[Sex & Sorcery] Gay stuff

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This thread follows up on Judd's (Paka's) comment in Sex and Sorcery: facts feeding fictions:

... would like to at some point address the gay and lesbian issues that the book seems to absolutely ignore

I submit that the book does not ignore gay and lesbian issues, because I think the stuff in the book applies well to humans in terms of gender regardless of whom they entwine genitals with.

Which is to say: I think that my fellow men who have sex with other men are, themselves, my fellow men. I do not think of them as feminized, even when swishy - that behavior is, as I see it, a commentary on male signals (semiotics, to use the old-skool word) rather than "girly" in any fundamental sense. The same goes for women, labels reversed.

I also think that "gay" is a very problematic label. Although I acknowledge its value as a political and subcultural entity - mainly because I think bashing and employment-discrimination are heinous, and thus "any tool will do" which combats them - I also think it has no claim to "essentialism," nor does it need such a claim in order to be useful/positive politically and subculturally. I recognize that gay behaviors exist (i.e. sex/preference with members of one's own gender); I am a bit queasy about ear-tagging gay people when subcultural and political aims are set aside.

To continue without spasms of resentment about the above paragraph, I fervently hope, and to move on to the relevance of Sex & Sorcery to the gay reader as the author sees it, here's my take.

- Apparently a preference for same-sex partners does not, in general, reduce or represent a disinterest in reproduction and parenting.
-Nor does it reduce or represent a disinterest in participating in society and one's community as a productive member.

Therefore I suggest that the book permits a person who prefers same-sex partnering to consider male and female protagonists, as well as the brand of male/female stories I describe, in a positive and useful light for role-playing just as it does for readers who prefer different-sex partners.

To bring up some examples from the cited sources ...

Hedwig (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) is not, as I see it, necessarily a "gay guy." Light in the loafers, prior to his disastrous operation? Sure. Glamm'd and doe-eyed? Yup. Inclined toward sex and love toward men? Apparently. But as a protagonist, and much older than the flashback scenes, he (or she) is a feminized male, who has literally been forced to adopt female-preferences and female-semiotics as a way to gain some love from others, to whatever degree possible. The question is not whether he is gay; the question is whether his situation has power and whether it can be exercised for happiness. Can he force Tommy to live up to his romantic promises? Can he strip naked and walk forth as who he is, makeup and wigs aside? Those are the questions which matter. (My use of "he" in this paragraph is obviously qualified. I do consider Hedwig male, but mainly through my gut-level identification with his crisis in the story, hence my maleness informs the pronoun, not some kind of chromosomal essentialism toward the character on my part.)

Tomoe Gozen may well be a gay woman, if that term means anything in the context of her society. She apparently gains more sexual pleasure from women than from men. However, she is not incapable of loving a man, including full samurai-woman-style loyalty to him and his military aims ... but I do not think the easy label of "oh, so she's bi" is going to help understand her either. My take on Tomoe is that she is not able to define ("realize") herself through any application of reproductive effort (to use the term in the broadest sense, which includes non-reproductive sexual contact). Her path is that of honor and death, relative to conflicts in society. When she tries to engage in romantic relationships, either her own or others, the results are almost always disastrous - her judgments about these things are very poor. She is quintessentially "unlucky in love," or as the water-demon tells her in the third book, "You are the tears of Kwan-Yin, you extinguish earthly passion." She is a woman whose personality/fate is well-suited to the male-style story - but that does not itself mean "Tomoe's a lesbian," any more than Hedwig's plight "means he's a gay guy."

Can I, a man who prefers different-sex partners, identify with both of these characters? You bet. Can I identify as well with a woman in a woman-style story? You bet. And finally, can I identify with a thorough-going, by-the-label gay man or woman as a protagonist? You bet (examples: the brilliant comics Wendel and Dykes to Watch Out For [both full of gay-ness, by gay authors, male and female respectively]; as a different spin, the movie Lianna [lesbian issues; straight male writer/director] and the book Still Life with Traveler [gay issues; straight male author]). The issues are all the same for all of us, gender trends and all; explicit gender preferences provide idiom and "twists" (no pun intended) that prompt powerful engagement in the stories. And those issues are what the book's about.

I wish that I had read Quentin Crisp's writings in full prior to publishing Sex & Sorcery. I attended a talk by him back in the mid-1980s, and he was an astounding, wonderful person. However, I didn't read his three main books, The Naked Civil Servant, Resident Alien, and How to Become a Virgin until last years. They are brilliant skewers right into the comfy heart of "gay vs. straight" labelling, and frankly, many of my strident gay-this-and-that friends would do well to read them, no less than my naively-homophobic friends. They are absolutely full of passages that as quotations would have suited my ends in writing Sex & Sorcery. That guy (swish or not, queer or not, whatever) was tough.

Best,
Ron

[DannyK]

Hmm, I was hoping that someday there'd be a supplement like "Scandal and Sorcery" addressing hot-button issues such as homosexuality, race, religion...

