Think, Thinking, Thought

Songbook

2010-08-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

I remember books of songs
Handwritten with love
By many a different hand
Careful, these are for God
Don't mind
About the wide-rule
Letters above each line
D C G
Telling the singers where to go up
C
And down
The pages always well-worn
Favorite songs ragged
Amazing Grace and
In The Sweet By And By
Tear stained and memorized
What was that one?
That Punky used to sing
With her cheeks so red from shy
Geneane and her
Taking turns
Melody and harmony
Sounding like Patsy Cline
And Tanya Tucker
Faces toward the sky
And my Grandpa playing
Bless em, Lord

Dracaena

2010-07-29T15:40:00.001-07:00

Today I discovered me in the plant
that sits on my desk.
I had pulled up a tiny pebble
to lay my head upon
And I was reading a book.
I was surprised to see such a tiny me
resting peacefully,
shaded from the fluorescent lights.
I slowly stretched and turned a page
regarding the larger me with indifference
and snacked on a piece of fruit.

Extraction

2010-07-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

Fist curled, you reached inside me and
grabbed my soul with your pinkie finger.
So delicately you pulled it out--
(like the stuck tampon I once helped you find)
"A-ha!" you said,
believing you had found the proof
to the lies you had told yourself.
And there, on my soul,
the hieroglyphics of my past glistened
wet and sticky.
You were frustrated by the mystery and depth
of these symbols, incapable of comprehending.
Like a monkey before a monolith
you saw your own reflection
and believed it was me.

perfect day

2010-07-29T15:37:00.001-07:00

We got up got the kids to school
Then we showered and got prettied.
(The clothes were a nice contrast that day.)
My boots felt heavy, meaningful.
\Thunder canyon beer, portabella mushrooms
I wanted to tell you what to do, so hard.
My mouth watered with longing.
I wanted to feed you.
\Sweet November. I cried through the whole thing.
How I always compared us to every romance.
We loved that beautifully.
We suffered that much, our cancer.
\All I wanted was to touch you.
We went to your house, then.
Blissful from the food, the movie
We made our way upstairs, giggling.
\Every time I hear a fan, I cry.
The one in your room was so loud, soothing.
Would have put me right to sleep,
But, first you were mine.

there's my territory

2010-07-29T15:34:00.003-07:00

hard lines, edges
strength and stamina
marathon not sprint
man hands
pride
work
blue collar
basic
simple
flannel, leather
muscle
and,oh god, sweetness hidden

keeping you

2010-07-29T15:34:00.001-07:00

If I could still reach you
I would
Grab your face with my left and
Squeeze your
Mouth open
And force my tongue in there
Until you could not breathe
\With my right I would dig
Inside you for all the
Reasons we cant be
And tug and pull
Them gleaming and dripping
Fall to my knees
And slurp/swallow them/you whole
\And digest and
Absorb you until
You were part of my very
Cells.
\And then you would not
Get away.

don't wait

2010-07-29T15:30:00.001-07:00

Where will you be
When the girl you love steps off the train
And into the arms of someone else
\Listen closely to what love tells you
Because the girl will be gone
Before you know it.
\Tennessee, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo
No telling where she will be in
Such a short amount of time.
You might miss her.
\She has fallen in love with herself
And the world
And now that she is free
She is going to play.
\And your chance to be with her
Will soon be gone.

bringing you to my room

2010-07-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

Bringing you to my room
I discovered exactly how vulnerable you are.
\Sitting by you in the big white chair
I remembered how harsh I was.
\Swinging on the porch with you
I visited a past full of anger and desperation.
\Lounging on the couch with you
I conjured up images of you smiling up at me.
\Bringing you to my room
I discovered how you still move me.

i miss her

2010-07-29T15:29:00.002-07:00

The woman I love is deep and hard.
I can't get into her anymore
She shut me out.
She knows things about me that noone else does.
She owns the secrets inside my body.
When she put her hand on me
I felt endless.
She is the only one who can take me.
\I feel her thinking about me every day.
She knows she still owns me,
I only wish we could be together.
I had hoped we could, but her trust
Couldn't be trusted.
\If you can hear this, dear one,
Know that I will always love you.

What I Did

2010-07-29T15:29:00.001-07:00

I know how much I hurt you.
I know that I was
selfish and childish and angry
when I didn't get my way.
I look at you now and know that
you evoked in me
every possible emotion
I could possibly have had.
I felt so deeply the
hunger and anger and want and need
all at once.
I wanted to posses you
the way you possessed my heart.
My soul belonged to you
and I fought you tooth and nail to get it back.
What power you had over me.
Just the sight of you mesmerized me.

Poet

2010-07-29T15:28:00.001-07:00

Writing you made me realize that I
had taken you and crumpled you like a piece of
paper so many times.
\Like a poem I had written badly, I threw you aside
Frustrated and angry
Why weren't the things in my heart the things that
were happening?
So much beauty in the love I had for you, my words
were just too clumsy to capture the meaning of you.
\Writing you,
I carefully pull the corners of my memories apart
And I see the words of us scribbled in my garbled hand,
tear-stained and naive
\And I spread you out, smoothing the wrinkles,
remembering every time I touched you. I reread the
words of what we were and bring my lips to you.

Gender References

2008-07-29T15:42:00.001-07:00

Gender

GenderPAC The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GenderPAC) is the national organization working to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes. GenderPAC also promotes understanding of the connection between gender discrimination and that based on factors such as age, race, and class.

Alter-Heros (french/english) This most excellent site on issues of sexual diversity, with a goal to eliminate prejudice and discrimination, to improve the image of homosexuals and bisexuals, and to halt homophobia so that the youth can feel proud to be equal members of society. Their mission is to provide the most comprehensive bilingual (French & English) web site that will strive to increase the public’s awareness with regard to issues dealing with sexual orientation and homophobia. A non-profit web site created for the youth by youth.

Butch-Femme.com What is Butch? What is Femme? What is Stonebutch? What is Stonefemme? This is a site to explore all your wonderings. Cool site with lots of stuff, writings, forums, FAQ. This site will be a heavy load for some of you.. we think it's worth the wait.

Playbutch Playbutch is made by lesbians for lesbians. A zine created with a devotion to butch women and a goal of supporting the butch community with an on-line resource for butches and their admirers.

Dieselfemme.com A dyke gender project that's a work in progress. Keep visiting and give your input. Take this chance to influence the internet presence and purpose of the following sites: diesel femme, boychick, girly dyke and butchy babe.

Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) is a peer support, education, and advocacy group founded and operated by and for intersexuals: individuals born with anatomy or physiology which differs from cultural ideals of male and female.

Kolot Kolot brings insights and innovative practices from the study of gender and Judaism to Jews across denominations, including www.ritualwell.org, a website offering access to hundreds of meaningful new rituals for holidays and life cycle events.

HirShe where online meets real time in the butch-femme of color community

Engender ENGENDER is an information, research and networking organization for women in Scotland, working with other groups locally and internationally to improve women's lives and increase their power and influence.

Pink Gladiolas A website dedicated to sophisticated erotic fiction on trans and lesbian issues. The site also carries eviews of upscale erotica sites.

The Transgender Guide "After a brief hiatus, TGGuide returns to provide the most comprehensive resources on the net for the TransGender Community." links, resources, news, media…..

FTM International An international site by, about and for FTM's.

The International Foundation for Gender Education Easy informative site… events, information , media, more.

Gender Nonconformity

2008-07-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/social04.htm

GENDER NONCONFORMITY

Queerness at an early age is usually recollected as a positive rather than a negative feeling, a suggestion that it is not something constructed by stigma, because the awareness precedes the age at which internalized stigmatization could be activated. However, ‘gender constructs’ could possibly occur at a very early age, and gender roles are often used to support social constructionist arguments. The view that children are wholly conditioned by their parents ignores the fact that ‘children are born with differing temperaments which to some degree determine how they will be treated by parents and others’ (Legg 1994). The 1981 Kinsey Institute studies of possible correlates between homosexuality and other factors such as class, siblings, etc., ‘came up with almost nothing. They very nearly found that the only powerful predictor of adult homosexuality is childhood gender nonconformity, a finding that has been replicated often, both retrospectively and prospectively’ (J. D. Weinrich, ‘Sociobiology’, EH). However, to posit gender nonconformity as somehow ‘causing’ homosexuality begs the question: ‘what causes the gender nonconformity? Researchers have suggested that at some level, the child and family know from an early point that the child is sexually "different"‘ (R. C. Savin-Williams, ‘Youth’, EH).
John Tanner (1780-1847), who lived among the North American Indians for the last thirty years of his life, and who was constantly approached by a fifty-year-old man who had already lived with many husbands and now wanted to live with him, said that among the Objibbeway the berdache ‘are commonly called A-go-kwa, a word which is expressive of their condition’. A common theme is that the two-spirit individual is destined to be the way he or she is. Usually this calling is discovered in early childhood; at one extreme, the infant who picks up a female article of clothing or occupation rather than male articles which have been placed in a circle near it, will be ‘dedicated’ to the two-spirit life, and this has been used to argue for social conditioning. But the ritual could well be a case of retrospective rationalization, of parents’ explaining and justifying their children’s personality, in the same way that the dreams ‘authorizing’ these transformations are often ‘recalled’ after the event. An observer of berdache among the Crow of the Plains in 1903 said ‘I was told that when very young, those persons manifested a decided preference for things pertaining to female duties’; while another observer of the Miami said ‘There were men who are bred for this purpose from their childhood’ from the first moment they are seen picking up a spindle etc., but most of the evidence suggests that they were ‘self-recruited’ (Whitehead 1993).
There also existed the female berdache, e.g. the hwame among the Mohave, though their role seems to have been less clearly institutionalized. Female transvestites, e.g. in the Cocopa, as young girls have ‘male proclivities indicated by a desire to play with boys, make bows and arrows, hunt birds and rabbits’. Among the Yuman the kwe’rhame are rare, but they too ‘realize their character through a dream at puberty’, characteristically dreaming of men’s weapons; ‘As a small child the kwe’rhame plays with boy’s toys’ (cited by Whitehead 1993). In other words, like a good many modern lesbians, they were born tomboys.
Most berdache are described by themselves and their societies as comprising a ‘third sex/gender’, yet modern anthropologists concentrate on culture and custom and generally do not spend much time commenting upon the physiological – i.e. essentialist – characteristics of the berdache: ‘Spontaneous use of female speech patterns, a piping voice, or feminine ways of laughing and walking are sometimes mentioned as identifying the budding berdache’ (Whitehead 1993). There is abundant evidence that the berdache – exactly like most lesbians and gay men – have an innate nature that resists being heterosexually constructed. The Mohave, like many other tribes, explained it thus in 1937:

