Placating with Pleasures: The Destruction of Silences.

This paper explores the role of silence in determining the identification of bodies that engage in sexual intimacy with other same-sexed bodies. Within the discourse of gay liberation, there is a compulsion to communicate such intimacy as evidence of one’s homosexual identity. Failure to communicate accordingly is equated with repression and oppression. In refusing/refuting silence as a valid form of communication, gay liberation demands all same-sex physical intimacy to be articulated and understood according to its own political and discursive needs. This paper seeks a return to silence as a means of refusing discipline into the gay identity