Author: MAJeff

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.]

[Crossposted at CultureKitchen.]

I have a date tonight, first one in about eight months.  I’m a little nervous, for both the regular reasons (Will I like him? Will he like me?  Will we both sit there suffering in silence?) and another reason that feels even more prominent at the moment.  He owns a business that has experienced tremendous growth in the past year.  I’m a temp who beat the poverty-care line by $20 for an emergency room visit this winter (I did have insurance, though).  There’s a bit of a class difference here, and that’s incredibly discomforting for me.

In part, that discomfort comes from what we can’t do.   To be honest, at this moment in life, I can’t even afford to go out for a decent dinner, something I really, really enjoy.  Right from the start, I have to place limits on what we’re able to do.

He could, of course, pay for dinner if that’s what we chose to do.  But that, too, leaves me feeling uncomfortable.  It’s not that I don’t like being treated, it’s that I can’t pay for dinner.  The difference in ability to pay flows from disparate control over resources.  In other words, he’s got more power than I do.

But the power differential is only part of it.  It’s a subjective thing as well.  A couple friends of mine are talking about buying houses.  I’m wondering if I’ll have enough to cover deposit on an apartment later this summer.  Some of the daily concerns in our lives are very different.  Buying a house is the furthest thing from my mind, indeed I doubt I’ll ever be able to do it as I’m relying very heavily on loans to pay for my graduate education.  I’ve got a mortgage worth and it scares the hell out of me.

It’s this feeling of uncertainty (not yet desperation) that’s so disquieting.  Not having control over your life, not being able to do the things friends take for granted, worrying daily about whether or not to buy that extra soda…it can wear on you.  There’s a line in Michael Franti’s song  “Rock the Nation”:

but do you feel me when I say I feel pain everyday
when I see the way my friends gotta slave
and never get ahead of bills they gotta pay
no way no way!

Franti’s overall song describes a situation much more desperate than the one I find myself in.  I’ll get by, and I’ve got a future career (committee willing) that will allow me to do some of those things I so enjoy and can no longer afford to do.  Others are far from that lucky.  I feel weird writing about being poor, since I do teach college…I am a professional and I’ve got it a lot better than a lot of other people.  I have worked as a Professor and have made a fairly decent living.  Right now, I’m not.  However, there are also a lot of folks in situations similar to mine, eking out a living, managing to tread water, keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, to survive.  That work can be tiring; treading water is exhausting.  Do it long enough and your legs can give out, your head sink below the surface, and your lungs fill with water.  It’s easy to drown if no life preserver is ever thrown out.

I still remember the first (and only) time I flew business class (they’d forgotten to give me a seat assignment, so I got this one as the plane was boarding).  I didn’t know how to act.  I didn’t know the drinks were free when I was boarding (I did figure it out by dinner time), and that’s why I refused them (who wants to pay for overpriced airline drinks?)  It was great!  I actually had enough leg room.  And at the beginning, it was incredibly uncomfortable.  I’m not “of” the people who usually sit up there, and I’m always aware of that.

More than anything, this post is about the little ways that this can enter our subjectivity.  My feelings of not quite being able to pull ahead; of, yes, intimidation and inferiority with a potential date of means; the fact that I spent my elementary school years living in a trailer and cringe when I hear “trailer trash”; all these things are related. They flow, in part, from my own class-based experiences and they shape the ways I interact with people.

I’m not sure where this is going, to be honest.  I’m just trying to play with this, to figure out the discomfort, to figure out what to do about it.  And I hope it doesn’t fuck up the date.

[Crossposted at CultureKitchen]

As I write this, I’m watching the Canadian House of Commons’ final debate on bill C-38: The Civil Marriage Act, a law to extend marriage equality to all Canadians (currently, eight of ten provinces and one of three territories have established equal marriage rights).  This bill’s path to tonight’s final reading has been a bumpy one, from the Liberal’s surviving a no-confidence vote, to a bold strategy that caught the Tories off guard and passed the budget (keeping the Government from falling), to cutting off debate last night.  Cabinet member Joe Camuzzo resigned his cabinet position rather than follow Prime Minister Martin’s order for all members of the Cabinet to vote for C-38.

