- Written in the context of the early AIDS crisis (1987) the essay is foundational in queer theory. - Bersani's **core argument is that gay sex offers a way to destabilize and rethink subjectivity (i.e. the self), identity, and power itself; and rather than defending or purifying gay sex, we should embrace its radical potential.** - Subjectivity (the self) in Western society is built upon autonomy, mastery, and dominance. - Identity is formed around sexuality, a fluid trait, but conceived as stable. - Power in patriarchy is bestowed on men— dominant and active penetrator. - The essay critiques both homophobic discourses and assimilationist / respectability politics that emphasize love, monogamy, and family values. - The title is a metaphor for how society views homosexuality as a site of death, disease, and degradation. Bersani flips this, suggesting there's liberatory potential in embracing the rectum as a symbol of undoing rigid identity structures. - Instead of trying to sanitize anal sex, and homosexuality more broadly, as "normal" or "clean," Bersani suggests that its very power comes from its ability to challenge social norms and rigid categories: masculine/feminine, powerful/weak, dominant/submissive. - If society fears the rectum because it symbolizes the collapse of identity and power, then queerness should embrace it as a form of radical resistance. - Drawing from psychoanalysis, particularly Freud and Lacan, Bersani suggests that receptive anal sex represents a dissolution of the self, a voluntary loss of control that threatens the foundation of Western subjectivity (the self) built upon autonomy, mastery, and dominance. - This loss of self, often seen as degrading, is actually an opportunity for liberation from restrictive identity categories. e.g. male/female, straight/gay, dominant/submissive. - The pleasure in surrendering the ego (which Bersani links to the Freudian death drive) suggests that subjectivity is not as stable or self-contained as society claims. - Bersani questions sexuality as a basis for identity. Sexual desire is fluid, shifting, and unpredictable—so why have rigid identity categories? - Patriarchal society structures men as dominant and active (the penetrator), while women and feminized people are expected to be submissive and passive (the penetrated). - Receptive anal sex, when performed by men, shatters the patriarchal power model and thereby challenges masculinity as necessarily dominant and that passivity equals inferiority. - Gay men, especially bottoms, are treated with more hostility than lesbians in many societies because they expose the fragility of male power.