Towards a Gay Communism

by Mario Mieli

  But there are others and others. Some people come to assume a very great importance for the ‘mad’ person (who certainly does not travel alone): and if the ‘schizophrenic’ can be attributed a ‘state of grace’, then I believe – from my own experience – that this ‘grace’ can be communicated to others, once the initiating impetus is given. Faust would not be Faust without the devil.

  Women and Queens

  And indeed, devils do exist.

  I have already indicated the possibility that, at a given moment in the life of a gay man, a satisfying erotic relationship with a woman can contribute to launching the ‘schizophrenic’ trip. And the ‘schizophrenic’ experience, as we have seen, is (among other things) a transsexual perception, the discovery of hermaphrodism. This enables us to understand how the liberation of Eros, the (re)conquest of transsexuality, also involves overcoming the resistances that inhibit relationships between male homosexuals and women, as well as between us and other men. A free man is gay and loves women.

  There is a widespread belief among many people that gay men are misogynist. Nothing could be more false: if we experience a heavy sexual attraction towards other men, this in no way implies that we hate women. On the contrary, we are in general far more disposed to develop relations of affection and friendship with women, feeling deeply akin to them in some respects, despite the fundamental difference that sees us as being, after all (or, according to many feminists, first of all), men just the same, and hence on the opposite side of the fence. The various levels of the revolutionary dialectic cut across one another, and the man-woman contradiction and the contradiction between heterosexuality and homosexuality are interwoven. If a gay male behaves in a way antithetical to the heterosexual Norm that is functional to the system, he is still willy-nilly, whether more or less consciously, tied to the phallocentrism that governs this system. On the other hand, a woman, who as such is potentially on the side of the revolution, can still fully submit to the heterosexual Norm, hence confirming herself in the role of slave and perpetuating male privilege and the repression of homoeroticism; she can more or less openly disparage erotic relations between people of the same sex, and repress her own homosexuality. The revolutionary struggle of women, however, tears a growing number of gay men away from the male union, and finds in them gay allies, always as ‘men in crisis’; while the propagation of gay desire by homosexual women and men distances women more and more from the Norm, and leads to many encounters, on the terrain of homosexuality, between women and women, and between women and queens. The presence of revolutionary lesbians is by far the chief link between the gay and feminist movements: revolutionary lesbians form the homosexual movement of women, and we can foresee that the women’s movement will become more and more homosexual.49

  Eros also finds liberation via the creation of new erotic relationships between women and gay men. This is in no way a question of reforming the Norm. Heterosexuality is essentially reactionary, because, being based on the contradiction between the sexes, it perpetuates the phallocentric male, the prototype of the fascist male that the state, and hence the left within the system, always propagate. Revolutionary homosexuals reject heterosexuality as a Norm, as the base of the family, and the guarantee of male privilege and the oppression of women. They combat it, recognising it as the form of sexuality in the name of which the system has always attacked homosexuals and incited people to persecute them.

  But erotic relations between women and gay men need not be ‘normal’ and hence heterosexual in the more or less traditional sense. Our relations with women can instead be (and in part already are) gay, very little heterosexual, and not at all straight. The revolution is (also) prepared by new positive encounters between persons of opposite sex, and by the creation of gay friendships between women and men. Women and fags can make love in a new way which, despite the historical and biological differences between the sexes, and the inherent contradictions of power that are bound up with these, is in tendency and intention a new form of intersubjective pleasure and understanding; they can make love in a way that is outside the usual pattern of the heterosexual couple. I believe that very many women really prefer fags to straight men, and that, among other things, their sexuality finds greater satisfaction and response in making love with a gay than in the egoistic fucking proposed, and often imposed, by the heterosexual male. Above all else, we gays do not treat women as sexual ‘objects’.

  Among us homosexuals, however, many feel particularly inhibited in recognising and expressing our erotic desire for women. I think that this is very largely a product of our psychological subjection to a particular model of heterosexual masculinity that we were forced to internalise as a model, but which we could not identify with. We know that we do not fit this model, and at the same time we conceive heterosexuality as we see it on all sides, in every corner of the world, i.e. centred on male virility and the objectification of the woman. But this is heterosexuality as it was imposed on women. And the liberation of women cannot but negate this, since inherent to it is the sexual, and not only sexual, subjection of the woman to the male.

  Consider, for example, the phallic ‘problem’: the male boasts of the ‘power’ of his cock, whereas we know that, most probably, we will not even get an immediate erection in making love with a woman. And yet this is a false problem: I am convinced that it does not matter to women. The erotic relationship is neither exclusively nor even primarily a genital one, and revolutionary women reject the authoritarian imposition of the phallus by the male, that boastful and alienating phallus that serves as a symbol and instrument of power in the heterosexual prison. (Between men, however, playing with cocks, even in a phallic way, can be very gay, it is gay, exciting and pleasurable for both involved, or for all three or four, etc.) Males should act out their phallic desire among themselves (nowadays even extended to fist-fucking), and stop imposing it on women. Even if women do occasionally desire the phallic relationship, I believe they will still find the ‘ideal’ partner or partners among gays, who really do love a penis, and not only their own (which moreover they love right to the end, without any disgust at their own sperm, for example, unlike the majority of heterosexuals), but also those of others.

