I don’t know if you will read this or not but I am going to write it anyway. I have been thinking of you lately, as I have had my head up Michel Foucault’s arse. I make that link in my mind in the nicest possible way of course. I really have loved what I have read by you so far, in The Queen Is Dead, on your blog and in some essays posted on Mark Simpson’s website. You have shown me a world I never knew existed before and now I am kind of transfixed by it.

I am currently writing a fictional account about Michel Foucault’s life and work as seen through the eyes of his daughter. Yes I know he didn’t have a daughter. That is the fictional bit. Well to be honest it is all a complete departure from the truth except for when it suits me. That’s what writers do it seems. I’ve never written a whole novel before.

Anyway. I have started doing some research, but I am finding that I am learning most from his writings themselves, and also by talking to other people who have read them, who have a sense of the man, just as I do. Mark Simpson kindly sent a list of my questions about Michel to Professor Halperin, but he wouldnt answer them, saying I had to read all the official biographies. I have this horrible suspicion that even if I do, I still won’t get the answers I require.

Currently I am quite intrigued by how Michel-positioned himself in his sexual acts. To what extent he was a fucker, and what extent he was a sucker. Because when I come to write scenes in my story, he has to be one or the other, at any given point. I am starting to think he was versatile, as his accounts of the SM scene in Sanfrancisco suggest he had some quite self-shattering experiences, that only a bottom could have. And because of his diagnosis it is most likely he contracted the virus through being penetrated. But you never know with that one. But he also seems quite…dominant to me. He keeps taking control of situations in my story, anyway. I can’t seem to stop him from chasing young men round Paris.

Which is where you come in. I want to write a scene in a public toilet in the capital, and I was wondering if A) you knew of any particular locations that he might have visited, or B) have a sense of which side of the glory hole he might have fallen on. Would he have been a putter-of-dick through the hole, or would he have been a sucker on the other side.

Ive been reading about the 1960s and how the government declared homosexual acts in public a ‘scourge’ on society, and so cottaging would have been illegal then. But people would have still done it, right? Do you know anything about that time in France? I read a great story about the 1860s, a century before, and how ‘pederastes’ would drill holes in the cubicles in Les Halles, only for the police to fill them in in the mornings. And then the pederastes would come out and drill the holes all over again. I loved how defiant it was. I can’t see gay men defiantly staking their claim on their territory like that these days can you?

Thank-you for inspiring me to go underground, down into the labrynths of history, and of Paris, and, well, of Michel Foucault’s libido. It is a fascinating place to explore.

I hope you are well.

Yours, in some kind of solidarity,

QRG
xxx

I am currently reading  Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida , his collection of photographs and essays that examines the personal impact and semiotics of photography. It was inspired by a photograph of Barthes’ mother as a child, which affected him deeply, looking at it after she died. It is Barthes’ final and most personal work, in which he places himself very firmly in the centre of the frame. The book has led me to think about how we tell our own stories, and why it is so important, particularly in relation to sexual identity.

I have read many personal accounts from women about  sexual identity, and I have written my own. But I think there is still a lot more to learn about how men perceive themselves and others, particularly those they have sex with.  I am not for example convinced our  ’modern homosexual’ exists as universally as we may think.  Telling personal stories and conducting personal research, I believe, is one important way we can uncover the complexities of how sexuality and identity functions, and is also a way of breaking down (hetero) normative structures and assumptions.

So, I have been searching for a long time, for writing about men’s sexual identities, where the authors, like Barthes in Camera Lucida,  also place themselves in the centre of the frame. Suddenly, almost spookily, I have found a few amazing examples almost all at once. Like a group of rent boys standing in the main square, huddled over cigarettes, that could be mistaken for lads out on the town, they were there all along.  I just didn’t see the signs.

In Suck My Nation , S A Lambevski, a researcher based in Australia, goes back to  Macedonia in the late 1990s. There he conducts an insightful and moving ‘queer ethnography’ of men’s (homo)sexual identities and how they intersect with ethnicity and class, in a place of great upheaval and (gendered) conflict. His research is triggered by a painful memory of returning home, and visiting a ‘marginal, dark place’ on the edge of town, the centre for ‘gay’ cruising, where Macedonian and Albanian men would brush shoulders uncomfortably and cast instant judgement on each other, based on the badges of identity they wear on their skin, their clothes, their demeanours.  Canal Street it is not. (Though I’d like to read an ethnography of Canal Street!)

