maintenancemeds

Three Reviews I: Meat, Sex, Desire
April 28, 2024

1. Meat Love: An Ideology of the Flesh by Amber Husain
Purchased at Everything's Fine

Fucking incredible, zero notes. My appetite/love for meat is something I’ve kind of struggled to justify for a long time (and will continue to struggle with for a longer time), but this book frames the inevitable cheapening of animal life & labor via the profit incentive not as a locus for individualized consumer guilt over climate change and/or animal rights necessarily— and paranoia over that guilt— but as a catalyst to imagining a different world and economic system, where animals are recognized as a class and not another natural “renewable” resource for humans to extract.

Contemplating on the aesthetic value of meat, how the “stink of death” has developed from being a vector for disgust, to a signifier of (acquired) taste, eroticism, love, ritual, beauty, and even thrift. The impulse to dominate and create vertical, hierarchal power structures that designate not only between different types/classes of humans, but also between humans and animals as a whole, is an inevitable feature of the capitalist economy. Taking notes from Judith Butler, we’re forced into a corner not only to be faced with the ethic of killing (sometimes even savoring it) but also, with who these killable subjects are. And this Overton window of acceptably “killable subjects” will always expand and shift, so long as we confuse what is beautiful (or can be made beautiful) and necessary and fulfilling with what is ethical and virtuous and equalizing.

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2. Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent by Katherine Angel

The most intriguing part of this book was the opening section, on consent. It underscores the main thesis of the book: the fallacy that we, women especially (and this can be extended to speak to marginalized genders as well), being 100% aware of what we want, of our desires, of what gives us (sexual) pleasure, then being able to voice it out confidently, is inherently emancipatory and is the key to having sexual desire fulfilled. Additionally, that the questions tied up with desire can be treated as a binary or answerable via purely scientific or objective means.

The investment in consent language, specifically the emphasis of a yes/no binary can and often does shove under the rug many realities of violence women and marginalized genders face that make up the main backdrop: that larger-scale coercion (economic, family dynamics, racial) takes place and inhibits some to say no, and that consent isn’t the golden ticket to enjoyment, chemistry, or “good sex”.

Power and imbalance— physical, or through the lens of gender, are intrinsic “obstacles” we need to navigate through, because that’s the political/economic framework we exist in; truisms like “no means no” or “be open about what you want” in the realm of sex & dating can be helpful, but not in the long run.

Confidence feminism isn’t sustainable either. Katherine angel deftly outlines how sex and desire threatened to be privatized by this brand of false empowerment; that women ought to be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that they should know what they want (as if this is a static thing not bound in context, setting, identity, and socialization), and that they should be able to accept the responsibility of sexual encounters with men ranging from uncomfortable to traumatizing and deal with it, rejecting “victimhood”. Danger and assault is always around the corner is an idea most women, even those on the liberal/leftist side of the spectrum, and it’s bleak and cynical, despite being true. But a social life of hardening one’s self up, of not being able to lie with the unknown presents a sexual politics that is also deeply troubling.

There is a chasm of unanswerable questions when it comes to sex and desire. It’s only human, even for men, to not know what we want, much less verbalize it and communicate it, even to a sexual partner whom we trust not to do us harm. The framework katherine angel suggests, taking account discourse on consent, desire, arousal, and vulnerability, is not one of give and take— but it also doesn’t discount that imbalances exist and can be anywhere from erotic, to dangerous. There is no one size fits all. It’s a framework that is equal parts hopefully utopian, equal parts soberly aware that inequalities exist and often manifest distilled in sexual relations, and equal parts a philosophical alignment and rallying cry: we must make peace with the fact that we cannot know the finite shape of our desire, and through that uncertainness, sex can be “…(two) people in mutual need at equal risk.” and on top of all this is that this is not, and cannot be, an attitude that aligns with individualism or the privatization of sex and desire. It lies in conversations, vulnerability with the other, exploration, and curiosity. I would have liked her to touch more on the subject of sex work and bdsm/kink dynamics, but that could be a separate work altogether!!

