week 8 sociology

1) "Passing Last Summer" by Dominika Bednarska 1) "Passing Last Summer" by Dominika Bednarska

Before we get started with this week’s material, I want to clarify how the word “queer” is being used in our assigned readings. The term queer refers to identities that radically challenge heteronormative identities and practices regarding gender, sexuality, reproduction, and notions of family. It is a reappropriation of what used to be used as a slur against LGBT people in that instead of denigrating its connotations of abnormality and strangeness, its reappropriation by LGBT communities celebrates its differences from heteronormative ideals of whiteness, monogamy, able-bodiedness, and affluence.

In “Passing Last Summer,” Dominika Bednarska discusses several issues that are usually given short shrift in gender studies conversations. Being lesbian-identified and disabled, she has often found herself subject to varieties of prejudice and discrimination that usually don’t confront able-bodied LGBT people. Moreover, she identifies as a lesbian who has romantic relationships with women, but who is also sporadically attracted to and engages in sexual relations with men. She hesitates to tell other gays and lesbians about her sexual relationship with a queer, disabled man she calls “N” for fear of “the disdain so many lesbians feel toward queer women who express any sort of desire for men” (282).

Since both she and N are queer and disabled, she finds their sex to be more freeing and less dependent on expectations regarding normative bodies, genders, and sexuality: “My disabled queer lovers and I understand that the genitals are not the be-all and end-all of sexual pleasure. Sex is not centered around performing a prescribed set of acts, but around finding pleasure” (288). Still, she does not think it would be right to let her primarily sexual relationship with N to define her sexuality, acknowledging that she is “very attracted to masculinity—butch, trans, and sometimes, rarely, even the most cliché of all: actual scrotum-toters,” but does not identify as bisexual, since she is usually attracted to and has emotionally intimate relationships with women.

Bednarski knows other lesbian-identified women like herself who are open to sex with men, but no desire to have emotionally intimate relationships with them, but she does not know of any convenient, socially recognizable categories or “boxes” that these women would fit into or if the term “bisexual” would be useful for them. The only thing that she does know for sure is that her desires change over time, “depending on the partner and the possibilities and the mutabilities of our own desires” (288). This fluidity to sexuality is often not tolerated well by both straight and queer communities, since it defies hegemonic ideas about the fixed and categorizable status of sexual orientation. While wary of the discrimination she faces, Bednarksi nonetheless accepts this mutability, writing that “it is impossible to know what sorts of partnering and sexual activity I will choose in the future based solely on what has happened in the past. All I can do is speak from what appears to be true, from my experiences so far, with an understanding that they may not be indicative of the future” (288).

2) Gender non-normativity 2) Gender non-normativity

Dominika Bednarska’s essay details the experience of a gender non-normative or non-conforming individual. Being gender non-normative means that one’s gender (with respect to self-identity, expression, and behavior) is not tied to corresponding social norms for sexuality (e.g. a man wearing pink does not necessarily mean that he is gay). If someone falls short of dominant gender norms in mainstream US culture—either by not acting masculine enough if one is male, or being “butch” and too masculine if one is female, then he or she risks social castigation in the form of homophobia and misogyny.

A recent prominent example of gender non-normativity is Caitlyn Jenner, a male to female transsexual who was previously known as Bruce Jenner (a 1976 Olympics decathlon gold medalist). Having been married and fathered families with three former wives, Jenner finally admitted his lifelong desire to be a woman to his family, friends, and the general public last year and “came out” as Caitlyn. Kris Jenner, his third wife, was devastated to learn of his gender transition and thought that it implied that their 20+ year marriage had been a sham. When asked about her current sexuality recently, Jenner has answered that she is uncertain and is dealing with the trials and tribulations involved in the transition to her new female gender identity.

