I recently attended an event, a very fine event, that engaged issues of sexuality and gender in education. During the event an attorney specializing in these issues, explored the legal terrain of LGBT rights and their relation to education. For instance, being in Michigan where there is no state anti-discrimination law, it is technically legal to fire someone for the sexual orientation or gender identity. This may not happen often and there are ways in which one can "get around" this lack (i.e. teacher unions can put a clause in the union contract). The information presented then was in many ways useful in thinking about this complex terrain. It was practical and important to be aware of and understand.
Yet, I am not a practical person. I prefer the excessive, the impractical. As I listened to these practical and important issues, I was surprised that often "sex" was either completely ignored or seen as irrelevant. I should note here that I am not talking about "sex" in terms of "biological sex" which in itself is a problematic notion, but about "sex" as in SEX, the act. I asked the lawyer why there was such an aversion to sex in the legal discourse around LGBT rights? Of course the response was, well housing discrimination has nothing to do with sex, having a job has nothing to do with sex, free speech has nothing to do with sex, sex is what happens in the bedroom...we dealt with sex with anti-sodomy laws (i.e. Loving vs. Texas - I believe). Yet, I persisted and disagreed noting that it is "sex" in part that defines sexuality and therefore "homosexuality" and sex can happen beyond the confines of the bedroom. I argued that the reason why judges perhaps operated in part in opposition to LGBT Rights or parents opposed LGBT literature in schools was because of the aversion to sex...that when such issues are engaged the image of "gay sex" enters the imagination and such images frighten, scare, and create an aversion to want to allow such persons to be fully human - the Symbolic is perhaps homophobic. The response again was not satisfying as the attorney noted a case where a girl wore a "gay pride" shirt to school and was asked to take it off because it was promoting "sex"...which was legally defended (successfully) as unconstitutional because it 1) wasn't about sex and 2) was about "pride"...
It was that response that exposed my point. What would the legal consequences of saying, "Yes, she is promoting sex" but even so, she deserves to wear such a shirt, she deserves to be fully human. Why, because sex is sex is sex...people have it, people like it, people don't like it. I want to believe, but I am no legal scholar, that instead of pandering to a de-sexualized society (and the political machine both democratic and republican) where sex is just in the bedroom and "pride" can be removed from the context of sex (perhaps law has forgotten the history of Pride) an engagement with the stigmatized concept of "sex" and embrace of the "homophobic fear" of such sex, different possibilities within the legal realm of discourse and the discourses that operate closely to it (i.e. medical, psychiatric, educational, political) could emerge...What these possibilities would be though is of course unknown, but no more unknown than the current strategies.
For readings that I develop my argument from see:
Leo Bersani (1988) "Is the rectum a grave" in D. Crimp (Ed.). AIDS: Cultual Analysis/Cultural Activism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Didier Eribon (2004) Insult: The Making of the Gay Self. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
David Halperin (2007) What do Gay Men Want: Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Exploring Chrianna, Protective Moms, and the Innocent Child
I love pop culture. It is like an aphrodisiac to me. It brings me so much pleasure. It is simply titillating. I realize that perhaps one is not supposed to “love” popular culture since it is popular and it is much classier to be in love with something not “popular”, less trashy, more “high class” or “high culture”. But, I come from the lower end of the class/culture spectrum and I prefer to stay there most of the time.
But, that is neither here nor there. My interest in popular culture, in part, is that it is a much more effective educational tool than most of the crap we do in education – in my opinion. This is not to say that what we do-do in education is worthless, only that students aren’t much engaged in it, it doesn’t captivate them, it doesn’t amuse them, it doesn’t excite/anger them. I mention something from “high culture” to my students and they look at me like I am crazy. I provide an interesting academic article and it is ok, but I relate it to popular culture (i.e. reality shows) and the conversation is off in rather interesting, provocative, and educational ways.
Yet, popular culture gets such a bad rap. Parents often times hate popular culture, especially TV, the most. In watching Real Housewives of New York, I was reminded of this as Alex said she and her husband did not allow TVs in bedrooms – sad day for their kids. I was also reminded of this when watching CNN and the Mom-Brigade was all in a tizzy because Nickelodeon would not remove Chris Brown from the ballot for a Kids Choice Award. Nickelodeon officials said they would not because the show is about “Kids Choice” and therefore would not intervene stating something to the extent that “the kids put him on the ballot and they, the kids, will decide who actually wins the award”. Of course the Mom’s retorted saying that Nick is not controlled by kids and that “kids don’t have the ability to make all decisions on their own”. I understand the mom’s concerns so I don’t want to be seen as a mom-hater. I just think they can get ridiculous sometimes as we all can I suppose. I want to explore the mom argument further for its implications in education. [Please note, after writing this, I learned that Chris Brown has removed his name from the ballot which adds more to this in my opinion]
The mom’s argument is that Chris Brown has set a bad example for young boys, that rewarding him the award would be awarding his behavior. Of course such an argument 1) assumes the kids understand what happened or even cared and 2) negates everything he did to get the nomination. Are we not allowed to fuck up without totally fucking up our lives anymore? The moms seem to want only “good” representation and good “role” models, but what exactly is good representation or a “good” role model? Chris Brown was not nominated because he is a great boyfriend, he was nominated because he is a good performer and in my opinion a rather good model for certain things.
But, let’s talk about the mom argument because they invoke the power of “popular culture” to educate and educate “wrong”. They demonize that which I love in order to make their point. In such demonizing of course they would probably hold up “other” more “upstanding” individuals who most likely have just not gotten caught. They would perhaps point to PBS for its wholesome representations, representations that will not pervert their kids and should be embraced as such. Their arguments seems to rest heavily on the notion that their children are innocent, that children need to be protected when perhaps such a stance is not fair (to us or children).
Now, before I go any further to take on this discourse around the Chrianna fiasco, I want to note that I am not arguing that violence against a person, any person, is justified. I do not think Chris should have beat up Rhianna, so move past that – that’s not my argument. My argument will engage this controversy, but to make it more complicated, to perhaps show that we are all victims and victimizers?
My interest is in the way that the mom’s invoke the victim narrative of the “female” but see no problem with the multiple messages that they might be sending young girls. They appear to want to send the message that it is not ok to allow someone to beat you up or violate you in any manner (be that physical, verbal, emotional). But, in such a lesson they propel forth another lesson - teaching perhaps that girls are still the weaker sex…that they need to be protected by a “universal” sentiment that “you shouldn’t hit a girl”? While I agree with the explict lesson, it is the implicit lesson(s) that is(are) ignored that concerns me. What is the cost of positioning the “girl” as weak, as needing a “universal principle” to protect her? What is the cost for the “girl” and what is the cost for the “boy”? Does the boy learn to take such violence from a girl rather than hitting back? (I hit back when I was a boy and when told not to hit girls, said whatever, if she hits me I’m gonna hit her back cause she’s bigger than me)
Does such rhetoric teach girls to be defenseless? Does it teach boys to be chivalrous (sexism in disguise)? Does it fail to recognize the complexity of human relationships – that in moments of passion people do irrational things and in doing so need to seek reparations afterward? Does this lesson teach boys or girls to walk away from relationships after such emotion-laden experiences? Does it fail to show that love is not always easy, that love can be violent? Diddy (Sean Puffy Combs), recently on Ellen, expressed his concern over this affair noting that relationships are difficult and things happen in them…people get emotional, people make mistakes, people fuck up. The difference, as he discusses it, is that 1) these are public figures and 2) the rest of us keep it quiet, don’t talk about it in our own private lives. Why don’t we talk about it? Why don’t we admit that humans are not entirely rational, that humans get emotional, that humans lose control and in recognizing this move away from shaming someone for such an action and talking about ways to ward off such an incident from occurring again? This talking of course may not cure the “problem” but it may take the scandal out of it allowing more people to see that “shit happens” and while “shit happening” is not an excuse for what happens (reparations should be made, apologies should be give) it should also not be an excuse to make an example out of someone or not talk to someone anymore. In talking with Patti about this, she said that NPR just had a story on abuse where an “abuser” couldn’t get help to change – turned away for being the victimizer and as such victimized, branded much like we brand sex offenders and put them on registries (I won’t go there now).
