With grace and elegance, Jonathan Allan asks us to admit that the anus seems caught up in a grand narrative; the very 'ground zero of gayness'. So what is our critical obsession with orientation? What would happen if we privileged the anal dimensions of texts and of cultural analysis? What if we relaxed, loosened up our critical inquiries, embraced the fullness of the pleasure of the text, and removed ourselves from the hermeneutics of suspicion?In a resolute deviation from the governing totality of the phallus, the very site of difference, Reading from Behind offers a radical reorientation...

Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it's just we have a harder time finding it. Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to...

Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it's just we have a harder time finding it. Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to...