Fag Discourse: That's So Gay, No Homo, and Childish Insults

I think kids are quite hysterical. They say the darndest things. But, in education kids are disciplined to not say certain things while being encouraged to say other things. The comical kindergarten technique of addressing an upset kid by asking them to “use their words” illuminates the power and precarity of language. The teacher wants the kid to “use his/her/hir words” but what words that kid can use are already, most likely, limited and if not limited will garner some form of discipline very quickly. By this I mean, if a teacher told a kindergartner to “use your words” and that kid told the teacher to “fuck off,” the teacher would while being highly amused and laughing on the inside find it necessary, due to professional standards, to inform the kid that such a phrase is inappropriate and discipline the student accordingly. We do not want little kids running around cursing because that would show poorly on them, their family, and the community in which they were raised. One could reference Paul Rudd's Role Models where we see a little black boy (shocking I know) who seemingly only knows how to cuss (and garners significant laughs from the audience since we rarely see the kid as black minstrel).

But, my concern is not with cussing kids. Rather, my concern, or perhaps interest is when kids - students - use phrases often labeled as “homophobic” such as “that's gay,” “no homo,” or “fag.” These phrases are common parlance on the playground, hallways, and classrooms. Homework is referred to as “being gay,” compliments to other same-sex classmates are ended by saying “no homo,” and refusing to do something seen as cool is met with “don't be a fag.” Pre-service teachers are often told that it is necessary to address such phrases when they hear them uttered, but GLSEN's research shows that unfortunately such phrases are rarely addressed by teachers. According to the 2009 report "62.4% of students who were harasseed or assaulted in school did not report the incident to school staff, believing little to no action would be taken or the situation would become worse if reported" while "33.8% of the students who did report an incident said that school staff did nothing in response." This finding is not unique to this study, but has been consistently found in various studies on school climate. And this finding speaks directly to teacher preparation. What type of preparation do pre-service teachers receive in their programs and what are the complexities of such preparation?

There seems to be a particular fear about addressing phrases and harassment hinged on sexuality. Some teachers - new and old - comment about being unsure what to say or how to address such phrases. Other teachers - new and old - note how they just address the comment head on, informing the student who said it that such a phrase cannot be used and will not be tolerated. Often though, the intervention ends here with the student not being informed as to why they are not supposed to use that phrase. And still other teachers - new and old - address the utterance and discuss why such an utterance is inappropriate. Within education, I would argue, it is this third option that is seen as the “gold-standard” practice. It addresses the language and teaches the user of such language of the problems using such language.

However, I find such interventions quite problematic - perhaps because I find most forms of pre-packaged advice problematic. I find it problematic because it does not take into account the context - who is saying it, how they are saying it, who they are saying it to, and why? I can't but wonder if a gay student speaking to another gay student and using, for instance, “fag” in an endearing way is ever told not to use that phrase. I imagine that this will become more prevalent in schools as Gay-Straight Alliances become more visible in high schools and middle schools. If schools provide a space for gay students in the form of GSAs, how does that space disrupt the traditional hetero-normative ways of addressing homophobic language? At an earlier time it seemed to be adequate to simply make certain words off limits. But as the times change and "gays" receive more legitimacy within the political realm, do schools have to alter what language counts as appropriate?

What do I mean by this? If a gay student utters "faggot" and is told not to use that word, what does the gay kid learn? Does the gay kid learn that they just cannot win? That schools are simply too straight for their gay ways of recuperating words? Do they learn that as they find words to use within their group of friends that allow them to "recuperate" injurious speech and create a space to survive that in fact, their survival space is not the "right" kind or not "appropriate"? Are they straightened out and re-oriented towards the more acceptable approach to language? I am not sure, but I think it is an important issue to deal with.

We might also think about the use of the phrase "no homo" as not only does it allow us to engage issues of sexuality, but also race as this is a phrase that is racialized - most often heard within the African American community. Many people find this phrase problematic. I think this phrase is interesting because it illuminates the inability within masculinity to compliment another "man" without being accused of same-sex attraction. It illustrates the limitations of masculinity. But, it also produces a space for compliments to take place. Rather than remaining silence and not telling another boy that his shoes are fabulous, "no homo" allows a different form of intimacy to emerge - an intimacy that is distinct from an intimacy that is associated with "homosexuality." So, while this phrase, on one hand, can be read as being homophobic. It might also be read as challenging the homo-hetero divide allowing for some "same-sex love" that is not "gay." And I think we should produce more forms of intimacy - ways of relating to others that are understood outside of sexual attraction...but this is quite difficult and is not a move to ignore the violence that "no homo" and other "homophobic" insults can inflict when uttered in particular contexts or dynamics.

