from the thesis...

I am reminded that religion, in general, seems to be about creating and maintaining boundaries. It also appears to be about humanity's situatedness in the world, about transcendence, about the creation of community, of identity as well as our relation to the "superhuman" (e.g. the Divine) and also that which is "subhuman" (e.g. those whom do not "fit"). Often, these boundaries are created through discourses of sex, sexuality, the erotic, libidinal drives and bodies: what bodies can and cannot do; which erotic expressions are and are not valid; who is holy and sanctified and who is not.

In this way, if religion is about establishing and maintaining boundaries utilizing these rubrics as the contours, it appears that religion, when embodied, meeting/touching/dealing with its own boundary would create a fight.

Simply, it appears that when religion is forced to deal with these rubrics which fall under the heading of "sexuality," it doubles over itself, fights itself, and cannot comprehend itself. The boundary converges with its center, with that which it creates: religion. And as this is the case, terror ensues because religion cannot deal with its own boundaries without recognizing its own possible finitude and propensity for erasure. This is why there is a drive to keep sexuality out of the church, so the two will never have to contend with the other.

--

If pleasure remains unchallenged in the theologies of black queers, then pleasurable experience that arises out of one’s choice to engage can further exacerbate feelings of loneliness, despair, isolation, rejection and abjection. To engage in the pleasure of the body within a religio-cultural understanding of pleasure as a base sense, as sinful, seems to be an articulation of one’s self-abnegation and woundedness. In other words, engaging pleasure could be a form of terrorism of the self: the greater the orgasm, the greater the guilt and shame.