The passage of C-38 is not in doubt tonight, nor is passage in the Senate.  The votes exist for marriage equality.  
I’m not going to liveblog this…don’t know enough about the Canadian Parliament or it’s members (couldn’t recognize Stephen Harper if he walked up and introduced himself), the minutiae of Canadian law or the Charter (I do know enough, though, that I was able to shock a Canadian with my accurate interpretation of the “Notwithstanding Clause”…not so much that I had a great analysis, but that an American had heard of it and could give a somewhat concise look at how it related to the topic).  Instead, if you read on, I’m gonna ask a question.

Sue Barnes just said: “We cannot distribute justice or fairness on the basis of numbers.”

Here’s what Prime Minister Paul Martin said at the introduction of C-38:

There is one question that demands an answer – a straight answer – from those who would seek to lead this nation and its people. It is a simple question: Will you use the notwithstanding clause to overturn the definition of civil marriage and deny to Canadians a right guaranteed under the Charter?

This question does not demand rhetoric. It demands clarity. There are only two legitimate answers – yes or no. Not the demagoguery we have heard, not the dodging, the flawed reasoning, the false options. Just yes or no.

 Will you take away a right as guaranteed under the Charter? I, for one, will answer that question, Mr. Speaker. I will answer it clearly. I will say no.

The notwithstanding clause is part of the Charter of Rights. But there’s a reason that no prime minister has ever used it. For a prime minister to use the powers of his office to explicitly deny rather than affirm a right enshrined under the Charter would serve as a signal to all minorities that no longer can they look to the nation’s leader and to the nation’s Constitution for protection, for security, for the guarantee of their freedoms. We would risk becoming a country in which the defence of rights is weighed, calculated and debated based on electoral or other considerations.

That would set us back decades as a nation. It would be wrong for the minorities of this country. It would be wrong for Canada.

The Charter is a living document, the heartbeat of our Constitution. It is also a proclamation. It declares that as Canadians, we live under a progressive and inclusive set of fundamental beliefs about the value of the individual. It declares that we all are lessened when any one of us is denied a fundamental right.

We cannot exalt the Charter as a fundamental aspect of our national character and then use the notwithstanding clause to reject the protections that it would extend. Our rights must be eternal, not subject to political whim.

To those who value the Charter yet oppose the protection of rights for same-sex couples, I ask you: If a prime minister and a national government are willing to take away the rights of one group, what is to say they will stop at that? If the Charter is not there today to protect the rights of one minority, then how can we as a nation of minorities ever hope, ever believe, ever trust that it will be there to protect us tomorrow?

Change the context.  Imagine this debate in Congress, or look back at debate over the FMA last year.  What (straight) American politician can we imagine making these same statements, and then taking action to put them into practice?

Update [2005-6-28 18:7:59 by MAJeff]: Watching the vote is kinda cool…The first vote was basically an amendment to send the bill back to committee for a full reconsideration…it lost 127-158

Update [2005-6-28 18:7:59 by MAJeff]: On to the final vote: C-38 passes 158-133.

In a previous installment, The Dictatorship of the Purrletariat, I tried to warn you of the impending Felinist assault on our American way of life.  Apparently, some of you haven’t taken my warnings seriously, so I am forced to write again of the nefarious plotting I have uncovered.

Below, you will read the harrowing tale of an underground network, of the fighting skills they’re developing, of the incendiary things they say about us humans.  Be afraid…the hairballs left in your shoes are just the preliminary phase.  

In my previous work, I introduced you to Tinkles, the Revolutionary intellectual who wrote the “Felinist Manifesto.”  Another of the intellectuals in this movement is Emma Goldclaw, seen here:

Here is some of her work:

Our efforts to create good homes for them are rejected.  The catnip we give them is viewed as a means of keeping them subjugated.  (“If we’re high, we’re not ready to fight,” Goldclaw has exclaimed.)  Even our efforts to keep them clean and healthy have been misused by this terroristic movement:

In my previous report, I detailed their ability to use weapons.  They’ve moved beyond copying our technologies, though.  They’re evolving.  It’s almost like they’re willing themselves new abilities that will be useful in their fight to overthrow us.  Either that or they’ve got some kick-ass scientists.  As this photo shows, they’re training in the martial arts:

And you thought the toilet paper was just a fun toy.  It’s also a military training device.