Queer Ethnography does not have to be academic. American writer  Steven Zeeland has been putting himself in the centre of the frame for years, in his writings about the sexual habits and identities of military men.  I can’t wait to read his work in full, in which he combines interviews with soldiers, sailors and marines (many of whom he has had sex with and known intimately), with observations and other research. Zeeland says that ‘sexual identity is a joke’. I am inclined to agree with him, but, as his work seems to show (from the little I have read so far), it is a joke that needs unpacking, because of how deeply it permeates how we define who we are, based on who we have sex with and how we have sex.

Queer ethnography can also be historical, reminding us that the ‘pre-modern’ versions of homosexuality did not just suddenly transform overnight into the modern gay man we see strutting down The Mission in his Moschinos. Change is messy and boundaries between eras are blurred. Justin Spring in a new book, tells the incredible story of Samuel Steward , the ‘secret historian’ and ‘sexual renegade’ who lived a creative life full of homosexual adventures, before the modern ‘gay’ had come into being.  ’He paid the price for being himself’ Spring said, ‘but at least he got to be himself’.

But here I am going to come back up to date, and  feature another homo-ethnographic piece I have just discovered, taken from a longer post called The Business Of Sex about an American man working as a rent boy in Europe in the 21st century. The author,  Homo Superior hasn’t blogged for a while now, which is regrettable. This is ‘queer ethnography’ at its most visceral, its most honest.  I think that in Camera Lucida, Barthes is saying that for us to improve our understanding of ourselves and the world, the writer, like the beautiful young man in the photo at the top of the page,  needs to stare straight into the lens. Homo Superior and all these queer ethnographers, certainly do just that.

I Wanna Hold Your…

I woke up this morning with Jirka next to me holding my hand; well, actually he had one finger hooked around one of mine and as we both drifted in and out of sleep, he alternately massaged my neck or laid his hand on my side or my leg. As the light got brighter coming in through the open windows he turned toward me, curled his body inward tilting his head toward mine; so I turned toward him and we laid there hands lightly clasped until he got up and made coffee 20 minutes later. He never said a word nor opened his eyes. We both acted embarrassed and were quiet until after the first cup.

Strange.

I’ve had my dick in his ass, both with and without a condom, in his mouth, and his in mine; we’ve made out for a half hour or more (at least we used to), in public and at home; we’ve danced drunkenly to slow Czech dance music in U Rudolfa and Chameleon, held hands chatting and drinking Gambrinus in Club Stella while the gay boys all around talked about us, I’m sure thinking he was bought and paid for; and yet that tentative expression of intimacy this morning blushed my cheeks and subdued his usual early morning chatter.

I don’t know whether we’ve reached some turning point or what. He’s told me more than once that he considers me his family now that he’s estranged from his freeloading brother — his other brother’s in jail and he has no other family, according to him. He’s Romany so I never know when he’s telling stories. Regardless, we share expenses and distribute money when the other one needs it. I accompany him to Pinocchio’s (perhaps the best known hustler bar in Prague) because he says he feels more confident when I’m there. To people observing our developing friendship, not just to me, it appears that we are committed to one another.

On the other hand, he has a girlfriend now and it has curtailed our sex play. I’ve enjoyed up to now the very easy-going way he approaches sex. When he wants a blow job he just states: “Riki, please, go oral!” When he’s feeling like getting fucked him he asks: “Go sex?” and then giggles. I just have to say: “Jiři, I’m horny” and his response is usually to grin and head for the shower for a douche. The straightforward nature of our sex seems to be just another reinforcement of the friendship, as well as a very convenient way of relieving tension and getting affection, but it’s not at the top of his needs hierarchy. That is, he likes it but can live without it, especially now with consistent pussy in the picture. I don’t blame him. When your job is to have sex with strange men it has to have some effect on your other sexual relationships. For me, however… I’ve been telling myself for the last several months it was purely physical (he fulfills about 90% of the qualities in a lover I find attractive); however, that little hand-holding interlude this morning made me realize I’m in love with him.

I should have known already by the surprising jealousy that arose in me the other day at Rudolfa when a preening blond Czech boy at another table caught his eye. “Ty vole, Riki, looking this boy I have big penis,” and here he put his palm on his crotch and moved it up 20 cm. “Stoh percent I am bee-sexual.”

“I know that already, Jirka.”

And sure enough when I reached over to check out his bulge he had a hard-on. He then borrowed 5 crowns to go stand by the boy at the jukebox and chat him up; but not before readjusting his package. I wasn’t livid but it irrationally made me sad. I knew then exactly what his type was: younger feminine gay boys, transvestites and transsexuals, all of whom he’s said on numerous occasions he’s wanted to fuck; and I am anything but that type. I guess I should be grateful though because with me he’s an exclusive bottom.

