Send Cancel. This has, if anything, intensified as of late and found expression in new technologies and new forms of commodity consumption and self-making. Thinking that sexuality revolves merely around bodily pleasures, practices, and orientations can too easily reify it as a distinct domain of life. It is important to remember that the reification of any normative framework—say, of intimate citizenship, for example—depends on and is constituted by the things it disavows as shameful, unserious, or perverse. After all, the two public health workers I talked to that day were themselves working hard to educate the local population about MSM issues. Geschiere, Peter, and Rogers Orock. Cite As: Friend, Juliana. For example, as part of the Diaper Mentality art project I describe in the article, the activist organization PAWA also depicted several political leaders as wearing adult diapers. GPM: You are referring here to Kent —95 , a young gay man who told me that, growing up, his mother, among others, continuously warned him that, were he to practice gayism , he would end up in diapers. But what I am interested in here is less the secret of a veiled intimacy or even of illicit forms of moneymaking. Originally published in How did you respond to these reactions? Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others.
But I think that the literature on secrecy can help us reflect further on that power or exuberance that accrues when someone exposes something intimate as troublesome; on why this act can so easily captivate an audience, mobilize affect, or seduce people into action. Thinking that sexuality revolves merely around bodily pleasures, practices, and orientations can too easily reify it as a distinct domain of life. So are you saying that you have Cancer of the rectum and will be wearing diapers your whole life? This is by no means just a Kenyan phenomenon; it is a global political tactic informed by humanitarian rescue and anti-trafficking ideologies. Ethnicity too comes to be constituted through objects and events that remain illegible if we study it simply as identity. GPM: This is a really important question. GPM: You are referring here to Kent —95 , a young gay man who told me that, growing up, his mother, among others, continuously warned him that, were he to practice gayism , he would end up in diapers.
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These results are drawn from our Fieldsights content, as well as announcements and information pages. So, what I am proposing here is my own version of a longstanding queer theory project: namely that, if we are to understand the political centrality of sexuality, it is essential that we decentralize it analytically. Cite As: Friend, Juliana. Rumors about diapers, of all things. What are the implications of this argument for studies of exclusion and belonging, both for scholars who do and do not self-identify as scholars of sexuality? This would be a major loss for understanding emerging dynamics of belonging and citizenship because the politics of such attachments themselves require the fetishistic reification of sexuality; they require us to think that there is something called sexuality that can make or break worlds. They are also, quite importantly, technologies of citizenship, ways to realign desires with normative imaginaries of intimacy. Why have intimate exposures become such normative and widely efficient modalities of political engagement? Ultimately, Meiu encourages us to expand our understanding of belonging and exclusion by attending closely to objects that, at first glance, may not seem to warrant close attention. In a fascinating recent article, Peter Geschiere and Rogers Orock show how, in Cameroon, the citizenry has been accusing a corrupt political class, the so-called les Grands , of engaging in anal sex and homosexuality for occult purposes. To be sure, a sensationalizing focus on objects such as diapers may easily undermine a politics of respectability that seeks to counter older colonial paradigms of racialized sexuality, a risk I take very seriously. Durham, N. Oxford: Pambazuka. Youth then also appropriated the hashtag to circulate imaginatively staged, witty images of such behavior to further scandalize the disciplining gazes of their elders. Indeed, as you suggest, this argument has wider implications for studies of belonging and exclusion.
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- So are you saying that you have Cancer of the rectum and will be wearing diapers your whole life?
- Indeed, I see this project, if you will, as complementary to—rather than critical of—the work that Kent and other Kenyan gay public health workers do.
- Attending ethnographically to objects that come to constitute various kinds of sexualized, but also racialized and ethnicized subjects helps me do precisely that.
- Ahmed, Sara.
- And so, to make the homosexual body a more stable target of outrage and violence in the collective imagination, leaders, media, civil society groups, and citizens often deploy a vast set of unlikely objects.
- Meiu, George Paul.
They are often very gifted in the arts and so attract people to themselves. In the homosexual the elbow grip is a well-known sign. They like to hug, or hold the person by the waist, holding hands while walking, etc. He may begin to identify with her, take an interest in feminine things, and develop effeminate mannerisms. Such concerns start early in life and are very difficult to break. These ignorant, bigoted and absurd views are widely presented as fact and further motivate those who argue that homosexuality must be eradicated from the continent because it is immoral, un-African and a danger to children. Benedict Hart Naziesque propaganda directly pulled from the anti-gay Nazi Heinrich Himmler will lead him to be hanged for crimes against humanity. I was raped and my attacker used a wooden implement. This lead to chrons then cancer and yes I wear diapers. It does happen, but as u can tell. Its only extreme. So are you saying that you have Cancer of the rectum and will be wearing diapers your whole life? Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Get the Mamba Newsletter Email. I accept the privacy policy.
Cite As: Friend, Juliana. This decentering lends insight into the reification of homo sexuality as a politically potent force for establishing and reinforcing the contours of citizenship. Ultimately, Meiu encourages us to expand our understanding of gay in pamper and exclusion by attending closely to objects that, at first glance, may not seem to warrant close attention. Juliana Friend: You mention that some of your Kenyan interlocutors were skeptical about your choice to research discourses about diapers. Some tried to point your ethnographic attention elsewhere, gay in pamper.
Gay in pamper. Diapers and Other Queer Objects: An Interview with George Paul Meiu
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In other words, at particular moments in time, such objects facilitate the displacement of desires, fears, and anxieties over the changing meanings of work, wealth, the body, and kinship, and mobilize them in opposition to, say, gay in pamper, the homosexual. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others.
Bravo, what necessary phrase..., a brilliant idea
I can not recollect, where I about it read.