A few weeks ago I was out at a beer garden, sitting with eight other slightly inebriated people –six of whom I had never met before that evening –around three conjoined plastic tables stencilled with beer brands.
We were playing a hybrid party game intersecting Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle. In anti-clockwise progression, we took turns asking questions with multiple answers e.g. countries in Africa, types of alcoholic beverages, designer brands etc. Whoever gave a wrong answer or was late responding got peppered with personal questions by every other person at the table, and, in lieu of answering a question that was too uncomfortable, were to throw back a shot.
I flubbed over a question –I can't remember what about –and was on the hot seat.
How many sexual partners have I had?
Alarmingly few, considering the shocked expressions and rebuttals with which my body count was met.
What did I like sexually?
Of the four ladies on the table, who would I fuck, marry, or kill?
Step by step, how was the fuck going to progress?
And then one of the ladies asked: Have you ever kissed a guy?
Her tone was excited, she'd brought out the big guns, but my answer was already anticipated and decided. Even as I was answering she motioned to the next person whose turn it was to ask me a question.
"Yes, I have kissed a guy."
This stopped her short, she and everyone else as silence fell on our table, uncomfortable, short-lived but meaningful
WHAAAAAAT??? FUUUNNNKE!
"Are you serious?" she asked, disbelief etched on her face.
Yup.
Did I enjoy it? Was it pleasurable?
Yup.
Did I feel anything while kissing another guy?
It's kissing. You're supposed to feel it. Kissing a guy is as pleasurable and intense a kiss as any.
Guy, you're gay!" spat the lady seated at the opposite end of the table from me, as though this were an insult. Confronted with a three-pronged choice –fuck, marry, kill –between four women, she was the one I'd picked to marry.
"I can't believe you're saying this," the one who'd asked the question gave out in a tone somewhere between betrayed and outraged. You'd think I had assaulted her, and, in some way, my answer must have felt to her like an assault. Here I was, admitting to –more than admitting, actually; owning –amorous possibility with a hypothetical man before strangers, and I wasn't ashamed when everything she knew told her I should be. She'd given me lifelines, room to amend, if not retract, my statement, and I wouldn't take it. Unspoken was the question: How dare I?
An ironic twist: during the course of our game, before I'd been asked and expected to deny having kissed a guy, three out of the four ladies at our table had admitted to sex with others of the same sex; one expressed more than a passing sexual interest in other women and identified as something of a lesbian. All of these communicated without the bat of an eyelid, without the slightest expectation of scrutiny. And, indeed, there was no scrutiny. Not for these women who liked women.
In expressing her disbelief, the one seated next to me used the slur "faggot." Naturally, this made me angry, but not for the usual reason.
I wasn't embarrassed. That taboo word, it was somewhat surprising to find, had no power over me. I didn't feel the slightest shame at being referred to as such. Instead, I was righteously angered in a way that admitted no concession to insult, because it was a misrecognition, deliberate in its intention to distort me, fold me into the sound of the word like retched phlegm and make disgust, the ramification of that sound, somehow definitive. But you see, I knew the guttural slur, "faggot", had nothing to do with me. Never in my life have I been more in love with who I am, so rather than respond in embarrassment tweaked into blind rage so I can live with it, I let the slur wash over me, ineffective. Useless.
Lawd, gimme the strength
So what, you girls have sex with other girls, but somehow the idea that I would kiss another guy upsets you?
Speaking over each other, all three ladies let me know they couldn't be judged the same as me. They were girls and it was "normal" for girls to explore. Men like it when two girls get it on, but two guys on the other hand... That was gay and terrible. Fourteen years.
I wanted to argue this, make it clear that being attracted to someone of the same sex didn't necessarily translate to being gay, but I wasn't going to let myself be pushed into what could be interpreted as defensiveness. Bi-erasure is something really personal for me, but, this one time, I chose to pick my battles.
Moreover, what was at play here was more insidious. What, really, did these blanket notions of men's sexual fantasies have to do with two women being intimate?
Separately, I brought this occurrence up with two of my best friends -male and female -the next day, and, both times, the term privilege –"female privilege" –came up in describing the latitude i.e. unaccountability, women ostensibly "enjoy" as regards same-sex relations, within less traditional spaces.
This seemed to me a misnomer. "Privilege" was so ill-suited to –and, in fact, the farthest thing from –what I'd been confronted with.
Have you kissed a guy?
This question had been intended to put me on the spot and make me squirm in my seat, as, I imagine, the lady who asked figured it would any man. Hers was less a questioning of sexuality than it was of masculinity. Perhaps, there was some thrill in the possibility that I would vehemently confirm her view of what masculinity should be for me, and that by so doing this projected idea of masculinity would be subverted, on her instance, by denial born out of my discomfort at the idea I could be less masculine.
It's interesting, the cognitive dissonance in recognising this sense of masculinity for its fragility while holding it up as the Holy Grail.
The manner in which these ladies reacted to my answer reflected on how they knew to see themselves in relation to a cultural order predicated on their relative existences, how they saw themselves in relation to me.
