Wednesday, March 9, 2022 — 7
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Holding onto and letting
go of the hypothetical you
The ironic erotic
“Suck my dick,” among its many vul-
gar variations, remains a hallmark
of the various mundane and profane
phrases heterosexual men utter to
each other every day. Maybe it’s the
immense and intense visceral sensa-
tionalism, the colorful imaginative
elicitation, a temporal subconscious
sexual re-orientation or perhaps just a
joke, but there appears to be an ongoing
tendency among straight men every-
where to ironically express erotic sen-
timents toward each other. What might
seem to be a banal social phenomenon
in actuality places us in an expansive
linguistic liminality, especially when
we consider the broader implications
these suggestive sayings hold in rela-
tion to homo-sociality, masculinity and
manhood as a whole.
To philosophy scholar Jeff Casey,
“Queerness is a specter that haunts
straight male relations.” He maintains
that
straight
masculinity
contains
within it a colossal amount of internal
contradictions. The rigid chains of het-
eronormativity, the paradoxes of the
patriarchal system and the corruptive
nature of capitalist ideology all serve as
a testament to the fervent and phallic
testosterone-fueled psyche of the mod-
ern (heterosexual) man. The creation
of class society (a male invention) has
structured our current social existence
to be rife with unfettered individual-
ism, competition and vice, thus antago-
nizing any authentic intimacy among
men.
It is ironic that the subtext of many
straight male bonding activities is
exquisitely erotic. Jungian psycho-
therapist Thomas Moore ascribes our
bodies as imaginative, mythical and
mythological erotic landscapes. Our
penchant for literalism hinders us from
seeing the inherent homo-sociality
in the male-dominated endeavors of
contact sports, video gaming, working
out, pre-going out rituals and night-
life, Greek Life, the military and gang
activities. As Black womanist Audre
Lorde describes, the erotic can be
viewed as “providing the power which
comes from sharing deeply any pursuit
with another person.” When consider-
ing the notions of Moore and Lorde in
tandem, it becomes clear that much of
male homo-sociality is simultaneously
homo-erotic (not to be infused/con-
fused with homo-sexual). Eros, accord-
ing to French writer Georges Bataille,
always entails a certain transgression.
Sports and video games simulate (phys-
ically or virtually) a breaking of soci-
etal norms and behaviors through their
systemic brutality. We inter-act in ways
in which we normally wouldn’t. Act is
the key word here. The performance
of masculinity that many straight men
act out is characterized by what sociol-
ogy scholar David Grazian describes as
“relentless competitive spirit, distant
emotional detachment, an insatiable
heterosexual desire, all commonly dis-
played by the sexual objectification of
women.”
Grazian likens the male affairs of
nightlife as a homo-social “girl-hunting”
ritual rife with rivalry. He makes the
claim that pre-gaming — which often
occurs along gendered lines — involves
an indulgence in drinking, drugs and
party music, which maintains and fast
lanes confidence and courage for the
night ahead. In the animalistic world of
mating and dating, Graizan proclaims
that males’ peers remain the “intended
audience” for their performance. With
their sexual encounters as events of the
ego, paradoxically, many men objectify
women, not just for ephemeral plea-
sure, but in order to gain high standing
and status, high ranking and reputation
among each other. And the post-gaming
cool-down, run-down and discourses
of the night between male friends only
furthers this phenomenon.
As feminist theorist Marilyn Fryre
explains in “The Politics of Reality,”
“All or almost all of that which per-
tains to love, most straight men reserve
exclusively for other men. The people …
whose respect, admiration, recognition,
reverence and love they desire … those
are overwhelmingly other men … From
women they want devotion, service and
sex.” The favorite actors and musicians,
athletes and politicians of straight men
remain majority male. Y’all saw their
Spotify Wrapped reveals. Ironically,
straight men seek approval from other
(straight) men above all else while
often avoiding actual intimacy.
Casey claims that “Paradoxically, the
embodied desire for heteronormativ-
ity depends upon homosocial relations
that in turn often manifest homoerot-
ic and even homosexual desires and
behaviors.” In other words, in con-
structing a society of male supremacy
built on rigid gender binaries and hege-
monic masculinity, heterosexual men
have indirectly subjugated themselves
into segregated same-sex spaces, all
of which hold ambiguously erotic ori-
entations. This is not to suggest that
straight men are repressed homosexu-
als, but quite the contrary. Such spaces
simultaneously create what gender
scholars Nils Hammarén and Thomas
Johansson refer to as a “straight panic
in which individuals experience anxi-
ety about how others perceive their
sexuality, and thus, feel a need to con-
firm their heterosexuality.”
Inevitably, heterosexuality requires
homophobia. Psychology scholar Greg-
ory Herek asserts that hegemonic mas-
culinity is in part determined by “what
it is not — that is, not feminine and not
homosexual.” It is not enough to not be
gay, but one must be anti-gay as a means
of maintaining and reaffirming one’s
status as heterosexual. Likewise, sexu-
ality scholar Jay Clarkson claims that
“even the most masculine gay man’s
homosexuality denies him the ability
to truly achieve the power inherent in
hegemonic masculinity no matter how
masculine the gender performance
because he will always be marginalized
simply because he is not heterosexual.”
