Standing on Shaky Ground
It's not about the sex, it's about the public lewd behaviour. Sure, whatever. Larry Craig's misdemeanor has driven a lot of talk not just about sexual identities, but the practices of homosexuals.Andrew at Air Pollution has been critiquing those who would label Senator Craig (as those before him) as being gay. He has also been dissecting the icky factor in reporting this story: bathrooms and cruising. Andrew and I have had a number of discussions about the construction of sexual identities, and for different reasons we have been uneasy with the politics thereof. However, we completely agree that professing sexuality in public has its problems:
Many college students, in my experience, see the development of GLBT identities in a pretty straightforward trajectory: in the nineteenth-century we couldn't speak, now we can. Many of them have, in fact, read Foucault and they understand that identities are historically constituted and change over time. But what is so often missing in these discussions, both on college campus and on the internet, is how the injunction to speak can often be just as limiting as it can be emancipatory. Speaking creates categories, forcing people into them against their will. Obviously Foucault made this point, and it probably does little good for me to say it here in this form, but I think its important to emphasize when this sort of thing happens. The automatic reaction should not be "if only he could have come out of the closet," but rather, "how unfortunate we live in a society where the ability to freely express sexual desires, in all their (consensual) forms, remains a dream."Indeed the creation of a defined category produces conformity as well. Why should everyone be labeled? Could not Senator Craig simply have sought gratification?
Last semester I assigned André Gide's The Immoralist to some students (a book that I picked with Andrew's assistance). I was myself surprised at one student's reaction: she was unwilling to accept the sexual openness proposed in the book. In her opinion, Michel's unwillingness to come out the closet made him sick, made his wife sick, made the people whom he touched sick. Simply put, his disease was not admitting his true sexuality.
Andrew isn't he only one talking about sexual identities. On the other side of the political spectrum, Marc at Spinning Clio is criticizing a work that purports to find same-sex marriage in the late Middle Ages. Projecting contemporary homosexuality, in particular the desire to marry one's same sex partner, reads too much into the past. In communities where each marriage was scrutinized, would not couples affrèrés meet resistance? Would homosexual men and women seek emotional fulfillment through marriage? Marc hits an important point: deep affection between men need not be manifested sexually.
All these examples show more about how identities are constructed and employed than how sexuality is conceived. So many identities are constructed on the belief of unchangeable, unshakable natures that they become essentialist, bordering on nativism or indigenism. These identities become so confining that they tend to isolate those who employ them. Indeed they are best employed when the identifying group wishes to resist modernization. The danger is that they will not participate in the discussion about modernization, rather it will occur around them as they are immune to it. Or that modernization will disturb the root assumptions upon which identities are based. Among the problems faced by Alsatians under German rule, for example, was how to argue that they were who they were (people shaped by history and tradition) and participate in German politics and global commerce.
The point is best driven home by Mahmood Mamdani in Citizen and Subject. By identifying Africans with tribal communities, colonial governments could keep them under traditional tribal justice and traditional tribal authority. Thus they had limited access to European institutions. The African worker, in particular, could not make choices about development and progress. S/he was always a visitor to the modern world, and what s/he experienced could not change African society.
Labeling Senator Craig "gay" potentially constrains him to being a man who cruises for sex in bathrooms--as much as it constrains gay men. It constrains him to live up to an identity that is not as stable as it seems.
(Disclosure: I hate people who fuck in public places. It unnerves me. Sorry, Andrew, I've reported a few couples in various states of passion in the library because, dammit, I have work to do. They were all heterosexual.)
posted by Nathanael @ 9:31 AM
20 Comments:
A number of years ago, a very good friend worked for a men's health organization. They very clearly differentiated between gay men and men who had sex with other men; my graduate advisor made the same distinction. Because of this experience, I had assumed that this distinction was rather widespread. I am a little surprised to see that it is not, but as you have noted here, the identity politics complicates the matter greatly.
In my graduate introduction to LGBTQ studies course, we read an article on the men John refers to (MSM). The skepticism, and outright hostility, was astounding. There's a great deal of investment amongst self-identified gay men to coopt any other men interested in sex with men to their identity. It's quite disturbing, honestly, when an identity category that was supposed to help emancipate GLBT folk has turned into its own modes of oppression.
And and sidenote: I took am not a huge fan of witnessing sex in public places, nor do I myself take part. But it's important to note that more often than not meetings that take place in a public restroom generally get consummated elsewhere. Even in my research on the phenomenon in nineteenth-century France, this was generally the case. Most of the descriptions we have of men arrested, its often exhibitionism and occasionally felatio.
AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s did much to reshape the professional understanding of sexuality. Self-reporting prevented the disease from being tracked. I don't think it was just that men and women were ashamed to identify themselves as homosexual. It was also a time when the GLBT community oriented itself toward bourgeois lifestyles (especially with the incorporation of West Hollywood). It also exposed many so-called monogamous individuals of all orientations.
