Five Favorite Finds (say that five times fast!)

I apologize for not posting until today. We waged a battle against enemy combatants at our house this weekend. Despite not having a pet, we were invaded by fleas. So we took the scorched earth policy and flea bombed the house to kill the usurpers which meant EVERYTHING had to be covered and then cleaned. Looking on the bright side, our house is sparkling clean (and the irritating pests are all dead J)!

So anyway, back to business. Here are five concepts/ideas that I have learned so far.

1.       First and foremost, I would have to say that at this point in the class I feel like I have a better understanding of the history of the queer movement. Jagose helped quite a bit with this. I can see why this book is still used today. I appreciated the breakdown of the queer, gay, and lesbian movements. What surprised me was the level of difference with these three movements. Jagose writes “Yet a close attention to the homophile movement enables a more historically nuanced understanding not only of the gay liberation movements but also of the political positions they advanced in common (D’Emilio, 1983) and their increasingly different priorities, necessitating their independent development.” I like the way Jagose split up the book so that the reader, me, was able to appreciate each movement and what it brought to the overall movement towards equality. 

2.       Secondly came my realization that queer encompasses everything that does not fit into the heteronormative society in which we live. Jagose includes a David Halperin quote I love (pg. 96): “There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers”.  The media feeds the public the heteronormative acceptable gay man but when a person, say like Isis who I mentioned in another blog post, who does not fit that image bursts onto the television fearful people recoil. It is a sad picture of our society that they fail to see a person as a person not just based on who they are attracted to. Or if that person is recognized as "different" those differences have to fit into a box society dictates.

3.       Next, I am choosing a Butler point from Gender Troubles because I got so much from that excerpt. The idea that gender could in fact be where society derives sex instead of the other way around was an idea that made me say “I never thought of it that way!” which is always a good thing. Butler writes “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called “sex” is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” What a controversial way to look at gender and sex!

4.       Fourthly, also from Gender Troubles (can you tell I liked the Butler piece? J) was the idea of constructionism. You can clearly see that what society determines is feminine and masculine is everywhere. But what intrigued me was de Beauvoir’s question of what if the attributes that are seen as feminine are really attributes that males have deemed less masculine and have tossed off? Better yet, what if what is considered masculine are really those attributes women, who have because of societal pressure, have deemed unfeminine and shed the practice of? I thought these concepts were both incredible and head-ache worthy.  

5.    Lastly, I feel that as a history lover, what I have taken so far is more a view of where politically the queer movement has progressed. I enjoyed reading Jagose in that her analysis of where the movement has been and then why it is still where it is was so informative. It was like a flow chart in a book…and who doesn’t like charts! J Jagose writes “Those lesbians and gays who are committed to achieving social change by means of democratically sanctioned structures allege that the queer position is too politically naïve and idealistic to be effective. Ignorant of the real machineries of power, queers will not be able to achieve anything from the marginalized position they champion.” It is this searing analysis that is my favorite quote so far in queer theory. She is not afraid to say this is what is limiting the movement in the hopes that it will educate the next generation.