Moving in a different direction, recently I heard the use of “fag” in a way that seemed new to me. The use of “fag” was in reference to being jealous. The person being called a fag was the person whom the person uttering "fag" was jealous of - “A football game already…ugh fag…you're so lucky”. In this comment, the fag is not the abject subject it seems, but rather the subject that is supposed to be admired for being able to “go to a football game already”. The fag is the lucky one. Of course, this is quite obvious. Fags are rather lucky. And I am quite interested in this lucky fag. Fag is most often used in a derisive manner, but this moment seems to completely challenge the derision and instead deride the alternative position - the position the utterer is in - namely the "straight" position or the "not-fag" position.

Now, I am not sure if the person using this phrase thought about the use in this way. But, that is really of no concern because you are reading my blog post about this and hopefully now might think about how words are quite complex and must be explored within the context they are uttered...and perhaps this illuminates why grammar and sentence structure is so important. Recognizing how words operate within a sentence impacts the possibilities instilled in that sentence. When "fag" becomes the "subject" of a sentence instead of the object of that sentence's derision, I think that is significant, but I will let you decide as you are more capable than I...

A Critique of Lady Gaga and her Politics on DADT

Lady Gaga has morphed, as a "pop" performer, into a "pop" politician these days as seen in her recent speech about Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT). And I appreciate her attempt to merge the "political" imagination with the "popular" imagination these past couple weeks beginning notably with her famed "meat dress" and her guests at the VMAs.

Yet, while I appreciate her as an artist (which some will contest), a performer (which some will contest), and as a political commentator (which some, including I, will contest)...I want to take on her engagement with DADT. I, of course, will be critiqued for my critique because it is rather unpopular. To not argue for the repeal of DADT as a "gay" individual is unintelligible because it puts "me" in the camp of the "homophobe". There are in this debate, much like the marriage debate, only two sides creating a dynamic reminiscent of Bush's argument that "you are either with us or against us." I am neither with nor against though. I seek a different path illuminating that Lady Gaga is a better liberal than I am. As such, I want to re-frame the debate to perhaps open up space closed off by Gaga and her opponents (e.g. McCain).

Gaga notes in her speech, a rather thoughtful speech, that there should be a new law that actually "kicks" out the homophobic soldiers. The homophobia of individual soldiers is the problem here. The problem is not that homosexual soldiers threaten the morale of troops, but that homophobia and homophobic soldiers threaten the morale because it is their "fear" of the "homosexual" that are the issue. The issue is not the homosexual soldier - they are there to do their job - but the homophobic soldier who cannot do his/her job because of a (irrational) fear they have of homosexuality.

This makes sense and is quite compelling. Yet, it maintains the logic of shame. Gaga's "new law" maintains that shame should occur and this shame is always inevitably related to (homo)sexuality and the individual. There is no engagement with the homophobia except to remove it, to shame it. The difficult task of engaging homophobia and inevitably the issues surrounding "homosexuality" are still left untouched - namely the military. With Gaga's hypothetical law then, the logic of shaming is maintained only with the "now" the good people being restored to the place of honor.

The new law, instead of marginalizing the gay soldiers, marginalizes the homophobic soldiers (who could also be gay as homophobia is not absent from the "gay" community). The homophobe becomes the "queer" outsider while the homosexual becomes the acceptable insider whereby the homosexual soldier can feel like the "good gay" finally with the homophobe finally taking his/her place of shame. I, of course, am not arguing in support of homophobia. DADT is discriminatory, but the methods by which such discrimination is engaged are strange. What I am arguing though is that Gaga's solution is inevitably no different, no more ethical than the old law she seeks to contest.

