Times haven't really changed.

I found it so very, very interested that a show from a little while back is so similar to shows depicting gay men today. Such as the show Happy Endings. Max, the gay male in the group of friends, is depicted as your average guy, lazy, doesn't like to do much cleaning, but when it comes to certain things he is depicted as completely feminine. The way the media shows gay men hasn't changed very much at all. If they aren't flamboyant and promiscuous, then they are masculine in most occasions.

My question is when are we going to have lesbians depicted in a show as a main character? When are we going to have a popular television show that is beloved by most of America that involves lesbians as main characters that aren't there just for some sexual context?

Sullivan - Ch. 11

Sullivan spends a lot of chapter 11 talking about the context of “camp,” and symbolism of the generic gay, male representation of imitating feminine characteristics, and how the stigma has transpired into popular culture as a seemingly accurate representation. He also spends a lot of depth talking about the context of “Batman Forever,” which apparently has a lot of underlying homoerotic symbolism that I was unaware of. Another representation of “queering popular culture” was generally highlighted in the Austin Powers movies, which is seen to many as a satire of the US perception of homosexual stigma. Has anyone heard of the BLO social experiment of switching the voice boxes of the Barbie’s and the G.I. Joe’s? I am shocked that I have never heard of this and nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read that someone took the initiative of actually doing this.

Binaries, Binaries, Binaries, OH MY!

In the selling out article I read the words, "The poor necessarily hate the rich, so much that the rich have reason to fear the poor. Moreover, the rich deserve to have civil government protect them and, by extension, their God-given right to happiness via property ownership. One critical function of liberal democratic government, then, is to defend wealthy people against poor people"

This statement is true applied to every binary. Black and Whites, or more realistically whites and non-whites for example. Even omnivores and and herbivores ( you knew I was going here.) Just look at  the Hardees ad that says "No one gives a high five after eating tofu." The meat eaters are purposely conditioned by the media to be against people who don't eat meat. The straights are conditioned to be afraid of gay people unless they are in an "appropriate" service position that serves women exclusively. But when that gay man is trying to sell you a rifle at the sporting goods store, now you have a problem. This is all the media conditioning us. Just like it does to fear black people and even mentally challenges people, who are often portrayed as murderers, like in The Long Hot Summer by William Faulkner.

Do you think it is impossible for people to break through this social conditioning that causes us to fear each other? It sounds like we need to hijack the media if we ever want social change.

Objective vs Subjective Freedom

First, I really want to say that I appreciate Chasin's contribution to this topic. I really think she has touched on some important issues. However, as I was reading, I did have a question for her: Is the problem here that the gay movement is fighting for rights in general or is it that even if they gained those rights, not all could access them equally?

To me, this is extremely important and it points to a distinction between objective and subjective freedom. The gay movement is pushing for objective freedom because they are asking for the same rights as everyone else. What seems more important, though, is the subjective freedom to actually take advantage of those rights. Chasin touches on this, though she uses slightly different language. It seems like her critique of the gay movements rests more on the need for subjective freedom rather than objective and she's right to say that the movements would need a lot of re-focusing in order to achieve this. This would require a more systemic change than simply passing a bill that grants rights to gays and lesbians. In order to be subjectively free, there has to be some measure of equality that enables access to carry out one's rights. Like she mentioned, it may be great to have rights, but if I don't have a lawyer to defend those rights or the education to understand them, then what has really been accomplished? So, basically, I agree with her on this point. The gay movement needs to go beyond rights if we expect social change that can really make an impact for everyone and not just a select few at the top. I also think that the way to do this is for all of the social justice movements to come together and start fighting together as one movement toward achieving not just rights, but subjective freedom for all.

Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces

This article discussed how gay characters on television, though they give more visibility to LGBT people and give people who may or may not have been exposed to an LGBT person a chance to understand at least a little of queer culture, are often often quite stereotypical or are forced into heteronormative story lines. For example, Will and Grace was used as an example to show how Jack is portrayed in a very stereotypical manner and gay relationships and life experiences are often forced into a heterosexual mold. A square peg in a round hole if you will. (Didn't mean that to sound as dirty as it did.) My question is: Because this article is a little bit dated since it focuses mainly on shows that are no longer on the air, do these ideas still apply to television shows which feature gay characters today? Or has it gotten more progressive?

My opinion is that just because LGBT visibility on television is greater today does not necessarily mean that things have changed very much. Shows that I have watched such as Glee, Project Runway, True Blood, etc. that feature gay characters still portray many of them in stereotypical ways. I mean, not all gay guys like showtunes and haute couture. No, really. Many lesbians on these shows are portrayed as the white, porn star ideal that has become so popular. Also, many LGBT characters are still being forced into heteronormative story lines where relationships are meant to evolve in the same manner that many heterosexual relationships do. While not bad per se, this forces many viewers to see LGBT people in situations and scenarios that may not be accurate to a queer identity or reality and may harm many people's perceptions of LGBT people when they realize this.

Selling Out

My question comes from Chasin's 'Selling Out.  'Targeting' in advertising is a fundamental term that means you zero in on where you want to spend your money based on who(m) you want to reach to spend their money on your product.  In the early 1970s, talk began in the ad world discussing the possibilities of reaching the gay and lesbian target audience.  Initially, belief was that the gay community had double the money and no children and were buying everything they saw with all of that discretionary income.  Some of those facts were of course wrong, but it was forgotten temporarily in the panic of the 1980s that was known as AIDS.  Later, the ad world became more versed in their facts and began in earnest to make the distinction between the gay and the not gay market.
My question is this: Chasin seems one of the more credible sources on the subject, both as an observer and a subject-did I just miss it or did Chasin decided the audiences were one and the same?

Sullivan and Gay Batman

First, I have to say when I read Wertham's hypothesis about Batman and homoeroticism, I was skeptical. Reading the comic books, playing the video games, and watching the newer movies always gave me a permeating sense of hegemonic masculinity. Thinking about it more, however, Batman does not kill people, which is the ultimate manhood act. His character traits do conflict with stereotypical masculine behavior. What I thought was most interesting was how she showed that even though Batman himself displays homoerotic behavior, the "campier" characters are vilified and often take their homoerotic roles over the top to emphasize that this is what you should not do or be. It is to the extreme that one assumes Batman is straight because his behavior is the polar opposite of his villains.

I wanted to get your all's opinion on this theory, because I have read it to multiple groups of people who would argue against it. I think she made a sound argument though.

The less education, the better? Naw.

The conclusion of “The Trouble With Normal” highlights the negativity of seeing societal normalcy is troubling in all aspects of education, safety, and self-perception. Using HIV/AIDS as a prime example of sexual epidemics, diseases have spread like wildfire due to the shame and guilt presented from negative stigmas concerning sex and sexuality. Heteronormative behavior has shaped how sex is perceived, and in turn is devastating the masses. Particularly speaking, the “hush hush” of sex and gender identity has greatly influenced youth education toward this “abstinence only, sex is wrong, the less you know- the better” connotation, and it has really become prevalent in how harmful that is to society and the role of sex in humanity. Sex is a natural instinct, and policing the way it is perceived has been a disaster in terms of safety and identity.

Gay Male Social Experiment

So I had to do this ridiculous assignment for one of my classes, I thought I would share it with you all since this is a LGBTQ Theory course. Offensive or appropriate? Here were my results...

 http://vegansteven.blogspot.com/2012/04/gay-male-social-experiment.html

That's right! I'm talkin' about porn....again...

So while I was reading Warner chapter 4 and they were talking about the whole redefining of what an adult business is and singling out porn shops, I kept thinking to myself.....I am someone who is pretty much against pornography. I wouldn't mind to see pornography disappear off the face of the planet. I must be a bad guy.... HA HA HA just kidding folks, I am the best guy ever!

