Queer, race, and class...

Queer and race/class interact in such a way that they complicate each other and add a unique element to being queer, a minority, or the oppressed poor. The dynamics of each are changed by the other, producing a new experience for someone that identifies as queer and is also of the poor, working class and/or a racial minority. What all of these “categories” (forgive the dehumanizing terminology for the sake of discussion) have in common are that, often, those who fall into these categories are rendered invisible by the larger, white, heteronormative middle class society. A second layer of invisibility exists when, within an identity, an individual is expected to behave, identify, or interact a certain way with the rest of society or those in that identity category, and that individual loses the aspects of their personality that make them unique: interests, history, sexual desires, etc. This point is demonstrated really well in “A Question of Class:” “I tried to become one with the lesbian-feminist community so as to feel real and valuable. I did not know that I was hiding, blending in for safety just as I had done in high school, in college. […] I did not realize that the fundamental me had almost disappeared” (Allison, 16). The author discusses “hiding” within the lesbian feminist community, fearing a very real disapproval of her masochistic sexual practices and her preference for the butch/femme gender roles. Her impoverished upbringing is also an issue, as she describes joking or making light of the reality of being very poor in the South. In this way, she is forced to be a caricature of herself, and the truth she lived (and that others still live) is rendered invisible.

This dilemma is also apparent in Borderlands. Anzaldua struggles to reconcile her both her ethnic and sexual identity with a culture that has a tradition of treating women very poorly: “…Though ‘home’ permeates every sinew and cartilage in my body, I too am afraid of going home. Though I’ll defend my race and culture when they are attacked by non-mexicanos, conozco el malestar de mi cultura. I abhor some of my culture’s ways, how it cripples its women, como burras, our strengths used against us, lowly burras bearing humility with dignity” (Anzaldua, 43). Not only does America’s white, heteronormative society marginalize minorities, but queers and/or women with cultural ties to non-white cultures may be marginalized within those cultures, thereby being forced outside of the place where these two circles touch, like the outside of a Venn diagram.

I found each of the readings this week stirring (and the Fanon reading downright poetic, though more difficult for my small brain to digest) and I realized that I identified, in some way, with the themes of class. Like Allison, I have glossed over my past, and referred to it almost anecdotally, in a way that marginalizes and hides the true experience. Like Anzaldua, I fear going to a “home” where I am different, resented, and seen as something of a failure. I have started being more honest about these truths, both with my family and with others, but I still don’t fully understand how to “own” these experiences: the experience of being queer, the experience of being trash, the experience of growing up with a mother who views the world through the lens of self-hatred. Am I ungrateful? Am I denying my roots by leaving the city and going to college and pretending to be an intellectual? I don’t introspect on this blog much, but these readings resonated with me in ways the others have not.