Queer Theory, Queer Praxis

For many years, I have been actively involved in queer politics, queer theory, queer communities, and queer sex.

For the purposes of this blog, "queer" does not denote a "sexual orientation" but rather this term alludes to a critical and political project that emerged in a particular cultural and historical moment. When I take up the word "queer," I do so in solidarity with activist projects such as Queer Nation, ACT UP!, the Lesbian Avengers, Transsexual Menace, Gay Shame, and numerous other grassroots and scholarly efforts to make cultural space for marginalized sexualities and genders.

(Someone emailed me about this blog and basically called into question my lesbian bona fides. Just to be clear: My queer practice doesn't consist only in writing words and marching in the street; for the past 12 years I've lived as an "out lesbian"--though I prefer to problematize that identity category--and I've had queer sex with queer women.)

I see my sexual praxis as part of a critical project to engage what Michel Foucault describes as a "great surface network" of sexuality "in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances are linked to one another in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power."

My project is to break patterns, fragment wholeness, and disrupt continuity—to disrupt the normative sequences that produce the familiar and the normal. I thus have a predilection for the queer, the monstrous, the grotesque, the non-normative.

My involvement with BDSM began as a performative engagement of critical theories of gender, sexuality, the body, and subjectivity. Foucault and other theorists of sexuality have seen in various sadomasochistic practices technologies for unseating the genitals as the singular or primary site of sexual pleasure. If a technique of pleasure is completely non-genital, the gendered implications are that people of any gender or sexual "orientation" could engage in that activity with each other. Neither genital configuration nor legal sex would determine or limit sexual role/position/experience. In some of my BDSM relations, I felt that I had achieved this goal of degenitalizing sexuality through a variety of practices, at least on the part of my embodied subjectivity (and not necessarily that of other bodies/subjects involved).

What’s haram about a play party?

I used to live in a house that hosted monthly play parties, which I attended and helped to hostess. I have also attended play parties at other locations. A play party is a gathering of people, usually in a private home or hotel suite, in which people engage in various kinds of consensual BDSM play. Different parties have different rules, but every party has some kind of rules to ensure the safety of the guests and the space and the enjoyability of the party. Some parties allow and encourage sex, and such parties usually require latex barriers and other such safer sex practices for sexual activities at the party. Most play parties do not serve or allow alcohol, but some of them do. Most parties have a “party safeword”, which guests can use to alert the other party guests around them that something is going wrong and they might be in need of assistance. A play party can be a place to meet new people, to flirt, to play with old and new friends, to socialize with other kinky folks, and to observe others playing.

I moved out of that house. Since moving out, I was invited back to a play party there. I decided to attend that party, but I wore hijab, chatted with friends and some new acquaintances, did not play at all, did not directly watch other people playing, of course did not drink alcohol, and left the party early after spending less than two hours there. I do not regret attending the party. Indeed, I appreciated that I could move through that space and talk to people there without doing anything that I would consider extremely haram. Wearing hijab served primarily as a reminder to myself that I should be modest and that I am trying to navigate this path of an Islamic (or at least Islam-inspired) way of life. I expect that others who are more strict Muslims would find much that was wrong about my actions that evening. However, at least for me, I think my participation in that manner was both an important intervention into that play space as well as an opportunity for me to struggle with reconciling BDSM and Islam.

So what exactly is haram about a play party? I consider a few factors.

--Gender mixing?
Well, what if it’s a play party just for women? I’ve attended several play parties that are for women only (or women & trans only) and do not allow non-trans men to attend.
Even if the party welcomes all genders, a multi-gender context is nothing special for me. I am an unmarried self-supporting woman living in the United States. I’m in multi-gender environments every day in school, at work, at cafes and other vanilla social contexts, etc. A play party is not uniquely worse in that respect than anything else in my daily life.

--Clothing?
Many play parties are places for people to wear “fetish clothing” such as leather, latex, corsets, and extremely high heels. Many of these outfits, are very revealing and/or tight. However, even parties I know of that have dress codes for parties would allow someone to wear hijab. At the last all-genders play party I attended, I wore a headscarf, a skirt over long pants, long sleeves, and a loose shirt. My clothes were opaque, not form-fitting, and covered everything except my face and hands.
If it’s a mixed-gender space, then the standard requirements for covering the body would apply. What does that mean? I'm no scholar, but I think as long as keep my hijab on, then there is still a fair amount of play in which I could engage. Would wearing hijab limit or modify the kinds of play that would be feasible? Being covered would not physically restrict or change any kind of topping I would do. As for bottoming, wearing clothing would lessen the intensity of impact play. Bondage can occur virtually the same on a clothed person as on an unclothed person—minus the rope burns, which I could do without anyway. The visual is different of course—a clothed person looks different from an unclothed person, so it would change the body as an object of voyeurism. Of course, voyeurism of clothed people can also exist.
If it’s an all-women’s space, then a Muslim woman would be required to cover at least the area between the navel and the knees, according to most scholars:
“The Hanafis and the Shafi'is say: It is wajib for her to cover the area between the navel and the knees in their presence.
The Malikis and the Hanbalis observe: She must cover the area between the navel and the knees in front of women, and in the presence of her maharim, her whole body except the head and the arms.
Most Imamis state: It is wajib for her to cover her rear and private parts in the presence of women and her maharim; to cover other parts as well is better though not wajib, except where there is a fear of sin.” Source: http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter7/2.html
Not surprisingly, Salafis argue that there should be even greater covering among women:
see http://abdurrahman.org/women/awrahofwomentootherwomen.pdf