Yet, the issue gets more interesting if we move away from the mom’s and to various other discussions about this issue. Rhianna and Chris have subsequently gotten back together. Many see this as absolutely ridic (that’s the cool way to say ridiculous). I think it is what it is. I think if they love one another and want to work through these issues, repair the trauma and damage, then I say go get ‘em. Yet, others have scorned Rhianna for making such a decision – some saying she is suffering from “battered wife syndrome”. First, why do we have to pathologize her decision to return to the man she loved, who made a mistake? Now, this is not to say again that his actions were “cool” or “justified” – they happened and if we all look deep within ourselves we can find things that we have done that were not very nice, perhaps violent to an Other (physically, verbally, emotionally). Second, and this might get me in trouble, is it possible that (some of) those who go back to “battering spouses” (male or female) do so because of the thrill, because they get some pleasure out of such situations. Or perhaps even that their love overwhelms their rational senses? Now, obviously this is a bit difficult to swallow, but what role does pleasure and desire play in decisions made about our relationships with an other? Some engage in such actions consciously (S/M) but perhaps others find such a relationship, either unconsciously or due to an unwillingness to express it consciously because of the scorn such a statement might cause, titillating, exhilarating, pleasurable?
Basically, if we engaged popular culture and the ways it positions subjects can we engage students with issues that are so often simplified? What would it mean to not pathologize men or women who keep going back to an abusive relationship? Or to look at such cases much more closely? To produce a different story about love? It is easy to look at such high profile cases and to in a sense displace the issues by doing so…but in such displacement do we lose the opportunity to implicate ourselves in these issues, to take a look in the mirror and see that we are all fucked up and that’s ok...that the issue perhaps, as Kincaid notes, is the story we are being told and we need to write new stories, new descriptions of issues?
Heterosexual Jealousy
In further thinking about this issue, I was re-reading a chapter by Judith Butler (2004) where she discusses heterosexual jealousy in light of the “inescapable ways that heterosexuality and homosexuality are defined through one another”. In her exploration she discusses the ways in which a man’s woman lover wants another man and in such a dynamic the “male” exposes the inability for passions to be mutually exclusive – that his (our) desires are simultaneously heterosexual and homosexual [in part I believe because as Lacan notes “desire is the desire of the Other”].
How you ask? In that by being enraged at his woman lover he may desire in part, to be in her (imagined) receptive position and in such a position see her not as taking on the feminine position, but actually exposing his imagination of her in “a position of passive male homosexuality”. He is enraged in part because he imagines himself in her position, a position disavowed in a homophobic symbolic, but cannot take on such a position…illustrating heterosexual and homosexual desires or passions where desires are never mutually exclusive.
So, why do I add this? I add it because I want to explore how her argument could illuminate different possibilities in reactions to “cheating”. Many reports note that the “jump-off” between Chris and Rhianna started from a text from another woman. In seeing this text, Rhianna became enraged and in response Chris became enraged – violently assaulting her. Unlike, but related to, Butler’s example, this one places the female as the one who originally becomes enraged but in such a rage provokes a rageful response. Heterosexual jealousy still rears its head, but in a slightly different dynamic. It is the male who, as is traditionally seen, is the one doing the cheating and exchanging/using women. While Butler then focuses on the male homosocial and homosexual bond and desire wherein male rage emerges in part out of the disavowal of the homosexual and the inability to be such…can we read the Chrianna incident as exposing the lesbian homosocial/sexual bond and desire also? Did Rhianna in her rage, imagine herself not in the passive feminine position (she was not getting from Chris by his being with another woman) but in the active masculine position (that Chris was imagined to be in) where she was not just pissed that her man was cheating but that she could not enter such a position, that she could not, in a homophobic symbolic, engage in such a relationship with another woman? Was Chris’s response then, in part, a homophobic one where he did not imagine Rhianna in an adulterous relationship with another man, but with another woman as she took on the active “masculine” position – eliminating the “male” dynamic in the relation and “hurting” his male “masculine” ego. Was his violence in part against the homosocial and homosexual passions and desires of the “lesbian” that were operating simultaneously in Rhianna’s response. This is not to say that either are "homosexual" merely to ponder the contradictory and multifaceted aspects that desire may have...Chrianna, because of their current "status" are merely place markers for thinking about this contradictory and multifaceted read.
But, that is neither here nor there. My interest in popular culture, in part, is that it is a much more effective educational tool than most of the crap we do in education – in my opinion. This is not to say that what we do-do in education is worthless, only that students aren’t much engaged in it, it doesn’t captivate them, it doesn’t amuse them, it doesn’t excite/anger them. I mention something from “high culture” to my students and they look at me like I am crazy. I provide an interesting academic article and it is ok, but I relate it to popular culture (i.e. reality shows) and the conversation is off in rather interesting, provocative, and educational ways.
Yet, popular culture gets such a bad rap. Parents often times hate popular culture, especially TV, the most. In watching Real Housewives of New York, I was reminded of this as Alex said she and her husband did not allow TVs in bedrooms – sad day for their kids. I was also reminded of this when watching CNN and the Mom-Brigade was all in a tizzy because Nickelodeon would not remove Chris Brown from the ballot for a Kids Choice Award. Nickelodeon officials said they would not because the show is about “Kids Choice” and therefore would not intervene stating something to the extent that “the kids put him on the ballot and they, the kids, will decide who actually wins the award”. Of course the Mom’s retorted saying that Nick is not controlled by kids and that “kids don’t have the ability to make all decisions on their own”. I understand the mom’s concerns so I don’t want to be seen as a mom-hater. I just think they can get ridiculous sometimes as we all can I suppose. I want to explore the mom argument further for its implications in education. [Please note, after writing this, I learned that Chris Brown has removed his name from the ballot which adds more to this in my opinion]
The mom’s argument is that Chris Brown has set a bad example for young boys, that rewarding him the award would be awarding his behavior. Of course such an argument 1) assumes the kids understand what happened or even cared and 2) negates everything he did to get the nomination. Are we not allowed to fuck up without totally fucking up our lives anymore? The moms seem to want only “good” representation and good “role” models, but what exactly is good representation or a “good” role model? Chris Brown was not nominated because he is a great boyfriend, he was nominated because he is a good performer and in my opinion a rather good model for certain things.
But, let’s talk about the mom argument because they invoke the power of “popular culture” to educate and educate “wrong”. They demonize that which I love in order to make their point. In such demonizing of course they would probably hold up “other” more “upstanding” individuals who most likely have just not gotten caught. They would perhaps point to PBS for its wholesome representations, representations that will not pervert their kids and should be embraced as such. Their arguments seems to rest heavily on the notion that their children are innocent, that children need to be protected when perhaps such a stance is not fair (to us or children).
Now, before I go any further to take on this discourse around the Chrianna fiasco, I want to note that I am not arguing that violence against a person, any person, is justified. I do not think Chris should have beat up Rhianna, so move past that – that’s not my argument. My argument will engage this controversy, but to make it more complicated, to perhaps show that we are all victims and victimizers?
My interest is in the way that the mom’s invoke the victim narrative of the “female” but see no problem with the multiple messages that they might be sending young girls. They appear to want to send the message that it is not ok to allow someone to beat you up or violate you in any manner (be that physical, verbal, emotional). But, in such a lesson they propel forth another lesson - teaching perhaps that girls are still the weaker sex…that they need to be protected by a “universal” sentiment that “you shouldn’t hit a girl”? While I agree with the explict lesson, it is the implicit lesson(s) that is(are) ignored that concerns me. What is the cost of positioning the “girl” as weak, as needing a “universal principle” to protect her? What is the cost for the “girl” and what is the cost for the “boy”? Does the boy learn to take such violence from a girl rather than hitting back? (I hit back when I was a boy and when told not to hit girls, said whatever, if she hits me I’m gonna hit her back cause she’s bigger than me)
Does such rhetoric teach girls to be defenseless? Does it teach boys to be chivalrous (sexism in disguise)? Does it fail to recognize the complexity of human relationships – that in moments of passion people do irrational things and in doing so need to seek reparations afterward? Does this lesson teach boys or girls to walk away from relationships after such emotion-laden experiences? Does it fail to show that love is not always easy, that love can be violent? Diddy (Sean Puffy Combs), recently on Ellen, expressed his concern over this affair noting that relationships are difficult and things happen in them…people get emotional, people make mistakes, people fuck up. The difference, as he discusses it, is that 1) these are public figures and 2) the rest of us keep it quiet, don’t talk about it in our own private lives. Why don’t we talk about it? Why don’t we admit that humans are not entirely rational, that humans get emotional, that humans lose control and in recognizing this move away from shaming someone for such an action and talking about ways to ward off such an incident from occurring again? This talking of course may not cure the “problem” but it may take the scandal out of it allowing more people to see that “shit happens” and while “shit happening” is not an excuse for what happens (reparations should be made, apologies should be give) it should also not be an excuse to make an example out of someone or not talk to someone anymore. In talking with Patti about this, she said that NPR just had a story on abuse where an “abuser” couldn’t get help to change – turned away for being the victimizer and as such victimized, branded much like we brand sex offenders and put them on registries (I won’t go there now).
