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| Testing Purposes Only Name: Ann Dixon Date: 2004-09-28 10:46:08 Link to this Comment: 10972 |
This is testing the web paper forum.
Please disregard.
| Testing Again Name: Ann Dixon Date: 2004-09-28 10:57:26 Link to this Comment: 10973 |
1
2
3
| Testing Again 2 Name: Ann Dixon Date: 2004-09-28 11:01:15 Link to this Comment: 10974 |
Every word
Is important.
| Testing 3 Name: Ann Dixon Date: 2004-09-28 11:02:11 Link to this Comment: 10975 |
Hmmm
testing
| Testing 4 Name: Ann Dixon Date: 2004-09-29 15:17:38 Link to this Comment: 10988 |
Words
words
words
| The Power of Discourse in a Political Sex Scandal Name: Maureen Co Date: 2004-10-07 12:30:03 Link to this Comment: 11046 |
Bibliography
The Associated Press. "Man Linked to N.J. Gov. Says He's Straight". ABC News. 15 August 2004. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040815_1582.html
The Associated Press. "McGreevey accused of 'smear campaign'." MSMBC News. 13
August 2004. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5686618
The Associated Press. "Text of McGreevey's Resignation Announcement", USA Today,
12 August 2004. sec. A
Delany, Samuel. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996.
Foucault, Miachael. "We 'Other Victorians'" and "The Repressive Hypothesis."The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980.
Moran, Robert. "No-go on lawsuit leaves question on resignation." Philadelphia Inquirer.
1 Sept 2004, sec. A.
Rubin, Gail. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." American Feminist Thought at Century's End : A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman Cambridge, Ma : Blackwell, 1993.
Sullivan, John and David Kocieniewski. "Papers Show Fund-Raiser Had Access to McGreevey Officials." New York Times, 17 March 2004.
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| Porous Boarders: Fetishism, perversion and the Gay Name: Rebecca Ma Date: 2004-10-07 20:51:15 Link to this Comment: 11053 |
According to Sedgwick, even the language used to identify the gay identity "queer" is non-referential. Queer describes the gay identity in as many uncharacteristic ways that fail to overlap certain individual homosexual experiences as it does in describing characteristic ways that overlap other homosexual experiences. Queerness is not always translatable just as being queer means different things to different gays. "'Queer' seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filiation" (Sedgwick 1993:9). Sedgwick contends that there always exists a performative aspect of the self in all the roles that people play, including the queer role. Thus queer is not outside of the performance. This description of performance as identity suggests that the retrospective act of interpreting performance constructs personhood. During moments of cultural misunderstanding and differences that cause personal stress and strains in individual access to self-representation of identity, a social actor has the ability to alter identity. By experimenting with who they are through sexual performance, people shape their sexual identities (Sedgwick 1993).
Building critically upon Delany, I call into question the accuracy of perversion belonging in marginal spaces. I specifically seek to analyze fetishism as a kind of perversion. If fetishism is understood as a fascination with a part of an object, which becomes superseded and defined by that part, then fetishism lives among the population of practicing heterosexuals performing conventional sexuality. Delany describes the perversion of the heterosexual desire.
"It seems to me that when one begins to consider the range of diversities throughout the sexual landscape, then even the unquestioned 'normalcy' of the heterosexual male, whose sexual fantasies are almost wholly circumscribed by photographs of female movie stars! Suddenly looks—well, I will not say, 'less normal.' But I will say that it takes on a mode of sexual and social specificity that marks it . . . as perverse" (Delany 1991:141)
We are given a mental image of all (namely contemporary American) heterosexual males desiring the bodies of actresses, the hegemonic females. Applying the definition of fetishism, I interpret the males as fetishists and the female movie stars as fetish in the fetishistic relationship. The actress' collective hegemonic qualities: long legs, large breasts and thinness overwhelm their individual meanings as distinct, whole women and take on meanings in and of themselves. Long legs, large breasts and thinness act as parts, superseding the wholeness of the woman who owns and lives in these parts. The lunacy of this picture challenges both heterosexual male desire as normal and its identity's performance as conventional. The author uses the unquestionable normalcy of heterosexuality's category to cast into doubt the normalcy of heterosexual's particular behaviors as anything but perverse (Delany 1991).
Under the misunderstanding of fetishism's perverse status, convention assumes the non-reciprocal nature of fetishistic pleasure. Conventional contemporary Americans view that in a relation based on fetishism, only the fetishist experiences pleasure. The assigned unidirectionality of pleasurable fetishism suggests to it a violent nature, since one partner inevitably cannot partake in the enjoyment. This violence reflects not fetishism's nature, but the conventional definition's limitations. If the pleasure is mutual, then it is no longer categorized as derived from fetishism but S/M. In extension, convention conceives the possibility of mutual fetishistic pleasure to be limited to the area of S/M. The logic that convention uses in distinguishing fetishism from S/M is based on the directionality of pleasure: fetishism is unidirectional while S/M is bi-directional. This logic draws the borders between fetishism and S/M. I argue that the conventional logic is flawed, since it destines pleasurable fetishism to be violent, by relegating all mutually pleasurable fetishism into the category of S/M, which is violent, though consensual (Delany 1991).
Delany contests through personal experience, that within the artificial borders drawn by these conventional understandings lives a fetishism based on mutual pleasure, not limited to the specificity of S/M. Mike fetishizes Delany's running sneakers while Delany experiences pleasure from Mike's fetishization. In this fetishism, each person performs in a way that's complementary to the other. I interpret Delany's personal accounts as evidence pointing to the porous quality of the conventional border drawn. The pleasure that is supposedly belonging to S/M seeps into the area of fetishism. The pleasure from being fetishized can be explained by a Lacanian concept of the desire to be desired. The source of desire for one partner is the realization of being the fetish (Delany 1991).
If fetishism does not accurately belong to a marginal space, reserved for perversion, then gays, straights, women and men can all experience fetishes. The idea that women experience fetishism is opposed by psychoanalytics who deny ever having seen a female fetishist. Delany traces the notion of the absence of female fetishists to Freud.
"The Freudian dimorphism in the psychoanalytic discussion of
fetishism is one of the empirical disaster areas in the generally brilliant superstructure of Freudian insight: men can be fetishist but women are kleptomaniacs" (Delany 1991:129).
Delany contends that the theoretical dimorphism does not apply to the actual sexual world in which women do experience fetishes. He describes a revealing personal experience to highlight the truthful identity of the fetishistic clientele. After meeting a husband and his wife, Delany discovers that she is sexually fascinated by her husband's dirty, work soiled hands. Considering his own sexual fascination with men's dirty, work soiled hands, the author argues that this particular sexual fascination is common to a heterosexual woman and a homosexual man. Both men and women experience fetishism and make various interpretations of it in retrospect. Their shared sexual fascination with men's dirty hands is congruent, though not completely translatable. The fetishists' roles differ but their performances are similar. If this specific sexual fascination can be called a gay man's fetish, then it is certainly also a straight woman's fetish. In turn, fetishism is an experience with congruent properties that seeps across the boundaries separating the sexes. Women can be fetishists (Delany 1991).
If the Gay Identity is non-referential and perversion and fetishism extend to spaces beyond their assigned conventional categories, then the boundaries separating them from convention are porous. Performance is identity with fluidity. Though not transcendental, the Gay Identity is marked. The Gay Identity, perversion and fetishism exists as objects in a contextualized world. Gay Identity's non-transcendental nature enables sexual experiences to be analyzed, understood, and empathized within a language-based and non-language based arena in which the meanings of the Gay Identity are contested (Delany 1991).
Works Cited
Delany, Samuel R. 1996. Longer Views. Aversion/ Perversion/ Diversion. Hanover:University Press of New England.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke Universithy Press.
| PRIDE Name: Laura Beth Date: 2004-10-08 09:19:31 Link to this Comment: 11059 |
Every June thousands of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people gather in different locations around the world to celebrate Gay Pride Month with dances, festivals, and marches. The categories of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender are fairly recent; the term "homosexual" used to refer to all individuals of a sexual orientation other than heterosexual. The tradition reached its thirty-fifth anniversary this year, and while the number of participants has skyrocketed since the first march, the rights for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people have not altered significantly since 1970. For example, not only are same sex marriages not legally recognized or granted the same privileges as opposite sex marriages, the current administration proposed to ban the possibility of same sex marriages ever being recognized by the government through a constitutional amendment.
This amendment is one in a series of attempts by the American legislature to restrict and confine the homosexual lifestyle, therefore an entire month seems extraneous to celebrate their identity given their lack of legal rights. But the more the government threatens to interfere with the choices of homosexuals, the louder PRIDE becomes: cities such as New York and San Francisco boast attendance in the hundreds of thousands. The legislative act of prohibition has provided strength to the prohibited acts in the case of sexual behavior and identity.
Michel Foucault best explains how homosexuality became an identity and a category. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault explores the validity of the "repressive hypothesis" which claims that sex has been repressed in Europe since the Renaissance. For three centuries, the bourgeoisie, characterized by "modern prudishness," "need[ed] to gain mastery over it [sex] in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present." (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 17) A key component to the repressive hypothesis is that the solution to escaping this repression is to talk openly about sex and therefore be liberated from the political restraint of sex. Foucault reasons that the censorship of sex did not "extinguish" any words concerning sex; on the contrary, the act of repression actually created new words.
Even before the age of repression, the government identified perverse sexual acts which deviated from the traditional intended purpose of sex—procreation within marriage. Instances of sex not adhering to this purpose were in violation of the law. Married heterosexual sex "with its regular sexuality, had a right to more discretion," under repression, so the bourgeoisie found alternate sex acts to target and discuss. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 38) Previously same sex sodomy had just been against the law, but then people began examining the reason behind engaging in homosexual sex and identifying characteristics associated with the act. "The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood . . . . nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality . . . it was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature . . . a species," thus a person who committed same sex sodomy was first and foremost classified as a homosexual. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 43) The act of engaging in homosexual sex translated into an identity in order "to give it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality." (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p.44) The discourse was opened was to why people engaged in homosexual sex, and they attacked the question from medicinal, historical, and psychological perspectives. As a homosexual's identity was defined by his sexuality, certain stereotypes for behavior were associated with having homosexual sex and therefore being a homosexual.
In the case of United States law, it is not illegal to be a homosexual. However, the act of engaging in sodomy was outlawed in every state before 1960, and the law was directed at homosexual sex. (www.sodomylaws.org) Western religious principles constitute the foundation of American laws and culture, and lawmakers created sex laws based on those found in the Bible: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:13) The ideals guiding American politics are "the ancient civil or canonical codes" described by Foucault. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 43) And similar to the 19th century French culture, modern American society has created a homosexual identity for those persons committing the aberration of sodomy and the government is intent on confining sodomites to their category.
Contemporary American politics reflects the public's fear of the homosexual identity. The "Thinking Sex" chapter of American Feminist Thought at Century's End: A Reader, Gail Rubin lays out the history of homophobia in the actions of the government in the United States. "Homosexuals were, along with communists, the objects of federal witchhunts and purges," as a result of the accepted image of the homosexual as a disgusting perverse creature out to molest young boys. (Rubin, p. 6) Americans began creating the middle class suburban dream after World War II, and homosexuals did not fit the standard for being a part of the mother and father with two children family living in a split level home located a convenient twenty minutes from the city.
Since they were less likely to find a community of people like themselves in suburban or rural areas, homosexuals migrated to the cities. Gay bars sprung up in urban areas across the nation, and such establishments became targets for the government to shut down homosexuality at the source. "Churches and other antivice forces constantly put pressure on local authorities to contain such areas [with a high concentration of gay establishments], reduce their visibility, or to drive their inhabitants out of town," with gay bar raids being a common "antivice force" of choice in many cities. (Rubin, p. 31) These raids were attempts to control the homosexual lifestyle of sex and drugs perceived as a threat to the ideal American "normal" life.
Stereotypes of the homosexual worsened with the appearance of AIDS in the 1970s. "Gay people find themselves metaphorically welded to an image of lethal physical deterioration," and religious fundamentalists blame acquired immunodeficiency syndrome on the sin of homosexual acts. (Rubin, p. 34) The government relied on its Western religious principles in attempting to prevent the spread of AIDS. As opposed to embracing and funding safe sex education and drug rehabilitation for drug users, legislators focused on associating the disease with a homosexual lifestyle: "Those who are at increased risk for becoming infected with HIV are not eligible to donate blood. According to the Food and Drug Administration, you are at increased risk if: you are a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once." (www.redcross.org) There are several other criteria listed as putting oneself at risk for contracting HIV, but male homosexual sex is at the top of the list.
In every instance where American society or legislation has attempted to marginalize the homosexual identity, homosexuals have responded by claiming the identity more loudly. The first publicized and documented reclamation came in June of 1969 when gay men and drag queens fought back during a routine police raid of a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. Named after the bar, the "Stonewall Riots" nearly resulted in mass casualties due to the intense anger of the rioters—they had had enough. They wanted an end to the many years and instances of being prevented from the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just because of their sexual orientation. The first PRIDE was in June of 1970 to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Revolution, and more people attend more PRIDE celebrations every year as new cities join the tradition. Sodomy was still illegal in many states when cities had their first PRIDE marches, but homosexuals united and proudly stood in public to proclaim their same rights to freedom as the rest of Americans.
They have not been alone with their fights for equality. Organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (1980) and Lambda Legal (1973) are dedicated specifically to protecting the legal rights of America's gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender individuals and communities. HRC and Lambda Legal were created in direct response to legislative attempts to restrict homosexual behavior. The American Civil Liberties Union has legally fought for those people most underrepresented in United States government since 1920 and is nationally respected for its mission of "defending the bill of rights." (www.aclu.org) ACLU and Lambda Legal handle court cases concerning same sex marriage and sodomy laws among other issues. In the last twenty years at least ten state supreme courts have invalidated sodomy laws, and in 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional in the Lawrence v. Texas case. The history of sexuality has resulted in individuals being defined by their sexuality, thus laws against homosexual acts prohibit homosexuals from claiming who they are. Social and legal attempts to restrain the homosexual identity have been met with increasing support and power.
WORKS CITED
1. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert
Hurley. (New York: Vintage Books, 1980)
2. Rubin, Gayle. American Feminist Thought at Century's End: A Reader. Ed. Linda S.
Kauffman. (Cambridge, Ma: Blackwell, 1993)
3. Paris is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Videocassette. Miramax, 1992.
4. www.sodomylaws.org
5. www.aclu.org
1
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1)Sodomy Laws, comprehensive website on the history and status of sodomy laws across the world
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| Self-Validation and Social Acceptance Name: Mar Doyle Date: 2004-10-08 10:04:57 Link to this Comment: 11061 |
I will be using the 1991 film "Paris Is Burning," a short work of fiction by Jane S. Fancher called "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," the lecture given by Carolyn Dinshaw on the twenty-third of September, and Cherrie Moraga's "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind" to support my thesis.
Originally, I started thinking about this paper in a manner quite different from that which will be shown here. I thought I knew everything I had learned and that I could take a single idea and 'run with it,' as the saying goes. Then I began reviewing the articles and rereading my classmates' posts. I have always had an unusual interest in how 'outsiders' interact with a society that tends to be somewhat exclusive. Being on the receiving end to this sometimes painful exclusiveness, having had a disability from an early age, the ideas of censorship and prohibition toward people discovering themselves intrigued me.
Due to illness, I watched "Paris Is Burning" after sending in my original plan for this paper. I was impressed by the complexity of the homosexual community in New York during the eighties. Despite the fact that all of these men were living outside of societal norms, they had a sense of belonging and home. They created Houses and families to replace what they had lost, but also to give them something they had not experienced in their previous lives: acceptance by society. When these men knew who they were and took their sexuality as a powerful piece of self, they began a search for others who would accept them as well. Once they found validation in themselves and their community, these men were hard to shake. One, who worked for an escort service, claims that he was quite frightened and literally jumped out of a window when one of his clients discovered he was a man, but this incident did not make him question his sexuality or the validity of his lifestyle.1
In Fancher's mystical take on Beauty and the Beast, "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," sexuality and security take on new meanings. Tammerlindh, the Beast figure, is a beast by day, but by moonlight he takes his natural form, that of a true hermaphrodite, or Rakshi. Mother, who may perhaps be Tammerlindh's father, curses him with the shape of a beast because he does not love himself, choosing to appear as a male to his lovers rather than expose his true self. After being cursed, Khendar and his father come across the Rakshi, and Tammerlindh takes them into his home out of a mixture of pity and generosity. When Khendar's father leaves Tammerlindh's estate, Khendar, who cares greatly for the Rakshi, though he thinks it a beast, remains with Tammerlindh. When Khendar learns that Tammerlindh is Rakshi, that is, both male and female, Tammerlindh's self-hatred comes to the fore and he attempts to commit suicide rather than face rejection from the man he loves. Through the story, Khendar, the Beauty figure, and the entity Tammerlindh calls "Mother," repeatedly tell him that he is worthy of love. The Rakshi believe otherwise, protesting, "No one can love that – creature.2" Khendar learns first hand that his would-be lover must accept himself before their relationship can grow. After he demands that Tammerlindh be returned to his true hermaphrodite form, Mother replies, "Until he accepts what he is, loves what he is, true love can't touch him. By his choice.3" Of course, the two lovers are given a fairy tale ending, and Tammerlindh learns to accept his/her duality and consents to becoming Khendar's lover.4
During her enlightening lecture, Dinshaw examined the growth and censorship of the lesbian, gay, and queer culture in the United States and the world at large. She put a large focus upon 'the queer nineties,' that is, the time during the 1990's when the homosexual culture readopted the term 'queer' and began to have a new affect on society, pushing their 'outsideness' into mainstream society. Queers learned to accept themselves and form their own groups and social constructs within their own so-called deviant societies. Some homosexuals have had trouble accepting themselves and these communities, giving rise to articles such as "Lesbians Who Sleep with Men." As society developed and queerness slowly began integrating itself into the mainstream, something that is still occurring today, the queer society became more accepted by others. The members of this outside community, having accepted themselves and each other, were prepared to be validated and accepted by the so-called normal, predominately heterosexual society. Once the homosexual community endorsed itself with its gay districts in cities, homosexual magazines, and homosexual literature, among other sundry items, it was prepared to take on the dominant culture. It has taken to this challenge with gusto, as evidenced in popular culture with movies such as "Velvet Goldmine" or "Y Tu Mama, También" and books such as At Swim, Two Boys. After knowing itself, queer culture is ready to be known by others.5
Finally, Cherrie Moraga's "Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind" only serves to reinforce the recurring idea that validation of self is necessary before one may be supported and confirmed by others. Moraga draws heavily on her personal experience as a mixed-race lesbian who lived in a strongly heterosexual, racially divided world. She discusses the difficulty of being a "mixed-blood Mexican6" in a predominantly white world. Moraga, during some of her writing, seems content to be ill-defined and have public self rather than a private self. She claims, "In her world, I'm just white7..." Later, she learns to define herself by her own measures, rather than by the opinions and statistics of those around her. In the beginning, Moraga says, "I only wanted to feel myself so much a Mexican8...", but she concludes with the line, "I live up to the mixed-raced legacy his people have betrothed to me.9" In accepting herself, she is allowing herself to be accepted by others.10
As our dominant culture continues to stretch and to grow, many of the once deviant outside groups become more mainstream. In these pieces, most of which can be considered less than deviant, and certainly not morally reprehensible, as they might have only a few decades ago, people, such as Pepper Labeija, Tammerlindh, and Cherrie Moraga, learn to come to grips with the realities of themselves, even if they have less than pleasant outcomes. Pepper Labeija faced the fear of coming out in an era that did not condone homosexuality. Tammerlindh learns to love itself, learning that being both male and female is not something shameful. Cherrie Moraga is taught that she exist in the two opposing spheres of being Mexican and being white without betraying either culture.
