When one speaks of intimacy in the new age of performative feminism, queerbaiting straightness and pink-washed nationalism, there are some phenomena that are now familiar to our cultural knowledge (and if they’re not, they should be).Phenomena like “Berlin straight”, “hetero-pessimism” and “non-binary male”. Somewhere between the identity battlefields, the “Queerbaiting heteros”, that have had enough privilege, now seek it’s re-instating in darkrooms and queer parties, and the “Heterobased gays”, that have had enough “victim” privilege, now seek its refusal in CEO chairs and wedding chapels. In this cultural-flop era we’re living through, of modern –isms, zapified cognitions and lobotomized politics, how can one even think of intimacy within the game of musical chairs we’re asked to participate in: Fuck, Marry, Kill – Empty Hedonism, Sellout Homonormativity or Solitary political consciousness? Joke is, gender might be a construct, but everyone still likes to cuddle.
When speaking of radical intimacy, Sophie K. Rosa’s book, entitled as such, asks for a deconstruction of the thought patterns we all unconsciously adopt. Firstly, intimacy as reserved for romantic partners though compulsory monogamy. Then, the couple as the ultimate form of intimacy toppling all the rest, and lastly, treating romance and the “couple” as outside of community and thus outside of politics. Ultimately asking for healthier and more diverse ways of connecting with one another, rather than a “perfect” relationship.
To begin with, the first thing we should posit against is the idea of Romantic Teleology. We treat “romance” as the ultimate goal of a person’s life. Its aspiration is everywhere around us, from the way newborns are being talked to, being promised a future of Prince Charmings, to every single pop song we belt out with our friends when we’re white-girl-wasted. In a society that is bereft of spirituality, “love” is treated as a God-like creature whose presence we might not necessarily be able to put into words, yet we constantly feel looming over us either as the ultimate reward of luck, or as the penultimate judgment, dying alone being the only thing worse than simply dying. We live in a heterosexist world, where toxic monogamy started from Valentines Day cards saying “You’re my other half”, “You complete me”, “You are my everything”, “I have eyes for no one but you” and has now taken a ship to a Love Island where it is paraded around within the premise of “If your love is real, you would never cheat” opposed to “The whole point of the show is dependent on people that DO cheat which is what the whole entertainment aspect is, cause what’s entertaining in watching a bunch of people who love one another be faithful and not tempted?”. If indeed the “ultimate” love, is natural, magnetic, unanimous, spiritual and divine, then what is this nugget of curiosity, our own sexual itch is based on? Such understandings of love, as needing to be tested, isolated in a holy-chamber of pure ideation and holy nature, creates a power dynamic of Evangelical Monogamy. In this world full of ZioNazis running governments and ChristianoTallibans enablers claiming gay protection from Muslims, it seems like the worst thing you can do to oppose their mission of holy retribution is to defile the “union” these clowns call “Purity”, via sex, either gay or simply, extramarital by “cheating” on your partner.
God forbid a girl has a little fun. (Evidently, lying to your partner is the bad aspect of cheating. As Rosa so boldly says “cheating is the worst part of the revolution”. This is not to promote cheating as a sort of advisory revolutionary act. More so, it is to consolidate the fact that we should strive for sexual openness
and exploration and oppose compulsory monogamy, if that is what we want, in ORDER to maintain healthy relationships instead of using sexual exploration as a result to what an “unhealthy” relationship looks like.)
If compulsory monogamy and heterosexuality are seen as “natural” and a straight cis monogamous couple is seen as an “established relationship”, then what about queerness? Okay okay, let’s maybe not get to fisting yet. How about then, a married couple that cheated? How about, a single mother? How about, a married couple with kids that are secretly swingers? Are any of these relationships valid, natural and established, or is their variance forfeiting their fight for the top of the SexSuccessPyramid? Is ANY infraction of the framework of monogamy seen as a moral failing or is that just reserved for cheaters, women that gained weight during their marriage and “let themselves go” and the “cooky, slutty, commited-phobic fags that munch butts”? To noone’s surprise, the first step in destabilizing the teleological approach to thinking about love, one simply needs to look back. Only during the 17th and 18th century, were the first introductions of romantic love as a valid reason for marriage, amongst the rich in the West – as opposed to simply, capital exchange between clans. Then, as recent as the 19th century did the phenomenon of romantic love marriages become more widely spread for lower classes. Even then though, the nature of marriage, had a transactional nature where the women were basically traded on the marriage market, for their fathers and families to accumulate more wealth, and love was simply a conceptual tool to somehow create the illusion of choice. Marriage then, as the ultimate goal of a person’s life, has a fairly short history of power and relevance beyond the subjugation of women to another patriarch. If you’re shocked by this, just read Engels and the Origin of the Oppression of Women – you can thank me later.
