Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Play

 A Meditation in Conversation w Audre Lorde

In reading Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” I was struck by her insights that were both encouraging and challenging. Challenging not in the sense of having to wrestle to understand them or to give them sympathy. Challenging, rather, in the sense that the life they call me to is one of challenge that is also deeply rewarding and human.

Lorde speaks vividly from her lived experience as a black lesbian feminist. Though her ideas resonanted with me across those differences (as she herself would likely expect them to), I see a deeply personal and meaningful current in the particularity of how her ideas speak to the use of the erotic for her sisters in liberation. It gave me pause to ask, as a white queer man who also seeks to be a feminist ally, what might some uses of the erotic be for men which can point towards a similar goal that “we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of” (57).

By way of autobiography, I have come to understand gradually that while elevating one’s own experiences as an absolute norm leads to oppression, reflection on and at times tenderness towards the contours of one’s own particular experience can lead to liberation. I was moved and then shaken when I discovered the field of masculinity studies under the subset of feminist studies, seeking to understand the breadth of possibility for what it means to be male in our times. To seek that understanding not as patriarchally prescriptive, but as refreshingly descriptive. I won’t quote studies here, but this current does inform my work, as does autobiography of my life as a bi male in general.

Lorde’s insights about the erotic as power have the potential to be liberative for many different groups of people. She paints a clear and empowering moral vision that celebrates attunement to our deepest joy and yearning while discarding the misuse of eros as “the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation” (the current which she names the pornographic)(54). However, as Lorde herself names, “the erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.” (ibid) Lorde’s reflections guard well against misuse. Though the mutuality and vibrancy of erotic power will doubtless transfigure us in powerful ways, my intuition says that if we as men are to truly tap into the erotic, we do better to not first reach for the erotic as power. As a queer man, my intuition says that for many of us it may be more liberative for us to reach for the erotic as play.

A casual partner of mine once said that, “sex between queer men is kind of like golf. It’s a way for them to get to know each other.” While I don’t intend to prescribe either promiscuity or abstinence, I think this is a powerful insight into the playfulness of the erotic, and its ties to the power of gentleness, curiosity and even Biblical meekness. Though I cannot know from experience, male heterosexual eroticism is often described to me as being oriented towards some goal. In its destructive forms, this goal is usually “conquest” or “victory.” In more ambivalent forms, it can be phrased as consummation or reaching a milestone, or perhaps having children. Only in a few straight men’s lives have I heard it described purely in terms of intimacy for its own sake, of playfulness, indeed of fun.

As men, we are often socialized to see life as competition. Who can most leverage the given resources of life to be the best, the most, the biggest, the strongest. That this message is now often caricatured in media does not mean it isn’t still a powerful narrative our society feed us. But what would it mean for us as men to consider the dynamism of our eros as that which encourages us to let our guard down, to let go of competition and to simply play? To play is to express both joy and authenticity, to be present in the moment with ourselves. More radically, playful eros may lead us to express our personality and personhood so openly that we make fools of ourselves. If we let it, eros can break down the walls and barriers to becoming who we were truly meant to be, from letting our whole selves echo and reverberate through our world unapologetically.

In my first intimate relationships with other men, I still held to this idea of competition. Rather than physical dominance, I was determined to sublimate and asceticize my eros. To get the most “spiritual” benefits out of sex as a sacramental part of God’s creation. Thankfully, my therapist reminded me before my first erotic encounter that sex can be deep, spiritual, meaningful etc, but that sex can also just be fun. There is a dignity and even a luminosity to many queer masculinities I have inhabited and encountered. Whether at the bar, watching drag, out at Pride, experiencing art, or in the bedroom, much of that vibrancy comes from a willingness to play.

Men are expected to be sexual beings and to broadcast our sexuality, but in my view we are not often encouraged to be in tune with the erotic within us. The straight man’s fear of certain kinds of sexual expression and the related fear of emasculation as a result of sexual heresy are signs to me that he is being kept out of fear from truly listening to his own eros. Socially, this can manifest also as an unwillingness to engage with emotions that aren’t destructive, like anger. To reveal oneself, to “come out” as a human being and to take joy in that self-disclosure; these are facets of the erotic as play, and it is these facets that so often are discouraged by conventional tropes about masculinity.

