Day: January 27, 2018

Hollibaugh’s main point in this paragraph is that the queer political movement has shifted from a struggle for freedom and sexual liberation to a movement for extensions of heterosexual rights to homosexuals. She complains that the current political movement is aimed towards “gay nuclear family rights and for serial monogamy” while it once aimed for sexual liberation. She concedes that there has been a great deal of progress in the current trends of the movement, with gender conforming gay people trying to fit in with the rest of society, but thinks that the gay liberation movement has lost something in it’s attempts to normalize queer people. She says that the gay liberation movement has shifted from a movement about a diverse culture’s freedom to a movement about normalizing a conforming subset of that community.

Wilchins claims that white American culture is one of the only cultures that splits sexual orientation from gender (27). On page 19, Wilchins discusses how this distinction might be questionable, giving the example of sexual orientation impacting gender expression in the form of clothing. She quotes a woman who wants the right to be a lesbian in her sexual orientation and also to look like a stereotypical lesbian in her gender expression with clothing. The first time I wore a tie around my parents, they exclaimed that it was for boys. That made me feel insecure and vulnerable. I think that the links between sexual orientation and gender expression are most obvious in people who fit into male/female, homosexual/heterosexual categories as binary oppositions, and that the connections between those aspects of identity become extraordinarily difficult to parse out for anyone who falls outside of either, or both, of those binaries.

Amber Hollibaugh claims that “gay liberation was the most passionately personal movement” that she belongs to. According to her, the gay rights and liberation movement made her face a lot of hostility and ridicule because of its rebellious nature. The paragraphs on page 264 and 265 of “My Dangerous Desires” speak about a gendered world where our beliefs and systems are incongruent with a world of only binary genders. She is claiming that our society has socially constructed the two genders: men and women. Due to the nation developing this type of heterosexual society, the gay rights and liberation movements caused a dramatic confrontation of what was perceived to be “the norm”. Hollobaugh’s main point seems to be that differing from the norm is so unheard of and therefore has become a large political issue. However, she believes that the gay liberation and rights movement has become “a movement for gay nuclear family rights and for serial monogamy.” Instead, she wishes for a movement that does not assimilate with a heterosexual society but rather can coexist and be something altogether new. In fact, she uses the phrase “we are just like them” distastefully and claims that the movement is trying to normalize queer people.
Riki Wilchins writes, “White American culture tends to be one of the few that splits sexual orientation from gender.” (27) However, person’s sexual orientation and their gender often force them to face similar societal or political issues and therefore join social networks or alliances. Both being oppressed minorities, it is easy to come together and form a more “powerful movement of political recognition.” In my own experiences, these alliances are recognizable in the form of “Gay Pride” parades in which the queer community comes together in order to stand up for their beliefs and challenge society’s heterosexual views.
-CB