the geni(talia) of christ.

The biological distinction between man and woman eventually came under the same scrutiny by theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are products of culture and as such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it.

“In a well-known Marx Brothers joke Groucho answers the standard question ‘Tea or coffee?’ with ‘Yes, please!” Zizek goes on to explain that the act of not making a choice like Groucho is the best choice. The unforgotten choice. Rather than creating binary opposites, by the act of non-choice we create a reality where all possibilities can coincide harmoniously.

We live in a dualistic reality. Well, one that is believed to be constituted by dualities. That’s how most would define their reality whether they agree with that or not. Our speech is inhabited by a spirit of binary opposites; things like evil or good, black or white, home and work, love and marriage, gay or straight and male or female.

Our lives our imprisoned by the categorical imperative. Or so we have agreed.

The structures within society imply a certain expectation upon each gender role depending upon the culture. For the western culture, there is anticipation that men are ‘the breadwinners’, not ‘a’ breadwinner, but ‘the’ breadwinner. The ‘the’ implies a universalized concept that must be adhered to; a term loaded with idealistic
notions of perfection. As if, once the male fulfils this role he then has now embodied what it means to be male. Or the woman, (in most eastern cultures) is anticipated to live in a subordinate relationship under the gaze of the man along with the general responsibilities of house, family, social and marital demands.

Philosopher Judith Butler* posits that the signified concept of male and female are socially constituted ideas. They are not real; we are not male and female. That to be female isn’t simply a universally generic stereotype but rather is something that is culturally defined and assumed. Or that to have a penis, one must be of the male persuasion. Paul deals with this concept of society and gender roles when he speaks of the categorical imperatives implanted within his early society. He replaces the social assumptions with something much more radical.

Paul never directly speaks of the genitalia of the Christ. Although, he does infer it.

In one of his letters, he speaks to a society subconsciously entrenched in its categorical imperatives: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”; here Paul, redirects and flips the categorical imperative on its head and radically claims that in Christ these signifiers are not simply culminated in the spirit of Christ but rather eradicated.

A Christianity inspired by defining genitalia and its many uses is a religious system trapped in its own pre-materialistic existence.

The gay issue as defined by some conservative religious people groups directly deals with the issue of defining genitalia and imposing socially defined injunctions upon the method in which they are used. By calling it an issue those who feel the need to do just that place themselves in a position of feudal power whereby they become the judge, jury and executioner of ‘such people’ who fit within their perverse definitions of reality. They illicit responses by engendering terminology that over-defines the ontology of another. I wonder if the reason why some fear or are threatened by homosexual discourse and realities is because of what has occurred in history with the subject of homogeneity.

For example, some automatically imply that homogeneity has to lead to a perverse use of communism or Hitler’s Aryan government. People fear the ‘same’ because once they discover the other that
inhabits the ‘same’ things about themselves, they want to kill it because we are narcissistic people who think that only we should be the original copies of our constituted self’s.

We all have some fetish or another.

For some it might be a foot fetish, for others it might be that things on their book shelf need to be in a particular listed order. It tends to go deeper than this, but this is to demonstrate that the supposed gay issue has nothing to do with the gay community (this includes the lgbtq communities). This dispensation toward fetishism, according to Lacan and Freud is due to the inability to accept our experience of castration. Because we cannot seem to accept our own powerlessness, we create a fantasy where we have the ultimate power.

This is the same with pornography, virtual or real. When someone spends their time attempting to control the opposite sex in any way shape form (sometimes even with consent) there is a social bond that is breached, a ‘law’ that is broken. For the moment that occurs the broken law brings the two ‘actors’ into another reality, a consummatedone. But one where distorted powers and gazes remain. One of love abused and exiled. This is the case with the fantasy behind the gay issue; those who are uncomfortable with the homosexual community have created ways with which they are given the illusion of power over another.

In reality, what is occurring is not only the duality of the other, but a tri-reality of others are created. So, in one case we have the person who might not be comfortable with a homosexual man or woman and thus label’s or abuses them and by doing so creates the victim as ‘other’. But by creating the homosexual as an other, the abuser then makes themselves the other because they distance themselves from the victim.

But what of the third other?

The third other is unknown others that are violently separated from that reality. The person who expresses their discomfort has not allowed for any other possible responses, they have ostracized any other
realities that are inhabited by other foreign responses. In this light, this uncomfortable person has created a whole list of unknown others, good and bad.

Paul dismantles this kind of thinking. He offers a reality that lies beyond the philosophy of others, good or evil, gay or straight, love or hate. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they are radically dissolved in this ethos that is embodied in the Christ ethic. It is the Christ ethic, not his/her/it’s genitalia that directs any person or community toward another reality where labels don’t exist.

But rather love is the reality that envelopes all.

*In the context of postmodernism, gender theorists, led by the work of Judith Butler, initially viewed the category of “gender” as a human construct enacted by a vast repetition of social performance. The biological distinction between man and woman eventually came under the same scrutiny by theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are products of culture and as such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it.