bell hooks on sexuality, queerness (and celibacy)

[Angelnoir]

On a recent panel called “Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body” bell hooks makes some interesting comments on sexuality and queerness. I really like the whole two hours, it’s worth a watch. But she makes an interesting point regarding sexuality in minute 1h:20ish-1h:30 which may be relevant to asexuals. She talks a bit about celibacy; I hope she really does write a piece on it (goes home and thinks about it). Although celibacy is not the same as asexuality, the act of not engaging in sexual activity and what it means for yourself, others and society today is still something that seems to be viewed in a specific light. (Also sometimes people call asexuality celibacy or did so in the past.)

I’ve transcribed it roughly:

Question: bell, you were not interested in talking about Beyoncé in feminism. I was just sort of wondering: how do we understand and acknowledge a historical trajectory of black women being subject to sexual colonization and exotization but also create a liberatory sex-positive framework for black women in ways that honor our sexual agency?

b.h.: I think that’s the critical question. What is that? What does that liberatory sexuality look like? I mean, let me theorize that it may very well be that celibacy is the face of that liberatory sexuality. That I would rather not be sexual than to be…. [a lot of laughter from the audience]

p: that’s making me uncomfortable. p2: I can’t fit in that box though.

b.h.: I’m trying to be futuristic here. But what does it mean to be able to say I’d rather not be sexual than to be sexual in any context where I’m being mistreated, where I have doubt, where my feelings are not, where I am triggered as an abuse survivor or what have you. I mean I’m just posing what are our choices as we think about journeys to sexual freedom? What choices do we have? People don’t ask me much, I guess I’m getting old, …used asked me who I was having sex with and try to write it on walls and stuff but I identify myself as queer pas(?) gay and I came up with this with one of my white colleagues , lesbian colleagues where we were saying that all of our lives we’ve experienced ourselves as queer as not belonging, as the essence of queer. I think of Tim Dean’s work on being queer, queer as not being about who you’re having sex with, that can be a dimension of it but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live. […] I got to go home and just think about how just mentioning celibacy troubled the waters.

[passionatefriend61]

I love bell hooks, and this is excellent of her to say. She's really onto the fact that true sexual liberation, a truly liberated sexual society, is one in which celibacy is truly equal to sexual activity. Where sex is held up as value neutral, neither good nor bad in the abstract, and having tons of sex is no more "progressive" or "radical" or "free" than not having any at all. I'm pretty sure bell mentioned celibacy as it relates to feminism in one of her books, maybe more than one, but I can't remember exactly which. I think it might be in "all about love" or "communion." Hmmm.

I love the fact that her statement of celibacy being the face of liberatory sexuality DID trouble her fellow panelists! Nothing like showing up "sex positive" people's compulsory sexuality attitudes by using the C word.

[byanyotherusername]

I'm really glad I saw this. I watched the whole talk. It brought up a lot of stuff, but in a good way. Thanks for sharing.

EDIT: Further thoughts...in that whole 2-hour talk I am pretty sure that bell's comment about celibacy, which I don't think was intended as a joke, got the loudest laugh of anything else that was said. I find that a bit chilling, honestly. I hope she does end up writing something about it.

[passionatefriend61]

The focus on “sexual liberation” has always carried with it the assumption that the goal of such efforts is to make it possible for individuals to engage in more and/or better sexual activity. Yet one aspect of sexual norms that many people find oppressive is the assumption that one “should” be engaged in sexual activity. This “should” is one expression of sexual coercion. Advocates of sexual liberation often imply that any individual who is not concerned about the quality of their experience or exercising greater sexual freedom is mentally disturbed or sexually repressed. When primary emphasis is placed on ending sexual oppression rather than on sexual liberation it is possible to envision a society in which it is as much an expression of sexual freedom to choose not to participate in sexual activity as it is to choose to participate.

Sexual norms as they are currently socially constructed have always privileged active sexual expression over sexual desire. To act sexually is deemed natural, normal—to not act, unnatural, abnormal. Such thinking corresponds with sexist role patterning. Men are socialized to act sexually, women to not act (or to simply react to male sexual advances). Women’s liberationists’ insistence that women should be sexually active as a gesture of liberation helped free female sexuality from the restraints imposed upon it by repressive double standards, but it did not remove the stigma attached to sexual inactivity. Until that stigma is removed, women and men will not feel free to participate in sexual activity when they desire. They will continue to respond to coercion, either the sexist coercion that pushes young men to act sexually to prove their “masculinity” (i.e., their heterosexuality) or the sexual coercion that compels young women to respond to such advances to prove their “femininity” (i.e., their willingess to be heterosexual sex objects). The removal of the social stigma attached to sexual inactivity would amount to a change in sexual norms.

-bell hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center

Someone posted this passage on Tumblr, so there you go. I think she's written more on this subject in other books, but I would have to go back and review.

[Angelnoir]

Thank you. If she puts it like that, it sounds revolutionary. Sex-positivism shouldn't be the standard by which we measure everything. It's restrainining. If there is something asexuality can bring to the table, this would be it.

And I agree, she did write something about sexual inactivity but now she should write something about the reaction she got from it while trying to seriously talk about it.

[ithaca]

It reminds me of this one: http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/19555-harpers-magazine-november-2006/

[catsaregood]

The focus on “sexual liberation” has always carried with it the assumption that the goal of such efforts is to make it possible for individuals to engage in more and/or better sexual activity. Yet one aspect of sexual norms that many people find oppressive is the assumption that one “should” be engaged in sexual activity. This “should” is one expression of sexual coercion. Advocates of sexual liberation often imply that any individual who is not concerned about the quality of their experience or exercising greater sexual freedom is mentally disturbed or sexually repressed. When primary emphasis is placed on ending sexual oppression rather than on sexual liberation it is possible to envision a society in which it is as much an expression of sexual freedom to choose not to participate in sexual activity as it is to choose to participate.

Sexual norms as they are currently socially constructed have always privileged active sexual expression over sexual desire. To act sexually is deemed natural, normal—to not act, unnatural, abnormal. Such thinking corresponds with sexist role patterning. Men are socialized to act sexually, women to not act (or to simply react to male sexual advances). Women’s liberationists’ insistence that women should be sexually active as a gesture of liberation helped free female sexuality from the restraints imposed upon it by repressive double standards, but it did not remove the stigma attached to sexual inactivity. Until that stigma is removed, women and men will not feel free to participate in sexual activity when they desire. They will continue to respond to coercion, either the sexist coercion that pushes young men to act sexually to prove their “masculinity” (i.e., their heterosexuality) or the sexual coercion that compels young women to respond to such advances to prove their “femininity” (i.e., their willingess to be heterosexual sex objects). The removal of the social stigma attached to sexual inactivity would amount to a change in sexual norms.

-bell hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center

Someone posted this passage on Tumblr, so there you go. I think she's written more on this subject in other books, but I would have to go back and review.

Great quote, thank you! I guess this explains well why people like the infamous Dan Savage aren't pro-asexual - I guess their "primary emphasis is placed on ending sexual oppression rather than on sexual liberation". This puts a lot of society's reactions into context...