Faculty Advisor
Smithers, Stuart
Area of Study
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Publication Date
Summer 2020
Abstract
Acknowledgement of the male anus’s simultaneous political and erotic possibilities, remain cast off from the idealized masculine body in heteronormative spaces due to the paranoid fear of its potential. While a taboo against anal eroticism has stood for centuries of civilization, evidence supports that passive-sodomy (understood as the act of being penetrated) was not prohibited merely for its output of fecal matter, but rather, its capability to produce an excess of pleasure without fruitful reproductive qualities (in short, satisfaction without labor). As enlightenment era thinkers disputed the repressed nature of anal eroticism which they believed to be fueled by infantile relationships with parents, sexuality, and toilet training, the anus became further understood as site of significant meaning for establishing the way in which one perceives the world. The anus has grown into the role of the achilles heel for patriarchal society becoming further concealed and privatized through the increase in rampant homophobia as the historically inflated nature of gender and sexuality started becoming unraveled.
Notes
Removed from view at request of the author.
Recommended Citation
Herrmann, Zachary, "Body Politics and 21st Century Taboo" (2020). Summer Research. 370.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/370
Rights
Publisher
University of Puget Sound
Included in
Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons