From F.H.A.R. to Fuckhouse

Guy Hocquenghem's frank, candid and provocative text was one that took stock of the desiring-politics of the gay liberation movement. Queer cruising zine collective, B.T.F.A, discover that it still has a fresh take on sexual possibilities and the normalising power of phallocratic roles

‘The Screwball Asses' - an essay by Guy Hocquenghem - was originally published in a special issue of the journal Recherches in March 1973. Titled ‘Three Billion Perverts: A Grand Encyclopedia of Homsexualities' the publication was seized and destroyed by police. Félix Guattari, despite attempts to remove editorial or authorial propriety, was, as the director of the journal, held responsible and fined 600 francs.

Hocquenghem's essay is a critique of complacencies, including his own, and predicts the gay liberation movement's descent into neoliberal identity politics in Western Europe and North America. A frustrated and incessantly reflexive text, it was produced in the context of post '68 Paris,'69 Stonewall and before AIDS.

Image: the first public demonstration of the Mouvement de libération des Femmes et du Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire, 1 May, 1970

The Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes were already fighting an anti-authoritarian struggle in the early '70s, which brought gender oppressions to the fore of the heterosexist, chauvinistic left movement. Followed and joined by homosexuals (including Hocquenghem), they formed the Front Homosexuel d'action Revolutionnaire (FHAR) in 1971, but quickly the lesbian members abandoned the group, despite the potential of their coming together in a fight against the prohibitions of the left.

The FHAR could never resolve the contradictions of having to fight against virility with virility, understood as an internal need or latent state, as its only weapon.

Anonymity is a pitfall for fags who want to challenge authoritarian production and individualised, macho politics. Hocquenghem did not remain anonymous. Falling into the pit - even though the pit might clearly be a site in which to produce and explore desire and sexualities - implies hiding and disconnecting from visibility politics or ‘being out'. If you don't give your name you must be ashamed or guilty.

Who wants to keep their sexuality private? Sexual oppression is privatised through heterosexist norms, made invisible and normalised, despite the fact that heterosexuality is continuously constructed, promoted and violently managed by the institutions of politics, economics and culture. For Guattari, ‘homosexuality would be, thus, not only an element in the life of each and everyone, but involved in any number of social phenomena, such as hierarchy, bureaucracy'- it would, unlike heterosexual norms, be a highly visible involvement, since homosexuality always declares itself in its non-heterosexuality.

Let's start with the admission that what follows is exclusively addressed to those individuals with whom I cannot make love.

Hocquenghem gets to ask repeatedly, but initially of his immediate community, what is non-desire when desire is a social relation? He tells us three anecdotes. The first concerns a meeting of the FHAR, in which they are discussing his book Homosexual Desire, where one member asks to address the desire between the group. The second is his own rejection of a cruise, following a lecture at the École des Beaux Arts. The third is an uncomfortable reflection on an anonymous text ‘Arabs and Us' featured in the same issue of Recherches as ‘The Screwball Asses'. Each anecdote attempts to pull apart what is already apart; that is, the separation of desired and desiring subjects. Those he addresses are those with whom he attempts a revolutionary politics, but whom he does not want to fuck. The essay compounds these relations through designations - top, bottom, body, speaker. He speaks for others, whilst acknowledging this power relation is implicit in his desires.

Who can speak about homosexuality as if it is outside of their desires? And who is asked to speak of homosexuality as if they could embody it? Could they liberate us? Did we ask for ‘tolerance' of our desires? Monique Wittig, Adrienne Rich, Jill Johnston; institutions such as Civil Partnerships, Queer Theory and Gay Rights, are all speakers that guarantee homosexual visibility, but there is no guarantee of pleasure. Differentiation of rights in the neoliberal context is a diversion, the lowest common denominator. Members of the English Defence League recently announced their support for homosexual rights, yet another way of constructing their xenophobic arguments, and the Conservative party's general election campaign persistently used gay rights as a way to signal a shift in party alignment in general, whilst their immigration policy, for example, tells us otherwise. It is as if one kind of social liberation can be separated from another. Should we be guarding our desires, burying and indulging them away from view and possible recuperation, or declaring publicly, who we are and who we desire?