When there is a desire in a child’s heart to become a transvestite, that child will act different. It will let people become aware of that desire. They may insist on giving the child the toys and garments of its true sex, but the child will throw them away and do this every time there is a big [social] gathering. (Cited by Whitehead 1993)

The berdache were noted for being exclusively homosexual from the moment they took on the berdache identity/role until their death (Greenberg 1988) (though they paired off with non-berdache men). The common view that the berdache wore the clothes of the other sex is an oversimplified stereotype; it is more accurate to say that they wore some clothes of the other sex, which reflects their third-sex (or ‘two-spirit’) status; indeed more recent anthropologists describe such behaviour as ‘mixed-gender’ rather than ‘cross-gender’ or ‘cross-dressing’ (a term coined by Edward Carpenter in 1911), to get away from the simplistic idea of ‘reversal’ or ‘inversion’. Greenberg (1988) points out that the dichotomous view of gender used by anthropologists is inadequate, but he then uses the prejudicial phrase ‘partial or incomplete transformation’ to accord with his view that the ‘core’ of the phenomenon is based upon gender rather than orientation. Whitehead (1993) similarly argues that ‘for Native Americans, occupational pursuits and dress/demeanor were the important determinants of an individual’s social classification, and sexual object choice was its trailing rather than its leading edge’.
This kind of foreground versus background debate obscures the central point, which is that the berdache has a unified sexual/cultural identity in which sexuality is as fundamental as gender. Homosexuality is so closely tied up with the berdache identity that to assert that gender is ‘the important determinant’ is prescriptive rather than descriptive. Homosexuality is the constant in the berdache; their gender behaviour is variable (e.g. ranging from mostly male to mostly female clothing or occupations). Gender dress/demeanour is most sharply marked when a berdache marries a man: what is never adequately considered is the possibility that the other-gender option was chosen after the homosexual relationship was chosen, to allow for the efficient division of labour in ‘husband–wife’ couples. The active/passive roles of the berdache and his husband are not necessarily fixed in private, only in public: a Hupa berdache says of his partner, ‘As far as it was publicly known, he [the husband] was the man. But in bed there was an exchange of roles. They have to keep an image as masculine, so they always ask me not to tell anybody’ (cited by Williams 1986).
Part of the social constructionist analysis of the ‘gender role’ of the berdache depends upon the allegation that the husband of the berdache (and the wife of the female berdache) is simply a man (or woman) rather than publicly categorized into a role, but this is not really true. Husbands of berdaches and wives of hwame were frequently the butt of social ridicule, a ‘kidding’ or ‘teasing’ severe enough to break up such marriages: i.e. a homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy clearly functioned here (Williams 1986). McIntosh (1968) paradoxically acknowledges this yet ignores it in her discussion of the homosexual role. The view that husbands of berdaches do not form a pecular category is contradicted by George Catlin’s famous paintings and descriptions in the 1830s of the ‘Dance of the Berdache’, which in fact feature what he called the ‘society . . . of odd fellows’, which consists of those who have had sex with the berdache dancing around him and making a public proclamation of that fact; only the partners of the berdache have the privilege to join the dance and to partake of the feast afterwards. No native Indian term is given for these ‘odd fellows’, but the distinctive category was nevertheless institutionalized by this ritual.
The shamans of Siberia and Central Asia have many features in common with the berdache, though the phenomenon is more closely associated with ritual ecstasy or trance states. Transvestism is important to the role, and there is an institutionalized role for female shamans. The male shamans regard themselves as the ‘wife’ of a supernatural ‘husband’, and they marry men less frequently than do the berdache. It is important to recognize the distinctive religious role of the shamans, but it is also a fact that homosexuals have a professional monopoly on this role. It is by no means a modern gay anachronism to suggest, as did Edward Carpenter, that shamanism springs from homosexual orientation, or that ‘In the whole process the homosexual–transvestite orientation is primary, the shamanic calling secondary’ (W. Johansson, ‘Shamanism’, EH).
The hijras of modern India – who are mostly transvestite or transsexual male prostitutes who perform music and dance at important social festivals – have been reduced to specifically gender phenomena by modern theorists despite the overriding importance of homosexuality in their lives. The hijras are of course ‘constructed’ in the sense that they castrate themselves, but they maintain that their hijra identity predates that castration and is specifically a homosexual identity. Shakuntala, a hijra interviewed in 1981, expressed anger that

In many places men who are perfect men have joined this community only for the sake of earning a living. This is not good. Only men who have not spoiled any lady or got any children should come into the hijra company. You should not have had any affairs with ladies, not have loved ladies, or done any sexual thing with them or have married a lady. We true hijras are like this from childhood. From a small age we like to dance and dress as women. Even when we go away from this world, in our death, we must wear the sari. That is our desire. (Nanda 1993)

The gender of hijras is a specifically queer gender – ‘neither man nor woman’. They deliberately exaggerate or burlesque female dress and mannerisms; their sexually suggestive behaviour and coarse speech and gestures (notably their habit of lifting their skirt to display their mutilated genitals) would be outrageous for women; they smoke the hookah which is reserved for men (Nanda 1993). A modern outrageous queen would recognize a sister in the hijra and his kin. Margaret Mead tells a story demonstrating instant recognition between an Omaha Indian berdache and a modern Japanese homosexual who visited her in the field in 1961. The Japanese man ‘was not a transvestite but . . . had a complete repertoire of homosexual postures. Within an hour of his arrival, the single berdache in the tribe turned up and tried to make contact with him’ (cited by Weinrich 1987).
Queers are as recognizable for their characteristic speech, mannerisms and bearing as are Jamaicans, Italians, Pakistanis or any other ethnic group. The long-running British television series Out on Tuesday (later called Out) demonstrated this to an embarrassing degree for politically correct viewers. Letters to the gay press complained about the choice of ‘obvious gay types’ for respondents/interviewees, unable to accept that we are all obvious gay types. I am sure that an aural analysis of the programme would result in a scientific chart of ‘the gay voice’.
‘Do queers walk funny?’ is a question still half-seriously debated in Internet queer newsgroups, the general consensus being that the walk imitates female prostitutes. But men who lived in the 1930s and 1940s when swishing was especially noticeable felt that the real construct was the exaggeratedly masculine walk of heterosexual men. ‘Men, with their B.M. [Bloody Manly] walk, were so terribly difficult to emulate. The biggest give away was the gay walk. The trouble was, if you were sent up, the camper you walked’ (Skinner 1978). Quentin Crisp remarked upon the Dilly boys in the 1920s: ‘A passer-by would have to be very innocent indeed not to catch the meaning of the mannequin walk and the stance in which the hip was only prevented from total dislocation by the hand placed upon it. . . . The strange thing about "camp" is that it has become fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, "Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag"‘ (cited by Miller 1995).
However, ‘camp stylization’ can be traced much further back than the 1920s. Grahn (1984) points out that not all ‘femme’ faggotry imitates female mannerisms: ‘Some of it is an independent Gay cultural tradition . . . handed along from faggot to faggot. . . . It is commonly supposed that faggots lisp in imitation of women. Modern women, however, do not lisp . . . But the sweet sibilant faggot speech is peculiar to Gay men, and completely distinctive. For the most part faggots learn their particular manner of speaking from each other.’ Lisping is cited as an affectation in works by Shakespeare and by Chaucer; it is not impossible, as Grahn suggests, that it was once a special courting speech or a ceremonial language of court. The alleged stereotype of the mincing queen has not changed significantly since Adamantios portrayed him in the second century:

You can recognize him by his provocatively melting glance and by the rapid movement of his intensely staring eyes. . . . His head is tilted to the side, his loins do not hold still, and his slack limbs never stay in one position. He minces along with little jumping steps; his knees knock together. He carries his hands with palms turned upward. He has a shifting gaze, and his voice is thin, weepy, shrill, and drawling. (cited by Aldrich 1993)

The real problem is that social constructionists will happily jettison both history and personal experience if they contradict political theory. John D’Emilio saw his first queers during his first visits to Broadway as a fifteen-year-old high school student:

Three young men, thin as toothpicks, with long teased hair, mascara, rouge, and powder on their faces, their fingers fluttering in front of them. . . . As with so many of my other early instances of ‘discovery,’ I wonder now just how I knew they and I had something in common. No one had ever spoken to me about drag queens, or effeminacy, or homosexuality, or the connections among them. Yet I knew. . . . I, and so many of the gay men I met in the succeeding years, would wax lyrical about our sixth gay sense, about the sharply honed ability we all possessed to recognize ‘members of the tribe.’ Now I think that’s all hogwash. It ignores the hundreds of legs that didn’t press back [in subway cars] and eyes that didn’t return the gaze.

In my view this illustrates a politically correct renunciation of a perception that really did exist and which can be documented in the lives of a vast number of queer men and women throughout history. The queer gaze is immediately recognizable, whether one participates in it or just observes it. As a man who cruised Leicester Square during World War Two said, ‘The eyes, the eyes, they’re a dead giveaway. . . . If someone looks at you with a lingering look, and looks away, and then looks at you again’ (Chauncey 1994). Like countless others, I can recognize a gay man at fifty feet, by sight or by sound. I can tell if a man is gay by the way he walks, by the inflections in his voice, by the way he steps out of a car. It is not simply a matter of being effeminate or even camp. As Donald Webster Cory said in the 1950s, there are signs ‘neither masculine nor feminine, but specifically and peculiarly homosexual’. When these features are exaggerated they become the mincing gait, the high-pitched, haughty or ironic voice and lisp, the self-conscious display of the body and the flutter of the fingers. ‘The special language of a queen, or even an ordinary garden-variety faggot, is so distinct I find I can distinguish it even in a crowd of men in a restaurant or on the street, far from any Gay scene’ (Grahn 1984). To assert that various queer gestures and signs are ‘culturally specific’ is to ignore the evidence that a quite limited number of gestures and signs marks out the effeminate/camp man and the butch woman across a very wide range of cultures and across several thousand years. A ‘third sex’ category is almost universally discernible even while the ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’ elements that go into that category differ.
It is very hard to find any evidence of social construction in the memoirs of gay men and lesbians. Gifford Skinner (1978), a working-class man born in 1911, remembers that his father’s pub’s urinal was constantly occupied by queens. He would wander in as an eight-year-old, and he knew instinctively that something interesting was going on which his presence interrupted. He would wait patiently for it to resume, but the occupiers always waited until he withdrew. In summer evenings he would attract the attention of back street children ‘by lifting up my flannelette nightshirt’. He would also dress up and strike attitudes, particularly in an oriental costume made from his sixteen-year-old sister’s yellow blouse, some lace, her stockings and some beads. ‘Dressed in this camp garb I did an undulatory dance to the gramophone record of The Passing of Salome by Archibald Joyce.’ Later, a school friend would occasionally sleep over. ‘I invented a game to play with him in bed whereby we took it in turns to be queen. I think it must have been inspired by Lewis Carrol because the queen was terrifically bossy and insisted on taking the active role in a crude simulation of anal copulation, a thing about which we knew little or nothing.’ His teacher organized a town carnival and she asked Gifford what he would like to go as. Gifford replied ‘A harem lady.’ By the beginning of the 1930s he was self-consciously ‘so’ and ‘musical’, and a very active member of the queer subculture, where he wore suede shoes and make-up and achieved upward mobility by liaisons with better-off, older men.