This movement is dangerous.  Their goal is the destruction of humanity.  I’m keeping a closer eye on Harriet.  I’d advise you all to do the same if you have cats.  The Felinist movement has not been able to corrupt the minds of all our pets, but they are trying to.  Your loving pet could be corrupted.  Keep a watchful eye.

And remember–we do have the ability to resist.  As I reminded everyone in that earlier report, the threat of this revolution can be mitigated by masturbating, thus forcing God to kill kittens and make the future safe for our kids.  Whack off for the sake of the children!  

[Many thanks to My Cat Hates You for their invaluable work in tracking the movement.]

It’s not metrosexuals.  No, they’re last year’s “trend.”  This year, it’s because non-metrosexual straights are adopting gay styles, and some of us homos are giving up on clubwear clothing and gym scuplture:

If a straight woman directing a fashion institute has lost her gaydar, what chance to I, a lowly academic working mostly among heteros, have?

It used to be that we could use earrings as a marker, a code for homosexuality.  Remember the, “If you pierce your left ear you’re gay” thing?  Now, the rings I’ve been wearing on each ear for 15 years are on every other straight man.

Then it was Doc Martins.  Then it was certain tattoos.  Then it was body piercings.

Not all of these trends started in gay communities.  Some of them were borrowed from others (punk…) and adapted.  Then they were adopted by other social groups and re-adapted.  Guess what, social trends circulate.  In a society such us ours, in which fashion (and other cultural trends) is always changing due to the need to keep people buying new stuff, cultural minorities (be they gay, black, punk, hippie, pothead….) will often be raided, signifiers with meanings taken up and transformed, made into commodities.  There tends to be a cycle to all of this.

This is also one of the reasons those minority cultures continue to change and innovate.  As gay style is adopted more by straight men, new gay styles will probably develop, markers to be maintained as signifiers of difference.  (Indeed, such things as fashion aren’t the only cultural signifiers we use; speech codes are other areas where such things come into play.)

The article points to one difference in the cycle as it’s traditionally played out:

I think there are two things we can point to for understanding this: mass media and changes in some forms of masculinity.

The mass media aspect is, I think, easier to understand.  In the past several years, we’ve seen an explosion in the sites of media production.  Developments in cable, satellite, and internet technologies, along with a diffusion of the ability to produce content had resulted in an exponential growth in images and messages in circulation.  It’s also compressed time.  Cultural cycles of innovation, diffusion, adoption, and decline simply move faster now.  A fashion’s lifespan isn’t as long–once it’s been adopted it’s dead, with several new trends waiting to take it’s place.

I don’t know what relationship this has to masculinity.  Part of the reason is that I think we often talk of masculinity to broadly, as though it’s a singular thing.  There are many masculinities. Part of me wants to ask, In which groups of men is this fashion crossover happenings?  What class locations do they occupy and from what geographic region are they coming?  What contacts to they already have with gay men?  How is the concern for “looking good” integrated into other aspects of their masculinity?

It’s no uncommon, after all, for men to try and make themselves more attractive, be they straight or gay.  Is the style being adopted because gay men have developed a flattering way to show off the male body?  Is grooming the only transformation that’s happening?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but it would be fascinating to explore them.  After all, we utilize clothing as a social marker of who we are, be it brand names, particular styles, a certain piece that has subcultural meaning.  Sometimes what we wear demonstrates that we don’t care what message we’re sending, thus sending a message.

I’ve got a message to send: Please stop copying us. You’re throwing off the gaydar and confusing us.  We have to keep coming up with new ways of identifying each other.  That’s a lot of work.  

(Crossposted at dailyKos)

[Crossposted at CultureKitchen.]