The Screwball Asses moves, in sections, between a historical analysis of heterosexuality and the economic foundations for its management through morality and psychoanalysis - a site of heterosexuality's potential disruption and its construction through the Oedipal myth. The Screwball Asses is partly simply Hocquenghem's plea for an acknowledging of love, sex and emotional agitation. A plea for which he has not been able to find satisfaction in Freud or Marx. Heterosexual norms and phallocracy are seen by Hocquenghem as being perpetuated by homosexuals as they are by heterosexuals, through categorisations and role-play of masculine or feminine for example, or a taboo of fraternal incest, which further codify desires, for homosexuals in particular. Rather than living our corporeality we live our sexuality. Hocquenghem claims that phallocracy makes it impossible to destroy the sexual institutions within ourselves.

All research on desire should be research on non-desire, on what blocks desire. In the philosophy department at Vincennes where speech on desire holds sway as it does here, I wanted to hold a day-long group investigation on non-desire that would be undertaken by people who declare they do not desire each other.

The essay goes on to exacerbate the differentiations between lesbians and gay men as forms of non-desire. Hocquenghem continues to speak for others. He later asks what would happen if we could change our desires? There is a potential for desire between lesbian and gay men. He idealises lesbians, as if lesbians do not tend to identify with power in the same way as gay men. He reveals himself through his critical reflection on daily life and a confession of his 18-year relationship. Hocquenghem knows and projects how he is, and will be criticised by men who do not like couples, and the left who see his cultural production as bourgeois. Both strategies could be seen as a fight against solitude. The alternatives he poses are silence and cruising, neither of which could be said to change his/our state of isolation.

The cruising machine has thus established an impenetrable border between what turns us on and what makes us think. This border is perhaps a defence mechanism against the intrusion of relations of power. Perhaps it is also a romantic resurgence of the desire to love what can only occur once.

Image: Map of a Brooklyn waterfron

Fuckhouse Directions and Useful Info

Seek out an outdoor area, shielded and uninhabited enough where a dynamic group of queers and perverts will feel comfortable gathering to have sexual contact: a place where architecture and flora inspire bodies flayed out and pounding under the bumpers of old trucks. And nooks, vantage points for the voyeurs, integral to the group act or occupation of cruising. Schedule regular occupations here. Invite friends, those you have had your hand inside, those whom you have admired from a slight distance, those who you know will get down.

Closest train is G to Greenpoint Avenue. Also nearby buses B61 and B43. One could take the L to the B61. (And those with cars, yes you can drive). From the Greenpoint Avenue subway stop, it is a 12 block walk to end of Manhattan Avenue. You will arrive at a cul-de-sac. If facing the water, the construction site is to your right. Huge gate (kind of can't miss it).

The space is very easy to access. It is a construction parking lot with a big fence surrounding it. There is no climbing involved. There is light on Manhattan Avenue and ambient light from other buildings in the area. Within the lot, it is dim.

There are no toilets. People may want knee pads or blankets. There are plenty of hooks/large hinges that rope etc. can be tied to. Big tanks create nice hiding places, and plenty of grates, chain-link fence. Even a nice spot near the water. We will have some stuff around (furniture blankets and some outdoor pillows).

This is a free-range sex occupation of space. We have scouted this location, had sex there, and are extending our enthusiasm to you to join us in a gathering.

This is a cruising space and behaves in that way. There are no custodians of the space or boundaries in any sense.

Let it happen.

About gender & bodies: Yes, transfruit! and Yes to females, ftms etc. and Yes to freecock!

Cruising and watching a plus, but we LOVE those who throw down, and have invited many of you with that intention.

Be shy, be bold.

B.T.F.A is an anonymous, reader-led, queer cruising zine. Currently in its third issue, and awaiting submissions, http://btfa.tumblr.com/ . For more information email btfabtfa AT gmail.com 

Info

Guy Hocquenghem, The Screwball Asses, Semiotext(e), 2010. Translated by Noura Wedell.