Homoerotic social ordering -- Deconstructing Foley [View All]

[nashville_brook]

(a re-tool of a post I wrote during Gannongate... brook)

Question of GAY SEX surrounding White House reveal who we have become

Who here has ever attended an elite prep school? Anyone been to jail? Well, I'm sure everyone has been to the zoo.

The kind of behavior associated with Foley's "naughty emails" has nothing to do with what most people consider sex. I know this is difficult to understand because we *are* talking about (people talking about) the act of eventually bumping uglies. Make no mistake, that happens in the end (pun intended), but it's not "romantic." All the well-groomed bachelors of a certain age in surrounding the GOP and the While House, they aren't all looking for love. They are "establishing order."

Homo-erotic social ordering is at the center the Lord-of-the-Flies world inhabited by the orphans of privilege at their boarding school and in their positions as congressional pages. It's also common in public schools, and in neighborhoods. You most certainly see it in prison. Who is whose bitch. It's certainly not a behavior exclusive to the wealthy. I grew up in central Florida and the cracker kids in my neighborhood did it. I've witnessed it in the corporate world where you have the bullying in a hereto-erotic manner. Hell, my 14-pound female Italian Greyhound asserts her authority over her roomie, an 18-pound male Iggy. I love it when we have guests over in the summer for BBQ's and Astra is humping away at Trouble. "Well you see, they are establishing dominant order. It has nothing to do with sex-drive. If she were in heat, believe me, she would be acting much different."

The Foley Flap is a perfect example of this social ordering. Pages are the very bottom of the heap in DC -- they are expected to DO ANYTHING to get a leg up. Or both legs. Foley provided that opportunity. Foley took advantage of their position of weakness -- but isn't that just the way things go?

The excuse made for homoerotic social ordering in uber fraternities such as Skull and Bones, is that the hazing is supposed to be the final stopping place for the adolescent ready to leave that ordering process behind. Reeeeally? Does the behavior serve a purpose beyond the developmental ordering of youth? I would say it most certainly does. Who wouldn't want to be privy to your opponent's darkest vulnerability? "He loves to screw little boys. He has a thing for _____________ (fill in the blank)." It's pure gold in the darkest depths of big time politics.

This is base nature, folks. It's WHY we form social institutions: to protect the weak. The Enlightenment, humanity in general, the arts, music. Our entire culture until now has been centered on progress and The Social Contract. Now, it is Hobbe's State of Nature re-created by men in power in order to fill a need -- most likely a garden variety narcissist need with Daddy-issues thrown in. Always needing to show oneself to be "the boss," or "the big Man," is not normal behavior. It's aberrant. Transgressive.

The issue of sex is relevant to the Foley story because it tells us something about this the Republican sense of social ordering. It's claw to jaw. It's pre-modern. It's Old Testament.