Trans(a)gressions and the Body Image (January 1998)

Trans(a)gressions and the Body Image Marcus Bunyan Paper from the Proceedings of the 2nd National Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Bisexual Health Conference, Melbourne, Victoria, 22-24 January 1998 Abstract This paper investigates the relationship between self-esteem, body-image and sexual desire within gay men. It looks at the gay male body as a site of ‘performativity’, the body ‘citationality’ quoting the ‘norms’ of gay society in order not to be labelled ‘other.’ If you do not fit the ‘ideal’ of what a gay male should look like this can lead gay men to transgress taboos to achieve their idealised body desires, a trans(a)gression against the self through the practicing of unsafe sex to obtain possession of an ideal body. Keywords Masculinity, gay male, gay male body image, male body, male body image, transgression, performativity, Other, homosexuality, taboo of unsafe sex, taboo, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio, resistance, unsafe sex, self-esteem, HIV, HIV/AIDS, disembedding mechanism, hyper-masculine body, misrecognition, trans(a)gression, compulsive sexual behaviour 1 “So yes, it has happened that ***** has had unsafe sex because he was attracted to the other person because of their body-image ... Always when it happens, he says it will never happen again because it was so risky and so dangerous and then it does ... It is always a conscious decision at the time - it was both doing the fucking and being fucked. It was ***** wanting to be as close as possible to this particular person - he knows they could be HIV+ but this doesn’t matter to him - he wants to be part of them emotionally, as physically and emotionally as close as possible, and by having unprotected anal sex he feels this connection and intimacy ...” 29 year old gay man interviewed in Melbourne.1 The philosopher Schopenhauer defined the non-material, non-conceptual and experience outside all possibility of time and space as the noumenal. He argued that we can have no real knowledge of our inner self because we can never ‘know’ it as such; we can only have real ‘knowledge’ of something if there is something to be grasped and something to grasp it and this only exists in the ‘phenomenal’ world - the world of causal relationships, the world of material substances, the world of phenomena.2 He illustrated that the greater part of our inner lives are repressed, because to challenge our idealised image of ourselves would be to disturb the boundaries of personality, ego, and identity.3 For many gay men, this is a challenging proposition they choose to ignore. Instead of taking up the challenges of the noumenal and using them positively in the growth of the self,4 I believe many gay men now use the body, and especially the surface of the body, as a syte/sight/site of ‘performativity;’ the body ‘citationality’ quoting the ‘norms’ of gay society in order not to be labelled ‘other.’ Not to be cast out from the fold, rejected by the majority of society has become an imperative to belonging, whilst the power that names and controls these discourses, that names us as ‘normal’ or ‘other,’ remains hidden.5 The theorist Judith Butler, using the terms ‘citationality’ and ‘performativity,’ was speaking of the dominant heterosexual paradigm, but the same distinctions can be applied 2 to hierarchical structures and sexual relationships within contemporary gay male society, as well as to gay society’s relationship with heterosexual society. Do gay men reinforce their own hierarchical relationship with each other, quoting their own ‘norms’ of desirability and performance? Although I agree that sexual identity is always in a state of flux, constantly informed by our culture, our surroundings and our memories and histories6 I disagree that homosexual sex can now be seen as a truly ‘ironic’ behaviour.7 Subverting and inverting the normal paradigms of heterosexual behaviour by allowing one male to fuck another male, therefore apparently ‘queering’ normal masculinity, making it a paradoxical masculinity in which gay men undermine heterosexual masculine power, is, I think, an outdated concept.8 Perhaps this may have been true 30 years ago when gay men were part of a largely hidden subculture, but as gay male society has become more readily accepted, there now exists the same oppression (in terms of body-image and racism), in gay male society as in heterosexual society. This oppression may be caused by a ‘homosexual patriarchy,’ the very thing that gay men have opposed within heterosexual society. We see the transference of a heterosexual patriarchy onto a homosexual patriarchy, where the chosen gay men have power over other gay men who become ‘other’.9 The body, as signifier of this power and authority, becomes an armoured penis, a phallus, protecting inner insecurities and presenting a smooth, polished surface (the mirrored body) for the reflection of adoration.10 As no penis can ever live up to the expectations of power embedded in it, the body becomes the visual re-presentation of that hidden power. One of the paradoxes of this ‘super-human,’ this phall(ocr)acy of a ‘straight-acting’ constructed torso, is that whilst the bodies are all perfect, all orifices being closed and filled11 (as in porn videos with a dildo in one end and a