A Humorous Critique of Voting One's Identity

A (humorous) reminder that women and black Americans (not to mention black women!) actually vote for who they think is the most qualified candidate-- shocker, I know. And what a f*cking insult that the media persists in insinuating they don't. And funny, no one appears to be asking white men voting for John McCain if they're voting their gender or race. Oh that's right, McCain gets to be an unmarked "candidate" while Senators Clinton and Obama are marked as sexed and racial 'others.'



via feministing

(Cross-posted to The Reaction)

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R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe "Outs" His Bandmates as "Heterosexual"

This is brilliant, and nothing less than I would expect from Stipe and R.E.M., who recently stated he's a "queer artist." This seems to me to be a response to his frustration over needing to "come out"; his lack of doing so had been read as "cowardly" rather than about one's sexual and intimate life being irrelevant and no one's damn business.

The coming-out parody that he performs is not with the point of criticizing "coming out," which for may queers is an important act, especially considering the history of queer invisibility. Rather, this parody reveals culture as heteronormative in that heterosexuality is assumed unless said otherwise and unless marked properly. It operates in a similar fashion that following up the question, "When did you first realize you were gay?" with "When did you first realize you were straight?" does.


In our culture we have a compulsion to know one's sexuality identity, which we presume tells us the "truth" about an individual, the "truth" of their sex acts, and allows us to render people's action, speech, and beliefs more meaningful due to the centrality that sexuality plays in how we conceive identity. Sexual identity becomes the way we can be explained and understood. (See Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality vol. 1, summary here)

This was especially evident in the J.K. Rowling/Dumbledore is gay incident this past fall. The announcement upset people because his sexual identity as gay was not made explicit in the text. Rowling's after-the-fact "revelation" of Dumbledore's sexuality operated less like a "coming out." Instead it underscored the cultural assumption of heterosexuality as the "default" sexuality, showing it to be normalized and exnominated. The personal lives of the book's adult characters were almost never discussed, yet this only became an issue because Dumbledore happened to be gay and therefore his personal life became of the utmost importance in making sense of his character. In the books, there was no lover, no obsession with musical theatre, no use of the word "fabulous!" I'm exaggerating of course, but what I'm indicating is that there was no overt way that the text produced him as gay. There was also no "coming out" moment in the text and he was not introduced as "gay" in the character's initial introduction (to the dismay of some gay activists). Of course, after the "revelation" people went through the texts and tried to re-read his character, with this "truth" in mind, and could thus "produce" him as gay.

I mean, look at the photo used to illustrate the BBC story, the caption "R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe in performance":



If that isn't an example of imposing a system of interpretation onto bodily acts that produce and understanding of gender and sexual identity, I don't know what does.

This complusion to know and distinguish genders and sexualities by making meaning of bodily acts really reflects back onto heteronormative culture and how fragile and vulnerable its own construction is.

This isn't to deny the value of "coming out"-clearly visibility of queer individuals as successful and caring people, present in every aspect of society is part of what is needed to disrupt social stigmas and assumptions. But I also think what Stipe is doing here is important too, and provokes a much-needed conversation about recent centrality and importance of sexuality to/as individual identity.

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Randon Act of Feminism for February/March : Gendered-Language Watch

I've decided to start a monthly "Random Act of Feminism"- a suggestion of something you can do to make feminism or feminist thinking visible in daily interactions with others. Among all of this cultural analysis, feminism is both useful and relevant to everyday life!

We're halfway through February, so this will be a 2-month deal, which is actually pretty appropriate considering February and March are the token "appreciation" months for women and African-Americans. Which in my book pretty much boils down to this:

image credit: Guerilla Girls

But this Random Act regards women and people of color (in addition to other social minorities) specifically, so in a way, I suppose it's "appropriate."**

Without further adieu....


Gendered-language watch
In conversation (your own and others'), watch how people are described. Typically, we use "identity" descriptors only with reference to women, gay men, lesbians, people of color, non-Western ethnicities, (and also non-Christian religions)...in other words, the default category for a "person" is a white, hetero, male. A person is only someone "other" than that when specified.

This is what's referred to as "ex-nomination" (coined by the semiotician Roland Bathes)-being 'unnamed'. What is unnamed is what is seen as a 'natural' commonsensical category. Those of us who are not white heterosexual men become those with "marked bodies"-bodies who must be named to be identified. In other words, people who are women, or black are designated as such (as if identifying them according to said label adds particular meaning to who they are as a person), while white hetero men are simply "people," and are thus permitted to establish meaningful identities in ways not shaped by said societal identity labels.

Listen for it-you'll be surprised. Start correcting your own speech and kindly point it out in others'. Usually these identity markers are completely irrelevant to the context of what's being said-and using them continues to produce the default category of "person" or "human" in line with how it's been posited throughout history, and how it's been assumed to be in disciplines such as science, psychology, and philosophy: white, heterosexual, and male. This is a subtle way that norms around gender, sexuality, race, class, &,... are reproduced on a daily basis, through interpersonal interaction. "-isms" (sexism, racism...) need not come in the form of legal discrimination-they often happen in little moments throughout the day in ways we often don't realize...until someone says "hey, wait a sec..."

**These token "history" months are case-in-point. I do not wish to take away from their usefulness-during those months, the promotion of minoritarian history seems like worthwhile endeavors and more people are exposed to those histories than might otherwise be. Indeed, it is sad that traditional disciplines are so WHITE that they are even necessary. But, they are a good example of what I'm talking about as far as exnomination goes. I hear so many people say, "Well, when will we have a men's history month?" The simple (and to me, obvious) answer: every day of every month of every year, in newspapers and classrooms nationwide, is the teaching of men's history. It just isn't called that. "Neutral" history is really the history of dominant culture-it just gets the "privilege" of being called plain-old "history". Why? Oh yeah-because of exnomination, baby!

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