This is not my biggest concern. My biggest concern is the irony of Gaga's position. A few months back when Gaga was being protested by the Westboro Baptist Church she told her monsters that "Although I respect and do not judge anyone for their personal views on any politics or religion, this group in particular to me is violent and dangerous. I wanted to make my fans aware of my views on how to approach, or rather not approach, these kinds of hate activists." Gaga did not seek violent reactions, but sought inaction against the protesters - allowing them to "be" outside - while inside love won out and the monsters sang. I admired Gaga's nonviolent stance and her ability to provide political commentary that did not use violence against violence.

Yet, in her talk she notes that "If you are not honorable enough to fight without prejudice, go home." The main concern of this statement is with prejudice. If you cannot fight without prejudice than you should not fight at all, you should go home. This concern is rather curious to me, in light of Gaga's oft dislike of fighting and love of, well, love. Gaga's position is strange because it does not address the issue of fighting. It argues for honorable and non-prejudical fighting. Fighting is ok, as long as it is "honorable" and without "prejudice". Gaga does not challenge the need to fight, nor does she critique the too numerous to state problems with the US Military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations that are far from without prejudice and some might argue, far from honorable. This is of course not to say that soldiers are not honorable, but the rhetoric used by the military via the media are problematic, limiting, and drenched in racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia.

It seems then that Gaga maintains an allegiance to the military in order to allow gay and lesbian soldiers to openly serve. She does not, unfortunately, argue against the military's use of sexual shame in its own campaigns against the foreign other. She addresses the homophobia that impacts individual soldiers while leaving in place the homophobia that structures the military mentality. What do I mean by this? One only has to look at Abu Gharib photos to see the ways in which the military has used sex, sexuality, and sexual shaming for its own benefit. So, while Gaga may be comfortable arguing for the inclusion of Gay and Lesbian soldier in the military, I have a problem following. I am not a good liberal. And I cannot support granting access to an institution that is fraught with problems. I see a major ethical problem arguing for people's rights to fight in battles that have in recent times been waged.

Of course this is probably an unpopular stance to take. It can be read as being disrepectful to soldiers and their families which it is not intended to be. My hope is, my argument is, that rather than merely granting access to gay and lesbian soldiers, a broader movement is necessary that challenges the necessity and operations of the military itself...because inevitably the issue with DADT as represented by Gaga is not with the miliary (and its homophobia/sexism/xenophobia), but with individual soldiers. The "military" remains untouched, uncritiqued while individual lives are shamed - be they the ousted gay/lesbian soldier under DADT or the homophobic soldier ousted due to Gaga's new (hypothetical) law.

Queertopia: A Strange Place

What is queertopia? Can such a place exist? And what is its future? Who is in such a place? And who is part of such a future, a rather queer future - perhaps? These are questions that are raised in a show I recently saw entitled Queertopia. According to the description of the play it is "based on true stories" that are "youth-driven oral histories" that "investigate[s] violence within and against the LGBTQA communities in America while imagining and performing a future just beyond our grasp." It is a show, an organic show whose script, as the cast discussed in the talk-back after the show, is constantly evolving and changing. It tells stories of youth, different kinds of youth, queer in different ways, but in such stories there emerges a haunting of the past - a past that haunts the lives of LGBTQA persons. Yet, such haunting propels forward uncharted possibilities not seen in the show itself, but imagined in the time and space after the show ends and the dance party begins. It is a play between the past, the present (as performed), and the future always "a day away" or "just beyond our grasp".

Within the show and perhaps the future it imagines, performance and dance become the modes not only of cathartic release, but of imagination, of not thinking about the real, but of thinking about the imaginary - about images that could someday be a part of the real images we see in our lives. It is a reach for, a dreaming of a queertopia.

Within the show, space and time interact..space is changed over time and time impacts what space is available and how such space is seen. And a part of this dynamic relates to the bodies involved in such space and time. How are bodies oriented within the space and time and what amount of time does it take to orient bodies in particular ways within a space? How do the stories of the characters illuminate different paths for "queer" bodies and different responses to the violence of existence?

But back to the concept of queertopia...

