Wrapping it all up...

Here we are, at the end of the semester.  I find it only appropriate to use my last blog entry to elaborate on what I've taken away from all of our wonderful readings.  While you may pick up on a slight hint of sarcasm in that last statement, I really do mean it sincerely.  Here's why.

I came into class without any real footing in philosophy, but simply an interest to learn more about critical theory.  The way I've come to appreciate critical theory is that it affords readers a way of slicing and dicing any given material in a thousand different ways, to read and understand and appreciate the subtleties and nuances of works of literature.  Being a pretty big reader of classical literature, I have always felt that, which each book I read, my world, my perspective changed.  And I honestly feel that literary criticism endeavors on just that -- providing a new lens through which we read, then understand, then see our world. 

Now, as highly as I regarded critical theory, I came in only with the brief introduction I was given in Eng 280.  Here I thought our class would simply be a continuation of this mixed-bag approach -- Post-Colonialism, Marxist, New American, etc.  So I was a bit (okay, a lot) dismayed after our very first day of class, when we were presented with Queer THeory: Issues of Embodiment.  I felt like the victim of a bait and switch. 

However, I'm so very glad I didn't bail on this class.  It has been such a unique experience, sitting in a room with highly-intelligent individuals, discussing the Butler and Foucault.  Reading these works weren't easy for me, but I'm happy to say that yes, Dr. Renzi, I've learned a lot.  A ton, really. 

Gender has always been a tenuous construct in my mind, and reading (and digesting with the help of our class discussions) has really opened up my views.  The beginning of the readings made me feel as though the idea of gender itself is a damaging one that serves as a vehicle for oppression.  But coming full-circle, Butler's suggestions in Undoing Gender resonated with me much more -- that gender itself is a social construction and performance, yes, but it is a reality that we must subvert and expand and problematize until it becomes a construction that is, at least and perhaps most, tolerable. And how can we do this?  Through continuous discourse.  Thanks, Foucault.  Discourse is an incredibly powerful force, a tool that we can use to shape and reshape our landscape, as he so loquaciously imparted to us in The History of Sexuality P.1.

So what has all of this done for me?  I have a new appreciation and understanding for how loosely defined the term "queer" can really be.  That queerness is one thing, but the embodiment of it is an entirely different level.  Certainly, my perspective on gender and sexuality has changed.  My views on the importance of others have changed.  And I’ve taken away an arsenal of knowledge that will augment how I read texts from here on out, always looking for the queer, always looking for seemingly strange notions of embodiment.

Thanks for a great semester.

- terese

Hung and the Oppressive Gaze of Others

As I’m working on my “theory” about the third parties that are imposed onto and invited into queer relationships, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means to present yourself to the world as queer, in any manner, really.

After we watched Clyve’s clip from Hung, I really got to thinking about returning to a former public as a newly queered body.  So you go through this pretty intense series of operations and transformations that no doubt requires a great amount of healing and adjustment.  And after all of that, you have to face not just your loved ones and those important to you in your life, but also be subjected to dissection by those from your “former public” (to borrow from Clyve), open for humiliation and pain at every turn.  This isn’t far from the experience that others must feel when they come out of the closet.  There is always someone else who impacts your existence, whether it’s intentional and invited or not.  I can’t even fathom the fear and trepidation that Kyla must have felt, and while the show is fiction, it’s most certainly an everyday reality for a so many people. 

So what does this imply for the living experience of a queer?  We’ve read about it and discussed a few different aspects, from being intelligible to the trauma of living amongst the always almost dying AIDS community. This got me to thinking of the endless number of ways that a marginalized life is intruded upon, from private intimate moments to attending a class reunion… sometimes simply walking down the street.  We’re social, relational beings, so this undoing and building of one another is inevitable, but it has been quite an experience opening my perspective up to the undeniable and grossly hideous ways in which queer lifestyles and bodies are regarded.  So, cheers I suppose, to this class further expanding my horizons, though it makes me just a bit sad to think about.