Previous: Essentialism
Contents

Next: Sexual Identities
References

(Copyright Rictor Norton. All rights reserved. Reproduction for sale or profit prohibited. This critique may not be archived, republished or redistributed without the permission of the author.)
CITATION: Rictor Norton, A Critique of Social Constructionism and Postmodern Queer Theory, "Gender Nonconformity", 1 June 2002

Funeral Blues

2008-06-11T07:59:00.001-07:00

2008-02-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

By Hook or by Crook. Check it out on video....Think I might be renting this one just to get some stills to do figure studies. I gotta get that stance just right.

2008-02-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

I found this book A Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography (cleverly quoting Gertrude Stein).

Queer Theory Research Info Via Wikipedia

2008-01-30T11:42:00.001-08:00

This 'Queer Theory' blog was not composed or written by me, Laura Angilee Murray. It is only being used to easily story information about Queer Theory for future research. My current body of work explores many of the following issues. Thank you everyone who contributed to this wiki. Your efforts have made my research much, much easier.

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION CAME DIRECTLY FROM WIKIPEDIA:

"Queer theory is a field of Gender Studies that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of gay and lesbian studies and feminist studies. Heavily influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and other deconstructionists, queer theory builds both upon the feminist challenge to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behavior with respect to homosexual behavior, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and deviant categories.

Queer theory

"In the late 1960s, closets opened, and gay and lesbian scholars who had up till then remained silent regarding their sexuality or the presence of homosexual themes in literature began to speak."^[1]

Although many people believe that queer theory is only about homosexual representations in literature, it also explores the categories of gender, as well as sexuality. Although some argue that queer theory is a by-product of third-wave feminism, while others claim that it is a result of the valuation of postmodern minoritizing, that is, the idea that the smallest constituent must have a voice and identity equivalent to all others.

Queer theory's main project is exploring the contestations of the categorization of gender and sexuality. Theorists claim that identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorized and labeled – because identities consist of many varied components and that to categorize by one characteristic is wrong. For example, a woman can be a woman without being labelled a lesbian or feminist, and she may have a different race from the dominant culture. She should, queer theorists argue, be classed as possessing an individual identity and not put in the collective basket of feminists or of colour or the like. However, Queer Theory is more akin to a personal philosophy as it is unsubstantiated with regards to what would per se constitute a theory.

Overview

Queer theorists analyze texts to expose underlying meanings within and to challenge the notions of "straight" ideology, and in this way owes much of its drive to the tenets of post-structuralist theory, and deconstruction in particular. Queer theory should not be confused with queer activism, which developed as a response to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Although there is overlap, queer theory became occupied, in part, with what effects necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing.

Queer theory, unlike some feminist theories and studies, includes a wide array of previously considered non-normative sexualities and sexual practices in its list of identities. Because queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality, there is debate as to whether sexual orientation is natural or essential, or if it is merely a construction and subject to change. The focus of theorists is the problem of classifying every individual by gender; therefore queer is less an identity than a critique of identity.

The term "queer theory" was introduced in 1990, with Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Diana Fuss (all largely following the work of Michel Foucault) being among its foundational proponents. The existence of queer language and terms is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels from an external mainstream culture and created by the 'queer society' as a means of communication.

History

Theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Teresa de Lauretis is the person credited with coining the phrase "Queer Theory". It was at a working conference on theorizing lesbian and gay sexualities that was held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in February 1990 that de Lauretis first made mention of the phrase.^[2] Barely three years later, she abandoned the phrase on the grounds that it had been taken over by mainstream forces, and institutions it was originally coined to resist.^[3] Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, and David Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality inspired countless others' work.

[edit] Background concepts

In many respects, Queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality. Due to this association, a debate emerges as to whether sexual orientation is natural or essential to the person, as an essentialist believes, or if sexuality is merely a construction and subject to change.^[4]

The essentialist theory was introduced to Queer Criticism as a by-product of feminism when the criticism was known by most as Lesbian/Gay Criticism. The feminists believed that both genders "have an essential nature (e.g. nurturing and caring versus being aggressive and selfish), as opposed to differing by a variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces".^[5] Due to this belief in the essential nature of a person, it is also natural to assume that a person's sexual preference would be natural and essential to a person’s personality, who they are.

The Constructivists counter that there is no natural, that all meaning is constructed through discourse and there is no other subject other than the creation of meaning for social theory. In a Constructivist perspective, it is not proper to take gay or lesbian as subjects with objective reality; but rather they must be understood in terms of their social context, in how genealogy creates these terms through history.