While growing up, I presented more
feminine and flamboyantly than I do
today. I was thus incessantly mocked
and made fun of, mostly by other males,
for how I dressed and spoke, for my
mannerisms and mere existence in
the world. I was threatened by those I
thought I was close to — called a fag-
got to my face and behind my back by
boys I thought were my friends. Even
today, as I stand comfortably in my own
queerness and bi-sexuality, many of my
relationships with straight men have
felt oppressive, rife with unequal power
dynamics and treatment. My sexuality
is rarely seen as legitimate to theirs.
The comfortability, desires and pref-
erences of straight men, without fail,
prevail over anyone else. Embracing my
bi-sexuality has become complicated by
our society’s dualistic tendencies to see
everything within the binary of male/
female, masculine/feminine or gay/
straight. The hyper-masculinization
and hyper-sexualization of Black men
as well as the vast array of anti-queer
sentiments within the Black commu-
nity have ultimately convoluted my
ability to be physically, emotionally or
spiritually intimate with anyone. Yet
as queer liberation theologist Marcella
Althaus Reid posits, bi-sexuality is not
limited to a physical sexual practice but
a mode of thinking that transgresses
the constrictive boundaries of being.
At the end of eternity, our souls have no
sex. Sadly, many straight and gay men
and women persistently perpetuate bi-
phobia, abnegating the multi-faceted
essence of our existence. Nonetheless,
it is clear that queer men as a whole will
never hold as much worth in society as
their straight counterparts.
Along these same lines, the irony of
straight male ironic eroticism is evi-
dent in how simultaneously aligned
yet antithetical it is to actuality. Con-
versational irony is an “intentionally
inconsistent” verbalization, which is
often associated with aggressiveness,
a common characteristic of hegemonic
masculinity. In conversational irony,
there is often an opposition between
what is said and what is meant. Yet as
linguistic scholars Rachel Giora and
Ofer Fein explain, irony does not entail
an elimination of what has been said yet
“communicates the difference between
the dictum and the implicatum.” So
when straight men say “suck my dick”
to other men, it might mean metaphori-
cally to merely “shut up” or may sug-
gest some other negative evaluative
expression. Nevertheless, we can also
understand what is literally being said
as an exemplification of hidden values:
receiving (oral) is traditionally associ-
ated with masculine sexual dominance,
while giving is seen as passive submis-
sion. Note, keeping with the patriar-
chal positioning and the corrosion of
capitalist ideology, giving and receiv-
ing become imbued with a hierarchical
structure in which to give is perceived
as lesser. Thus, an ironically erotic
demand for one of the same-sex to suck
another man’s dick presupposes the act
of giving orally and being passive as an
inferior state of being.
Even in queer spaces, topping, which
does admittedly correlate with giving
nevertheless maintains it’s connection
to “manliness” through it’s concur-
rence with penetration. Despite the
venereal vulnerability of bottoming
and its bodily byproducts, to bottom
in today’s times is to be subjugated to
relative femininity, literal passivity
and fallacious inferiority as a result of
our colonial conditioning. As critical
gender and culture scholars Billy-Ray
Belcourt, George Dust and Kay Gabriel
assert, “In a homonormative semiotics
of sex, topping is an enactment of gen-
der; it is a performance of masculinity,
which is bound up in the erotic life of
whiteness.”
The unnerving notions of neo-lib-
eralism — as observed in our culture’s
collective digital mediation of sexuality
through the seductive lure of algorith-
mically antagonistic corporate-owned
social media, dating and hook-up apps,
as well as the co-optation and de-radi-
calization of queerness — has manufac-
tured within modern-day queer spaces
an
all-encompassing
superficiality
and hyper-sexuality. To Belcourt et al,
“Relations between gay men are stuck
in the rut of the sexual.”
It makes sense, then, why “suck
my dick” and other erotic explica-
tives issued by heterosexual males are
expressed as ironic. The hyper-sexual
nature of homo-eroticism pervades all
same-sex male interactions. Beyond
KARIS CLARK
MiC Columnist
It only takes a slight glance in
my direction or a minor corridor-
collision and an ensuing “Oh, I’m so
sorry about that” (or god forbid, a
single conversation) for me to start
mentally arranging the furniture in
our future quaint suburban home by
the sea. My heart swells, I suddenly
can’t find my words and my face red-
dens. I begin to sweat if I’m wearing
my leather jacket, and I probably am
because, secretly, I want you to com-
pliment my outfit. And when you do
give me that validation, I smile so
wide it feels like the outer corners of
my lips tear at their flesh-fashioned
seams, but I’m hoping you’ll find it
endearing. And when I fall asleep,
you appear in my dreams.
I’m hoping you won’t judge me,
but I didn’t really become a hopeless
romantic until anime poisoned my
impressionable brain in early middle
school. From Kirito and Asuna to
Sakuta and Mai, most of the anime
I watched portrayed romance as
dramatically direct love confessions
while the characters sit atop high
school rooftops at sunset or watch
fireworks shows at the summer
festival together. Yet the buildup
to these relationships are predict-
able and uncomplicated; the audi-
ence knows from the beginning that
the two main love interests will get
together. I didn’t even know liking
boys was an option for me until I
was at least 14, so while other kids
my age were making out behind the
classroom buildings after school, I
could only live vicariously through
the media I consumed.
