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.”