Amanda touches on some very nice points in this post:

I remember driving several hours with a colleague to do a training in Morriss, Minnesota.  On the way, we came across a Focus on the Family broadcast, and couldn’t help but listen (we were on our way to perform an anti-homophobia training for a sexual assault crisis program).  One of the topics that came up was sex education.  The woman who was describing the “objectionable” sex ed program talked about how it had the gall to teach children the terms for their “private parts,” words like “penis” and “vagina.”  She got all weepy as she described how this was destroying their “natural innocence” even as she talked about how kids “natural curiosity” would lead them to try sexual things.  So, are they sexually curious or naturally innocent?  Or, are those two things not as separate as our radio Helen Lovejoy would have us believe?

About the only thing I remember from my own high school sex education was that our teacher said homosexuality was wrong.  Other than that, it was plumbing.  It only took a couple days out of our regular health class.  Honestly, it was pathetic.  I had better sex ed in the fifth grade in Ames, Iowa.

To a degree, I understand the fear-based approach to sex education.  It’s at the heart of most of what passes for sex ed today.  Indeed, the abstinence-only crew has created an industry out of fear-based sex miseducation (pdf document).  What I don’t understand, though, is the desire for ignorance.

My MA thesis was a study of the Minnesota Family Council’s newspaper over a decade, focusing specifically on how they talked about sex education.  There was a consistent theme, less information is better.  In the early period (mid- through late-80s) the primary message was that the schools should not teach sex education.  The AIDS crisis (and 90% public support of sex education, including condoms for disease and pregnancy prevention) didn’t make that a terribly sellable position.  The shift to abstinence-only occurred in the late-80s/early 90s.  The Right was able to co-opt legitimate fears about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies into a message of “Don’t talk about it or they’ll do it.”  Information somehow becomes license.

Whoopi Goldberg had a great response to this in her late 1980s one-woman “Fontaine goes straight” (Or something to that effect).  Discussing the AIDS booklet that C. Everett Koop wanted to send out, but that Jesse Helms objected to because it “told special people how to have special sex” and not get AIDS.  Helms, like so many on the Right, was running around saying, “If you tell people about this, they’ll do it.”  Whoopi’s response: “What I wanna know is who is Jesse Helms fucking and what’s his name? Because I know he’s read it!”  (I’ve got the party favors ready for when Jesse Helms finally enters Hell.)

“Sex is dirty; save it for someone you love.”  I can’t remember where I first heard this, but it sums up the Right’s approach to sexuality quite well.  It’s also not such a great message. It’s not that I have anything against “dirty” sex, but to say that sex is dirty? Well that’s going to far.   But I can’t help but think that dirt (as well as “sin”) is central to this.  The radio program I mentioned is exemplary of this–we can’t talk about body parts with their technical names, it somehow destroys innocence.  I can’t help but think that it’s the specification of which body parts that’s supposedly doing this destruction.  “Propriety” doesn’t allow us to use words like “penis” and “vagina.”  We should probably avoid “clitoris” altogether since it’s not really central to the baby-making aspects of sex, and pleasure–particularly women’s pleasure–is to be feared and controlled.  Better to live in ignorance than risk a loss of control.

Maybe that’s why sex is so fear-inducing; it involves loss of control.  It’s not only that the ability to control others’ sex is lost, but our own ability to control ourselves can be thrown away during moments of great sex.  Even if it’s something as small as having our face contort in any number of ways–many of which are quite unflattering–during sex, we lose some of our ability to determine what our body is doing.  The inability to orgasm on command–or to not orgasm on command–is representative of more than just momentary discomfort, we really cannot control everything that’s going on.  That loss can be discomforting.

I wonder if that’s part of what this mystification thing is all about.  Sex is something over which we can never exert complete control; indeed, it sometimes seems to control us.  Rather than allowing themselves to go along with that loss of control, sex must be controlled more rigidly, including information about it.  We have to keep people away from it by keeping them ignorant and frightened.  I think…

This is a mindset I can’t get into.  Sex is a complex thing, and I can’t help but think it’s a pretty good idea to know something about it before you start having it.  I’m reminded of a scene in the “Proper Condom Use” episode of South Park.  Mr. Mackey is teaching the boys about sexual intercourse:  “The man takes his penis and…now where did I put that thing?”  Their fear of losing control would consign us all to a world of “where does this go?”  (If we could send them all off with Towelie and a bag of Cheetos, and get them as far away from policy as possible, then South Park Republicans might actually be tolerable.)