A couple weeks back he asked me if he thought that the sex biznis could make him gay. I said no, that I knew plenty of hetero rent boys that didn’t enjoy the sex per se and for whom it was just business. I named a couple of guys he knew.

“Ano, ano,” he nodded his head. “But I like the sex.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied.

“Občas,” he quickly added, meaning sometimes.

“Well, I’m gay and sometimes I don’t like it either. Depends on the boy.”

“Pravda (Truth),” he concluded.

So I know what I mean when I say I love him and when I hold his hand or kiss him good night or gasp in worship when I’m sucking on his soft brown foreskin; but, what does he mean and what was he trying to tell me today?

Our first lesson is about how the ‘homosexual’ appeared in our consciousness, and what some of the implications have been for the solidifying of that ‘deviant’ sexual identity in our culture.  Unfortunately, the Daddy of the history of sexuality, Michel Foucault is no longer around to deliver this lesson. So we found one of Michel’s sons and heirs, Mark Simpson to tell us a little bit about the emergence of sexuality as a meaningful form of social identity. Thank-you Mark for sharing your knowledge with us. Knowledge, as they say, is power.

Mark Simpson on the birth of the ‘sexual’ era (Out magazine, September 2009)

As you may have noticed, the out-and-proud modern gay, born amidst protest, shouting and flying bottles outside the Stonewall Inn in 1969, is now forty years old. But you may be less aware that this year is also the 140th birthday of a much more discreet and distinguished (if pathologized and sometimes pitiful) figure that Stonewall is often seen as making obsolete: the homosexual.

The offspring of Austrian-born Hungarian journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny, the homosexual was delivered to the world in a couple of pamphlets he published anonymously in 1869 arguing against the Prussian anti sodomy law Paragraph 143 – the first appearance in print of the word.

Kertbeny argued that attraction to the same sex was inborn and unchangeable and that besides the law violated the rights of man: men should be free to do with their bodies as they pleased, so long as others were not harmed. Kertbeny maintained strenuously that he himself was ‘sexually normal’ (and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, save perhaps his strenuousness).

Kertbeny’s ‘homosexual’, itself a disapproved conjugation of Greek and Latin, was part of a larger classificatory system of human sexual behaviour he conceived which included quaint terms such as ‘monosexuals’ (masturbators) and ‘pygists’ (aficionados of anal sex), most of which have not survived. However, another of his quaint categories has persisted and ultimately proved even more popular than the ‘homosexual’: the vast majority of people in the US today would happily and perhaps rather too hastily describe themselves as ‘heterosexual’ – despite the fact that the ‘father’ of heterosexuality, as Jonathan Ned Katz has pointed out in ‘The Invention of Heterosexuality’ (1995), seemed to conceive of heterosexuals as more sex-obsessed than homosexuals and more open to ‘unfettered degeneracy’.

Words like most offspring have a life of their own of course, and in this case one that worked against the coiner’s intentions.  Despite Kertbeny’s libertarian if not actually homo-chauvinist sentiments, we might never have heard of the ‘homosexual’ (or indeed the ‘heterosexual’) if the word had not been adopted by Richard von Krafft-Ebing a few years later as a diagnosis for mental illness, setting the medical tone for much of the coming Twentieth Century with its aversion therapies, sex-lie detectors and psychiatric water-boarding.

Kertbeny’s double-edged legacy isn’t just the coining of the word ‘homosexual’, but helping to invent ‘sexuality’ itself: the very modern idea that there are different species of people constituted by their sexual preference alone – ‘heterosexuals’ and ‘homosexuals’ (and ‘bisexuals’ as an exception-to-prove-the-rule afterthought). Kertbeny invented the homosexual because he considered the other available terms, ‘pederast’, ‘sodomite’ and ‘invert’ too judgemental. He also saw no link between homosexuality and effeminacy — which he didn’t mind being judgemental about: he detested it.

As the brilliant sexual historian David Halperin puts it in his book ‘How To Do the History of Male Homosexuality’ (2002), pre-homosexual discourses referred to only one of the sexual partners: the “active” partner in the case of sodomy, the effeminate male or masculine female in the case of inversion. ‘The hallmark of “homosexuality”…’ he writes, ‘is the refusal to distinguish between same-sex sexual partners or to rank them by treating one of them as more (or less) homosexual than the other.’

The concept of the ‘homosexual’, medicalized or not, ultimately made possible the rise of the out-and-proud gay man, regardless of his own ‘role’ in bed or gender style, and also a gay community of equals. But it also tended to make all sex between men, however fleeting, however drunken, however positioned, ‘homo’ – along with all the participants, regardless of their sexual preference.