[Judd]

Ron,

I don't know very much about gay and lesbian issues or that branch of critical theory, which is why I just brought it up vaguely, rather than actually posting about it.  Thanks for addressing the issue.  When I've digested the book again, I'll have more of a retort, if any.

Judd

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Danny, you wrote,

I was hoping that someday there'd be a supplement like "Scandal and Sorcery" addressing hot-button issues such as homosexuality, race, religion

No way. That would be playing the game for you. It's a tool for addressing problematic stuff, so if you want stuff X, then get to work and play.

Best,
Ron

[DannyK]

Hello,

Danny, you wrote,

I was hoping that someday there'd be a supplement like "Scandal and Sorcery" addressing hot-button issues such as homosexuality, race, religion

No way. That would be playing the game for you. It's a tool for addressing problematic stuff, so if you want stuff X, then get to work and play.

Well, yeah, but I'd still selfishly like to hear what Ron thinks.  :)
I'll think about this some more, and maybe start a different thread on a different day.  

Danny

[lumpley]

Hey Ron.  You know I'm just trying obliquely to provoke you into geeking about relationship hassles, but:

What's your claim that the gender stuff in Sex & Sorcery applies to humans, not just to humans whose gender stuff is reflected by and reflects the gender stuff in Western lit?  (I say "just" acknowledging that it's stupid: the gender stuff in Western lit is my gender stuff, and I can't really care very much about any other.)

How is your claim of relevance "to humans" not a claim of chromosomal essentialism?  Or is it one?

Plus I think that "entwine genitals with" evokes a sweet image, so nice on that.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Vincent,

What's your claim that the gender stuff in Sex & Sorcery applies to humans, not just to humans whose gender stuff is reflected by and reflects the gender stuff in Western lit? (I say "just" acknowledging that it's stupid: the gender stuff in Western lit is my gender stuff, and I can't really care very much about any other.)

I definitely do not think my take on this matter is suitable for an internet discussion. Enjoy the private message, and for here, I'll say ...

I consider different cultures to provide different idioms and circumstances in which the same issues are dealt with. Sometimes the solutions are characteristically different for different times/places, but I contend that these different solutions fall along spectra and matrices which, themselves, are identifiably "human."

I do not consider humans to be blank slates upon which culture writes, but rather that each culture is a specification or limited subset of what humans "are" or "can be." We learn, yes - but we learn along particular paths.

In other words, non-western literature and myth is accessible to westerners, and vice versa, with only a little effort to get beyond the idiom and local symbology. I also contend that this phenomenon is common and often fun.

How is your claim of relevance "to humans" not a claim of chromosomal essentialism? Or is it one?

Most people don't know that the chromosomes' role in how mammalian sexual anatomy develops is actually a very recent evolutionary phenomenon - that the sexual anatomy itself is older. Many, many animals have genitals that you and I would recognize as male-associated and female-associated, in keeping with the kinds of gametes being delivered by them. But most of these animals do not utilize a dimorphic-chromosomal-specific "kickoff" developmental feature which locks the development down; instead, they respond to environmental cues very early in development. None of their chromosome pairs are dimorphic; they're all full pairs.

So sure, some insects, birds, mammals, and a few other beasties have secondarily evolved these dimorphic-pair "early signal" developmental specifiers, but think of them as being a somewhat more picky "committee meeting" at the beginning of a process which existed before the committee was invented.

To understand the essentialism of gender, one must turn to gametes: sperm and ova, or in plants, pollen and ova. And guess what! What bodily features are associated with the production of sperm and ova is a very, very diverse issue! As soon as we start looking at a particular species, we just left essentialism behind in the dust.

Within a species, or among a group of species which are similar enough to "follow the same rules," a number of interesting patterns emerge, all of which I think are directly relevant to human behavior, but none of which need be utilized as a "you're a gurrl so you act like this" kind of mental whip, at the individual level.

Plus I think that "entwine genitals with" evokes a sweet image, so nice on that.

Really? Then I believe that an image search on Google, using any terms which seem to you related to "entwine genitals," will turn up more images to intrigue you.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

I think I see.  If you'll forgive me, biology - humanity - is like the thematically-charged Situation, and culture is like how it actually plays out, this particular time.

And, um, thanks for the Google tip!

-Vincent

[kwill]

wow, ron, that was a fascinating dip into the biology pond - is this a topic I might find it covered in a popular science title? it sounds like the kind of thing stephen jay gould might have spent a chapter or two on

anyone interested in the human angle may enjoy reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the main character is a pseudohermaphrodite who inevitably has to deal with sexual identity issues - not as blah as that makes it sound - what I found interesting was how the identity crisis was dealt with in different eras (e.g. modern day "it's all in your genes" versus 70s "you can be whoever you want to be")

[Tim C Koppang]

anyone interested in the human angle may enjoy reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Actually, I just picked up that book!

You might also try Written On The Body, by Jeanette Winterson.  The main character's gender is never revealed.  He/she/other obviously has relationships with both male and females, but the author keeps a tight grasp on traditional gender roles.  At times, you may think that you have the gender "figured out," but of course that conclusion would only be based on traditional societal roles.