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In contrast with the earlier tattoo tradition associated with the military, prisoners, and biker groups, which disavowed any connection with the "primitive," many of the new tattoo enthusiasts saw themselves as "modern primitives", embracing an art form that had been regarded in the West as a sign of barbarism. This identification with the "primitive" manifested itself in the adoption of tribal motifs from tattoo traditions such as those of Samoa, Hawaii, Native America, and Micronesia. For adherents of this movement, "primitive" cultures offered an alternative to the repressions of modern Western civilization insofar as they were seen to celebrate, rather than suppress, the sensuality of the body. Such ideas have received more theoretical elaboration in the writings of Alphonso Lingis. He interprets "primitive" body markings as a challenge to Oedipal sexuality that is centered on the phallus. In his view, practices such as tattooing and scarification, which involve directly cutting into or perforating the skin, serve to eroticize the whole surface of the body. As such, these marks are not signs of an interior self or identity, but rather, serve to decenter the ego through the release of polymorphous, libidinous urges. Rather than conveying meaning, he sees such marks as points of "sensation," which operate primarily on a visceral rather than a semiotic level. This is underlined by the abstract, geometric nature of "primitive" body markings. In contrast with the representational or pictographic nature of Western and Japanese tattooing, tribal markings, according to Lingis, are not a system of signs pointing to a meaning beyond themselves that needs to be deciphered, but rather, operate directly on the senses, circumventing interpretation.
Such a view of tattooing was seen as liberating for gay men, who embraced it as a visible way of expressing non-normative desires, pleasures, and identities. Taking a practice that had hitherto been used to exclude them, they now converted it into a public display of the body's potential for a non-phallocentric eroticism. In contrast with the earlier tattoo tradition, which had sought to fix masculine identity, they destabilized it, highlighting the indeterminacy of a sexuality that refused to be regulated by Oedipal imperatives. At the same time, however, as this practice of body marking sought to subvert patriarchal constructions of masculinity through a reconnection with tribal cultures, its conception of the "primitive" was still very much inflected by Western colonialist assumptions. In particular, insofar as it viewed "primitive" body markings as being a manifestation of a pre-Oedipal eroticism, unfettered by the constraints of "civilization," it reproduced imperialist assumptions about the hypersexuality of "primitive" peoples. Although it regarded this in a positive, rather than a negative, light, it failed to recognize that this is very much a Western projection onto tribal cultures, which bears little relation to how native peoples themselves conceive of the practices of body marking. Most commonly, indigenous peoples regard practices of body marking primarily as a means of induction of members of the tribal group into socially prescribed roles rather than as a vehicle for eroticizing the body.
Thus, while a gesture was made toward the acknowledgement of the value of tribal cultures, to a large extent, it was based on a Eurocentric construction of the "primitive." The relationship of tattoos to masculinity in Western culture during the course of the twentieth century has been a highly contested affair. On the one hand, they have been used as emblems of a patriarchal, heterosexual masculinity that has been predicated on a disavowal of the feminine and the primitive, while, on the other hand, they have become an expression of a non-phallocentric sexuality which seeks to reconnect with the primitive, though in a rather problematic way. It is this very contradictory nature of the relationship between tattoos and masculinity that accounts for their growing prevalence within advertisements for men's fashion and body care products.