After exploring these four sources of information and integrating my own knowledge of culture, self, and the importance of being accepted by both, as well as the hope for support by society, any society, whether a so-called deviant community or the dominant society as a whole, I came to a conclusion. Looking at the issues of both sexual and racial differences, the validation that people crave is hard to find, especially within one's own self, but vital to one's own existence as an independent entity. Each author or director or speaker seems to be preaching the same message, despite dissimilarities in content, theme, and execution. To be accepted by a larger group, one must feel validated in one's own choices. For a deviant group to be accepted by the dominant society, its members must feel accepted by themselves and by one another. Faith in one's cause and spirit never hurt anyone, either, as shown in "Paris Is Burning" and "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood."
End Notes
1. Paris Is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston, Prestige Films, 1990.
2. 312. Fancher, Jane S. (2002), "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," in The 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy Anthology, ed. Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert, New York, DAW Books.
3. 332. Fancher, Jane S. (2002), "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," in The 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy Anthology, ed. Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert, New York, DAW Books.
4. 309 – 333. Fancher, Jane S. (2002), "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," in The 30th Anniversary DAW Fantasy Anthology, ed. Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert, New York, DAW Books.
5. Carolyn Dinshaw, lecture on Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, 23 September 2004.
6. 231. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.
7. 234. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.
8. 234. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.
9. 238. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.
10. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge,
| Rectifying the Rift: An Analysis of the Harlem Dra Name: Claire Pom Date: 2004-10-08 11:37:53 Link to this Comment: 11064 |
Foucault, Moraga, Fuss, hooks, Butler. These authors, along with many more, have concerned themselves with the defining of categories. In reading these authors our class has, upon every occasion of meeting, discussed the formation of categories. What we have discovered, in part, is that things are not defined by what they are, but by what they are not. Diana Fuss, in her article "Inside/Out," states "any identity is founded relationally, constituted in reference to an exterior or outside that defines the subject's own interior boundaries and corporeal surfaces" (Fuss, "Inside/Out," 234). A common example of this, derived from Freud, is that males are defined by their having a penis, while females are defined by their lack of one. Defining identity is not necessarily so binary. As Cherríe Moraga puts it "Call me something meant to set me apart from you and I will know who I am" (Moraga, "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," 237).
The subcultures of American society, cultures that are not part of the white patriarchy, are defined by how they differ from this white patriarchy. Our class was privileged to be introduced to one subculture found in Harlem during the late 1980s through the documentary Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston (1992). This documentary captured the lives of men who lived outside the dominant culture. They had several strikes against them: they were Latino and African American, they were homosexual, and many of them were poor, sometimes even homeless. These men came together to form a kinship network, in the form of houses, to protect and support one another. Out of this milieu developed drag balls, balls in which the men dressed up and competed in different categories, such as "executive," "realness," and "voguing." The object of most of these categories was to mimic dominant society by looking like the heterogeneous members of the white patriarchy.
After watching Paris is Burning, reading critiques of it, listening to class discussions, and processing through my own thoughts about the film that I have come to struggle with an extremely large tension I am confronted with in thinking about the drag ball subculture of Harlem. Is the mimicking of dominant society by this culture a way of subverting it or is it supporting and perpetuating the white patriarchal ideal? Do these men redefine dominant society in their own terms and take control of it? Or are they trying to be as close to it as possible in order to be less on the outside and closer to the inside?
The men of this subculture clearly set themselves off from the dominant culture. They belong to houses, each with a mother who looks after them and sisters who provide a support network. Several of them live together. They compete in the drag balls under the tutelage of a house, representing their drag family while leaving all real familial connections to the outside world at the door. The spectacle of the drag balls goes so far as to create a different world, one completely apart from the dominant culture. This world is the only place that these men can go and be themselves without fear of discrimination; a discrimination that leads relentless physical and emotional harm.
However, in this world these men mimic dominant culture, thus reinforcing its norms. Some of these men desired to completely lose their identity as men and become integrated into the dominant culture as women. For Venus Xtravaganza, one of the members of the "House of Xtravaganza," her greatest dream was to be truly assimilated. She desired to be a white suburb wife with a husband and a washing machine, away from the drag culture where people knew her "little secret." On a more subtle level, dressing in drag "is nothing but the displacement and appropriation of 'women,' and hence fundamentally based in misogyny, a hatred of women" where "women are the object of hatred and appropriation, and that there is nothing in the identification that is respectful or elevating" (Butler, "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion," 127 and 125). These men take on the identity of women, parading around as them and, as one drag queen put it, "being more woman than women." If drag queens can out-woman women, and drag queens are near the bottom of the social hierarchy, they displace women to an even lower rank, supporting the patriarchy.
Dressing in drag and mimicking the dominant heterosexual white patriarchy does not just further marginalize women, but other discriminated minorities as well. These men did not just mimic womanhood, but instead mimicked a very specific white womanhood. By idealizing white womanhood, African American and Latino men devalue their own cultures and the beauty of their own women. They present the idea that the "brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself – its way of life – [is] the only meaningful life there is" (hooks, "Is Paris Burning?" 149). Paris is Burning is "portrait of the way in which colonized black people... worship at the throne of whiteness" (hooks, 149). To achieve an idealized, happy, prosperous life these minority men imitate the life that they see that achieves this, the white life. In doing so, they disregard their own culture; devaluing it in the process.
Dressing in drag does not solely reinforce set white patriarchal norms. It can also act as one of the "subversive places where gender norms were questioned and challenged" (hooks, 145). By dressing in drag, these men are challenging the binary division of gender. No longer is there just "male" and "female," but also "male that dresses as female," "male who thinks he is female," and so on. Pepper Labeija, the mother of the house of Labeija, makes it very clear that he is proud to be his individualistic self: a man who dresses in drag, is homosexual, but desires to remain male. Each member of this drag society is a member for their own reasons. Not all desire to be part of the mainstream society, even if they do mimic it. And in mimicking it they could be upholding it or subverting it or even both at once.
One topic which Livingston does not broach in Paris Is Burning is that of appropriation. These men have usurped the norms of dominant culture; have adjusted them to fit into their subculture and by doing so they have the chance to redefine these norms in their own way. Judy Butler, in her article "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion" discusses the idea of appropriating terms of heterosexual patriarchal society. She states: "There is no subject prior to its constructions, and neither is the subject determined by those constructions; it is always the nexus, the non-space of cultural collision" in which terms are defined and "it is the space of this ambivalence which opens up the possibility of a reworking of the very terms by which subjectivation proceeds – and fails to proceed" (Butler, 124). The same principle can be applied to the appropriation of the hegemonic practices. By adopting dominant culture's ways of dressing as their own, the members of this drag society destabilize the norms of dominant society and in doing so act to "reverse and displace" those norms (Butler, 123).
How do we rectify these two opposing ideas: that the drag culture of Harlem supports and reinstates the dominant society norms while at the same time subverting them? The only possible answer here is that, concurrently, "drag may well be used in the service of both the denaturalization and reidealization of hyperbolic heterosexual gender norms" (Butler, 125). Both aspects exist in parallel, shaping and defining the dynamic character of the Harlem drag subculture.
Two other students in our class, Arielle and Sara, both investigated ideas that I have not even touched upon surrounding this subculture. Arielle is exploring the aspect of pleasure derived from these balls. It is possible that, as Sara is investigating, this pleasure leads those taking part in this pleasure-filled culture to be completely clueless to the consequences of their actions? Could they be clueless of their impact on the greater society that so influences their own discrimination? What exactly is their influence on greater society?
At the end of the documentary, Livingston put in a news clip that demonstrates that voguing, a dance form that originated in the competition of drag balls, became mainstream; adopted in music videos and on the fashion runway. However, in becoming mainstream, it lost its roots in the drag subculture. It, instead, is described as coming from "Harlem," leaving out all references to the drag balls. Unfortunately, Livingston did not explore the greater effects of this subculture on surrounding cultures past the appropriation of voguing. How were the cultures around this drag subculture, both the dominant white patriarchal culture and the cultures of minority groups of New York City, affected by it? Was the drag subculture ostracized or embraced? And if embraced, was it embraced for the spectacle, like how it was embraced by the viewers of Paris is Burning in the same theater as bell hooks, or was it embraced for the essence and character of the whole culture? It is clear that I am unable to even begin to examine all the aspects that influence the formation of the drag subculture, leaving me with many unanswered questions that have yet to be fully explored.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993. 121-140.
Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
hooks, bell. "Is Paris Burning?" Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End, 1992. 145-156.
Moraga, Cherríe. "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind." Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity. Becky Thomson and Sangeeta Tyagi, Eds. New York & London: Routledge, 1996. 230-239.
Paris Is Burning. Director Jennie Livingston. Videocassette. Miramax, 1992. 76 minutes.
| Inside and Outside the Closet: Coming Out and Bina Name: Jessie Pay Date: 2004-10-08 13:23:33 Link to this Comment: 11065 |
The act of "coming out" is a complex political tool. Its use is open to ambiguous possibilities, ranging from subverting social order to reinforcing those power structures. Of course, it is undoubtedly an empowering act for many non-heterosexual persons to identify themselves as such. Even if the categories of "heterosexual" and "homosexual" are entirely socially constructed (as Michel Foucault argues), that does not mean that they are not real categories of thought that shape the way we live our lives. Indeed, my computer is entirely constructed, but is still undeniably real. Since many non-heterosexual people do live their lives identifying differently from heterosexual people, they may find "homosexual" (or a similar label) an accurate description of their identities and daily lives, however socially contingent that description is. That said, I do not wish to make a judgement call on whether or not someone should or should not come out. Rather, I wish to examine the complicated space represented by "the closet" and the multifarious effects that "coming out" has on the larger social structure.
On one hand, it is tempting to say that the space of the closet, and the resulting ability to come out, is a necessarily radical weapon. Our social structure is based around insides and outsides: "any identity is founded relationally, constituted in reference to an exterior or outside that defines the subject's own interior boundaries and corporeal surfaces" (Fuss 234). Homosexuality serves as the foil to heterosexuality – something that heterosexuality can define itself against. It is "a transgression of the border which is necessary to constitute the border as such" (Fuss 235). Heterosexuality becomes that which is not homosexuality. The secretive space that the closet provides, though, complicates this binary structure. By providing the ability for an "outsider" to pass as an "insider," it serves as an ambiguous space that is neither clearly inside nor outside. It is a contradiction in itself, in that it is both inside and outside simultaneously. Furthermore, it points out the instability of society's larger inside/outside structure by including both inside-ness and outside-ness in the same space: the closet is a site where it is possible to be homosexual and inside, and heterosexual and outside, all at the same time. This possibility that anyone can spring out of the closet at any time and declare her/his ruse destabilizes the tenuous boundary between inside and outside. The act of coming out is subversive also because it points out all of heterosexuality as performance. If one person can act heterosexual, it illuminates heterosexuality as an act, implicating all of heterosexuality as a performance.
On the other hand, it is also possible to interpret the closet as a reinforcer of inside/outside categories. The closet is a space of secrecy. If someone is "in the closet," s/he is pretending to be something that s/he is not. This secret indicates that two oppositional identities at work – the one that is kept hidden, and the other that covers for it. The closet also reinforces the places designated for these two identities. The "real" identity which is kept in the closet is "private," whereas the presumed identity, outside the closet, is "public." Moreover, the concept of the closet emphasizes the hierarchy inherent to these binary oppositions. That one identity must be hidden implies its shamefulness and inferiority to the opposing, public identity.
Clearly, coming out can have extremely disparate effects, or at least differing interpretations of those effects. In order to determine whether or not coming out is a successful political tool, we must evaluate how the act influences the actor's relationship to power. Here it is useful to turn to Foucault's definition of power. For Foucault, there is no single, monolithic power force (e.g., the government). Power, rather, is exerted in the way we produce discourse – the way we form knowledge which then creates what we regard as "truth." Starting in the eighteenth century, "the confession became one of the West's most highly valued techniques for producing truth" (Foucault 59). The "confession" here can take place between any two people with an investigative relationship, for example, between doctor and patient, teacher and student, or parent and child. Power, then, is not simply divisible between the dominators and the dominated. It is exercised in interchanges, and forms not a single oppressive force, but rather something closer to an inescapably dense web. There are particular sites of power where power relays are more salient: sexuality is "an especially dense transfer point for relations of power" (Foucault 103). Still, these power locals are interconnected within a broader power system.
Under this definition, power is inseparably linked to the ability to participate in the formation of discourse. Coming out, unfortunately, does not provide this sort of authority. Indeed, it merely exposes homosexual-identified people to the power structure on a more personal level. The individuals in society who can speak authoritatively about homosexuals are not gays and lesbians themselves, but rather, individuals who simply espouse the dominant discourse which is already in place – ideas that everyone already accepts before they are even said. Coming out does not enable homosexuals to claim "back from them a certain interpretative authority over the meaning of [their own] words and actions" (Halperin 13). On the contrary, coming out exposes a gay person on a personal level – others can talk about her/him personally with no fear of being discredited so long as they are asserting the "truths" of dominant discourse (Halperin 13). This lack of power is illustrated by the typical heterosexual response to a homosexual coming out: "Are you sure?" Those within the dominant discourse (those who are "inside," in Fuss's terms) have the ability to refute what the "outsiders" are saying about their own identity. It is hard to imagine this scenario with someone claiming a more benign label such as "I am a vegetarian." This identity statement does not prompt the response, "How long have you known? Are you sure it's not just a phase? Maybe you just haven't eaten very good hamburgers yet." Sexuality is by far a much more poignant locus in which power relays may be articulated; these relays reveal the authority held by "insiders."
At the same time, however, it is important to note that staying in the closet will not bring you greater power either. Though a closeted homosexual may gain some privileges usually reserved for heterosexuals, s/he does not have authority over the discourse that creates her/his identity that Foucault recognizes as power. In the closet, a gay person does not know what others think about her/him, if others have "caught on," and is thus still servile to other people's knowledges. S/he is merely attending heterosexuals' requirement that homosexuals not reveal themselves. If this need is met, heterosexuals can maintain a distance from the "outside," and keep the so-called secret of homosexuality unacknowledged. Of course, homosexuality is hardly a secret, as Foucault argues extensively – the concept of homosexuality is a product of a complex social system; at the same time that homosexuality was constructed, it was understood as a secret. "What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" (Foucault 35). When homosexuals refrain from communicating their sexuality, they present themselves as something that does not need to be acknowledged. "To 'closet' one's homosexuality is also to submit oneself to the social imperative imposed on gay people by non-gay-identified people, the imperative to shield the latter not from the knowledge of one's homosexuality so much as from the necessity of acknowledging the knowledge of one's homosexuality" (Halperin 29).
The closet, then, reinforces the dominant discourse in another way – by allowing silence. For "silence itself – the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers – is less the absolute limit of discourse... than an element that functions alongside the things said... There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses" (Foucault 27). The need for heterosexuals to remain silent on the topic of homosexuality is yet another reinforcer of their dominant status, and the space of the closet allows this silence to exist unquestioned.
Coming out disrupts this aspect of discourse-formation – yet this does not necessarily mean that claiming a homosexual identity is liberating. Since the concept of "the homosexual" is socially constructed, no one identified her/himself as "homosexual" before s/he was told what it means – that her/his sexual behavior supposedly meant something about her/himself. "Not only did [society] speak of sex and compel everyone to do so; it also set out to formulate the uniform truth of sex... we demand that [sex] tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness" (Foucault 69). However, sexual identity cannot reveal any deep, hidden, personal truths since it originates from a social process, not from one's own person. Furthermore, the claiming of a socially constructed identity, even if meant to be a rebellious act, is exactly what is needed in order to solidify the creation of that identity. As already established, no one could have identified her/himself as homosexual before some social authority told her/him that s/he was. The act of repeating back the identity with pride – "I am gay, and I'm proud about it!" – is the resistance required to complete the power relay. "[H]omosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or 'naturality' be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified" (Foucault 101). One cannot have power without having resistance, and this resistance is vital to the power relays which produce identity.
However, it is not necessarily the case that identities must be performed exactly as dictated. "[T]he argument that the category of 'sex' is the instrument or effect of 'sexism' or its interpellating moment... does not entail that we ought never to make use of such terms, as if such terms could only and always reconsolidate the oppressive regimes of power by which they are spawned. On the contrary, precisely because such terms have been produced and constrained within such regimes, they ought to be repeated in directions that reverse and displace their originating aims" (Butler 123). Resignification may be possible in the space between what we are assigned and what the range of possibilities are that we can do instead. Whereas Foucault posits a direct reverse discourse, where individuals are only able to throw back the authoritative discourse's own language, Butler finds that it may instead be possible to intervene in the discourse, shift the meanings, and influence one's own identity. "There is no subject prior to its constructions, and neither is the subject determined by those constructions; it is always the nexus, the non-space of cultural collision, in which the demand to resignify or repeat the very terms which constitute the "we" cannot be summarily refused, but neither can they be followed in strict obedience. It is the space of this ambivalence which opens up the possibility of a reworking of the very terms by which subjectivation proceeds – and fails to proceed" (Butler 124). For example, if lesbians are looked down on because they are supposedly "unnaturally" masculine, how does this notion change if a woman, denying the negative connotation, lauds this very quality in her female lover? If used self-consciously, perhaps this kind of language can simultaneously address and counter the dominant discourse that means to assert these concepts in negative terms.
Even if it is impossible to be in control of the production of truth, inside or outside of the closet, it is important to become involved in the discourse that establishes knowledge, and this is only possible outside of the closet. Utilizing Foucault's definition of power, it may be quite impossible to be liberated, if "liberation" means free of all forms of power. Foucault makes clear that power is an incredibly extensive structure, that, in the closet or not, one cannot escape power. However, coming out does provide an important resistance. When one comes out, s/he is trading one set of power relays for another: but this does not mean that the act is not ultimately freeing. One is still entrenched within the power system, but coming out presents a different form of power relations in which one can reverse, resist, and react against the social discourse.
Works Cited:
Butler, Judith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion," from Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993. p121-140.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Vol. 1). New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out," from Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. p233-240.
Halperin, David. Saint Foucault. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc, 1995.
| Language, Power and Discourse of Sexuality: The ca Name: Sierra Jor Date: 2004-10-08 13:45:27 Link to this Comment: 11066 |
Foucault asks "What are the links between these discourses, these effects of power, and the pleasures that were invested by them?" (Foucault, 11). In the case of New Jersey governor it seems clear that power, language and pleasure were very much related in his speech on August 13, 2004, in which he announced his resignation, that he had had an affair with a man, and that he was a "gay American." A man in a position of power was both given power and gave power to the general public with his announcement. Consequently he opened up a multiplicity of discourses on the matter ranging from the true reason for his resignation, to the true meaning of the word Gay, to the effects that his coming out would have on the gay community. The case of governor McGreevey showed how language can be powerful, helpful and harming all at the same time, furthering Foucault's suggestion of strong links between discourse, power and pleasure.
McGreevey exercises a great deal of power in choosing the things that he says in his speech and even the ways that he says them. He uses his words to benefit him. The majority of the speech sounds like a plea to the people of New Jersey and the American public. He asks for the audience to sympathize by speaking of his struggle and confusion. So, when McGreevey says, "And so my truth is that I am a gay American. And I am blessed to live in the greatest nation with the tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, in a country which provides so much to its people" the audience feels a pathos for him. This statement is a direct call for forgiveness and sympathy, even before they have heard the whole case. It calls for the American people to remember their civil liberties and privileges to forgive him any wrong doing. "...McGreevey was playing the gay card as a trump for being corrupt..." (Brown). Amidst current discussion of Gay issues in American politics McGreevey was playing to an issue that most Americans feel strongly about in one way or another. Thus "...McGreevey has made his story both unusual and important by casting it as the tale of a secretly gay public official - someone who masqueraded as heterosexual for his whole adult life - who was undone less by his obvious ethical lapses, than by the necessity of hiding his true sexual identity." (Lazarus). Through language he finds "Ways of rendering it [his actions] morally acceptable and technically useful" (Foucault, 21). It is with this beginning to the speech that he announces his affair and resignation. His speech is "...calculated to drown out the much less forgivable lapse of putting his almost comically unqualified boyfriend, Golan Cipel, on the state payroll..."(Brown).