In many ways, sex is about a loss of control (Sexual masochists are quite explicit about this).  That’s kind of cool about it.  Sex is a complicated phenomenon.  It is frightening.  It’s calming.  It’s exciting.  It’s fun.  It’s dangerous.  It’s painful.  It’s otherworldly.  It’s mundane.  It’s just sex.

Mizzkyttie points us to an incident of parents trying to screw up their gay kids:

Last spring, I sat in my office listening to a student tell me he might not be able to get his paper in on time because his parents had thrown him out of the house for being gay (he was actually worried about the paper).  A couple months ago, I sat at my computer screen crying as I read this diary at dKos.  What the fuck is wrong with these people?!
Over at Pandagon, Amanda takes a look at some of the surveillance involved in the programs rules  (Here’s my favorite one from the entire list: “The clients may not wear Abercrombie and Fitch or Calvin Klein brand clothing, undergarments, or accessories.”)  Ex-Gay Watch has been following the situation as well.

The whole program rests upon the assumption that homosexuality is a result of gender-inappropriate socialization.  Us queers didn’t learn the right ways to be men and women.  Thus, women in the program are required to shave their legs and armpits twice a week, and men are forbiden from wearing bikini briefs.  What they wish to creat is a world of Ward’s and June’s on valium, acting out the ideal family in a state of perpetual numbness.  And that’s for the people who aren’t destroyed by these programs.  This quote, provided by the Queer Action Coalition, shows us what the Anti-Gay Industry is really after (and make no mistake, these ex-gay “ministries” are virulently anti-gay and tightly linked to groups like AFA and FRC):

Yup, folks, that’s what this poor kid and the rest of us are up against.

I’m sitting here with the cat, killing a little time before I head off to the Boston Gay Pride Parade.  I also need to grab some sunscreen before I leave.

I have an ambivalent relationship to Pride.  The first NY Gay Pride was an anniversary march for the Stonewall Riots.  I miss the deep politics that caused Pride to begin.  I love the way queer folks come together to celebrate during these times.   I get a little tired of corporate sponsorship and constant advertising–we’ve become more of a market niche than a political community.  Whatever, that’s the context today.
The first Pride Parade I went to was in Des Moines, Iowa in 1993.  I was a student at Iowa State, and a friend of mine and I drove the 30 miles to Des Moines in order to march.  It was more in the spirit of the early marches–a mass of people parading down the street, being public.  It had little of the feel of these larger parades.  There were fewer organized groups and fewer people lining the streets.  It was also probably more moving and powerful.

My favorite Pride Parade moment was a couple years ago in Minneapolis. SCOTUS had recently issued its Lawrence decision, and Strom Thurmond died the same day. Mayor R.T. Rybak ended up being placed right directly in front of the Twin Cities’ gay marching band (yup, a gay marching band).  Their melodie du jour was Y.M.C.A.  There was Mayor Rybak jumping down the parade route doing all of the arm signs and getting the crowd to go along.  The mood was very different a while later, when the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s green bus rolled down the parade route…that brought many a tear (and still does).  I also remember that day because in the evening at the bar I was holding my beer against my face to try and cool it off; I lost several layers of skin from that sunburn.

It’s been less than a year since W’s re-election, with closeted gay men (Ken Mehlman, Dan Gurley…) helping him run the most anti-gay campaign since 1992.  Since that election, the administration has continued its systemic assault on gay equality, and the Theocratic Right has increased its attacks on our communities.  We’ve also seen Connecticut enact Civil Unions and a few other states and localities add sexual orientation to their anti-discrimination and bias-motivated violence statutes.  Queers have been marryin’ each other in Massachusetts for over a year now.