Yet, the issue gets more interesting if we move away from the mom’s and to various other discussions about this issue. Rhianna and Chris have subsequently gotten back together. Many see this as absolutely ridic (that’s the cool way to say ridiculous). I think it is what it is. I think if they love one another and want to work through these issues, repair the trauma and damage, then I say go get ‘em. Yet, others have scorned Rhianna for making such a decision – some saying she is suffering from “battered wife syndrome”. First, why do we have to pathologize her decision to return to the man she loved, who made a mistake? Now, this is not to say again that his actions were “cool” or “justified” – they happened and if we all look deep within ourselves we can find things that we have done that were not very nice, perhaps violent to an Other (physically, verbally, emotionally). Second, and this might get me in trouble, is it possible that (some of) those who go back to “battering spouses” (male or female) do so because of the thrill, because they get some pleasure out of such situations. Or perhaps even that their love overwhelms their rational senses? Now, obviously this is a bit difficult to swallow, but what role does pleasure and desire play in decisions made about our relationships with an other? Some engage in such actions consciously (S/M) but perhaps others find such a relationship, either unconsciously or due to an unwillingness to express it consciously because of the scorn such a statement might cause, titillating, exhilarating, pleasurable?
Basically, if we engaged popular culture and the ways it positions subjects can we engage students with issues that are so often simplified? What would it mean to not pathologize men or women who keep going back to an abusive relationship? Or to look at such cases much more closely? To produce a different story about love? It is easy to look at such high profile cases and to in a sense displace the issues by doing so…but in such displacement do we lose the opportunity to implicate ourselves in these issues, to take a look in the mirror and see that we are all fucked up and that’s ok...that the issue perhaps, as Kincaid notes, is the story we are being told and we need to write new stories, new descriptions of issues?
Heterosexual Jealousy
In further thinking about this issue, I was re-reading a chapter by Judith Butler (2004) where she discusses heterosexual jealousy in light of the “inescapable ways that heterosexuality and homosexuality are defined through one another”. In her exploration she discusses the ways in which a man’s woman lover wants another man and in such a dynamic the “male” exposes the inability for passions to be mutually exclusive – that his (our) desires are simultaneously heterosexual and homosexual [in part I believe because as Lacan notes “desire is the desire of the Other”].
How you ask? In that by being enraged at his woman lover he may desire in part, to be in her (imagined) receptive position and in such a position see her not as taking on the feminine position, but actually exposing his imagination of her in “a position of passive male homosexuality”. He is enraged in part because he imagines himself in her position, a position disavowed in a homophobic symbolic, but cannot take on such a position…illustrating heterosexual and homosexual desires or passions where desires are never mutually exclusive.
So, why do I add this? I add it because I want to explore how her argument could illuminate different possibilities in reactions to “cheating”. Many reports note that the “jump-off” between Chris and Rhianna started from a text from another woman. In seeing this text, Rhianna became enraged and in response Chris became enraged – violently assaulting her. Unlike, but related to, Butler’s example, this one places the female as the one who originally becomes enraged but in such a rage provokes a rageful response. Heterosexual jealousy still rears its head, but in a slightly different dynamic. It is the male who, as is traditionally seen, is the one doing the cheating and exchanging/using women. While Butler then focuses on the male homosocial and homosexual bond and desire wherein male rage emerges in part out of the disavowal of the homosexual and the inability to be such…can we read the Chrianna incident as exposing the lesbian homosocial/sexual bond and desire also? Did Rhianna in her rage, imagine herself not in the passive feminine position (she was not getting from Chris by his being with another woman) but in the active masculine position (that Chris was imagined to be in) where she was not just pissed that her man was cheating but that she could not enter such a position, that she could not, in a homophobic symbolic, engage in such a relationship with another woman? Was Chris’s response then, in part, a homophobic one where he did not imagine Rhianna in an adulterous relationship with another man, but with another woman as she took on the active “masculine” position – eliminating the “male” dynamic in the relation and “hurting” his male “masculine” ego. Was his violence in part against the homosocial and homosexual passions and desires of the “lesbian” that were operating simultaneously in Rhianna’s response. This is not to say that either are "homosexual" merely to ponder the contradictory and multifaceted aspects that desire may have...Chrianna, because of their current "status" are merely place markers for thinking about this contradictory and multifaceted read.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
On Love
I find myself often meditating on the concept of love. It is said to be many things. It is said to make the world go ‘round. Yet, in making the world go ‘round what else does it make us do? Does it make us go mad? Does it make us feel sad? Does it make us feel a connection to something in a world so often feeling devoid of meaning or is it that which gives us meaning,
what which makes the world bearable, livable?
What is it about love that makes us so…so scared? So happy? So vulnerable? What is it about love that splits us from ourselves, further than we are already as a split subject? What is it about love that is thought to be able to solve the problems...that if we just loved, things could be, would be, should be different?
Who is it that is allowed to love? Who is it that we are allowed to love? Who is it that we allow ourselves to love? Why is it that we hurt those we love? Must we inflict such hurt? Is such hurt, such pain necessary for love to be understood, known, felt?
How is it that we can walk away from love? Is it because we never know that it is love until, there, in the future, when we can look back on “now” and see that we had love? That we felt loved? That we loved?
Do we fool ourselves to believe that love is possible or do we fool ourselves to believe that love is impossible? Is love delusional? If love is delusional, what does it mean for those of us who love, or want to love, or have loved, or have lost love, or have, in an instant felt all of these – pushing and pulling us in different directions – this queer thing called love?
Do we ever walk away from love without knowing what we are walking away from? Is it easier to walk away from love, to re-fall in love somewhere else, some-time else so not to feel the creeping feeling that we will soon, fall and shatter the self, the self that we have produced and believe is real, true when perhaps that’s just it…we are not whole, we are always split, always divided? We can never love entirely for we know not ourselves entirely? Is love a failure because of this? Or in such a failure can love be something different? Something radical? Something strange?
Do we search for love and search for it often without ever asking what it is we are searching for or if what we are searching for is even something that can be searched for? Do we search for it when we’ve found it, hoping, believing, desiring, fantasizing that something different, something “better”, something of our dreams will finally come along? Or are we swept off our feet in a different time and place and in such a time and place have to just love and not look back…not looking back even if that means hurting the one we loved, there in a different time and place?
What happens to those who are left there, back there when others move, fall, or re-fall in love?
What do we do when we are left here, in the past, with our love there, somewhere there in a different time and place with a different love? Do we shatter further? Do we begin searching for love again, even if such a search is always in vain? Do we fall again…further in love in an attempt to fall out of love? Do we fall out of love and in doing so fall back in love…with someone else? With our self? Do we mourn our loss? Can we mourn such loss? Is such a loss grievable? What does such a loss require to be mourned?
what which makes the world bearable, livable?
What is it about love that makes us so…so scared? So happy? So vulnerable? What is it about love that splits us from ourselves, further than we are already as a split subject? What is it about love that is thought to be able to solve the problems...that if we just loved, things could be, would be, should be different?
Who is it that is allowed to love? Who is it that we are allowed to love? Who is it that we allow ourselves to love? Why is it that we hurt those we love? Must we inflict such hurt? Is such hurt, such pain necessary for love to be understood, known, felt?