For example, as Foucault explains in his The History of Sexuality, two hundred years ago there was no linguistic category for gay male. Instead, the term applied to sex between two men was sodomy. Over time, the homosexual was created through the discourses of medicine and especially psychiatry. What is conventionally understood to be the same practice was gradually transformed from a sinful lifestyle into an issue of sexual orientation. Foucault argues that prior to this discursive creation there was no such thing as a person who could think of himself as essentially gay.

[edit] Identity Politics

"Queer theory" was originally associated with radical gay politics of ACT UP, Outrage! and other groups which embraced "queer" as an identity label that pointed to a separatist, non-assimilationist politics.^[5] Queer theory developed out of unexamined constraints in the traditional identity politics of recognition and self-identity. Queer identity, unlike the other categories labeled lesbian or gay, has no interest in consolidating or stabilizing itself. It maintains its critique of identity-focus by understanding the formation of its own coalition; this may result in exclusionary effects in excess of those intended.

Acknowledging the inevitable violence of identity politics, and having no stake in its own ideology, queer is less an identity than a critique of identity. However, it is in no position to imagine itself outside the circuit of problems energized by identity politics. Instead of defending itself against those criticisms that its operations attract, queer allows those criticisms to shape its - for now unimaginable – future directions. "The term," writes Butler, "will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized." The mobilization of queer foregrounds the conditions of political representation, its intentions and effects, its resistance to and recovery by the existing networks of power.^[6]

[edit] The role of biology

Queer theorists focus on problems in classifying every individual as either male or female, even on a strictly biological basis. For example, the sex chromosomes (X and Y) may exist in atypical combinations (as in Klinefelter's syndrome [XXY]). This complicates the use of genotype as a means to define exactly two distinct genders. Intersexed individuals may for many different biological reasons have ambiguous sexual characteristics.

Scientists who have written on the conceptual significance of intersexual individuals include Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ruth Hubbard and Carol Tavris.

Some key experts in the study of culture, such as Barbara Rogoff, believe that the traditional distinction between biology and culture is a false dichotomy since biology and culture are closely related and have a significant influence on each other.^{[citation needed]}

In Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, Anne Fausto-Sterling challenges many of the biological facts surrounding how we constitute gender and sexuality. From genitalia to brain composition, "hormones and gender chemistry," "toward a theory of human sexuality." A feminist biologist, Fausto-Sterling navigates the scientific underpinnings of sex. However, some queer theorists are beginning to acknowledge that the sexing of the body occurs as both a combination of social construction and the objective reality that biology studies.

[edit] HIV/AIDS discourse

Much of queer theory developed out of a response to the AIDS crisis, which promoted a renewal of radical activism, and the growing homophobia brought about by public responses to AIDS. Queer theory became occupied in part with what effects – put into circulation around the AIDS epidemic – necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing in "queer".

To examine the effects that HIV/AIDS has on queer theory is to look at the ways in which the status of the subject or individual is treated in the biomedical discourses that construct them.^[7]

The shift, affected by same sex education in emphasizing sexual practices over sexual identities^[8]
The persistent misrecognition of HIV/AIDS as a "gay" disease^[9]
Homosexuality as a kind of fatality^[10]
The coalition politics of much HIV/AIDS activism that rethinks identity in terms of affinity rather than essence^[11] and therefore includes not only lesbians and gay men but also bisexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, people with AIDS, health workers, and parents and friends of gays; the pressing recognition that discourse is not a separate or second-order "reality"^[12]
The constant emphasis on contestation in resisting dominant depictions of HIV and AIDS and representing them otherwise^[13]. The rethinking of traditional understandings of the workings of power in cross-hatched struggles over epidemiology, scientific research, public health and immigration policy^[14]

The material effects of AIDS contested many cultural assumptions about identity, justice, desire and knowledge, which some scholars felt challenged the entire system of Western thought,^[15] believing it maintained the health and immunity of epistemology: "the psychic presence of AIDS signifies a collapse of identity and difference that refuses to be abjected from the systems of self-knowledge."^[16] Thus queer theory and AIDS become interconnected because each is articulated through a postmodernist understanding of the death of the subject and both understand identity as an ambivalent site.

[edit] Prostitution, pornography and BDSM

Queer theory, unlike most feminist theory and lesbian and gay studies, includes a wide array of previously considered non-normative sexualities and sexual practices in its list of identities. Not all of these are non-heterosexual. Sadism and masochism, prostitution, inversion, transgender, bisexuality, intersexuality and many other things are seen by queer theorists as opportunities for more involved investigations into class difference and racial, ethnic and regional particulars allow for a wide ranging field of investigation using non-normative analysis as a tool in reconfiguring the way we understand pleasure and desire.

The key element is that as viewing sexuality as constructed through discourse no list or set constituted preexisting sexuality realities but rather identities constructed through discursive operations. It is important to consider discourse in its broadest sense as shared meaning making, as Foucault and Queer Theory would take the term to mean. In this way sexual activity, having shared rules and symbols would be as much a discourse as a conversation, and sexual practice itself constructs its reality rather than reflecting a proper biological predefined sexuality.

This point of view places these theorists in conflict with some branches of feminism that view prostitution and pornography, for example, as mechanisms for the oppressions of women. Other branches of feminism tend to vocally disagree with this latter interpretation and celebrate pornography as a means of adult sexual representation.^[17]

[edit] The role of language

Queer theory is likened to language because it is never static, but is ever-evolving. Richard Norton suggests that the existence of queer language is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels from an external mainstream culture.^[18]

Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michael Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured through the use of language. Heteronormativity was the main focus of discourse, where heterosexuality was viewed as normal and any deviations, such as homosexuality, as abnormal or "queer".