cock in the other),12 they are also ‘ripped’ and ‘cut’ (body-building terms), destroyed in the very act of perfection. This, then, is how ‘performativity’ is manifested in gay men, in the search for the ideal; the ideal body for oneself, and if not for oneself, in one’s partner, as a reaction against the possibility of unstable boundaries caused by the noumenal. To ‘fit in,’ to be ‘part of the A-team,’ absolves the gay man from challenging his identity too much - he sits in a 3 comfort zone, and watches his image and the image of others. There is an overriding emphasis on surface. Fitting the ideal becomes a competition with one’s self and with others - if you cannot control the world you live in, then you can, at least, control your body.13 But as gay men can never ‘fit’ the consumerist ideal of a body, they may never be satisfied with their self, and there follows an endless chase after more ‘perfect’ muscles a more ‘perfect’ tan, in an attempt to become blemish free. Thus, the body becomes a simulacrum,14 a hyper-real substitution for the real self (this can be seen in the gay chat rooms on the Internet, where nearly everybody is hard, muscular and built - but how many people do you see like that when you go to the sauna?) The body also becomes a symbolic token (like money), a ‘disembedding’ mechanism, a mechanism that no longer requires the actual presence of the person to attain authenticity (this can be seen in the photographs in gay magazines, where the photographs do not require the models presence to authenticate their value).15 If you do not fit the ‘ideal’ of what a gay male should be - a smooth, muscular mesomorphic body that is white - then you become ‘other,’ and your self-esteem can suffer tremendous damage. According to my research this can lead gay men to the transgression of taboos to achieve their idealised body desires, a trans(a)gression against the self through the practicing of unsafe sex to obtain possession of an ideal body. How do we see ourselves - as others actually see us or how we think others see us? How do we picture what this is like? These perspectives or points of view16 cause us to constantly survey ourselves in modern society, to see how closely we ‘measure up.’ These perspectives may be formed not just from individual perceptions but from the mediation of a group consciousness. In the acceptance of the hyper-masculine body within gay male community as the ‘normative’ ideal, we see a construction which has assumed the guise of a universal. This has led to a compulsion to try to be and act like the ideal, both in physical image and perceived sexual libido. This compulsive behaviour has been commented on in my field research17 and is a ‘learned’ characteristic of gay men (a kind of ‘ritual’ that can be observed in gay clubs, sex clubs and in pornographic videos, etc...) who constantly monitor their performance, putting themselves under surveillance, 4 to see if they match the images and sexual performances presented to them from within gay society. One of the presuppositions of gay male sexual contact is the desire of pleasurable looking (scopophilia). The intense need of the gay male for sexual release (masturbation or fucking leading to ejaculation) is promoted within the community by the perceived idea of a gay man’s sexual performance and is linked to the act of ‘misrecognition’ (seeing himself as a reflection in others) that he has sustained since his early formative months.18 In my opinion this positive ‘misrecognition’ of a partner in a gay sexual encounter means the act of sex becomes an acknowledgment, for however brief a time, of the existence and worth of the self of both participants. Lacking true connection with other human beings and desiring a sense of ‘intimacy’ that is normally not found in their lives, gay men may settle for brief and what they think are uncomplicated encounters, to provide a connection and a degree of emotional and physical release. Gay men do have the need for the release of sexual tension, I’m very happy to say, but at the same time they may fear the prospect of intimacy that physical connection may bring. I think many gay men may fear the exposure of their facades, the masks they have built up around themselves, and this may be seen in the quick sexual encounters that happen at the sauna - the sexual acts take place ‘en passant,’ (in passing) in a series of transitory realities that really have no before or after - no history or future - and the search for emotional connection with another gay man has to start all over again. It is as if gay men are afraid to open up to other gay men on any level other than quick sex - and if passion is involved (this is also a form of intimacy), the revelation of self can be doubly distressing. It challenges gay men’s perceptions of self, and their own boundaries of identity and image may be put into flux. This may be a good thing in many cases, as it can lead to a (re)definition of where you ‘are at’ as a human being, but it can also lead to another form of compulsive behaviour in some gay men - a search for intimacy and emotional connection that can become an addiction. They will constantly search for a partner that offers this intimacy and emotional connection, seeking their ‘other half,’ their 5 completion in another, and in this sense it becomes part of