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3. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets by Todd McGowan

A bit tautological so I feel like it could’ve been a bit shorter, but overall the idea that capitalism persists because we’re psychically invested in it since it mimics the how we process desire (and vice versa), taking notes from psychoanalysis. Our desire, in the framework of capitalism, is mediated through a cyclical system of loss. The mistake of exchanging the lost object (i.e. the almost imaginary, sublimated commodity that promises satisfy all our desires, always the next purchase away) with the object of desire (i.e. the object-commodity that we CAN acquire, which never provides real or lasting satisfaction) fuels to this almost mechanized rhythm. In other words, the act of desiring for something or someone is itself the satisfying part, the fulfilling part, and the erotic part. This is the act of “loss”. Waiting for a package to arrive feels so good. But the satisfaction we feel upon the actual arrival of the order never really is proportionate to the amount of desire we had for the object while waiting for it or adding it to our cart online. And so we start the cycle anew, invested in the promise of tomorrow, and of the imagined near-future. This promise rationalizes accumulation, manufactured or false scarcity, commodity fetishism, and capitalist realism (or, the illusion that capitalism is inherent in human nature and the natural order of the world— therefore a neutral force yet incomprehensibly requiring violent policing and surveillance to uphold). Buying into the promise of tomorrow is buying into the promise of capitalism, that is, there will always be a tomorrow where all your accumulation will have paid off. I’m not sure I agree per se because the promise of tomorrow can be revolutionary and necessary to keep working, but it’s given me something to think about. Interesting tangents to make with this with spontaneity vs. organization in a lot of New Left thinking (Graeber, Fisher, etc.)

Overall great. It put into words an everyday feeling that we’re all mostly familiar with. I think it was a bit reductive and one dimensional at points, when explaining away the rationale behind suicide bombing or terrorism for example, ignoring the words Imperialism and Neo-colonialism and its other cousins. The ideas fall a bit short in those aspects, but it made me work to understand, which I always appreciate.

We are never satisfied, because capitalism is good at making our dissatisfaction feel so fucking good. This is a psychic investment that we must uncover, break, and use as the impetus for political action.

Magdalene J. Taylor for an article on the Dirt newsletter re: the question Is it better to desire, or be desired?: “it feels better to be desired but spiritually the reward for suffering through desiring is greater”

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Bonus! Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality by Gayle Rubin

This was so illuminating but also pretty challenging— an amazing articulation and enunciation of what it means to be Queer.

Queer theory supports the rejection of the regimes of the normal, and being at odds with this world. Where do “unsavory” erotic tendencies (i.e. incest, pedophilia, beastiality, etc.) fit into this conversation? What enables these erotic orientations to exist? Non-horizontal power structures, the ethics of consent, patriarchy, and/or the lack of agency children have, maybe. I was really challenged by this point Rubin makes, because I understand the logic and how the state exercises punitive power over demonized, sexual minorities (often painting them with a wide brush). When these right-wing talking points and laws are enacted to drive Undesirables out of communities, visible daily life, and the labor force all “perverts” can be treated with the equal amounts of disgust, regardless of where they sit on the sexual hierarchy in relation to a heterosexual, monogamous, non cross-generational dynamic. And besides, when the state does try to circumvent the threat of violence against a vulnerable population (usually, children), the laws are most often misguided, ineffective, and employs the use of defenseless scapegoats (historically, gay men, and currently trans people).

(Also, who has and continues to deprive children of their agency and rights, anyways? We simultaneously want to put them on a moral pedestal, while also completely failing to advocate for their dignity and freedom. Something I definitely need to think about more.)

I think the true concern we would have— especially as Queers, is with the abuse of authority, and not pathologizing variations of sexuality per se. We are concerned with the deconstructing of supposedly morally chauvinistic or superior stances/ways of life which protect, foster, and normalize violence. I need to read more about this but the feeling I get now is not the impulse to include every “sexuality” that is oriented against the regimes of the normal under the Queer descriptor uncritically, but to interrogate how abuse of authority and power relations can come into play especially by the state and protectors of Capital. I don’t think Rubin’s end goal was to write a defense of pedophilia and incest specifically, but to demonstrate how the knee-jerk reaction to pathologize sexuality and incite moral panics over sexual plurality materially hurts all queer people (and sex workers) especially those already being driven out of a visible life.

Also, see: the fallacy of misplaced scale. It’s a great way to suss out moral panics over sex and sexuality.

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