McGreevey's failure to mention anything regarding placing Golan Cipel on the payroll is one of the many things that give the media and public power. "There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses" (Foucault, 27). This silence was calculated by McGreevey but acted to work against him. The things that are excluded from the speech give others power. The media and the public are then given the power to scrutinize. Delany says, "We must always reserve a margin to deal with what is excluded from our articulation, no matter the apparent inclusiveness" (Delany, 140). Through this margin McGreevey gives the media and the public the power to speculate the true reason for the speech. The situation "...had given the Governor the choice of being exposed through a lawsuit or of making some kind of payoff. But McGreevey decided on a third option: to announce, surrounded by his wife and family, that he is a "gay American," to admit an affair with (though not harassment of) Cipel, and to resign effective in November." McGreevey did not come out to the American public out of pride for his identity, but rather out of a fear of exposure and legal problems. The question then arises as to the legitimacy of his claim to be gay. Many reporters asked why, if McGreevey was gay, did his heterosexual relationship—his marriage—not come to an end. It even called up a discussion of the true nature of gayness, asking whether it is an identity or a performance.
Along with the power to interpret McGreevey's silences the media is also given the power to interpret his words. Some people begin to ask whether the reason he was resigning is because he is gay or because he was involved in an affair. The emphasis placed in the beginning of his speech on his struggle that he used to inspire understanding makes it seem as though his sexual orientation is the most important aspect that needs to be conveyed. The headlines that announced his resignation, "US governor Quits Over Gay Affair"; "NJ governor, saying he's gay, resigns office"; "NJ Governor: I'm Gay and I Quit," indicate that the importance of him coming out was expressed. Therefore, if his sexual orientation is in fact the most important part of the speech then it would seem to follow that the reason for his resignation is that he is gay. The headlines also indicate this. It seems in fact from comments from the media and the public that they believe that the reason he is leaving office is that he is gay. "'I never thought he was going to admit he's gay, to be so genuine. I expected him to say legal problems were forcing him to step down,'" Rick Dalina said in reaction to the governor's speech (Gendar and Standora). While the true reason that McGreevey stepped down was legal reasons it is a common misconception that is was because he was gay.
It is exactly this misconception that has opened a discourse based on the effect of McGreevey on the gay community and the gay community's approval or disapproval of him. McGreevey, like many homosexuals, struggled in realizing and accepting his identity. "Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, hailed the 'amazing' and 'moving' elements in McGreevey's coming-out speech. 'Perhaps the very open and human way he did that,' Foreman said, 'will increase respect for gay people who make that decision every day'" (Santos). His position of power and very public announcement of his homosexuality gave strength to many fellow "gay American[s]." His prompt resignation, though, after becoming America's first openly gay governor can hurt the Gay community. Many conservatives as well as some liberals may take this as an indication that a homosexual does not have the capacity to govern. The revelation of a sexual affair at the same moment as a revelation of homosexuality could also reinforce many stereotypes that gay men sleep around and take advantage of straight men. These notions could be very counter-productive to the few advances that gays have made recently and could be devastating to current debate over the legalization of gay marriage. The issue of gay marriage could also be hurt by the connection that McGreevey makes between gays and their feelings on gay marriage. Gay marriages were recently halted in New Jersey. This halt to gay marriages may lead people to believe that McGreevey doesn't agree with gay marriage.
Unfortunately the first exercise of power happened much before McGreevey's speech. The exercise of power was a societal pressure to suppress homosexuality and discourse about homosexuality. According to Freud what is repressed always surfaces, often is a different manner. Not only was McGreevey forced to suppress his homosexuality by marrying a woman and any discourse about it, he was consequently forced to suppress his means of obtaining sexual pleasure. "...the harder you try to suppress the truth, the more inevitable it is that it will find a way to come out" (Huffington). In McGreevey's case his sexual repression surfaced in the manner of obtaining pleasure through an adulterous affair with another man that resulted in him employing this man in a high state position. McGreevey was forced in unfortunate circumstances with somewhat unfortunate consequences to put into discourse his sexuality and the affair thereby inspiring a multiplicity of discourses.
Brown, Tina. "The Governor Slips Out Under Cover of Gayness". Thursday, , August 19, 2004; Page C01
Delany, Samuel. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996. 119-143.
Foucault, Michel. "We 'Other Victorians'" and "The Repressive Hypothesis."The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. 3-13, 17-49.
Gendar, Alison and Standora, Leo. "Gov's groove no secret around town". New York Daily News Saturday, August 14th, 2004.
Huffinton, Arianna. "Drama of New Jersey governor teaches us that to be gay is to be normal". Ariana Online August 16, 2004
Lazarus, Edward. "The Issues Governor McGreevey's Resignation Raises:
Stigma, Acceptance, and the Difference Between Legal and Social Change". Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004
"McGreevey: I am a gay American" www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/12/mcgreevey.transcript/index.html
Santos, Fernanda. "Instant hero in gay community". New York Daily News Friday, August 13th, 2004.
| Breaching Borders: Identity and the Insiders Name: Nancy Evan Date: 2004-10-08 15:09:01 Link to this Comment: 11067 |
In her 1995 book, ¡°On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood¡±, Ellen Lewin presents the phenomenon of lesbian women who, through childbirth, gain access to the heterosexual community as an in-group member. At first glance, Lewin¡¯s observations seem to subvert traditional inside/outside ideology, portraying the boundaries of the hetero- and homosexual worlds as permeable rather than rigidly, relationally exclusive. A more exhaustive analysis, namely of the accounts of the women Lewin interviews, serves instead to reinforce inside/outside construction in relation to self and perceived identity. While the women are ¡®allowed¡¯ into the selective sphere of heteronormality, they do not cross these categorical lines as both ¡®lesbian¡¯ and ¡®mother¡¯. This paper will argue that the terms ¡®lesbian¡¯ and ¡®mother¡¯ are mutually exclusive, perhaps not in reality, but in the capacities of identity, performance, and location within an inside/outside dynamic.
Lewin prefaces her analysis with a glance at the classic Western representation of the lesbian. This depiction focuses on the exclusion of lesbians from typical female roles of ¡°motherhood¡± and ¡°nurturing¡±; being a mother carried an implied notion of heterosexuality, therefore, lesbianism and motherhood ¡°cancelled each other out in the popular imagination¡± (107). Indeed, many of the women surveyed shared the sentiment of motherhood as ¡°overwhelming and engulfing other dimensions of their lives¡ªincluding what they considered the lesbian component¡± (109). While this may be ascribed to the daunting tasks of mothering and childcare, the women pointed to a more self-appropriated explanation as they echoed one another in their tendencies to ¡°downplay the significance of their lesbianism in giving accounts of themselves [as mothers]¡± (110). Simultaneously, these women were rooting themselves more deeply in the heterosexual world and losing ties with the homosexual world. Many of the reports quote the lesbian mothers as feeling stronger ties to the world they share with straight women than with other lesbians. Many felt the lesbian community to be unfriendly to lesbian mothers. One woman was even asked to leave her all-lesbian rap group after her child was born, as her fellow group members believed she was no loner ¡°attuned to lesbian issues¡± (124).
The question remains as to why straight mothers, as a representation of the larger heterosexual community, would be so quick to ally themselves with lesbians, even lesbian mothers. For a scholar of feminist theorist Diana Fuss, this coalition seems to threaten the inside (read: dominant) status of heterosexual society. Fuss¡¯ notion that the ¡°denotation of any term is always dependent on what is exterior to it¡± means that any group (in this example, heterosexuals) typically defines itself in ¡°critical opposition¡± to that which it is not (homosexuals) (233). Not only does heterosexuality need the category of homosexuality to keep at a distance that which is undesirable, heterosexuality itself is threatened if homosexuality ceases to exist or becomes assimilated into the inside group. In a structure where existence is so dependent upon the joint processes of ¡°alienation, splitting, and identification which together produce a self and the other¡±, what is to be done with individuals who can be recognized as both the alien (lesbian) and the insider (mother) (Fuss 234)?
To add another level of specificity to Fuss¡¯ argument, and to attempt to answer the question posed in the last paragraph, let us further interrogate the identities of the women described in ¡°Lesbian Mothers¡±. None of the women in Lewin¡¯s study spoke of ¡®renouncing¡¯ their lesbianism; even if motherhood eclipsed the lesbian aspect of their lives, they would still respond in the affirmative if asked if they considered themselves lesbians. The important component in this situation is not, then, the actuality that the women were homosexuals but the rational choice of their own dominant identity and the corresponding performance of their homosexuality. The straight women who became compatriots to the lesbian mothers had no illusions as to the sexuality of their new friends; they knew these women were lesbians, but they also knew they were not performing the role of lesbian.
This brings us to the notion that it is not the existence of homosexuality that threatens heterosexuality, but the performance of it. The women were not not gay, they were merely not actively occupying ¡®gay¡¯. There was no closeting, no attempt to ¡°pass¡± as a heterosexual, not even any denying of actually being a lesbian, merely a swap out of a divisive identity for a more salient and harmonious one in order to move inward without difficulty. In this process, lesbian is not deleted, simply dormant. Fuss, channeling Foucault, concedes that ¡°sexual identity may be less a function of knowledge than performance¡± (238). Yet this description of stepping out of lesbian identity without switching to the binary counter-part (or even another counter-part within the schema, bisexual, for example), upsets Fuss¡¯ claim of relational determinacy. What does it mean for an individual who is not performing a homosexual identity but also not performing a heterosexual identity? It means there must exist another space outside of inside or out that Fuss has neglected to name and ¡°Not inside yet not outside yet not in between¡± somehow does not seem enough.
The theory-based analysis presented thus far in this paper does not address the potential moral implications of changing inside/outside spheres. Why do these women choose to become a part of a system that othered them in the first place? Taking into account the obvious social and political implications of being among the insiders, participating in heterosexual society seems to allow these women to escape from some lesbian norms. As one woman admits,
¡°Since I had [my daughter], I felt it was okay to do these things I¡¯ve been wanting to do real bad. One of them is paint my toenails red. I haven¡¯t done it yet, but I¡¯m going to do it. I felt really okay about earinf perfume, and I just got a permanent in my hair... I feel like I¡¯m robbing myself of some of these things I want to do by trying to fit this lesbian code. I feel like by my having this child, it has already thrown me into the sidelines.¡± (Lewin 110).
Unwittingly, this woman has given us more of a space for lesbian mothers than Fuss can provide. Again, she is not attempting to be straight, she is just taking a break from her performance of lesbian and watching from the ¡°sidelines¡±. Some of the women also associate motherhood as giving them access to ¡°sources of goodness¡± helping them ¡°construct a satisfying image for themselves¡± that homosexuality, with its associations with deviancy and moral wrongness, can never provide (Lewin 110).
There are also women who enter the heterosexual world hesitantly. These women seem to recognize the current mutual exclusivity of ¡®lesbian¡¯ and ¡®mother¡¯ and, viewing heterosexuality as the site where motherhood can occur, decide to sacrifice their homosexual identity for the time being. These women overwhelmingly speak of motherhood as a temporal identity, one which they will occupy arguably until their children are old enough not to need the constant care of infancy. After this point, the women will embody lesbian again, letting ¡®mother¡¯ fall into the background in identity choice.
Evidently, Fuss is necessary as a locus for which to place the forces at work in Lewin¡¯s work. Yet she falls short to fully identify the differences between innate and performative identity and the implications these have for inside and out. It is these differences, as well as the task of finding space for those who move out of their own sphere and without renouncing it, that prove to be the logical next steps in Fuss¡¯ inside/out construction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fuss, Diana. ¡°Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories¡±. New York. Routledge.
1991. pp 233-239.
Lewin, Ellen. ¡°On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood¡±.
Conceiving the New World Order. Berkeley: Univ of California Press. 1995 Pp 103-121.
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| Queer as Straight Guys with Folk Eyes Name: Chelsea Ph Date: 2004-10-08 15:22:00 Link to this Comment: 11068 |
In 2003, NBC launched on one of its cable channels, Bravo, a reality-makeover show that became a national obsession. The show was "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Two years earlier, in December of 2000, Showtime produced what was to become one of the most controversial and popular television shows in the network's history: "Queer as Folk," inspired by the BBC original of the same name. Queer was here- in a big, bold way. These two pop culture phenomenon set up a discourse for the pivotal word in each title,
"Queer." Examining both in the context of their own, self-prescribed language, begs the question, how is the term shaped by its invoker, and how in turn is the invoker shaped?
"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Obviously, there are not a lot of queers queuing up to exchange eyes with the heteros. The eye is a queered object; it is the queer gaze that looks at the straight male. However, the queer gaze is disembodied and unattached
to an actual queer man; it is directed not to the "straight guy" specifically, but to his apparel and lifestyle. The queer eye is juxtaposed with what it is not- it is not straight- and it is not fully human. In this way, it is a relational category which I will call "passive-relational" because the disembodied gaze cannot actively engage in a relationship with the embodied male.
The "queer eye," ironically, makes the "straight guy" more straight, by creating a more sexually desirable figure for the purpose of a heterosexual gaze, embodied in the wife/girlfriend/female blind date. Essentially, the men get packed off to Queerville
for an afternoon and taught the fine art of being an attractive human being. Queer desire is completely denied. The "queerness" is lighthearted, witty and enjoyable; there is no looming presence of AIDS, no hint of "queer-bashing," no sense that the "Fab Five" are
victims of repression or persecution- it's an illusion the nation craves.
"Queer as Folk." Folk? Like Ani? Or like people from the Midwest? Or like everyone if you're Bush? The name sets up a relationship between these "everyman" figured "folk" and queerness- setting up an inclusional relationship. The name implies that these "folk," whosoever they be, are the epitome of queer. This relationship I will call "active-relational," as the term queer is being actively applied to an embodied, autonomous group. The closest we can come to understanding the term in this context is to look at
the characters in the show, those who are queer as folk. Characterization in the show takes a white, middle-class perspective on gayness, mostly male. It is, undoubtedly, a failure to show the experience of any racially or economically marginalized group, not
to mention the absence of more than a cursory glance at fetishism, bisexuality, S/M, etc.- as if white-collar, white male queerness were all that the show could take on.
The show succeeds in many ways, however. There is none of the unmingled lightness of "Queer Eye-" this is in-your-face, unapologetic, defiant Queer. It does not shy from the presence of AIDS (several principle characters are infected), except perhaps in
avoiding being visually explicit about the dying process. The message is clearly one of love and compassion towards AIDS victims. The characters with AIDS are shown in the context of the love and support the "family" gives them, and are a fully developed,
integrated part of the show. Bashing and violence is also a strong and harsh reality; it is inescapable, just as it is in queer communities everywhere.
Conflict with the straight community is present in a variety of ways. In one of the first episodes, one of the characters declares, "There are only two types of straight people: those that hate you to your face, and those that hate you behind your back." Although this is proved more than inaccurate by most of the show, it is also made clear that the "family" in the show is queer and includes only two blood relatives and two straight-identified characters. In this way, it is no wonder that the public craves the mutually positive, if selectively accurate, portrayal of queer men and heterosexuals.
So, wait, what is queer? Granted and understood that there are two different ways of using the word presented here- passive/relational and aggressive/relational. Eve Sedgwick points out a current trend in which "intellectuals and artists of color...are using the leverage of the word 'queer' to do a new kind of justice to the fractal intricacies of language, skin, migration, state" (5). Does this imply that queer is a sort of strategy? It certainly could be argued in light of the two presented examples. The disembodied queer gaze "for" the straight male is ambiguous. Is it offered to the straight man? Yes, and so becomes non-threatening, submissive and a way to protect the queer man from homophobic retaliation by making himself harmless spectacle.
The leverage referred to in the above passage can be likened to a status signifier. Using leverage implies having something "over" another, anything from social power to evidence for blackmail. "Queer" has leverage over the shared "intricacies of language, skin, migration, state;" essentially, queer can be used to highlight/break down the marginalization of these signifiers. Queer is being used as a status term. By claiming a status with "queer," the claimer separates themself from heteronormative culture, and
takes up a power position which allows them to pass judgment on that culture without the recognition of said culture. This is obviously a distinct advantage: bringing into discourse those that were previously, perhaps, not within the 'gay' or 'lesbian' discourse.
What happens within the gay/lesbian/queer culture after such an event? Potentially received in a hostile manner (as, for example, a threat to any progress between the inside and the outside), the term may be rejected by the community which gives it
authority, attacked and degraded easily once it is in the discourse of the community. Specifically, if one group were to make a claim to be "queerer" than another, or to put qualifiers on the term which were unattainable to the larger whole, the support structure for both would be damaged and one would be forced to the margins. This is well documented with feminism, and its seeming incapability to recognize/incorporate the experience of women of color (at least until recently). By not allowing a place for feminist women of color (or refusing to recognize the need for one), the women of color who considered themselves feminists became disillusioned with the term and no longer sought identification with a term that so explicitly did not involve them.
Sedgwick makes a very useful correlation between the terms "gay" and "sex" and "queer" and "gender." Much as we have come to think of sex as being "merely" biological and gender as being socially constructed, thanks to Laquer, so there is a tendency in
Sedgwick to do the same with "gay" and "queer."
..."gay" and "lesbian" still present themselves...as objective, empirical categories governed by empirical rules of evidence..."Queer" seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental
self-perception and filiation. (5)
Therefore, in the same way that gender may be felt implicitly and is generally held to be more fluid than the biological determiners of sex, so is queer a fluid and less restrictive signifier of sexuality.
In Thursday's class, Anne and Gilda drew several diagrams on the board of what in/out space looked like in their minds. One of Anne's diagrams showed the outside as fully
encompassing the inside; Gilda's demonstrated the exclusivity of both outside and inside by showing the existence of presence in the space between. These diagrams were extremely helpful for envisioning my own concepts of 'gay' and 'queer' for this paper. I believe that, from a Sedgwick-gay ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy") point of view, the model would look something like Gilda's. The pretty- agreed-upon normative culture would be inside, the 'gay' culture would be outside, and there would be a lot that neither group would want to let in; S/M, fetish, inter-generational couples; those on the outside of inside AND the outside of outside, the queer in some instances, simply unnamed in others. In a very real sense, "Queer as Folk" uses its "queer" to expand the outside boundaries in the way Gilda was describing, bringing to our visual field (and into the outside), at least for a moment, patterns of behavior that were beyond out.
The encompassing in-within-out model would represent the Sedgwick-queer point of view. 'Queer' accepts and encompasses 'gay' as being part of itself, but 'gay' resists, therefore attempting to create a segregated space inside the outside. This attempt would be fruitless, as, in the opinion of the queer whose model this is; 'gay' is always/already encompassed, and therefore cannot voluntarily separate. This is reflected and expanded by "Queer as Folk," which is actively inclusive. In the sense of "Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy," the term is commandeered and used to represent only the harmless, disembodied gaze without homoerotic desire, nullifying its attempt to encompass more.
This qualifying of points of view is leading to another of Sedgwick's arguments, that perhaps the biggest difference between 'gay' and 'queer' is what happens to the word when it is used, and what happens to the user. The effects of the user on the word have
been discussed throughout the paper, but what is the word's effect on the user?
Delaney comes to an awareness of his experiences with the various men he meets in the cinema (Mike; the perpetual virgin), and to realize that he cannot explain their desire by receiving it: "all I could explain...was my side of the relationship" (128).
Although he cannot explain it, it does not change his pleasure in the experience, a fact he refers back to Lacan for, "one desires the desire of the other" (1). The effect of queer on a large group calls to mind visions of marchers chanting "We're here! We're Queer!" It seems to be a nebulous, all-encompassing term, allowing a certain
freedom when it is invoked by the masses and creating power through united numbers. However, on an individual level, the question becomes, how do you prove that you are queer? If you claim the status of queer, how do you keep it? It is the eternal problem of "anyone's use of 'queer' about themselves means differently from their use of it about someone else" (Sedgwick 9). To label someone queer is to take the agency to name themselves; to name yourself requires being exposed to the judgment of others- will you be found worthy? Do you need to be? Sedgwick argues not: "...all it takes- to make the description 'queer' a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person" (5).