In later years there was an explosion of discourse on sexuality and sexual orientations with the coming-of-age of the Internet. Prior to this, discourse was controlled by institutional publishing, and with the growth of the internet and its popularity, the community could have its own discussion on what sexuality and sexual orientation was. Homosexual and heterosexual were no longer the main topics of discourse; BDSM, transgender and bisexuality became topics of discourse.

Derogatory terms, such as dyke, faggot, queer and other terms, were originally coined by the queer society to communicate and relate with each other. It was homophobic people who turned these words into slurs.

Although homosexuality and queer practices are nothing new, the association between queer practices and deviancy is taking on new meaning in the modern world as queer community and queer culture becomes more apparent. Queer culture is not limited to queer sex. Queer culture, from an ideological standpoint, represents the queer community and its arts, lifestyles, institutions, writings, politics, relationships and everything else encompassed in culture. Two common sects of queer culture are the "flamboyant" and "the closet." The flamboyant side of queer culture originates in “the streets” with butch dykes, clubs, bars and drag queens. The closet side of the queer culture is more secretive with code words, separate social lives and rarely mixes with the flamboyant street culture.^[19] Queer culture in general is intertwining with the common "normative" culture, with people being exposed to the ideas of gay pride and becoming more educated about queer studies in schools and society.

[edit] Media and other creative works

Many queer theorists have created creative works that reflect theoretical perspectives in a wide variety of media. For example, science fiction authors such as Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler feature many values and themes from queer theory in their work. Patrick Califia's published fiction also draws heavily on concepts and ideas from queer theory. Some lesbian feminist novels written in the years immediately following Stonewall, such as Lover by Bertha Harris or Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig, can be said to anticipate the terms of later queer theory.

In film, the genre christened by B. Ruby Rich as New Queer Cinema in 1992 continues, as Queer Cinema, to draw heavily on the prevailing critical climate of queer theory; a good early example of this is the Jean Genet-inspired movie Poison by the director Todd Haynes. In fan fiction, the genre known as slash fiction rewrites straight or nonsexual relationships to be gay, bisexual, and queer in sort of a campy cultural appropriation. And in music, some Queercore groups and zines could be said to reflect the values of queer theory.^[20]

Queer theorists analyze texts and challenge the cultural notions of "straight" ideology; that is, does "straight" imply heterosexuality as normal or is everyone potentially gay? As Ryan states: "It is only the laborious imprinting of heterosexual norms that cuts away those potentials and manufactures heterosexuality as the dominant sexual format."^[21] For example, Hollywood pursues the "straight" theme as being the dominant theme to outline what masculine is. This is particularly noticeable in gangster films, action films and westerns, which never have "weak" (read: homosexual) men playing the heroes, with the recent exception of the film Brokeback Mountain. Queer theory looks at destabilizing and shifting the boundaries of these cultural constructions.

Queer theorists also analyze texts to expose underlying meanings in texts and investigate the discrepancies between homosocial male bonding, homophobia and homosexuality in English literature. King Lear is often used as an example.

New Media artists have a long history of queer theory inspired works, including cyberfeminism works, porn films like I.K.U. which feature transgender cyborg hunters and Sharing is Sexy, an "open source porn laboratory", using social software, creative commons licensing and netporn to explore queer sexualities beyond the male/female binary.

[edit] Theorists

[edit] Further reading

Michel Foucault, La Volonté de savoir, 1976.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men, 1985.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 1990.
Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory, 1996.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ Ryan, M., 1999. Literary Theory: a practical introduction. Oxford. Blackwell. P. 115
^ David Halperin. "The Normalizing of Queer Theory." Journal of Homosexuality v.45, pp. 339-343
^ Jagose, A 1996, "Queer Theory".
^ Barry, P 2002, Lesbian/gay criticism, in P Barry (eds), Beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp139-155.
^ ^a ^b Blackburn, S 1996, “essentialism”, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, (Oxford Reference Online).
^ Brooker, P, A Concise Glossary of Cultural Theory, 1999
^ Donna Haraway, The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies, 1989.
^ Michael Bartos, Meaning of Sex Between Men, 1993 and G.W. Dowsett, Men Who Have Sex With Men, 1991.
^ Richard Meyer, Rock Hudson's Body, 1991.
^ Ellis Hanson, Unread, 1991.
^ Catherine Saalfield, hocking Pink Praxis, 1991.
^ Jagose, A 1996, Queer Theory, [1].
^ Edelman, L 1994, Homographesis, [2]. Accessed 19-04-2007.
^ David Halperin, Homosexuality: A Cultural Construct, 1990.
^ Thomas Yingling AIDS in America, 1991.
^ Ibid., p. 292.
^ [3]
^ Norton, R 2002, “Queer language, A Critique of Social Construcionism and Postmodern Queer Theory [4].
^ Wilson, N 1997, Our families, our values: snapshots of queer kinship, R Goss & A Adams (eds), Strongheart Haworth Press, pp 22.
^ Matias Viegener, "The only haircut that makes sense anymore," in Queer Looks: Lesbian & Gay Experimental Media (Routledge, New York: 1993) & "Kinky Escapades, Bedroom Techniques, Unbridled Passion, and Secret Sex Codes," in Camp Grounds: Gay & Lesbian Style (U Mass, Boston: 1994)
^ Ryan, M., 1999. Literary Theory: a practical introduction. Oxford. Blackwell, p.117."