3) "The Impact of Multiple Marginalization" by Paula Rust 3) "The Impact of Multiple Marginalization" by Paula Rust

Once, during an otherwise pleasant viewing of an LGBT pride parade on TV with a friend and her family, I witnessed a type of homophobia that I have at times seen expressed by some Chinese Americans. My friend and I, both second-generation Chinese Americans, were accustomed to a growing degree of tolerance of and support for LGBT people within mainstream white US culture, but this was less true of the primarily first-generation immigrant communities in which we were raised. My friend’s parents, who had been placidly watching the parade with us, suddenly grimaced and let out big groans when an image of an Asian man embracing his male partner flashed on the screen. “Why do they have to shame us like that?” they exclaimed. I was a bit stunned by their reaction, but frankly, not too stunned since it was not something I had never seen before; I was just surprised that they had groaned so loudly in front of me, since Chinese people were supposed to “save face” in front of others. Moreover, her parents, who didn’t really know me too well, seemed to assume that I was straight simply by virtue of my Chinese American appearance, prompting me to realize the compounded difficulties of being queer in certain ethnic communities. For them as for my parents, the appearance of any Asian individual in mainstream media was usually tantamount to that individual being representative of Asian Americans in general (thus, for instance, their pride at every one of the Chinese basketball player Yao Ming’s successful games in the NBA). Their shame at this TV image of a gay Asian man, however fleeting it was, could be attributed to the burden of representation that ethnic immigrants and people of color bear in this country.

In “The Impact of Multiple Marginalization,” Paula Rust discusses the ways in which lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are also ethnic and racial minorities sometimes experience multiple kinds of social oppression—one of which she identifies as the heterosexism of some marginalized racial and ethnic groups. In those ethnic communities that have experienced racism and oppression, the desire to preserve ethnic values and traditions is strengthened “because ethnicity is embodied and demonstrated via the preservation of those values and traditions” (289). For some of these communities, “homosexuality represents assimilation” and LGBT-identified individuals are “accused of buying into white culture and thereby becoming traitors to their own racial or ethnic group” (290).

Rust notes the existence of similar kinds of homophobia to that of my anecdote above in certain groups of ethnic minorities like African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, and Jews wherein the fact of racism and ethnic marginalization interact with heterosexism and monosexism. She points out that “[b]ecause members of ethnic minorities are often perceived by Euro-Americans as representatives of their entire ethnic group, the nonconformist behavior of one individual reflects negatively on the whole ethnic group” (290).

4) Fractured selves 4) Fractured selves

While some marginalized racial and ethnic communities are heterosexist, what Rust calls “mainstream LesBiGay communities” tend to stereotype ethnic and racial minorities (e.g. the “Super Stud” and “Miss Thing” identities available for African American men in the gay community). Since whiteness is the implicit norm in mainstream LesBiGay communities, ethnic and racial minorities feel marginalized in them. LGBT ethnic and racial minorities therefore sometimes feel that they are double or triple minorities and “experience their coming out as a process of further marginalization from the mainstream, that is, as an exacerbation of an already undesirable position […] This can inhibit coming out for individuals who are reluctant to take on yet another stigmatized identity” (293).

For example, here is another anecdote: my family once set up a lunch meeting for my sister with a Chinese American man (whom I will call “T.”) around her age with the hopes of kindling a romance between them. His parents are friends with mine, and so we all went along to the lunch meeting. Not only was the meeting excruciatingly awkward, but T. made it known to my sister that he is gay and has a whole other life that his parents don’t know about in New York City. His parents had been worried about his lack of girlfriends, but he appeased them by telling them that his work life usually made him too busy to date. T. felt that he was part of two different communities and could not integrate all the parts of his identity in either one. Being the only son of his immigrant parents, he was very close to his parents and felt obligated to marry a woman and have children, and repress his gay orientation. The Confucian value of filialpiety (respect of one’s family elders) was very much adhered to in his family and it was unlikely that he would come out to his parents any time soon for fear that he would disappoint them. At the same time, the gay community he was involved in viewed his Chineseness as exotic and associated it with stereotypes of Asian men as more effeminate than white men. He could never integrate all the parts of his identity in either context, and felt like he was constantly having to move through life with a fractured sense of self.