In the pilot episode of "Queer as Folk" a Jeep belonging to one of the characters is graffitied and "FAGGOT" is written in pink spray paint on the side paneling. As the owner
drives through downtown Pittsburg, he declares his inclination to leave the graffiti and begins yelling "I'm a faggot!" to the passersby. The impulsion to use it in the first person allows the character to change the term from being the projection of others onto himself into an external declaration of his own sexuality. This claim is defiant of, and exclusionary to, anyone who would refuse to drive down the street yelling "I'm a faggot;" he has set the mark. By turning the phrase from passive-relational to active-relational,
forming the word to himself, and himself to the word, he both illustrates Sedgwick's points and plays at renouncing the community which protects him. For a moment, it is him versus the world and it is a beautiful thing- but it cannot last. The term does not stand on its own, but always relationally to that which it is not, creating language barriers which isolate and ostracize while creating new insides and outsides. This constant tension illustrates clearly the endless revision as the term shapes and reshapes those who invoke it; it is a struggle which can be traced, as Caroline Dinshaw pointed out, throughout the late nineteenth century to the present day. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Queer as Folk" exemplify this struggle in the realm of modern American pop culture.
Works Cited/Consulted
1. Delaney, Samuel R. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996.
2. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
3. Laquer, Thomas. "Of Language and the Flesh." Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. 3-24.
4. "Pilot: Episodes 1/2." Queer as Folk. Showtime. 3 December 2000.
5. Sedgwick, Eve. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. 5-9.
6. Sinfield, Alan. "Diaspora and Hybridity: Queer Identities and the Ethnicity Model." Textual Practice. 10(2), 1996. 271-293.
| Feminism: Bringing the Outside In Name: Marissa Ch Date: 2004-10-08 16:17:55 Link to this Comment: 11069 |
There has been a great deal of discussion over the Feminist & Gender Studies Program changing its name to Gender & Sexuality. The basis of this debate is over the exclusion of the word "feminist" from the title. It is important to question how this modification will affect the direction of the program and the feminist movement as a whole. The categorization of this area of study must be sensitive to the complex social issues it represents. Bringing the term "gender" to the fore-front, and focusing less on women, is a necessary "part of the attempt by contemporary feminists to stake claim to a certain definitional ground, to insist on the inadequacies of existing bodies of men" (Scott, 166). This new spotlight on gender and sexuality does not detract from feminism at all; rather it represents the next step in the evolution of the feminist movement.
As Lacqueur stated, categorization "is an inescapable consequence of our biological makeup" (Lacqueur, 18). This is especially true in any college, where categories are institutionalized in order to help guide students along their academic path. It is hard to imagine academics as "a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience" (Lacqueur, 19). However, categories have a way of excluding some people, since people are diverse and do not fit into neat containers.
This holds especially true with the Feminist & Gender Studies Program. The term "feminist" is a category that many students do not identify with because of its history of race, class, and sex. Some female students are not comfortable with its overtly confrontational ideas and do not want to be associated with the "man-hating" stereotype that is portrayed in society. African-American students can feel alienated by this term, since past the waves of feminism did not include the plight of minority women for the most part. Men may not want to be identified as a feminist, and students who question their own gender may not think this movement really relates to their lives. This leaves a large population of the student body feeling outside the borders of the feminism, which directly relates to their lack of participation of the movement outside of the classroom.
On the surface, the exclusion of the term from the department's name is an effort to invite a more diverse group of students into the program. This change in the title also represents a change in feminism, one that seeks to focus less on women and more broadly on gender.
The history of feminists challenging the constructed norm for women has pushed the movement itself to the outside of society. It is crucial for the movement to retreat from the outside by being more inclusive of all the players in society, including men. Fuss asked the important question, "does one compromise oneself by working on the inside, or does one shortchange oneself by holding tenaciously to the outside?" (Fuss, 237) It is evident by where women stand in society today that feminists are only shortchanging the movement by excluding the rest of society by focusing on women and pushing everyone else "outside."
Women do not exist alone in society, and in order to change it there must be more factors included into the equation than just women. The retreat of women back into the home after "feminism" started shows that the role of women cannot change for the long-term unless society changes along with them at the same pace. Their new-found identity was not enough to stand up to the crushing pressures of what both men and the rest of society expected from them. Our history proves that re-defining women is not enough, and making real progress is dependant on re-defining gender.
Both sexes need to be explored and deconstructed, since "women and men are defined in terms of one another, and no understanding of either could be achieved by entirely separate study" (Scott, 153). The question we need to ask is not exclusively what our nation should expect from women, but also what our nation should expect from men, and what men and women should expect from each other.
The emphasis on "gender" instead of "feminist" "rejects the interpretive utility of the idea of separate spheres, maintaining that to study women in isolation perpetuates the fiction that one sphere, the experiences of one sex, has little or nothing to do with the other" (Scott, 156). True equality of the sexes can only be achieved when both of these spheres are examined and the rigid borders that exist between them are broken down. The collapse of this border is essential, since the existence of these separate spheres is what "hierarchal structures rely on," the "generalized understandings of the so-called natural relationships between male and female" (Scott, 173).
As long as men and women are regarded to be different in relation to one another, by the existence of gender roles, this binary opposition will always leave society to value men over women. The historical excuses men have made to suppress women's freedom, such as "we are just naturally better to handle the workplace and they are just naturally better tending to children," will continue to repress women's involvement outside of the home. These myths can only be abolished by discrediting the "natural tendencies" they are based on.
Feminism needs to rescue itself from this "stalled revolution." The fact is that while women have forged ahead, men have not been able-nor willing-to catch up. This phenomenon is clearly a problem for women who try to juggle work and family. There are numerous consequences for women, since they are not getting the support needed at home or in the workplace. Women are abandoning careers at their peak, because they cannot handle the lack of leniency from a male employer who does not understand the demands of a family along with "the second shift" their husbands conveniently delegate to them. There is too much stress on modern women, because they are finding obstacles at every turn. Then, in turn, working women are blamed for every negative trend in society that relates to children, since they are "neglecting" their primary role as mothers.
Focusing on gender in the feminist movement is not only important so men can re-define their roles, but it will also change the definition of power as we know it in our society. This is because "changes in the organization of social relationships always correspond to changes in representations of power" (Scott, 167). The central inequality that exists today between the sexes is the monopoly men have over power.
Power, success, and money are interchangeable words that presently define goals in life. Feminist theory cannot just tell women to go out in the world and be as successful as men. The definition of success, which is recognized by our society, is based only on what men have constructed it to be. Since the man's historical role has been the "breadwinner," success is customarily measured by income and wealth. This is the basis why society devalues women who stay at home, since they are not achieving this masculine notion of success. Furthermore, women who do not conform to this ideal are rendered powerless and pushed into the private sphere-the home.
It was not a coincidence that just when women were flying up the corporate ladder in the 1980s, the fashion for the women in the workplace included shoulder pads and ties. Not only must women emulate men's goals, but the very essence of their femininity stands in their way. "Women started this conversation about life and work- a conversation that is slowly coming to include men. Sanity, balance and a new definition of success, it seems, just might be contagious. And instead of women being forced to act like men, men are being freed to act like women" (Belkin, 13). This freedom from traditional gender ideologies should now be the main objective, since what is needed to resurrect this revolution is "a radical break, a change in orientation, objectives, and vocabulary" (Fuss, 238).
When entering college, I never would have imagined I would be part of this program, because the only example of feminism I ever had was the one society provided for me. I felt on the outside of feminism, because I thought my interests in boys, marriage, and motherhood was not included in its definition. After learning what feminism really was during my sophomore year, I discovered I was not on the outside after all.
I have to admit that, at first, I was disappointed by the omission of the word "feminist" from the title of the program. At the time, I was just feeling at ease with my personal realization that I was feminist. I found myself feeling, once again, on the outside. I know after taking this class, that defining myself by any category is a wasted effort. The focus should be on who I am and not how well I fit into any category. I now understand why the only required course, one which concentrates on de-constructing gender, and the new focus of the program is the only thing that will save us all.
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| Constructing Queerness and Problems of Opression Name: David Litt Date: 2004-10-08 16:18:31 Link to this Comment: 11070 |
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Over the last two decades or so, the idea of queerness is one that has been utilized and considered by individuals and communities of marginalized sexualities and genders. The concept is one that has attempted to broaden and deconstruct traditional notions of gender and sexuality in order to include all of their incarnations as valid experiences and identities. Queerness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a part of it yet, seemingly, not everyone can be queer without changing the very nature of queerness. Or can they? Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer identities and behaviors.
In her book, Tendencies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick constructs queerness as a seemingly all-inclusive and individually determined space, writing that:
queer can refer to: the open mesh of
possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances,
resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when
the constituent element's of anyone's gender, of
anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made)
to signify monolithically. (8)
She expands queer beyond the bounds of "same-sex sexual object choice" making queerness about performative behavior rather than sexual mechanics (Sedgwick 8). For example, Sedgwick's idea of queer includes "feminists... masturbators... lesbian-identified men...[and] people able to relish, learn from, or identify with such" among others(8). She posits that the fundamental precondition, "to make the description 'queer' a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person" (Sedgwick 9). Yet is this self-determined queerness valid? Can actual queerness be claimed simply by those wanting to claim it?
Sedgwick's attempt to create an all-inclusive, individually driven, queerness makes it even more marginalizing and oppressive in some ways in that by including everything but vanilla sex between a man and a woman it singles out this particular act of sex and this particular binary gender structure as the non-queer, or the norm. Despite the fact that this is probably not Sedgwick's intention, her construction of queerness highlights the existence of a sexual and gender norm and simply clumps all abnormal sexualities and genders together under the category of queerness. The interpretation of queerness as being a "catch-all" category for sexualities and genders which do not fit into the category of heterosexual, man, and woman, supports the idea that queer status is a second class status because there is nothing particular about it other than the fact that it is not normal.
Her attempt to create queerness as a sort of democracy in which each individual determines his/her status as queer also has counterproductive consequences for queerness. Sedgwick, in an attempt to shift the power of labeling someone as queer from the straight labeler to the queer labeled, robs queerness of some of its potency and cohesion. For example, imagine queerness as being the popular table in a middle school cafeteria. I can decide to label myself as queer and then feel entitled to be able to sit at this table yet the students at the table can easily choose to reject me. If they do not reject me, and allow anyone and everyone to sit at this table, then, in some ways, the table of popular students loses its identity as popular. Sedgwick's claim that the only thing necessary to be queer is the desire to attach the label queer, "to the first person" faces the logistical challenge that the established queer community can reject an individual, and should in order to maintain its identity.
The previous example may highlight many negative aspects of exclusivity yet it nonetheless exhibits that groups exist because their members share common traits and that in order to maintain its identity a group must maintain these commonalities. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault writes that, "persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of perversions and a new specifications of individuals" (42-3). In this text, Foucault details how, "the sodomite" was transformed from, "a temporary aberration" to "the homosexual [who] was now a species" meaning that their existed particular prescriptions of sexual mechanics that defines homosexuality (43). Therefore, according to Foucault's argument, claiming "queerness" is merely affirming your status as the oppressed and marginalized.
Sedgwick's idea that queer status can be assumed merely by wanting to assume it attempts to throw off the oppressive nature of claiming a queer identity that Foucault describes. Yet both Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness in such a way that it is a perversion from sexual and gender norms because their theoretical representations leave the reader with the idea queerness is necessarily subversive and oppositional from the norms. Thus both Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness in such a way that it oppresses those who claim a queer identity. Is this merely an intrinsic attribute of the construction of a queer identity or is their some way to inhabit a queer identity and not be passively buying into a system of oppression?
Michael Warner, in his essay, "Tongues United: Memoirs of a Pentecostal Boyhood" writes that there exists, "a horizon of significance within which transgressions against the normal order and the boundaries of the self can be seen as good things" (43). That which forces individuals claiming a queer identity under Sedgwick's or Foucault's construction of a queer identity is that they are claiming a singular identity. Whether it is based on performance or mechanics, identifying as queer under these two constructions creates a system in which the self equals one thing, which then can be processed into a system of oppression. Warner includes these, "discarded personalities, vestigial selves" and "visible ruptures with yourself" as a necessary part of claiming a queer identity, or any identity for that matter, because they disallow the claiming of an identity to be the means by which one can be oppressed.
This is why Warner advises his reader to believe when he/she is told that their, "current [personality] was a mistake you made" (45). He constructs queerness in such a way that claiming a queer identity, "[provides] a meaningful framework for the sublime play of self-realization and self-dissolution" (Warner 43). Thus, according to Warner, through the dissolution of the singular self through the realization of the ruptured self, one can claim a queer identity and escape oppression because a singular identity claim which is open to oppression, such as the claiming of a queer identity, cannot completely encompass a ruptured self. Excepting one's status as incongruent allows one to claim a singular identity without inviting oppression because one's incongruence prohibits a singular identity claim to completely describe the self.
The manner in which Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness allows for oppression because they assume that the self is a singular cohesive body. Warner supposes that by realizing the fragmentation the self, one can claim an identity and escape oppression.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An
Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage
Books, 1980.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1993.
Warner, Michael. "Tongues United: Memoirs of a Pentecostal
Boyhood." The Material Queer: A LesBiGay Cultural
Studies Reader. Ed. Donald Morton. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1996.
| Legacy and Respect: The Usefulness of Feminism Name: Deborah So Date: 2004-10-08 16:39:29 Link to this Comment: 11071 |
Works Cited
Dalke, Anne. "Re-Naming the Feminist & Gender Studies Concentration:
An Account of the Past Process of Deliberation--and a Sketch Towards the Future." CAP doc. April 14, 2004
Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
hooks, bell. "Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression." Feminist Theory Reader. Ed. Caroline McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim. New York: Routledge. 2003, 50-57.
Johnson, Allan G. The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1997.
Rubin, Gail. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." American Feminist Thought at Century's End : A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman Cambridge, Ma : Blackwell, 1993. 3-64.
| Redefining the Boundaries of Queer: Jimmy Corrigan Name: Gilda Rodr Date: 2004-10-08 16:47:40 Link to this Comment: 11072 |
The words "gay" and "queer" have become near synonyms in our daily discourse. As Carolyn Dinshaw pointed out in her lecture, in the name of the TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the word "queer" is interchangeable with "gay," since it describes the protagonists' flamboyant, stereotypical homosexuality. However, many scholars and activists, such as Dinshaw, see "queer" as an "edgier" term that speaks to the fringe, outsider nature of those sexualities not part of the heterosexual norm. Queer is considered to be a more inclusive, less restraining label than others like gay, lesbian, or transsexual, but it is interpreted in different ways. In our online discussions, Deb Sosower defined it as: "a way in which all the disparate peoples who are not heterosexual can identify with a positive group of acceptance without further labels." (1) Sosower went on to group "straight allies" under the category of queer, which gives a place to heterosexuals in a concept typically associated solely with gay people. The boundaries of the concept queer are hard to define precisely because there is not one absolute definition of the word queer. In fact, these boundaries can be made flexible enough to accommodate some who would never fit under the label "homosexual," but are nevertheless outside the heterosexual norm.
In her essay "Inside/Out," Diana Fuss defines a strict binary opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality, where the heterosexual norm is the inside and homosexuality is outside. However, Fuss herself asks: "[W]hat gets left out of the inside/outside, heterosexual/homosexual opposition?" (2) In other words: what is outside of both the inside and the outside? Queer can become the term that attempts to include all (or, at least, more) of what is not homosexual but is not the heterosexual norm, either.
The inside/heterosexual norm views the outside as those who derive sexual pleasure from practices that diverge from said norm. These divergent behaviors are considered deviant or perverse. But Samuel Delany says that all the sexualizing of people and/or objects "work[s] essentially by the same mechanism;" therefore all sexual desires are perversions in a way—only some are "socially prescribed," while others are outside the social norm (3). Delany cites the pleasure heterosexual men get from looking at female movie stars as an example of a socially prescribed perversion (and therefore "not perverse" in the eyes of the norm), while a male deriving pleasure from, say, a drag queen impersonating a movie star in a ball, like in the "subculture" (by definition, outside the norm) depicted in Paris Is Burning (4), is just a plain old perversion. Those perversions that are not socially prescribed, but are not categorized as homosexual either, get lost in the outside of the outside.
Eve Sedgwick argues for a use of the word queer that is not simply the synonym of gay it has become, but that encompasses "the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made or can't be made to signify monolithically." (5) This definition of queer does not limit itself what it is outside of the inside/heterosexual norm, but goes beyond to contain all those perversions that are not socially prescribed. It is broad enough to include even its most unlikely participant, a heterosexual male—Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (6).
Jimmy, the antithesis of the comic book hero, is an adult white man with dismal social skills, which he compensates with an overactive imagination. Not only is he not the stereotypical aggressive straight male, but he also doesn't engage in the perversions that are "socially prescribed" to heterosexual males. His inability to interact with women makes him unable to establish any sort of sexual relationship with the object of his desire—and it is pretty clear that Jimmy is attracted to women, from the way he thinks about them and the images of women's bodies and even close-ups of breasts throughout the book. So instead of, to use Delany's words, "getting off" to having sex with a woman, or masturbating to/fantasizing about "female movie stars", his perversion, or his way of obtaining pleasure, is to imagine quiet evenings at home, in front of the fireplace, with his co-worker Peggy. In reality, Jimmy has barely any contact with Peggy, who is also verbally abusive, but she is still the only woman, other than his mother, that he knows.
Jimmy's sexual behavior, or to some (but clearly not to Delany), lack thereof, puts him outside the heterosexual norm, where men perform their identity by interacting with women in certain ways and having sex with them. Since Jimmy cannot have that interaction (or rather, practically any kind of interaction), because he is so socially awkward, he gets pleasure from his apparently non-sexual fantasies. Then again, Delany tells us that everything can be sexualized, anything can be a fetish, including a quiet evening by the fire. Jimmy is a sexual being, and a man attracted to women, but his personality renders him unable to belong to the inside, but his desire for women denies his categorization as homosexual.
As Jimmy's story progresses, his fantasies become somewhat more "sexual." At one point, when Jimmy is in the hospital, he spills a jar full of his own urine. The nurse that comes in to pick it up is sympathetic to Jimmy when she realizes what has happened. Jimmy, arguably turned on by her kindness, imagines the nurse unzipping his pants and touching him. The fantasy continues as the nurse leads Jimmy out of the hospital and takes him home, where a fire is burning. Following that are images of her cooking him breakfast, of Jimmy and the nurse holding each other and exchanging rings, and of what is presumably the happy couple's home. Any sort of explicit (traditionally-)sexual act is omitted from the sequence. In a different comic, it might have been a deliberate choice of the artist to "skip over" the sex scenes. However, considering that Chris Ware does not shy way from sexually charged moments in the rest of the book, it appears as if the focus of Jimmy's fantasy, what he lusts after, is not sex with the nurse, but rather a functional relationship with a woman. In both this fantasy and in Jimmy's dream about sitting in front of a fire with Peggy, it is the women who take control: Peggy sits on a chair as she caresses his head, while Jimmy is on the floor, restrained by her legs; and it is the nurse who takes charge and makes him leave the hospital. This further illustrates Jimmy's queer nature, because in the heterosexual norm, it is the men who are dominant and the woman who are passive.
If queer really purports to be, as Sedgwick wants, inclusive of all those who do not fit the heterosexual norm, of everyone that is "outside", then there must be room for behavior not generally considered as "queer"—room for Jimmy Corrigan, even if at first glance he appears to belong to the norm, and room for others like the "heterosexual straight (sic) white woman [who] may consider herself [queer] because she is only having missionary sex with her husband" that Anne Dalke mentioned in class and Claire Pomeroy commented on in her postings (7).
A pioneer in debunking myths about the abnormality of homosexuality, Alfred C. Kinsey said "there are only three kinds of sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy and delayed marriage." (8) For Kinsey, Jimmy Corrigan, a heterosexual middle-aged virgin, seemingly harmless to the norm, would be the biggest pervert.