- terese

Gender and Kids: An Experiment

As demonstrated by my barely-changed version of Mr. Strong, I really struggled with the “queering” of the children’s book.  It really has nothing to do with a sense of deep-seated nostalgia, and certainly not a respect or reverence for the genre.  I just find that all matters related to child rearing are particularly delicate, impossibly complicated, and profoundly significant.  While a few whimsical, gender-reinforcing books will probably make no difference, I do believe that the long-term social conditioning that children receive can be absolutely defining and impactful.  Considering all of the mediums and outlets that we get exposed to, the implications are pretty scary to me.  So naturally then, I was afraid quite afraid to do anything too risqué, which, I suppose, shows you just how socially conditioned I am.

So, on a quest to find a children’s book that stars a queer child, I did a bit of Internet searching for a book that addressed gender binaries and queer children.  Surprisingly enough, I found the highly-praised My Princess Boy, which features a main character is a boy who loves dressing up in princess clothing, tiaras, etc.  Based on the book jacket, the aim is to teach acceptance and tolerance. Actually, the salesperson at the bookstore commended my purchase, saying it was a fantastic kids book.  I read it once and thought it was definitely unique in addressing such a touchy subject matter. But I had some reservations (which I’ll get to at the end of the post), so I decided to test it out on my niece, Nona.

A few things about Nona:

• She is the youngest of three, with two older brothers.  She is 5, with a 6½ year old and 8-year-old brothers
• She flatly refuses to wear anything pink, preferring camouflage and sports apparel.
• Since she could compose intelligible phrases, she has insisted that she was a boy and should becalled “Bobby.”  Only recently, upon starting kindergarten and being socialized with other children, has she openly referenced herself as a “girl.”
• She loves wrestling, very physical play.  She plays soccer, tee-ball, and ice hockey. 

I thought she’d be a good test subject, given she has a similar disposition to the main character,. Unfortunately, she didn’t really pay much attention to the book after about 3 pages). At the end, we recapped, and I asked her if she liked the Princess Boy.  I was expecting that, at very least, she could relate to a child wanting to be something he/she isn’t.  She said, “No. He has no face. And I don’t like pink” (which was quite prominent in the entire book).

After thinking about this for a few days, I’ve realized that there are some serious flaws with the book.  First, the book was written by a loving parent, from her perspective, and didn’t do much in terms of actually engaging a child.  More importantly, the overarching message I got, aside from parental love, was tolerance, not revision.  Since our Butler discussion on Monday, I’ve realized that, like she suggests in Chapter 1, we have to push not just for tolerance, but for a radical revision of how we define humanity to begin with.  By reinforcing that the Princess Boy's pleasure when dressed up in princess clothing is not normal and requires an open heart and mind, it feels like perhaps the author is unintentionally reinforcing his “queer”-ness.  It's as if she's confirming that wearing pink really is for girls but we should be tolerant if boys wanted to wear pink, instead of questioning why boys can't wear pink to begin with.  And none of the characters had faces drawn in.  I'm not sure why this bothered me so much, but it did.  Perhaps it felt a little less human, a little more...creepy.

Don’t get me wrong, books like this don’t really exist, and the fact that the subject is being worked into children’s books would probably give Delany some hope. I just think the book doesn’t really go far enough.  Maybe it’s a good first step, but is it (and will it) ever be enough?  I can’t imagine how difficult it is to create a book without gender bias and binaries, but apparently, it’s nearly impossible.

To end this post, here’s a link to a recent article showing just how far off we are when it comes to children’s books.

Gender Bias in Children's Books - NY Times 

- terese

p.s. For demonstration (and entertainment) purposes, here's my book critic, Nona, doing one-armed push-ups in her camo pj pants.

Gendered Languages in The Left Hand of Darkness

In completing The Left Hand of Darkness, the correlation between language and gender have come through quite strong for me. Much of the plot relies on the linguistic and cultural divide between Genly and Estraven, which no difficult doubt stems from their vastly different world views on gender. As we discussed in class, it’s to communicate without some common ground, a shared language, if you will. Indeed, their lack of a shared language structure made it impossible for each to convey the very core of their respective communication modes – Gethenian “shifgrethor” and Ekumen “mindspeech.”