Obviously what's being done by good old Rudy, is not even attack on the porn industry but the singling out of gay and lesbian related adult oriented things. Probably the only reason sex toys fell into a gray area is because they are possibly being used by heteros. Those silly heteros and their homophobia. But we can't blame it all on Rudy even though he is a gigantic McDouche, because what he did unfortunately reflects the wants of the majority homophobic population. Yeah I know, it's a sad world we live in.....Anyway back to the porn!

So I don't that the solution to any problem is banning anything, I just want that to be known. It really bothers me that this happened, they launch an attack against the LGBTQ Community by attempting to displace and destroy their "adult entertainment" of sorts. What a douche move! I mean think about it, they force the people to have to defend pornography and other sexual related things, making it look like to the idiot general public that LGBTQ peoples are SEX CRAZED. When in reality I am sure the LGBTQ people are not any more sex crazed than any normal person is. I'm not sure where I'm going with this because I don't really have a good question this time around. I guess I just wanted to put down some thoughts I had during this reading.

“Without pornography, there could be no manhood—and humans would desire to embrace sexual selfhood instead” -J. Stoltenberg


What do you think about this quote when applied to gay pornogrpahy?

Public Sex, Public Knowledge

As I was reading the chapter from Warner, I was really just kind of amazed at the arguments presented (in a good way). I think the part that stood out to me the most was the following: "Autonomy requires more than civil liberty; it requires the circulation and accessibility of sexual knowledge, along with the public elaboration of a social world that can make less alienated relations possible." My research deals somewhat with the alienation that occurs in modern society, so this definition hit something very interesting for me. I think there is something undeniably true about needing more than just liberty to be truly autonomous. Liberty without open access to knowledge is useless; that includes sexual knowledge. This ties into the thoughts Warner presents about the exchange of sexual knowledge within queer circles as well as the governmental and societal crackdown on both what can be known and what can be said. If you think about all the times we edit ourselves in "public" I think you can see what I mean.

Therefore, instead of a question, I propose a challenge. I propose that we all stop editing ourselves in public. I know that's not as easy as it sounds, so maybe we can just all start with saying one thing that we want or need to say that we would usually refrain from saying. What might be accomplished by simply refusing to censor ourselves?

Who are the tourists?

When I think of New York City, one of the first attractions that comes to mind is the night life. Reading Chapter 4 of Warner and Giuliani's crack down on publicized sex, clubs, gay bars, and even gay book stores, I couldn't help but wonder why he would want to eliminate this association of New York with sexual freedom. Warner says it is supposedly to create an environment more clean and appealing to tourists, but I feel like many tourists would be disappointed in finding a tame, boring, familiar state because it is so far from the image people have in their heads of New York.

Aside from the monetary benefits, in privatizing sexual identities and openness they are eliminating any emphasis on safe sexual practices and accessible resources/places to meet without having to fear their safety. It also adds to the shame people experience in exploring their sexuality.

Zoning out Sex

Okay, my first question is: Wrestling videos? Really?

My second, more legitimate question is this: This chapter mentions how often laws like Giuliani's "quality of life" rezoning and real estate interests override what the public actually wants or cares about. For example, Disney's control over Times Square made it impossible for adult stores and the like to remain open while many viewed these places of business as harmless or even, if I may be so bold, as a daily hangout. Because these places were, and are, some of the only vestiges of open sexuality in the modern world, they remain important to safe and free sexuality. What happens when all these businesses are closed because of these kinds of ordinances? What will the repercussions be?

I believe that if all adult businesses were to close it would be a grave miscarriage of the constitution as well as a form of denial.  People want to go around and pretend that sex and all its variances don't exist, (or that missionary is the only position,) and, while it is their right to think however they please, if I want to go to an adult store and buy some fuzzy handcuffs I am perfectly within my rights as an American to do so. Getting rid of adult stores won't get rid of deviant sex, or any kind of sex for that matter, so to ban them is really a moot point. Getting rid of adult stores, while not the end of the world, shows a bias towards any kind of sex that is considered to be abnormal. If it is possible to ban adult stores, what else could be banned?

