Post-modern Piss-off: Assault on Sexuality
It’s here. It’s on the Prowl. And its prey is sexuality. Behind every corner of our social relations lies a facet of ourselves known as our sexuality; that complex cell of our being that dictates eroticism and pleasure. Since the creation of bureaucracy and capitalism, that site has been a constant target of censorship and betrayal of the human being. Our sexuality has constantly been paraded behind closed doors, within closets, hushed unless in private company. Capitalism has made its own use of this not only in aiding in the censorship of sexuality; sexually explicit DVDs are among those with the highest cost per disc and a simple Internet search can yield enough porn to make you bleed out the back of your friggin eyes. In the same way has the media produced a veil by which only certain forms of sexuality are considered acceptable for public consumption while all those that fall into the ‘abnormal’ or ‘amoral’ categories are placed elsewhere, away from our site by which we too begin to categorize them as the ‘other’, thereby placing them within the abnormal or amoral yet again.
Quite recently, Calgary transit officials decided to remove a series of ads from buses in which Virgin Mobile portrayed two individuals in a semi-erotic stance, lips embraced in a passionate moment between two people. While two of the four posters, both of which portrayed a male-female embrace were pulled from buses, a third poster which portrayed a male-male embrace was not allowed to to be run in the Calgary campaign. One poster was allowed to stay up from the campaign however. Portraying a young woman seductively touching her lips while half of her breasts show beneath her white angel outfit, this poster demonstrates that while it is appropriate to portray an individual as owning sexuality, it is inappropriate when desire based on sexuality is produced. The eroticism behind our sexuality is only OK when it is not shared with others. Whatever our sexual orientation is, the raw notions of human emotion and desire are under attack, being censored yet again by that all powerful wheel which we buy into. Societal morality has once again said no to a series of ads and campaigns which are in no way demeaning to human sexuality nor do they portray anything specifically erotic besides a passionate kiss between two individuals. The one poster which does remain portrays the ‘angel’ of womanhood, in which virginity is presented yet understood silently to be a falsity. The image of the virgin angel versus the image of a hetero- or homoerotic embrace; who doesn’t want a virgin?
Yet there is another angry spirit in the mix: Notions of gender. Now here’s an interesting topic: gender neutral clothing. A lot of feedback I’ve gotten on this topic seems to be that gendered presumptions of clothing dictate the particular oppressive style of dress a person chooses (or in some cases reject). As one person put it to me: “Just because I have boy parts does not mean I’m a boy!”. It’s true, a lot of men find different styles of skirts, dresses, and uni-pants a much more comfortable choice in both representative of their gendered self or as a free-moving style of dress that corresponds with various daily tasks. Lets boil this down to two concerns: clothing styles are oppressive because of preconceived notions of acceptable gender performances. While certain styles of clothing may have more utility, they are drawn into distaste because of what I want to call ‘societal normality’ OK, so those are our two raw facts.
Now lets add another dimension to this discussion. When we bring up consumerism and capitalism, a whole new matrix of the oppressive nature of gendered clothing, body idealizations, and fashion (which has seemingly become the new bourgeoisie of our time... and yes... I blame the fashion industry and the multi-trillion corporations which sell the products which are supposed to make us the epitome of beauty yet smell like shit if you actually open the bottle while your in the store). Lets think of what is marketed to us in terms of body image.
i) We have the twig-figure models who wear clothing that makes it look like they may not actually be slowly dying from various diet regiments, eating disorders, and the inevitable damage that has to happen to their vital organs like their kidneys or livers. And here i begin to wonder when that little protruding collar bone thing became fashionable.
Ii) We have the high class male models; running the gambit from suits and jackets to underwear and swim-wear. These men make every other man watching feel inferior in some way shape and form.
If we concern ourselves with body image, we have to be able to recognize that these images of the perfect bodies and the taboo of eroticism are ruining any ounce of self respect we may be holding onto. And we buy into them people, we do. We support the consumerist regime that dictates so many matrices of our daily experiences. I am a pissed off fudge-packing, pudgy, disgruntled fag who just wants to make people think about this one raw question I am posing: what if all of our concerns over the ‘ideal body’ and the ‘ideal sexuality’, as well as the physical and emotional danger that these concerns bring with them, are not our faults? What if the problem is not how we look or how we present our sexuality, what if the problem lies in what we’re told we should look like to be ‘attractive’? Maybe its just some random idealist thought, but isn’t there some shred of truth in the begging of this question?
