Within queer circles, it is not uncommon to hear people say that desire is political, that you should expand your desires, and that not doing so makes you a bad person.
Nov 7, 2023·edited Nov 7, 2023Liked by Kier Adrian Gray
This is such a tricky area to talk about. I can think of many ways desire has been considered a moral and/or a political issue in the past. Queer love and or extramarital love are obviously still problems in the eyes of many people currently. But in the past, loving someone with a different religion, politics, skin colour, or nationality could get you disowned from your family. I personally know of several cases of English born people who were disowned when they married an Irish person.
And then there is the way class or caste intersects with desire. In my community there was a young woman named Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu who was from a wealthy landowning family. She married a poor rickshaw driver secretly against the wishes of some of her family members. A year later she was murdered in India and her husband was badly beaten. Eventually it came out that her own mother and uncle had arranged for their murders.
I suppose all desire exists within a societal context of some sort and approval or disapproval follows from that. It begs the question: Are humans innately moralizing or rule-creating creatures? If so, how does that serve us at an individual, family or community level? Is it possible for us to create a world without right or wrong, good or bad? I wonder …
Nice work, kier! Very glad to have access to your voice. You're a testament to the sanity and common sense that await those who shake free of the cult.
I'd love to read more of your real life experience from the times you calibrated desire with politics. It might give me the courage to write along the same theme, because I've done that too.
Hey Mike! I'll definitely consider it. It's tricky to know how private to get and when; right now, my most personal writing is going into my memoir manuscript. If you do end up writing about your experience with this, please drop a link here so I can read it!
This is such a tricky area to talk about. I can think of many ways desire has been considered a moral and/or a political issue in the past. Queer love and or extramarital love are obviously still problems in the eyes of many people currently. But in the past, loving someone with a different religion, politics, skin colour, or nationality could get you disowned from your family. I personally know of several cases of English born people who were disowned when they married an Irish person.
And then there is the way class or caste intersects with desire. In my community there was a young woman named Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu who was from a wealthy landowning family. She married a poor rickshaw driver secretly against the wishes of some of her family members. A year later she was murdered in India and her husband was badly beaten. Eventually it came out that her own mother and uncle had arranged for their murders.
I suppose all desire exists within a societal context of some sort and approval or disapproval follows from that. It begs the question: Are humans innately moralizing or rule-creating creatures? If so, how does that serve us at an individual, family or community level? Is it possible for us to create a world without right or wrong, good or bad? I wonder …
Nice work, kier! Very glad to have access to your voice. You're a testament to the sanity and common sense that await those who shake free of the cult.
Thanks so much, Jim!
I'd love to read more of your real life experience from the times you calibrated desire with politics. It might give me the courage to write along the same theme, because I've done that too.
Hey Mike! I'll definitely consider it. It's tricky to know how private to get and when; right now, my most personal writing is going into my memoir manuscript. If you do end up writing about your experience with this, please drop a link here so I can read it!