I think it is necessary to begin in the present thinking about queertopia by looking backwards to the past to the etymology of what seem to be important terms - namely utopia, dystopia, and then finally the etymology of the queer in queertopia. Utopia is a neologism, first used in Sir Thomas More's book Utopia (1516). It emerges from Greek to mean broadly "good place." More used the term allegorically, noting such a place could not actually exist, but imagining such a place offers potential critical insights into possibility. Dystopia, a modification of utopia, is according to its etymology, first uttered by John Stuart Mill in 1868 in a speech in the British House of Commons. It means broadly a "bad or ill place." Utopia is founded on the "good life" while dystopia is its negative counterpart, a utopia with a problem. So, what about queertopia? I had not heard of the concept "queertopia" until this show...so let's look to the etymology of queer to begin an understanding of such a concept. Queer means "strange" or "peculiar" or "eccetric;" "off-center" or "oblique". And in the 20th century becomes associated with (homo)sexuality - an association that cannot be avoided with the utterance of "queer" as noted queer theorist Eve Sedgwick notes in Tendencies. So a queertopia is a strange or peculiar place, but a strange and peculiar place that is intimately connected with sexuality - particularly non-normative sexualities. It is perhaps a space and time where non-normative sexualities exist in a different paradigm BUT is neither good nor bad, it is peculiar...it is ambivalent about good and bad.

It is this ambivalence of the queertopia that I find quite useful and quite well engaged in the show. Depending on how one might read "queertopia" there are perhaps two immediate responses. One might imagine the show as playing with the notion of utopia - providing an overly positive spectacle of same-sex lovin'...one that imagines a world without violence, filled instead with love and gaiety. Or, one might imagine the show as playing with the notion of dystopia - imagining a future that is filled with violence, with queer bashing in order to provoke rage and calls for queer resistance. Both readings while somewhat present in the show, are inadequate for what happens. Instead, the viewer gets a merging of these two and in such a merging the show engages ambivalence where the good and the bad, the right and the wrong become much more complicated. The "queer bodies" are not merely victims, but also violators. Violence is not only inflicted from the outside, in BUT also from the inside out as the psychic wounds and the social wounds dance to produce the queer subjects.

And it is this production - both the literal production of the show and the metaphorical production of the lives such a show re-presents - that creates the queertopia. A space, a place and therefore a time somewhere and nowhere fleetingly showing the world we live in, the world as it once was, and how the world might be always struggling with the violence of existence and the (in)ability to escape such violence. This (in)ability both opens up the space to counter violence (an ethics of non-violence) while recognizing the presence of violence in the constitution of the human - we are violated by coming into existence (e.g. through naming, through being slapped on the butt by the doctor, or having our sex determined for us in the case of intersex babies). We cannot become subjects, we cannot become bodies, without violence but as Judith Butler argues "it is precisely because one is formed through violence, the responsibility not to repeat the violence of one's formation is all the more pressing and important" (2009, 167).

Legalize Gay

I recently was walking past American Apparel and saw this shirt that said "Legalize Gay". I was running late for a meeting so I couldn't stop and purchase it on the spot...I had to wait and hope that such a beautiful shirt would be still available two hours later.

It was still available two hours later. It was available in numerous colors and numerous sizes. I got a small, hoping it would shrink a little and then look super gay. But that's neither here nor there. My purchase of the shirt was done with a hint of irony. Actually, it was bought because I thought it was ridiculous and hysterical. I found it ridiculous and hysterical because I didn't get it and wondered why we should ask to "legalize gay". Of course, you, the reader, might be asking why that is odd so I will explain.

It seems odd because I am not sure how one "legalizes" an identity or perhaps why one would seek such legalization? It seems odd to ask for the government to "legitimate" an identity through legalization because specifying particular identities limits other possible identities. If I change my mind and don't want to be "gay" anymore, am I still a legal or legitimate being if I choose to "be" or "do" something different than "gay"? Such a demand seemingly limits other possibilities not yet "legalized" and as such gives the "government" the capability to delegitimate those identities that are not "legal". Along with this comes of course other areas of life that work along side the "government" such as the medical profession and education system that will also not recognize or "pathologize" those "identities" not legal - and therefore abnormal or delegitimate.

