From the September drop-in non-instructional lifedrawing session with the male model:
"Passion, like a flame..." ink, pencil on paper, text a photoshop layer, 11" x 14", ©Brenda Clews, 2005.
The drawing, when I'd finished it, seemed to speak about homosexual love, queer love, same-sex desire. The way it entraps, because of the culture, the struggle with it. For someone gay, it's not just, 'Are they potentially interested,' but, 'Are they gay, or could they be, too' - a double question. So he is... pulling back, thinking, yet crouched, his body alive with desire, his libido flowing towards the object of his desire. Whether who he desires is even aware of him is not indicated in the drawing.
As I worked on the drawing, I started thinking about whether sexual orientation configures the experience of desire. This profile of desire has no procreational element in it; it's pure sexual desire. Meaning it's different to heterosexual desire where there is a potential conception and a potential responsibility. Where, because a child could be created, the weight of love is different.
In heterosexual love, there is always a referent to potential conception. It's a referent that is absent from queer love, where desire is simply desire, without the consequence of a third, a child, being born. Desire is always a dyad; never a trinity. This makes the act of desiring the other different, surely. Not better or worse, only that sexual desire and its potential consequences is crucially different in hetero and homo bodies.
A semiotics of sexuality, an anatomy of desire... I am playing with these terms: sexuality, with its referent to a third in potentia or as actuality or what is forgone or even as memory, as a triad (hetero); where the referent is non-existent, which configures desire differently, as a dyad (gay); and, excuse the play on words, and serious philosophic concepts, and my giggles, perhaps as a monad (masturbation). When we pleasure ourselves there is no biological referent either.
Each line of the drawing, a deepening of understanding. Our culture has its foundation in Ancient Greek thought, where the dominant, founding class was gay, and one wonders on the paradigm of man alone - a solitary male God, a patristic culture, a 'one sex' model politically - elements which are still with us thousands of years later, comes out of an essentially dyad relationship to the other.
Where desire is only between two, and there is never a spectral third...
(Surely we all have elements of each.)
Will I ever understand why the mother's body is so problematic in Western thought and culture? For it is.
technorati tags: art, lifedrawing, homosexuality, heterosexuality, sexuality, anatomy of desire, semiotics of sexuality, biological referent, maternal theory.
first off, Brenda
ReplyDeleteI love this drawing
I have loved all of the
lifemodel drawings
however, about this
"In heterosexual love, there is always a referent to potential conception. Always. Even if it's as absence, with surgery, hysterectomy, vasectomy, menopause, whatever."
I do not agree
I would say "I take issue"
but the metaphor is too close
to what you are saying
I think perhaps
it's very personal
whether heterosexual sex
has a conception refferent or not
for me
it does not
Suzanne, hmnnn, I have been here, thinking how a heterosexual person cannot have any referent to conception in their sexual practice and am coming up blank. Everytime I think of a possible way, I find a contradiction. With a man or a woman who cannot have children, there must have been a time when that reality was recognized and accepted, and became a story explained over & over throughout life to enquiring others. With a man or woman who decided to forgo having children, again, a major period of decision had to have been undergone, and, again, the reasons for it reiterated throughout life to others. The referent remains in the background. Visiting a hooker, even there, surely somewhere, what if this woman becomes pregnant or this man causes conception. It's there. Even for the menopausal woman, there is memory of the fertile time in the body itself. Does that ever just go away? This 'referent,' then, is present in ways that are completely absent in same sex unions. In same sex trysts and unions, it's not even on the horizon. Not a thought, a possibility, anything to consider in any way. This makes the anatomy of desire in hetero and in homo sexualities different from each other in a fundamental way, that's all.
ReplyDeleteCan you elaborate here on what you mean? I'm open to having my contentious ideas disagreed with. I do love a good discussion!
Thank you for the support on my drawings; I love your poetry too.
xo
As I continue to try to find exceptions, oh, possibly teenagers, who might know where sex can lead but might not fully understand how actual the possibility of conception is. I mean, I knew as a teenager, but I imagine there are teens who don't. Then the possibility of conception is not a referent- though it still is, biologically.
ReplyDeletethe path to the ovaries
ReplyDeletewhether they are functional or not
is not the only one love takes
and the other nerve tingling orifices
are not always chosen
as conception prevention
for me
every instance of sexuality
is an individual event
I have been preganat three times
each time because I chose to get pregnant
the first ended in a miscarriage
the other two
were full term pregnancies
resulting in my sons
I know my body,
and how it works,
well
each time I became pregnant
within the 28 days of
the then current cycle
all the other times
in which I have had sex
both before and after
menopause
conception
nor thoughts about it
were not
part of the experience
the experiences
in most cases
werre the expression and communication
of love
I think always pairing the two
making love and conception
deningrates the sensate
experience
we women after all
have a body part
connected with sexuality
that serves no purpose
other than pleasure
Suzanne, I agree with everything you've said. I think we're talking about different things, though. I am talking about a 'referent' and you are talking about pleasure. I am talking theory and you are talking practice. I am trying to understand sexuality as a triad (hetero), a dyad (gay), and, excuse the play on words, and serious philosophic concepts, and my giggle, perhaps as a monad (masturbation).
ReplyDeleteWhen we pleasure ourselves there is no biological referent either.
Just something to think about.
xo