LGBT IDENTITY AND TIME

(The following is a modified version of what I wrote, at the request of a photographer, about a series of photographs he has taken of me over the years)

When I look at the pictures of myself, I see my relationship to time.  Not to time in an abstract, metaphysical sense as much as in a historical sense

History is a story we tell using time, or, way that we as humans interact with this phenomenon we call 'time'.

So, history. 

We have our own history as LGBT persons, but we are forced to exist in another history too. That of the heterosexual political regime.

One of the photographs in the series

When I look at the photographs of myself over many years, I see that my outfits (and 'outfit' is a fitting word because it seems to carry the sense of being equipped for both battle and adventure) are responses to historical time.   I bring back looks from the past, and this bringing back is rebellion against the raging desperation of  heterosexual delusion, and a tribute to and mnemonic for the recollection of a time when there was more hope because a gay movement still existed, before it was subsumed and killed by heteronormative co-optation and conservatism. 

I also bring in looks from the future, in the sense that my constant attempts to evade or respond to the regime sometimes produce odd combinations of affective responses in the form of clothing, hair, and makeup styles.  These oddities are responses which cannot yet be articulated well verbally . They are the potential future of fashion and rebellion.

Trans identity might also be a response to time. It comes after the identity deconstruction of postmodernism, and is perhaps an attempt by queer persons to adopt and own the discourses of postmodernism, one of the most prominent recent historical modes of philosophy.

Time now -  losing the Sexual Revolution and the sexual center of gay life. 

Time now - younger LGBT persons and their placement in the historical narrative (time in its real and relevant sense, in its political sense). 

 

Time now - continuity with the revolutionary LGBT past, loyalty to it, while also negotiating a relationship with today. 

All those other things that heteros experience I experience too in some sense - I take in and see and feel and sometimes make use of their templates for the human experience of time (i.e.  what it means to be a man of middle age, what it means to age, what beauty and sexuality are allowed to be at certain ages, in which ways wisdom can be said to grow with time).   Figuring out a space of identity that takes in even their bad ideas, in the sense that even bad ideas can be seen as artful and good if they eyes of the seer are not prosaicizing eyes). 

So, personal change and development through time, but in the context of historical and political change in time, in the context of being gay, of being LGBT, of being queer, of a context that is changing but enduring ?  What's important to gay identity is this historical and political context.  There is no social or metaphysical time or history or identity which escapes this political history. Political history is the primary  aspect of time.  LGBT life is the most important political dimension.  The Sexual Revolution and the Gay Revolution  were the most important elements of our 'time'.  The photographs are a testament to a personal life which is a life conscious of not existing outside of the historico-political narrative, and conscious of the fact that this is the most important aspect of what we call 'time'.  My outrageous gay fagmale homosexual pussy is the most important aspect of time. 

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'Acceptance' Is A Defeat for Queer Justice



      The right-wing gay media, right-wing gay organizations like Human Rights Campaign Fund and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in the U.S., and most heterosexuals are pushing the idea that 'acceptance' into society is good for L.G.B.T.Q. persons and that it is something that we as queer persons want. That our enemies and those who have oppressed us and commit treason against us now want this for us should be a first warning that there may be danger here, and indeed there is grave danger in this valuation of acceptance as a goal for queer persons.


How preposterous a question acceptance is for LGBT persons is evidenced by the reversing of the question: Should we accept heterosexuals? This reversal points up the absurdity of non-revolutionary expressions. The point about acceptance is really something quite different.


When something (e.g. a social group) is accepted, that something is accepted both as something by something else and, when one is talking about a social group such as the queer community, the something accepted is accepted into that something else. But, in order to present oneself for acceptance, one has to value the opinion of the person or society to whom one presents oneself. Any valuation of the heterosexual regime is inauthentic in that it is forced, and comes from desperation and low self-esteem brought about by that very regime. Thus, the regime of heterosexuality manufactures the idea that LGBT persons should be "accepted".


The point that queer leaders should be stressing is that we should NOT accept the heterosexual political regime.


There is no such thing, currently, as a gay person or as a heterosexual person who exists outside the hegemony of the heterosexual political regime. The two always go together. Yet it is essential for queer persons to reject this regime at all events, at all turns. We do not want acceptance into something false, malignant, delusional, boring, and narrow. The end of the heterosexual political regime is what we want, an end which will liberate all non-delusional, intelligent, honest heterosexual persons as well.


We do not want this regime of fraud, ignorance, slavery, delusion, abuse, attack, and fear. We don't want family, family values, marriage, privatized sexuality, Judaic religion, or creepy chauvinism, and we are disgusted by men and women who expect everyone to be a plaything for their tedious and slave-class heterosexual desires.


Asking to be accepted is like asking to be allowed to be a slave. The owners of heterosexual society manufacture desires by force and fraud, and many queer persons have not been allowed the education, freedom, camaraderie, communities, and power which can surmount these manufactured desires, these things that heterosexuals want us to want. They want us not only to be slaves, but to beg to be allowed to be slaves. If there were such a thing as a natural order, a hierarchy in which queer persons were slaves and heteronormatives the masters would seem to be the opposite of it, yet that is exactly what we have right now. But you can refuse to tell their lies. As queer persons, we must believe in our own world, even though the cheerleaders for heterosexuality are loud and desperate and want so badly for us to believe that they have something valuable. We know that existence on this heterosexual plantation is something we will never truly want. If one wants to keep the idea of acceptance but turn it into something that makes sense, one could ask, "Why can't heterosexuals just accept that we don't want and will never want what they are offering?"