In a post from a few days ago, I wrote about the ways a certain class subjectivity can squeeze its way into a potentially romantic encounter. [Alas, there was no romance in that particular encounter.] One of the things I find fascinating is the ways our social locations influence how we understand and interact with the world, and those who occupy it.
I just finished reading Foucault’s History of Sexuality (yes, all three volumes). Aside from feeling a little like stabbing myself in the forehead, I also find myself wondering how sexual desire was experienced–how it felt–during the 600 or so years Foucault was describing. It’s all well and good to describe the moral reflection that went on surrounding the role of sexual activity, but that still seems inadequate. We can look at the moral reflection of an ear, the institutional arrangements, the first-hand accounts in diaries or letters, but we’ll always, to some degree or another, be filtering those things through our own subjectivities. What I want, and know is impossible, is to get inside the consciousness of people living in those social positions other than my own, a pure intersubjectivity. (Sometimes I want this; there are things I don’t want to know…how someone like Jeffrey Dahmer experienced desire, for instance.)
The sexual identities we claim today are relatively new in human history. I don’t want to dig too deeply into Foucault’s work right now, but a primary argument from Volume 1 is that the modern era witnessed the creation of sexuality: With the rise of bureaucratic apparatuses of state management, and with population becoming a problem of administration, along with the proliferation of specialized domains of knowledge, and a social demand to talk about sex flowing from the confessional, a new form of social organization was conjured into being: sexuality.
All of these social processes (re)produce practices, institutions, and meanings around questions of sex. So, sexual activity is not only organized by these institutions, but also (in it’s potential or realized form) organizes them (think, for instance, of zoning laws; the types and amounts of material (sexual or not) determine where a business may be located.) They also shape individuals. Our identities, and our desires, are shaped by our social milieux.
Recently, there was a minor controversy over whether or not Abraham Lincoln was gay. Well, of course he wasn’t. He may or may not have “known” Joshua Speed, but he certainly wasn’t gay. In the time of Lincoln’s life, the thought of organizing one’s life around the object of sexual desire, and of making that desire a central part of his social identity would have seemed absurd. It wouldn’t be until later that “the homosexual” would come into being (along with its–at the time–aberrant compatriot, “the heterosexual”). It makes no sense to attribute contemporary desires to historical figures, as their and our desires are shaped in different contexts and will be experienced differently.
One of the problems with such essentializing moves is that they distort. For instance, one can only describe marriage as heterosexual if it means involving members of the opposite sex. However, if we take “heterosexuality” to be a specific historical formation, then we can say that marriage has only recently been heterosexual. That may be a semantic difference to many people, but it has important implications. It forces us to look at the institutional mechanisms by which heterosexuality and modern marriage are co-constitutive. It also forces us to look at the changing dynamics of marriage historically–the roles and number of partners, the rules and regulations for entry and exit, the rights and privileges assigned the members of the marriage–and the marriage itself…all these things point to a constantly changing formation. But that’s not the point for today. The point is how these changes, related as they are to larger social change, shape our own sexual subjectivities.
In his look at the development of “gay” communities in late 19th and early 20th Century New York, George Chauncey writes:
This heterosexual identity arose first in the middle classes, in part as a reactionary mechanism to reestablish their own “manly credibility.” It was in this professional/managerial class, where non-physical labor was becoming more prominent, that “masculine” and “heterosexual” first merged. Heterosexuality, thus, was in many ways a reactive identity. Its deployment was used to shore up those whose masculinity was suspect.
I’m kind of wondering how that has changed. In his recent book, Beyond the Closet, Steven Seidman notes, from interview data, that many young people still deploy a heterosexual identity in this manner. Behind this deployment of an identity is, I would guess, a feeling that it’s necessary to put one’s identity out there–it’s relevant to the situation in some way, at least in the mind of the person making such moves.
One of the most effective educational tools queer movements have used is the speakers’ bureau, where a panel of folks allows an audience to throw any sort and number of questions about queer existence at them. I’ve tried to turn that around in a couple classrooms to ask heterosexuals similar questions. Interestingly, much of the conversation has focused on meeting members of the opposite sex (once, I ended up asking the men and women in my class if they really even liked each other). We haven’t, however, managed to delve into issues of identity deployment and subjectivity
So, this kind of gets me to the question at the start of this piece (and a few related ones), and it’s mainly for my heterosexual friends:
- What’s it like to be straight?
- When are you aware of your heterosexuality?
- When are you unaware of it?
- Under what circumstances do you make heterosexual identity claims, and why?
[Crossposted at dailyKos.]
