Strictly 4 My Underground Homo Deep House Thugs: DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues

Setting aside the promotion of child-rearing in late 19th century America and England at the apex of their imperialist ambitions, I never quite understood the conflation of capitalism with heterosexuality, especially since queers have been the most avid participants in a consumerist culture forever, but this is an argument for another thread.

i think if u look at this historically tho it makes sense - i mean the condition of homosexuality has been like this hidden culture, i'm thinking like dusty springfield slipping polari into interviews. A lot of gay codes have to work as secret signals that are wide open, obv not really anymore in western countries and also the internet has changed this a lot but. So I mean gay culture has had to grow up as a version of straight culture, so that it can pass and also be understood as its own discrete codes etc. U c that in paris is burning with the whole bit on "realness." So much so that you could make a point that it shows how successful the ball'rs apprppriation of like hollywood glamour etc. was, that it could so easily be re-appropriated back into straight culture via madonna, malcolm mclaren etc.

I think i'm a little less forgiving wrt beyonce because of that rumour that one of the dancers in single ladies/sweet dreams was the choreographer. I know it prolly woulda been kinda insulting to get called a dude for the girl dancer, but I still think they couldv let the rumour circulate and not deny it instead of shooting it down etc. well maybe not, but also when she did it at the vmas she had these white chicks also dancing with her and I was kinda like "couldn't they have had some guys 2?" I mean, I saw a kylie minogue concert where they had guys wearing can-can dresses but maybe that is b-c this is europe i dunno.

especially since queers have been the most avid participants in a consumerist culture forever

not true. but since this is a dj sprinkles/terre thaemlitz thread, i'll let that go for another time.

would be in interesting topic for a thread... more in terms of the history of the culture. at least some part of the perception of "mere consumerism" amongst homosexuals must have something to do with the death of Modernism, the transformation of fashion and entertainment (formerly "art") into global industries, the way that these niches that were carved out were stripped of any sociopolitical import...

there is a difference between Fred Schneider's take on secondhand and some stereotype of a nihilist, selfish "twink" rummaging through a vintage clothing boutique in nolita.

yes!

I think i'm a little less forgiving wrt beyonce because of that rumour that one of the dancers in single ladies/sweet dreams was the choreographer.

random that i happened upon this part of the thread just as i've been looking into beyonce's choreographer (for single ladies and other things), jonte. i've been hanging around some dancer and designer types in nyc and he's been popping up. i wouldn't know without bothering to check the single ladies vid itself, but he's definitely been in some of her live performances on talk shows and whatnot. some of his solo stuff (sorry if this is off-topic or whatev):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot5YiAt5p0M

nah that's awesome

though otoh I am totally reinforcing another stereotype about gay people. probably lots of gay people don't have any talent or interest in art or fashion just like, you know, any large group of people that are not defined specifically as artists or people into fashion. I haven't left NYC in a while.

I got dragged to a gay club a year and a half ago and met Jonte. He seemed like a nice guy. He had an entourage and a miniature top hat.

alex in montreal wrote:
> that specific idea of queer culture as LOCALIZED and GEOGRAPHIC and COMMUNITY-BASED that is made explicit at various points in Midtown 120 Blues - my ability to view 'queer culture' as something I share ownership of is compromised

i think this is precisely the contradiction terre is interested in exploring, through a wide range of releases and writings - particularly the notion of subverting/complicating "identity ownership" as a form of domination. terre had a strange relationship to the midtown scene, too, since she was apparently so intimidated by the post-op transsexuals that she chose to closet her own non-op transgenderism and always DJ'ed dressed as a boy. so i think she would agree on the culture being LOCALIZED thing, but is the type of person who is suspect of COMMUNITY as something different from actual social interactions, which can be much more contradictory or fragmented or hypocritical...

the transcript to his recent talk in amsterdam is kind of about this - dissecting and rejecting both concepts of "minority" and the deleuze/guattari concept of "becoming-minor," yet conceding a time and place for both.
http://www.comatonse.com/writings/becoming-minor.html
excerpt: "My proposal to you, in identifying these various problems with both the "minor" and "minorities," is not to think about deterritorialization or reterritorialization, but overterritorialization. By "overterritorialization" I mean simultaneously engaging in contradictory social identities; forsaking pride for an open investigation of shame and hypocrisy; inviting confusion in our own life and the lives of those around us; and not only thinking of social alliances in terms of cooperation, but to actively engage in non-cooperation as a means of socialization."

shh! it's not me! wrote:
>probably lots of gay people don't have any talent or interest in art or fashion

i can't find the articles now, but i remember terre talking several times about how the gay/lesbian marriage thing (from a romantic perspective) is proof that queers are as unimaginative as everyone else, the same conformist desires pounded into them, etc... also, how many people see sexual reassignment surgery as "radical," when in fact it is the ultimate attempt to become something conformist (conventional man or woman) - even if the quality of the results often prohibit that conformity.

