When Amber Hollibaugh discusses the gay liberation movement as something that morphed into a “tame civil rights challenge”, I view it as her dissecting the differences between liberation and assimilation. In the reading she speaks about how her role in femme/butch relationships has lead to her being assumed as heteronormativity in disguise, that she would be better off with a “real man”. She uses this to argue that the gay liberation movement has been reduced to “a movement for gay legal rights” that closely resemble the rights of heterosexual couples. (265)
In this regard, I agree with her—the aforementioned liberation and assimilation have many differences between them that are representative of our society and how we interact with it. For many queer people who do not fit neatly within a cisnormative or binary way of looking at sexuality or gender, the notion of getting equal rights in society is mainly about re-defining what society’s definition of self expression looks like. Based on her usage of gendering her partner’s genitals earlier in the beginning of the article, I don’t get the impression she has a nuanced understanding of trans issues (“man cock” comes off as bioessentialism from Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists), but that is what I take from her position on the article.
Riki Wilchins writes that “White American culture tends to be one of the few that splits sexual orientation from gender.” (27) An example she provides is from David Valentine, who argues that a black femme-queen on hormones would more likely identify as gay or queer as opposed to transgender. This is an interesting perspective because of the presence in the drag community (including forerunners like Ru Paul) regarding conflating gender identity and sexuality in a negative way, saying that gender is only performative and those who take it too seriously are to blame.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with her point, though—I do think the issue of gender being separated from sexuality does play a role in a white, American society. Another example I can think of is the aforementioned conflation of acceptance with assimilation, referencing what was mentioned in class in response to the Dan Savage video as “nuclear families, but gay”. I would argue that both the aesthetic and the societal structures that perpetuate this lifestyle are rooted in White American culture.