What's next?

2008-01-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

Well, every day is turning into somewhat of an adventure while learning html. This whole website business is really interesting and it takes a real Rennaisance woman to figure it out. I know that I am supposed to be this literary intellectual or painterly hippie, but I suppose I am neither and both. My forgotten first love is science, so I am better at figuring this stuff out than I would have ever given myself credit for. I know that for a person interested in the innerworkings of the computer world, I am almost old. I keep doing things on my own and they keep working out in some magical way. I mean, how the fuck did that woman find me to ask for my cover art? I guess I did put myself out there......Maybe never expecting to be discovered by some local yokel, but expecting the world to look for me. And I guess they did.

Google analytics is complex but gives such a complete picture of what we should know about our own website. I have shown it to Nanette and as a numbers person (as much as she denies it), she loves it. It quantifies EVERY time someone visits the website. It is a magical tool that works like I do, only with the ability to give verifying proof.

Grants: Hey, what if I actually apply?

Paintings: Gender fluidity, photograph subjects, gather images

Websites: update personal site, photograph work, catalog

Newsletter: Weekly=web version; Quarterly=paper to web

Writing: Explain about gender fluidity, globalization and robot genetics

Book Cover: Keep up emails, get paid?

Freelance: Forget it! Maybe Chairies Jubilee?

Shows: Apply to competitions and win some money, silly

Information: Useful info Chattaboogie

Chattablogs: connect

CreatHere: apply for everything

Blog: create a new one that just follows this body of work.......image gathering, articles, writing

Images: dont forget about stock photography.....use it! create it!

Artist Bio

2007-08-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Laura Angilee Murray grew up in rural Tennessee, regularly attending Southern Baptist churches and funerals that her grandfather preached. Her father was a biker in a gang and her mother is a secret writer and avid scrap booker. She learned to draw as an adult and was amazed to find that she could also sculpt and paint out her experiences.

Deciding her work would be better informed by seeing the world, she traveled across the U.S. settling in Tucson, Arizona where she continued her education and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona. She studied under the watchful eye of Barbara Rogers and was heavily influenced by Andrew Polk and the late Bruce McGrew in painting and printmaking. Moira Geoffrion guided her three-dimensional work into “the most cohesive body of work” according to a recruiter from Columbia University. She showed in Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Santa Fe.

Confronting personal demons, Laura’s large-scale figurative oil paintings and charcoal drawings challenge the viewer. When there is more than one figure on a canvas or more than one painting in a space, they seem to be engaging in a dialogue or are staged in some drama. Influenced by Odd Nerdrum, Richard Diebenkorn, Francis Bacon and Henri Matisse, some of the work is disturbing, staring right into the viewer’s eye or without a face, incorporating unreadable text, bright colors and occasionally a found object (Thank you, Michael Holsomback). The world she has created is both beautiful and terrible.

Laura Angilee Murray moved back to Tennessee after a decade in the desert and several visits to Puerto Rico where her partner and daughter are from. Current works include a series of paintings loosely based on women wrestlers from the 1950’s, butch women and water-filled self-portraits. She works for the Association for Visual Arts, teaches painting and sculpture at Cleveland State and creates in her studio at Rivoli Art Mill. You can see her recent work at www.lauraangileemurray.com or gatheringthequiet.com

Thank you for the wonderful comments

2007-02-26T10:22:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to thank everyone for looking at this site and letting me know whatcha think. Make sure you put your first name or initials at the end of the comment, that way I can hug you when I see you or call you and shower you with the proper praise.

By the way, I just watched "My Date with Drew" (thanks to Stacie the Gracie) and I can't believe this little gem got past me. I am so glad to see that the lovers, the dreamers and me do get to take a crack at things and that all hope is not lost. I can't get through a nervous drive to an interview without thinking about Grease II: "I need a C-O-O-L R-I-D-E-R!"

If you see anything else out there I had BETTER see, then let me know. And, if you need a Snoopy Snowcone Machine, I happen to have one!

www.mydatewithdrew.com

Getting out the List

2007-02-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

Seems like lately I have thought myself into a corner. I am tired of dealing with lately. I just wish I could keep being alone and doing things without being interrupted. It feels like such a crime to ask for this time. I need it so desperately.

I am going to meet with the aac today and I am nervous. I am not sure what to do, how to go about what I am doing or anything. Perhaps I will just show up and things will happen. Do I really want to volunteer more of my time? Well, yes, but not to stupid activities. These are supposed to be jobs that help further my career, not everyone elses.

I stupidly reread old poetry today and now I feel kinda lonely and sad. Is this what is going to happen every time I get alone time? Or will I finally get to work? A painting a day seems a little bit trite now that so many other folks are doing it.....Maybe not, though, since I will be working on a tangible goal.

Perhaps that is the answer: A tangible goal. It would do me good to sit down and write everything that I need to do in the here and now.

How about a little list:

Post work on my zapplication
figure out how to get images in 1920x1920 square format
get better photos
RSVP to the Art for Healing Gala
find something to wear
Organize workspace
build cabinet
Make Paintings
what now?
list painting subjects
Ready for class
what in the heck are your students going to draw next?