I would like the authors those articles to tell me why they think homosexuality is inherently radical in the first place, given other animals do it without killing each other, et al.

isn't what other animals do kind of irrelevant to radicality, being more or less relative to human societal norms

I'm just saying homosexuality itself sort of exists outside of ethics, hence (to some extent) radical/establishment dialectics.

Like, OK, so we're not supposed to want marriage. We're not supposed to want to change our sex to more closely align our inside with society's standards of the outside. Are we supposed to routinely and regularly jerk it in public in the name of gay radicalism? Would that do it?

(And I guess by "in public" I mean not gay bars.)

at this point then i just think thaemlitz's point is based on one contradiction too many

eric, i have a headache right now so i won't go any further, but this statement— "I'm just saying homosexuality itself sort of exists outside of ethics, hence (to some extent) radical/establishment dialectics" — is so myopic that it sort of made me chuckle through the pain.

ti4rn4n, you're right, but what Bersani eventually comes to (and Hocquehnghem suggested even earlier) is that queering in any fashion is exactly what you're talking about— a reconstituting of heterosexual, capitalist cultural norms, so that the heterosexual matrix in some way still controls the very 'subversion' that queers are supposedly performing. this is why i've sort of abandoned the self-identifier 'queer' in a lot of ways, since i sort of agree with Bersani and Hocquenghem on the issue.

ok but I feel like the only answer to that would be "uh, we know." I don't think anyone trying to emulate hollywood movie-stars, or atlanta cheerleaders is really gonna be too upset by someone pointing out that they're copying straight culture. I mean, its pretty obvious. There's extended bits where they talk about Dallas or one where Venus Xtravaganza talks abt wanting to become a suburban housewife.

well, i'm not saying that the people within the ball'r culture would be upset....in fact, i never said that. don't really know why yr response was so condescending.

There's no reason why homos need to think they're outsiders, tabes.

there are plenty of examples of and reasons as to why homos ARE outsiders. whether a homo wants to think and act like an outsider is a matter of choice. but when the dominant culture is so fucking repellant, i personally find it revolting that anyone would want to be an insider.

I guess you're not charming enough.

With a few reservations I agree with Alfred here. Historically, gays/lesbians etc were obv outsiders in the sense of being legislated against or entirely invisible or etc. And emotionally, radical queers sensibly believe that all people who go through the (usually at least partly painful) process of coming out ought to consider the sense of alienation they have felt as inclining them towards a deeper appreciation of radical class/sex/race (in addition to queer) politics. But this is clearly not the case for the vast majority of GLBTs, who are radical in barely greater proportions than any other community groups in the developed world. It is difficult today to see the experience of growing up gay or lesbian etc. as being, for most people, substantially more politically meaningful than growing up obese, say. Social alienation of any type can be politically empowering... or, perhaps rather, energising - I think in practice much of the process of politicisation of young queers is not always "empowering" in any meaningful sense, but rather is an extension of the kind of adolescent suspicion of authority and sense of oppression-of-identity common to many teenagers (but which, having had to hide their identity, young queers may not have enjoyed as fully as their straight peers), enlivened by a mostly very superficial reading of queer/marxist/feminist (and very occasionally race) theory, but ultimately something to be "worked through" until the young firebrand is finally comfortable with their (let us not be in doubt here) sexual identity, at which point their political opinions may be worth listening to, or at least honest.

At any rate, if capitalism is good at anything, it is accommodating (I will not say "commoditising", which would be the more correct but emotionally-loaded term) and catering for the needs of social groups such as GLBTs (as a whole or in its more specific formations). In this sense capitalism perhaps can only be said to the be the enemy of queers in the sense that it can be said to be the enemy of any person who is not a 19th century white male factory owner ("if only they would realise it!"). No political movement outside of anti-capitalism itself can be said to exist "beyond the horizon" of capitalism, which is why anyone who thinks queer identity is somehow the fundamental basis of all radical politics is usually being egocentric.

I say this, of course, as someone very sympathetic towards the political aims of politicised queers!

My niece was born three days ago. I know exactly what it means to feel like an outsider: the older brother with no hope of bringing progeny into the world. I don't need to make myself an outsider.

You live a self-charmed existence, don't you, Ted.

Shh! Don't disturb his young gay smugness!

All's I'm saying is that a lot of forms of so-called radicalism in this particular context are starting to smell strongly of self-promotion.

Whatever, I'm just going to listen to "Hush Now" again and again. Among us non-radicals, silence equals comfort.

> I would like the authors those articles to tell me why they think homosexuality is inherently radical in the first place, given other animals do it without killing each other, et al.

first, those were examples of people challenging the notion of inherent radicality. second, the notion comes from dominant culture positioning homosexuality as a "threat" to dominant mores. "radicality" becomes a way of attempting to wield that possible power granted by dominant cultural fears.

...or something.

> I'm just saying homosexuality itself sort of exists outside of ethics, hence (to some extent) radical/establishment dialectics.

scary! replace "homosexuality" with "heterosexuality" and you have just written the formula for why we're in this mess.

