Author: JB

When referring to “the burden of scarcity” (Grover 187), Jan Zita Grover is speaking about the problematic nature of a certain subject or identity having no precedent for representation in society. As a result of this, there are a variety of viewpoints that may follow, all revolving around the interpretation of the significance of actions within a marginalized group.

For example, when there is no representation, “the unseemly [behavior] of even one member – or one representation – carries a far greater significance, a much heavier burden” (187). This can create pressure on certain individuals to either fit in with/recreate behaviors of others in order to identify with them or even make one feel like their identity and expression isn’t welcome. Both of these perspectives can be seen in response to mainstream media, which largely focuses on cishet, white narratives, characters, and storytelling. Through this, queer people and people of color may feel isolated and pressured to fit within these narratives where their struggle may be a side point, supplementary to the narrative, or completely ignored altogether. This also makes it difficult for those who have existed beforehand to leave a precedent for future generations to go after, a definite problem within queer culture and studies.

Grover, Jan Zita. “Framing the Questions: Positive Imaging and Scarcity in Lesbian Photographs.” Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs, edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser, Pandora Press, 1991, pp. 184–190.

 

Regarding equality becoming narrow, a specific example that Duggan references is “gay tunnel vision”, what she describes as “national gay civil rights politics in the new millennium [that actually developed] as the ‘gay equality’ branch of multi-issue neoliberalism.” (Duggan 47). The “conservatizing institutions” part of the statement refers to the corporations that sponsor pride marches (i.e. the activities of the Human Rights Campaign), and through this queerness is contextualized within consumerism and as a result its autonomy is removed. This also ties in with the “right to privacy”, as all of these examples center around issues about queer assimilation with gay marriage in the forefront (one of the HRC’s main issues), emphasizing freedom in privacy.

Racism in Boystown was perpetuated by the supposedly anticrime movement’s interest in having “community walks” (Blair 292). During these community walks people would walk with police and, as they confronted people engaging in reportedly questionable activities, would take photos and then distribute them through social media platforms, specifically in Facebook groups. Because these photos would position people of color as perpetrators of crime, the racism of this selective storytelling perpetuated more paranoias and stereotypes that isolated people of color in Boystown.

Because of the effect colonialism has on queerness, specifically fetishes (also mentioned in the article), LGBTQ tourism no doubt is also influenced by sexual preference, outside cultures, and elements of colonial fetishization.

REFERENCES

Alexander, M. Jacqui. “Imperial Desire/Sexual Utopias: White Gay Capital and Transnational Tourism.” Pedagogies of Crossing, 2005, pp. 66–88., doi:10.1215/9780822386988-004.

Blair, Zachary. “Boystown: Gay Neighborhoods, Social Media, and the (Re)Production of Racism.” No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, edited by Patrick E. Johnston, S.n., 2016, pp. 287-303.

Duggan, Lisa “Equality, Inc.” The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, Beacon Press, 2014, pp. 43–66.

 

In the essay What’s Wrong With Rights?, Dean Spade articulates systematic failures that prevent trans-identifying individuals from receiving equal treatment under the law and equal rights. In law reform, this takes the lack of representation and care with regards to trans bodies within the legal system making any potential reforms ineffective. This is because that, while the intent of LGBTQ-inclusive laws is to bring awareness to discriminatory crimes that regularly occur, there are too many societal and racial intersections that involve society’s awareness of trans bodies for it to be considered effective. Law reform must come hand-in-hand with an understanding society with an accompanying inclusiveness outside of legal matters.

With regards to hate crime laws, Spade argues that one of the issues with dealing with hate crimes is the oversimplification of how to process said crimes through our current legal system. He says that this results in thinking that “the criminal punishment system is the proper way to solve [hate crimes]” (44). Because there are many systematic flaws that disadvantage marginalized groups through the justice system (an example being the War on Drugs, which intersects with racial discrimination), strengthening hate crime laws to fit around the legal system reinforces the systematic shortcomings.