Of course, I recognize the impetus behind the shirts is in relation to Prop 8 in California and the argument to legalize "same sex marriage". Believing that if "gays" can marry, they become first class citizens, failing to see the loss that such a gain simultatenous entails. But I want to think about this in a different way. It seems odd that we "fight" to keep the government out of our bedrooms by relying on that very government to legislate such a request. We want you out of our bedrooms, but we want you in our bedrooms at the same time because we ask that you are in our bedroom so that you "see" that what we do is not "illegal" or something that will put us behind bars. Of course there are benefits to this...the legal realm provides a certain amount of possibilities - legitimate possibilities and safety from the prison. Yet, it also while producing possibilities of legitimacy, simultaneously occludes other possibilities - further marginalizing those possibilities that do not yet have "movement" to seek legitimation or possibilities that refuse to rely on the "legal" to make them legitimate. This can poignantly be seen, not in the realm of the legal, but the realm of the psychiatric where homosexuality was depathologized only to provide the space for gender non-conformity to be pathologized in the form of Gender Identity Disorder. We see in this that as the "homosexual" became officially healthy that other transgressive ways of being (i.e. a sissy boy; a manly girl) became officially 'unofficial' and deemed unhealthy.

What then does it mean to "legalize gay"? Does it mean to normalize the "gay" and move away from the arguably transgressive "nature" that was once associated with "gay" but perhaps moreso these days the "queer"? Does legalizing "gay" also normalize it to be "like them" just as some have sought the "gay" to be...we're just like you and deserve the same rights...While such a strategy provides recognition in the "traditional" sense, does it fail at changing anything? Does "legalizing" gay inevitably defeat what is most desired?

The Politics of Bruno

Sacha Baron Cohen's recent film, Bruno, has been causing quite the stir. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation rebuked the film for reinforcing negative stereotypes with the president of the organization stating "the movie was a well-intentioned series of sketches _ some hit the mark and some hit the gay community pretty hard and reinforce some damaging, hurtful stereotypes." While it is understandable having seen the film the ways in which some of the skits could be read as "hurtful" or as "reinforcing stereotypes" such a reading is perhaps problematic as it does nothing to engage the brilliance of the film.

To explore the brilliance of the film, I want to start by noting that I believe GLAAD, similar to other political advocacy groups, engages a politics of identification. In engaging politics in this way, they seek to argue for "positive" images that people can identify with - images that make those who are "different" look reasonable or understandable or intelligible to a "mainstream" audience. There are of course benefits to doing this so I do not mean to delegitimate those benefits. However, in doing so such politics must also engage in the process of disidentification - to distance themselves from images that are negative (i.e. damaging stereotypes). As such, these politics get caught within, as Tim Dean notes, the dialectics of identification and disidentification. What though, might happen if we sought to engage politics away from this dialectic to think about or engage these issues differently? This engagement is not one about positive and negative identifications, but about exploring the ways in which lives are regulated, constrained, liberated, etc. in different ways.

In watching Bruno, I can tell where people might get upset - especially "gay" people. Images of a father holding a baby in a hot tub with sexual acts occurring right next to the baby, "unmentionable sex acts" occuring between two men, etc. Yet, the issue is not that these images are negative, the issue is that we still have an aversion to sex and seeing sex up close and personal makes us uncomfortable...and in such discomfort we seek to distance ourselves from that (i.e. walking out or violently attacking those engaged in such acts) or regulate the ability for such images to be seen (i.e. censorship). Baron Cohen's film exposes this brilliance by doing it, by making people react to these images and in such reactions we see the discomfort and hate people have for difference, for lives that are outside of the norm and unrecognizable...AND in such unrecognizability, people do violence...they ask for a baby to be removed from its home, they throw chairs at two men "wrestling", they seek to turn people "straight"...and in trying to do so, they seek to make, in this case Bruno, normal, the same as everyone else.

Bruno then is a brilliant social commentary that seeks to do politics in a different way...seeks to through the joke, through parody, mock those things that seem to have become "legitimate" or "recognizable". For instance, he mocks transnational adoptions by the stars not because those children do not deserve to be adopted or to have a "life", but because such adoptions provide a certain type of capital to those celebrities...it provides them with this humanitarian gold star and publicity. It also raises fascinating intersections of issues - the role of "culture" in raising a child, the normal "familial structure" that is imagined to be "best" for the child, and the complexity of race relations within the contemporary world. Reading the film at its surface level, as most seem to do, fails miserably to engage this complexity - in part because this complexity fails at allowing us to think about, well, the complexity of these issues that have a history, often times violent, a present, often times violent, and a future, one that is perhaps reparative, but perhaps violent. It is significantly easier to, as GLAAD does, to take a clear-cut stance that divides representations into "positive" or "negative" because it provides a foundation, a starting point...when depending on the context and the bodies involved...those judgments vary as do the starting points.