As individuals who also find pleasure in the welcoming pout of others of the same sex, these ladies and I weren't equal. Of the four of us, only I could take responsibility and ownership for my desires, could be held accountable for them. Only I was allowed choice, whether or not born out of an innate proclivity.
Couched in the patronising language of the patriarchy, these ladies were unthinking, mindless and driven by uncontrollable sentimentality, slaves to their emotions, incapable of choosing what or how to desire, and, by default, choosing and desiring anyone who chooses and desires them. A Harvey Weinstein, a Bill Cosby, an R. Kelly, a Louis C.K, a Clarence Thomas, or a million other faceless men insinuated into their private moments with their vaginas or those of other women.
They couldn't be held to task for being with other women sexually, because in those spaces they are fetish and fantasy for anonymous men by whose assumed pleasure theirs become validated. And this is "normal". Unchallenged. Unquestioned; this idea all three ladies held that their sexual expressions were subject to a pervasive male gaze and, for that, normalised. Subtext: this omnipresent male gaze permits them to be sexual.
I imagine these young ladies tweeting with the hash-tags #MenAreScum and #MeToo. If only they knew.
Considering, for instance, the emphasis on penetration in lesbian porn, what other possibilities exist for the sexual female within the constraining gaze of men but that of agent provocateur or prisoner at large?
Ours is a culture that polices female sexuality. Whore or Madonna, a female should have no sexual agency outside the demands and sensibilities of men –should have no sexual agency, period. When a virgin, she is pure for her husband's bed, and any attempt to own her body and be sexual is framed as devaluation at the hands of men whose value as individuals –and, consequently, citizens –stays above question.
In patriarchal tradition, everything leading up to sex is predicated on masculine agency. Sex is something females give because men take. In deciding when to "give up the cookies", what's at stake for a female is her worth as a person, her "virtue" inextricably tied to the irreproachable sexuality of men; in danger of being lost to the wiles of men.
A proper female is rewarded by a man getting on one knee, popping out a ring, and/ going to her family –read as father or, in his absence, the man nearest in stature, a male child, or, in their absence, a woman filling in. All that's required of the female is to nod and say yes, and, lest this be mistaken for some strain of control, a say in the course of her fate, it's important to interrogate why, in the gesture of marriage proposals, it is considered a given that a female wants to –and is ready –to be engaged. If so, why wait for a man to affirm, by exercise of his will, her passive wishes, and what happens when he doesn't?
Even in cultures where brides pay dowry, the transactional language is framed around the invaluable nature of men presented as phenotypic rather than constructed. Weddings may be about females but marriages, like all institutions crafted around an imbalance of power, are about men –hence, the staple advice about power struggles in marriages on Christian websites which, purportedly addressing men and their wives, denounces as harmful behaviour typically expected of men, while noting the role played by the emergence of the "modern woman" i.e. a woman who sheds God-given femininity for masculine priorities, in such power struggles.
In a scene from episode two of the ABC hit TV series, How To Get Away With Murder, Connor Walsh (played by Jack Falahee) shows up with takeout at Oliver's after missing a date earlier in the week.
"You really think I’m that desperate," says Oliver (played by Conrad Ricamora), “that you can buy me some takeout and bat your eyes, and I’ll get down on my knees like some sad twink?" The gay archetype, twink, is used here in its derogatory sense, descriptor for a young effeminate gay man who is undoubtedly a bottom i.e. the receptive partner during sex between men.
After first closing the door on Connor, Oliver reconsiders the offer of sex, with a proviso. “OK, but tonight, I do you.” (emphasis is mine).
This may seem innocuous on the surface but, on closer inspection, there are some troubling presumptions inherent in this statement, especially on the backdrop of endemic bottom-shaming amongst homosexual and bisexual men.
“OK, but tonight, I do you” presupposes that being the receptive partner is not "doing", that bottoming does not require sexual agency; that to be a sexual agent, to not be "some sad twink", is to penetrate. Even more unsettling is the insinuation that being done is tenable punishment for missing a date, which, to me, has a lot to do with the pandemic rhetoric of sex as violence, with the penis as a weapon or flagellating whip.
In ancient Greek and Roman societies, being penetrated was often used as an insult and was regarded such a violation of the sexual integrity of male citizens (this did not apply to slaves) as to constitute cause for stripping one of his citizenship. According to Daniel J. Pullen (PhD., Indiana), professor of Classics and Chairman of the department at Florida State University, "Aristophanes, the comic playwright, he often has a character that looks out into the audience and talks directly to them. And one of his favourite things basically translates as 'Look at all the gaping assholes.'"
Much of the scholarship on the stigma constructed around being the object of penetration –"done", "topped" –underscores that this phenomenon has a lot to do with power and its association with gender roles; with specific regard to same-sex loving men, it is a false equivalence of heteronormative gender roles with sex positions during sexual activity between two men –hence the ignorant question all male same-sex couples deal with at one time or another, "Which of you is the female?"