REFERENCE

“What’s Wrong with Rights?”, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, Dean Spade

 

As I understand it, the “antisocial thesis” refers to the notion that queerness exists outside of societal expectations and sociality, first postulated by Leo Bersani in the 1995 book Homos. (Caserio et al. 819) Naturally, there are many different ways to read this, with some readings being that queerness exists in opposition to mainstream society, others saying that it should redefine mainstream society, and some saying the two shouldn’t be compared.

When Rodríguez speaks about “politically incorrect erotic desires” (Rodríguez 342) she uses fantasies as a way to discuss internalized ways in which society affects the desires and needs of oppressed individuals, specifically addressing the nuance behind how our sexual identities are formed.

This relates to the “antisocial thesis” discussed in the PMLA document because our fantasies are mostly antisocial and exist within niche queer communities (such as BDSM and various communities under that umbrella) that organize under the guise of discreteness when not in the position of activism/pride. An example that she brings up is “daddy play”, in order to highlight that people argue that it “does not condone, engender, or map easily onto actual accounts of coercive incestuous relations” (Rodríguez 342)—this method of looking at problematic fetishes provides agency for the consenting individuals involve while also detangling the systematic pressures that created these desires in the first place. She brings up many different points that argue either for or against it, saying that certain fetishes (another example being race/power relations and their role in BDSM play) have inherent contexts no matter what the intent, but ultimately ending on the notion that “everyday trauma constitutes our lives.” (Rodríguez 345)

REFERENCES

Caserio, Robert L., et al. “The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory.” PMLA, vol. 121, no. 3, 2006, pp. 819–828. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25486357.

Rodríguez, J. M. “Queer Sociality and Other Sexual Fantasies.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 17 no. 2, 2011, pp. 331-348. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/437415.

 

Lyrics from “I’m Not a Loser” by The Descendents

Though these are lyrics to a song, I chose them as a visual element due to their poignant resonance when taken out of context on a lyrics sheet. The lyrics to “I’m Not a Loser” exemplify the heteronormative, queerphobic, cis narrative of early US hardcore punk, pairing aggressive, outward lyrics with simplistic and fast instrumentation to get the words across as feelings more than poetry. This is a good example of sexual panic, though, because of how the words (both in the music and out) represent genuine fear on the part of a straight, cis, man of queer people who pose no threat other than having sexual lifestyles that deviate from the supposed norm. To impressionable high school-aged kids (the age at which I began enjoying this music before noticing the very queerphobic tendencies), these words fly by in a song but have power to queer listeners when presented on paper.

On another note, words like “gay” and “homos” being used to discuss strictly sexual feelings erases homoromanticism and subsequently asexual tendencies from the narrative. This is seen through the usage of “your pants are too tight” and “Mr. Buttfuck”, limiting queerness to supposed stereotypes and sexual roles that are harmful in this context due to their supposed threat to the narrator.

REFERENCE

The Descendents. “I’m Not a Loser.” 1982. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiltQYlNot0

 

In the poem “To Live in the Borderlands”, Gloria Anzaldua speaks about “the Borderlands” as both the land surrounding a border (presumably between the U.S. and Mexico due to the juxtaposition of Spanish and English) and a personal direction for processing feelings of being from multiple cultures. The aforementioned usage of Spanish and English interchangeably is sometimes to insert words that do not have accurate translations in English and to simply translate the English words (“To live in the Borderlands/Cuando vives en la frontera”). In both situations, though, this juxtaposition appears to highlight the difference and difficulty between switching languages rapidly in the same way that being multicultural might cause a confusion of identity, especially in the context of a society like the U.S. that integrates elements of other cultures just as easily as it rejects them (i.e. elements of other cultures being strong in many sections of the U.S., sometimes existing alongside intense xenophobia and racism towards them).