How is it that we can walk away from love? Is it because we never know that it is love until, there, in the future, when we can look back on “now” and see that we had love? That we felt loved? That we loved?
Do we fool ourselves to believe that love is possible or do we fool ourselves to believe that love is impossible? Is love delusional? If love is delusional, what does it mean for those of us who love, or want to love, or have loved, or have lost love, or have, in an instant felt all of these – pushing and pulling us in different directions – this queer thing called love?
Do we ever walk away from love without knowing what we are walking away from? Is it easier to walk away from love, to re-fall in love somewhere else, some-time else so not to feel the creeping feeling that we will soon, fall and shatter the self, the self that we have produced and believe is real, true when perhaps that’s just it…we are not whole, we are always split, always divided? We can never love entirely for we know not ourselves entirely? Is love a failure because of this? Or in such a failure can love be something different? Something radical? Something strange?
Do we search for love and search for it often without ever asking what it is we are searching for or if what we are searching for is even something that can be searched for? Do we search for it when we’ve found it, hoping, believing, desiring, fantasizing that something different, something “better”, something of our dreams will finally come along? Or are we swept off our feet in a different time and place and in such a time and place have to just love and not look back…not looking back even if that means hurting the one we loved, there in a different time and place?
What happens to those who are left there, back there when others move, fall, or re-fall in love?
What do we do when we are left here, in the past, with our love there, somewhere there in a different time and place with a different love? Do we shatter further? Do we begin searching for love again, even if such a search is always in vain? Do we fall again…further in love in an attempt to fall out of love? Do we fall out of love and in doing so fall back in love…with someone else? With our self? Do we mourn our loss? Can we mourn such loss? Is such a loss grievable? What does such a loss require to be mourned?
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obama Dress Code
Today, while running and watching CNN there was an interview with the student body president of North Carolina Central University - Kent Williams Jr. While I could not find the interview, I was able to locate an article about Mr. Williams' dress code crusade. Mr. Williams was discussing his, I'll say, "mission" to clean up the student body by making them presentable. This "mission" in part emerged from an interview then Presidential candidate Barack Obama did with MTV where he noted that "brothers should pull up their pants". Now, I understand where this desire to have people pull up their pants is coming from. I recognize that wearing low-ridin' baggy jeans is not very professional and that in doing so individuals open themselves up to being judged as any number of things (i.e. thug, gangsta, etc.) not to mention the necessity to wear cute undies.
I found Mr. Williams to be very persuasive in his presentation of this idea - noting that he is not attempting to enforce a dress code, merely to bring the rules of "business professional" to his colleagues by handing out cards with dress rules such as not wearing one's pajamas to class, not wearing short skirts, covering up the cleavage when not in the clubs, and of course pulling up one's pants. His intentions are in many ways it seems to provide "rules" to enter the game - a game that is one fraught with issues related to race, class, gender, and sexuality.
However, as he was discussing, Mr. Williams made a rather interesting statement - noting that wearing clothes in such a manner shows a lack of self-respect. I found it rather odd, perhaps disturbing that in the attempt to clean up the image of fellow students, he had to do so by pathologizing, psychologizing the students...making it not possible that they are wearing these clothes because of the image they seek to produce, the image they want others to associate them with, or simply because such clothes are rather enjoyable to wear. While he is not trying to enforce a dress code, his language seems to provide no other option than to abide...for to not abide is to lack self-respect...when it seems that the lack of respect is on those who cannot simply imagine ways in which one's clothing is not solely related to their "mental state" and ability to respect themselves.
The notion of "respect" seemed rather persuasive in many discussions around the topic - seen in the article linked above and in President Obama's interview. What it is about clothes that provokes such anxiety and provokes individuals to feel disrepected because of what some "other" is wearing. Is the issue not about the respect, but about the desire for such individuals to fall in line and dress in a fashion that is "normal" and "normal" being linked with "respectful". One can think about the current fascination with President Obama's changing of the fashion in the oval office - making it much more casual in perhaps the same light. Is it disrepectful to the institution of the presidency to disrupt the norm of professional attire? I wouldn't think so, but then again, President Obama already, arguably, has earned a lot of respect and can "break" with the norms...
Of course, the issue that Mr. Williams brings about is not just about college students or what is worn in the oval office. One can look at dress codes in public and private K-12 schools and the ways in which discourse operates around these policies. I would argue in many ways such discourse is inevitably normalizing - seeking to produce students in a very limited way so that they are all "mentally healthy" and "self-respecting" according to those adults who are able to enforce such rules. Of course the joy then, is finding those students, those moments where subversion occurs and the dress code is utilized in perverse ways - perhaps Brittany's use of the "school girl uniform" is a recent incantation where the uniform comes to represent that which it intended to eliminate or minimize...
I found Mr. Williams to be very persuasive in his presentation of this idea - noting that he is not attempting to enforce a dress code, merely to bring the rules of "business professional" to his colleagues by handing out cards with dress rules such as not wearing one's pajamas to class, not wearing short skirts, covering up the cleavage when not in the clubs, and of course pulling up one's pants. His intentions are in many ways it seems to provide "rules" to enter the game - a game that is one fraught with issues related to race, class, gender, and sexuality.
However, as he was discussing, Mr. Williams made a rather interesting statement - noting that wearing clothes in such a manner shows a lack of self-respect. I found it rather odd, perhaps disturbing that in the attempt to clean up the image of fellow students, he had to do so by pathologizing, psychologizing the students...making it not possible that they are wearing these clothes because of the image they seek to produce, the image they want others to associate them with, or simply because such clothes are rather enjoyable to wear. While he is not trying to enforce a dress code, his language seems to provide no other option than to abide...for to not abide is to lack self-respect...when it seems that the lack of respect is on those who cannot simply imagine ways in which one's clothing is not solely related to their "mental state" and ability to respect themselves.
The notion of "respect" seemed rather persuasive in many discussions around the topic - seen in the article linked above and in President Obama's interview. What it is about clothes that provokes such anxiety and provokes individuals to feel disrepected because of what some "other" is wearing. Is the issue not about the respect, but about the desire for such individuals to fall in line and dress in a fashion that is "normal" and "normal" being linked with "respectful". One can think about the current fascination with President Obama's changing of the fashion in the oval office - making it much more casual in perhaps the same light. Is it disrepectful to the institution of the presidency to disrupt the norm of professional attire? I wouldn't think so, but then again, President Obama already, arguably, has earned a lot of respect and can "break" with the norms...
Of course, the issue that Mr. Williams brings about is not just about college students or what is worn in the oval office. One can look at dress codes in public and private K-12 schools and the ways in which discourse operates around these policies. I would argue in many ways such discourse is inevitably normalizing - seeking to produce students in a very limited way so that they are all "mentally healthy" and "self-respecting" according to those adults who are able to enforce such rules. Of course the joy then, is finding those students, those moments where subversion occurs and the dress code is utilized in perverse ways - perhaps Brittany's use of the "school girl uniform" is a recent incantation where the uniform comes to represent that which it intended to eliminate or minimize...
Friday, January 23, 2009
Memories Failed, Memories Disciplined
Robert Mapplethorpe (1987) ChestIn the beginning of the “camera”…it did not produce the photo…it produced an image that could only be captured by tracing the image… The images of the camera then were fleeting, rarely saved, rarely archived as they are in our postmodern world of scrapbooks, facebook photobooks, myspace accounts – archives of our lives. Yet, the fleetingness of the image is the same today, for the image captured is of but a moment, a moment caught in time and (re)produced in the hopes that in such production our memories can be captured just like the image itself. Yet, our memories are not our own. They are always, in part, those of the Other and what story, what memory the Other seeks from us or allows us to tell. I cannot reveal certain memories to you because they may be inappropriate, traumatic, inaccessible and therefore are disciplined from being told, hidden from view. My “photo” then is not “my” photo. That above is not, even if I would like it to be, my chest, my six pack, my pec. It is not me above. Rather, it is an image of someone I do not know created by a famous photographer, made famous by capturing such images – producing photos, producing anxieties, outrage, passions, desires. Yet, it is an incomplete photo, it is missing a part, but in missing a part is a “complete” piece of art, a complete piece of work provoking and evoking reactions.
