Queer Diversities

• tensions within diversity; definition of a social community
  • transgender representation from lesbian and gay-oriented organizations
  • butch and femme individuals vs. roleplaying “the heterosexual institution”
  • sadomasochist/BDSM individuals
  • white-led and radical lesbian groups
• “We can trace the expansion of the LGBTQ community by looking at some work that has attempted to capture the richness of who we are as a people.”
• States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, Edmund White: “I criticize my book for concentrating on gay men in big cities and for ignoring lesbians as well as small-town or rural life”; “In 400 pages, he could cover only so much of our diversity”
• diversity is socially constructed and depends on
  • the social setting observing diversity
  • differences among queer individuals
  • avoidance of monolithic thinking about queerness

pertaining to women and lesbian communities

• lesbian separatism: sexism and homophobia among lesbians
  • → definitions of woman and womanhood
  • Simone de Beauvior: “one is not born a woman”; womanhood and femininity are learned through experiencing culture
  • Monique Wittig: “lesbians are not women”; a category of women only makes sense when related to men and lesbians abandon relations to men, so lesbians are not women
  • Adrienne Rich: lesbians are women who mut confront both homophobia and sexism in a society governed by patriarchy and male dominance
  • Pat Califia: dykes vs lesbians: lesbians assimilate into mainstream heterosexuality and capitalism, and dykes are forced into confrontation, visibility, and individualism
    • not a fan of this one op
• transgenderism and transsexualism and the concept of womanhood
  • “Are male-to-female (MtF or M2F) transsexuals actually women? Because they once lived as men, can they truly understand the sexism that many women find to be a key experience of women in patriarchal societies? What about those who become involved intimately with transsexuals? A lesbian activist friend of ours recently married a female-to-male (FtM or F2M) transsexual activist. Is the lesbian still a lesbian? Her husband once lived as a woman but now lives as a man; how does such a change affect the way our friend feels about her own identity—and about how others perceive her identity?”
    • Alix Dobkin: “rise and appeal of transgenderism” leads to rejection of womanhood as caused by sexism and misogyny
    • Patrick Califia-Rice: “I think lesbians have a right to ask why FTM’s who pass fully as male want to be given the right to participate in all-women events. It’s legitimate to ask if this is simple opportunism. Yes, it can be difficult to clarify one’s identity; sometimes simply saying you are a man or a woman is not entirely accurate. Since the FTM community is much smaller than the lesbian community, and many of us maintain friendship ties or erotic connections there, it can be painful and frightening to have to give up these resources.”
      • nuance of diversity and identity; ability or lack of to fit into gendered communities as someone who transitions between communities and binaries
        • suggested connection between ftms and butch dykes over masculine-aligned interests and presentation
  • WBW and transsexual exclusion
    • “separate and whole space”: intersectionality and views of privilege
    • nuance of identity and identity politics

pertaining to bisexual visibility

• bisexual erasure
• bi-eroticism vs. bisexual identity: a transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon in which affection is displayed without fitting into a binary homosexual lens
  • Shakespeare: sonnets about both women and men
  • Oscar Wilde bi-eroticism
  • Marjorie Garber, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life: avoiding perverse presentism by viewing through a bi-eroticismal lens
  • attempts to avoid bi-eroticism lead to an attempt to divide and binarize homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, erasing bisexuals who exist in-between
    • Kenji Yoshino, “The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure”: contrast bisexuality to monosexuality, but not homosexuality and heterosexuality
      • monosexuality: one who is interested in a single sex
      • monosexual exclusion creates a social order: both homosexuality and heterosexuality are guarded and stable by excluding bisexuals, who make it hard to “prove” one is monosexual
      • perceived “bisexual nonmonogamy” vs. ideals of monogamy
      • fear of bisexuality because of the suggestion that sexuality is a choice vs nature
• bisexual erasure vs. bisexual acknowledgement in media
  • Brokeback Mountain article by Amy Andre asserting protagonists are bisexual; intended to address ignorance of potential bisexuality in reviews/discussion
  • Bisexual Men in Culture and Society Introduction, Brett Beemyn and Erich Steinman: hidden HIV threat representation of bisexual men and heterosexual women; homosexual affairs
• intersexuality identity and connection to the wider community
  • Intersex Society of North America: stigma and trauma vs. gender debate
  • Morgan Holmes, “Queer Cut Bodies”: queer and intersexual people share issues regarding forced presentation, parental stigma, and stigma from a heteronormative society

pertaining to the definition of “queerness”

• “q”: queer or questioning in the acronym
  • a section about the definition of queerness
    • modern use as a political term
    • modern reclamation of stigmatized and derogatory term: defined as an adjective for non-mainstream/non-normative erotic and romantic practices
      • transgressive signal of lgbtq+ progress
  • using other terms to define a celebration of a non-normative ethos
    • Pomosexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality, Carol Queen and Lawrence Shimel: using pomosexual: a term which encompasses both sexual identity and nuance and identity in pleasure in eroticism
    • “bear” culture and ‘ur-springs of the bearstream’ which challenge normativity (The Bear Book II, Les Wright)
  • definition and use of queerness and lgbtq+ identity differs within the community itself: “the challenge of diversity is finding a comfortable place within the diversity”
    • “straight-acting” and “straight-passing” discrimination against restrictions and hierarchies practiced in subcommunities
    • queer and pomosexual terms, etc. are rebellion against the hierarchies established by interpretationso f diversity
    • conformation and assimilation of lgbtq+ people into society vs. non-normativity ^nqnlwa
      • ““Who is not represented by the LGBTQ label?” Is the experience, for instance, of African American gays and lesbians in the United States the same as their white counterparts? What about Latinx and Asian Americans? What about queers in different national contexts?” → intersectionality
      • “We may be afraid of being recognised, of facing repercussions at work where we are isolated and alone. We are visible in a crowd but we remain largely invisible in our daily lives. The sense of solidarity that comes with marching and mingling as part of a mass of gay people is therefore a welcome relief from the isolation of everyday life. When we march we say that this is the one day of the year that belongs to “us.” However, it is impossible to sustain this sense of political power once the carnival is over.”

pertaining to allies of the LGBTQ+ community

• allyship
  • kink community: “queer in the broadest sense of the world”
    • SM stigma vs. active discrimination in the LGBT community (“The Joy of S/M”, Susan Wright)
    • viewpoint of abnormality
  • sex workers
    • commonality of stigmatization and limited access; effects of intersectionality and ignorance
• pedophilia
  • North American Man/Boy Love Association and connections to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
  • power of myth between homosexuality and pedophilia: Save Our Children, Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America “Who is calling the question of public exclusion and for what political purposes? Who are the audiences being targeted and how do they (or the perception of them by those attacking and defending versions of collective identity) shape the outcome?”

“As you can see, the issue of diversity within the LGBTQ community is complex and often vexed. In significant ways, we are queer because of that diversity, because of our difference from normative cultural conceptions of appropriate gender behavior and accepted sexual practice. Still, many queers, when encountering sexual diversity, act much as many straights do when encountering queerness—with hesitation, skepticism, and sometimes hostility. Whether such skepticism and hostility are warranted varies from issue to issue, identity to identity, and community to community. In his apologia for homosexuality titled Corydon, French author André Gide requests that we do not “understand” him too quickly—that we do not assume that what seems different can be honored by viewing it as less complex than it actually is. The diversity within the LGBTQ community ensures that any understanding of queerness that jumps to quick conclusions is likely to be foiled upon closer examination. This diversity—this complexity—makes our experiences in many ways all the richer, particularly as we are prompted to think more deeply and critically about what queer is—and could be.”