#showhound

i think the middle section of this entry into the warhound series is so clear-eyed about the ways in which sex and politics interact. this is especially pertinent to us, because i think a lot of people's ideas about it today are quite muddled.

for instance, in my review i mentioned the similarities between showhound and the epstein files. this might strike some as odd, given that the prevailing opinion on epstein, these days, is that he was bound up in some kind of blackmail operation, and there is no blackmail in showhound. instead, showhound--like, i would argue, l'affaire epstein--is basically about class, namely the upper class of the imperial core.

handler has, at this point in the novel, become a kind of sex symbol for the imperial aristocracy. compare this with popular neonazi nick fuentes wearing a replica of jeffrey epstein's monogrammed quarter-zip. this is perhaps unsurprising, for it seems clear that handler has become so popular because she is the most sadistic rapist in a society premised upon sadism and rape.

what is more paradoxical, then, are the aristocrats who desire nothing more than to act out the role of the hound in the scene handler has created. but this is precisely where showhound's insight about imperialist society resides: the aristocratic girl who begs to be handler's bootblack is nothing at all like sartha thrace. the condition of the true hound is to, in a very serious way, see handler as a deity. this is no small thing! it may even be literally incomprehensible to us in secular society. and it is certainly incomprehensible to the aristocrat bootblack, whose soul has been utterly corroded by pleasure and profit. no, for the aristocrat, handler/hound, despite technically consisting of two people, is a lot closer to masturbation.