My interest is in this absence, that which is not present, and the possibilities to be imagined. What will “we” imagine and will “it” in part be what we hope to be there, a normal mirror image of the pectoral muscle already present, for that is often the story that “incomplete” photos allow us to tell. That story makes the subject of the photo complete. Yet, what if we imagine it to be something else, a pectoral muscle “disfigured” by a burn, a tattooed pectoral muscle – tattooed with the image of a name - the name of a lover, a mother, a child, a lost love, a lost mother, a lost child? What possibilities does this incomplete image provide for the stories that the “image” can tell…perhaps illustrating that any photo whether complete or (in)complete illuminates that the memories constructed in the telling of such memories are always incomplete, failures because of the partiality of language…that language cannot tell us all that we wish it could tell. Does this incomplete image then perhaps allow us to explore our own anxieties of what is absent, what we wish was present, and how in such failure, such incompleteness we can encounter the Other in new ways?
Ruination by the Child: Adam and Eve Revisited
Figure 1: Titian Adam and Eve c. 1550. Madrid, Prado.The images of Adam and Eve are often evoked in a variety of settings, although often it seems to emerge around the role of original sin in relation to the child. Utilizing this “biblical” reference…I want to think about the phrase that humans are “made in the image and likeness of God” where “God” becomes parent (either mother or father or both depending on your read of the Bible) and “man” becomes child. Yet, in this we see that God did not make “child” (in our image of the child as a “little person”) but made man and woman – made “adults” that then had little people (our image of the child) after their fall from grace…Adam and Eve were arguably of course “God’s” children but they were not little shitting, eating, crying children but grown people with rather childlike curiosities and behaviors. Being “made in the image and likeness of God” then creates an image of “God” that is “grown” (our image of the “adult”) and the notion of a small “child” rather queer, rather “unlike” God, an image occluded by the image created by “God” of the “child” that which is “grown”.
As I thought of this mythical pair and their relationship to the concept of the “child” and as the first adult-children, I went to find an image of them…one that represented the image that I had with me of a man and woman, grown, by a tree (see Figure 1). In the image I found and choose for my purposes here, one sees the peculiar presence of a child. The child, positioned above the heads of Adam and Eve is handing Eve the apple. The child has become the serpent, tempting Eve with that infamous apple that would lead to the downfall of “mankind” and its banishment from the Garden of Eden. As I looked at this image and pondered the queer place of the child I became rather perplexed. The child in this image provokes a variety of readings. One could read it as the serpent using the innocent child-image to tempt Eve, since a child would never lead its parents astray AND parent’s can’t but help be “dazzled” by the beautiful (innocent) face of the child. But, if one looks at the date of this painting (1550), we see that it dates around the time in which the child was more often seen as a corrupt, depraved being not yet seen as the innocent little cherub of later times. This is of course not as clear-cut and open to debate.
However, looking at the painting, the child is not the cause of the downfall, only the instigator since it is the “apple” and what it contains (knowledge? Self-concept?) that opens the eyes of Adam and Eve to their nakedness. The child though is positioned above Adam and Eve, holding a figural position that is superior to them. The child has perhaps already been corrupted by the wonderous taste of the apple, otherwise why would it want to offer it to Eve? Is the child, living in this state of corruption, envious of the adult-like innocence of Adam and Eve, therefore tempting them in order to have company in the state of corruption, to usher them into the Symbolic realm of “knowledge” – the wily child? If the child is ushering in the adults to the Symbolic, how does this ushering alter the role of the m(O)ther in psychoanalysis – my current fascination? Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, the m(O)ther mediates the child’s entry into the Symbolic as the m(O)ther’s language cuts the Real of the Child, shattering its image of a perfect ideal world. But, here in the mythical story of Adam and Eve, through the artistic representation of Titian, it is the Child that cuts the world of the adult and ushers the adult into the Symbolic – cutting the Real of Eve (her ideal Eden) with Eve then cutting the Real of Adam (his ideal Eden). So it is not the m(O)ther that cuts the Child, but the Child (as Other) that cuts the mother (providing that Eve is viewed symbolically/mythically as the first “mother” from which mankind emerges). It is the child that ushers in language while simultaneously being without language – incomprehensible to those around unless they “eat” the forbidden fruit and enter the realm of corruption. The child is the Real – representing something inaccessible to Adam and Eve since they were never “child,” never little. But, the child is also that which cuts their Real, by bringing them that which is in the apple – language, “sight”, knowledge.
I obviously do not know how legitimate or accurate such a read is in relation to Lacanian psychoanalysis (the three Orders of Lacan – the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic – are still being worked out in my mind) but if we take this reading where the Child ushers in the cutting of the Real, perversely giving Eve the apple, the role of the Feminine takes on a different meaning as it is not Eve, the feminine, who instigates the downfall but the sexless child, the child with a serpents tail, who instigates the downfall.
Furthermore, does this image of innocence and corruption reveal both the Dionysian and Appolonian child…with the literal “child” eliciting the image of evil - instigating the corruption of the adult – revealing that the “adult” can never be innocent because of the “child” AND the literal adults, Adam and Eve, in their symbolic child-like state, eliciting the image of innocence and purity corrupted by the pain of the child.
[Random Aside: I find it rather curious how Adam is touching Eve (perhaps her breast) with his left hand, Eve is grabbing the apple with her left hand – an apple that is on the “left” side. The child, however, is handing the apple with its right hand – its left side is unseen – as the left side of the photo (if split in two) is the darker side. Yet, historically it has been the “left” side that is seen as evil, as any (left-handed) student of the Catholic educational system of yesteryear can attest and the right hand side seen as that of “good.”]
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Doubt and the role of Child Abuse
I recently saw John Patrick Shanley's film Doubt which features Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It was potentially one of the best films I have seen recently, not only for the superb acting of Streep, Hoffman, and the rest of the cast, but because of the stories it seeks to tell. If one has seen the previews, one sees a film that seems to explore the Catholic priest sex scandal with the school principal Sr. Aloysius - played by Streep - believing that the parish priest Fr. Flynn - played by Hoffman - is having an inappropriate relationship with one of the students - Donald Miller. Of course we never really see the student and if one sees the film one realizes that the film is much more complex...Donald is the first black student at this school, Sr. Aloysius has no evidence of her belief and is a rather unlikable character, Fr. Flynn is likable but borders on creepy, etc.
However, I only want to dwell on a particular scene in the film. A scene in which Sr. Aloysius walks Mrs. Miller - played by Viola Davis - to her work place. In this brief scene, Mrs. Miller wants the sister to leave it be, telling her that Donald only has to make it to June when he graduates and starts high school. Within this conversation where Sr. Aloysius tells Mrs. Miller that she believes there is an inappropriate relationship between her son and Fr. Flynn, Mrs. Miller notes that it is in Donald's nature, that Donald would have been killed if he had stayed in the public schools, and that his father beats him for this "nature". Now, in my interpretation this "nature" is Mrs. Miller noting that her son is gay...something rather taboo in 1964 (5 years before Stonewall, the oft spoken start of the "gay rights movement"). She notes this because in many ways she is happy that Donald has found someone that makes him comfortable, that comforts him with his "nature". Sr. Aloysius is obviously disturbed by this notion...asking Mrs. Miller what kind of mother she is for thinking such a relationship has any validity.
It is this scene that was fascinating to me. It is fascinating because Mrs. Miller appears to be troubling the traditional notion of age of consent. I would argue that she is illustrating that consent laws in many ways are problematic for "gay" children. The establishment of consent laws, creating age demarcations for who can fuck when and where and with whom, had an important impact on how gays on different sides of the adult/child binary interact(ed). Now, this argument is not meant to condone per se pedophilic relationships and I recognize that there are serious issues of child abuse in the world, but my argument is meant to call into question how such consent laws - meant to protect the child - inevitably abuse the (gay) child by closing off the possibilities of entering relationships and spaces with other “gay” adult-persons. One can just think about the lack of “gay” things in mainstream society to recognize that that the “gay” bar all of the sudden becomes a mecca of becoming intelligible to oneself – a holy place that one goes to become oneself and see others like it. Of course it is problematic to think about the notion of becoming oneself and the limitations that even the notion of the “gay” bar create in terms of possibilities for “gay” youth…but that’s not my point.