For the queer man who breaks the taboo of his own sexuality being seen as a form of emasculation by society and courageously self-discloses anyway, there is still potential for the erotic to be hampered. Masc4masc culture, the unwillingness to be seen beside more “femme” men, etc. Perhaps deeper and more subtle than this is that when we “look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with other, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences.” My hunch is that when we feel something is lacking in our short-term intimate encounters, the lack is not necessarily commitment so much as a lack of willingness to be fully invested our own joy and the other’s joy, to play. To be truly seen and known in an atmosphere of mutual curiosity and affection.

It is in the playfulness of eros that I begin to embody in my own life perhaps a bit of what Jesus meant when he said “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” The Greek word πραυς for meek has many shades of nuance, and in my opinion the splitting hairs over shades of meaning is perhaps less helpful than a more holistic view of looking at this virtue in light of the other Beatitudes. A workable reading would be, “strength in gentleness.” And I can think of no better place where gentleness is demonstrated as strength then in eros as play. There is no pretense, no will to dominate another (even BDSM is not so much a competition as a dance of erotic give and take, push and pull, a kind of intimate sparring). There is only the self freely and fully realized, whose carefree expressiveness frees other selves to run through the sunlight and be known. Perhaps the meek inherit the earth not just through divine ordinance, but because it is the gentle, the strong, the playful who are able to open themselves up to embrace the whole world in its glorious becoming.

The River of Desire – Navigating Eros, Race and God-talk

 

As a student of theology and a queer Christian, the work of understanding and envisioning desire as part of the spiritual life, particularly erotic desire, is something I’m passionate about. Not only because it very directly affects my life (though it does), but also because I think it’s a question that the church in power has done very little helpful reflection on, and it’s a significant facet of human life. Even for my aroace siblings in Christ, the way we talk about desire and God shapes the realities queer Christians experience in the Church and in the world.

In thinking about these things in my classes, I have found that many theologians of color have wisdom to offer on desire that is far more illuminating than anything I read in white purity culture. The traditional, patriarchal, abstinence-only shame-of-the-body approach to eros is not life giving for anybody. Cis straight white men can pretend that it gives life to them as they benefit in a certain way. However, as someone who myself is all those things except straight, I have seen the underside and I can say that this model hurts them too, much in the way that whiteness as a system hurts white people by cutting us off from our humanity (though in ways not as deadly as how it affects people of color).

M Shawn Copeland, a black Catholic nun and womanist theologian, describes eros and the erotic as something deeper and more complex than simply the desire for genital sex, though it does include that. In summary, Copeland describes the erotic life of Jesus as one that reaches out to others, sees itself as interwoven with others and effects the possibility of life and flourishing. Reading Copeland, one perhaps feels a resonance with Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”.

This is just one example of the insight that theologians of color can bring to bear on the questions of queer theology, and also of theology of sexuality and desire in general. And yet, as a white queer Christian, I continue to see ways in which their insights occasionally clash with queer theology as I’ve come to understand it. This is not a critique of theologians of color or white queer theologians, but something that I feel must be contended with in order to do both communities justice. Desire and my understanding of it often feels like a rushing river. Unlike traditional evangelical accounts of desire, I do not see this fast moving current as a threat, a river to be dammed and siphoned. On the contrary, I think the complexity, intensity and vibrancy of human desire speaks to the power and dynamism of God’s own life which God pours out on us. But I do wish to avoid the rocks, and to do justice to the words and flesh of the people who accompany me on the river, their desires, their being, their inherent dignity in the εικον θεου. The following rumination is an attempt to lay my cards on the table, understand both what wisdom and what challenges are offered by theologies of race and theologies of queerness (offered by white theologians). Perhaps in so doing, we can begin to offer one map or chart through the rapids and enjoy the ride. 

My struggle to do justice to both theology of race and theology of queerness seems to be largely due to the realities of eros in a racialized world that both theologies wrestle with.*

I’ve seen a number of theologies of race that rightly talk about the problem of gaze in the service of whiteness, objectification, and patterns of relationality that are embedded in colonial/patriarchal/imperialist/white supremacist hierarchies. Occasionally, I have also seen theology by white authors productively used to pursue this good purpose. Recently, I read an excerpt on Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans as part of a class on theology/race/culture. Barth comes down fairly harshly on eros as it currently exists, but in the context of racism and supremacy, his critiques make a good deal of sense.