  Once the ‘problem’ of erection is dispensed with, which is therefore a pseudo problem, the fag will understand that it is fine to make love with a woman, and the woman will be happy to make love with someone who knows how to make love, i.e. with a gay man. One evening on TV I saw Ornella Vanoni, looking very fit, who was singing ‘You Don’t Know How to Make Love’: she was seductive, but I felt involved and ‘complicit’; a complicity that was intense, emotionally erotic, and involving a shared common knowledge (and desire) of the male. I think that even the genital relationship between women and gay men is more richly shaded, in terms of reciprocal sensual attention in contact, rather than the habitual ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’, over in a couple minutes, of the heterosexual male.

  Making love with a person of the other sex always yields the renewed discovery of a body and form of pleasure that is different from one’s own. But in order to fully and reciprocally enjoy this diversity, it is necessary to understand one’s own sex, not only in the autoerotic mode, but also in the alloerotic. Homosexuality is superior to sexual individualism; it is the discovery of one’s own sex, the recognition by desire of (all) people of the same sex. Homosexuality is the sine qua non for being truly able to love the opposite sex, and hence to love bodies that are different from our own.

  It is clear, however, that the phallic fixation of the heterosexual male is a function of his concentration on himself, on his own cock, a function of his repressed and suppressed homosexual desire. It derives from the transformation into (alienated) autoeroticism of the desire for one’s own sex that was in its original tendency (and still latently is) directed towards (all) persons of the same sex. The identification with the phallus on the part of the heterosexual male results from a kind of ‘introjection’ of the homosexua
l ‘objects’ which he has had to renounce. It is this blind rejection of the homosexuality that is hidden and secret in himself, which the heterosexual imposes on the woman as virility, rigid virility.50

  The desire for persons of the same sex, which is the first consequence of love of oneself, is forced to return – in the heterosexual male – to its earlier narcissistic dimension; males leap across to their heterosexual goal by repressing the middle term of homosexuality. A leap in the dark, hence their clumsiness. As Georg Groddeck has written:

  Man loves himself first and foremost, with every sort of passionate emotion, and seeks to procure for himself every conceivable pleasure, and, since he himself must be either male or female, is subject from the beginning to passion for his own sex. It cannot be otherwise, and unprejudiced examination of anyone who will consent to it, gives proof. The question, therefore, is not whether homosexuality is exceptional, perverse – that does not come under discussion – what we have to ask is, why it is so difficult to consider this phenomenon of passion between people of the same sex, to judge it and discuss it, without prejudice, and then we have also to ask how it comes about that, in spite of his homosexual nature, man is also able to feel affection for the opposite sex.51

  It is impossible to speak dispassionately of homosexuality, since it is a repressed passion. In the same way, it is often true that what is more openly desired is not what is desired at a more fundamental level: perhaps it is heterosexual men, solely heterosexual on the surface, who really have the most powerful gay fantasies stirring in their unconscious. And to keep their homosexual desire latent, they continue to establish only superficial relationships with women, who, by involving them deeply, could only bring out the queen that is in them, the ‘woman’ within. I believe that the erotic desire for women is alive deep within me, being at bottom my own desire to be a woman; and now this is beginning to surface, beautifully, in my life.

  We can put forward the hypothesis that heterosexuals, forced to repress their own very strong homosexuality, identify themselves with the ‘objects’ of this repressed desire; and that this is what leads them to be such masculine males or feminine females. We gay males, however, are effeminate, and in this we display our deep attraction for women. (The converse may be true for lesbians, but it is not a simple case of mutatis mutandis.) In other words, we can say that everyone invests himself with the connotations of his own repressed ‘object’ of desire. This strengthens the ego and accentuates individualism; the liberation of polymorphous, transsexual desire, of the unconscious, is the condition and essence (in a very material sense) of the community that is to be realised. It is the guarantee of genuine intersubjectivity, of a genuine ‘us’.

  However, our condition as homosexuals, our sexual ambiguity, the type of balance attained in us between subjectivised connotations and repressed connotations, is tendentiously hermaphroditic, it is the expression of transsexuality. With heterosexuals, conversely, the assumption on the part of the ‘subject’ of the connotations of the repressed homosexual ‘object’ leads to a double role playing, to the male being simply more masculine, that typical normal role playing which the feminist and homosexual struggle will end up exploding entirely, in the interest of freeing our repressed transsexuality. If the dialectic between the sexes and between the sexual tendencies is already a fact of social life, it simultaneously involves a large number of underlying levels that are not immediately apparent. The women’s and gay movements are preparing the earthquake that will spur the collapse of the entire patriarchal structure.