In addition to the reasons above, I would argue that this stigmatisation, more than anything else, has to do with the framing of femininity –the quality of being female –as a polar opposite of masculinity –the quality of being male –within a system that needs masculinity to be the paragon of rightness in order to justify the unearned power and privilege that accrues to it.
What then does it mean to be female?
Professor Germaine Greer during a panel debate taped in New York on April 30, 1971 for the documentary film, Town Bloody Hall, described it beautifully when she said:
“Sexual politics, by and large, has something to do with the act of fucking being to the advantage of the one who fucks and to the disadvantage of the one who is fucked. And as far as I can see, the one who is fucked, be it male or female or a pig or a stone, is always characterised as female and inferior.”
Thus, being female transcends sex and gender. Men, too, can be female, depending on their being penetrated, topped, done, or the possibility of imputing on them such assumptions.
As a system, patriarchy needs the pathologisation of femininity to survive. Seeing as the definitive feature of femininity i.e. the quality of being female, is fuckability, it also follows that this quality of being, assumedly, fuckable would be shroud with indignity -ergo, slut shaming, bottom shaming, and heterosexism -with exceptions only where this fuckability exists as an addendum to masculinity, which is typified by a sexual integrity premised on conquest -"tonight, I do you."
Shaming, it's important to note, is not without its consequences. The enterprise of shame has widespread ramifications in the lives of its objects, in shaping their worldview and how they are able to conceive of themselves as citizens and political agents.
Unlike guilt which goes to the rightness or wrongness of a specific action, shame is diffuse and goes to the self-identity of an individual. Shame constitutes an evaluation of self and is commonly referred to by psychologists as the belief in a malignant self. Shaming feeds stereotypes and stereotypes cause individuals to be misrecognised.
Professor Melissa V. Harris-Perry makes the compelling argument in her book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, that recognition is intrinsic to citizenship. It thus follows that to the extent to which shaming constitutes a misrecognition, it is a divestment of citizenship. In patriarchal tradition, today the same as in ancient Greek and Roman societies, all it still takes is fuckability.
In The Self-Conscious Emotions, Tara L. Gruenewald, Sally S. Dickerson, and Margaret E. Kemen explore the link between the experience of shame and the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines in humans. Proinflammatory cytokine activity, it has been proven by extensive research and experiments, is activated under conditions of social threat (exemplified by shaming) in humans and acts on the brain to induce adaptive, affective and behavioural changes marked by social disengagement i.e. withdrawal, submission, and appeasement behaviour that may reduce the likelihood of further shaming. In light of these, it goes without saying that the shame crafted around female sexuality has severe political implications and can also be an effective tool for control and unchallenged domination. It is therefore imperative to interrogate and deconstruct the feminised shame culture of the global patriarchy.
My favourite definition of feminism is one by African-American feminist scholar, bell hooks. "Feminism," she writes, "is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression." This definition goes to the heart of the matter in naming sexist thinking and action as the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are male or female. This definition is also open-ended enough to take into account the systemic and institutionalised nature of sexism, recognises that patriarchy is a social reality in which both males and females are conditioned, and, by implication, that this conditioning is reversible.
Last week I turned on the news to reports of Charlie Rose being the latest on the long list of high-profile men accused of sexual harassment, assault, or both. This wasn't shocking but it felt like a let-down. He is one of those rare interviewers who -ironic as this may seem -know how to let their interviewees speak, and I have been a fan of his technique. My favourite show of his was the 1993 interview of prolific Pulitzer prize-winning author and Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison, who, in response to Rose's question on her feelings about racism as an African-American, delivered what, to me, remains one of the most iconic dissections of racism.
Toni Morrison: "How do you feel? Not you, Charlie, but don't you understand the people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft. There is something distorted about the psyche. It is a huge waste and it is a corruption and a distortion. It's like a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is.
It feels crazy. It is crazy, and it has just as much of a deleterious effect on white people and possibly equal as it does black people.
...If the racist white person, and I don't mean if the person is examining his consciousness, doesn't understand that he or she is also a race, it's also constructed. It's also made and it also has some serviceability. When you take it away, if I take your race away, there you are all strung out and then all you have got is your little self.
What is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? These are the questions..."
We can take these questions and apply them to sexism, replacing white people with those who practice sexism.
What are you without sexism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself?
These questions conceive of a state of affairs that is non-existent and, as such, limited to imagination. So I propose a radical reconfiguration:
WHAT ARE YOU WITH SEXISM?
When I was asked in the course of that party game to say of the four ladies at table who I was going to fuck, marry, or kill, I became nervous, stalled, and my tone was apologetic by the time I got to the "kill". There's something to be said about the position and function of mortal violence as part of a coherent group involving sex and marriage as related concepts, but the really interesting thing is when the tables were turned and one of the ladies was asked the same thing, she was flip, reeling off her picks -I was the kill -and giggling while at it. I wonder now if, just like me, that had something to do with her sense of possibility.
What are you?
As a male, what unearned advantages do you enjoy for the sake of being male and what is the toll on your humanity? As a female, do you belong to yourself? Are you able to centre your goals, your desires and sexuality in your imaginations for life?
If not, what are you going to do about it?
Share This Article