When I say communication, I mean more than just the ability to decode a simplistic linguistic code to include comprehension, where both the speaker and receiver understand, even at a rudimentary level, the definition and context of the message spoken.  The message is more than a verbalized utterance of coherent phonemes, but an exchange of information.  In the framework of the novel, communication goes beyond Genly and Estraven’s ability to speak to (or perhaps more accurately, at) one another, but their inability to interpret the underlying meaning of each other’s utterances.  Accordingly, a mutually-intelligible, shared language must mean more than a linguistic structure, but a pragmatic awareness that supports the edification of ambiguous and polysemic messages.

Taking these thoughts in conjunction with our class material, I wonder then, what a decreasingly engendered language would mean for the idea of gender itself.  So much of our culture and definition of humanity revolves around the simple, arbitrary assignment of gender, and it’s restricted to the binary that we’ve read about all semester.  Those who fall outside and/or between our two restrictive categories are then alienated and seen, as Butler suggests in Undoing Gender, as less than human.  So what to do then?  We know that some genderless utopia isn’t possible, nor would it likely be ideal. But what if we could, through a drastic restructuring of our linguistic modes and models, impart a deeper level of empathy and understanding across genders?  Maybe, through shared experience and an, inclusive, mostly intelligible language, we could overcome some of the gender divide that separates the supposed “normal” genders and those who exist in the margins of said categories?  Maybe, then, the varying degrees of empathy and recognition would proliferate and instead of a binary, gender would be more of a sliding scale. 

This is all hypothetical of course, and probably a little bit too much of a “blue sky” idea.  I just find that, the more I think about the novel, along with all of our readings in class, the more I see just how stifling and damaging the gender binary can be.  And as an English student, I naturally gravitated towards the implications on (and of) language.

- terese

Desire, Discourse, Delany.

Since I didn’t’ get to discuss the Delany article in class, I’m going to dedicate a post to the reading. Simply put, I enjoyed reading every section of this discourse.  From Corduroy to AIDS, Delany pulls together the concept of discourse – “the structuring and structurating force” (5) – that continually (re)shapes what we believe to be true and natural. Reading Delany brought together so much of what we’ve discussed this semester in terms of queer theory. Here are a few connections I made to our readings thus far:

Space, Time, and Perversion: Much of the work we discussed from Grosz’s book discussed the perversity of lesbian desires. I find it interesting to tie into this discussion Delany’s notion of desire being foundationally centered upon “absence” (15) and “lack” (19). The idea that lesbian desires are perverse suggests that at the desires to love and be loved both have normative limitations. Grosz’s work suggests to me then, that desire for another, that void/lack/absence and subsequent desire to fill said void/lack/absence has heterosexual boundaries, so lesbian desires, which lie outside of these normative limits, are perverse. Perhaps more accurately, desire, as sadistic and masochistic as Delany contends, is a perverse concept in and of itself, so, lesbian, gay, straight, bi, etc desires are all deviant, really. 

Gender Trouble: Delany’s attempt to re-gauge Iva’s reading of Corduroy’s gender confirms a lot of what Sandra Butler presents in her work. Gender and its pretenses exist, and I think both Delany and Butler acknowledge this. But the arbitrary nature of gender – like the simple fact that Corduroy wears pants – makes it a troublesome and false basis for sexuality and societal expectations.

The History of Sexuality: The most significant take-away from Delany’s essay is the importance of discourse.  His many examples of how discourse shapes perception, helping to edify our understanding of not only what’s important, but also why and how it’s important.  He explicitly references Foucault’s work, but much of his work has echoes of just how significant discourse is in the history of humanity, and how it can mold and shape our perception in such deep and meaningful ways.

This was definitely my favorite essay thus far in our class. Delany’s stories and examples gave clarity while also adding humor to a rather serious meditation on, among other things, desire, sexuality, and concept of discourse surrounding these matters. 

P.s. I found myself completely surprised when Delany noted that he was a gay black male. For whatever reason, I thought of him as a middle-aged white man, probably of hetero persuasion. I just found that really odd that I had this assumption in already in mind. Maybe I’m just another cog in the machine…?

- terese

Works Cited

Delany, Samuel R. Queer Thought and the Politics of the Paraliterary. London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999. Print. 

Humanity through Death - AIDS

The photo that brought AIDS home

As we've discussed the multiple dimensions of AIDS at length on class, I thought I'd share photo feature from Time magazine.  Sorry this is a few weeks late, but I just remembered it this week, so...better late than never, right?

