A for Anus

In Chinese slang, the anus is referred to as "chrysanthemum" due to their similar appearances. In Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with "death" and "sacrifice ritual". Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a "bottom", and feeling "guilty towards my parents and country(China)", to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.

My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My undergraduate tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in a film, linked the anus with a poem by Rilke (http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/020095dieuhrensonah.html). Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.

Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized on Grindr. The sentiment of "no Asians!" has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay "community" that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed—in other words, to occupy bottomhood. On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don't hate "yellow fever" because they also only like white men, calling themselves "white fever". Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.

The fear of femininity is the common link between misogyny and homophobia, reflected in various social and cultural practices. Beneath this hatred and anxiety, in the modern or colonial context, lies a stigmatized anus, demonized as immoral and associated with transgression or stupidity. Asians and the anus are seen as the opposition of whiteness and the phallus, blacks as bottoms are seen as devalued and enslaved, and the West is simultaneously intertwined with racism and homophobia as aversion to the anus is transferred to the position of the subject of life. Revisiting Paul B. Preciado's notion of "anal castration" is necessary:

The boys-of-castrated-anus established a community of what they called City, State, Fatherland, whose power and administrative authority excluded all those bodies whose anus remained open: women are doubly perforated as a result of their anuses and vaginas [with] their entire body transformable into a uterine cavity capable of housing future citizens; however also the bodies of faggots, which the power was not able to castrate; bodies that repudiated what others would consider anatomic evidence and that creates an aesthetic of life from this mutation.

Preciado has challenged the focus on the penis in Freudian theory by introducing the concept of "anal castration," questioning the validity of "castration anxiety" and "penis envy." The anus of Asian men is seen as a tool for white penis pleasure during sex, but it does not produce pleasure in itself.Challenging white dominance in sex requires a re-examination of the anus and its pleasures.

G for Grindr

In European countries, gay male cruising has been completely transformed by capitalism into Grindr, where it has become focused on cruising for money. Almost no trace remains of whatever anti-capitalist ethos there once was in cruising. It appears that a similar trend is rapidly emerging in China as well, as gay dating apps hold significant economic worth.

The emergence of these apps has also led to the decline of traditional Chinese offline meeting places for gay men, like gay bathhouses. Many marginalized gay men, including older and married individuals, have lost their opportunities for sexual encounters. Additionally, these apps have transformed an inclusive, unconventional gay sex culture into a more exclusive one, contradicting the idea of "loving the ugliest gays".

Every gay I know spends a significant amount of time on Grindr, and I can relate to that. The advertising slogans used by these apps are filled with neoliberal rhetoric advocating the benefits of remaining single and celebrating the limitless networked potential of romantic or sexual partners. The anticipation of casual sexual relationships in online dating and through casual encounters has increasingly turned sour, leaving behind more frustration than satisfaction.

As the Western postmodern ideology encourages a constant pursuit of pleasure, the commodification of Otherness through diversity initiatives has led to a romanticized fantasy of the "primitive". The consumption of the Other in sexual "primitive" fantasy displaces and devalues their history. Research by Wade and Harpers indicates that sexual stereotypes influence partner selection, leading to racialized decision-making processes. This perpetuates racialized stereotyping in gay culture and affects the social acceptance of sexual discrimination. Virtual spaces provide anonymity leading to racist manifestations and microaggressions directed at marginalized groups.

If I were to identify as a top, I would face resistance from other gay fantasies that associate hyper-masculinity with "tops." On the other hand, if I were to identify as a bottom, it would perpetuate the notion of "Asian feminine bottomhood" as a stubborn marker in my self-identification and disidentification. This would occur as I become part of the game, whether by participating in it or resisting it. For example, I might try to prove that Asians are not feminine or appropriate feminine bottomhood as an empowering act of “turning the master’s tool around to dismantle the master’s house”.

S for STDs

STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV.Leo Bersani's psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in "biopropagation" in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance. A similar view can be seen in the relationship between the words virality and virility.

I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen's articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to "death" or "the grave," but rather gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan's grave is the grave of “man” , what is “man“ in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science.This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves "human" in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves "human" when we refuse to face the virus?

I chose the octopus rather than myself to appear in this drag show perhaps because I didn't just want to explore being Asian/Chinese, but more so being inhuman."Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" asked by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in GLQ Volume 21. Octopuses and viruses maintain their mysteries, opacities, and fundamental alterity, like the unstable category of queerness that refuses to be known.