These are interesting times to be queer in America.  Our national culture has changed dramatically since I went to that parade in Des Moines.  Teaching my Queer Communities and Social Movements at Boston College this spring really highlighted that for me.  The world is completely different for my students than it was for me, a mere 12 years ago.  When I was a student at Iowa State, the only place I could by a copy  of The Advocate in Ames was at the adult book store.  Bay Windows is now distributed on the campus of Boston College.  One of my students this semester even asked me, “You mean AIDS hasn’t always been here?”  (I think that’s the first time I was stunned into silence in the classroom.)

We’ve made amazing strides since I started going to Pride.  Things are getting better culturally, if not politically.  This Pride, though, is about telling our opponents You will not push us back into the closet!  That is their goal.  I destroyed that bugger years ago, and I’ll never go back.  It’s a destructive place, and their agenda is a hateful one.  The desire to reinstitutionalize the closet is a desire to do actual harm in people’s lives.  

We’ve got a lot to be proud of.  As communities, we’ve survived some pretty hideous shit.  We’ve changed segments of society,  and have made some serious political changes.  We’ve created vibrant cultures.  We ain’t done yet.

HAPPY PRIDE

The other night, Lorraine asked if folks would be interested in an ongoing gender theory discussion group.  Foolishly, I was the first to express an interest, and thus the first to post.  (I’ll get you Lorraine…)  While I originally discussed putting it up on Friday night, I might be heading to a protest tomorrow evening, so I don’t know if I’ll be around–I’m posting it tonight.

Before I start, a note.  Some of these conversations might get into some heavy-duty theory, and technical and abstract language–we’ve got some theory geeks here (me included).  If you haven’t read up on or aren’t into academic theory, don’t worry.  Instead, ask us what the hell we’re talking about.  Those of us who work in the academy, who do this for a living, have a tendency to get stuck speaking academese.  One of the things I’m concerned with–and I know others are as well–is how to translate highly abstract and technical language into English.  There are some powerful ideas out there, but they do no good if nobody understands `em. Dig in everybody.  Share your thoughts….please.

That’s the other point of this: we’re doing theory.  Take this as an opportunity to ask, challenge, agree, or even laugh.  And be careful…one of my friends recently commented that she’d never seen anyone who could write so academically while at the same time dropping multiple F-bombs.  Theory can be fun…and funny.   Below the fold we’ll get this party started.

Today, I’m gonna talk a bit about gender, knowledge, and the body.  The discussion will take a few detours along the way, but I think they’ll all make sense in the end.  At least, I hope so.

I’ll start with some basic assumptions laid out by the slacker who got me to write this thing:

It is the perception of difference that I want to focus on, particularly as it relates to biological knowledge.  I guess, what I’m talking about is the way sex is gendered (and, no, I’m not talking about doing the nasty).

Well, getting to the nasty, it was recently reported that scientists had bred “lesbian” fruit flies…on purpose!  (Scientists were able to do this with male fruit flies several years ago.)  This sent some gay folks into a tizzy, “See?  That’s further evidence it’s genetic.”

I don’t know what kinds of causal mechanisms have made it such that a male body sets me atingle while a female body does pretty much nothing for me.  I also don’t care.  I do, however, find the search for a biological cause to be fascinating.

At this point I’d like to return to the Fleck quote above.  In a culture such as the Sambia, where adult males force boys to perform fellatio and ingest semen as a part of their initiation rituals, (see Gil Herdt’s Guardians of the Flute) the idea that we would need to find a cause for the desire to engage in ingestive male-male fellatio would be ridiculous.  It isn’t desire, but necessity: the ingestion of semen allows the initiates to build up a store of it in their own bodies.  It is necessary to become a man. Our desire to find a “cause for homosexuality” comes from a different definition of homosexual behavior–for the Sambia, it’s a necessity for becoming a man, for us it is based in desire and helps define who we are as people. We’ve created a whole social type around it. (People in our society might also call the Sambia behavior child sexual abuse, which would lead us into another category of people-pedophiles….) Western biologic has conditioned us to look inside the body to determine why human behavior occurs.  Our cultural stock knowledge provides a base for scientific knowledge.

Often, when discussing male/female-related stuff, we make a distinction between sex and gender.  Sex is biology, gender is the social stuff that gets attached to sexed bodies.  However, what I want to bring into this conversation is something I learned from Anne Fausto-Sterling:  Sex is gendered.

