Androcentric
One comment to one of my posts, was to free my mind of "androgeny". I think this comment was misplaced. This blog is about androcentrism. While philosophizing homosexuality would seem reductionist and naive at best, "homo" is essentially sameness. And while I am not specifically writing a treatise on the exaltation of masculinity or testosterone worship, this is definitely about one form of desire.
One that revolves around men.
I never said I represent the sum of desires of all gay people in Cairo, or that I will faithfully map and present "desire" in Cairo, I rather said I will explore. From my own standpoint, from my own beliefs and my own conviction of what constitutes desire, desirability or "desireness".
Such scope would be impossible to capture in my frivolous writing!
My writing reflects my person and only my person. I might try to analyze the scope of desire for other people, but such an effort can not and should not replace the actual collectivity of these desires and what they mean for each and every single person, individually.
While, I am all for diverse, multiple sexual configurations and different terrains of desire, I know for fact that they can not be faithfully categorically captured. But as we were taught, we stereotype to better deal with significant amounts of information. With the awareness of removing or taking out a degree of sensitivity to difference and diversity.
The fear of stereotypes is quite common and quite a legitimate concern. Most everyone fears he or she would be misrepresented and misunderstood. I, myself, am one.
But this does not preclude me from using categories and stereotypes and infusing them with my individual idiosyncrasies. Like a song, I personalize it, I make it my own.
I reconfigure the stereotype.
Which is challenging and annoying to most people, because in general people are reluctant to think and to put an extra mental effort to understand. Its an economy thing. You economize with your resources. Yet I believe that the brain is the only source which you should not economize when you're using it!
Like most people are reluctant to think, some are also afraid to "come out" with the stereotype they seem to fit or lie within its proximity.
I might not be a "eccentric, morbid queen", but if such a stereotype exist, there are a lot of things about me, that fit within its range of meaning or field of signification.
And I am happy to be eccentric and morbid, and I am happy to be dubbed as the queen who writes. Not exalting in a self-defeating manner, but at peace with how people approach me and how they perceive me.
I am ready to embrace these signifiers, in a very French sense, but with awareness and self-reflection. It might not be obvious but its certainly there.
One that revolves around men.
I never said I represent the sum of desires of all gay people in Cairo, or that I will faithfully map and present "desire" in Cairo, I rather said I will explore. From my own standpoint, from my own beliefs and my own conviction of what constitutes desire, desirability or "desireness".
Such scope would be impossible to capture in my frivolous writing!
My writing reflects my person and only my person. I might try to analyze the scope of desire for other people, but such an effort can not and should not replace the actual collectivity of these desires and what they mean for each and every single person, individually.
While, I am all for diverse, multiple sexual configurations and different terrains of desire, I know for fact that they can not be faithfully categorically captured. But as we were taught, we stereotype to better deal with significant amounts of information. With the awareness of removing or taking out a degree of sensitivity to difference and diversity.
The fear of stereotypes is quite common and quite a legitimate concern. Most everyone fears he or she would be misrepresented and misunderstood. I, myself, am one.
But this does not preclude me from using categories and stereotypes and infusing them with my individual idiosyncrasies. Like a song, I personalize it, I make it my own.
I reconfigure the stereotype.
Which is challenging and annoying to most people, because in general people are reluctant to think and to put an extra mental effort to understand. Its an economy thing. You economize with your resources. Yet I believe that the brain is the only source which you should not economize when you're using it!
Like most people are reluctant to think, some are also afraid to "come out" with the stereotype they seem to fit or lie within its proximity.
I might not be a "eccentric, morbid queen", but if such a stereotype exist, there are a lot of things about me, that fit within its range of meaning or field of signification.
And I am happy to be eccentric and morbid, and I am happy to be dubbed as the queen who writes. Not exalting in a self-defeating manner, but at peace with how people approach me and how they perceive me.
I am ready to embrace these signifiers, in a very French sense, but with awareness and self-reflection. It might not be obvious but its certainly there.
Comments