the compulsive sexual behaviour of gay men noted above. And what of a self that does not fit the limited bodily ideals of the gay male community, whose body does not fit the shape, the colour or the class of a middle-class gay white male aesthetic, what of him? “... male-male desire takes two forms. One is a scheme of narcissistic identification with a man considered to have the phallic, patriarchal quality. The other constructs certain males as phallic substitutes who may, then, be ‘consumed’ in the hope that they will provide the missing phallus.” Jon Stratton.19 As Bataille notes, we are discontinuous beings; we live and we die.20 I also note that the French call an orgasm ‘the little death’. In the youth culture of the gay male world, where beauty is fleeting, the need to validate a sense of existence and continuity of self is important. Gay men may have little control, be ostracised and victimised in other aspects of their lives and through their many sexual encounters, seek a validation, an affirmation that their lives do matter (but, paradoxically, they don’t, because they are prepared to have unsafe sex and risk death to validate their existence, whilst transferring their metaphorical death, however briefly, onto another). I think this is where the desire for their body image ideal may take a gay man into dangerous territory, as can be seen in the opening quotation. Because they do not fit their body image ideal themselves, some gay men will go to any lengths to ‘have’ a gay man who does - however fleetingly, however unsafely, and this action becomes a transgression against the taboo of unsafe safe sex and therefore may become a trans(a)gression against the self, by an actual harming of the self through the contraction of the HIV virus. In fact, over half of the people I have interviewed have said they have had unsafe sex because of how they were feeling about their own body-image self-esteem and how they felt about their prospective partners’ body image. 6 Their decision to have unsafe sex becomes either a conscious one, undertaken in the full light of reasoning and knowing the risks involved, or an unconscious one, where the person, either in the throws of lust and passion, or just because he didn’t care or didn’t think, has unsafe sex because he desired a close and emotional bond with his sexual partner. But how unconscious a decision is this? In the trans(a)gression of the taboo of unsafe sex, we find that desire to possess the object overrides the fear of the death, the need to possess something beautiful transferring our own discontinuity onto the object of our affections, our sexual desires becoming aggressions against ourselves and against others. Transitory encounters at gay male sex venues can be seen to be relatively free of the implied danger of contact that is normally associated with meeting a stranger,21 because other gay men must be there for the same reason you are - sex. Unfortunately the danger of contact, once the initial approach has been made, is transferred to the unseen but implied danger of the presence of HIV infection with the partner of your choice. Usually nothing is known about the prospective partner’s sexual history, so the approach, which in gay male sexual contexts, can seem to be free from aggression is, in fact, loaded with aggressive physical and psychological overtones. What does a gay man want out of these transitory sexual encounters other than sex? What projections of desire, ego and will does he make to achieve his objective? What risks is he prepared to take in order to secure his goal? Gay men like to fuck and recent statistics suggest that anal sexual activity within the gay male population is on the rise.22 The (in)difference that some gay men feel to the practicing of safe sex becomes a problematic personal, ethical, and moral choice, sometimes one in which gay men choose not to be aware of the responsibility towards their partner. It is always yourself that you must protect and look after (but paradoxically possibly harm at the same time). But I think this attitude, the attitude of “If he doesn’t speak up, he must not want me to use a condom,” or “Its his choice, why should I question his motives,” brings up the ethics of a wider responsibility, not just to yourself, but to your partner and the rest of society.23 I hear people saying “Oh bugger the rest of 7 society,” and herein lies the dilemma - for, in the end, if we do not care, if we are not ‘aware’ of what is going on around us, aware of our own existence and freedom, and of our own responsibility for the nature of our existence, that is exactly what the rest of society will do - bugger us! Finally, then, how do we reconcile our beliefs and our single definition of self in a postmodern world that offers many different view points? “... reality is never simply given and is always generated by the technologies and modes of development of a society at any given moment in its history.” Paul Virilio.24 Our prejudices, our ‘conditions of understanding’ entail judgements and choices made in the historicity of our memories and our experiences which are reflected in the judgements of a mass consciousness and the power structures of society.25 Through verbal and nonverbal communication these value judgements are made - is this work of art good, is this man beautiful? We