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X. Desire: The Morning (and 15 years) After

As the empire realigns, late capitalism stretches like spandex across the globe and the prison-industrial complex swells, it seems indulgent, nostalgic and yet essential to think through what now constitutes desire within public spaces. In 1988 I was dreaming of desire full bodied. I couldn’t sit still in that sex education class for one more visual of my ovaries infiltrated by syphilis or lips by chlamydia. Now, to speak of pleasure within the public sphere, once a seemingly reasonable if radical idea, threatens job security (Tobin, 1997). In 1997, then US Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was removed from office: ‘Masturbation: it’s not a fourletter word, but the President fired me for saying it’ (Elders, 1997). As all the evidence still points to the fallacies and ineffectiveness of a ‘Just Say No’ national campaign, federal funding purse strings strangle any discourse embodying the complexities of desires. My friend Evelyn Shalom, high school sexuality educator, assures me that the world is better – there are no more ‘giggles’ in class when she introduces gay/ lesbian/bi/trans/queer issues, and many high schools enjoy gay/lesbian/trans/bi/ straight alliances; the books are more explicit; condoms and Planned Parenthood phone numbers can – in some districts – flow freely. Yet I find myself growing agnostic about schools as a site for critical education. We’re witnessing perverse versions of progress toward a socialist-feminist dream 30 years old. When repressed, desire refuses extinction. It morphs instead through a maze of underground subversions and seepage which – as we are now experiencing – can be exhausting and debilitating, filled with quiet hope and impatient outrage. It is with humility, awe and laughter that I read the essays in this volume. This collection of writers is, of course, a piñata of friends and colleagues – a delicious stew of women-wonder(ing)s about bodies and pleasures in a time when pleasure is almost outlawed, dangerous and privatized. From these essays we gain wisdom worthy of being posted on your refrigerator door, and we confront the perverse