Wow, well, here is an essay from N+1 by a straight man about the tyranny of marriage. In part, he is disappointed that the gays, on the whole, have given up striving for complicated radical relationships and have become marriage-obsessed. Is the new boringness of gays bringing us all down? Perhaps, yes. I can understand that disappointment! "Here is marriage: The division of humanity into closed couples, when modernity has given us a chance at something much better-affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness which overflow the monogamous male-female dyad... To marry is the closest adult thing to making your eyes big, your forehead rounded, and your hands into adorable little paws. Look at hubby-wubby! It is so responsible. It says that your desire is not for pleasure or fun, it is for ï¬Âtting in. It is for the maintenance of what already is... Opposing gay marriage is like denying the wishes of people who want to feed your pets or take out your garbage." I don't really know what to do with this but I am fascinated.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
79
I love Mark for this.
I mean, I already loved him, but now even more.
Right? I'm impressed! Scared maybe. Possibly slightly offended? But intrigued more.
It is off the hook.
Thank you, Mark.
This is the source image for the piece in the window of The Sex Museum on 5th ave @ 26th. I walk by it every day on my way to work and giggle.
N + 1....now as formulaic as The Economist.
This is funny, because Mark Grief missed my "Media Pussyhounds" list by the same narrow margin that Peter Brant did.
One of the enviable parts of THE GAY LIFESTYLE, I've always thought, is/was the absence of expectations--from society, from family, from lovers. . . And now that gay marriage is more on the table, doesn't it kind of suck for a lot of people who don't really want a lifetime partnership?
I mean, isn't it breaking up some serial monogomists' relationships that they were maybe enjoying not having to formalize? And it didn't used to matter--I'm guessing, without foundation--whether or not you wanted to have children. It just wasn't an issue for most gay people before, right?
Having the option to marry would totally suck! Kinda like how it must suck for women when they feel pressured to vote.
Look, I was born and bred a hopelessly suburban bourgeois and inadequate revolutionary, and while the realization that HOLY SHIT I'M ALSO GAY tended to change a few things, it kinda didn't challenge the hopelessly-suburban-bourgeois-and-inadequate-revolutionary part all that much, at least not as much as lots of people just sort of naturally assume it does, or should. So marriage? A nice little job with benefits? A house with a picket fence and a dog in the yard and a tire hanging from the tree I can throw a football through? Yeah, it still all seems nice.
Regardless, I sincerely hope my incorrigible bourgeoisness doesn't screw up his chances for fucking awesome sexy-time.
A million ways to say "I want to fuck other people"; a million ways to say "I hate my parents"; choose one and keep it short.
But Rassel, didn't you get the memo? N+1 is supposed to be taken seriously.
So was democracy, and you know what that got us.
Forgetting for a second that N+1 is important: you nailed the douche.
Wait, my garbage man is gay?
He so just whistled at me.
I firmly hold that having never been married is the new virginity.
So is a broken off engagement like saying, "Just the tip"?
YESSSS, says the lady with the broken-off engagement.
+1
As a married man (with child) I only have one thing to say: Grow the fuck up you twerp. Sleeping around and clubbing all hours is a bit sad when you're in your 40s.
Uh, oh. That is my game plan.
Actually I would but, you know, I'm too tired most of the time.
If you were single and child free you would have the time and energy. For the sleeping around, the clubbing not so much. That does get old.
How about in your late 30s?
This guy... What exactly is he taking on here? This penis-with-a-thesaurus loses me numerous times on his way to making seventeen (twenty?) points. Apparently, N+1 has a once-a-paragraph MFA-worthy-baroque requirement. So in his disappointment that gays have not created any new relationship systems he tears down the existing ones... because, you know, they sometimes suck (and using every lame anti-marriage platitude along the way). "marriage is also almost inevitably intolerable to any post-’60s individual who counts the accumulation of strong experience and passionate feeling as the sine qua non of meaningful existence." Mmmmm,ok Mark. He certainly wins my award for guy taking on every possible subject under the sun with which he has no experience whatsoever (including, maybe, writing essays that are meaningful first, pretty sounding, second) and in doing so becomes, essentially, a negative of all the right wingers that write about the spiritual and scientific abomination that is homosexuality.
Worst of all maybe is the language of certainly he employs betrays the lack of certainly about anything he writes.