My point is that Mrs. Miller, painstakingly perhaps, recognizes that Donald has no one else to turn to, no one else to be in relationship with because there are no other "gay" persons around. If Fr. Flynn is a person that Donald trusts and is comfortable with, then she is happy that he has found someone that loves him...something his own father cannot do, unless one constitutes being beaten as "love". Now of course this is difficult to comprehend because discourse in contemporary US has pathologized relationships with large age variations...and further more when the "child" is involved. And of course we do not know what type of relationship exists between the two characters in question. If the relationship is sexual it is obviously complicated by issues of power and ability to consent...however these issues are issues that should be taken seriously and explored...granting Donald some form of sexual agency, if he is knowledgeable of the choices and what is at stake in any relationship, especially a sexual one. In thinking about this then we see that Fr. Flynn is placed in a rather precarious place because if he takes a "gay" child under his wings to form of bond with him, he is immediately suspected as having inappropriate relationships BUT if he does not develop such relationships, that child may never experience love or a relationship that validates the feelings that child has. NOW, of course some adults could take advantage of that...but not all adults will as some adults recognize the plight of children and the needs of children to have validation and love in a world filled with violence and abuse...especially towards those "gay" bodies.
All in all, I found this film rather thought provoking in thinking about an issue (specifically Sexual Abuse in the Catholic church) in new light. I don't know if many viewers will catch this little nuance in the film...but from my perspective is was incredibly provacative and insightful
My point is that Mrs. Miller, painstakingly perhaps, recognizes that Donald has no one else to turn to, no one else to be in relationship with because there are no other "gay" persons around. If Fr. Flynn is a person that Donald trusts and is comfortable with, then she is happy that he has found someone that loves him...something his own father cannot do, unless one constitutes being beaten as "love". Now of course this is difficult to comprehend because discourse in contemporary US has pathologized relationships with large age variations...and further more when the "child" is involved. And of course we do not know what type of relationship exists between the two characters in question. If the relationship is sexual it is obviously complicated by issues of power and ability to consent...however these issues are issues that should be taken seriously and explored...granting Donald some form of sexual agency, if he is knowledgeable of the choices and what is at stake in any relationship, especially a sexual one. In thinking about this then we see that Fr. Flynn is placed in a rather precarious place because if he takes a "gay" child under his wings to form of bond with him, he is immediately suspected as having inappropriate relationships BUT if he does not develop such relationships, that child may never experience love or a relationship that validates the feelings that child has. NOW, of course some adults could take advantage of that...but not all adults will as some adults recognize the plight of children and the needs of children to have validation and love in a world filled with violence and abuse...especially towards those "gay" bodies.
All in all, I found this film rather thought provoking in thinking about an issue (specifically Sexual Abuse in the Catholic church) in new light. I don't know if many viewers will catch this little nuance in the film...but from my perspective is was incredibly provacative and insightful
Friday, December 26, 2008
A Note on Marriage
Kenji Yoshino in his recent legal analysis for The Advocate of where to go from here with the passage of Proposition 8 notes that “Social theorist Michel Foucault once said homophobes were much less threatened by gays departing for a one-night stand than gays in a committed relationships” with Foucault stating that ‘It is not the departure for pleasure that is intolerable, it is the waking up happy” (p. 39). Yet, I don't believe Foucault was advocating for marriage – as if one wakes up from marriage happy.
I do believe that Foucault was arguing about/for the new modes of being or doing relationships that “homosexuals” opened up - of which marriage is not. One night stands and the intimacy such relationships create are in fact a way in which people – gay and straight – wake up happy and find pleasure but it is these relationships that are de-legitimated by the government and that threaten the notion that monogamy and marriage are the only options available for people to "wake up happy". We do not see political activism around these modes of being and doing life because these are the modes of being and doing that are threatening to the sanctity of "marriage" and the pedestal that it seems to occupy on the symbolic political level...
I do believe that Foucault was arguing about/for the new modes of being or doing relationships that “homosexuals” opened up - of which marriage is not. One night stands and the intimacy such relationships create are in fact a way in which people – gay and straight – wake up happy and find pleasure but it is these relationships that are de-legitimated by the government and that threaten the notion that monogamy and marriage are the only options available for people to "wake up happy". We do not see political activism around these modes of being and doing life because these are the modes of being and doing that are threatening to the sanctity of "marriage" and the pedestal that it seems to occupy on the symbolic political level...
Fallying For Marriage: A Case Against the Marriage Drive
Fallying for Marriage: An Argument Against Marriage
A Fally is a rally based on a fallacy. A fallacy is a “component of an argument which, being demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, renders the whole argument invalid” (thanks Wikipedia for the refresher). Starting here, I would like to talk about marriage rallies or more so marriage fallies AND how such rallies are really fallies based on problematic arguments. I write this not to de-legitimate these rallies or those persons taking a part in them – although you may very well read this as doing so. I also do not think that their arguments are completely invalid. I commend them for their activism, bravery, and passion – I myself may take part in them as we all have our contradictions and need for solidarity . I write this however so those of us who do not fight for this “marriage” thing in certain ways can have our views expressed AND not simply pushed aside like a pesky bug or worse seen as being in “bed” with the enemy. To make it clear, I am not a fan of Focus on the Family, I am not a fan of religious zealots. I am not a fan of hate. What I am though, is tired…tired of this marriage debate having only two sides and becoming more and more like Dubbya’s notion that “you are either with us or against us”. I am tired that we have spent millions fighting this fight while LGBTQ youth sleep on the streets, HIV/AIDS research and program funding decreases, schools fail to address issues of difference, and a whole host of issues that are pertinent to the “LGBTQ” Community (and I would argue the community at large) are pushed aside and often ignored. So, here goes…
I am not with the marriage advocates and I am not with those who oppose marriage based on religious and moral grounds. I do not hate myself so please don’t try to pathologize me as suffering from “internalized oppression” or “internalized homophobia” because I do not agree with the mainstream gay plight for marriage. I do not buy into there only being these two sides. Rather, I am with the unnamed side in this debate – the “queer” side, the ugly underbelly, that sees such a drive for marriage as rather problematic and based perhaps on some shakey, fallacious grounds. I see this drive for marriage as potentially limiting the exploration of new forms of relationships, new ways of finding intimacy, new ways of being with others…while some will argue that we need the freedom to marry, I argue that in the unfreedom we currently live in with regards to marriage, there are modes of being, freeing modes that perhaps should be explored and fought for, modes that do not simply abide by what we know, but produce new avenues – however fleeting – of being in the world that do not simply require “us” to be like “them”…
So, here is my argument for a different way in this world so obsessed with wedding bells, gifts, wedding dresses, and tuxedos…I note though that these thoughts are heavily indebted to the work of Michael Warner and Judith Butler who have both written about the problematics of marriage.
1) Love is often times used as a device to argue for same sex marriage. Why shouldn’t two people in love be able to marry? How can you look at this beautiful same-sex couple that has been together for years and deny them access to this hallowed institution of marriage? How could you be so hateful to not want to grant people the right to show their love for one another? How could you deny them the right when it doesn’t even affect you? These are all good questions, they have some emotional pull…They are kinda effective at pulling at the heart strings…Keith Olbermann in his recent emotional plea relied on love to argue that this is not an issue of politics (huh, it’s not?) but one where you either stand on the side of love or not…But first, since when did marriage become about love and why is it that one needs the government to legitimate one’s love for a partner? Or perhaps I should ask, since when did the government care about there being love in a marriage…last time I checked, you just had to sign a piece of paper that was for all intensive purposes a contract, a entering into a union, a rather non-loving document really. So, Keith, I agree that love is important, but marriage is not the solution, it does not make those who don’t love those who are different (those “haters”) all of the sudden love difference. Love is more difficult and marriage is not the solution to showing love, having love, or being in love…I can be in a committed relationship (gay/straight/lesbian/polygamous/monogamous/open) without governmental interference and still have the stability and permanence that has oddly been tied as coming with marriage?
