Bad Bunny and the empire of pleasure: twerking against the patriarchy

Bad Bunny during a concert in Philadelphia in September 2022.@ShareifZ (WireImage)

In my brief academic life I have dedicated myself to finding resistance in the most violent of Mexican popular culture.

It is as if he believed that scratching to find subversion where it is least possible, in the most violent of the violent, in the pages of the red note, there, if I find resistance there, then there is hope.

If I can demonstrate that resistance we can rewrite history.

And then the future is different, it is possible.

This is how the little women arose inside

But I could not at that time find a way to reinterpret the story of the little men.

I knew I couldn't include them in the

because photography for them did not function as a space for resistance and subversion of everyday violence.

I followed my intuition, although I did not find the language to describe it.

The little men have hung in my file ever since.

And now, after seven years, I understand, and I return to the archive to rewrite its history.

And if I understand why it has to do with Bad Bunny.

But to get here I first had to write a book that would help me understand why the elderly victims of the alleged serial killer El/La Mataviejitas counted as victims for the State and the Nation while the women victims of femicide in Ciudad Juárez or in the State of Mexico or in the State of Tlaxcala have never counted?

When I say that they "count as casualties" to the State and the Nation, I am trying to follow the question that Judith Butler asks in her book

For Butler, the life that can be publicly mourned is the life that is deemed mournable after it is lost.

Butler argues that for a life to be considered mournable, that life must first be recognized as life, and that recognition depends on how that life is framed.

Within the case of El/La Mataviejitas, it was interesting to know why the murder of forty-nine elderly women shocked the nation in the context of the alarming number of femicides.

The search for El/La Mataviejitas began in 2003, and between 1993 and 2004, 382 deaths of women were officially registered in Ciudad Juárez.

In those same years, in the State of Mexico, 4,379 deaths of women were registered.

But the authorities and the official media did not speak of a dehumanized, broken society.

It was not until the grandmothers of Mexico were murdered that the authorities, the attorney general, and the assistant attorney spoke of a dehumanized, decomposing society.

The murder of forty-nine elderly women unleashed a coordinated search for a serial killer, round patrols, a police force of more than 800 policemen,

training of agents by foreign police officers specializing in this type of murder.

The police in Mexico were not going to rest until they found the person responsible.

None of this has ever happened with the murder of any, not even a woman victim of femicide.

What we know is from her mothers: they are looking for them.

For her friends, for the feminist activists who have not stopped for decades.

But because of them, because of the thousands of victims of femicide, there has never been any kind of national crisis or even a formal investigation.

In 2002, the then ambassador for human rights and democracy, Mari Claire Acosta, was fired by then President Vicente Fox "for not stopping the Amnesty International report 'Mexico Intolerable Deaths: 10 years of disappearances and murders of women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua'”.

And we know the fate of many other people who have denounced these unspeakable crimes, death.

The example: the documentary

on Netflix.

We know now, but even so there is no response from the Government.

We all know López Obrador's unfortunate statements in this regard.

Juana Barraza Sampeiro, known as 'La mata viejitas'. Cuartoscuro

Why is the murder of old women mourning for the nation?

Why have women victims of femicide never counted as lives worthy of mourning for the nation?

After ten years of research and twice a week on the couch, I finished the book.

After reading all the reports on femicide, reading the statements in the press comparing how they expressed themselves about the elderly victims and the victims of femicide, reading about criminology in Mexico, I discovered the most obvious:

Who counts as a victim in Mexico?

Women who represent the ideal of the woman/mother established through notions of Mexicanness.

Desexualized women like the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Women who seem to have no sexual agency, but who are the idealized guardian angels of their homes.

Who does not count as a victim in Mexico?

What bodies are not considered worthy of mourning by the state?

The bodies of women and feminized that, like La Malinalli, are sexualized.

Women's and feminized bodies that have sexual agency.

The bodies of women who transgress the normative roles defined for women/mothers in Mexico.

The bodies of the victims of feminicide do not count and continue to be violated by the State.

When young, poor, brown women are killed or sold, their bodies are re-inscribed in Malinalli's.

It's all in sexual agency.

By sexual agency I mean the ability we have to have the power and resources to be able to develop that potential with ourselves and also socially.

I discovered the obvious: sexuality in feminized bodies has always been so threatening and dangerous that it has to be annihilated.

To annihilate is to murder, not to know, not to investigate, not to speak.

For almost a century it was not known where the orgasms of bodies with vulva came from.

For Freud and many of his followers, girls experienced clitoral orgasms, but women transferred the sexual response to the vagina.

After much feminist research it was concluded that cisgender women have a unified sexual organ, and that all parts react during arousal, regardless of which part is being stimulated.

Cis women appear to have as much erectile tissue as cis men.

However, in the 21st century, women's nipples cannot be publicly displayed under any circumstances,

And if you do it on almost any social network, they will close your account.

