[BRIEF NOTE] Desiring the Inaccessible
Apr. 24th, 2005 02:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldJack Malebranche's column for Lust Magazine, "The Homosexual Warlock" (caution: graphic content), is an interestingly iconoclastic take on the issues of gay rights and non-heterosexual behaviours. His October 2004 column examining the phenomenon of straight (maybe "straight") men appearing as attainable objects in gay porn--and, one could argue, as Fab editor Mitchel Raphael did in issue 266's editorial, in male gay/bisexual culture at large--comes to the conclusion that the inclusion of heterosexuals in such a manner is a way of dominating them, of asserting the masculinity of gay/bisexual men and rejecting heteronormative definitions in a decidedly certain manner.
I don't doubt that this is true. I also don't think that this is the only reason. Yes, gay/bisexual men have been known to desire straight men. Straight/bisexual men have also been known to desire lesbian/bisexual women. Straight/bisexual women have been known to desire gay/bisexual men. And so on, and so forth. People keep finding themselves caught up in their desires for objects of incompatible, or barely compatible, sexual orientations. This faintly humourous trend can't properly be distinguished from the broader and time-honoured tradition of people longing after the people they can't have. What fool in love hasn't hoped that the person they long for will return their desire? Who hasn't hoped that the recalcitrant objects of their desire can be swayed to see the way things ought to be? How could the idea of seduction ever be rejected when it so clearly can work? Hope springs eternal.
I don't doubt that this is true. I also don't think that this is the only reason. Yes, gay/bisexual men have been known to desire straight men. Straight/bisexual men have also been known to desire lesbian/bisexual women. Straight/bisexual women have been known to desire gay/bisexual men. And so on, and so forth. People keep finding themselves caught up in their desires for objects of incompatible, or barely compatible, sexual orientations. This faintly humourous trend can't properly be distinguished from the broader and time-honoured tradition of people longing after the people they can't have. What fool in love hasn't hoped that the person they long for will return their desire? Who hasn't hoped that the recalcitrant objects of their desire can be swayed to see the way things ought to be? How could the idea of seduction ever be rejected when it so clearly can work? Hope springs eternal.