Most societies tend to recognize two sexes, while others have created more categories.  “Male” and “female” are categories imposed upon nature.  Nature itself has failed to make these categories exhaustive and exclusive.  Fausto-Sterlilng, in an “order-of-magnitude estimate” has calculated that about 1.7% of live births produce intersexed babies (pp. 51-3).

“So, what?” you might ask.  Well, for many folks born in these sexual interstices, the “so what” becomes surgical “correction”:

If the phallus isn’t predicted to be large enough for those activities, off a part of it comes and a “clitoris” is constructed.  Note how the determination of which sex to make these folks is based on social considerations, particularly associated with pee-pee size.

It might be argued, however, that their gender is altered, their sex isn’t as they will remain genetically one or the other.  My only response would be this: depends which criteria you’re using to define sex. This brings us back to Lorraine’s original post and point Number 1–perceived differences between the sexes.  Which parts of the body matter?  The answer to that will vary as conditions merit.  Doctors may not be able to create a genetic female from a baby born genetically male, but they can make a genital one…sort of.

The dichotomous gender system we live with has other implications.  For instance, we often discuss such things as “sex” hormones as male (testosterone) and female (estrogen).  What we forget is that men and women both have these hormones circulating through their bodies…in varying concentrations.  Their association with sexual development may obscure the fact that “they can best be conceptualized as hormones that govern the process of cell growth, cell differentiation, cell physiology, and programmed cell death.  They are, in short, powerful growth hormones affecting most, if not all, of the body’s organ systems” (Fausto-Sterling, p. 193).  Likewise, when a new study comes out highlighting some difference between the sexes, “men, as a group, are more likely to be __ than women, as a group” becomes “men are more ___ than women.”  Statistical normality becomes categorical unity.  Variation among men and among women is rendered insignificant in relation to variation between men and women. Indeed, the focus on difference as a result of sex may obscure how those differences flow from other sources.  

Nature is more complex than our explanations of it will ever grasp, and the order we see in it is often an imposed one.  It may be impossible to untangle the ways that our gendered preconceptions affect biological explanations.  Can’t hurt to try, though.

Any thoughts?

Lorraine has been, in her usual fashion, tearing into some of the gender issues surrounding the kos migration.  I’m going to quote a bit of Lorraine’s diary here:

I share this perspective of locating gender within social relations of power.  I share Lorraine’s concerns regarding the body.  In this diary, though, I want to take a look at the issues from a different perspective, that of performativity, as offered up by Judith Butler.
While Butler herself is nearly unreadable (I’ll never make the mistake of trying to read her stuff at bed time again), the basic idea is that we bring gender into being through our actions.  We perform gender, thus (re)creating it.  Those performances take place within the power relations set out above; those relations shape which courses of action are available and what sanctions will befall people should they fail to “act right.”

What we’ve been seeing as an enactment of male privilege, among lots of other things.  On the web, we’re reduced to speech acts more than in other settings, but we might recognize the ways that certain types of speech tend to be more common for one gender or the other (or however many we decide there are).  I hesitate to attribute certain styles to either gender because: 1) I haven’t studied it; 2) I try to be hestitant in making generalizations; and 3) Everyone who says my swearing is a signifier of my “maleness,” can be pointed to Maryscott O’Connor, who may be the only person to swear more than me….I love ya for it, girl!

However, the speech acts we did see were exhibiting a male prerogative by diminishing critical female (and feminist male) voices.  Worse, those voices were “put in their place” via attribution to a gendered victim mentality.  Kos has been treating those voices as a “special interest,” not an integral part of the Party.

That brings us to the broader context of this conflagration.  The web of power relations in which this took place is one in which those hostile to women controlling their own sexual choices, pleasure, and reproductive freedom hold the reins of institutional power.  Women’s actual choices are under attack, rhetorically and institutionally.  The very real threat to women’s lives was discounted.  

Then it was mocked.

So, while I think Lorraine starts us on the right path by looking at the web of power relations, I think a look at this controversy as the rhetorical enactment of those power relations, particularly within the larger context, leads us to a deeper understanding of what’s been happening.