somatic semantics 094
shame, cringe and the performance of sexual liberation within a world order that routinely (re)produces and broadcasts (geopolitical) terror
hi hello,
welcome to the ninety-fourth issue of somatic semantics.
next week’s clap back
join me on zoom monday june 17th from 6:30pm to 8:00pm for we need to talk about megan: misogynoir + racial capitalism + libidinal economy.
use this link to add the event to your google calendar. i’ll also (re)share the zoom link on the day of.
last week’s clap back
thank you so much to everyone who participated in last week’s clap back! your insights on baby reindeer and jerrod carmichael reality show illustrated the relationship between shame, cringe and the performance of sexual liberation within a world order that routinely (re)produces and broadcasts (geopolitical) terror.
click through the slides in the instagram post linked above for a few of my hot takes.
here’s a quick recap of our conversation:
lan kicked us off with a perfect summary of baby reindeer. we then discussed the ways in which the show (often unintentionally) served as a reminder of mechanisms (from intimate to global) that conspire to protect (the concept of) white masculinity.
we reflected on the role of women in baby reindeer and the ways in which their safety and wellbeing – rather than being presented as important considerations – were collateral damage in the main character’s quest for self-actualisation (or social and professional recognition of his self-perceived comedic talent).
shannon pointed out the ways in which misogyny and fatphobia were mobilised (despite the writer’s claims) to antagonise martha’s character while upholding the fiction that sexual violence is enacted by conventionally unattractive social pariahs who could not otherwise access sex in a relational economy that ascribes them no value. this suggests that it is both laughable and unsafe for a fat woman to experience desire. in this way, sexual abuse as a form of systemic violence that is enacted through structures of power is invisibilised. we spoke of the online discourse surrounding the show and the audience’s eagerness to root for donny’s character while demonising, searching for and rapidly identifying the real martha with significantly less efforts put towards the identification of the man who groomed and raped donny.
we spoke about teri’s character, about the absolutely preventable transmisogynistic violence donny’s character subjected her to and how the show framed it all as an inevitable consequence of his (inter)personal growth. we discussed the fact that she was characterised as a therapist and a mother figure tasked with holding his hand as he stewed in (internalised) transphobia and homophobia while developing the social capital and corresponding confidence to see himself as a real man. it is also worth noting that donny allowed and dismissed martha’s physical attacks of the black and brown women in his life with particularly intense xenophobia and transmisogyny culminating in martha’s public beating of teri.
we discussed how grooming appears in the show as well as the ways in which, under global capitalism, live-streamed images of extreme violence serve as a form of grooming through which we are routinely reminded of who the nation state is willing to wound and kill in the rituals through which it attempts to assert its legitimacy. in the case of settler colonies like israel, it manifests as images of genocide that seek to normalise rape, murder, starvation and countless atrocities while suggesting that palestine and palestinians are always already dead or dying.
i brought up a recent conversation with my friend nathalie during which she pointed out that baby reindeer fans and the internet at large did not seem to have much to say about the writer’s bigoted and decidedly unfunny comedy (which is still available online) in which he makes actual nazi jokes. all the while students in encampments across turtle island are being labelled as antisemites for peacefully asserting the necessity and inevitability of palestinian liberation.
“the act of simultaneously remembering and forgetting can be compared to that of a trauma response. trauma survivors and their abusers may choose to ‘forget’ because oftentimes, they do not wish to remember through re-traumatization. similarly, a nation-state—the unifying love for a country and its mapped borders—and those who govern it, can be adverse to remembering its trauma, and the trauma it has caused to others.” — zahra haider, on banal nationalism: notes on the quiet nationalism of the everyday, zero point
kwame brilliantly summarised jerrod carmichael reality show and its inherent cringe. we discussed the show’s homonormative and homonationalist undercurrents as they appear through jerrod’s desire to (re)experience a specific brand of masculinity that can only be produced through the nuclear family (which greatly contributes to his animosity towards his parents).
tania spoke on jerrod’s desire to be mothered by almost everyone in his life while performing endless transgressions (often in the form of emotional abuse) to test the limits of their affections.
we unpacked the themes of faith, family and intergenerational schisms. we remarked that throughout the show jerrod felt extremely familiar and that his personal and professional longings illustrated the difference between being gay™ and being queer – between be(com)ing by consuming/being consumed and be(com)ing in and through kinship.
“‘queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” – bell hooks
mahlet mentioned that both shows felt like symptoms of late stage capitalism that could not and would not be produced in any other context. we also addressed the role of misogynoir on both shows and the ways in which the main characters reinscribed the rules of racial capitalism by expecting that the black women in their lives be readily available to prioritise their needs at any given moment while framing their own aspirations as impossible, ridiculous or non-existent.
we discussed much more (i guess you just had to be there 😌) and concluded that our next conversation should focus on megan thee stallion while delving deeper into misogynoir as a pillar of imperialism.
i leave you with dua saleh and serpentwithfeet’s unruly:
with love + light,
nènè