In this context, the poem rejects the notion that this means defeat. Anzaldua does not hide the pain of this dilemma, exploring violence (“the mill with the razor…”) and addiction (“fight hard to resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle…”), but the poem ends with a more hopeful message: “To survive the Borderlands/you must live sin fronteras/be a crossroads.” Because the Spanish translates to “without borders”, I believe that Anzaldua is arguing that in order to fight against a society that defines culture, identity, and citizenship as being separated by borders, you must internalize the notion that borders do not exist, welcoming everything else in.

CITATIONS

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “To Live in the Borderlands.” Power Poetry, www.powerpoetry.org/content/live-borderlands.

In the essay “The Whiter the Bread…” Alison Reed argues that post-racial refers to a society that attempts to argue that it “sees past race” due to supposed social progress that has occurred. This notion fails to address the nuance with race relations in American society, implying that because there are so many ways in which bodies are discriminated against culturally and under the law due to race, it is impossible to pretend that everything has progressed to a point where race is irrelevant (the “colorblindness” that Reed mentions). The idea that everybody is viewed as equal requires a strong re-working of the system that facilitated (and still facilitates) racial violence and cannot come from a moral shift. This moral shift also skirts discussions of accountability in American society, making people think that “racism was so long ago” despite it still being prevalent in the US.

Regarding “the hypervisibility of black bodies for a white queer politics of injury” (Reed 57), I understand that as meaning the fetishization and intentional centering of black bodies in white queer rhetoric in order to distance oneself from whiteness. This can come off as self-serving because the ways in which people of color are provided opportunities and visibility in certain realms can come off as more of the white author distancing themselves from their white identity, or acting as if the connection to people of color “queers” their identity in any way.

This can also be present in the way in which queer theory is presented, where there are racialized politics regarding the way in which queer theory relates to society. Reed mentions this by saying that “queer theory at the same time spectacularly represents racialized embodiment as a way into its stylized origin narrative of trauma” (Reed 57). Because the way in which people experience trauma is intersectional, this notion also appears in the preexisting writings regarding queer theory.

SOURCE:

Johnson, E. Patrick, and Alison Reed. No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Duke University Press, 2016.

I believe queer theory to be the analysis and juxtaposition of both gender and sexual identity against internal, external, and societal constructs and predispositions.

The discourse of Queer Theory is not incredibly present in my chosen field of study (music composition) due to its emphasis on conservative tradition. Ironically, though, this makes it brim with opportunity to unpack the various traditions within it, i.e. dissecting the notion behind gendered voices in a field where there are already non-gendered descriptors such as soprano, alto, tenor, bass, etc. As a contrast, there is plenty of queer and social activist-oriented discourse in underground, DIY types of music (and more avant-garde, experimental fields) in which I participate as a byproduct of my major, and I think that background can be helpful for discussing the discourse and implementation of queer theory.

In Cohen’s article she discusses the link between marriage and white supremacy—one of the examples she uses comes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which black women and men in the slave system were not able to get married. This is an important distinction due to it being a strong example of what Cohen describes as

“the state and its regulation of sexuality, in particular through the institution of heterosexual marriage, to designate which individuals were truly ‘fit’ for full rights and privileges of citizenship.” (Cohen 453)

This idea of the state controlling rights definitely correlates to white supremacy and in turn marriage. The seemingly unattainable image of a “nuclear family” has little context for all Americans and is greatly influenced by social mobility, race relations, and sexuality, and to strive for this same aesthetic but for queer people is counterintuitive to liberation. This relates to her view of coalition politics being difficult due to the amount of systemic ways of oppression that color how different people relate to not just queerness but how that queerness then relates to society. She speaks throughout the article regarding “strengthening many communities” (Cohen 453)—by this she means that in order to form successful coalitions it is necessary to acknowledge that not everybody interacts with societal constructs in the same manner and to deconstruct society as a whole it is necessary to deconstruct it from every aspect, making it accessible to everyone.

Citation: Cohen, Cathy J. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”, GLQ3, 437-482

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.