S2 E12, On Amatonormativity

We accept without condition the idea that gender follows from biological sex. Your body arrives in one of two options—male or female—and your gender is decided in the same moment your sex is named. But what if binary gender plays the decisive role and it is biological sex that is retrofitted to serve our need for boys and girls, men and women? Further reading: Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary (Agustin Fuentes): https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691253251/sex-is-a-spectrum Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (Anne-Fausto Sterling) https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/anne-fausto-sterling/sexing-the-body/9781541672895/?lens=basic-books Sex is Not Real: The Invention of a Noncoherent Binary (Beans Velocci): https://www.dukeupress.edu/sex-isnt-real

In this final episode, we will turn again to Audre Lorde for a way to reframe and reconstitute our relationship to the erotic. Rather than see the erotic as a synonym for the sexual, we will explore how the erotic—as a register of our deepest feeling and intensity—can and should animate so many of our life endeavors. What would it mean to define your life as an erotic project? What if we believed and expected our education, work, political commitments, and relationships to generate the passion that we are told is only possible in sexual relationship? What if the erotic was not barricaded in the bedroom? And what if we began to demand deep feeling from all that we are told is predictably and unsurprisingly numbing? Let’s think about the personal and the political implications of expanding our understanding to the erotic and refusing the lie that it is a private occasional feeling. SHOWNOTES In this episode, I quoted from two works by Audre Lorde: ‘The Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’ ‘Poetry is Not a Luxury’ Both of these essays are readily available online or can be found in Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays https://www.silverpress.org/products/your-silence-will-not-protect-you I also briefly quoted from Adrienne Rich’s Twenty One Love Poems (VII). You can find the lines here: https://www.best-poems.net/poem/twenty-one-love-poems-viii-by-adrienne-rich.html

In this episode, we will focus our attention on amatonormativity, or the cultural expectation that we seek romantic coupling (and, ultimately, marriage and monogamy). This demand that we find the highest fulfillment in romantic relationship exists in tandem with the demand that we experience ourselves as sexual subjects. We will also listen to Vee, a person who identifies as both asexual and aromantic, as they describe the complexities of their lived experience SHOW NOTES The following texts were cited in this episode: Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law (Elizabeth Brake): https://www.amazon.com/Minimizing-Marriage-Morality-Feminist-Philosophy/dp/0199774137 The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center (Rhaina Cohen): https://www.amazon.com/Other-Significant-Others-Reimagining-Friendship/dp/1250280915

In this episode, we will extend the previous conversation on compulsory sexuality and consider more carefully the difference between sexual and romantic orientation. We will also listen to Julia, a person who identifies as both asexual and aromantic, as they describe the complexities of their lived experience.

S2, E 10: On Compulsory Sexuality In this episode, we are going to turn our attention to the social system of compulsory sexuality that mandates that we must experience sexual attraction and the desire for sexual activity. Compulsory sexuality is a set of both assumptions and demands that impact all people, regardless of how they define their relationship to sexuality. We will also begin to discuss asexuality, or the experience of feeling little or no sexual attraction to another person. There are a good deal of misunderstandings about asexuality, and the next two episodes will focus on defining and clarifying an identification with asexuality. SHOW NOTES The following texts discuss compulsory sexuality as well as asexuality. They are excellent texts for early reading on the subject. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen): https://www.amazon.com/Ace-Asexuality-Reveals-Identity-Meaning/dp/080701379X Acing Science: Compulsory Sexuality and Asexual Possibilities (Kristina Gupta): https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295754260/acing-science Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture (Sherronda J. Brown): https://www.amazon.com/Refusing-Compulsory-Sexuality-Asexual-Sex-Obsessed/dp/1623177103 Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality (Ella Przbylo) https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/24390 (this is open source)

In this episode, we will consider the rising interest in civility discourse and norms. An increasing number of colleges and universities—as well as political culture more generally-are striving to help us disagree in more constructive ways and extend mutual respect as we do. It sounds benign enough, but we look at what civility often conceals: the demand for those who are already harmed to placate and reassure power. In fact, civility can be understood as a form of soft repression, and we consider how this is so.

S2 E8 On Complaint DESCRIPTION In this episode, we will explore complaint: as a response to an unacceptable and unwanted situation as well as a means of remedy when one has been harmed. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work on complaint, we will think about why institutions and systems often work to block complaint, why we are made anxious by the act of complaining, and why it is important that we guarantee that our grievances are recorded for those who both came before as well as those who will come after us. SHOW NOTES I discussed two books by Sara Ahmed at some length: Complaint! (Duke U Press, 2021): https://www.amazon.com/Complaint-Sara-Ahmed/dp/1478017716 No!: The Art and Activism of Complaining (released on April 7th, can preorder): https://www.amazon.com/No-Activism-Complaining-Sara-Ahmed/dp/1558613684

In this episode, hope is not read as ‘naïve hope’ that wishes only for a better future; hope here is a more radical version, sometimes called ‘educated hope,’ because we must learn how to hope in ways that do not deny the intolerability of the present or the necessity of striving for a different future. We talk about the role of hopelessness and despair as partners for hope as well as make the case for a kind of hope that would rather fail or be disappointed than forfeit imagining a better future or ‘not yet.’ SHOW NOTES In this episode, I cited the following texts: The Principle of Hope (Ernst Bloch): https://www.amazon.com/Principle-Studies-Contemporary-German-Thought/dp/0262521997 ‘Despair is Not a Luxury’ from No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (Rebecca Solnit): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2517-no-straight-road-takes-you-there Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Jose Manuel Munoz): https://nyupress.org/9781479874569/cruising-utopia-10th-anniversary-edition/ ‘Hope in Refusal: Feminist, Queer Futurity’ (Rachel Silverbloom) Signs: Vol. 49 (4): Summer 2024, 807-830.

In this episode, we will consider the rise of the ‘angry white man,’ the man who experiences aggrieved entitlement because he has not been delivered the social power, authority, and resources promised by patriarchy. The angry white man—who may resent downward economic mobility as much as feminist challenges to gender hierarchy—has been recruited as a voter, protestor, and warrior in the fight for normative masculinity (which, by extension, requires normative femininity). We talk about the political force of the angry white man right now as well as the many ways he is positioned as the last defense of patriarchy and white supremacy. Show Notes The following texts have been mentioned in this episode as well as earlier episodes in the series on masculinities: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Angry White Men: Masculinity at the End of an Era (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Angry-White-Men-American-Masculinity/dp/1568585136 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483 The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks): https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

In this episode, we are rejoined by Dr. Suzanne Ashworth for a conversation about the rise and rules of ‘bro culture.’ She will discuss the shaping force of ‘guyland’ for white, college bound or college educated young men as well as the ways in which the extended adolescence offered to men generates entitlement, requires silence, and affords protection. She will also discuss the ‘killing paradox’ that defines dominant masculinity and the use of ‘fag discourse’ as a form of social control for young men. Together we will think about the elevation of ‘bro culture’ in modern political life and the forms of complicity it encourages from the larger public. Show Notes Dr. Ashworth mentions the following texts in her discussion: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483