So then, the beauty of Bruno's politics are that they seek to illuminate the problems of identification and how in such identification and its dialectical process with disidentification, exclusions still occur...what his film does produce, in the wake of this critique is an possible politics that seeks not to say "good" or "bad" but challenge its viewer to think about why discomfort, disgust, violence, or anger emerges in the context of difference, of otherness? What pushes people to the edge and asks them to push back to re-establish boundaries - boundaries that challenge one's coherent view of the world? What challenges us to see the world in ways that go against the normative frameworks of race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality? And how in going against such normative frameworks are 'we" changed but also the world changed to allow different viable possibilities to emerge?

Reflections on MJ: The King of Pop

As the spotlight shone down on an empty microphone, the memorial service over and the sound of his music yearning for his voice, I realized I had just witnessed the end of an era for no longer would that microphone be sung into by the King of Pop as his voice is now present only in memory - memories memorialized in his albums. And it is those albums and the sound of his voice, that brought the world together again to say goodbye and begin to heal our own wounds - wounds created by the loss of our King.

Michael wanted to heal the world and he sought to heal that world through his song, through asking his listeners, asking us, to believe not just in his message, but in ourselves and our own ability to heal the world. We are not alone he told us and we weren't alone today as the world came together to mourn the loss of our King. It is there, in the state of mourning, that a thank you should be given to his family as they opened up their own grief to mourn with us, to help us mourn, and in such mourning begin to celebrate the life of the one lost. While some may have called it a spectacle, a bunch of "hoop-la", they miss the beauty of the moment as millions across the globe entered public spaces, sat in private spaces, to watch on TV or live stream on the internet to be together and mourn the lost object of Michael Jackson. This coming together traversed not only the boundaries of private/public but national boundaries and as some have noted illustrated Michael's message in "Black or White" where it doesn't matter if you're black or white. Yet, in this mourning, we see a beautiful figure in Michael Jackson and it is that beauty - a rather queer beauty - that I seek to reflect on.

As I listened to the stars speak of their memories and experiences of Michael, it was apparent that this man was loved by many, even after he had found himself so often in strange predicaments, inevitably creating him as a strange man in the minds of many. While Al Sharpton noted to Michael's children - "your daddy wasn't strange, what was strange was what your daddy had to deal with", his sentiment fails to recognize the importance of Michael's strangeness and how it was his strangeness that captivated us - that made Michael beautiful.

Michael was strange because he believed in kindness - a queer thing to believe in these days - and his message was always one of kindness. In his soft-spoken voice he spoke of his love of the world and of children - sentiments that are often positioned with the feminine. He believed, even with all he had been through and all that goes on in the world that it could be healed. Yet, in such a soft-spokenness he disrupted our images of the masculine male and as such was seen as "strange" for what kind of man would act like that? A "kind" man would but in such kindness must be positioned as "feminine", as less manly. I would argue it was this kindness that was misunderstood and allowed him to be derided for being “jacko the wacko” for being a boy in a man’s body...for being "crazy". Perhaps, as his actions are positioned as "crazy", we can see that it is kindness that is crazy as we would prefer to not allow ourselves to believe in it, questioning it and anyone who embraces it as "strange". But, Michael was put in strange predicaments because he lived in a strange world in a body that was strange...but it was this strange body that allowed us to see other possibilities and it is in his strange body that he had such power.

Michael Jackson was a queer body as he transgressed so many of our naturalized categories. He challenged our assumptions about race, gender, age, and sexuality. He was black, but white - telling us that it didn't matter. Yet, it does as we hear people ask if he wanted to be white, question him for having "white" kids, or claim him for "their" group - defeating his message of healing. He was man but could pass as woman at times, transgressing the gender binary and causing us to take a second look or even mock him for looking so strange. He wanted to show other possibilities, to show it didn't matter...but we want it to matter, we wanted to box him in...to produce him as a coherent "subject". He transgressed sexual norms as people pondered his sex life and accused him of perverse sexual dealings with children. Yet, these disruptions are not as disruptive as his disruptions of age and that adult-child binary.

