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
Interesting post, Terese. I like Clyve's use of "former public" - I think in general there's a very negative response that occurs when someone dramatically thwarts our expectations in such a specific (and often sexual) way. Sticking to the topic of reunions, it's one thing to hear either positive or negative developments about a person - I don't know, someone getting married, someone doing really well for themselves when you thought they'd never get a job at all, someone who's become unexpectedly attractive, someone who's picked up a substance abuse problem - the list goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteThe difference with Hung, to me, is that this "former public" is being asked to go back and reevaluate their thoughts on Dan/Kyla entirely, because they knew him in a particular way and now have to renegotiate what they thought of him/etc. That's shallow, sure, but they do have to do it. And it isn't simply a matter of surface change (e.g. a woman coming back as attractive when she used to be significantly less so); Dan actually physically becoming a woman forces these people who knew him as a man to recognize that they had a flawed interpretation of him in the past.
I loved our talk in class on this, as it's difficult to pinpoint when exactly we are to consider "Dan"/Kyla as a woman, especially as she seems to have consistently identified as such. But clearly, as Dan, he was taught particular things from birth that coded him in particular ways... I don't know. I think what I'm getting at is that given the current predominantly binary/heterosexual gender structure in our society, anyone who is queer is going to have to go through a tremendous internal process, and that internal process is pretty consistently going to become less an issue of private space and more an issue of public one. That's unbelievably sad, when you think of how traumatic it would be for everyone you used to know in high school to suddenly be intrinsically and pointlessly involved in your private space.
And I think it's unfair to say that Kyla should just not have gone to the reunion, because that still doesn't constitute an invitation to make her private space public. You've raised some interesting questions about public/private space for me in class, Terese, so I'm really glad you've blogged about it as well. Best wishes on the project!
Terese,
ReplyDeleteTouching post and good points! I also very much enjoyed Kelsey's comment and I believe she has a good point. I feel that when someone comes out of the closet or gets a sex change it is often times a more traumatic experience for all involved because it is tied so much into the fundemantals of being a human- identity. When someone gets a new job, gets married, develops a drug habit or anything else that happens to people that others find out at class reunions, these are all things that happen to someone. If someone gets a sex change or comes out of the closet however, this is a dramatic change to their identity. This causes cognative dissonance in the public because they had defined a person one way and now they are another. The same thing happens with the person who is experiencing this radical change because they are finally recognizing and acting on a part of themselves that the previously supressed-which fundementally changes their identity. All in all, great post!
Michelle