Queer Theory, from my understanding, is a method of cultural study that aims to reject traditional views on gender and sexuality as well as understand the construction and implementation of a binary system. Looking at the world through the lens of queer theory allows individuals to deconstruct the binaries within our society, and reconstruct their own notions of societally imposed categories. It is a perspective that is useful for every individual no matter the field, including the sciences. In the field of Chemical Engineering, this perspective is useful to have as one will meet a multitude of people from different backgrounds and cultures in the job. Chemical engineering is known as being dominated by white-males and in applying the perspective of queer theory to the relationships and power dynamics within the field, one is able to destruct the pre-existing patriarchy.
In Cathy Cohen’s piece, Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens, draws on the relationship between marriage and white supremacy. She writes: “… marriage and heterosexuality, as viewed through the lenses of profit and domination, and the ideology of white supremacy, were reconfigured to justify the exploitation and regulation of black bodies” (454). To explain this connection, Cohen uses examples that stem back to colonial times. Interracial marriage was prohibited and laws were enacted during the seventeenth century to restrict it from happening. The “mixing” of the races caused such anxiety during not only the colonial times, but up until 1967 during the Civil Rights Movement, and arguably still causes a certain level of anxiety in society. The “interbreeding” or marrying individuals from different “races” was regulated all the way into the nineteenth century as the “one-drop” rule comes to mind when thinking about tactics used to maintain the “pure” and hegemonic white race.
The laws prohibiting miscegenation were not appealed by the United States Supreme Court until thirteen years after its Brown decision to desegregate schools. Prohibiting interracial marriage, as A. Leon Hibbinbotham, Jr., expresses in his book, The Matter of Color-Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period, is representative of the American legal tradition of preserving the white race. From this example, the regulating of behavior of people, namely heterosexuals that are/were considered on the outside of heteronormative privilege can be seen. To marry someone that is of a different race than one’s own was viewed as threatening to a system of white, upper-class and heterosexual domination.
Cohen’s discussion of this relationship between marriage and white supremacy is relevant to her plea for “difficult work of coalition politics” as it is a relationship that marginalizes people across different races, ethnicities and sexes (462). In discussing this relationship, Cohen is “recognizing the link between the ideological, social, political, and economic marginalization” of different groups of people (462). Coalition politics is difficult work in its attempt to unite marginalized groups towards a shared goal.
Sources:
Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ 3 (1997): 437-465.