Colonized Desire: "S/he yearns for two things only: To be loved, of course, and to be safe."

There are those in the Post-colonial world of theory that believe that homosexuality doesn't exist in the colonized world.  In fact theorist, like Franz Fanon and Joseph A. Massad, believe that homosexuality in the colonized world is, and was, a product of colonial taint, enforced upon the indigenous people by the colonizers.   However, I like to think that homosexuality did exist in the world of the colonized way before the Europeans showed up—sexual acts between people of the same sex were normal, not questioned as obscene, nor even given a name.  In fact love between two men, or women, was considered the purest form of love.   It is only when Europeans showed up and introduced the politics of heterosexism that are completely ingrained in post-colonial societies today, where the violence and persecution against homosexuals is extremely violent.  In doing so, the colonizers declared that sexual relations between people of the same sex were abhorrent homosexual acts condemned by the religious doctrines of Christianity.

Whatever the case, somewhere along the line the concepts of sex and gender became completely misconstrued, and policing of sexuality in the post-colonial world is a result of this misconstruing. 

The Caribbean is a post-colonial society where sexuality is policed through gendered behavior.  In fact the Caribbean is a special place when it comes to colonization and sexuality, because it is a place full of people from many cultural backgrounds—both West and East—who have different views when it comes to sexual behavior.  Because the Caribbean was a place of violent colonization and decolonization, sex became the new way to either control—whether it is colonization or decolonization.

Before I get to the readings for this week, I’d like to introduce some of my own theory on the way sexuality is constructed within the Caribbean.  I build off of the works of social oppression theorists to construct the way in which sexuality can be understood within the Caribbean.

Here is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on sexuality within the Caribbean. It focuses on the way homosexual men are forced into a space of sexual hybridity within the nation of Cuba.  I am in no way assuming that the way homosexuality is treated in Cuba is the way it is treated for the entirety of the Caribbean.  The colonial story varies from country to country.  However, several nations have created laws against homosexuality, and more times than not, homosexuals are forced to hide their sexuality through gendered behavior. 

You will notice in my paper that I bring up the concept of sexual hybridity, and I explain the reason why homosexual men are forced into this space of sexual enunciation.   

To better understand this concept I would like to focus on two of the readings for this week.  The first is one of my personal heroes and role model, Reinaldo Arenas.  For those who don’t know who Arena’s is, I suggest you read the rest of his memoirs, or see the movie, Before Night Falls.   “Eroticism” is a chapter from these memoirs.  To make a long, and important, story short Arenas was a political hero for homosexuals in Cuba.  He fought long and hard to write novels against the Castro Regime—ironically a regime he helped put into power.  Many of his manuscripts were confiscated by police, as well as homosexual men who were “supposedly” his friends.  Arenas was exiled to the United States in the Mariel Boat Lift in 1980—Castro finally gave those who wanted to leave, who he called the scum of the Earth, the permission to do so.

I hope you take the opportunity to learn more about Arenas because he was truly an amazing person. 

“Eroticism” was the first piece I read of Arenas, and it helped form the topic for my undergraduate colloquium paper.  Plus, it helped me decide where I want to situate myself in the field of post-colonial studies—homosexuality within the post-colonial world.  I’d like to point out that Arenas uses autobiographical anecdotal writing to create a gay aesthetic—this process is what Audre Lorde first called biomythography.  Biomythography combines narrative form with autobiographical form to convey one’s own personal life with other homosexuals—somewhat similar to the mbari process.  It is used to celebrate queer life within the Caribbean by uniting, and embracing other homosexuals.  

The first autobiographical anecdote that Arena describes in “Eroticism” is of a young male who he and his friend Tomasito La Goyesca met while on a bus.  Arena’s narrates that “the young man had signaled Tomasito several times and touched his very erect penis. [But] when Tomasito grabbed it, the man reacted violently, beat him up, and called him, and all of us queers” (34).  From this little bit of narration, it is clear that the man was obviously interested in both Arena and Tomasito, yet when approached for a sexual handout he was unable to cross the liminal threshold and identify as a homosexual man even though his erect penis said otherwise.  Arena later narrates that Tomasito had accidently switched wallets with the violent man who turned out to be “an official of the Ministry of the Interior” (34).  

Arena comments that “[This] man, who was persecuting us for being gay, probably wanted nothing more than for us to grab his penis, rub it, and suck it right then. Perhaps this kind of aberration exists in all repressive systems” (35).  Arena is not only describing the psychological oppression that the official was facing, but that something was preventing him from acting out what was obviously his same-sex sexual desire. It also shows that even people in power during the revolution were forced to act out the laws of nationalism.   In this case the official was acting out his repression through violence because of his inability to cross the liminal threshold into same-sex desire, a product of his place within the government.

