Here's what I've been working on. I think it's pretty much done, though I'm not super happy with it. If you have any suggestions do let me know! Email's nkerr@midd
When talking with other students about the label “Queer”, an idea that pops up in conversation after conversation is the desire to eschew political consciousness in relation to sexual-object choice. This is understandable in some sense; the term “Queer” to many has overt political, theoretical and social underpinnings, that is when it isn’t written off as an outdated and offensive term for which we now have a “better” and more “neutral” alternative in the acronym of LGBT.
“Why should my sex life be political?”
“Why, as a (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Pansexual etc) identified individual, should I have to ascribe to a political ideology for which there is no heterosexual equivalent?”
These are, of course, important questions to address. Why should a minority group, demarcated by something as arbitrary as sexual preference, be asked to ascribe to a whole set of politics, presuppositions and stereotypes when we do not ask the same of our heterosexual counterparts?
This line of questioning misses a crucial point; namely, any claim to or classification of identity is an inherently political act, and the classifiers “homosexual”, “heterosexual”, “bisexual” etc, were all conceived, brewed and assembled within political contexts.
Foucault locates the creation of the homosexual—and of sexual identity more broadly—in the late 1800’s. It was at this point that acts of sodomy, adultery or prostitution suddenly ceased to be sporadic behaviors or activities and became discursive behaviors constitutive of identity. Thus from “sodomy” was born the “sodomite,” someone who engaged in an act or acts of sodomy which suddenly bestowed him with the burden of an identity. Those classified as “sodomites”, “adulterers” and so on could now be punished politically and socially, as the unmarked (and assumedly untainted) individuals of high moral standing could justify their right to dominance by contrasting their discipline, morality and purity against that of the debased and newly-identified sexual deviant.
And LGB politics has continued in much the same vein since then, using the bondage of identity to engage in identity politics (at times to great effect and good use), demarcating themselves from the unwashed heterosexual masses and demanding rights as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual individuals. (I leave Transgender out of this list since homonormative identity politics has seen fit to abandon the Trans fight in favor of “respectability”, using a mantra of “First the few, later the many” to justify co-opting and subsequently disenfranchising transpeople).
It is far too late to divorce sexual identity from the political. Heterosexuals too engage in a hetero-identity politics, it is simply because they dominate the political system that a white, heterosexual identity politic is rendered invisible, a convenient way of naturalizing a systematic control that is anything but natural.
There can be no claim to a “natural”, “apolitical” sexuality; no such identity exists or has existed within modern Western social-political discourse. Instead, Queer Folks ought to embrace the political nature written into our bodies, our identities. Denying the role that social and political power has played in our creation is a fruitless road, one that renders the very recent ascension of the dominant hetero/homonormative identity politic “natural”, i.e. invisible; and ultimately, the denial and rejection of the political within our Queer bodies is a deliberate ignorance of our creation, past, present and future.
This is not, however, a call to identity politics. The identity politics of white, middle-class homonormative “activists,” with their calls to solidarity, unity, are ultimately a dead end. We’ve seen this tension between a Queer political activism and a hamstringed, straight-jacketed homonormative LGB activism play out in the fight for Same-Sex Marriage. Queers who questioned the idea of marriage as a “human right” (as opposed to, say, access to education, housing, healthcare etc, issues that the homonormative “Human Rights Campaign” does not concern itself with) were demonized by the HRC and homonormative public figures like Dan Savage, cast as opponents of the struggle for the “human right” that marriage supposedly is.
The label of “Queer” has been shed by the mainstream gay movement , its culture co-opted and reappropriated for a white, elite, normative and bourgeois consumer audience. Corporate sponsored Pride Parades, the support of Dov Charney and his chauvinist-anti-fat-softcore-porn-fueled t-shirt empire, empty promises of queer-for-profit pop stars (are you there, Gaga?), this is what is left to us by the lepidopterist that is identity politics.
What, then, is a satisfactory answer? If we cannot ignore the queerness of our bodies, of the bodies of everyone we know, but cannot fit into identity politics, what avenue is left open to us?
It is by finding an activism that fits our own lives and bodies, by constantly doubting “common sense” politics and ideology, by not supporting something just because we are told to, that we can realize a reinvigorated coalitional politics and not be lulled by false consciousness. Instead of opening our campuses up to the ROTC because of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (is the military now vindicated, washed clean of all its crimes because of this newfound “tolerance?”), why are we not rejecting the presence of the Military Industrial Complex on our campuses? Instead of getting riled up about same-sex marriage, why do we let Republicans hamstring healthcare legislation and tear down or privatize welfare? The systematic and ruthless war being waged against American citizens and non-citizens alike by white, male, heteronormative capitalist interests affects all of us, and, whether Queer or straight, white or non-white, normative or subversive, it is our task now to recognize oppression when it is presented to us, even if it is wrapped up in an appealing little package. What is the cost of buying into dominant political narratives? Are we any more free without DADT? Are we better people because we can marry (and who, exactly, among us actually has access to that “right?”), or are all of us getting fucked as we congratulate ourselves on the success of our identity politics?
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