His Resident Advisor podcast is really, really good - I'd love a copy of his private Depeche Mode remix.

No offense, guys, but I really want to hear a Weird Al parody of the intro.

replace "homosexuality" with "heterosexuality" and you have just written the formula for why we're in this mess

I guess that's always been my point here. This insistence on maintaining "otherness" errs when it tries to eradicate stray elements of "with-ness."

I come away from some queer theory feeling like the authors want me to disown my mother and father for daring to be heterosexual.

^^^ This is a pretty poor reading of queer theory unless you were reading, like, agit-prop zines from 18 yr old baby-queers. (The real-life example of this when I was at uni was a zine a girl I knew put together called "An Introduction to the White Capitalist Hetero-Patriarchy")

If anything, actual queer theory tries to break down any assumption that there is an "absolute" difference-in-identity between heterosexual and non-heterosexual people. It suggests that heterosexual people are constructed in pretty much the same way as homosexual people, the importance part of which is that it means they are a construction (i.e. not "natural", "god-intended" etc.). The consequence of this of course is that heterosexuality loses the monopoly on rightness. But, conversely, it cannot hold the monopoly on wrongness. Queer theory doesn't dislike heterosexuals, it dislikes a taxonomy of sexual identity (read: perversion) that tries to hypostasize what it means to be not-straight. It no more equals a hatred of heterosexuals than the feminist insistence that women can choose their lifestyle equals a hatred of men.

What a lot of people think of as "queer theory" is really a badly assembled rainbow coalition my-first-marxism which pats itself on the back for apparently transcending or revolutionising "gay identity politics" (because gay men are sexist classist racist pink dollar slaves after all) and then turns around and asserts the same brand of identity politics it claims to reject.

It's much closer to a misreading of Catherine McKinnon (i.e. radical feminism) than a misreading of Foucault etc.

Haha I don't the Rainbow Coalition is what you think it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow/PUSH

It may be a bit of an Australianism to use "rainbow coalition" in the context i'm using it. It's less an official term than a put down.

Well in that case, the Australianists picked up the name of an American organization only tangentially related to gay rights and misused it.

You gotta admit that it's a great term for what I'm describing.

Sorry, but as an American, and probably even moreso as a black American, I just have whole other set of connotations associated with the term.

At the same time, it's perfectly understandable if non-Americans are unfamiliar with Jackson's organization.

right but rainbow coalition is a term used to mean a lot of different things in different countries anyway, usually multi-party majority governments

Oh. We don't have those.

Yeah exactly that's where the phrase comes from originally I'm pretty sure!

Alright, I guess I've been proven wrong.

about rainbows?

1. Call me an adolescent. I don't really care.

2. To Eric: Beavis said it better than I could: first, those were examples of people challenging the notion of inherent radicality. second, the notion comes from dominant culture positioning homosexuality as a "threat" to dominant mores. "radicality" becomes a way of attempting to wield that possible power granted by dominant cultural fears.

As stated above (in my last post), I don't really think that anyone has to embrace ^^this 'possible power'^^ of radicality as a prerequisite for being a homosexual. PERSONALLY, I embrace it because I believe it does have some power in threatening and challenging dominant cultural mores.

3. Tim F., I've been reading agit-prop queer zines since I was that teenager you're describing, and at this point (ten years later), I'm relatively well-versed in a lot of queer/feminist theory. However, I do find that the energy and passion of queer teenagers (especially punk rockers) remains energising and invigorating to me, though I am sometimes disappointed in the myopic nature of their anger.

3. To Alfred and Eric: I'm no less smug than either of you, so shut the fuck up.

(and tho i said it on the gay thread: alfred and eric, let's just agree to disagree. let a thousand flowers bloom, etc.)

Which gay thread, table? Clearly I'm missing out.

I have to say, this thread (which I'm somehow just reading now) warms my heart for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is how the DJ Sprinkles album spurred this much broader conversation about queer identity, etc. Good to see homos and the homo-friendlies stepping up to talk about some interesting, relevant stuff. More, more I say!

Mods: please retitle this thread Refutations of Smugness: DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues

3. Tim F., I've been reading agit-prop queer zines since I was that teenager you're describing, and at this point (ten years later), I'm relatively well-versed in a lot of queer/feminist theory. However, I do find that the energy and passion of queer teenagers (especially punk rockers) remains energising and invigorating to me, though I am sometimes disappointed in the myopic nature of their anger.

I'm not disappointed - they're teenagers! They're supposed to be energetic and passionate in their hatred of parents. I just think Eric is too quick to conflate that with queer theory per se.

In much the same way that anti-globalisation rallies would fall over without teenagers but we don't award those same teenagers book contracts with Verso (or do we?).

unless it's a compilation of Aaron Cometbus writings, I don't think so. (and one of those has already come out!) (well, and Aaron is more of a 40-year-old teenage at this point)

This thread is really making me want to dig up the queer-theory-informed paper on drag I wrote when I was 19.