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.

The Problem of "We"

This will probably sound more like a blog post for a sociology class, but I feel like our studies on queer theory have such close ties to sociology that I’m going to post anyway.

As we discussed in class today, I’m really struggling with the recurring “we” theme. At the very beginning, Butler’s questioning of “women as a subject for feminism” on the very first page of Gender Trouble seemed to really hit home for me.  How could we possible group together such massive collection of disparate individuals and their respective identities into a concise, all-encompassing label?  While I understand entirely that this collective mass is clearly effective in garnering social and political power to change (or at least make strides towards progress) the oppressive conditions of an otherwise oppressed class/category, it just seems like the benefit of “we” seems short term.  When constructing and defining this political body, it’s inevitable that the individual identity gets sacrificed for the greater good, but it seems like this sacrifice will only come back later to undermine the movement itself. 

Take today’s example in Chapter 5 of An Archive of Feelings. The masses of those affected by AIDS were indeed secular – gay men and African-Americans in particular.  And ACT UP created this coalition whereby those affected by AIDS and HIV+ joined arms for greater political mobility.  But what about each individual’s own identity, whether it be as a lesbian drug addict who happened to be HIV+ or a high-femme activist who was shamed by her own identity?  What about Eve Sedgwick’s idea that all it takes is a compulsion to identify with queer to be queer… that somehow, this revolutionary idea was less convincing from an individual that otherwise fit the expected, heteronormative American dream?   Or how the most convincing and supportive activists in ACT UP would be looked down upon, less effective if they were to partake in hetero pleasures?  It seems ironic that the plurality of “we” can become an oppressive singular identity.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with Sedgwick, but I don’t live in some fantasy world, wishing that everyone could just accept each other without categorization or expectations. Like I said, I understand the need for political and social mass in order to incite change.  But I guess this post is just me, trying to work through these tensions I feel in regards to any type of movement or collective “we.”  It’s something I’ve struggled with for quite some time.  In a similar matter of identity politics, I feel very strongly about the pan-continental term of “Asian-American” that is so readily applied to me.  My black hair, smaller eyes, yellow-toned skin are also irrevocable differences that will forever mark me as the “perpetual foreigner.”  And, like the AIDS movement, an Asian-American movement started in the mid-eighties in a quest dig out of the political margins to which ethnic minorities are often relegated. I don’t, in any way, shape, or form, want to minimize the mortality and pure significance of the AIDS movement by comparing it to Asian-American identity politics, but there are similar traits of erasure and denial that run through both. In the journey towards progress, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and other ethnicities that shared a similar physical typecast were all suddenly Asian-American.  What is Asia really?  Why is Asian-American only coined for Southeast Asia, but not India, Russia, Kazakhstan?  Who decided all of this?  The differences and nuances between each country are astronomical, and our individual immigrant heritage was sacrificed in favor of progress.  So where does this leave me, who am I?  An Asian-American of feminine persuasion?  An American woman with Vietnamese heritage?  A woman?  A supporter of “queer” orientations, or perhaps more likely, queer myself? 

I draw this comparison, because I felt a similar sentiment in some of Cvetkovich’s testimonials, where individual identity is forfeited for a greater cause, where activists were ashamed and/or secretive about their own sexuality.  Can "we" ever get to a point where identities aren't so politicized?  Likely not, but I suppose we can keep working towards more expansive, accepting modes of identifying ourselves and others?  There’s obviously no answer to any of my questions, and I suppose I’m not really looking for one.  I’m just trying to reconcile this need I feel to recognize so many more facets of identity that go beyond the restrictions of discernable traits, whether physical, behavioral, or other.  I have no idea as to how this could realistically be facilitated, but I also have no idea how I could ever be okay with being relegated to choosing one, or even a few, comprehensive categories in which my true individual identity could fit.

- terese

Works Cited

Butler, Judith Butler. Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge Classics, 1990. Print.

Clare, Eli. "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness." Public Culture, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 359-365. Print.

Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press. 2003. 

Musings on "Lars and the Real Girl"

Oh Lars. 

There were so many gems within this movie that I want to discuss in depth, but I thought perhaps I should save that for the paper, and list some quick hits here that I thought really made the movie. 

I really liked the blatant irony of Lars’ chaste relationship with a sex doll; that an anatomically correct doll actually underscores his decency and wholesome sincerity.  I also liked how shocked Karin is when seeing that Bianca was indeed anatomically detailed under her skirt.  I mean, really, what did she expect to see?