With the paradoxical result that there’s probably now rather less erotic contact – or in fact any physical contact at all – between males than there was when the homosexual was born, 140 years ago. The homosexual, in effect, monopolised same-sex erotics and intimacy.

Which is, frankly, a bit greedy.

http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/all-the-lonely-people/

For me the main concern is a slight degree of anxiety as to what people are thinking about. Is that person watching that other person who is quite attractive in a way that would suggest a deposit in his “wank bank” for example? Well I really don’t want to know.

This topic was touched upon in The Fermata I think, but I can’t be bothered to go and find exactly when and how. Also I remember it being mentioned in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiam, the one with the incest survivors group.

Personally I think it is rather demeaning to masturbate while thinking about real people, particularly without their knowledge. Of course what they don’t know can’t harm them but imagine if it was someone you were in semi-regular contact with? Most people are capable of separating fantasy from reality but not everyone can. In an ideal world, you should always ask their permission first, although this could result in some very awkward conversations.

“Hello, I’ve just noticed you here and well you’re rather attractive. Are you interested in a representation of yourself, an avatar if you like, participating in various purely imagined degrees of sexual activity on a semi-regular basis in the next few weeks?”

In addition to this, it is not just being in someone’s masturbation fantasy that could be a bit of a problem, it is the things they might make you do in the course of their “session”. The mind can go to some odd places in those times.

Personally I think there should be some kind of hanky code (maybe a Kleenex code in this case). You see someone with this particular kind of hanky, and you know they’re perfectly happy to be fantasised about when you next masturbate. Excellent, fill your wank bank (that term is beyond vile by the way) The design of the hanky should give an indication of the kind of things they’re happy to do. For example:

“Yes I’m happy to participate in group activities and bumming but I’m not really into spit-roasting”

This way we can all be a bit less neurotic.

* For reasons losts in the mists of time for some reason, amongst a group of my friends “I Touch Myself” was considered to be “my song”. Why a Pretenders-rip off about a lady indulging in gusset typing by a couple of Australians was considered to be my song I have no idea, but it did lead to a hilarous moment when I was pleading entry to a crowded pub because they were playing “my song”. It didn’t get to be my song for ever though, as when I clumsily tried to snog some woman in a pub not knowing her rather large scary boyfriend was watching and my friends nearly dragged me out of the pub, it was replaced with the song playing at the time “If I Can’t Have You.” Now I don’t really have a theme song. Perhaps I should.

My new housemate Vic seems to blow dry her hair every day, regardless of whether she works or goes out.  Seeing as I’m, well, me, this seemed rather alien. I don’t blow dry my hair ever. Well not since last year. I do have a hairdryer, straighteners, curling tongs (which I do use when my hair is long to be fair) and various other Nicky Clarke contraptions, but they sit in a box under my desk and are generally ignored.

Seeing as the weather is actually rather nice at the moment in Blighty, I pondered on Twitter why women blow dried their hair when a) the weather is so warm and b) they’re not even going anywhere.

I was inundated with responses (well I had about five) and things actually got quite heated, if you’ll pardon the pun.

@KezLewis advised that without blow drying and straightening her hair looked worse than Monica in Friends does in Barbados (and I’m prreeeetty sure that’s a wig).  She has four kids and so doesn’t do it every time, but still feels she’s not acceptable to go out in public without sorting it. This is partly as she can’t see. So that made sense.

@kirstieh has an unruly front of hair/fringe and always does that, although this only takes 3 minutes about every three days. She agreed daily blow drying plus dye (Vic) was a “recipe for straw”.

@QueenLucyL does her hair even if she’s not leaving the house, as it doesn’t look right without it.  Apparently it needs volume.  Having looked at her avatar it does look lovely. Also she assured me I hadn’t failed as a woman, which was nice. “I wish I could go out without blow drying…” she tweeted, wistfully.  I get that a lot, but when I think about the women saying it, their hair looks lovely and mine… well it probably doesn’t.  Back when it was really long and red last year I often went out without brushing it, giving it a literally “just got out of bed” look which in retrospect may have been ample reason for Kev to dump me.

Our own @anwen said she didn’t know where her hairdryer was. HURRAY for Anwen!

Hurray also for @RealAKBizzle86 who says she doesn’t wash hers if not going anywhere. But in fairness her hair is very short.

Anyway, having taken all of this in, I decided to blow dry and straighten my hair today, just to see, and post pictures on the Twitter.  They are also shown here.

