We Demand That Sex Speak The Truth

Waiting Is Directed At Nothing: Any Object That Could Gratify It Would Only Efface It. Still, It Is Not Confined To One Place, It Is Not A Resigned Immobility; It Has The Endurance Of A Movement That Will Never End And Would Never Promise Itself The Reward Of Rest; It Does Not Wrap Itself In Interiority; All Of It Falls Irremediably Outside.

The Appearance In Nineteenth-century Psychiatry, Jurisprudence, And Literature Of A Whole Series Of Discourses On The Species And Subspecies Of Homosexuality, Inversion, Pederasty, And "psychic Hermaphroditism" Made Possible A Strong Advance Of Social Controls Into This Area Of "perversity"; But It Also Made Possible The Formation Of A "reverse" Discourse: Homosexuality Began To Speak In Its Own Behalf, To Demand That Its Legitimacy Or "naturality" Be Acknowledged, Often In The Same Vocabulary, Using The Same Categories By Which It Was Medically Disqualified.

Homosexuality Appeared As One Of The Forms Of Sexuality When It Was Transposed From The Practice Of Sodomy Into A Kind Of Interior Androgyny, A Hermaphroditism Of The Soul. The Sodomite Had Been A Temporary Aberration; The Homosexual Was Now A Species.

The Judges Of Normality Are Present Everywhere. We Are In The Society Of The Teacher-judge, The Doctor-judge, The Educator-judge, The Social Worker-judge.

A Critique Is Not A Matter Of Saying That Things Are Not Right As They Are. It Is A Matter Of Pointing Out On What Kinds Of Assumptions, What Kinds Of Familiar, Unchallenged, Unconsidered Modes Of Thought The Practices That We Accept Rest.