When it comes to gay marriage though, we believe the laws are reversed due to the subjugation of LGBT people within the homophobic regimes we live in. Under the sexual hegemony we live in , where desire is organized contractually, gay marriage represents the last-frontier of neoliberal capitalism as far as love and intimacy goes. Initially, what one should deconstruct is the aspirational fantasy of assimilation as a “solution” to the social status of oppression an alternative would be. By naturalizing and assimilating gay desire within society, what capitalism does is re-instate the sexual hegemony straight people suffer in, to gay relationships. How this happens is by extending the laws that regulate intimate relationships (ex. Inheritance, care giving when sick) to gay people that are married, ultimately establishing the power of marriage over any other kind of relationship. You see! Marriage is great! Even gay people want it!
Gay love is seen as love par-excellence since ultimately, with no cause of “natural reproduction”, you represent the desire to marry in its purest form – love as a bond needing protection from the bad, crazy world of hedonism. Used as a form of nation building, gay marriage is plastered across campaigns as empty as “Love is Love” and “We’re all human”, to somehow show how similar gay people are to straight people. As opposed to the crazy, threatening, sex-obsessed, glitter wearing, STD baring fairies that are so selfish they want to party till their 80’s and stack up a sex-roaster in the 3-digits. The same ones that are ruining our claim for rights with their harnesses during Pride and their dirty cruising. An example shoved down our throats ad-nauseum is Tel Aviv as the gay Mecca of the Middle-East. HOW can one hate Israel when they are the ONLY democracy in the Middle East, and the ONLY country that loves gays and wants to protect them from the big scary brown Muslim? As if the biggest cause of death of queer Palestinians is Allah and not Israel.
Homonationalism is not only a form to control gay people from revolting, but also a way to cement Western supremacy over the Muslim world. Look at the wholesome, gay couple of Prime Ministers, using a surrogate (aka. rich people harvesting their seed in a woman as if our societies weren’t dystopian enough) and adopting a less-privileged black kid to show them the wonders of the West, posing over the Amsterdam river à la Ikea picture-frame. How beautiful of a sight it is, this “win” for Gayness, while their government is literally funding a genocide 5 countries to the left, and enforcing stricter migration policies by the minute. It doesn’t matter, as long as the rainbow flag is big enough to cover all the dead bodies we’ll step on in our heels during Pride.
IF indeed, the reason we are fighting for gay marriage is not assimilation but it is to receive all the advantages this union has, then why are we not fighting exclusively for those advantages instead? Why do we need to pass the message of “I’m just like you”, in order to receive only a fraction of privilege? If what we want is the privilege to see our partner in the ER, why do we not fight for the recognition of other relationships as important too? Why are we so bothered by the table only until we get a seat and then we put our feet on it? This hetero-normality we so eagerly beg for, as breadcrumbs from the privilege pie is nothing more but a distraction, created by the upper-class gays, the ones that vote against us in the booth only because they wish to see themselves sitting at the head of that table. It universalizes a normative framework of intimacy which ultimately excludes the BIGGEST chunk of the community that instead of wedding bells and tuxedos, what we need is:
– FREE TRANS HEALTHCARE
– FREE MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
– SEXUAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
– EQUAL WORKSPACE OPPORTUNITIES
AND FOR FUCKS SAKE
– BETTER EDUCATION AROUND OUR LIVES
Latsly, what Radical Intimacy preaches, is a form of Relationship Anarchy that is informed and realistic to the discourse, most people’s lives are jettisoned in without their will. Yes, you do not get to choose whether you’re gay or not. You do get to choose whether you’re a bootlicker though.
Firstly, Relationship Anarchy is not an “anything goes” Fuckfest. It is an awareness and a plea to collaborative relationships that are built around people, as opposed to a “common sense” of what our desires and wishes are.
Relationship Anarchy is an inclusion of your romantic relationship as “a part of” the community rather than “apart of” the community. Community comes first. Always.
Relationship Anarchy is thinking of friendships as relationships that need equal attention as to whoever is providing your orgasms.
Relationship Anarchy is thinking of that someone who provides your orgasms as important and who you relate you to through queer time instead of a hetero “ first date-become monogamous-move in-get married-have kids” kind of timeline.
Relationship Anarchy is denouncing romance as competitive and see it as touchy, and affective, and sticky, and sweet, and salty and sexy and malleable to whatever fucking adjective you want to attach to it.
Relationship Anarchy is seeing Romance with a capital R as inherently queerphobic and the pop culture bullshit we’re deep-throating as needing a gag-reflex because you should not want to ingest everything they sell to you.
Relationship Anarchy is promoting political partnerships that go against hoarding another person’s body and lastly, Relationship Anarchy is understanding the power of your body as that is in constant tension with the evolving power structures that make it what it is: a tool of the Empire to control.
Instead, Relationship Anarchy asks you to treat intimacy and your body as a powerful nuclear tool of mass destruction. Withhold sex from losers. Withhold sex from people that would vote against you. Withhold sex from fascists and from racists and from transphobes. Realize the beauty that comes with the crevice, folds and shimmies, your belly, titties and thighs make, when you wish to dance horizontally with whoever you want, whenever you want, and however you want.
Life is what you make of it but life is gonna suck, if you don’t know how to swallow. So guzzle up gurls.