It felt a bit odd and at first I couldn’t remember how to work the hairdryer, but I used some serum I seemed to have in The Box Of Nicky Clarke and some clips and afterwards I was horrified to realise it looked far better than it had since… well, October 1st 2009 when I won a work competition to have my hair cut. (I normally cut my own hair. Of course.)

It looked better, yes, and I think when I finally get a new job I shall attempt to dry my hair before I get to the office/supermarket/building site/wherever.  But doing it on a Sunday when I’m going to lounge about with cider and Come Dine With Me repeats? Nah, don’t think so.  I’m still a Fauxmos at heart, and in the second picture I just don’t quite look like me.

But those kind of places as far as I’m concerned seem to encourage the camp. Maybe it’s a reaction against it, or maybe they are two sides of the same coin.

Take the Spanish and their maricóns. But they have Almodovar:

and the Americans have John Waters and the eating of dog shit:

but the Australians do have Kath & Kim:

They win.

But doctors in America are treating pregnant women with hormones that they think will stop their girl children from developing unwanted non-feminine traits, like not being desperate to get married and have children, or wearing Dr Martens. I wish I was joking about this but I’m not.

I found out from Dr Petra Boynton, @DrPetra on twitter. Then I told Mark ‘Fauxmos Daddy’ Simpson. He was so outraged he wrote a blogpost.  But, being the generous soul that he is, he sweetened the pill by including some lovely fauxmo-friendly news, about some cool androgynous kids in China. Thanks to Petra and Mark for sharing this information, and challenging the myth that any child who does not appear to be careering to heterosexual heaven is ‘abnormal’…

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2010/06/30/chinas-avant-garde-androgyny-and-americas-retrosexual-medication/

Here is my response to this depressing story, with some more information about how it relates to ‘intersex’ children, and in particular, how the drug being developed seems to aim to remove ‘genital abnormality’ in intersex children. Before they are even born. Whichever way you look at this story it is very disturbing.

http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/the-world-wont-listen/

We think http://fauxmos.wordpress.com/ is written by a woman (77%).

Make of that what you will.

I think the time has come to talk about my own gender. I have talked about being a woman in a man’s world. I have talked about masculinity in the workplace, both mine and that of my male colleagues but I have never actually made a concerted effort to write my own gender, to narrate, if you will, my own gender identity.

So here goes.

I’m scared.

I have always had a pretty strong masculine side. It was always something I both revelled in and was ashamed of, aggressively ramming it down people’s throats to cover my own shame. All the time I secretly thought it would be something I would grow out of, once I’d sorted my head out, and grown up, that kind of thing.

But the fact is, I am in my mid-30s, pretty happy and sorted in life but it’s still there. I stopped doing a manual job a couple of months ago and since then my upper body has got weaker, I am losing my muscles. I started to think, maybe that’s ok, maybe I don’t need them any more, maybe that phase is over. But I decided at the end of last week that no, it’s not ok. I swam a mile on Saturday, kayaked for 2.5 hours on Sunday and am planning a session on a rowing machine for Wednesday. I want my muscles. I get a kick out of being strong.

I also get a kick out of having long curly hair and hour glass curves.

I could go into the psychoanalysis but I’m not going to. It doesn’t matter how I came to be here, this is where I am and that’s fine. It’s not about fighting men. I like men, I fancy them and when I’m in a relationship, I like to feel like I’m the girl. Very few people have ever suggested that I am a lesbian. It’s not about sexual orientation.

It’s just that the gender binary doesn’t work for me. I don’t like my behaviour and my choices about how I earn my living or spend my time to be defined by society’s perception of what I should do because I have certain body parts. I don’t like the conflation of femininity with incompetence in spatial tasks. Spatial awareness is a skill that can be learned like any other. Professional male cricketers can’t catch as well when they first start at school as they can after years of training. Builders don’t put up shelves as well when they are apprentices as they do after 20 years on the job. Truckers of either sex are generally rubbish at parking when they first start. So you learn.

I recognise that the male and female minds and bodies are different to a certain extent for evolutionary reasons but they are nowhere near as different as society deems them to be. They are nowhere near as different as society wants and needs them to be. The binary is convenient for society, it’s that old line in the sand thing. You’re one of those, I’m one of these so we need to act like this.

It may be convenient for society but it isn’t very convenient for me. I’m me, I do me things and I act in a me kind of a way.

I don’t really attach a label to my gender identity. I don’t really know what labels are out there, I’m quite new to this whole debate (I was going to grow out of it remember!). I tend to just think that I am a strong woman, both in body and character, who is in touch with both the femininity and masculinity within her.