--Voyeurism?
According to Dr. Saalih as-Saalih, the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) has forbidden a woman to look at the awrah (translated as “private parts”—I think this means genitals but might be more broadly construed) of another woman. Source: http://muslimahconnection.com/hijaab/dressamongwomen.shtml
That would mean that, even in all-women contexts, watching any kind of genital play is not permitted.

--Alcohol?
Most play parties don’t allow alcohol or at the very least do not provide alcohol. I do not drink alcohol.

--Sex?
Sex between a man and a woman outside of marriage would of course be zina and very much haram.
I’m guessing that public sex even between married people is also prohibited, but I don’t know what scholars have written on that matter.
Lesbian sex seems slightly more open to debate, as it is not addressed explicitly in the Quran or in any cases from the time of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh). However, following the clothing restrictions (covering navel to knee among women) seems de facto to rule out genital contact among women. I’ll address this issue in more detail in a subsequent post.

--Dry play
“Dry play” (non-genital BDSM play, such as bondage or impact play like spanking and flogging) is arguably permissible , if done clothed. I am no scholar, but I do not see anything in the Quran to indicate that consensually hitting someone else (of the same sex) in the context of BDSM is any more haram than, say, wrestling or other contact sports. Indeed, I have read many places that activities not explicitly prohibited by Allah are permissible.

Therefore, I think that attending a play party could be permitted as long as I keep my clothes on.

Desiring/Submitting

Salaams,

I am writing this blog as a diaristic account of my thinking and experiences, particularly regarding religion, philosophy, theory, culture, and my recent engagement with Islam. Other related topics might include aesthetics and art, gender and sexuality, the body, subjectivity, and social and material relations.

I have titled this blog Desiring/Submitting. I have recently been struggling with two categories. I hope that my thinking through some issues relating to these categories may create a conversation with other readers in the blogosphere.

Both of these terms are complex and polysemous, inflected with numerous connotations.Desiring and desire are terms that have been in circulation in anglophone and francophone queer theory and history of sexuality academic circles. In common parlance, desire can signify any need or want or craving. Desire can connote a bodily hunger, a refined and educated taste, and a complex cultural field. The material and cultural production of desire and the history of desire are important areas of study that I wish to engage as part of this blog. I also describe some of my own interests, wishes, and desires in my everyday interactions.

"Submission" is the literal translation of the Arabic word "Islam". To be a Muslim is to be one who submits to the will of Allah. "Submission" is also a term in circulation in the BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadomasochism) community and culture, in which submission virtually always means a consensual and negotiated submission to a particular person or people in an erotically charged context. Both Islam and BDSM are constellations of knowledge about which I have been learning and communities in which I have been participating in the past several months.

I do not present desiring and submitting as two poles of a binary opposition. Desire does not entail a libertarian-hedonistic worldview of "I do what I want". Submission does not require a denial or destruction of the self. Rather, desiring/submitting constitutes a troubled und unstable dialectic of sorts. Desiring and submitting are each techniques of affirming and closing off possibilities.

Both desiring and submitting are relational processes. Desire frequently invokes a desiring subject and a desired object. Submission requires a submittor and that to which the submitter submits. Paradoxically (and fabulously), in submission, the power to which the submitter submits--who may be God or some worldly power--is actually the grammatical "object".

I put these terms in the presenting progressive--"desiring" not "desire"; "submitting" not "submission"--because these are active and ongoing engagements in my life. Rather than seeing either desire or submission as a fixed momentary action, I see these as continuous practices and challenges. In that spirit, this blog is an unfolding conversation.

Islamic studies, queer theory, and Euro-Marxian critical theory are not theoretical approaches that have frequently found a comfortable home together in the blogosphere or other forums. inshaAllah this blog can be one small forum for such a critical project.

Thank you for reading. I welcome comments.