So, for those who argue that you need marriage to show your love to your partner…perhaps I will ask that you re-examine your notion of love and why you would need anyone beside your partner to legitimate that love. I have no doubt that those couples who seek the right to marry are anything but in love. I can look at the images of couples holding hands and see their love…so I am not denying the importance of love…I am merely denying the notion that marriage legitimates that love and that “we” need the government to be a part of our love – It Doesn’t and we should fight for the deconstruction of the government’s involvement in legitimating and therefore delegitimating relationships (be they gay or straight). Of course I recognize that the ways in which marriage is talked about that “love” has been “wedded” to marriage…but let’s be real and recognize that such is not the case.
2) Ahh, but you say that it’s actually not about love…that’s just rhetoric to get people to feel sympathy, empathy, or something good emotionally to “get out the vote”. What this debate is really about is the benefits…the over 1000 governmental benefits that are provided to the wedded couple. “We” deserve equal rights for our relationship because our relationship is just like “theirs” – those individuals who “fit” the traditional definition of marriage. We are normal and if we are normal we deserve the rights that are afforded those who are normal. Again, a good argument…yet, perhaps we should ask, why again should the government be able to legitimate and therefore de-legitimate a relationship? Why again are we fighting for the government to define the “proper” relationship between persons so that “proper” relationships are awarded certain benefits for fitting in? Why, I ask, are there benefits to being in a certain form of a relationship to begin with? Why do we privilege one form of relationship (two-people who are presumably heterosexual) over any other (two or more people who are on the spectrum of “sexuality”)? Simply adding “same-sex couples” to the definition does not deal with the issue that there are still relationships that are and will be disadvantaged because they do not fit and perhaps do not want to fit the new “definition” of marriage? These relationships, still disadvantaged, are relationships between not only “gay” people but also “straight” people…and people anywhere else where ever they define themselves…making this not an issue of “gay” vs. “straight” but between the “normal” vs. “queer” conceptions of relationships.
3) But, wait…you are saying that these are good arguments (thank you), they illustrate the problems with this whole marriage debate. YET, shouldn’t people have the choice to get married? Shouldn’t it at least be an option? I often hear it asked that “shouldn’t marriage be a possibility for same sex couples”…often defended…“so that we can be just as miserable as straight people”? These are really good questions…why shouldn’t marriage at least be an option for same sex couples? Shouldn’t choice be an option? I would argue that it is not that simple – choice is complicated. The ability to choose to marry disciplines not only “ourselves” to conform to the norms that marriage “law” will create BUT it also disciplines those who do not want the choice because that choice occludes the choices that are already present in the “unfreedom” of marrying. This drive for “choice”, the “choice” to marry is then inevitably a disciplining tool to take away the choice of those who resist the normal, the ideal of the married couple. Furthermore, making marriage an option, does little to combat the “hate” that I would argue is a hope that underlies the marriage debate…that if we can show “them” that we are normal and have normal homes in which to raise the future of our nation, then all will be well in the world. But, the “we” of the marriage debate does not include those who don’t seek normalcy, those who are the one’s often violated physically, verbally, and symbolically (often by the “gay” movement itself), those that are seen as “bad” representatives of the movement. Marriage, as a choice, simply makes those who do not fit the marriage wagon more and more outside the movement, more and more violated for refusing to be a part of the normal gay movement and “choose” to be that which is being fought for…These individuals are sometimes told that their time will come, that the wagon will come back to pick them up…but so often if we look at the history of movements, rarely does the wagon go back. I ask then why do “we” seek to have a choice that we know will cause harm to those who are already on the margins of our movement…normalizing ourselves while further forcing them to be less like they want to and more like us…the one’s who are just like “them”, the normal happy couple…
So, I conclude with this…perhaps the success of bans on gay marriage are a good thing…perhaps these successes will allow “us” to re-think the arguments and fight the bigger battle around the normalizing forces that seek to delegitimate those relationships – be they the current same-sex relationships that seek marriage OR those queered relations that don’t and perhaps never will seek marriage BUT still deserve respect and perhaps the “benefits” currently awarded to a small notion of relationships. Perhaps, oh perhaps we can fight for ways in which we imagine new ways of being with one another that do not buy into what is already there…finding our chances at being “a little less alone in the world” not through legal recognition around an institution that has been so detrimental in so many ways BUT through solidarity and coalitions that challenge such normalizing forces to make life more livable not just for those who might fit in, but for those who challenge and defy social sanctions.
Yet, this battle will never conclude, everyone will not be included, as the horizon is always illusive…utopia is but a mere fantasy…but perhaps we can make life a bit more livable, creating little paths, little moments where the horizon of possibilities comes a bit closer to reality…but inevitably is always off there, in the distance, forever on the horizon. Marriage is not the solution to the problems that plague our hesitancy around sexuality…it merely displaces the burden of difference, making some of “us” feel better, perhaps “normal” while excluding others, perhaps giving them less choice in being anything but “normal”.
A Fally is a rally based on a fallacy. A fallacy is a “component of an argument which, being demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, renders the whole argument invalid” (thanks Wikipedia for the refresher). Starting here, I would like to talk about marriage rallies or more so marriage fallies AND how such rallies are really fallies based on problematic arguments. I write this not to de-legitimate these rallies or those persons taking a part in them – although you may very well read this as doing so. I also do not think that their arguments are completely invalid. I commend them for their activism, bravery, and passion – I myself may take part in them as we all have our contradictions and need for solidarity . I write this however so those of us who do not fight for this “marriage” thing in certain ways can have our views expressed AND not simply pushed aside like a pesky bug or worse seen as being in “bed” with the enemy. To make it clear, I am not a fan of Focus on the Family, I am not a fan of religious zealots. I am not a fan of hate. What I am though, is tired…tired of this marriage debate having only two sides and becoming more and more like Dubbya’s notion that “you are either with us or against us”. I am tired that we have spent millions fighting this fight while LGBTQ youth sleep on the streets, HIV/AIDS research and program funding decreases, schools fail to address issues of difference, and a whole host of issues that are pertinent to the “LGBTQ” Community (and I would argue the community at large) are pushed aside and often ignored. So, here goes…
I am not with the marriage advocates and I am not with those who oppose marriage based on religious and moral grounds. I do not hate myself so please don’t try to pathologize me as suffering from “internalized oppression” or “internalized homophobia” because I do not agree with the mainstream gay plight for marriage. I do not buy into there only being these two sides. Rather, I am with the unnamed side in this debate – the “queer” side, the ugly underbelly, that sees such a drive for marriage as rather problematic and based perhaps on some shakey, fallacious grounds. I see this drive for marriage as potentially limiting the exploration of new forms of relationships, new ways of finding intimacy, new ways of being with others…while some will argue that we need the freedom to marry, I argue that in the unfreedom we currently live in with regards to marriage, there are modes of being, freeing modes that perhaps should be explored and fought for, modes that do not simply abide by what we know, but produce new avenues – however fleeting – of being in the world that do not simply require “us” to be like “them”…
So, here is my argument for a different way in this world so obsessed with wedding bells, gifts, wedding dresses, and tuxedos…I note though that these thoughts are heavily indebted to the work of Michael Warner and Judith Butler who have both written about the problematics of marriage.
1) Love is often times used as a device to argue for same sex marriage. Why shouldn’t two people in love be able to marry? How can you look at this beautiful same-sex couple that has been together for years and deny them access to this hallowed institution of marriage? How could you be so hateful to not want to grant people the right to show their love for one another? How could you deny them the right when it doesn’t even affect you? These are all good questions, they have some emotional pull…They are kinda effective at pulling at the heart strings…Keith Olbermann in his recent emotional plea relied on love to argue that this is not an issue of politics (huh, it’s not?) but one where you either stand on the side of love or not…But first, since when did marriage become about love and why is it that one needs the government to legitimate one’s love for a partner? Or perhaps I should ask, since when did the government care about there being love in a marriage…last time I checked, you just had to sign a piece of paper that was for all intensive purposes a contract, a entering into a union, a rather non-loving document really. So, Keith, I agree that love is important, but marriage is not the solution, it does not make those who don’t love those who are different (those “haters”) all of the sudden love difference. Love is more difficult and marriage is not the solution to showing love, having love, or being in love…I can be in a committed relationship (gay/straight/lesbian/polygamous/monogamous/open) without governmental interference and still have the stability and permanence that has oddly been tied as coming with marriage?
