Intersectional Gender-Queer Feminist Desire (or, What the Hetero Gazes Miss When Watching “I love Dick”)

Sarah Gubbins and Joey Soloway’s recent series “I love Dick” – an adaptation of a cult feminist novel by Chris Kraus – demonstrates a rare, visceral grasp of the deep roots of gender oppression. The response to this oppression is intersectional, anti-racist, gender-queer empowerment and feminist desire. It’s inspiring and must be defended from (misunderstanding vis-à-vis) the perspective of the heteronormative gaze, still dominant together with the masculinist and racist gaze in the maturing 21st century. In its deviations from the novel, the screen adaptation activates intersectional connections that remain underdeveloped in the original. If the novel mines sexual oppression and gives voice to feminist desire in its raw and terrific power, I read the series as excavating sexual oppression at the intersection of sex, gender, race and class, and giving voice to (gender-)queer desire in all its fantastic force.