Likewise, many theologians of color I’ve read provide powerful insights into the nature of love, relationship and belonging, of the possibility of seeking spaces of freedom, flourishing and affection in resistance to the oppression of supremacist and capitalist desire.** Indeed, I would argue black theology as I’ve experienced so far has taught me more about what it means to love others well than has academic queer theory.

At the same time, some queer theology, while broadly aligning with the values of egalitarian relationship, love and belonging expressed by the aforementioned theologies, is often in the business of critiquing society’s relationship to eros in general, and asking if we might not have missed crucial realities of being, loving and belonging in an attempt to found a sexual ethic (particularly for the church).*** Monogamy and, to a lesser extent premarital chastity are not necessarily bad things if undertaken willingly with an understanding of the dynamics involved. But queer theology is right to name that they are not inherently exempt from the systems of oppression that plague all human affections. Some theology of race acknowledges this, but it is also in my experience at times uncomfortable with the possibility of other solutions. It’s worth noting that polyamory and promiscuities are not exempt from oppressive dynamics either. But to me it seems that some traditional theology around race sees the positive principles of love and belonging as only capable of coalescing around monogamous, chaste, often though not always heteronormative lines.

In my conversations with other queer Christian activists, we sometimes acknowledge that the work of queer theology is really advancing two different but related conversations in the Church. The first conversation is around the questions, “Can same-sex relationships be measured by the same measures of virtue as straight relationships?” and “Can trans lives be measured by the same measures of virtue as cis lives?”***** This is the conversation of integration and dignity, and it is the one that is generally the most comfortable to cishet people, or at least the most accessible.

The second conversation is centered around the more dangerous question, “Do queer lives and relationships require us to reimagine what it means to be faithful in our relational lives?” Admittedly, speaking as a theology student, I have perhaps written the question differently than some secular queer theorists might. But I think in either case, there is a desire to see how queer experience might challenge or reshape the possibilities of human life, not just conform to what is currently expected or normative.

People in both conversations sometimes wish to pretend the other doesn’t exist. Activists working for integration want to advance the narrative that “we’re just like you straight people” and in so doing at times erase the ways queer experience differs radically, and the promise and potential of that difference. Activists working for deconstruction sometimes reject marriage or other practices entirely as morally bankrupt, and in so doing erase any acknowledgment that people who find certain relational practices compelling for personal reasons might be able to “queer” them in unexpected, life-giving ways.

I personally feel that we need to be having both conversations at once or we will never achieve the hope we seek. And my struggle with theology of race and the ways it often treats eros is that it feels uncomfortable having the second conversation. At the same time, some of its insights provide answers to the first conversation that far surpass much of what white queer theology can contribute to the first conversation, and the moral fabric many theologians of color can describe through their lived experience provides a possibility for queer virtue that operates more like the destabilizing, recreating power of the second conversation.

And so, ultimately, I feel caught between the critique of desire, its call to rise above the easy answers of kyriarchal sexual practice, and the critique of chastity, its call to see in mysterious and scandalous exercise of desire the possibility of deeper life, love and communion with the Other. I expect I will be navigating these currents for the rest of my life, but it is my hope to be faithful to the truth of both, and it seems important to be able to talk about it.

*Queer friends of color, feel free if you feel so led to add any context I may miss in my analysis as a white queer man

**It’s important to note that theology of race is not only something that theologians of color can do, lest I exempt the patterns of whiteness from the conversation around race as if race is something that “other people” have and wrestle with but I do not. That said, my readings of theologians of color have proved fruitful for understanding not only their experience in the system of race, but also for ways that we all might begin to, as my professor puts it, “throw a wrench in the gears” of race and racism.

***Some queer theorists and theologians, not without cause, suggest that even trying to form an ethic was our first mistake. I personally think it’s pretty difficult to not form some kind of ethos or ethic or approach by which to try and embody positive relationality to others, but their critiques are important in at least two ways: They bring to our attention the limits of our best intentions, and they highlight the ways in which our attempts to create ways of living faithfully and mutually with one another have been tainted by racism, colonialism, capitalism, sexism, etc.

*****I recognize that the conversation around trans identity and experience adds layers of meaningful complication to the entire conversation of queer theology. It’s beyond my scope and experience to be able to explain these, but I want to note here that I’m not intending to ignore them by not delving into them fully. They are important and should be considered.