneaks, marked by illusion and deception and joy and glamour and transformation?

Without being too presumptuous, I think the reason certain tropes never seem to die is because they reinforce the personal narratives, identities and power of the guys who are privileged enough to decide what’s okay and what’s not okay, what’s hot and what’s not, and these are the same systems that define culture on a much bigger scale. White guys like to see themselves reified. Even and especially if we live in a world which is constantly validating certain bodies, white guys feel like it is our birthright to have this constant stream of validation 24/7, uninterrupted, and never critically examined. 

I’m really into this idea of locating the erotics of the trickster, though. I’m constantly looking for a way of reconciling opposing ideas of desire and sex and lust, and have found an effective way of expressing this reconciliation (in like art or whatever) through ambivalence. I think it is a debatably believable pose, no less “authentic” than butchness, but I think it is, to an extent, a way of getting people to look critically at their desires. What does it mean to be with someone who might or might not be really into having sex with you? If you’re trying to connect with someone who is ambivalent about whether or not they want to connect with you, it necessarily forces you to ask whether or not you want someone who seems so ambivalent (Do I turn you on? What if I don’t care to hear the answer to that question, do I still turn you on?), and to identify with your own uncertainty, your dual impulses to both fuck and run (at the same time).