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UNDER THE SIGN OF WILDE 77
thought to be perverse. The “active” partner (insertor) in sodomy was thought to
be guilty of a criminal act perhaps, but would not take on a social identity based
on that sexual expression. In most cases, the active partner would continue to be
perceived as heterosexual: “Men with a strong sense of their…masculine gender
role could easily enter same-sex sexual relations without challenging their
heterosexual sense of self” (Marshall 136). That the “passive” partner alone bore
the lion’s share of the social stigma and became the bearer of a sexually-labeled
identity can be clearly proven by the accounts and definitions given by the
participants themselves, particularly the “passive” participants who, too,
perceived their “active” partners as heterosexual (Chauncey; Crisp 62; Gough
126–127; Marshall 145–153; and Meyer 33).
When the activity of posing is considered within the context of these active/
passive distinctions regarding sexual performance, a nexus of power
relationships strikingly emerges. As long as one wielded power by dominating
the body of the Other, then the social stigma attached to homosexual and
homoerotic practices could be, if not bypassed completely, at least politely
ignored. Performing the insertor’s role in penetrative sex was only one way to
align with this idealized domination. It could also be achieved by controlling the
model’s body through dictation of the pose or even by figuring the Other as the
object of the gaze. By “inserting” the poser into this discourse, the two halves of
the equation can be drawn out: on the one hand, the sanctioned domination of the
artist/spectator/insertor/inscriptor and on the flip side, so to speak, the perverse
receptivity of the model/ poser/insertee/inscriptee. 3 Operating within these
politics, Wilde felt he could flaunt his homoerotic hi-jinks—whether in text or in
everyday life—as a judgment-free prerogative of his social status. Richard
Ellmann recognized that Wilde’s “attitude towards sexual transactions was the
conventional one of his class. He did not think of his behavior with boys as of
any consequence” (1988:436); men of high standing could, and often with
impunity, sexually consort with and deploy the bodies of working-class men as
they wished (Weeks 1981:105). I suggest that this understanding of the issues of
power and domination in relation to bodily inscriptions of homoerotic desire can
clarify the role of the pose in Wilde’s trials of 1895.
In February of 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, furious over his repeated
failures to force the termination of Wilde’s relationship with his son Alfred
Douglas, sent a card to Wilde, addressed: “To Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite
[sic].” Wilde’s response is history; he was pushed over the edge, and in an
emotionally charged state of anger swore out a warrant for Queensberry’s arrest
on charges of libel. Queensberry’s charge that Wilde was a posing sodomite was
not at all incidental. He knew Wilde would be outraged. Simply calling him a
sodomite would not have worked nearly as well. Wilde loved to flaunt his
proclivities and would most likely, as he had done in the past, use the label as a
springboard for some dramatic and witty response. But to charge Wilde with
“posing” was to reverse the power relationships along the inscriptive axis of the
active/passive distinctions of sodomitical practice. By accusing him of being a