It is his traversing the adult-child binary that is most fascinating. Berry Gordy Jr. noted that in his personal life, Michael was shy and child-like. Brooke Shields noted that Michael had to grow up and lose out on his childhood as he entered the adult world of the music industry as a child. He was an adult but always seemed child-like but as a child he had to be adult. His growing up was to quick but as a grown up - he grew beside himself to be "child" while "adult". And it was his original loss of childhood that perhaps provoked him to fight for the child and embrace his own child-ness - to forever traverse that strange boundary between the adult and the child. Yet, when "adults" embrace their childness and when men love children such beings are produced as having had something gone awry - something all to evident in Michael's life.

Yet, it is his child-like status that will allow us to remember Michael forever, for the child is never to be lost, the child is to outlive the adult and in dying as the shy, quiet child-like man he was in his personal life, Michael will live on forever young, forever growing beside himself as his life expands across the globe and throughout time to perhaps continue on in his quest to heal the world. In dying as the child, he remains forever child...never an old man, never anything but that which he sought his whole life to find and protect.

In mourning his lost, the world perhaps found moments where it came together and began to see itself healing from its loss, bringing to fruition - albeit fleetingly - Michael's dream…And, in such a moment, the world perhaps began to see healing in other ways as people reached across to aisle to grasp the hand of an other to fleetingly feel connected as they watched Michael go out with style in New York, Milan, Ghana, Hong Kong, and beyond.

And so with that, I end this reflection...thanking Michael for always sharing his genius with the world, even in strife, to help make it a better world. I thank him for his queerness...for transforming his body in strange ways to perform different possibilities, even if such possibilities often got him in the tabloids for being "wacko". You will live in your music as your voice becomes a testament to your dreams. May you rest in peace.

Assemblages and Identities

Puar, in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, presents her reader with the notion of an assemblage. She writes that “an assemblage is more attuned to interwoven forces that merge and dissipate time, space, and body against linearity, coherency, and permanency” (212). In presenting this conceptual intervention in Queer Politics and studies, she provides space to engage the tensions between "identity politics" and "queer politics" whereby the identity necessary for identity politics (i.e. rights based movements) is troubled by the contingent, fleeting process of identification. Identity or positionality require a snapshot, a static box that can be held up to fight for a given "x" (i.e. marriage, recogniton). Such notions of identity or position however, as Judith Butler (1990, 1993) has noted, are not natural but constructions constructed throught their repetitions and through such repetition become naturalized or as Puar writes "consolidates the fiction of a seamless stable identity in every space" (212). Identity then demands are coherence over space and inevitably over time...that my identity is the same over space and time. Yet, as queer interventions have argued...such notions of identity are troublesome to those who do not fit into such identity categories or who are violated through such naturalized or privileged identity categories.

Puar's intevention with Assemblage here provokes a recognition and negotiation with the space and time of "being" or "doing" life. She seeks, it appears, to illustrate the problems with identity and positionality and most interestingly theories of intersectionality. It is the assemblage that provides for the engagement with the temporal movement of "doing" life. If one looks at assemblage in art, one realizes that something created through assemblage is dependent on the found objects that are apart of the piece. These found objects are related to the space and time in which the piece is constructed. As a piece of art it can change...its meaning and appearance is dependent on that which is possible in any given time and space. Using this in opposition to identity, an assemblage allows "us" to see the ways in which an engagement with the world and an understanding of that world is related to the time and space in which we are engaged...the exciting although difficult part being an excavation of ways in which such assemblages become naturalized or understood as "identity"...illuminating the tension between identity as a static category and "doing" as a performance assembled from the possibilities possible - be they radical newness, subversive appropriation, or reiteration of norms. It is this tension, the process of "doing" life illustrates how "indeterminancy and determination, change and freeze-framing, go together" (213).

The use of Puar's intervention provides in these queer times, the space to imagine and re-imagine possible ways of "being" or "doing" or "relating" in this world. Yet, it recognizes the complexity of such, refusing to get rid of the necessity of "identity" but recognizing and demanding the recognition of the limitations of such an approach.