So, for those who argue that you need marriage to show your love to your partner…perhaps I will ask that you re-examine your notion of love and why you would need anyone beside your partner to legitimate that love. I have no doubt that those couples who seek the right to marry are anything but in love. I can look at the images of couples holding hands and see their love…so I am not denying the importance of love…I am merely denying the notion that marriage legitimates that love and that “we” need the government to be a part of our love – It Doesn’t and we should fight for the deconstruction of the government’s involvement in legitimating and therefore delegitimating relationships (be they gay or straight). Of course I recognize that the ways in which marriage is talked about that “love” has been “wedded” to marriage…but let’s be real and recognize that such is not the case.
2) Ahh, but you say that it’s actually not about love…that’s just rhetoric to get people to feel sympathy, empathy, or something good emotionally to “get out the vote”. What this debate is really about is the benefits…the over 1000 governmental benefits that are provided to the wedded couple. “We” deserve equal rights for our relationship because our relationship is just like “theirs” – those individuals who “fit” the traditional definition of marriage. We are normal and if we are normal we deserve the rights that are afforded those who are normal. Again, a good argument…yet, perhaps we should ask, why again should the government be able to legitimate and therefore de-legitimate a relationship? Why again are we fighting for the government to define the “proper” relationship between persons so that “proper” relationships are awarded certain benefits for fitting in? Why, I ask, are there benefits to being in a certain form of a relationship to begin with? Why do we privilege one form of relationship (two-people who are presumably heterosexual) over any other (two or more people who are on the spectrum of “sexuality”)? Simply adding “same-sex couples” to the definition does not deal with the issue that there are still relationships that are and will be disadvantaged because they do not fit and perhaps do not want to fit the new “definition” of marriage? These relationships, still disadvantaged, are relationships between not only “gay” people but also “straight” people…and people anywhere else where ever they define themselves…making this not an issue of “gay” vs. “straight” but between the “normal” vs. “queer” conceptions of relationships.
3) But, wait…you are saying that these are good arguments (thank you), they illustrate the problems with this whole marriage debate. YET, shouldn’t people have the choice to get married? Shouldn’t it at least be an option? I often hear it asked that “shouldn’t marriage be a possibility for same sex couples”…often defended…“so that we can be just as miserable as straight people”? These are really good questions…why shouldn’t marriage at least be an option for same sex couples? Shouldn’t choice be an option? I would argue that it is not that simple – choice is complicated. The ability to choose to marry disciplines not only “ourselves” to conform to the norms that marriage “law” will create BUT it also disciplines those who do not want the choice because that choice occludes the choices that are already present in the “unfreedom” of marrying. This drive for “choice”, the “choice” to marry is then inevitably a disciplining tool to take away the choice of those who resist the normal, the ideal of the married couple. Furthermore, making marriage an option, does little to combat the “hate” that I would argue is a hope that underlies the marriage debate…that if we can show “them” that we are normal and have normal homes in which to raise the future of our nation, then all will be well in the world. But, the “we” of the marriage debate does not include those who don’t seek normalcy, those who are the one’s often violated physically, verbally, and symbolically (often by the “gay” movement itself), those that are seen as “bad” representatives of the movement. Marriage, as a choice, simply makes those who do not fit the marriage wagon more and more outside the movement, more and more violated for refusing to be a part of the normal gay movement and “choose” to be that which is being fought for…These individuals are sometimes told that their time will come, that the wagon will come back to pick them up…but so often if we look at the history of movements, rarely does the wagon go back. I ask then why do “we” seek to have a choice that we know will cause harm to those who are already on the margins of our movement…normalizing ourselves while further forcing them to be less like they want to and more like us…the one’s who are just like “them”, the normal happy couple…
So, I conclude with this…perhaps the success of bans on gay marriage are a good thing…perhaps these successes will allow “us” to re-think the arguments and fight the bigger battle around the normalizing forces that seek to delegitimate those relationships – be they the current same-sex relationships that seek marriage OR those queered relations that don’t and perhaps never will seek marriage BUT still deserve respect and perhaps the “benefits” currently awarded to a small notion of relationships. Perhaps, oh perhaps we can fight for ways in which we imagine new ways of being with one another that do not buy into what is already there…finding our chances at being “a little less alone in the world” not through legal recognition around an institution that has been so detrimental in so many ways BUT through solidarity and coalitions that challenge such normalizing forces to make life more livable not just for those who might fit in, but for those who challenge and defy social sanctions.
Yet, this battle will never conclude, everyone will not be included, as the horizon is always illusive…utopia is but a mere fantasy…but perhaps we can make life a bit more livable, creating little paths, little moments where the horizon of possibilities comes a bit closer to reality…but inevitably is always off there, in the distance, forever on the horizon. Marriage is not the solution to the problems that plague our hesitancy around sexuality…it merely displaces the burden of difference, making some of “us” feel better, perhaps “normal” while excluding others, perhaps giving them less choice in being anything but “normal”.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Family Blood Lines - The Queer(ed) Family
We often times talk about one's family blood line. It is blood that creates the family line in the cultural imagination. The old adage "blood is thicker than water" seeks to illuminate that family ties bind and no matter what stay with one in the best of times and the worst of times (or so it is thought). This of course gets murkier as families become hybrid with step, half, and adopted siblings, each in a different way challenging or transforming the "blood line" and the concept of family.
But, I am not interested in the traditional family blood line, rather I want to think about how transmission and family operate in perhaps a different way when one examines HIV/AIDS. HIV is transmitted. It is transmitted through blood. It thus in a queer way creates a family blood line. Yet, this family blood line is not recognized as such because the blood through which transmission occurs and the genealogy that is present is occluded by the ways we tell history and its absence often times of the sexual encounter. What I mean by this is that the transmission of HIV through sex, does not just transmit the "virus" but also transmits a line of lives, the stories of those who had that "virus" as part of their body and transmitted it to an other...thus creating this web of connections and a "family".
Why don't we talk of this family though? Is it because this family is seen as consisting of lives often times not wanted within the traditional family - kicked out of homes for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender? Is it because we have moral panic and hysteria around HIV/AIDS seeing it as causing death, rather than providing new ways of living, new modes of intimacy? I do not of course want to imply that HIV/AIDS is just a "gay disease" as it is something that impacts the lives of all - we all live with HIV/AIDS. Yet, if this is so, we do not want to admit it, rather we seek to distance ourselves from the possible disruption that these new families, these new family trees cause in our lives where the traditional family and its values dominate the political, religious, and moral realm. What then could the families look like if we did a genealogy of the family one acquires with the acquisition of HIV? What connections and relations could be formed if we looked for our family through the blood line created within/through HIV?
Perhaps we can look at it this way...we often times see reproduction as the transmission of life and HIV/AIDS transmission as the transmission of death. What happens if we change the frame at which we look at these issues to see them differently, queerly? Is not reproduction inevitably the transmission of death as that which is birthed will suffer and will die even in our feeble attempt to touch immortality through reproduction? Is not the transmission of HIV/AIDS not the transmission of life, providing those who have died previously because of the virus to live on through the bodies of others who acquire it - providing life and living in new ways not yet imagined along with space to create activism and possible lives hidden from view because of the HIV/AIDS panic(s)?
I of course do not want to imply that reproduction is just the transmission of death but it is not just the transmission of life...it will produce death, just hopefully out there in the future when "we" don't have to see it or grieve it because we ourselves will have died. And I of course do not want to deny that HIV/AIDS does produce and has produced suffering and death (often times hand in hand with political and economic apathy) but it does not just produce these things. It also produces new modes of being and doing life with a "virus" that has historically created a space of shame...
My thoughts then are meant to perhaps re-think about the family and see that the virus transmitted often times through the act of sex creates a family blood line similar but queerer than the blood line often times thought of. I do not mean to deny that this virus can be transmitted through violence, through accident, through lies BUT that is the same for reproduction as not all "babies" are born out of choice, but sometimes by accident or through violence.
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