Rereading X by davey davis and was intending to write a critique of it bc my friend who has this critique won’t write it — the critique is about it sort of being fixated on the government persecution of white queer people who do bdsm and activism in the age of ever so slightly future fascism , and not acknowledging what kind of life exists outside America . I think that it’s a valid problem to have with the book but also I love this book and its prose style hits and its totally shitty protagonist who reminds me so much of what is terrible abt my ex and also what is so attractive about an irresponsible sadist . and I suspect my friend doesn’t like it both bc of its focus on terrible white queer people and their violence and because they find the gross sex, violent sociopath kinks and CSA flashbacks upsetting and “not what bdsm is” whereas I feel like ….abu ghraib slavery and CSA is kind of the heart of America bdsm soul if you get down to it , that’s where the fantasies come from , it’s not from cute or friendly places, and that’s scary, and if you pursue catharsis and reckoning you get closer to scary stuff pretty fast and I like thinking about the connection and the inability to absolve it. And I think the book is reckoning with that in a way that a lot of bdsm lit doesn’t by having a bad evil irresponsible traumatized sadist who hurts others— w the caveat that I don’t know that daveys spaces are any less connected to that darkness irl than anywhere else and while of course there are black people doing bdsm (and dating people like davey) there’s also a lot of black queers totally outside it and who find it unpleasant and off putting bc of the near the surface racism (uniforms, waterboarding, language of slavery and prison) that white people even if they’re dealing in fantasies they acknowledge has a connection to real violence can’t properly contend with .
Re the critique: every time the world outside america is mentioned in X it’s like
-our friend left to go to Brazil and immediately died
-someone gets to go to Belgium bc their sw client paid for a visa
-someone goes to vietnam, where their grandparents live
And you never hear from any of these people again.
and the reality of irl immigrant convoluted life between countries, visa issues, detention and deportation doesn’t really enter the story , the world outside America essentially just is death as far as the narrative is concerned, which if you’re an immigrant reading it even pre 2024 I get why it grates