References:
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.
Puar, J. K. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Shame is the Name of the Game

The concept of shame is a concept that has arguably had a strong impact on communities of individuals that are “different” and for the communities for which these “different” communities are defined against. These communities of “difference” are “shamed” for not being normal, for being different, for not following the straight and narrow by which the “normal” communities define themselves. Politically such communities of difference can unite and fight back to show that “they” are not abnormal, but in actuality…to borrow from Andrew Sullivan “virtually normal”…“we are just like you”. These communities, in making this claim, seek legitimation, recognition, and rights – important things indeed. Yet, in making this claim towards normalcy, what is given up? What is lost when communities or the voices that can speak for a community displace the “negative” the “shameful” in order to be like the rest, to be recognized as, in part, human?

As the “gay” community celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots – for all intensive purposes the event that is considered to have started the modern gay rights movement – I want to think about the negative, the shameful and how in displacing such things, something is lost. As the trannies and queens of Stonewall fought back, harkening in the gay rights movement, so the story goes…Pride set in. It was with Pride gays, lesbians, and the rest of the gang could march down the streets, assert their rights, fight for those rights, and be recognized, at least by some, as subjects. Yet, as the movement continued, this Pride arguably began to displace some of the shameful antics of those “queers” so that the others might fit in and get their piece of the American Pie. I was reminded in a recent interview of Edmund White in Out that the movement has changed drastically from the days of Stonewall. White notes that the leaders of the movement have shifted from the “political radicals” to the “stuffy middle class gays”. And it is arguably these “middle-class gays” that now determine the focus of the movement – namely marriage and adoption rights. Yet, in fighting for these “rights”, other issues are left untouched, except by those political radicals still out there. And in this, those who started the movement, those who were the one’s most often violated, most often visible again have taken the backseat. The queens that threw the first heel, the trannies and street trash that made up much of the Stonewall crowd are still waiting for their turn, still living their “shameful” ways…while the “stuffy” gays buff up their “rights” to be like, well to be normal.

I was reminded of all this recently when attending a Pride celebration with a friend. This friend had never been to a Pride celebration before and in many ways was rather surprised at the event…the costumes, the skin showing, the public intimacy, the “freaks”…were all a bit much for him, perhaps even making him uncomfortable as we sought refuge in a trendy sushi bar whose clientele was much more middle to upper class, and arguably quite white. However, I do not want this to accuse him as an individual for this discomfort, to psychologize him and his unease because this was not about him as an individual but about the bigger issues and the tensions between Pride and shame. Having seen only the “good” gays represented in television and the “bad” gays either made invisible or pathologized and shown to not be “representative” of the “community”, it makes sense that Pride festivals for many “gays” are uncomfortable because everyone and everything comes out of the woodwork. The space of Pride is rather queer…it is not “straight”, it is strange and in such strangeness it is rather fleeting…but a mere day when “I” can do things in public I cannot do in most other “spaces”. Yet, back to the discomfort and how such discomfort seems to emerge when the “good gays” see that which is considered shameful, excessive, bad taste…causing the Pride celebration to become splintered and/or at times “cleaned” up to become a “family” event.

The queer space of Pride struggles with itself as different bodies seek different things…as some bodies seek to show the “good” side of things, the “family friendliness” of the gays while others seek to disrupt these notions, to challenge the normative family to expose, to play with something different…leaving me to ask…Why must Pride be a family event? Why must “we” cater to the concept of the, I would argue “straight family” to celebrate Pride or to be a legitimate public event? One could feasibly think about different concepts of the family, often created by different facets of the “gay” community and how perhaps these families are the ones that deserve to have space, to have an event catered toward them that is in a public space? What would it mean to argue for the legitimacy of these “families” or does arguing for such legitimacy rely on the normative structures, forcing these “queer” family structures to become “normalized”?
I ask…Since the “straight” family has so often abused the “gay” body by kicking them to the streets, by sending them to therapy…why not celebrate the families that the “gays” create, the houses, the connections that are made as the abused bodies of many gays repair their wounds, their losses, not to be victims of the family…but as creators of new families…of families chosen, not born into? And in some cases, families that are “blood” related with the advent of HIV/AIDS and the family tree one could feasibly construct with the line by which one’s infection has followed…(see my earlier post of HIV/AIDS and Family bloodlines)

For more interesting work on Shame see:
Leo Bersani. Intimacies. 2008 (see also Bersani’s “Is the Rectum a Grave” 1988)
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. 2004
David Halperin. What do Gay Men Want: An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity. 2007.
Heather Love. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. 2009.

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

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.