WORKS CITED
1. Sosower, Deb. "queer vs gay" in Knowing the Body: Knowing the World Forum. Sept. 23, 2004. http://serendipstudio.org/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=277
2. Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 234.
3. Delany, Samuel. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996. 141.
4. Paris Is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Videocassette. Miramax, 1992. 76 minutes.
5. Sedgwick, Eve. "Queer and Now." Tendecies. Durham, NC: Duke UP. 1993. 8.
6. Chris Ware. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000.
7. Pomeroy, Claire. "What is queer?" in Knowing the Body: Knowing the World Forum. Sept. 23, 2004. http://serendipstudio.org/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=277
8. Crain, Caleb. "Alfred Kinsey: Liberator or Pervert? in The New York Times. Oct. 3, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/movies/03crai.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
| ENJOY THE HEAT Name: Arielle Ab Date: 2004-10-08 16:54:32 Link to this Comment: 11073 |
Citations
1. Dorian Carey. "Paris is Burning"
2. bell hooks. "Black Looks". Pg 153 & 154.
3. bell hooks. "Black Looks". Pg 153
4. Judith Butler. "Bodies That Matter". Pg 136
5. Judith Butler. "Bodies That Matter". Pg 135 & 136
6. bell hooks. "Black Looks". Chapter 9
7. Dorian Carey. "Paris is Burning".
8. Ed Sikov. Email commentary in regards to "Paris is Burning".
Bibliography
Butler, Judith. "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'". New York. Routledge. 1993
hooks, bell. "Black Looks: Race and Representation". Boston, MA. South End Press. 1992
Livingston, Jennie. "Paris is Burning". Los Angeles. Off White Productions. Distributed by Orion Home Video. 1992
| The Individual Experience in a World of Categories Name: Elizabeth Date: 2004-10-08 17:13:12 Link to this Comment: 11074 |
Lakoff and Johnson argue for an embodied mind, saying that our categories are based on how we experience the world through our bodies. According to this theory, as a result of their different anatomies, men and women would experience the world differently and their categories would be inherently different. Also, it would be expected that all women would share the same categories. Our class and our discussions have demonstrated a diversity of opinions and methods of categorization that refute this part of Lakoff and Johnson's argument. I think that Lakoff and Johnson were correct in saying that "the categories we form are part of our experience." However, what they neglected to factor into their analysis of the way human beings categorize is the differences of each individual experience. Categories and their meanings are based on an individual's personal knowledge of the world, and that is why no category means exactly the same thing for more than one individual. I want to examine the categories of race and sexuality in Moraga and Delany to demonstrate the significance of the individual experience and its direct connection to categories. Also, I want to suggest that race as "other" is more problematic than sexuality to one's personal identity.
Delany's "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion" presents us with a series of troubling tales. They all originate within Delany's life, but his reason for choosing these particular tales is "precisely because they are uncharacteristic" Even within one's own individual experience, there is an uniqueness to events. The category "gay" doesn't mean that the individuals who identify themselves as part of it will share an understanding of all that it has meant for one person to claim this label for himself/herself. Delany acknowledges that the identification with others that categories create is in a way false, "even the similarities are finally, to the extent they are living ones, a play of differences." He emphasizes that much of the sexual experience remains outside of language. No everything will be shared, not everything can be. An individual's journey to claiming his/her own identity is entrenched in the personal journey, in occurrences both characteristic and uncharacteristic. However, maybe these "uncharacteristic" tales are not as uncharacteristic to his experience as Delany believes. It is fact that they are indeed a part of Delany's experience as a gay man, and he says himself that there is no universal "gay experience." What is Delany's basis for a gay experience when all he has is the complete knowledge of his own? I think that maybe this has been Delany's point all along. In the end, he denies the existence of a Gay Identity:
The point to the notion of the Gay Identity is that, in terms of a transcendent reality concerned with sexuality per se (a universal similarity, a shared necessary condition, a defining aspect, a generalizable and inescapable essence common to all men and women called "gay"), I believe Gay Identity has no more existence than a single, essential, transcendental sexual difference.
I think what Delany is saying about identity is not restricted to the category of gay but can be applied to all categories. There is an illusion created by the nature of categories, which is that we can use them to relate to others. The words used to represent categories can be said to be meaningless in the respect that there is no one meaning that is held by everyone. The connotations of a word vary among individuals and what it is meant to inhabit a category is based on the individual experience and what the individual holds to be true. It is not the personal system of categorization that is problematic because as Lakoff and Johnson state, "every living being categorizes." It is not something that we as human beings are able to control but an action that is "an inescapable consequence of our biological makeup." The underlying problem of categories is related to language and its inability to capture the individual experience since by its very nature, language is about communicating with others. The act of putting our system of categories into language results in the category losing the individual's meaning. The category is now open to the interpretation of others and their imposed meanings. Now the individual's identity is called into question.
This struggle to maintain one's own personal identity is highlighted in Moraga's The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind. She insists that we invent ourselves, but the part of her argument concerning race is problematic because race is thought of as both biological and external. However, Moraga's way of living race is one that is impossible for most people to relate to. It is defined precisely by the fact that Moraga's experience cannot be defined by any category. Even though others may want to put her in the "biracial" category, her experience defies the limits of this category. She has experienced life as a woman who is white, Puerto Rican, Spanish, Cuban, brown, a half-breed, Chicana, etc. because as she says, "My lovers have always been the environment that defined my color." She is not simply a biracial woman; she has lived as more than that. Moraga's experience cannot be labeled by any one category. Her experiences as a woman of color and as a lesbian are intertwined; In Moraga's own words, "...we've know a lot of women. Why is it so hard to write of what we know about women? And much of what I know, I admit, is about race."
What are you?
Have you ever had to convince someone of your identity? Every time I tell someone that I am Irish, Italian, and Korean, I have to offer an explanation in response to his/her look of disbelief or puzzlement. With a smile on my face, I say, "Well, my dad is Italian, my mom is Irish-Italian, and my twin sister and I were adopted from Korea." Just when I think I see the light bulb of comprehension turning on above his/her head, I hear the next words out of his/her mouth, "Oh, so you're actually Asian then since your real parents are Asian, right?" Sometimes it feels as though I have to defend who I am, that there is a need for me to provide others with an acceptable reason for the claim that I am making in regards to my own identity. In the minds of these other individuals, Asian is a category that fits. Physically, they can look at me and see that I am Asian. Korean is the answer they are looking for if they want specifics because, once again, that makes sense and allows their systems of categorization to remain stable and intact.
"Call me something meant to set me apart from you and I will know who I am."
Cherrie Moraga's statement about difference sounds extreme at first, but in a way, as someone who is transracially adopted, I understood where she was coming from. The idea of categories as defining who I am unsettles me. Like Moraga and her refusal of the terms "biracial" and "bisexual," I don't want labels being imposed on me, trying to tell me who I am and limiting what my experiences have been with one word, a word that is meaningless compared to the individual experience that it is supposed to represent. I feel that there is something about categories that make identity problematic in regards to the individual. The confusion and bitter tone that I read in Moraga's tone do not only result from her inability to belong to any particular category but from her frustration that the individual experience is compromised by expecting us to limit and define what we have done and who that makes us by accepting the categories of societies. Moraga's experience reflects the inability of language to capture the individual experience. My reading of Moraga and more importantly, my understanding of her, was not so much about what her words were but the emotions and feelings behind them.
Delany's "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion" and Moraga's The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind are about the value of the individual experience, and yet, the reactions to them were very different. I think that the explanation for this has to do with language and the differences in the writing itself. The tone of Delany's piece is more of an appeal to the audience to re-evaluate the idea of identity. Moraga's writing is also meant to move others, but it is more defiant. She is resistant to the very language that she is using, resentful of the categories that are boxing her in. The inclusion of race and Moraga's argument that it is something that is outside of a category is more problematic than the Delany's idea of sexuality as being outside of language. Moraga's defense rests in her unique experience. Delany, a black gay man, makes practically no reference to its influence on his gay experience, whereas Moraga's race has been defined by each of her relationships. I viewed Moraga's refusal to have labels imposed on her as empowering despite her criticism of the particular labels. If the personal is political, shouldn't an individual like Moraga have the right to claim her own separate category? Delany is also advocating a kind of separation from a category. In his case, he is dismissing the idea of a gay identity. I think that at the heart of their arguments can be found the same message: we need "to maintain the personal without collapsing it into the political. In order to do this, we cannot neglect the value of the individual experience by trying to condense it into categories, only to discover that the meaning has been lost.
1)NAME OF YOUR
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ETC (AS NECESSARY)
| The Role of Language in Understanding Sexuality Name: Bryn (Bree Date: 2004-10-08 17:26:20 Link to this Comment: 11075 |
Bree Beery
October 3, 2004
IPGS- Anne Dalke
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN UNDERSTANDING SEXUALITY
Upon my initial reading of the assigned essay topic I thought that this essay would be fairly easy to construct. It was not until I actually analyzed and outlined it that I comprehended the depth and complexity of the questions at hand. In trying to answer the first question, "What have you learned so far?" I ended up with two pages of just notes and I realized that I have learned far more than I though I knew. Despite the fact that I have gained more knowledge and understanding on a subject of extreme interest, I have more questions now than I had previously. Lastly, I had no idea as to how to even begin finding answers to my questions. If I knew than would I not have done so already? I then had to start from scratch. While reviewing my notes and outline I discovered a repeating theme, language.
I find it fascinating, as an aspiring English major, how every reading and lecture we have discussed is somehow related to language. I view language as an agency through which discourse is discussed, power is given as well as received and identities are created and then categorized. However, with such influence, comes problems and language is no exception. Language, in all of its forms, poses many problems, such as the issue of censorship, consistency of terminology as well as the importance of what is not being said. Although I find many problems with language and all of its limitations, I hope that by the time I finish writing this essay I can better understand its effects on the subject of sex and gender and hopefully build on its potential.
Throughout class, when we have discussed discourse we informally define it as a way in which individuals and societies understand sexuality and gender through language. However this loose definition is problematic for me as I think of the quote from the great mathematician Alfred Whitehead, "The notion that thought can be perfectly or even adequately expressed in verbal symbols is idiotic" For example, when discussing the term "queer" everyone had different perceptions on the meaning of the word, however this problem holds true for any and every word. Language can only say so much. Understanding sex and gender concerns more than the use of language, as demonstrated by Foucault and his writings about "the way in which sex is put into discourse." He makes the point that when examining sex one need to take notice of what is not is not being said, or being censored, rather than just listening to the obvious points at hand. Through language one is able to understand and interpret different issues, but if certain language is being censored then one is not able to interpret, or worse not understand which cause many problems for the individual and society. Foucault also goes on to state, "What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" This notion of repressed sexuality also creates problems in using language. As Voltaire once said, "The great use of words is to hide our thoughts." What worries me is that if sex is viewed as a secret and something of which not to be discussed, than no one will ever be able to have a genuinely open discourse concerning sex without feeling regret or shame.
This problem of censorship then leads us into the problem of creating and defining identities. In utilizing Diana Fuss' idea of identity as being defined by what we are not, I feel that censorship is just one way in which a society or individual can classify themselves. In relating this to the Carolyn Dinshaw lecture, Malaysia and Canada, by censoring and reprimanding certain forms of "bad" language, are able to create definitive identities separate from those considered "bad." In return to Fuss' idea that identity is relational, brings me back, once again, to our classroom discussion on the term 'queer'. The Sedgwick reading explored the idea that queer can only be identified through one's own individual actions and beliefs rather than by the general, yet limited use of language. As she states, "queer seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self- perception and affiliation." To be able to create our identity in terms of who and/or what we really are, we have to find out through individual interpretation and understanding of certain terms and connotations, rather than by conforming to what we are not defined as by language. So then the question at hand is how does language allow one to better know one or another's identity, sexual or otherwise? I would have to say that it does not help, if anything it hinders. Language seems to only define identities in relation to their similarities and or differences (i.e. straight vs. gay, sex vs. gender, etc.) rather than by portraying them as intertwined and codependent. As Delany states, "...even the similarities are finally, to the extent they are living ones, a play of differences- only specific ones, socially constituted, not transcendental ones." There is no such thing as clear cut divisions, which then leads us into another problem with language, the problem of inescapable classification.
In The Order of Things, Foucault argues that categorizing is instinctive to human beings and that there will always be some sort of basic construction of classification, despite the fact that categories are ever changing. In relation to Fuss, Foucault also states that, like speech and language, one must always be sure to look at the 'empty space' within the categories to gain a better understanding of sex and identity. Yet what I find difficult is to find the 'empty space'. There always seems to be such a distinctive split as to what something is and what it is not. The idea of distinctions in categorization is related to yet another class dialogue, the question whether language is on the outside or inside.
Delany, Dinshaw and Fuss all recognize the problem of inside/outside language and the fact that there is not a clear and distinct line between the outside and inside, particularly in relation to sexuality. Delany views the sexuality as "always occurring partly inside language and partly outside of it." In fact, what make Delany and Dinshaw so progressive as authors is there attempts to blend the inside of language with that of the outside. By adding a 'Q' for 'queer' on the cover of her literary journal, Dinshaw is able to speak to both the inside and outside spheres of language. She refers to the 'Q' as "both legitimate and disruptive". By calling the "Q" legitimate she is bringing it into the inside world of language, yet by calling it disruptive she is still admitting to its current place outside language. Delany also uses a similar method in his writing, Aversion/Perversion/Diversion. By using the language of the inside, he talks of his sexual experiences as though they are just common everyday occurrences, yet because his acts are socially taboo they are still left on the outside. In the Fuss reading she asked a question that I found interesting, ""Does one compromise oneself by working on the inside, or does one shortchange oneself by holding tenaciously to the outside" Dinshaw and Delany have demonstrated that one does not need to compromise nor shortchange oneself when working with the language of the inside as well as the language of the outside. All of these examples establish the importance of language, not only for our interpretations and understandings of sexuality, but also to the exclusions and inclusions of individuals and societies.
Language, no matter how many problems it has nor how many solutions it brings is inevitably important in understanding sex and gender. Language, with all its complexities and different avenues of meaning, will forever be an important reality and necessity. As Fuss states, "the dream of either a common language or no language at all is just that- a dream, a fantasy..." Without language the discourse of sexuality would not even be considered for discussion, power relations would be distorted and identities would be neither created nor categorized.
Tyron Edwards, The New Dictionary of Thoughts (United States: Standard Book Company), 1961, 339
Michel Foucault. "We 'Other Victorians'" and "The Repressive Hypothesis."The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. 3-13, 17-49.
Michel Foucault. "We 'Other Victorians'" and "The Repressive Hypothesis."The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. 3-13, 17-49.
Tyron Edwards, The New Dictionary of Thoughts (United States: Standard Book Company), 1961, 340
Diana Fuss. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
Guest Lecture by Carolyn Dinshaw, BMC '78, Professor of English and Director of Center for Gender and Sexuality, NYU, "LGBT Studies in a Transnational Frame"
Eve Sedgwick's essay "Queer and Now"
Eve Sedgwick's essay "Queer and Now"
Samuel Delany. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996. 119-143
Michel Foucault. Preface and Forward. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966; rpt. and trans.New York: Vintage, 1973. ix-xxiv
Michel Foucault. Preface and Forward. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966; rpt. and trans.New York: Vintage, 1973. ix-xxiv
Samuel Delany. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996. 119-143
Guest Lecture by Carolyn Dinshaw, BMC '78, Professor of English and Director of Center for Gender and Sexuality, NYU, "LGBT Studies in a Transnational Frame"
Diana Fuss. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
Diana Fuss. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
| Unknowingly Outside: A Study of Perspectives Name: Sara Ansel Date: 2004-10-09 18:14:09 Link to this Comment: 11077 |
Citations:
Hook, Bell (1992). Is Paris Burning? , Black Looks. (pp. 145-156).
The Muppets Abstract. Oct. 5th, 2004.
| Unknowingly Outside: A Study of Perspectives Name: Sara Ansel Date: 2004-10-15 13:18:04 Link to this Comment: 11093 |
Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning inspired an awareness of being that I had not previously experienced. The film urges the spectator to reevaluate not only one's breadth of knowledge of the black gay culture in the 80's, but also the perspectives from which one views the film. Personally speaking, the easiest evaluation of the latter topic would be the perspective of a privileged white straight female born into a sheltered and socially traditional household. This background would thus color my reaction to the film: one of intense sadness for the featured interviewees who yearned for an existence which was mostly unobtainable except in the case of extreme sacrifice and typically led to social ostracizing and ridicule (even in some cases, death) – yet this existence they yearned to emulate was something I had been born into without struggle nor appreciation, it was simply my life.
But one could say my perspective of pity and guilt was actually somewhat of a perversion of the deeper meaning of the film. My feelings were not enlightened but the opposite – I was subjugating the people's identities in the film by not recognizing their independent validity, and only reacting to their performance of emulation with condescending sympathy. My depression over the film resulted not from what Bell Hooks's depression stemmed as she explains her views on the film: " [It is] a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks are all to willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power, and pleasure." (Hooks, Is Paris Burning? pg. 149) I was only saddened by the fact that the performers in the film were unable to obtain their dream. I had not looked at the dream itself and critiqued the presentation of such a perspective on our societal hierarchy. This new found perspective, achieved during class discussions and readings, was the finale of the topic for me until I checked my mailbox after class the following day.
In my mailbox was an honor code abstract detailing a case brought before the council in previous months. My first thought when carrying the abstract home with me was curiosity at what felt and looked to be a massive case summery of around 30 pages. I settled down to read it. The case abstract dealt with an occurrence two semesters ago during a Halloween dance on Bryn Mawr's campus. Two Haverford male students attended the Hallween party at Rhoads dressed as "two specific female Black popstars. They had painted themselves brown and attached prosthetic breasts and buttocks to their bodies." (The Muppets abstract, pg. 1) The case abstract is incredibly detailed in documenting all parties' statements and reactions.
After the Halloween party where they wore their costumes the entire night the two males felt necessary to write an explanation to the community after hearing some rumblings about their costume from friends and strangers alike. They explained that they had no intention on offending anyone in the community, but had simply chosen the costumes because of its ridiculous nature. The abstract explains, "[Bert said] they saw white plastic breasts and considered dressing as topless women. Then they saw the black breasts and butts and decided to wear them instead. [He thought] the black body parts would be funny because they were so different from his own. [He said] they then purchased jewelry and brown face paint." (The Muppets abstract, pg. 3) A student of color on campus contacted the two male students and requested to meet with them along with other students concerned by their actions. The two male students did not attend and thus they were brought before Honor Council as the confronting party felt a dialogue was necessary but had not been achieved.
The Council met several times with the confronting party and the confronted party. In a series of dialogues the passion and pain felt by the confronting party is obvious even within the somewhat monotone voice of the abstract. A member of the confronting party explains, "[I] felt disconnected from Haverford when [I] saw [I] could be dehumanized like this...[I] now feel vulnerable and unprotected on campus." (The Muppets abstract, pg. 3) In an even more impassioned description of the effect the two Haverford male's actions had on some members of the community, another member of the confronting party says, "[I] didn't have to see the costumes to [my]self to feel this hurt. [I] pose the hypothetical question that if someone is murdered, [I] could feel the pain without being there. [I am] slaughtered very day. [I] must always be on guard against disrespect." (The Muppets abstract, pg. 10)
At times, the council requested breaks in order to calm both parties after certain strong words. Repeatedly, the abstract mentions how the anguish and emotion of the confronting party was a surprise to the Haverford males: "Bert said that he saw Zoe angry and shaking. He explained that he hadn't seen this level of emotion or hurt before." and "...he [Bert] had not thought of or heard the concern that his costume might remind women of rape, possibly even a rape perpetrated on them. The intensity of emotion was also new."