Gus and Karin represented the embodiment of heteronormative behavior to me.  Yes, Lars was socially awkward and a bit unstable.  But their concern form him made it seem as though his solitude and withdrawn nature was some sort of illness that could be fixed with a romantic relationship (with one of the feminine persuasion of course).  Gus asks to “fix” Lars who, aside from his single status and awkward mannerisms, seems completely functional.  He has a job, he drives, he eats, he exists.  Then, when he brings home exactly what they expected – a girl / companion – but in a form that didn’t fit heteronormative expectations, he was deemed to be even crazier.  This isn’t taking away from the fact that they seemed to genuinely care for Lars, it’s just that their desire for him to be “fixed” seemed to mean that he should land a girl, get married, settle down, and have children. In other words, a conventional heterosexual life that fits into the heteronormative hegemony.

Perhaps Sedgwick’s right, we’re all a little queer, a little crazy.  An entire town is convinced to not just tolerate Lars’ quirky behavior, but to see his delusion for themselves. At first pass, this can be a testament to some idyllic idea of the human condition, but it shows a little bit of a psychological weakness we all have in our capacity to empathize with others, particularly those we care about.  We care… so much so that we’re willing to personally identify with others, and applying it to Sedgwick, perhaps it takes mere identification with “queer” that makes us so.

I thought the tie-in of religion was brilliant.  If only all organized religion could preach and practice such tolerance and respect for one another, particularly those considered “queer.”   Mrs. Gruner and her friends are particularly endearing for some reason.  Older folks who display sage wisdom and overall sensibility always win.

The tie between childbirth and death was interesting.  Lars sees childbirth as dangerous, and explains this to the doctor.  Maybe part of his aversion to Karin’s touch is really his fear for her impending labor.  While this fear is easily explained by Lars’ mother dying during childbirth, it’s also an intriguing concept.  Childbirth, in most hetero situations, is a marker of life, a celebration.  But for homosexuals who are biologically incapable of producing life in the hetero convention (and are further denied from means of adopting and raising children in their own right), childbirth takes on a different meaning.

I drew some correlations between Bianca, Margo’s teddy bear, and his cube-mate’s action figures.  All of these are inanimate objects that are given human-like importance and characteristics.  These are akin to the dolls that are used throughout Misfortune.

Lars, like Rose from Misfortune, has some gender issues that are tied with coming of age and growing up.  When he tells Gus that Bianca’s culture has ceremonies and rites of passage that confirm an entrance into adulthood and manhood, I get the feeling that Lars himself is looking for ways in which he also can know that he is a man.  In the same vein, Rose never truly cements a stable identity until (s)he comes to terms with her physical and mental state of mind in terms of gender.  It almost feels like part of growing up, at least in these two works, means finding asserting a gender and committing to performing this gender, both in private and in public.

All in all, a thought-provoking movie that was funny, but more so at times, quite sad.  Feel free to share the moments and highlights that you found funny, ironic, profound, etc.  

-terese

You go girl!

CNN: Why Men Are In Trouble

So I read this CNN article and laughed, for many reasons.  “Why Men are in Trouble” by William J. Bennett.  While I recommend reading it (if anything, for a solid chuckle), here’s a quick synopsis, as defined by the story highlights:

•  William Bennett: Women have made huge strides in achievement
•  He says men have fallen behind, now accounting for less than half of college degrees
•  Men are more distant from families, many don't have jobs and lack maturity, he says
•  Bennett: We need to teach boys the things they need to thrive as men 

The article goes on the cite statistic after statistic that women have indeed made great strides as a gender.  The saying, “You go girl!” as apparently been adopted by all women, and now we should worry about men and their inability to perpetuate a society that is suffocatingly masculine.

Bennett focuses a significant portion of his argument on employment and marriage, on the “founding virtues – work, marriage, religion,” That women have seemingly taken over the working force, and are having babies willy-nilly without the involvement of the father.  The irony, to me, is that this is opinion seems so deeply rooted in capitalism and economics, as Foucault suggested.  Human capital is all we are in the eyes of society, right?  And now, the human capital is being swayed toward the supposedly feminine.  Women are taking jobs and salaries, and they’re adding new members into society that aren’t raised with the proper respect for the power of the penis.

My apologies if I don’t appear apologetic.  With all of there readings in class, I feel as though we’re back to square one – at least with this article.  Bennett works with two very defined categories – men and women.  There is no in between, only black and white.  Here is the real world, well, at least the world in which I reside, the grey matter is where most individuals fall.  Aren’t we all queer, really?  There is certainly some truth in Sedgwick's suggestion, that it only takes a thought, a “compulsion” to speak of ourselves as different to truly be different.

While I understand that, to make an effective social commentary, one must create these categories, to create the political unit, as Butler noted.  But to adhere to such an outdated, exclusive dichotomy suggests to me the very opposite of what Bennett is claiming.  We can’t have made so much progress if we feel we’re ought to focus on “teaching boys to be manly men.”  How about we teach our children to be good people?  To teach (and more importantly, demonstrate) what being an upstanding individual, a responsible citizen entails, not how to focus solely on gender-specific scripts that will inevitably hinder their enlightenment and progression as adults.