Interesting, as 20-year old in Los Angeles, many of my friends, myself included, voluntarily took HIV tests on a regular basis regardless of our orientation, our current sexual history, or our partners. We took it seriously as an obligation to ourselves and our partners. However, when I moved to New England and asked for a test, it was automatically assumed that either I suspect myself of being infected or that I participated in "risky" behavior. Was I gay? A drug user? Sleeping with someone infected? Sleeping with multiple partners? Etc. I think that the presence of a strong GLBT community affected how we all thought of our sexuality and health, and the same attitude was not present without that community.
You owe a very nice and interesting blog. Please come visit my site Memphis Business Search Engine when you got time.
You owe a very nice and interesting blog. Please come visit my site Memphis City Business Listings when you got time.
Thanks for posting, definitely going to subscribe! See you on my reader. Please come visit my site Austin Business Directory when you got time.
Thanks for posting, definitely going to subscribe! See you on my reader. Please come visit my site Local Business Directory Of Austin U.S.A. when you got time.
I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it :) I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post. Please visit my Please visit my blog when you have time Please come visit my site Denver Business Services And Classifieds when you got time.
I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it :) I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post. Please visit my Please visit my blog when you have time Please come visit my site Denver Phone Book when you got time.
Hey congrats on the new posting come out
btw i love your blog although i have just stumbled upon it =)
Love the new pictures you got there! Please come visit my site Directory Milwaukee Cityy when you got time.
Love the new pictures you got there! Please come visit my site Business Resources Comprehensive Listings when you got time.
I am deeply in love with every single piece of information you post here. Will be back often to read more updates! Please come visit my site Portland Business Services And Classifieds when you got time.
I am deeply in love with every single piece of information you post here. Will be back often to read more updates! Please come visit my site Oregon OR Phone Directory when you got time.
It is very interesting article and quite impressive and more informative and looking forward to read such article. Please come visit my site San Francisco City Business Listings when you got time.
It is very interesting article and quite impressive and more informative and looking forward to read such article. Please come visit my site Business Resources Comprehensive Listings when you got time.
I'm glad you're back to posting. I love reading about your shopping adventures and great finds. Your outfits are always super cute too! Very inspirational. Please come visit my site Baltimore Business Services And Classifieds when you got time.
I'm glad you're back to posting. I love reading about your shopping adventures and great finds. Your outfits are always super cute too! Very inspirational. Please come visit my site Maryland MD Phone Directory when you got time.
I'm glad you're back to posting. I love reading about your shopping adventures and great finds. Your outfits are always super cute too! Very inspirational. Please come visit my site Baltimore City Business Listings when you got time.
I'm glad you're back to posting. I love reading about your shopping adventures and great finds. Your outfits are always super cute too! Very inspirational. Please come visit my site Business Services Web Directory Of Baltimore when you got time.
When floods do occur, The North Face Sale the water, though turbid for the time, subsides rapidly and soon becomes clear again. Below Hertford, floods are liable to act injuriously, the water remaining longer on the adjoining marsh lands. Mr. Beardmore stated that heavy floodings had taken place in May 1824, in November 1852, and in October 1857, and that at such times large areas of land were, laid under water for several days. Skechers Shoes The marsh-lands on both sides of the lower Thames are not subject to such flooding, as the embankments are found to be sufficient to shut out the tides, and the primitive sewers, marsh-ditches, and tidal outlet-sluices regulate the delivery of flood waters so as to prevent injury to land. The marsh districts on both sides of the lower Lee are now subject to the double evil of flooding and droughts; during long continued dry weather the surface cracks until there are fissures several feet in depth. Flood water is passed much more rapidly down the valley of the Lee in consequence The North Face Sale of the improvements made of late years in the navigation by dredging the channels. Much, however, remains to be done which would improve the conditions of the marsh-land and the health of the people.The evidence as to the water-mills proves that in many instances the dams and ponds act injuriously by preventing land drainage and impeding floods. However useful Discount G Star Sale water-power may have been in former times, when these mills were first established, that use has now been greatly reduced in relative value, and, wherever there is sufficient trade to The North Face Sale make grinding corn a profitable occupation, steam-power has to be brought in as an auxiliary, the improved navigation and railway accommodation facilitating the delivery of coals so as to give an advantage to steam over the constantly alternating and uncertain flow of water. Water-power having diminished in commercial value, and land for agricultural purposes having greatly increased in value, injury to the adjoining lands may be shown to cause an annual money loss to the district Shape Ups Boots. To this money loss must be added injury to health by the retention of large areas of undrained land. Water-mills and mill-dams are proved to be injurious to local properties, but we have no evidence as to any serious pollutions being caused by these mills, other than so far as they cause a partial stagnation in the water and accumulations of mud by ponding.
Post a Comment
<< Home