The two Haverford males had not dealt with such an intense new perspective on their actions, and at times, it seems that new perspective was their own. One can not deny the inherent relationship between the incident described in the Muppets abstract and the initial reaction viewers (including myself) had to the documentary Paris is Burning. In both cases there existed insensitivity within the portrayal of, in one case, the white upper class, and in another, two black female performers. Paris is Burning situates the audience in a singular position of spectatorship and removal. Hooks describes this state in her article.
Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly, white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates "whiteness." These folks left the film saying it was "amazing," "marvelous," "incredibly funny," worthy of statements like, "Didn't you just love it?" And no, I didn't just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay bothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The "we" evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness." (Hooks, Is Paris Burning?, pg. 149)
Hooks is clear in her biting criticism of the film claiming it misleads the audience to think that the film celebrates the gay, male, Ball culture, when in fact it is subtly reaffirming and even strengthening the racial, social, and economic hierarchy which oppresses the exact people she features in her film. A similar pattern of deception and an unknowing 'outside' existence exists within the Muppet abstract. The two Haverford males did not view themselves as ridiculing or creating caricatures of African American women. They were unaware of their own outside existence to the African American experience and seemingly unaware of such an existence at all. Additionally, their decision to wear breasts and butts reinforces their outside existence to females as they lacked understanding that this display of the body was offensive and degrading. Their male-centric and racially insensitive attitudes are apparent in their unapologetic tone and use of various discriminating terms. They repeatedly refer to "colored friends" and in their responses to the concerns and hurt put forth by the confronting party. Ernie speaks clearly on his opinion of his actions. He says, "[I] know many people who have no problem with [my] actions and who think this is ridiculous." Ernie goes on to say, "[I] recognize the hurt, but not necessarily the wrongness of [my] actions." (The Muppets abstract, pg. 5)
Bert and Ernie's story is another example of how condescension, racism, sexism, and oppression can be highlighted within seemingly innocent actions when one party represents another unknowingly from the 'outside.' Bert and Ernie lacked perspective of what their choice of costumes would signify to others because of their male-centric and superior attitudes. They were not only unaware how their decisions to paint their faces brown and wear prosthetic breasts and butts would reference historical oppression, but that this historical oppression still effected people of today and was not simply a story of past times, but a continuing struggle.
Like the deeply rooted racism and classism of Paris is Burning, a film seemingly celebrating the culture and people it serves to eventually dehumanize, the actions of Bert and Ernie stood for much more than two Haverford students lacking perspective and foresight. Bert and Ernie's actions stand for a more deeply rooted problem of young people today forgetting that we are still struggling for equality and respect within our society and that no one is immune from this necessity for empathy and understanding.
.
1)
2)NAME OF YOUR
3)NAME OF YOUR
SECOND
WEB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT
THIRD W
EB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT
Hook, Bell (1992). Is Paris Burning? , Black Looks. (pp. 145-156).
The Muppets Abstract. Oct. 5th, 2004.
| Constructing Queerness and Problems of Opression Name: David Litt Date: 2004-10-16 00:44:56 Link to this Comment: 11096 |
YOUR TEXT. REMEMBER TO SEPARATE PARAGRAPHS WITH
. WEB REFERENCES GO IN
A NUMBERED LIST AT THE END (SEE BELOW). TO CITE A WEB REFERENCE IN THE TEXT, USE
THE FOLLOWING AT EACH NEEDED LOCATION: (YOUR
REFERENCE NUMBER).
1)NAME OF YOUR
FIRST WEB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT
2)NAME OF YOUR
SECOND
WEB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT
3)NAME OF YOUR
THIRD W
EB REFERENCE SITE, COMMENTS ABOUT IT
ETC (AS NECESSARY)
Over the last two decades or so, the idea of queerness is one that has been utilized and considered by individuals and communities of marginalized sexualities and genders. The concept is one that has attempted to broaden and deconstruct traditional notions of gender and sexuality in order to include all of their incarnations as valid experiences and identities. Queerness endeavors to include all of those who feel they are a part of it yet, seemingly, not everyone can be queer without changing the very nature of queerness. Or can they? Queerness is a concept which resists borders and structure yet it seems as though there must be certain commonalities among all queer identities and behaviors.
In her book, Tendencies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick constructs queerness as a seemingly all-inclusive and individually determined space, writing that:
queer can refer to: the open mesh of
possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances,
resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when
the constituent element's of anyone's gender, of
anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made)
to signify monolithically. (8)
She expands queer beyond the bounds of "same-sex sexual object choice" making queerness about performative behavior rather than sexual mechanics (Sedgwick 8). For example, Sedgwick's idea of queer includes "feminists... masturbators... lesbian-identified men...[and] people able to relish, learn from, or identify with such" among others(8). She posits that the fundamental precondition, "to make the description 'queer' a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person" (Sedgwick 9). Yet is this self-determined queerness valid? Can actual queerness be claimed simply by those wanting to claim it?
Sedgwick's attempt to create an all-inclusive, individually driven, queerness makes it even more marginalizing and oppressive in some ways in that by including everything but vanilla sex between a man and a woman it singles out this particular act of sex and this particular binary gender structure as the non-queer, or the norm. Despite the fact that this is probably not Sedgwick's intention, her construction of queerness highlights the existence of a sexual and gender norm and simply clumps all abnormal sexualities and genders together under the category of queerness. The interpretation of queerness as being a "catch-all" category for sexualities and genders which do not fit into the category of heterosexual, man, and woman, supports the idea that queer status is a second class status because there is nothing particular about it other than the fact that it is not normal.
Her attempt to create queerness as a sort of democracy in which each individual determines his/her status as queer also has counterproductive consequences for queerness. Sedgwick, in an attempt to shift the power of labeling someone as queer from the straight labeler to the queer labeled, robs queerness of some of its potency and cohesion. For example, imagine queerness as being the popular table in a middle school cafeteria. I can decide to label myself as queer and then feel entitled to be able to sit at this table yet the students at the table can easily choose to reject me. If they do not reject me, and allow anyone and everyone to sit at this table, then, in some ways, the table of popular students loses its identity as popular. Sedgwick's claim that the only thing necessary to be queer is the desire to attach the label queer, "to the first person" faces the logistical challenge that the established queer community can reject an individual, and should in order to maintain its identity.
The previous example may highlight many negative aspects of exclusivity yet it nonetheless exhibits that groups exist because their members share common traits and that in order to maintain its identity a group must maintain these commonalities. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault writes that, "persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of perversions and a new specifications of individuals" (42-3). In this text, Foucault details how, "the sodomite" was transformed from, "a temporary aberration" to "the homosexual [who] was now a species" meaning that their existed particular prescriptions of sexual mechanics that defines homosexuality (43). Therefore, according to Foucault's argument, claiming "queerness" is merely affirming your status as the oppressed and marginalized.
Sedgwick's idea that queer status can be assumed merely by wanting to assume it attempts to throw off the oppressive nature of claiming a queer identity that Foucault describes. Yet both Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness in such a way that it is a perversion from sexual and gender norms because their theoretical representations leave the reader with the idea queerness is necessarily subversive and oppositional from the norms. Thus both Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness in such a way that it oppresses those who claim a queer identity. Is this merely an intrinsic attribute of the construction of a queer identity or is their some way to inhabit a queer identity and not be passively buying into a system of oppression?
Michael Warner, in his essay, "Tongues United: Memoirs of a Pentecostal Boyhood" writes that there exists, "a horizon of significance within which transgressions against the normal order and the boundaries of the self can be seen as good things" (43). That which forces individuals claiming a queer identity under Sedgwick's or Foucault's construction of a queer identity is that they are claiming a singular identity. Whether it is based on performance or mechanics, identifying as queer under these two constructions creates a system in which the self equals one thing, which then can be processed into a system of oppression. Warner includes these, "discarded personalities, vestigial selves" and "visible ruptures with yourself" as a necessary part of claiming a queer identity, or any identity for that matter, because they disallow the claiming of an identity to be the means by which one can be oppressed.
This is why Warner advises his reader to believe when he/she is told that their, "current [personality] was a mistake you made" (45). He constructs queerness in such a way that claiming a queer identity, "[provides] a meaningful framework for the sublime play of self-realization and self-dissolution" (Warner 43). Thus, according to Warner, through the dissolution of the singular self through the realization of the ruptured self, one can claim a queer identity and escape oppression because a singular identity claim which is open to oppression, such as the claiming of a queer identity, cannot completely encompass a ruptured self. Excepting one's status as incongruent allows one to claim a singular identity without inviting oppression because one's incongruence prohibits a singular identity claim to completely describe the self.
The manner in which Foucault and Sedgwick construct queerness allows for oppression because they assume that the self is a singular cohesive body. Warner supposes that by realizing the fragmentation the self, one can claim an identity and escape oppression.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An
Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage
Books, 1980.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1993.
Warner, Michael. "Tongues United: Memoirs of a Pentecostal
Boyhood." The Material Queer: A LesBiGay Cultural
Studies Reader. Ed. Donald Morton. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1996.
| PRIDE Name: Laura Beth Date: 2004-10-17 23:09:06 Link to this Comment: 11108 |
Every June thousands of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people gather in different locations around the world to celebrate Gay Pride Month with dances, festivals, and marches. The categories of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender are fairly recent; the term "homosexual" used to refer to all individuals of a sexual orientation other than heterosexual. The tradition reached its thirty-fifth anniversary this year, and while the number of participants has skyrocketed since the first march, the rights for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people have not altered significantly since 1970. For example, not only are same sex marriages not legally recognized or granted the same privileges as opposite sex marriages, the current administration proposed to ban the possibility of same sex marriages ever being recognized by the government through a constitutional amendment.
This amendment is one in a series of attempts by the American legislature to restrict and confine the homosexual lifestyle, therefore an entire month seems extraneous to celebrate their identity given their lack of legal rights. But the more the government threatens to interfere with the choices of homosexuals, the louder PRIDE becomes: cities such as New York and San Francisco boast attendance in the hundreds of thousands. The legislative act of prohibition has provided strength to the prohibited acts in the case of sexual behavior and identity.
Michel Foucault best explains how homosexuality became an identity and a category. In The History of Sexuality, Foucault explores the validity of the "repressive hypothesis" which claims that sex has been repressed in Europe since the Renaissance. For three centuries, the bourgeoisie, characterized by "modern prudishness," "need[ed] to gain mastery over it [sex] in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present." (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 17) A key component to the repressive hypothesis is that the solution to escaping this repression is to talk openly about sex and therefore be liberated from the political restraint of sex. Foucault reasons that the censorship of sex did not "extinguish" any words concerning sex; on the contrary, the act of repression actually created new words.
Even before the age of repression, the government identified perverse sexual acts which deviated from the traditional intended purpose of sex—procreation within marriage. Instances of sex not adhering to this purpose were in violation of the law. Married heterosexual sex "with its regular sexuality, had a right to more discretion," under repression, so the bourgeoisie found alternate sex acts to target and discuss. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 38) Previously same sex sodomy had just been against the law, but then people began examining the reason behind engaging in homosexual sex and identifying characteristics associated with the act. "The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood . . . . nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality . . . it was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature . . . a species," thus a person who committed same sex sodomy was first and foremost classified as a homosexual. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 43) The act of engaging in homosexual sex translated into an identity in order "to give it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality." (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p.44) The discourse was opened was to why people engaged in homosexual sex, and they attacked the question from medicinal, historical, and psychological perspectives. As a homosexual's identity was defined by his sexuality, certain stereotypes for behavior were associated with having homosexual sex and therefore being a homosexual.
In the case of United States law, it is not illegal to be a homosexual. However, the act of engaging in sodomy was outlawed in every state before 1960, and the law was directed at homosexual sex. (www.sodomylaws.org) Western religious principles constitute the foundation of American laws and culture, and lawmakers created sex laws based on those found in the Bible: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:13) The ideals guiding American politics are "the ancient civil or canonical codes" described by Foucault. (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 43) And similar to the 19th century French culture, modern American society has created a homosexual identity for those persons committing the aberration of sodomy and the government is intent on confining sodomites to their category.
Contemporary American politics reflects the public's fear of the homosexual identity. The "Thinking Sex" chapter of American Feminist Thought at Century's End: A Reader, Gail Rubin lays out the history of homophobia in the actions of the government in the United States. "Homosexuals were, along with communists, the objects of federal witchhunts and purges," as a result of the accepted image of the homosexual as a disgusting perverse creature out to molest young boys. (Rubin, p. 6) Americans began creating the middle class suburban dream after World War II, and homosexuals did not fit the standard for being a part of the mother and father with two children family living in a split level home located a convenient twenty minutes from the city.
Since they were less likely to find a community of people like themselves in suburban or rural areas, homosexuals migrated to the cities. Gay bars sprung up in urban areas across the nation, and such establishments became targets for the government to shut down homosexuality at the source. "Churches and other antivice forces constantly put pressure on local authorities to contain such areas [with a high concentration of gay establishments], reduce their visibility, or to drive their inhabitants out of town," with gay bar raids being a common "antivice force" of choice in many cities. (Rubin, p. 31) These raids were attempts to control the homosexual lifestyle of sex and drugs perceived as a threat to the ideal American "normal" life.
Stereotypes of the homosexual worsened with the appearance of AIDS in the 1970s. "Gay people find themselves metaphorically welded to an image of lethal physical deterioration," and religious fundamentalists blame acquired immunodeficiency syndrome on the sin of homosexual acts. (Rubin, p. 34) The government relied on its Western religious principles in attempting to prevent the spread of AIDS. As opposed to embracing and funding safe sex education and drug rehabilitation for drug users, legislators focused on associating the disease with a homosexual lifestyle: "Those who are at increased risk for becoming infected with HIV are not eligible to donate blood. According to the Food and Drug Administration, you are at increased risk if: you are a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once." (www.redcross.org) There are several other criteria listed as putting oneself at risk for contracting HIV, but male homosexual sex is at the top of the list.
In every instance where American society or legislation has attempted to marginalize the homosexual identity, homosexuals have responded by claiming the identity more loudly. The first publicized and documented reclamation came in June of 1969 when gay men and drag queens fought back during a routine police raid of a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. Named after the bar, the "Stonewall Riots" nearly resulted in mass casualties due to the intense anger of the rioters—they had had enough. They wanted an end to the many years and instances of being prevented from the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just because of their sexual orientation. The first PRIDE was in June of 1970 to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Revolution, and more people attend more PRIDE celebrations every year as new cities join the tradition. Sodomy was still illegal in many states when cities had their first PRIDE marches, but homosexuals united and proudly stood in public to proclaim their same rights to freedom as the rest of Americans.
They have not been alone with their fights for equality. Organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (1980) and Lambda Legal (1973) are dedicated specifically to protecting the legal rights of America's gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender individuals and communities. HRC and Lambda Legal were created in direct response to legislative attempts to restrict homosexual behavior. The American Civil Liberties Union has legally fought for those people most underrepresented in United States government since 1920 and is nationally respected for its mission of "defending the bill of rights." (www.aclu.org) ACLU and Lambda Legal handle court cases concerning same sex marriage and sodomy laws among other issues. In the last twenty years at least ten state supreme courts have invalidated sodomy laws, and in 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional in the Lawrence v. Texas case. The history of sexuality has resulted in individuals being defined by their sexuality, thus laws against homosexual acts prohibit homosexuals from claiming who they are. Social and legal attempts to restrain the homosexual identity have been met with increasing support and power.
WORKS CITED
1. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert
Hurley. (New York: Vintage Books, 1980)
2. Rubin, Gayle. American Feminist Thought at Century's End: A Reader. Ed. Linda S.
Kauffman. (Cambridge, Ma: Blackwell, 1993)
3. Paris is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Videocassette. Miramax, 1992.
1)Sodomy Laws, A reference site for the history and current status of sodomy laws in the US and around the world.
2)American Civil Liberties Union ,Website for the organization working to defend the bill of rights.
| Legacy and Respect: The Usefulness of Feminism (re Name: Deborah So Date: 2004-10-18 13:37:58 Link to this Comment: 11114 |
1. that it will be enticing for prospective and current students and faculty, because it names their personal and intellectual interests and investments (while avoiding the word "feminism," which is off-putting to a large range of individuals)
2. that it accurately represents the current state of scholarship in the field
3. that it accurately names--and invites exploration of--where the interesting questions lie."
At the date in which this statement was composed last April, I probably would have agreed with its relevancy and reasoning. I no longer accept this line of thinking, however, due to my education and involvement in Anne's co-taught class I am taking this semester, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender. It is ironic that I began my study of gender four years ago as a freshman vehemently against feminism, and only now as a senior taking the only class required for every major or concentrator in that field have I come to appreciate the legacy and usefulness of feminism as a theory of practice and of education.
My original concepts of feminism were that it was a theory that denounced men and elevated women beyond a fair or equitable place in society. I recognize now the stereotyping that I inadvertently allowed myself to feel. "Equating feminist struggle with living in a counter-cultural, woman-centered world erected barriers that closed the movement off from most women." (hooks, p. 53). I was one of those women who was closed off, or rather closed myself off, from feminism. I viewed feminism as a means to an end wherein women would lobby their superiority over men and treat men in the same callous, unrecognizable way in which women have been treated by men for centuries. For me, in order to demand respect, it should first be given. I wanted to embrace a theory that was inclusive of all genders and not alienating any gender, even men. In order to change the tide of oppression and miscommunication, I did not want to contribute to an "eye for an eye" philosophy that derogated any gender from its opposite's perspective, and victimized all woman and vilified all men. This stereotype that I held that feminism only focuses on women is described by Allan Johnson,
"In one sense, critics are correct that focusing on women as victims is counterproductive, but not because we should ignore victimization altogether. The real reason to avoid an exclusive focus on women as victims is to free us to concentrate on the compelling fact that men are the ones who victimize, and such behavior and the patriarchal system that encourages it are the problem." (Johnson, p. 110).
What turns me off about this quote is that it actually doesn't empower women to be in a position of abuser, but rather gives that power only to men. Not that anyone should actually actively abuse anyone else, no matter their gender or sex, but rather the notion that the power that allows abuse is solely attributed and controlled by men and not women. Women can't hold themselves equal to men without also taking responsibility for the same privileges and faults that men have who exercise power against others. I felt compelled, reading quotes and thinking about arguments like this, to disagree with feminism because I believed it was advocating equal rights for women but not equal responsibilities and action ownership. It was quotes and thoughts such as these that made me question feminism's actual agenda. I did not want to exclude men from a discussion about feminism because they weren't female; to separate the sexes and create an oppositional binary, in which "any outside [men] is formulated as a consequence of a lack internal to the system [feminism' it supplements." (Fuss, p. 235). It was through my debates with peers and in my class that I realized my inaccurate and incomplete conception of what feminism as a theory actually constitutes.
"Deflecting attention away from stereotypes is necessary if we are to revise our strategy and direction. I have found that saying 'I am a feminist' usually means I am plugged into preconceived notions of identity, role, or behavior. When I say 'I advocate feminism' the response is usually 'what is feminism?'" (hooks, p. 55). I realized during the first quarter of this course that I did not fully understand what feminism was and was relying on stereotypes to typecast feminists into identities and opinion-holders that were unfair and ignorant categories. Through what I assumed feminism was, I felt that I could understood and judge what it's abilities were to do. I was signifying the word feminism with multiple, unequalizing politics and policies. I viewed feminists as individuals who only saw negativity in men and inter-gender relationships; that "Those inhabiting the inside [of feminism] can only comprehend the outside[males] through the incorporation of a negative image." (Fuss, p. 235).
I was unprepared to open up my mind to accept or embrace alternative definitions of feminism. "Like any other word, 'feminism can't be used unless it has meaning, and any meaning necessarily sets it apart from other possibilities." (Johnson, p. 111). I thought of feminism as being apart from what I deemed in my mind an overriding, inclusive category that looked at people not from the perspective of their sex but as human beings and individuals solely. I was concerned with the ideas that feminism was an inside category that excluded men, and was thus controlling and perpetuating the same judgment mistakes in regards to gender value. "...A commitment to being inclusive and nonhierarchical makes many feminists leery of definitions, since definitions can be used to establish an exclusive 'one true feminism' that separates 'insiders' from 'outsiders'." (Johnson, p. 111). My linguistic stereotyping created my false sense of knowledge in this arena and my conviction in the exclusionary quality of feminism. "Change may well happen by working on the insides of our inherited sexual vocabularies and turning them inside out." (Fuss, p. 239). I can understand why a departmental name change seems attractive, but it is my opinion that a reworking of what feminism and feminist theory mean and have achieved would be more useful than closeting it.
"Feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a ready-made identity or role one can step into." (hooks, p. 53), and "...provides an ideological basis for change on every level of human existence..." (Johnson, p. 102). By defining feminism as being "off-putting to a large range of individuals," the people seeking to change the gender department's name were actually acting against their own criticism of feminism. Through their narrow definition of feminism as being "off-putting" and not worthy of student' or faculty's "personal and intellectual interests and investments," their statement pigeon-holed the idea of feminism in exactly the negative way that they purport feminism to do. By excluding the term or the theory of feminism, the department is actually being exclusive instead of inclusive, which is the argument wielded most often against terms such as feminism! Instead of being afraid of politically charged terms, I think it is the duty of educators and students to embrace them and challenge their need for safety or complacence. "...At the same time that [feminism] can frighten us or make us feel uncomfortable, it can also empower us because it makes such compelling sense of what's going on and what it has to do with us." (Johnson, p. 115). By changing the department name, we are giving in to the pressures to be safer but less real. I personally did not come to Bryn Mawr or Haverford College in order to be reassured that all of my previous stereotypes in any field of study were true; I value the education, despite my initial reluctance, on feminism and its importance. By eliminating "Feminism", we ignore and offend the previous and current efforts of feminism as a movement towards change and improvement in gender relations. "Feminism is the only ongoing conversation about patriarchy that can lead to a way out." (Johnson, p. 130).
"[Feminism] played a part in most attempts to understand and do something about patriarchy and its consequences." (Johnson, p. 113). This to me has emerged as the most compelling argument in support of feminist study and practice. I now recognize feminism as a vehicle for discussing and dictating change in everyone's lives; women and men alike. Feminism has the history and legacy of uniting people of all genders to promote equal and legitimate interpersonal relationships and power structures.
"A broader and deeper feminism is about the very terms on which equality is figured. It is about women's right to participate as men's equal in society, but also about the power to shape the alternatives from which both women and men may choose. It's about behavior; it's about the power to change society itself." (Johnson, p. 119).
In other words, feminism is not stagnant or boring, it's useful. It is a valuable and politically valid tool for effecting and improving women's and men's lives. I do not devalue the term "Sexuality", in fact I find it a fascinating and thought-provoking concept. Gail Rubin writes, "...the relation between feminism and sex is complex. Because sexuality is a nexus of the relationships between genders, much of the oppression of women is borne by, mediated through, and constituted within, sexuality." (Rubin, p. 35). The department statement posits that removing "feminism" in lieu of "sexuality" incorrectly encompasses feminist theory. "Re-naming the concentration recognizes that the extension of these [feminist] theoretical initiatives and imperatives has led to a more comprehensive understanding of gender." To argue that "Sexuality" studies can take the place of feminist studies is misleading, according to Rubin. "Feminist thought simply lacks angles of vision that can encompass fully the social organization of sexuality....an autonomous theory and politics specific to sexuality must be developed." (Rubin, p.43). Johnson suggests that, "Some people...have declared a postfeminist era. But we aren't post feminism; we're in a backlash coming at the tail of a temporarily exhausted women's movement." (Johnson, p. 128). By asserting that the name change "accurately represents the current state of scholarship in the field" does not do justice to the current writers and passionate feminists today.
Finally, saying that students are no longer interested in feminism belies the research and thought that I have put into this paper and that of my peers who also have treated and debated this topic. I support the contemplation and study of sexuality, especially as it pertains to multiple disciplines and life experiences. However, advocating a new line of thought and education does not necessitate the negation of an influential and governing previous line of thought. "Personal experiences are important to feminist movement but they cannot take the place of theory." (hooks, p. 56). This is what to me signifies the greatest reason for keeping the name "Feminism" in the title of our Gender studies program. Without embracing the challenge of the word "Feminism", we invalidate the theories and movement of Feminism and its legacy. Without it, we would not be free to debate its merit in our classrooms today. For a true department and vision of inclusion, we must embrace and challenge feminism as an integral part of our gender and sexuality studies in the pursuit of a more perfect understanding.
Works Cited
Dalke, Anne. "Re-Naming the Feminist & Gender Studies Concentration:
An Account of the Past Process of Deliberation--and a Sketch Towards the Future." CAP doc. April 14, 2004
Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out." Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. 233-240.
hooks, bell. "Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression." Feminist Theory Reader. Ed. Caroline McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim. New York: Routledge. 2003, 50-57.
Johnson, Allan G. The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1997.
Rubin, Gail. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." American Feminist Thought at Century's End : A Reader. Ed. Linda S. Kauffman Cambridge, Ma : Blackwell, 1993. 3-64.
| The Power of Discourse in a Political Sex Scandal Name: Maureen Co Date: 2004-10-18 13:45:14 Link to this Comment: 11115 |
| this is a test Name: gus stadle Date: 2004-10-18 13:45:26 Link to this Comment: 11116 |
This is another paragraph..
| The Individual Experience in a World of Categories Name: Elizabeth Date: 2004-10-18 17:09:29 Link to this Comment: 11123 |
Lakoff and Johnson argue for an embodied mind, saying that our categories are based on how we experience the world through our bodies. According to this theory, as a result of their different anatomies, men and women would experience the world differently and their categories would be inherently different. Also, it would be expected that all women would share the same categories. Our class and our discussions have demonstrated a diversity of opinions and methods of categorization that refute this part of Lakoff and Johnson's argument. I think that Lakoff and Johnson were correct in saying that "the categories we form are part of our experience" (Lakoff and Johnson 19).
However, what they neglected to factor into their analysis of the way human beings categorize is the differences of each individual experience. Categories and their meanings are based on an individual's personal knowledge of the world, and that is why no category means exactly the same thing for more than one individual. I want to examine the categories of race and sexuality in Moraga and Delany to demonstrate the significance of the individual experience and its direct connection to categories. Also, I want to suggest that race as "other" is more problematic than sexuality to one's personal identity.
Delany's "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion" presents us with a series of troubling tales. They all originate within Delany's life, but his reason for choosing these particular tales is "precisely because they are uncharacteristic" (Delany 125). Even within one's own individual experience, there is an uniqueness to events. The category "gay" doesn't mean that the individuals who identify themselves as part of it will share an understanding of all that it has meant for one person to claim this label for himself/herself. Delany acknowledges that the identification with others that categories create is in a way false, "even the similarities are finally, to the extent they are living ones, a play of differences" (Delany 131). He emphasizes that much of the sexual experience remains outside of language. No everything will be shared, not everything can be. An individual's journey to claiming his/her own identity is entrenched in the personal journey, in occurrences both characteristic and uncharacteristic. However, maybe these "uncharacteristic" tales are not as uncharacteristic to his experience as Delany believes. It is fact that they are indeed a part of Delany's experience as a gay man, and he says himself that there is no universal "gay experience." What is Delany's basis for a gay experience when all he has is the complete knowledge of his own? I think that maybe this has been Delany's point all along. In the end, he denies the existence of a Gay Identity:
The point to the notion of the Gay Identity is that, in terms of a transcendent reality concerned with sexuality per se (a universal similarity, a shared necessary condition, a defining aspect, a generalizable and inescapable essence common to all men and women called "gay"), I believe Gay Identity has no more existence than a single, essential, transcendental sexual difference. (Delany 142)
I think what Delany is saying about identity is not restricted to the category of gay but can be applied to all categories. There is an illusion created by the nature of categories, which is that we can use them to relate to others. The words used to represent categories can be said to be meaningless in the respect that there is no one meaning that is held by everyone. The connotations of a word vary among individuals and what it is meant to inhabit a category is based on the individual experience and what the individual holds to be true. It is not the personal system of categorization that is problematic because as Lakoff and Johnson state, "every living being categorizes" (Lakoff and Johnson 17). It is not something that we as human beings are able to control but an action that is "an inescapable consequence of our biological makeup" (Lakoff and Johnson 18). The underlying problem of categories is related to language and its inability to capture the individual experience since by its very nature, language is about communicating with others. The act of putting our system of categories into language results in the category losing the individual's meaning. The category is now open to the interpretation of others and their imposed meanings. Now the individual's identity is called into question.
This struggle to maintain one's own personal identity is highlighted in Moraga's The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind. She insists that we invent ourselves, but the part of her argument concerning race is problematic because race is thought of as both biological and external. However, Moraga's way of living race is one that is impossible for most people to relate to. It is defined precisely by the fact that Moraga's experience cannot be defined by any category. Even though others may want to put her in the "biracial" category, her experience defies the limits of this category. She has experienced life as a woman who is white, Puerto Rican, Spanish, Cuban, brown, a half-breed, Chicana, etc. because as she says, "My lovers have always been the environment that defined my color" (Moraga 233). She is not simply a biracial woman; she has lived as more than that. Moraga's experience cannot be labeled by any one category. Her experiences as a woman of color and as a lesbian are intertwined; In Moraga's own words, "...we've know a lot of women. Why is it so hard to write of what we know about women? And much of what I know, I admit, is about race" (Moraga 232).
What are you?
Have you ever had to convince someone of your identity? Every time I tell someone that I am Irish, Italian, and Korean, I have to offer an explanation in response to his/her look of disbelief or puzzlement. With a smile on my face, I say, "Well, my dad is Italian, my mom is Irish-Italian, and my twin sister and I were adopted from Korea." Just when I think I see the light bulb of comprehension turning on above his/her head, I hear the next words out of his/her mouth, "Oh, so you're actually Asian then since your real parents are Asian, right?" Sometimes it feels as though I have to defend who I am, that there is a need for me to provide others with an acceptable reason for the claim that I am making in regards to my own identity. In the minds of these other individuals, Asian is a category that fits. Physically, they can look at me and see that I am Asian. Korean is the answer they are looking for if they want specifics because, once again, that makes sense and allows their systems of categorization to remain stable and intact.
"Call me something meant to set me apart from you and I will know who I am." (Moraga 237)
Cherrie Moraga's statement about difference sounds extreme at first, but in a way, as someone who is transracially adopted, I understood where she was coming from. The idea of categories as defining who I am unsettles me. Like Moraga and her refusal of the terms "biracial" and "bisexual," I don't want labels being imposed on me, trying to tell me who I am and limiting what my experiences have been with one word, a word that is meaningless compared to the individual experience that it is supposed to represent. I feel that there is something about categories that make identity problematic in regards to the individual. The confusion and bitter tone that I read in Moraga's tone do not only result from her inability to belong to any particular category but from her frustration that the individual experience is compromised by expecting us to limit and define what we have done and who that makes us by accepting the categories of societies. Moraga's experience reflects the inability of language to capture the individual experience. My reading of Moraga and more importantly, my understanding of her, was not so much about what her words were but the emotions and feelings behind them.
Delany's "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion" and Moraga's The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind are about the value of the individual experience, and yet, the reactions to them were very different. I think that the explanation for this has to do with language and the differences in the writing itself. The tone of Delany's piece is more of an appeal to the audience to re-evaluate the idea of identity. Moraga's writing is also meant to move others, but it is more defiant. She is resistant to the very language that she is using, resentful of the categories that are boxing her in. The inclusion of race and Moraga's argument that it is something that is outside of a category is more problematic than the Delany's idea of sexuality as being outside of language. Moraga's defense rests in her unique experience. Delany, a black gay man, makes practically no reference to its influence on his gay experience, whereas Moraga's race has been defined by each of her relationships. I viewed Moraga's refusal to have labels imposed on her as empowering despite her criticism of the particular labels. If the personal is political, shouldn't an individual like Moraga have the right to claim her own separate category? Delany is also advocating a kind of separation from a category. In his case, he is dismissing the idea of a gay identity. I think that at the heart of their arguments can be found the same message: we need (in the words of Gus) "to maintain the personal without collapsing it into the political." In order to do this, we cannot neglect the value of the individual experience by trying to condense it into categories, only to discover that the meaning has been lost.
Works Cited:
1. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
2. Samuel Delany. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996.
3. Cherrie Moraga. "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind." Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, eds. New York & London: Routledge, 1996.
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| Porous Boarders: Fetishism, perversion and the Gay Name: Rebecca Ma Date: 2004-10-18 20:33:47 Link to this Comment: 11124 |
According to Sedgwick, even the language used to identify the gay identity "queer" is non-referential. Queer describes the gay identity in as many uncharacteristic ways that fail to overlap certain individual homosexual experiences as it does in describing characteristic ways that overlap other homosexual experiences. Queerness is not always translatable just as being queer means different things to different gays. "'Queer' seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filiation" (Sedgwick 1993:9). Sedgwick contends that there always exists a performative aspect of the self in all the roles that people play, including the queer role. Thus queer is not outside of the performance. This description of performance as identity suggests that the retrospective act of interpreting performance constructs personhood. During moments of cultural misunderstanding and differences that cause personal stress and strains in individual access to self-representation of identity, a social actor has the ability to alter identity. By experimenting with who they are through sexual performance, people shape their sexual identities (Sedgwick 1993).
Building critically upon Delany, I call into question the accuracy of perversion belonging in marginal spaces. I specifically seek to analyze fetishism as a kind of perversion. If fetishism is understood as a fascination with a part of an object, which becomes superseded and defined by that part, then fetishism lives among the population of practicing heterosexuals performing conventional sexuality. Delany describes the perversion of the heterosexual desire. "It seems to me that when one begins to consider the range of diversities throughout the sexual landscape, then even the unquestioned 'normalcy' of the heterosexual male, whose sexual fantasies are almost wholly circumscribed by photographs of female movie stars! Suddenly looks—well, I will not say, 'less normal.' But I will say that it takes on a mode of sexual and social specificity that marks it . . . as perverse" (Delany) We are given a mental image of all (namely contemporary American) heterosexual males desiring the bodies of actresses, the hegemonic females. Applying the definition of fetishism, I interpret the males as fetishists and the female movie stars as fetish in the fetishistic relationship. The actress' collective hegemonic qualities: long legs, large breasts and thinness overwhelm their individual meanings as distinct, whole women and take on meanings in and of themselves. Long legs, large breasts and thinness act as parts, superseding the wholeness of the woman who owns and lives in these parts. The lunacy of this picture challenges both heterosexual male desire as normal and its identity's performance as conventional. The author uses the unquestionable normalcy of heterosexuality's category to cast into doubt the normalcy of heterosexual's particular behaviors as anything but perverse (Delany 1991).
Under the misunderstanding of fetishism's perverse status, convention assumes the non-reciprocal nature of fetishistic pleasure. Conventional contemporary Americans view that in a relation based on fetishism, only the fetishist experiences pleasure. The assigned unidirectionality of pleasurable fetishism suggests to it a violent nature, since one partner inevitably cannot partake in the enjoyment. This violence reflects not fetishism's nature, but the conventional definition's limitations. If the pleasure is mutual, then it is no longer categorized as derived from fetishism but S/M. In extension, convention conceives the possibility of mutual fetishistic pleasure to be limited to the area of S/M. The logic that convention uses in distinguishing fetishism from S/M is based on the directionality of pleasure: fetishism is unidirectional while S/M is bi-directional. This logic draws the borders between fetishism and S/M. I argue that the conventional logic is flawed, since it destines pleasurable fetishism to be violent, by relegating all mutually pleasurable fetishism into the category of S/M, which is violent, though consensual (Delany 1991).
Delany contests through personal experience, that within the artificial borders drawn by these conventional understandings lives a fetishism based on mutual pleasure, not limited to the specificity of S/M. Mike fetishizes Delany's running sneakers while Delany experiences pleasure from Mike's fetishization. In this fetishism, each person performs in a way that's complementary to the other. I interpret Delany's personal accounts as evidence pointing to the porous quality of the conventional border drawn. The pleasure that is supposedly belonging to S/M seeps into the area of fetishism. The pleasure from being fetishized can be explained by a Lacanian concept of the desire to be desired. The source of desire for one partner is the realization of being the fetish (Delany 1991).
If fetishism does not accurately belong to a marginal space, reserved for perversion, then gays, straights, women and men can all experience fetishes. The idea that women experience fetishism is opposed by psychoanalytics who deny ever having seen a female fetishist. Delany traces the notion of the absence of female fetishists to Freud. "The Freudian dimorphism in the psychoanalytic discussion of fetishism is one of the empirical disaster areas in the generally brilliant superstructure of Freudian insight: men can be fetishist but women are kleptomaniacs" (Delany 1991:129). Delany contends that the theoretical dimorphism does not apply to the actual sexual world in which women do experience fetishes. He describes a revealing personal experience to highlight the truthful identity of the fetishistic clientele. After meeting a husband and his wife, Delany discovers that she is sexually fascinated by her husband's dirty, work soiled hands. Considering his own sexual fascination with men's dirty, work soiled hands, the author argues that this particular sexual fascination is common to a heterosexual woman and a homosexual man. Both men and women experience fetishism and make various interpretations of it in retrospect. Their shared sexual fascination with men's dirty hands is congruent, though not completely translatable. The fetishists' roles differ but their performances are similar. If this specific sexual fascination can be called a gay man's fetish, then it is certainly also a straight woman's fetish. In turn, fetishism is an experience with congruent properties that seeps across the boundaries separating the sexes. Women can be fetishists (Delany 1991).
If the Gay Identity is non-referential and perversion and fetishism extend to spaces beyond their assigned conventional categories, then the boundaries separating them from convention are porous. Performance is identity with fluidity. Though not transcendental, the Gay Identity is marked. The Gay Identity, perversion and fetishism exists as objects in a contextualized world. Gay Identity's non-transcendental nature enables sexual experiences to be analyzed, understood, and empathized within a language-based and non-language based arena in which the meanings of the Gay Identity are contested (Delany 1991).
Works Cited
1. Delany, Samuel R. 1996. Longer Views. Aversion/ Perversion/ Diversion. Hanover: University Press of New England.
2. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke Universithy Press. .
| Feminism: Bringing the Outside In Name: Marissa Ch Date: 2004-10-19 13:15:18 Link to this Comment: 11132 |
There has been a great deal of discussion over the Feminist & Gender Studies Program changing its name to Gender & Sexuality. The basis of this debate is over the exclusion of the word "feminist" from the title. It is important to question how this modification will affect the direction of the program and the feminist movement as a whole. The categorization of this area of study must be sensitive to the complex social issues it represents. Bringing the term "gender" to the fore-front, and focusing less on women, is a necessary "part of the attempt by contemporary feminists to stake claim to a certain definitional ground, to insist on the inadequacies of existing bodies of men" (Scott, 166). This new spotlight on gender and sexuality does not detract from feminism at all; rather it represents the next step in the evolution of the feminist movement.
As Lacqueur stated, categorization "is an inescapable consequence of our biological makeup" (Lacqueur, 18). This is especially true in any college, where categories are institutionalized in order to help guide students along their academic path. It is hard to imagine academics as "a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience" (Lacqueur, 19). However, categories have a way of excluding some people, since people are diverse and do not fit into neat containers.
This holds especially true with the Feminist & Gender Studies Program. The term "feminist" is a category that many students do not identify with because of its history of race, class, and sex. Some female students are not comfortable with its overtly confrontational ideas and do not want to be associated with the "man-hating" stereotype that is portrayed in society. African-American students can feel alienated by this term, since past the waves of feminism did not include the plight of minority women for the most part. Men may not want to be identified as a feminist, and students who question their own gender may not think this movement really relates to their lives. This leaves a large population of the student body feeling outside the borders of the feminism, which directly relates to their lack of participation of the movement outside of the classroom.
On the surface, the exclusion of the term from the department's name is an effort to invite a more diverse group of students into the program. This change in the title also represents a change in feminism, one that seeks to focus less on women and more broadly on gender.