I’m not calling for some utopian ideal where gender doesn’t exist, though I may sound a touch bitter.  No, there just needs to be recognition of the many, many categories and identities that lie between, outside, and of course, within, “man” and “woman,” boy and girl.  I have an answer for Bennett, who laments the increasing complaint of most “girls” – where have all the good men gone?  They’re apparently busy working on finding their mid-20^th century “virtues.”

-terese

The Economics of Drag

 It’s interesting that, no matter how marginal a subgroup can be in any given society, that economics is still a ruling factor.  Mother Camp outlines the social hierarchy within the world of female impersonators, from the lowly street fairies to street impersonators and the upper echelon of stage queens, with the ultimate dream of being “legit” in Hollywood as a mainstream actor. 

Throughout Newton’s selection, it was apparent that the relative success of an impersonator depends on how well they can compartmentalize their lives, separating their performance from their personal lives. The lower-tier street performers lived in “residential groups” that served to “fuse the work and home lives” (13), while the more successful stage queens lived shockingly normal lives, living “farther away from clubs…and they almost always live alone” (17).  They have clean living quarters and appear to be almost normal, straight males.  There seems to be resentment and contempt towards the lower classes who cannot clean themselves up and appear straight and “normal” – whatever normal could possibly mean in this otherwise “deviant” lifestyle.  The most successful, like Wanda, are shockingly normal in their outward appearances.  And the epitome of their craft would be to achieve status as a mainstream actor, to go “legit.”  This seems to suggest then, that success, as defined by female impersonators, is to be as seemingly normal as possible, outside of their performances. 

Part of this quest for normalcy seems rooted in economics.  If one lives their live – both professional and personal – immersed in “street” affairs, then it’s likely that one can never been seen beyond the deviance that the lifestyle represents.  The more one is “normal” (read: hetero), the more stage success.  And the more stage success, the more financially stable.  It’s ironic that, even in subversive cultures, the dollars and cents of economic standing still define the structure of the hierarchy.  It’s a bit disheartening to see that, even when these performers are pushing the social boundaries of gender and sexuality, they’re still confined within the operations of a greater economic sphere, and still required to conform in order to escape the street lifestyle.

Works Cited

Newton, Ester. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators In America.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972. Print.

Queer Self-Identification

A common thread I’m finding as I continue to post blogs is the prominent role of identity politics in our discussions so far.  For the first time though, Queer and Now gave a modern face to the theory that Foucault and Butler have been building in terms of gender and sexuality.  This isn’t to say that either theorist’s work felt outdated, but more that their work didn’t seem to put as much of a name and face on the many underlying issues of queer theory as Sedgwick’s work.  Her introduction provided the back story we all (unfortunately) know so well now – and that is the inner struggle of those marginalized as sexually queer.  Ironically enough, the suicide numbers and statistics actually make the issue more human, providing a more tangible humanity than Foucault and Butler’s academic prose. 

In reading Sedgwick, I felt the weight of the word “queer,” with all of its social and political nuance, seems to be almost destructive.  In a hegemonic structure that perpetuates the notion of the heterosexual couple as the standard unit by which all others are measured, anyone residing outside of this restrictive definition is then marginalized, polarized, made deviant.  It’s a heavy word, one that carries so many implications, in both self-perception as well as societal judgment.  It’s extremely curious to me, then, how Sedgwick proclaims “queer” to be merely a matter of self-proclamation; that if I believe myself to be queer, I am.  And we can get into the solipsism of this statement, or maybe the semantic/syntactic/pragmatic study of such declarations, but I’m struggling with something a bit higher here, more simplistic.  Is it really that easy to “claim” an identity? 

After further reflecting on our class discussion around the agency and authenticity of queer self-identification, I found myself having a bit of a “light bulb” moment.  If we say, “I think, therefore I am,” than Sedgwick is correct.  She – a queer theory pioneer, an oft-quoted queer theory guru – is the most shining example. As a woman who, aside from her profession and area of expertise, can be seen as the very definition of the conventional heterosexual dream, in a long-term seemingly functional 40+ year life partnership and marriage…with a man.  No, she didn’t exactly fit the bill of a queer pioneer, but her position in academia and in queer theory remains the same, regardless of what she “reads” like on paper.  She clearly internalized and empathized with the term and those who embodied this identity.  So maybe what Sedgwick means, is that all one needs to do to be queer is not just he “impulsion to use it in the first person,” (9) but to know it – that is, to acknowledge, to understand, to empathize.  We wouldn’t feel a compulsion to self-identify unless we felt some level of understanding, some true reason to claim the identity as our own, so if you feel it, if you know it, then you are.  And in this way, then Sedgwick, regardless of her marital/relational categorization, is queer.