Questions

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"The Impact of Multiple Marginalization" - Paula Rust

In “The Impact of Multiple Marginalization,” Paula Rust discusses the ways in which lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are also ethnic and racial minorities sometimes experience multiple kinds of social oppression—one of which she identifies as the heterosexism of some marginalized racial and ethnic groups. In those ethnic communities that have experienced racism and oppression, the desire to preserve ethnic values and traditions is particularly strong “because ethnicity is embodied and demonstrated via the preservation of those values and traditions” (289). For some of these communities, “homosexuality represents assimilation” and LGBT-identified individuals are “accused of buying into white culture and thereby becoming traitors to their own racial or ethnic group” (290).

Rust notes the existence of homophobia in certain groups of ethnic minorities like African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, and Jews whereby the fact of racism and ethnic marginalization interacts with heterosexism and monosexism. She points out that “[b]ecause members of ethnic minorities are often perceived by Euro-Americans as representatives of their entire ethnic group, the nonconformist behavior of one individual reflects negatively on the whole ethnic group” (290).

If you identify as LGBTQIA and/or are a part of a racially or ethnically marginalized group, have you experienced the kinds of multiple marginalization Rust describes? However you identify, what do you make of the “burden of representation” that ethnic and racially-marked individuals are made to bear?

2- Passing Last Summer" - Dominika Bednarska

Before we get started with this week’s material, I want to clarify how the word “queer” is being used in our assigned readings. The term queer refers to identities that challenge heteronormative identities and practices of gender, sexuality, reproduction, and notions of family. It is a reappropriation of what used to be used as a slur against LGBT people; instead of denigrating the word's connotations of abnormality and strangeness, the reappropriation of queer by LGBT communities celebrates its differences from heteronormative ideals of whiteness, monogamy, able-bodiedness, and affluence.

In “Passing Last Summer,” Dominika Bednarska discusses several issues that are usually given short shrift in gender studies conversations. Being lesbian-identified and disabled, she has often found herself subject to varieties of prejudice and discrimination that usually don’t confront able-bodied LGBT people. Moreover, she identifies as a lesbian who has romantic relationships with women, but who is also sporadically attracted to and engages in sexual relations with men. She hesitates to tell other gays and lesbians about her sexual relationship with a queer, disabled man she calls “N” for fear of “the disdain so many lesbians feel toward queer women who express any sort of desire for men” (282).

Since both she and N are queer and disabled, she finds their sex to be more freeing and less dependent on expectations regarding normative bodies, genders, and sexuality: “My disabled queer lovers and I understand that the genitals are not the be-all and end-all of sexual pleasure. Sex is not centered around performing a prescribed set of acts, but around finding pleasure” (288). Still, she does not think it would be right to let her primarily sexual relationship with N to define her sexuality, acknowledging that she is “very attracted to masculinity—butch, trans, and sometimes, rarely, even the most cliché of all: actual scrotum-toters." But Bednarski does not identify as bisexual, since she is usually attracted to and has emotionally intimate relationships with women.

Bednarski knows other lesbian-identified women like herself who are open to sex with men, but have no desire for emotionally intimate relationships with them, but she does not know of any convenient, socially recognizable categories or “boxes” that these women would fit into or if the term “bisexual” would be useful for them. The only thing that she does know for sure is that her desires change over time, “depending on the partner and the possibilities and the mutabilities of our own desires” (288). This fluidity to sexuality is often not tolerated well by both straight and queer communities, since it defies dominant ideas about sexual orientation as fixed identities. While wary of the discrimination she faces, Bednarksi nonetheless accepts the mutability of her sexuality, writing that “it is impossible to know what sorts of partnering and sexual activity I will choose in the future based solely on what has happened in the past. All I can do is speak from what appears to be true, from my experiences so far, with an understanding that they may not be indicative of the future” (288).

Does Bednarska’s essay help you to better understand some of the struggles of disabled queer people? Her experience casts light on a subject mentioned last week—that sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and gender do not always align in predictable patterns. What do you think of how she characterizes the fluidity and changeability of her own sexual desires?