lust isn’t under attack, entitlement is
content warning: this piece contains a short description of sexual violence
UPDATE: Since initially publishing this piece, Keith Boykin has removed his harmful piece, as he notes here. Darnell L. Moore responded to his note here.
#MeToo, #YouOkSis, and so many other phrases reminds us of reality: women, femmes, gender nonconforming folks, trans folks, and queer folks are sexually assaulted and harassed on a daily basis. Our current discussion centers women and sexual assault in Hollywood, but does not include how race, class, disability, occupation, and more factor into who is heard, believed, and amplified.Yet many of us aren’t doing much about the problem of sexual violence and the rape culture that surrounds it, let alone paying attention to the ways non-white, trans, queer, incarcerated, sex workers, and/or disabled folks factor in.
With white feminists and men of all races now proudly identifying as “intersectional feminists”, what is actually reducing — or even eliminating — harm? Is anything changing? This is why I, a Black queer nonbinary person, see Darnell L. Moore’s “The Bodies of Others Are Not Mine” as a tangible call-to-action for those whom phrases like “don’t rape people”, and “don’t use power to manipulate people” seem to fall short.
Moore’s writing does not pull the classic “well actually” that men are known for, taking the focus away from the survivors we’re currently discussing. Instead, Moore calls us — “gay, bisexual, trans man/masculine, queer,” — in and tells us to listen carefully. His piece reminds us that our queerness does not make us less likely to harm anyone, and demonstrates how we actually uphold a culture of harm just like non-queer folks. Regardless of the very real trauma related to our sexualities, we are still socialized in worlds dominated by patriarchy. And those of us who appear more normatively masculine receive an added benefit. Our harmful behaviors are rooted in power and entitlement that I — and so many men — are socialized into from birth.
We are not entitled to anyone’s body but our own.
Yet just because the problem is systemic does not mean we can skirt accountability. In other words: just because we are socialized this way does not mean we can just blame society and move on. And that is where Moore challenges us; he asks us to hold ourselves and each other accountable. Moore allows us to sit in silence with our own thought process, our past histories of symbolic and actual violence. This process of personal accountability is uncomfortable, and the process of public accountability can be terrifying. Nevertheless, this is me holding Keith Boykin, a Black queer writer and CNN political commentator, accountable, as well as letting young queer folks know that nothing about what Boykin wrote is ok.
Rather than taking on the task Moore assigns, Keith Boykin recently published a piece that begins with the phrase, “In my mind, I’ve already fucked Darnell Moore.” The opening paragraphs callously detail rape and is truthfully enough to stop reading the piece. Maybe Boykin felt he was justified in opening his piece in this way because the detailed sexual act was hypothetical? But let me be clear: nothing Boykin wrote is justifiable. “In Defense of Lust” is so disgustingly crass that Myles E. Johnson already covered how thoughts can do harm, and now I want to cover how sexual violence is sexual violence is sexual violence. It’s really simple.
The cruising scenario described is familiar to many of the queer experience, yet it lacks any verbal or nonverbal form of consent from his partner. So even in Boykin’s imagination, the encounter lacks Moore’s consent to engage in sexual activity. This all ignores the fact that Boykin responded to a piece about rape culture among queer men with an opening statement about himself literally fucking Moore. Maybe Boykin read a completely different piece than the rest of us? Or maybe, just maybe, he read right past Moore’s piece as he conjured up the image of sex with the author.
Where Moore critiques the “desire for power and control — desires men are socialized to enact” that fuels rape culture within queer and non-queer spaces, Boykin literally embodies it in his rape scenario (see the use of the word “dominance”).
Where Moore imagine strangers “as having the capacity to consensually welcome or reject [his] stare,” Boykin assumes consent and denies autonomy from strangers by stating that “yes, sometimes, the guy in sweatpants on the train wants to be seen as a sexual being.”
Where Moore learned from his 20s that his queerness does not ‘temper his capacity’ to harm, Boykin interprets Moore’s words as some sort of Orwellian thought police.
The unfortunate truth about Boykin’s writing is that I’ve met him. Not Keith Boykin, but men like him. Both queer and not, I’ve met men who feel like he feels and think like he thinks. Let us— queer folks, and in this particular instance: Black queer folks — stop recreating toxic masculinities and begin to rethink how we can relate to our friends, colleagues, partners, and strangers.