Amid mentally selecting the fonts
for our future wedding invitations,
the picture of my parents’ wedding
photo sitting on my grandmoth-
er’s old dining table appears in my
imagination. They stand hand in
hand, beaming directly at the cam-
era and consequently, the viewer.
Suddenly, their eyes watch me as I
navigate this dreamscape. The fan-
tasy I’ve constructed fractures as
their inescapable gaze permeates my
thoughts. The top and bottom rows
of my teeth slowly clench together
so hard they grind down my enam-
el. My sweat-infused, water-based
eyeliner cascades down the space
between my epicanthic eye folds
and my nose bridge. My words lodge
themselves inside my trachea, and in
my gasps for oxygen, blood fills my
warm face. My heart swells until I
can feel it pounding in my fingertips
like it wants to break free. When I
awake from my daydreams, their
smiling faces appear in my night-
mares instead.
I want to rant to you about these
feelings, but I can’t because you’re
not really real. The hypothetical
“you” in this piece, my chance-
encounter dream boy, is just that — a
dream. On the other hand, homopho-
bia is hyperreal. It looms above me
at all times, especially when I start
thinking about the future. For many,
Queer love is often a transaction,
forcing us to surrender parental
love for romance. The power imbal-
ance for young Queer people always
results in an unequal trade, espe-
cially when our heterosexual coun-
terparts never need to relinquish
much of anything. Furthermore, it
places undue pressure on the success
of the relationship; what happens if
I come out and am exiled from my
family only for some shitty Tinder
boy to ghost me tomorrow? In order
to destroy these vivid future anxiet-
ies of inescapable familial confron-
tation, I must construct even more
detailed fantasy worlds as a defense
mechanism. It is unrealistic for me
to expect to run into my ideal part-
ner in the grocery store aisle, which
is precisely the reason I hold on to
my phantasmal musings of love. If I
set my criteria for romance so high, I
never need to worry about the future
because I’ll never have one with you.
When I return from class or the
grocery store or wherever I see you
in passing, the pile of dishes fester-
ing inside my sink is the only thing
waiting for me at home. Once I turn
on the faucet, I let the running water
engulf my hand, slipping in between
the finest ridges and notches of my
fingertips. As I scrub down chicken
karaage residue and tomato paste
stains, I wish you were beside me,
drying the dishes as I hand them to
you. I wish we had eaten out of these
bowls and tossed fried ramen in this
frying pan together. I wish we were
just coming home from class or the
grocery store or wherever we met
up, walking hand in hand all the way
back.
In the middle of my daydreaming,
I don’t even notice the rising water
temperature until my scalded skin
becomes red. Instinctively, my left
hand turns on the cold water and
holds my writhing right hand under
the stream. My fingertips, pressed
together in pain, rub against my
cracked, dry knuckles, embracing
each other until the aching subsides.
Even within this piece, I had tricked
myself into thinking that you, my
imaginary lover, could ever protect
me. In truth, there is no escaping
omnipresent homophobia. It invades
and corrupts every inch of my mind,
and I keep trying to construct new
barriers to run deeper and deeper
into my own ideal world. Life is too
short to continue evading love and
its consequences.
Queer love comes with strife but
I must allow the pain to wash over
me in order to embrace the warmth
within the anguish. Even on the
precipice of catastrophe, hypotheti-
cally rejected by both familial and
romantic relationships, I will only
have my own hand to hold. Leaning
over my sink, with my hands clasped
together as if in prayer, I let you go.
Design by Zoe Zhang
Design by Andy Nakamura
ANDREW NAKAMURA
MiC Assistant Editor
“suck my dick” men will say phallic
phrases like “on his ass” as a meta-
phor for berating someone. The fre-
quently uttered, “F— you” carries
with it an ironically ambiguous,
obvious yet often obscured notion
of eroticism. In the undertones of
what’s uttered is the staggering asso-
ciation of penetration with weakness
and fragility. These phrases falsely
equate sexual passivity and penetra-
tion as an inherently punitive subju-
gation.
Deconstructing the ironic eroti-
cism of male heterosexuality allows
us to see how the social construction
of sexuality in our society has played
out along rigid patriarchal lines. It
also enables us to see the homo-soci-
ality embedded in everyday male cul-
ture that is often expressed in such
ways that eschew authentic intimacy.
Sexuality remains much more com-
plex than our culture is willing to
confess. From the physical and literal
to the figurative and metaphorical,
we should do more to divulge in dis-
course on our every-day sexuality. In
doing so, we can gradually unravel
the unruly formations of patriarchal
power for good.
“Paradoxically, the
embodied desire for
heteronormativity
depends upon
homosocial
relations that in
turn often manfest
homoerotic and
even homosexual
desires and
behaviors”
“Sexuality
remains much
more complex
than our culture
is willing to
confess.”