Secrets of carnal desires

As an incredibly emotionally charged read, G. Winston James’ “Uncle” prompts us to confront the complexities of desire in a world in which established norms are superimposed upon our already scrupulous internal police. By inviting readers into the intimate thoughts of a young boy, James allows us to feel the isolation of Jake, as he wrestles with his growing attraction toward Uncle Paul that he describes as “weird stuff” -- the thoughts and “secrets” that make him feel “scared” to harbor. His unfiltered thoughts expressed freely and candidly constantly urge us to consider the formation of a sexual identity in which the volatile nature of desire is often suppressed by expectations to fulfill established norms. James evokes pity toward the six-year-old boy as Jake is burdened by his fear that his “mom or the boogey man, or something, will get [him]” if he does not grow up “right”. The struggle Jake faces in his effort to grow up as a masculine “tough kid” while masking his innate desires points to the “performativity” of gender that Judith Butler establishes in her essay “Imitation and Gender Subordination”. It is his struggle, or performance, that prompts us to believe that Butler’s proposition to rethink gender, even if it means relinquishing those personal, ontological certainties about our identities, is not so troubling after all. We consider her compelling claim to view identity more as a type of doing” rather than “failing” by trying to imitate and “approximate phantasmatic idealizations,” that Jake is misguided to achieve. Butler calls for a "decentralization of sex" by arguing the falsehood of the conventional equation, in which sex (being male or female) determines gender (masculinity and femininity) and ultimately results in the denial of desire. So as James arouses empathy for a young boy, left perplexed and ashamed by his “secrets”, maybe what we truly need is to consider Butler’s rendition of a shared sexual identity that “ is interested in where the masculine/feminine break down, where they cohabit and interest, where they lose their discreteness”.