I'm a good deal older than most of the class, and I vividly remember the AIDS hysteria in the late 80s.  I was just in elementary school, but it was so pervasive, so sensational.  It was all over the news, and the only thing I can compare it to in more recent terms is something like when the bird flu broke out, and everyone started wearing surgical masks and talking about the dirty Chinese.  Only, with AIDS, the fear and persecution seemed to reach a more feverish pitch, with hate and prejudice being allowed in the name of public health. Looking back and reflecting on that time again in class has really given me a renewed perspective on the topic.  What I find most disheartening is that HIV and AIDS are still viewed as a queer/Black-American issue.  There are so many layers to this social issue that people fail, or refuse, to see.  I recall the media fuss over the Benneton ads, and never really understanding, or caring to understand.  Maybe I was too young, but even now, two decades later, I'm still grappling with the ads, and whether the company was exploiting a tragic phenomenon.

Peta's "duality" as noted in the captions is particularly arresting. Caretaker and patient, half-Native American, half-White, feminine and masculine... sick and strong. And the cyclical nature of discourse that Delany alludes to in his essay are embodied, quite literally, in the lives of the Kirby family and Peta. In these photos, I could see Crimp's mourning come to life as well, the physical incarnation of his words on paper.

Anyway, I don't think the feature needs any narration by me.  I just find it profoundly provocative and powerful, and thought I should share.

- terese

American Beauty... Beautifully Confusing.

Similar to my entry after Lars and the Real Girl, here are a few observations on American Beauty, particularly through the lens of our class readings.  There were a ton of issues related to gender, embodiment, and queer theory. I wanted to get these thoughts out prior to our class discussion to record them as unaffected as possible.

• The incest taboo was definitely present in this film as we discussed in class.  Colonel Fitts has homoerotic tendencies towards his son, which were really difficult to watch.  I found the tension between them, particularly the beatings, to have a very graphic and sexual undertone.  While the Colonel approaches Lester with his repressed longings, it feels like much of the homosexual desires he finally lets loose actually stem from his relationship with Ricky.
• This is the third time I’ve watched the movie, but this is the first time I really considered and focused on the gender tensions that are everywhere in the movie.  Lester is the poster child (man?) for performative masculinity.  Working out, being “cool” are all actions that he takes are surface-level attempts at embodying masculinity.  Angela and Jane also represent differing degrees of adolescent femininity.  In reading Halberstam’s passage on queer time being “stretched out adolescence” (154), the dynamic between Lester and Angela could totally be construed as adolescent and queer as much as it is heterosexual and, well, creepy.
• There’s definitely an air of subversion in the film, particularly with the Jims.  They’re the most normal, functional coupling in the movie, and they happen to be homosexual partners.  Their interactions are the most domestically sound, while Lester/Carolyn and Frank/Barbara are clearly troubled with deep-seated psychological and emotional issues.  I see this as a two-pronged attack against hetero-normativity.  The Jims represent the faithful, domestic bliss that hetero “time” represents, but subverted with the homosexual relationship.  Meanwhile, the “conventional” heterosexual couples are laden with some serious issues – Carolyn’s cheating, Frank seriously repressed sexual desires, Lester’s lust for a teenager – these all serve to question not only the legitimacy of hetero-normative institutions, but also the damage it can cause when forced and perpetuated onto the masses.
• I’m not quite sure what to make of Ricky and Jane.  Ricky seems to be the one person who “gets” it.  He turns his father’s supposed bigotry on its head, and sees the beauty in the simplest of things.  He relishes that the “faggots”(as Frank calls them) aren’t ashamed of their own identity, even in the midst of suburbia.
• I’ve always struggled with the ending.  While I’m almost satisfied with Lester finally coming full circle and ceasing to see Angela as an object of sexual desire, he’s killed by Frank in a blind rage after exposing his repressed homosexual desires.  There’s obviously the self-hate and melancholia that individuals like Frank must feel, but what does him killing Lester say about these multi-layered tensions of gender and alternative sexuality?  I’m still not sure what the overall message is, and viewing the film with our readings in mind only further complicated my thoughts. 

- terese

Works Cited

Halberstam, Judith.  In a Queer Time and Place – Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives.  New York: New York University Press.,2005. Print.