Another place where Arena describes the representation of sexual hybridity and gender identification is when he is the recipient of a brutal beating by a man he has had sex with.  Arena recounts this violent memory and says that:

Things were settled with a look, asking for a cigarette...The young man accepted, and once  inside my room, surprisingly asked me to play the role of the    man. Actually that gave me pleasure to, and the man went down on me.  I fucked him and enjoyed it like a convict. Then, still naked, he asked me, “And if anybody catches us here, who is the man?” He meant who fucked whom. I replied perhaps a little cruelly, “Obviously, I am  the man, since I stuck into you.” This enraged the young man…and he started to throw     me against the low ceiling…I was getting an awful beating… [and] I was afraid to die. (41)

Arena shows that even the physical act of sex doesn’t escape the oppressive chains of heterosexism and gender identity.  Masculinity is equaled to the act of performance and insertion, and femininity is labeled as submissive and receiving. Because Arena challenged the young man’s masculinity he was seen as challenging the systems of gender that embody the physical act of sex.   Arena himself identifies his act as that of a “convict” because he is taking away his sexual partner’s masculinity. This results in sexual hybridity being forced upon both participants through gender identification, and sexual freedom is denied from taking place.

The final part of “Eroticism” Arena describes, in autobiographical form, the setbacks he faced while writing down his memoirs, manuscripts, and novels.  He writes that “By the year 1969 I was already being subjected to persistent harassment by State Security, and I feared for the manuscripts I was continually writing” (49). He juxtaposes the appropriation of his writing by the government, to how the sea “[was] a way to escape from the land where were repressed; perhaps in floating on the waves we escaped our cursed insularity” (49).    His writing served as a way to express the repression he was experiencing at the hands of gay men and the government which wreaked havoc on his sexual identity.   Because he was making his voice known, and not conforming to sexual repression, he became visible as betraying the gender of the nation.  So because his writing was compromised—an intimate part of his identity—the sea, a place separate from land/nation, was the only escape from the daunting confines of heterosexism.  

The second reading that I would like to focus on for this post is Thomas Glave’s “Whose Caribbean? An Allegory, in Part.” Thomas Glave is from Jamaica and is an activist who fights for gay rights.  In fact, he helped create an organization called the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays( J-FLAG).  He is also the editor of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing From the Antilles—the first anthology of Gay Caribbean Literature.  (The readings for this week come from this book, which I am extremely fond of!).   

This short allegory/political speech is full of questions on sexuality, gender, and democracy.  However, it’s interesting that Glave would use the term allegory, because it is significant to a National allegory—which connects both heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals. (Refer to my blog post on National thought).  I call it a speech because it switches from narrative to speech half way through the text.  But what is most interesting is that Glave manifest the concept of sexual hybridity through his narrator/protagonist.  The manifestation of sexual hybridity functions as a way to unite both sexes—in essence a connection between homosexuality and heterosexuality.  In the very beginning the narrator states:

 I am fairly certain…that the child was both female and male—a common enough occurrence in that place of the child’s origin at that time, as, contrary to numerous  prevailing opinions, happens frequently today. The child—let us know him/her as “s/he”—possessed a slender penis of startingly delicate gree…s/he also possessed a pair of luminous blue breasts…The child also possessed a vagina and uterus, which, as was             common knowledge among all who knew him/her, produced at least two or three times     per year (Glave 177).

Glave uses gendered pronouns and connects the two, but let us remember that gender is a social creation so by doing so Glave is deconstructing the binary of he and she by combining the two. A manifestation of sexual hybridity through gendered pronouns.  WOW!!! He also uses physical reproductive organs, penis and uterus, to "re-gender" a human being. Glave, as a gay political activists is “Hope[s] that [they] could engender social and political change in a nation that , broadened through [their] efforts, would ultimately be worthy of all Jamaicans:a nation welcoming to all, irrespective of sexuality and perceived gender transgressions.

As I was reading through Glave's narrative, I reverted back to Spivak’s assertion that the subaltern cannot speak.  Maybe I reacted too harshly to this idea. Even though I am gay I live in a society where I can express it freely without fear of consequence.  I must say I have to reformulate my own opinion on this subject.  If sexual hybridity exists, and homosexuals are forced to conceal their sexuality within the space of sexual enunciation then in fact they cannot speak authentically—thanks Cait Turner for making me question this.  They are forced to share “Darkness and silence…For all time….un-voicedness, complete despair” (Glave 179).  They can only demonstrate their sexuality—which in essence serves as their “voicedness”—through heterosexual norms.  However, Glave by “gathering” these narratives, poems, and speeches work to give an authentic voice that isn't suppressed or colonized by heterosexism. Instead their voices work to un-colonize their sexual desire which is policed through gender and sexual politics. 

Homosexual desire in the colonial world is often met with forceful resistance.  It is often considered disgusting, taboo, and unnatural.  It isn't that homosexuality doesn't exist in the colonial world. Instead it is re-colonized by the colonized. Therefore, sexuality, a significant aspect of culture, is appropriated and distorted so that it can never be purely the same.