The history of feminists challenging the constructed norm for women has pushed the movement itself to the outside of society. It is crucial for the movement to retreat from the outside by being more inclusive of all the players in society, including men. Fuss asked the important question, "does one compromise oneself by working on the inside, or does one shortchange oneself by holding tenaciously to the outside?" (Fuss, 237) It is evident by where women stand in society today that feminists are only shortchanging the movement by excluding the rest of society by focusing on women and pushing everyone else "outside."
Women do not exist alone in society, and in order to change it there must be more factors included into the equation than just women. The retreat of women back into the home after "feminism" started shows that the role of women cannot change for the long-term unless society changes along with them at the same pace. Their new-found identity was not enough to stand up to the crushing pressures of what both men and the rest of society expected from them. Our history proves that re-defining women is not enough, and making real progress is dependant on re-defining gender.
Both sexes need to be explored and deconstructed, since "women and men are defined in terms of one another, and no understanding of either could be achieved by entirely separate study" (Scott, 153). The question we need to ask is not exclusively what our nation should expect from women, but also what our nation should expect from men, and what men and women should expect from each other.
The emphasis on "gender" instead of "feminist" "rejects the interpretive utility of the idea of separate spheres, maintaining that to study women in isolation perpetuates the fiction that one sphere, the experiences of one sex, has little or nothing to do with the other" (Scott, 156). True equality of the sexes can only be achieved when both of these spheres are examined and the rigid borders that exist between them are broken down. The collapse of this border is essential, since the existence of these separate spheres is what "hierarchal structures rely on," the "generalized understandings of the so-called natural relationships between male and female" (Scott, 173).
As long as men and women are regarded to be different in relation to one another, by the existence of gender roles, this binary opposition will always leave society to value men over women. The historical excuses men have made to suppress women's freedom, such as "we are just naturally better to handle the workplace and they are just naturally better tending to children," will continue to repress women's involvement outside of the home. These myths can only be abolished by discrediting the "natural tendencies" they are based on.
Feminism needs to rescue itself from this "stalled revolution." The fact is that while women have forged ahead, men have not been able-nor willing-to catch up. This phenomenon is clearly a problem for women who try to juggle work and family. There are numerous consequences for women, since they are not getting the support needed at home or in the workplace. Women are abandoning careers at their peak, because they cannot handle the lack of leniency from a male employer who does not understand the demands of a family along with "the second shift" their husbands conveniently delegate to them.
There is too much stress on modern women, because they are finding obstacles at every turn. Then, in turn, working women are blamed for every negative trend in society that relates to children, since they are "neglecting" their primary role as mothers.
Focusing on gender in the feminist movement is not only important so men can re-define their roles, but it will also change the definition of power as we know it in our society. This is because "changes in the organization of social relationships always correspond to changes in representations of power" (Scott, 167). The central inequality that exists today between the sexes is the monopoly men have over power.
Power, success, and money are interchangeable words that presently define goals in life. Feminist theory cannot just tell women to go out in the world and be as successful as men. The definition of success, which is recognized by our society, is based only on what men have constructed it to be. Since the man's historical role has been the "breadwinner," success is customarily measured by income and wealth. This is the basis why society devalues women who stay at home, since they are not achieving this masculine notion of success. Furthermore, women who do not conform to this ideal are rendered powerless and pushed into the private sphere-the home.
It was not a coincidence that just when women were flying up the corporate ladder in the 1980s, the fashion for the women in the workplace included shoulder pads and ties. Not only must women emulate men's goals, but the very essence of their femininity stands in their way. "Women started this conversation about life and work- a conversation that is slowly coming to include men. Sanity, balance and a new definition of success, it seems, just might be contagious. And instead of women being forced to act like men, men are being freed to act like women" (Belkin, 13). This freedom from traditional gender ideologies should now be the main objective, since what is needed to resurrect this revolution is "a radical break, a change in orientation, objectives, and vocabulary" (Fuss, 238).
When entering college, I never would have imagined I would be part of this program, because the only example of feminism I ever had was the one society provided for me. I felt on the outside of feminism, because I thought my interests in boys, marriage, and motherhood was not included in its definition. After learning what feminism really was during my sophomore year, I discovered I was not on the outside after all.
I have to admit that, at first, I was disappointed by the omission of the word "feminist" from the title of the program. At the time, I was just feeling at ease with my personal realization that I was feminist. I found myself feeling, once again, on the outside. I know after taking this class, that defining myself by any category is a wasted effort. The focus should be on who I am and not how well I fit into any category. I now understand why the only required course, one which concentrates on de-constructing gender, and the new focus of the program is the only thing that will save us all.
| Critiquing Gender Constancy as Practice and as Mod Name: Jana McGow Date: 2004-10-19 14:10:30 Link to this Comment: 11134 |
"What is REAL?" asked the rabbit one day..."It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
A current debate in Developmental Psychology centers around when gender labeling, identity, and stereotyping first occur in children, and how the timing of these events correlates with a moment in every child's life where they reach what is called "gender constancy." Gender constancy, briefly, is the knowledge that the mechanical sex one has been assigned will always be his or her sex, but also the knowledge that he or she will always be a girl or boy, and the characteristics that go along with that gender are a part of his or her permanent future identity. Before the age of around three or four, children state that they believe that they can grow up to be a different gender than they are now, and they can change genders based on how they dress or cut their hair.
I guess fortunately slower than many children, I struggled with this concept of gender constancy long after mastering that rabbit-hat illusion, and it never really caused me a great deal of pain or confusion until the end of high school. The fact that I never really liked girls, but that I was a girl never really occurred to me as a problem. Looking back now, I was such a contradiction because I did so many "girl" things, but I didn't think I respected "girl" things. I could easily observe and then decide not wear make up or high heels and my protests of "girl" were obvious, but I was quiet and polite in my way of acting and speaking I didn't have gender constancy when I was 3 or 4; I was 18 when I finally realized, "I'm a girl", and despite my respect for "boy" things, I was never going to be a boy, and although I could do as many "boy" things as I wanted, society would always treat me differently.. But now that I had gender constancy, I realized my problem: I had so much disrespect for these women who were like me, just playing their societal parts, doing what was asked, expected, and reinforced by society. My disgust with them was also a disgust with myself because my quiet personality although I embraced intelligence and challenge, showed that I too had been socialized, and I was being stigmatized unfairly for it. I no longer felt real or legitimate, and I was angry. From now on, everything I did I would have to analyze. As Samuel Delany sighs in his piece Aversion / Perversion / Diversion concerning the way the subordinate societal members must always analyze their own actions, and try to strip them of society to compare them to "reality", he says, "Gay Identity – like the joys of Gay Pride Day, weekends on Fire Island, and the delight of tickets to the opera – is an object of the context, not of the self – which means, like the rest of the context, it requires analysis, understanding, interrogation, even sympathy, but never an easy and uncritical acceptance" (142).
Looking at how the gender constancy theory as worked (or not worked) throughout my life for me, highlights the naivety of the theory, and how using rigid terms and concepts like gender constancy for studying psychology or history or society stifle the imagination and creativity necessary for acceptance in young children, and radical change in society at large. Rediscovering this pivotal point for me, and taking Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality, where I really looked at trying to define the word gender, I find I hate the concept of "gender constancy." I realize that even though the term gender constancy is used to study the origins of gender stereotyping so that we can learn more about them and how to fix them, the term itself is not scientific or objective mastering reality, it's about mastering the constructed reality that reinforces the gender and sexuality hierarchy. "Gender constancy" in young children is really the knowledge that the physical sex you have been given is attached to certain toys, but also certain characteristics, and eventually certain roles that you will be defined by and in relation to for your entire existence. This realization is a process that you learn more about throughout your life, not something you have the ability to comprehend in any way at three or four. How are we supposed to learn anything about changing the origins of gender stereotyping, if we are using terms that are so naive, unscientific, and unrealistic. How can we really expect children or anyone to come to terms with their "gender constancy", and isn't that feeding into the dominant culture's fantasy. Clarifying the definition of gender constancy in terms of the role society gives you rather than the role you feel a part of, unless you are a genius, means it probably doesn't happen at the age of three or four. Perhaps it happens most saliently at socially defined important moments like puberty, marriage, decisions to have children. But in some ways gender constancy can perhaps never really happen, at least not for the subordinate members of society.
We were asked one day in the same psychology class to come up with a way to get children to "override their gender stereotypes" based on our readings. We thought of lots of ideas, but as we kept going back to the readings, the scientific data was not encouraging. After reaching their definition of "gender constancy", Children were influenced somewhat by gender labeling, but children were more significantly and consistently influenced by modeling, and even more discouraging, they were influenced by stereotypes more than realities. Never mind that their mom drove them to school everyday, and their dad only drove once a year on family trips, "men were drivers." We could change the gender labels we gave toys and activities, we could even bring in women police officers or male nannies, but how could we change stereotypes children were getting outside the classroom, from home, from media, and from our own inability as adults to think outside stereotypes. After mulling in the impossibility of this for a while, I wondered to myself how teachers convinced their female students to try male professions when the stereotypes were more than commonalities, but absolute-isms. How did young girls thirty years ago ever decide they wanted to be anything other than teachers or mothers or nurses? The evidence of influence was important, but in the end it seemed limiting, and stifling of our creativity. How did those first teachers manage to override the evidence, and turn what their students knew about the world inside out? What did those girls discover that no one else knew? As Foucault in his "The Order of Things" asks, "But what is it impossible to think, and what kind of impossibility are we faced with here?" (xv).
I think this moment of frustration in the evidence in my psychology class captures the flaw in the argument for constancy. Foucault highlights this dramatically in his article "The Order of Things". This obsession we have with keeping things constant, keeping the boundaries, not ever crossing them, and then believing and explaining that this order and organization is responsible for the progression of a society. Gender constancy for example, is in young children a mark of intelligence, something highly regarded in today's society. Intelligence and acceptance seems to keep things in order and in this way keep people happy. Foucault in "The Order of Things" requests a wake-up call from history's attempted cause and effect view that there is an order, and if that order is changed, there is a method to the change. But after examining "the suddenness and thoroughness with which certain sciences were sometimes reorganized; and the fact that at the same time similar changes occurred in apparently very different disciplines," (xii) Foucault argues that in fact, change can and has come at random times, and this volatility is a reality that will endure. By even saying and believing that there is an order to things in history and in time, we make the white heterosexual male even more comfortable with his status by promising permanence. If we noted more the often abrupt and mysteriousness of some past moments of radical change in society, perhaps those with status would not feel so confident, and those in subordinate positions would not feel the limitations of a gender or sexual constancy. In the same way by noting the stubbornness children's stereotypes, we challenge teachers and scientists to come up with new ways of changing children, but we also discourage them and sometimes stifle their creativity to imagine a world outside of societal contraints.
I think Foucault would describe Gender constancy as a construction of order in society that is created by society, and is part of that order, but not necessarily a part of the reality of what people do or think in private. Even without or before the overall societal revolution, there is always a place in the here and now for subordinate people to feel, exist, and live as "real." Bell Hooks writes in Black Looks, about the film Paris is Burning, notes that "Much of the individual testimony makes it appear that the characters are estranged from any community beyond themselves." When I watched this film, I assumed that this was true, that they had been estranged from "any community beyond themselves." But, then I realized that Hooks is talking not of the community of large, but of the relative community of people we surround ourselves with that understand us. Of course for some, the places and people are more comfortable and easy to find than others, but at least they exist, and they exist for not a resistance of the way society perceives us, but a resistance of allowing that perception to affect us in a certain place with certain people. Our minds look for places where they can thrive no matter how hidden those places are.
Even in my fantasy world of a women's college, in the classroom I feel the effects of society, and I feel this is unfair because as a young girl I was given the same kind of reinforcement for playing my role that boys were given for playing theirs (praise, candy, allowance etc), but in my new college environment, being polite and raising my hand gets me labeled as weak. Where is my classroom rebelliousness you ask? I think I lost it somewhere in kindergarten. Bryn Mawr allows me to imagine that my female constructed ness is really just a part of my reality, and at the same time allows me to imagine a world where gender constancy is not something I will ever have to deal with. Places like Bryn Mawr although in society's context are a "fantasy" are important because they generate creativity in both the self and in ideas of society; here we imagine what a different kind of world might look like with an honor code and women playing the dominant roles.
Children before the ages of around three or four still believe in magic. They believe in Santa Clause, rabbits popping out of hats, and that though today they are a girl, tomorrow, if they wanted to, (or a fairy godmother said so, or if they cut their hair short enough) they could be a boy. Then, when they are "intelligent enough", they learn constancy. They begin to understand that the amount of liquid you have in your cup doesn't change despite the container you place it in, magic is really only optical illusions, and you will have their same body for the rest of your life, it will only grow and get older. Actual gender constancy, however, I believe, only really exists for the dominant group, because only they can truly match the ability to act as an agent or a subject with how they are viewed in society. Everyone else still lives in a fantasy world where magical things don't, but nonetheless, can happen. Accepting your gender is not an intellectual progression, but rather an acceptance of inferiority which stifles creativity, and it is not a description of one's personal reality. Society and science have some strange fear that change is disastrous, but in fact Foucault points out that change is a part of nature, a part of the human creative mind, and something we must learn to live with, promote, and propagate. Instead of obtaining gender or any kind of "constancy', more of us should follow Foucault's lead in "attempting to uncover the deepest strata of Western culture" and "restoring to our silent and apparently immobile soil its rifts, its instability, its flaws; and it is the same ground that is once more stirring under our feet" (xxiv).
Works Cited:
Delany, Samuel. "Aversion / Perversion / Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996. 119-143.
Foucault, Michel. "Preface and Forward." The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973. ix-xxiv.
Hooks, Bell, "Is Paris Burning?" Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992.
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| Breaching Borders: Identity and the Insiders Name: Nancy Evan Date: 2004-11-03 16:05:23 Link to this Comment: 11344 |
In her 1995 book, "On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood", Ellen Lewin presents the phenomenon of lesbian women who, through childbirth, gain access to the heterosexual community as an in-group member. At first glance, Lewin's observations seem to subvert traditional inside/outside ideology, portraying the boundaries of the hetero- and homosexual worlds as permeable rather than rigidly, relationally exclusive. A more exhaustive analysis, namely of the accounts of the women Lewin interviews, serves instead to reinforce inside/outside construction in relation to self and perceived identity. While the women are 'allowed' into the selective sphere of heteronormality, they do not cross these categorical lines as both 'lesbian' and 'mother'. This paper will argue that the terms 'lesbian' and 'mother' are mutually exclusive, perhaps not in reality, but in the capacities of identity, performance, and location within an inside/outside dynamic.
Lewin prefaces her analysis with a glance at the classic Western representation of the lesbian. This depiction focuses on the exclusion of lesbians from typical female roles of "motherhood" and "nurturing"; being a mother carried an implied notion of heterosexuality, therefore, lesbianism and motherhood "cancelled each other out in the popular imagination" (107). Indeed, many of the women surveyed shared the sentiment of motherhood as "overwhelming and engulfing other dimensions of their lives—including what they considered the lesbian component" (109). While this may be ascribed to the daunting tasks of mothering and childcare, the women pointed to a more self-appropriated explanation as they echoed one another in their tendencies to "downplay the significance of their lesbianism in giving accounts of themselves [as mothers]" (110). Simultaneously, these women were rooting themselves more deeply in the heterosexual world and losing ties with the homosexual world. Many of the reports quote the lesbian mothers as feeling stronger ties to the world they share with straight women than with other lesbians. Many felt the lesbian community to be unfriendly to lesbian mothers. One woman was even asked to leave her all-lesbian rap group after her child was born, as her fellow group members believed she was no loner "attuned to lesbian issues" (124).
The question remains as to why straight mothers, as a representation of the larger heterosexual community, would be so quick to ally themselves with lesbians, even lesbian mothers. For a scholar of feminist theorist Diana Fuss, this coalition seems to threaten the inside (read: dominant) status of heterosexual society. Fuss' notion that the "denotation of any term is always dependent on what is exterior to it" means that any group (in this example, heterosexuals) typically defines itself in "critical opposition" to that which it is not (homosexuals) (233). Not only does heterosexuality need the category of homosexuality to keep at a distance that which is undesirable, heterosexuality itself is threatened if homosexuality ceases to exist or becomes assimilated into the inside group. In a structure where existence is so dependent upon the joint processes of "alienation, splitting, and identification which together produce a self and the other", what is to be done with individuals who can be recognized as both the alien (lesbian) and the insider (mother) (Fuss 234)?
To add another level of specificity to Fuss' argument, and to attempt to answer the question posed in the last paragraph, let us further interrogate the identities of the women described in "Lesbian Mothers". None of the women in Lewin's study spoke of 'renouncing' their lesbianism; even if motherhood eclipsed the lesbian aspect of their lives, they would still respond in the affirmative if asked if they considered themselves lesbians. The important component in this situation is not, then, the actuality that the women were homosexuals but the rational choice of their own dominant identity and the corresponding performance of their homosexuality. The straight women who became compatriots to the lesbian mothers had no illusions as to the sexuality of their new friends; they knew these women were lesbians, but they also knew they were not performing the role of lesbian.
This brings us to the notion that it is not the existence of homosexuality that threatens heterosexuality, but the performance of it. The women were not not gay, they were merely not actively occupying 'gay'. There was no closeting, no attempt to "pass" as a heterosexual, not even any denying of actually being a lesbian, merely a swap out of a divisive identity for a more salient and harmonious one in order to move inward without difficulty. In this process, lesbian is not deleted, simply dormant. Fuss, channeling Foucault, concedes that "sexual identity may be less a function of knowledge than performance" (238). Yet this description of stepping out of lesbian identity without switching to the binary counter-part (or even another counter-part within the schema, bisexual, for example), upsets Fuss' claim of relational determinacy. What does it mean for an individual who is not performing a homosexual identity but also not performing a heterosexual identity? It means there must exist another space outside of inside or out that Fuss has neglected to name and "Not inside yet not outside yet not in between" somehow does not seem enough.
The theory-based analysis presented thus far in this paper does not address the potential moral implications of changing inside/outside spheres. Why do these women choose to become a part of a system that othered them in the first place? Taking into account the obvious social and political implications of being among the insiders, participating in heterosexual society seems to allow these women to escape from some lesbian norms. As one woman admits,
"Since I had [my daughter], I felt it was okay to do these things I've been wanting to do real bad. One of them is paint my toenails red. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to do it. I felt really okay about earinf perfume, and I just got a permanent in my hair... I feel like I'm robbing myself of some of these things I want to do by trying to fit this lesbian code. I feel like by my having this child, it has already thrown me into the sidelines." (Lewin 110).
Unwittingly, this woman has given us more of a space for lesbian mothers than Fuss can provide. Again, she is not attempting to be straight, she is just taking a break from her performance of lesbian and watching from the "sidelines". Some of the women also associate motherhood as giving them access to "sources of goodness" helping them "construct a satisfying image for themselves" that homosexuality, with its associations with deviancy and moral wrongness, can never provide (Lewin 110).
There are also women who enter the heterosexual world hesitantly. These women seem to recognize the current mutual exclusivity of 'lesbian' and 'mother' and, viewing heterosexuality as the site where motherhood can occur, decide to sacrifice their homosexual identity for the time being. These women overwhelmingly speak of motherhood as a temporal identity, one which they will occupy arguably until their children are old enough not to need the constant care of infancy. After this point, the women will embody lesbian again, letting 'mother' fall into the background in identity choice.
Evidently, Fuss is necessary as a locus for which to place the forces at work in Lewin's work. Yet she falls short to fully identify the differences between innate and performative identity and the implications these have for inside and out. It is these differences, as well as the task of finding space for those who move out of their own sphere and without renouncing it, that prove to be the logical next steps in Fuss' inside/out construction.
Fuss, Diana. "Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories". New York. Routledge.
1991. pp 233-239.
Lewin, Ellen. "On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood".
Conceiving the New World Order. Berkeley: Univ of California Press. 1995 Pp 103-121.
