dyke is not a brand name

IT IS GLOBAL DISORDER

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore, and no aspect of this society being in any way relevant to queers, there remains to the civic-minded, responsible and thrill-seeking queer only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy compulsive heterosexuality.

(SCUM Manifesto, sort of. Valerie Solanas, 1967)

The sexual uprising of Stonewall has reached its turning point in the reordering of habits, spaces and bodies under I.W.C. (Integrated World Capitalism). Once-abject sexualities are every day more presented as an inconsequential option in the free market, a prefab bedroom set (pink or blue?) with which to redecorate the lack of a intense, joyful political life free to all.

In a democracy defined by free choice, when free choice is defined by consumption, our sexualities -- with all their critical potency for challenging the institutions which administer affections and resources -- have become tidy packages on the shelves of the global boutique. Existing norms and classifications again and again provide raw materials for capitalism. What is really obscene these days is to be queer and poor, queer and restless, queer and uncontrolled. . .

The image of the queers, the freaks, the wild ones, the cyborgs, the hysterics, the truck-drivers, the frigid ones and the loose ones, the ones in broken high-heels and the barefoot ones assaulting the supermarket of the world, the privatized garden and the wedding ceremony is our most cherished dream. To be divine is to always push the limits, experiment with the loss of composure which exposes the sexual discipline of Home and Crust; it is to disorganize anew all classifications.

Rights are a useful but insufficient charity, perverse in their disciplinary capacity. Now that capital has been embodied in us with hushed and persistent violence: (re)productive body, consumer body, clean and disinfected body which has repressed the ghost of stigma and death, versatile and accelerated body, it is time to ask: Is a different body possible?

It must be, because here we are.

-la eskalera karakola-