as individuals make value judgements everyday of our lives and it is every person’s right to choose as part of that society’s freedom. It is possible that the docility of the individual in accepting collective value judgements of society however, may allow the power structures and discourses that control people to be conveniently forgotten. It is the inherent power of the institutions within a community that guide its ongoing construction, formed, as it were, by the heat of profit and the currency of visibility, value and exchange. The lack of communication between partners in regard to safe sex is an example of the negative reaction against an institution that promotes a ‘valued’ collective consciousness (always have safe sex) in relation to the spread of the HIV virus. My research suggests that not many gay men negotiate safe sex in casual encounters - it is rarely discussed at a practical level and I think this is because of the feelings of ‘guilt’ that the gay health ‘industry’ has made gay men feel about its occurrence. It is interesting where this guilt comes from; perhaps because it is ‘rammed down your throat’ so often (pardon the pun) and that you know it is a bad thing to do, that some gay men feel so guilty doing it. Subconsciously then, having unsafe sex may become an ‘act of resistance,’ in 8 Foucauldian terms,26 against the dominant paradigm that is promoted as ‘safety’ within the gay male community. I wonder is there a correlation between low and high selfesteem and guilt? To make gay men and the gay community more aware of “... the ability of dominant groupings to define their bodies and lifestyles as superior, worthy of reward, and as, metaphorically and literally, the embodiment of class”27 is, I think, an important task. With the increase in body dissatisfaction amongst gay men because of the prevalence of idealised body images, leading to a greater incidence of steroid abuse, anorexia and bulimia,28 there is a need for greater discussion and debate about body fascism and racism within the gay community. The research into the effects of dominant body-image stereotypes will make gay men more aware of the issues involved.29 It is still all too easy for the dominant hegemonic group within a subculture or society to impose and identify what a valued body should look like, and the projected desire that these bodies attract. We have to encourage gay men who do not ‘fit’ the limited body-image ideals to explore and value other aspects of their personalities, identities and differing body images: “If our embodied experiences negate dominant conceptions of gender roles, for example, there is the basis for the creation or support of alternative views about men and women ... It is important to note that not all bodies are changed in accordance with dominant images of masculinity and femininity, and there is much individuals can do to develop their bodies in different directions.” Chris Schilling.30 I am under no illusions that there will always be a hierarchical structure as to which bodies are seen as valuable within the gay community, but by encouraging the exploration of alternatives, the dominant paradigm may perhaps start to weaken its hold over the current images that are portrayed and idealised within the gay community. In conclusion, the above quotation posits a possible way in which we can encourage individuals in society to look at their own and other people’s bodies in alternative ways. If we can accept experiences, memories, and histories which may negate dominant body- 9 image stereotypes, and treat these experiences in a positive way, this may promote a willingness to question our own judgements about the value of different body-image types. I feel strongly that a rebellion against the ‘normative’ state of images and ideals within the gay male community, with the consequent blurring of the boundaries of the body-image, is something that should be encouraged, but not to the extent that this transgression becomes a trans(a)gression against self or partner. Marcus Bunyan 1998 Word count: 3,217 Endnotes 1 Bunyan, Marcus. Unpublished interview with 29 year old, white, middle-class, gay man. Melbourne. 18/11/1997 2 As discussed in Magee, Bryan. Confessions of a Philosopher. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997, p. 405 3 4 Ibid., p. 406 For growth of the self see Babad, Elisha. The Social Self: Group Influences on Personal Identity. Beverley Hills: Sage Publications, 1983, pp. 48-49 5 These issues are discussed in Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 13 6 “We are increasingly aware, theoretically, historically, even politically, that “sexuality” is about flux and change, that what we so readily deem as “sexual” is as much a product of language and culture as of “nature.”” Weeks, Jeffrey. Against Nature: Essays on History, Sexuality and Identity. London: Rivers Osram Press, 1991, p. 69 10 7 As proposed in Pronger, Brian. The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 144-145 8 Ibid., p. 75. 9 As proposed in Frank, Arthur. “For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytical Review” in Featherstone, Mike, and Hepworth, Mike, and Turner, Bryan, (eds.,). The Body. Sage Publications, London, 1991, p. 56. 10 For a discussion of the ‘mirrored body’ see Dyer, R. Only Entertainment. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 116 quoted in Stratton, Jon. The Desirable Body. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 195. 11 “... the new bodily canon ... presents an entirely finished, completed, strictly limited body, which is shown from the outside as something individual ... All orifices of the body are closed. The basis of the image is the individual, strictly limited mass, the impenetrable facade. The opaque surface and the body’s ‘valleys’ acquire an essential meaning as the border of a closed individuality that does not merge with other bodies and with the world.” Bakhtin, M. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, Mass.,: MIT Press, 1968, p. 320 quoted in MacSween, Morag. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 139-140 12 In gay male pornography all orifices are blocked, closing off leakages, and not permitting the secretion of dirty, chthonian, fluids unless they are white and pure. Unfortunately these days, male sperm may not be so pure. 13 “If we as individuals are relatively powerless to affect social structures we can at least control the environment of our bodies ... [the body becomes] the only environment over which the individualised self can exert any meaningful control.” MacSween, Morag. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 154-155 14 For a discussion of simulacrum see Moore, Suzanne. “Getting a Bit of the Other - the Pimps of Postmodernism” in Chapman, Rowena, and Rutherford, Jonathon, (eds.,). Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, pp. 180-181 11 15 For a discussion of ‘disembedding’ mechanisms see Simmel, George. The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge, 1978, p. 179 quoted in Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, p. 24 See also Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993, pp. 181-183 16 For a discussion of ‘points of view’ see Merleau-Ponty. Le Visible et l’invisible. Paris, 1964, p. 177 (English trans. by Alphonso Lingis, Evanston, 1968, p.134) quoted in Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. (English trans. by John Goodman). Cambridge, Mass.,: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 34-35 17 Interview with Adkins, Greg. Health Educator, Outreach Beats Education Officer, Victorian AIDS Council/Gay Men’s Health Centre, Melbourne, Victoria. 02/10/1997 18 For a discussion of ‘misrecognition’ see Burgin, Victor (ed.,). Thinking Photography. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 146-148 19 Stratton, Jon. The Desirable Body. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 180 20 Bataille, Georges. Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo. New York: Walker and Company, 1962, p. 15 21 For a discussion see Goffman, Erving. Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press, 1963, p. 124 22 “The rise in the incidence of unprotected anal sex was part of a general rise in the practice of anal sex in the gay community. The percentage of gay men reporting no anal sex in the previous six months dropped from 21 percent in 1992 to 15 percent in 1996. The researchers commented that anal intercourse may have become “more central to homosexual practice” and that new educational strategies may be necessary in response to the change in sexual behaviour.” 1996 Male Call Survey quoted in an article by Bell, Ron. Melbourne Star Observer. Issue 411. Melbourne: Oz Media, 27th March, 1998, p. 3 23 “Care and concern imply another aspect of love; that of responsibility. Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed upon one from the outside. But responsibility in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response 12 to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being. To be “responsible” means to be able and ready to “respond” ...” Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. London: Allen and Unwin, 1957, pp. 27-29 24 Sans, Jérôme. “Interview with Paul Virilio,” in Flash Art. Issue 132, 1988, p. 59 25 For a discussion of ‘conditions of understanding’ see Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward, 1975, p. 245 quoted in Wolff, Janet. The Social Production of Art. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, p. 100 26 For an explanation of ‘acts of resistance’ see Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. London: Allen Lane, 1979, pp. 92-93 27 Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993, p. 140 28 For research into the rise in body dissatisfaction among gay men see Mishkind, Marc, Rodin, Linda, Silberstein, Lisa and Striegel-Moore, Ruth. “The Embodiment of Masculinity: Cultural, Psychological and Behavioural Dimensions” in Kimmel, M. (ed.,). Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987 29 See Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993 Ewing, William A. The Body. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994 Heywood, Leslie. Dedication To Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996 Ridge, Damien. “Queer Connections: Community, ‘the Scene’ and an Epidemic” in The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. June, 1996. Signorile, Michelangelo. Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles, and the Passages of Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997 30 Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993. pp. 112-114 13