Love as Community, Sex as Revolution
After reading bell hooks’ “All About Love,” (1999), I was overwhelmed by her graceful articulation of the reason behind the lack of love in contemporary times. She scrutinizes love as not something abstract and overtly romanticized, but as something materially grounded in community, justice, and mutuality. Love is all we talk about when it comes to poetry, cinema, and literature. It is something divine, invisible, yet so concrete and powerful. We love to praise the capability of love, but we’ve developed a profound reluctance to address the problem of lovelessness in our society.
We are in a perpetual state of lack, according to consumerism. We need more seasonal fashion items and more “university essentials” in our rooms. We’ve been persuaded by consumerist-capitalist culture through its alluring promise that once we fit into the ideal model of what’s considered a good member of society, we’ve somehow “made it.” This image involves a loving family with two children, working to make sure the mortgage and bills are paid. The catch of this promise is that it assigns us into isolated individual units, promising a good life if we work hard enough. Yet, in reality, we see people suffer greatly from the lack of connection. The suffering comes from how the promise we’ve been given underestimates what love is capable of; it is never an entity existing outside social and economic structures.
Speaking to my own experiences, I have always been skeptical about how relationships were discussed. A man, a woman, and children. A husband who earns the family capital, a wife who cares for children, or the other way around. I’ve always questioned the legitimacy of this established tradition of the family. It simply assigns tasks and rules for family units in marriage. But the nuclear family model never talks about how to take care of your kids if, let’s say, they don’t fit into the heteronormative expectations of society. Growing up gay with parental negligence has always made me resent the idea of family and schools; I consider them legal forms of bullying kids who aren’t normal. That was a figure of speech, of course. I can’t help but wonder, why do we never talk about the politics behind our relationships? Our relationships with our parents, friends, and loved ones are never just emotional. They are also political. I see people rushing into relationships, and even marriage, due to the fear of societal shame of being different.
Our understanding of “relationship goals” is, by default, centred around competition, insecurities, and control, shaped and informed by individualism. We live in a culture where individuality has been overemphasized and glorified, and the notion of love and intimacy has become something strictly romantic. Every mainstream entertainment tells us, especially marginalized folks, to be independent and self-reliant. While this may work short-term, one can never be a lone wolf in society. We need communities to thrive. We have to reimagine love to be about interdependence, equity, and reciprocity.
WE NEED COMMUNITIES TO THRIVE. We have to reimagine love to be about interdependence, equity, and reciprocity.
Friendships have taught us about love and interdependence. We’ve already been equipped with the knowledge to approach love beyond transactionality and conditionality. We love our friends with reciprocity and respect. Yet, we are confused and puzzled when it comes to romantic relationships. I’ve seen couples who torture and punish each other using the silent treatment to prove a point that one of them has to be right. People, including me, struggle to feel a sense of security in romantic relationships. We mirror the practices of the prison industrial complex, in the likes of surveillance, isolation, and removal of intimacy. We unconsciously internalize this logic of domination, jealousy, and control onto our romantic partners. This logic is truer regarding the pedagogy of sex and intimacy.
My university hookup experiences with guys have been extremely messy. I had a lot of sexual encounters in my first year in university; guys would come into my dorm, and we’d have sex, oral, or penetration. Then he would leave. I hated most of these hookups. We either didn’t talk before having sex, or the conversation just got rushed through as if it was utterly unnecessary. I was so frustrated with my experiences with Queen’s guys. Back then, I considered sex not as an intimate act, but rather as something to gain validation. After countless self-reflection nights during the isolation of COVID, I stopped hooking up with Grindr guys, not because I had found “the one,” but because I stopped seeking meaningless bodily connections. I am aware that sex is central in most gay cultures and scenes; there is nothing wrong or shameful about it. But I want to find connections in communities instead of individualized acts of sexual intimacy with someone I’ll never interact with again. I’ve found strength and happiness in BIPOC and queer communities. University is a fantastic place for connection and community that many take for granted. We keep hearing how great university was from older generations, not because university or college is the only place where you’d have a good time, but because there are a variety of communities to be found or created. We are not meant to live in individualized units isolated from the rest.
I’ve always feared intimacy and love as a kid. I even considered them threatening. But the irony is that lack creates desire. I crave intimacies, yet I have internalized harmful ideas about love and relationship to be about absolute control; control and domination are never sustainable. To fully embrace the capacity of love and community, I have unlearned the ideals of manhood that are organized, shaped, and informed by patriarchal and capitalist standards. I acknowledge and accept my limitations as an individual and wish to devote myself to community-building. I allow myself to make mistakes and move away from the mode of relationship that emphasizes possession, competition, and ownership to a relationship model about mutuality and growth. Just as bell hooks said, “love is both an intention and an action,” (1999). It is never a slight or one single moment. It is intentional, it is the daily mundane actions we do for our loved ones in the communities. Communal love sustains us.
“Community cannot take root in a divided life. Long before community assumes external shape and form, it must be present as seed in the undivided self: only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others.”
ARTICLE BY: HOOSICA HUANG
Illustration by: Sam Andersen