You could say that his mistake is relocating a delusion, and thinking that that constitutes intellectual progress. Instead of having silly ideas about marriage, we'll have them about what gays do instead of marriage - whatever you call that.
This is very deep!
Dude has found a stash of "The Playboy Philosophy" columns and is translating them into N+1ese with his left hand.
I think that is the point, that "growing up" is not inherently good or valuable if it is stifling.
I am early-40s and have looked long and hard [*cough*] for any real, tangible benefit I might reap by "growing up", and you know what? Zero-point-zero-zero.
This was meant as a Reply to LondonLee... Sorry.
But he doesn't say "if" does he?
While presenting some good ideas, unfortunately Mark Greif's analysis and assumptions are not exactly right, so his conclusion that gay people's push for the right to be married is somehow damaging to (Utopian) possibilities would not be right either.
For starters, he proposes, "If the household organization of three thousand years of recorded history could be altered simply in the interest of what people wanted, in the interest of desire, then anything could be changed."
Anything can still be made to change. Period.
The "household organization of three thousand years" has never been a monolithic reality-- across time or cultures, and certainly not for individuals (as they have experienced it, personally).
Secondly, he divides time and social history as if there was an absolute worldwide social and cultural construct where it was "pre-gay-acceptance" and "post-gay-acceptance." That's not the case. There has always been a certain degree of cooperation between gay people and others within their own societies, families and social hierarchy that have allowed both to coexist, just as there is with women in relation to men in the world. That co-existence is fluid, ever changing, and the subject of both power, control and freedom- depending on where you fall in the mix at various times in circumstances.
So fear not someone's not putting up with bull-shit that results in feeling excluded, or not included (like not being able to have society recognize the relationships you choose to make-- including getting married), and don't worry that such personal reactions (however popular they become) will limit what is possible in the world- Utopian dreams and all. Just work for results, push on, and be ever mindful that the Buddha (amongst others) was right to teach that we- human individuals- are not to be seen as isolated from one another but as conjoined to each other in weighty and consequential relationships.
The institutionalized right (or decision) of gay people to elect to be married is a risk to no one, unless you individually choose to think of it that way. If you don't like it, change your thinking about it!
And this.
It's hard to change the thinking of people who aren't really thinking in the first place.
Also, he's riding into town on that tired old palomino, Blank Slate.
Right on!
Make the mistakes, intellectual and other, that please you, and get on with it. And don't write articles about it.
Funny, this, because I'd heard that Mark Greif was engaged. Engaged to be married. If not already married.
Willing to bet this entire article is the result of losing his marital virginity and realizing all to late that it wasn't a good fit for him.
CHOICES people, we have them. Make them work for YOU.
too, not to.
Classy, Megan.
You're alive!
I was afraid we'd lost our Advice Lady.
Yeah, Megan! It's not like Mark Greif's relationship status was in some remote way relevant to the article he wrote. For shame!
This is all very nice but if I'm ever dying of something in a hospital I would really really like some assurance that they're not going to prohibit the man with whom I've spent the last few decades of my life from visiting me.
Also, the tax thing, for heaven's sake.
I'm with you.
"Here is marriage: The division of humanity into closed couples, when modernity has given us a chance at something much betterâ€"affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness which overflow the monogamous male-female dyad… To marry is the closest adult thing to making your eyes big, your forehead rounded, and your hands into adorable little paws. Look at hubby-wubby! It is so responsible. It says that your desire is not for pleasure or fun, it is for ï¬Âtting in. It is for the maintenance of what already is…"
Horse apples. I didn't get married to maintain anything, or to fit into any male-female dyad. I got married because I wanted to bind myself to the woman I love, to spend my life in her company, to take her as my own and to give myself to her. Love seeks union with the beloved, and marriage is, to my understanding, the most complete and perfect union attainable this side of heaven.
All I know is married Mr. Mandrake is responsible, upstanding, honorable, healthy and happy. Unmarried Mr. Mandrake (he's on marriage number two, so he has some points of comparison), got falling-down drunk every night, wondered why it hurt when he peed, lived in degenerate squalor, and (true story) set his suite at the Chateau Marmont on fire when he fell asleep on the couch having "one last smoke" before bed. Married Mr. Mandrake will live a lot longer than unmarried Mr. Mandrake would have, a fact that becomes more compelling the older he gets.
Me likey unmarried Mr. Mandrake!
