CB Week 2 Readings

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