  The harsh persecution of homosexuality has led us gays to greatly constrict our identity as homosexuals. In order to defend and assert ourselves, we must before all else be able to resist, and be homosexuals. This is why the gay movement has particularly emphasised the theme of homosexual identity. Our first task has been to learn to recognise ourselves, to know and love ourselves for what we are, to extinguish the sense of guilt that has been forcibly imposed on us. Only then can we consciously confront life, society and the world. But once this identity is attained, and lived to the full, it is time for us to free the hidden tendencies of desire, and to explore our secret passion for women. This can only make us more gay, since that means becoming more conscious of what we desire and what consistently motivates us.

  If the liberation of homosexuality will for many years52 be a universal problem (which is why today the homosexual ‘of strict observance’ is still a revolutionary figure, even though the revolution will in due course make this restriction seem in a certain sense perverse), if through the realisation of communism homosexuality will be liberated and lived to the full, we gays, who are the conscious bearers of this seed of liberation, cannot but confront and seek to resolve the problems that relationships with our women comrades impose on us. Thus I believe that totalising gay relationships with women will enable us to discover the reciprocal desire between the sexes, a new reciprocity that is totally different from the asymmetry of traditional heterosexual relations, a revolutionary solidarity. And it is also (and perhaps above all) by deepening our friendships with women that we gay men can liberate our own anima, which unites us with women, and become more ‘women’ (in a completely different sense than Myra Breckenridge or Raquel Welch!).53 We can offer women the possibility of new and positive relationships with people of the male sex: women and fags together.

  We can hope to see a ‘sexual general strike’ of women against heterosexual males, and the creation of new totalising relationships between women, the complete liberation of female homosexuality. ‘Stop making love with men, let women make love with one another, and with us!’ That is our gay proposal to women. And it is a doubly interesting proposition for us, since, if on the one hand we have an interest in deepening our gay relationship with women, on the other hand it is in our interest that all heterosexual males should be at our disposal … That should be very entertaining. This invitation to women is the first postulate (a dangerous number one …) of our gay science.

  Relations between people of different sex only have a revolutionary sense today when they are gay, i.e. when they are between women and gay men, especially between gay women and gay men. And the heterosexual males? Their arrogant and deficient role is today clearly counter-revolutionary, formed in the image and likeness of capitalist power, and they can only act in a different way with women when they have managed to relate in a new way among themselves. For the time being, from the sexual point of view (and not this alone), they want to do with women what, because of the repression of their homosexuality, they cannot tolerate doing among themselves. They want to fuck women, but are terrified of being fucked; they like ejaculating against women, but feel horror at the very idea of another male coming over them. This is all part of the heterosexual equation and its absurdity. For the time being, from the standpoint of the revolution, heterosexual males still represent far too greatly capital, the enemy, domination and alienation.

  Only the struggle of women can change this. Only our homosexual struggle, only gay pleasure, can make straight men into fags too. And a few men are beginning to understand this, at last: you don’t say! … A heterosexual comrade from Quarto Oggiaro wrote the following poem:54

  A demonstration

  of the extra-parliamentary left

  is in crisis

  a group of homosexual cats

  crazy with love for communism

  managed to get up close

  perhaps too close

  to the comrades

  who by now are very red

  but with embarrassment

  with their hands over their assholes

  they haven’t even got the possibility

  of consulting Mao

  to settle the argument.

  __________

  1. ‘Les Culs Energumènes’, in Grande Encyclopédie des Homoséxualités (Paris: Recherches, 1973), p. 226.

  2. Freud, ‘Negation’, Standard Edition, Vol. 19 (London: Vintage, 2001), p. 235. (Freud’s
emphasis.)

  3. Ibid.

  4. Brown, Life Against Death, p. 321.

  5. Freud, ‘Repression’, p. 147.

  6. Brown, Life Against Death, p. 4.

  7. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989), p. 72.

  8. Marx, ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)’, Early Writings, (London: Penguin,, 1992), p. 352. (Marx’s emphases.)

  9. Ibid., p. 353. (Marx’s emphasis.)

  10. See Chapter 6, section 4.

  11. Brown, Life Against Death, pp. 9–10.

  12. [Editor’s note from original volume: Joseph Needham (1900-1995). English historian, among the most renowned Western experts on the history of Chinese civilisation.]

  13. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 104.

  14. R. D. Laing, The Divided Self (London: Penguin, 2010). Norman O. Brown writes: ‘The difference between “neurotic” and “healthy” is only that the “healthy” have a socially useful form of neurosis.’ (Life Against Death, p. 6).

  15. Silvana Arieti, Interpretazione della schizofrenia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978), p. 3.

  16. [Translator’s note: Mieli here uses the German term, which literally means ‘life-world’ and is associated with Edmund Husserl (who he has previously cited). For Husserl, the concept denotes not the world as such (in a metaphysical or ontological register) but rather the world as it is lived, known, and contextualised by individual subjects.]

  17. [Translator’s note: Echoing his previous use of Lebenswelt, Mieli here again uses the German term for ‘worldview’. Unlike Lebenswelt, however, Weltsicht is not the common philosophical term for worldview (and associated with Hegel), which would be Weltanschauung.]