This whole 'marriage' debate is off the mark, in my opinion. Most gays I know don't give two shits about 'marriage' -- as a bourgeois institution -- but certainly want equal rights; 'gay marriage' is only an unfortunate shorthand for this (completely rational) desire. Hence, if I were ruling the world, our government would encourage any two people, whether non-heterosexual or non-homosexual (and including relatives) who wish to do so to enter into a 'civil union' that will give every such couple the same rights as every other couple. (There are sound reasons to encourage ppl to live together -- it doesn't meant they have to have sex or 'love' one another.) Note that this is not a separate-but-equal argument because there would be NO government sanctioned marriage for anyone. 'Marriage' as a word and a concept would be stripped from the law (separation of church and state!) and relegated to the anachronistic world of animal sacrifice or whatever else happens on Sunday mornings at the local congregation.
I COULD NOT POSSIBLY SUPPORT THIS IDEA ANY MORE THAN I ALREADY DO
(Also, I thought Emily Mag's post from LAST NOVEMBER about the oppressive quality of marriage -- hey, from a str8 girl! -- was more eloquent, entertaining and on point. http://www.emilymagazine.com/?p=405 )
Eerie. Reading this article (the sentences I was able to get through without too much cringing) reminded me specifically of La Gould. Something of the same brave new smugness.
As a church-goer I have to let you know that our animal sacrifice only occurs at Wed. morning Bible study, not at regular Sunday services.
So that would make you Protestant.
Episcopalian, AKA Catholic Lite.
You know what I want? Bring back sodomy laws. Gay sex was a lot hotter when it was illegal. Now...eh.
When sodomy is outlawed, only outlaws will have sodomy.
Hey, I like to sit in the back of the bus myself, but I DO have theright to choose to do so or not. Capice?
"affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness which overflow the monogamous male-female dyad"
shorter version: I WANT TO DO THE 22 STARBUCKS BARISTA WITH THE NOSE RING SO BAD
er, 22-YEAR OLD STARBUCKS BARISTA
(damn you, the Awl, we already have logins, when will we be able to edit our comments, I ask you?)
For a hipster douchebag "22 Starbucks baristas" are the equivalent of the 70 virgins for an Muslim martyr.
his thoughts on gay marriage seemed flawed, but i'm deeply digging his argument about the goodness of abortion.
By the way, Mark, I just spoke with Jon Gosselin and he was all "That N+1 dude TOTALLY nailed it! Dude, Kate was, like, totally a is lye poured upon the petri dish of my new relations of erotic sociality. Dude needs to get that out there. US Weekly and some shit should print that. Then people be understanding me. Also, I totally loved his Reality of Reality Television shit. Damn straight my reality is the unacknowledged truth that drama cannot, and will not, show you. Rock on, Mr. Writer Man! Rock on!"
You are pouring the lye of N+1 on the petri dish of N+1, so what is that, (NaOH)(N2+2N+1)?
I think you meant to say: You are pouring the lye of N+1 on the petri dish of N+1, so what is that, (NaOH)(N2+2N+1)
But with a question mark. DELETE DELETE DELETE. Oh heck.
It's like trying to fix a voicemail!
Nobody can hear my voice inside this series of tubes.
The statistics in places where gay marriage or civil unions have become available suggest that most gay men do not want to be married or partnered.
Demanding that society allow us to participate in a civic contract such as marriage isn't the endpoint of what gay relationships are capable of, it's merely the least we should expect from our government. All of this pompous posturing has nothing to do with that simple fact.
This reminds of when a writer (really, though, a blogger) says something like, "Oh my god, you guys? I'm on my 346th straight hour of watching back-to-back 'Sex and the City,' and it's SO BAD!"
If you don't like it, just don't do it.
AWESOME graphic, though.
Finally, just read it. Read it carefully.
And it's not "Utopia" you're chasing, pal, it's Erewhon.
I can't speak for the rest of the Utopian heroes out there, but I think a lot of the gay marriage struggle is best seen through an Equal Protection or civil rights lens.
I don't want to get married, but I don't want anyone to tell me I can't.
I have, however, always wanted to be a divorcee.
Everyone knows that gay divorcees do it in high heels and backwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-xfaiAftJI
So wait, did his boyfriend agree to having an open relationship or not?
Also, small point, but:
"...in the ovum that gets flushed into a tampon every month with menstruation..."
Not actually how that works.
More to the point, a lack of understanding of women's reproductive biology may shed some light on his assertion that abortion is good "like sports medicine and hotels."