Not men's nipples, not those.

While finishing this book on violence against women and reading about femicide, I was listening to Bad Bunny:

How does it feel, how does it feel

When I'm inside and you're in front

Or, if not, on top of me

When I make you come, come, come

Most of Bad Bunny's lyrics talk about sexuality on fire, about a girl (never specific, but because of her queer aesthetic and her videos she's not necessarily a cis girl, she's also a trans woman) who has a lot, a lot of sexual desire .

I do know that you really like reggaeton and that someone like Isabella Lovestory invites you to

and have a

, in your words "it makes you feel sexual", and because she also moans and moans on stage.

Ivy Queen during an event in Miami, in 2021. Rodrigo Varela (Getty Images for Univision)

It is indisputable that Tomasa de Real

and also perhaps more than Bad Bunny talks about that sexuality of feminized bodies that is always prohibited in another way.

Tomasa de Real,

is going

.

Ivy Queen, the filly, the horse, had to make her way among many toxic and macho masculinities and as she says, sing like

to be respected.

Her first song, Muchos quieren tumbarme, arrives to mark territory in Noise for the reggaeton artists that follow:

Many want to knock me down I tell them "look, no, no, no, they won't be able to" If when I sing people know that the queen has arrived, the reggae girl

Ivy Queen speaks from desire and how difficult it is to express it in this systematized patriarchy.

The impossibility of feminized bodies to sweat and enjoy without meaning authorization for harassment and abuse.

That is what the authorities in Chihuahua believe as a justification for not looking for the responsible victim of feminicide.

Patricio Martínez, governor of Chihuahua from 1998 to 2004, said: "Well, these women were not returning from mass when they were attacked."

Women feminist activists have repeatedly denounced re-victimization by believing and acting under that belief on the part of the authorities, that wearing a miniskirt is a sexual invitation.

The theses performed:

.

Many times not even on the dance floor do we have political and sexual agency, claimed Ivy Queen:

I want to dance You want to sweat And stick to me The body rubs I tell you: "Yes, you can provoke me" That does not mean that I am going to bed

Tokischa, your favourite, declares shamelessly, because

:

Today I'm in teteo like a hot dog

Wearing my tattoo and my gold teeth

Clava'or in the fat pantyhose of the alley

What will be the dog that scores this goal?

And yes, all of them speak of that desire for which our lives would not be worthy of mourning for the State, only the mourning of our friends.

But it is necessary, essential, essential, that we can experience this desire without fear of being killed.

With the social stigmatization and psychic internalization that implies negotiating the subjectivity of "whore" with ourselves we have dealt for centuries and today we have each other.

But our lives depend on a larger infrastructure for which we are vulnerable not because we are "women" and therefore weak.

If not, as Leticia Sabsay and the Ni una Menos movement analyze, which is contrary to

it does not seek cancellation, it is a vulnerability linked to relationality and interdependence in the face of its essential attribution to femininity.

For Sabsay, these different experiences of the vulnerability of feminized bodies and their claims for justice counteract efforts to circumscribe life in terms of gender, sexuality, nationality, and race, and therefore have the potential to be liberating.

Other reggaeton artists like J Balvin also speak of the particular sexual desire in women, openly and consensually:

He gets horny when he listens to this perreo

And I also get horny if I see her

She is very pretty, out there so lonely

With that little waist, dancing close to me

Perhaps we could argue that all reggaeton only talks about sexual desires, but many salsa songs too:

And in my bed nobody is like you

I couldn't find the woman

That I draw my body in every corner

Without you on a piece of skin

Oh, come devour me again, come devour me again

Come punish me with your desires more

All these reggaeton songs are giving us permission to be sexual, to make us the owners of the sexual agency that corresponds to us.

But, to me, Bad Bunny is doing something different.

Bad Bunny is not

my sexual desire and allowing it.

Bad Bunny is

to my sexual desire exactly how I need it.

Singer J Balvin during a concert. Ethan Miller (GETTY IMAGES)

After reading Michael Foucault and learning in college that "sexuality was socially constructed" I decided to rebel.

I wasn't going to let society determine me straight and I was going to be queer like all my friends in class.

But everything collapsed years later when the psychoanalyst asked me: are you going to hold Foucault responsible for your sexuality?

Linda is very sharp.

My sexual desire and my attraction is to masculinity.

My desire is towards a masculinity, but not essentialized to cis male bodies.

On the contrary, I have never been attracted to the toxic masculinity with which many cis men unfortunately educate and grow up.

It is not a masculinity linked to machismo (a couple of times I have confused myself with some masculinities in women who have turned out to be more macho than me – Linda would say).

My wish is in butch paradise.

My desire is for a masculinity that often feminized bodies inhabit, the masculinity of little men.

Before his latest record,

, many scholars and critics wrote about how Drake was redefining hegemonic masculinity.

