Let's Spice Things Up

After Professor Selig encouraged us to post more on the blog—things we come across on Facebook, things that interest us, things that are "provocative" and thought-provoking—I decided to go with this short piece on from a Tumblr called "On the Visceral."  One of my professors, Kyla Tompkins, is an editor/contributor for the blog, which deals with "the shifting global organization of bodies and sensation" and "track[s] and interrogate[s] the viscerality of pleasure and pain and the importance of flesh to the social world and its cultural products."

LINK: 

http://onthevisceral.tumblr.com/day/2015/01/26

The piece is a brief summary and analysis of a 2013 video—Untitled Fucking—by performance artists Amber Hawk Swanson and Xandra Ibarra (a.k.a. La Chica Boom).  The work in question is a commentary on the relationship between feminism—namely mainstream, white feminism—and racialized sexual politics.  What this work explores is incredibly important for feminist as well as queer studies (our class included): the realities of racial difference in relation to sex and sexuality, the shortcomings of white feminism and white queer activism in that recognition, the often-judged and marginalized sexual desires/pleasures/fantasies individuals possess, and the censorship of all things sexual and erotic in some feminist/queer politics and their removal to a private, domestic sphere (à la rich-gay-white-male-model-angel-god representatives of the marriage equality movement).

The blogger notes at the end that the piece might be too raunchy—too "perverse" or "trivial"—to be of much political importance. Thoughts? How "messy" should the daily work of feminist/queer politics get? To what extent should female/queer/sexually marginalized people be explicit or open about their sexual practices, desires, and experiences?

Just some food for thought.

--Luke