Sorry, no deep philosophical ruminations here, just a pretty simple revelation for me about Sedgwick’s work and it’s relation to the Cartesian duality.   

-terese

Works Cited

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Duke University Press, 1993. Print.

Talk is Cheap

As our discussion of Foucault’s History of Sexuality continues, the correlation between restriction and discourse – or perhaps more appropriately, restriction through discourse – becomes more and more evident.  While the notion in and of itself isn’t groundbreaking or mind-blowing, it certainly has me thinking more critically about the constraining effects of a gender-based language, which Butler introduced via Luce Irigaray.  Indeed, perhaps gender discourse, similar to sexuality discourse, has been effectively policed by a faulty language that, whether intentional or not, serves to limit progress and legitimacy.

In class, Foucault’s “’discursive fact,’ the way sex is put into discourse” (Foucault 11) suggests that, while we may speak much about sexuality, the way in which sex is discussed is perhaps more indicative of the true nature of sexuality than what is said.  Our class discussion of the many types of paraphalia was a perfect demonstration of how the “scientification” of sex, while allowing for a supposed objective discourse, also allows those who do not fall under these clinical categorizations renounce these as alien, deviant behavior.  It acts as a mechanism for those outside of the categories to judge and marginalize those who have been deemed as deviant.

Similarly for Butler and Irigaray, the very basis of discourse suggests oppression, with the “totalizing goal” of excluding the feminine altogether through a “phallogocentric signifying economy” (Butler 13).  It follows then, to suggest that one of the biggest hurdles to some semblance of a comprehensive, unbiased gender discourse is the lack of a language through which we can conduct this discourse; that the discourse itself, whether seemingly progressive, is self-defeating in terms of the “other.”  If we operate through a structurally weighted language that is indeed phallogocentric, then any communication that does attempts to open up discourse on gender roles outside of the dominant role is rendered ultimately futile.

As we read more and more of these foundational texts, many commonalities and correlations are starting to emerge.  The most problematic to me at this point is this very point – that the existence of discourse doesn’t carry much value if the manner in which we communicate it, and the language through which we conduct it, is inherently fallacious.  Both Foucault and Butler seem to be driving this point home to me, which has me questioning all sorts of “progress” we’ve supposedly claimed in identity politics that goes beyond just gender, but also ethnicity, religion, political persuasion, etc.  Like the title suggest, I suppose I’m seeing just how cheap our “talk” can be and has been.

-terese

Works Cited

Butler, Judith Butler. Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge Classics, 1990. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 – An Introduction.  Random House, Inc. 1978. Print.

The Circular Reasoning of Gendered Identity Politics

In discussing and unpacking Judith Butler’s first few chapters, I found the issue of identity politics – and particularly, the role of gender in said political machinations – to be quite problematic.  As Butler notes, “the question of ‘the subject’ is crucial for politics” (Butler 3).  

Herein lies the issue though, at the very definition of the political subject.  The very basis that there exists a subject, a quantifiable entity or defining characteristic that galvanizes a political “body” implies that there is indeed an identifiable being known as “woman.” It requires a commonality, some sort of (nearly) all-encompassing umbrella under which countless subscriptions can huddle. But what is that commonality?  How is it defined?  Is it the physiological features of the female body – as in, anyone with female reproductive organs?  Or is it culturally contextual, revolving the execution of performative gestures that suggest feminine (like Eddie Izzard)?  Are identity politics (in relation to “women”) really that simple?  

Butler certainly recognizes this “assumption that the term women denotes a common identity,” that if “one ‘is’ a woman, that is surely not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive…because gender is not constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts” that “intersect with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities” (Butler 4). Indeed, attempting to embody (pun intended) identity in such a comprehensive manner cannot only be bogus, it can be quite damaging. In the process of activating a political body, we are obscuring other facets of identity, and in some cases, erasing them, for the sake of progress.  But then again, as Butler notes, without a subject, how does one make the political and social strides that the feminist movement has undoubtedly secured?  Although it feels a bit like circular reasoning, I do feel that this discrepancy is increasingly significant, and one that is worthy of considerable thought.

I suppose the question I was left with (among many others, of course) is -- How can we reconcile the need for political agency through mobilized masses, while still maintaining the significantly unique identity of constituents?  In the highly-charged and diverse political arenas that we now operate in, is the construction of gender outdated, and if so, can we ever get away from our reliance upon such an ingrained structure of thinking and judging?

- terese