Drake was embodying a “soft” masculinity by always coming across as emotional and vulnerable in comparison to the hyper-aggressive hip-hop and rap culture.

Cis men who deconstruct themselves and inhabit a soft and sentimental masculinity are appreciated.

But it is no longer enough.

Compared to the toxic masculinity of Pedro Infante or a Soprano, for whom women are just sexual objects and property, a No is a Yes, and there is no loving responsibility or accountability, Drake's soft masculinity mattered.

But that's not the masculinity that attracts me either.

I find Drake a bit controlling and needy:

.

I like to dance it, but it doesn't arouse my desire.

Drake suffers a lot:

, they wish him ill, it is very difficult to be as famous as him, he has too much money.

In the work song with Rihanna, he justified himself for not being there, giving it to him, because his emotions are too much.

It's just water.

He is a scorpion.

I spilled all my emotions tonight, I'm sorry.

And to top it off, in her most recent album, the person she's with has him sleepless, paranoid and crazy, because

… since

A Certified Lover Boy who suffers because he can't get out of himself and his emotions are so great.

As the Nigerian writer Teju Cole says, “

”.

Bad Bunny, on the other hand, speaks from a subjectivity that only responds to desire and does so from joy.

When I explain to my friends in Montreal why I like Bad Bunny and I translate the lyrics to them, they conclude: of course you like it because it's basically a

.

In queer jargon, a service top is someone who really knows how to take care of you, who just wants to give you pleasure and makes sure you enjoy every second of the experience.

Many times it also implies knowing how to exercise control towards the other person, but it does so following the explicit instructions of that person.

Bad Bunny embodies a masculinity that knows how to make you surrender to your own sexual pleasure.

Therefore, for me she is different from all the other ragpickers.

That's why I like it more than any other reggaeton.

Because her masculinity responds to my own desire.

Bad Bunny with his dancers at a concert in New York, last August. NOAM GALAI (Getty Images)

You got wet for me to be baptized.

(So ​​far it is not known and there is no research on this fluid from the ejaculation of bodies with a vulva, it is not known where it comes from or where it comes from, but Bad Bunny knows how to give that pleasure and giving it is his).

After the 'dust' with me, the sheets, you have to throw it away

Towel for the baby, to dry her

It gets smelly and I like how it smells (how it smells)

What if I want to eat you?

Obvious

You are going to see the star without a telescope

I saw her in four and I thanked God

(Because he knows how to follow instructions, because there is agency and sexual desire).

That I do everything you need to make you come

(For more than half a century it was not known where female orgasms came from).

In this joy is the resistance against violence against women.

It's not just having sexual agency, it's allowing yourself desire and pleasure.

It does not come from a position of neoliberal feminism, whereby my empowerment is based on the self-hypersexualization of my body, and individualism.

Bad Bunny responds to my demand without falling into romantic love.

She also knows

that I am a

but that

He is not

although he recognizes when he

And what if my

It is a masculinity that understands that the anus has historically been, as Paul Preciado points out, an abject organ.

Bad Bunny turns the anus into what Preciado calls the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body.

It is not a sexuality reduced to penile-vaginal penetration.

It is a sexuality based on a desire to explore, to feel, to be, to reach an indescribable pleasure.

Perhaps it is the enjoyment-pleasure to which Jenny-talia, Kebra, the mommy of the de-culonization movement, invites us.

For Kebra, de-culonization is a way of "feeling and practicing" the pelvis as a center of power and enjoyment, between earth and heaven, it is the vehicle through which sexual energy materializes, unfolds and transmutes, rises and falls, and allows us to feel and enjoy that energy.

Just last year I took a workshop with her.

My witch told me: "You have sagging hips, have sex like crazy and start dancing."

Obviously I knew that my task was to take a workshop on deculonization.

What took me from the class was that, "de-territorialize the heterosexual body" and "re-territorialize" my desire in the pelvis.

None of this I teach my students when I teach Bad Bunny classes.

My students don't speak Spanish, I don't focus on letters.

And besides, I wouldn't know how to talk about my desires in class.

When I teach Bad Bunny I talk about

,

, the relationship between the global south and imperialism, decolonization, gender transgression, violence against women, the history of reggaeton.

And most end up being fans.

I have not found a way to talk about desire and sexual enjoyment of women in classes.

Maybe I should teach them to dance reggaeton instead of "key concepts."

How to write about that desire, about those movements, sensations, fluids, emotions, drives that are untranslatable in language?

It seems impossible and perhaps unnecessary.

But I'm going to try when I go back to the archives and talk about the little men.

Bad Bunny makes the dance floor political from where our wishes can be found.

Susana Vargas Cervantes

is a PhD in Philosophy, writer, teacher and activist;

Her work focuses on cultural perceptions of issues such as gender, sexuality, and class in Latin America and North America.