christopher de la Torre

They say a sane person living in an insane world must be insane. And if what they say is true, then Terry Goldie should be admitted immediately.

Despite not having sex with a man until age 22, Goldie has had a lifetime of sexual experience to draw from, and as a professed homosexual (at least, for now) who has also had numerous sexual experiences with women, this intellectual should abhor labels. But in his latest work queersexlife: Autobiographical Notes on Sexuality, Gender & Identity, Goldie suggests that we might be better off with more of them, noting Grosz’s observation of how “the simple binary of sex and gender has resolutely failed.”

Call him gay, call him straight; just don’t call him “in-between.” Goldie is quick to discount bisexuality as a “false concept…an identity for those who are primarily willing to assert an identity but are actually still on the road to their true identity,” calling it a situation that “consistently confuses” him. Perhaps it is a clear illustration of his “inability to see the hidden side” of his sexuality using self-analysis. Maybe he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed, or perhaps his loathing of the term reflects a distaste for things lukewarm. Or perhaps it’s because “the very idea of ’bisexual’ seems to belie a monogamous heterosexual or homosexual relationship,” a concept derived from our society’s “penguin-like faith in the couple, regardless of how few couples seem able to keep the faith.”

queersexlife reads like a history lesson infused with social theory that screams “I told you so,” as, for example, when Goldie nonchalantly shoots down the notion of “gay recruitment” and recognizes the non-masculine boy, or “sissy boy,” as a constant target. Simply put, Goldie blows “normative” thinking out of the water by immersing us in dinge queens, drag queens, intersex and anal sex –taking the “personal memoir” approach to academia to a whole new level.

Particularly enlightening are Goldie’s notes on the homosexual child, bisexuality, and the chapter entitled “Dinge Queens and Racists,” in which he discusses politically appropriate desire, illustrating how homosexuality is “clearly a force of racism” and noting how, in some cases, difference in race may be a way of “using race to reproduce the relationship as ’hetero.’” Regardless of whether or not you are fascinated by Goldie’s ability to smoothly discuss subjects most modern day scholars would choke on, the considerable unearthing of scholarship in queersexlife should, in itself, be reason to take this work seriously.

But the question here isn’t really about whether or not Terry Goldie’s brand of pragmatism preaches to the masses. The words contained in this instant classic (and perhaps soon-to-be seminal work) are for those willing to shed their heterosexual conditioning for a moment and delve into the dense and ever-evolving subculture that challenges the status quo at every turn. That might be why, as Goldie points out, “even sophisticated thinkers seem to offer answers too simple to be satisfying.”

Read my review on Edge