![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Suck My Neck
Aug. 2nd, 2001 09:11 pmI've been reading through some of my gay studies books again. One of them, _Out In Culture_, has an article on the word "queer," how it's used, and how his idea of "queer" is related to film.
I like the author's idea of queerness - he basically defines it negatively, like small-p pagan; queer covers the vast unmapped territory of everything that isn't straight. It's not just gay and lesbian; adding bisexuality and the various trans-es doesn't fill it; BDSMers, the poly and the swingers, and all the myriad forms of "variant" sexuality are included. The author even acknowledges that a straight person may have queer moments, and that these need not be related to "homosexual panic" or suppressed bisexuality - they just are. Quite cool.
The author also mentions a queer subtext to several genres of film, in passing; one of the ones he mentions is the horror film. As it happens, JT and MW are putting together a World of Darkness game. Okay, so it's _Mage_, not one of the creepies, but still, I ended up thinking about it -
The eroticism of a vampire is bound up in his/her feeding. That much is made clear not only by the movie context, but also by the rules of _Vampire: The Masquerade_. The victim of a vampire, by definition, has to be femme, passive. That makes all vampires masculine, or at least butch, by definition. Female vampires have to be lesbian, by these rules. (That fits with their depiction in an awful lot of films.) To the extent that he also preys on men, though, the male vampire is figured as bisexual. That, too, makes sense; a vampire's eroticism is no longer genitally focused. "Blood is the life!"; semen and vaginal fluids are beside the point. If the vampire has an erotic organ, it's the mouth. And it has a dual function; the fangs are phallic, penetrating, thrusting, but then the mouth is the entry point for the fountaining fluids of the beloved. The vampire's mouth is a perfect vagina dentata.
Anyway, something to keep in mind if I'm ever back in a V:tM game.
Tuesday evening, JT called and asked if he could use our computer to send a message to his Quake clan - his internet connection was down. We ended up going grocery shopping with JT and MW, then picking up DG and going to IHOP for dinner. They left the sour cream off of my omelet, and the salt shaker was filled with sugar (we're not sure whether that was someone's idea of a joke, or a mistake in the back).
Wednesday, the power was off from about 9:10 am to 6 pm; a group of total incompetents was changing out our meters. (They were supposed to have been done at 1 pm.) Of course this happens on the day that I have guests. I ended up making a loaf of soda bread instead of the multigrain loaf I had intended for the altar. I also served the blackberry mead as the altar wine; it was very good. We didn't actually do much for circle; mostly we talked about CMA and what to do about it. Goo, Rasputin, and MW came for circle; JT decided to stay home, and PB was busy with work and family stuff. I really miss having circle on a regular basis; I'm going to have to keep nagging Goo about it until we start having full moons again.
After circle, I played the Spouse "Video Killed the Radio Star" in honor of MTV's 20th birthday. The Spouse played me "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin" as a response. I don't get his sense of humor, some days. :)
I like the author's idea of queerness - he basically defines it negatively, like small-p pagan; queer covers the vast unmapped territory of everything that isn't straight. It's not just gay and lesbian; adding bisexuality and the various trans-es doesn't fill it; BDSMers, the poly and the swingers, and all the myriad forms of "variant" sexuality are included. The author even acknowledges that a straight person may have queer moments, and that these need not be related to "homosexual panic" or suppressed bisexuality - they just are. Quite cool.
The author also mentions a queer subtext to several genres of film, in passing; one of the ones he mentions is the horror film. As it happens, JT and MW are putting together a World of Darkness game. Okay, so it's _Mage_, not one of the creepies, but still, I ended up thinking about it -
The eroticism of a vampire is bound up in his/her feeding. That much is made clear not only by the movie context, but also by the rules of _Vampire: The Masquerade_. The victim of a vampire, by definition, has to be femme, passive. That makes all vampires masculine, or at least butch, by definition. Female vampires have to be lesbian, by these rules. (That fits with their depiction in an awful lot of films.) To the extent that he also preys on men, though, the male vampire is figured as bisexual. That, too, makes sense; a vampire's eroticism is no longer genitally focused. "Blood is the life!"; semen and vaginal fluids are beside the point. If the vampire has an erotic organ, it's the mouth. And it has a dual function; the fangs are phallic, penetrating, thrusting, but then the mouth is the entry point for the fountaining fluids of the beloved. The vampire's mouth is a perfect vagina dentata.
Anyway, something to keep in mind if I'm ever back in a V:tM game.
Tuesday evening, JT called and asked if he could use our computer to send a message to his Quake clan - his internet connection was down. We ended up going grocery shopping with JT and MW, then picking up DG and going to IHOP for dinner. They left the sour cream off of my omelet, and the salt shaker was filled with sugar (we're not sure whether that was someone's idea of a joke, or a mistake in the back).
Wednesday, the power was off from about 9:10 am to 6 pm; a group of total incompetents was changing out our meters. (They were supposed to have been done at 1 pm.) Of course this happens on the day that I have guests. I ended up making a loaf of soda bread instead of the multigrain loaf I had intended for the altar. I also served the blackberry mead as the altar wine; it was very good. We didn't actually do much for circle; mostly we talked about CMA and what to do about it. Goo, Rasputin, and MW came for circle; JT decided to stay home, and PB was busy with work and family stuff. I really miss having circle on a regular basis; I'm going to have to keep nagging Goo about it until we start having full moons again.
After circle, I played the Spouse "Video Killed the Radio Star" in honor of MTV's 20th birthday. The Spouse played me "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin" as a response. I don't get his sense of humor, some days. :)