Zoning out Sex

Ethics, politics and sex.  Is the 'neighborhood' dangerous to city planning? Only if, as the author points out on page 189, that the fantasy is that sexuality only happens in the home.  Zoning helps to keep the heirarchy as it exists today, alive and well.  We all visit communities that don't share our mailing address, some of us have made regular visits to neighborhoods we don't call home in order to express or share our sexuality.  I feel sometimes, that I simply find new ways to devise an old sentence in order to rephrase a similar question.  Here it is:   In order to enable or allow those whose sexuality does not always conform to the top of the food chain, queer politics must have public representation  on City Planning Commissions that establish these zoning laws-right?

Enke

Some of the details written in Enke's article really hit home due to some personal experiences I had this week, and I wanted to share. If you 'tl;dr' me, I totally understand.

I thought the insight, particularly from the Introduction piece on the formation of the feminist movement, was a fantastic piece into seeing the "movement outside of the movement," so to speak, and for getting a sense of understanding from people who weren't in the forefront of the movement, who may not have identified as a feminist for one reason or another, but still grasped the concept of liberation and tried to initiate grass root change in their own systems. We hear the "feminist movement" and we think of organized protests, or well established groups who worked both independently and together to impact this great social change; yet this was only one facet of initiating that change. Why were certain groups the faces of change, while others who may have made a significant impact were left out of history books? Stemming to the previous readings we've had about the feminists vs. lesbian feminists, I have started to see trends that social movements, while advocating for the rights of a targeted minority group, are still ranked in accordance to how they fit on the scale of dominant culture. On page 11 of the text, Enke writes, "How, then, do we understand the exclusions and hierarchies, and the ways that they contributed to the differential visibilities of actors and agendas within the movement? What was "white" and "middle class" about the movement when women of color and working women helped generate it from the beginning? A spatial analysis shows that conflicts within feminism gained form and name with tangible spatial contestations over environments already laid through with race, class, and sexual hierarchies."

This hit home;

I have been infrequently attending the meetings for the campus gay-straight alliance this school year, better known as the former LGBTieS, and was sitting in on a meet Monday evening. I have been looking for ways to become more involved in LGBTQ issues, but for the length of time that I have attended ETSU, the club has done the bare minimum in terms of organizing, getting their name out, or serving the needs of its members. I have become somewhat involved over this semester and last in trying to push for the club to make changes to serve a mission and to make a name for itself and the LGBTQ "community", but it has failed to do so. I was recently nominated to run for office within the organization and feel as though this will be a strong outlet to really try to initiate some change for our non-active yet still growing LGBTQ population.

Community; we've asked the question in class, "Who IS the community? Who ISN'T the community?" This is has been on my mind in a significant portion over the past few weeks, both from the perspective of someone who feels often left out of the "community" as an open and devout bisexual, and yet someone whose goal over the next school year is going to be to encompass "community" through one of the only LGBTQ outlets on campus.

Walking out of the meeting, I was approached by an acquaintance I hadn't even noticed. I had been sitting in the front of the room and paid little to no attention to who else was there, but knew he wasn't a regular to the group. I had never seen him in a meeting before, and that was the first thing he really brought up to me; he was also an African American male. He said that he wanted to talk for a minute both because I was a familiar face and because he found out I was nominated to run for office. He begins explaining that it isn't the first club meeting he's ever attended there, but that he's never felt a sense of acceptance or comfort by being there. He expressed that despite the fact that the club doesn't do much for anyone, they specifically exclude any concept of race, and that he has several friends who identify as both gay and African American, and would love to get involved with the LGBTQ community if they thought for a second that they would be accepted.

To shed light back to Enke's perception of the feminist movement, but also to cross-culturally connect the """Gay and Lesbian Movement""", it seems that these groups too frequently exclude more than they include. The "Gay and Lesbian Movement" has changed to include Bisexuals and Transgender People to their name,forming the "LGBT/LGBTQ" acronym, but they're still in the back of the movement; they "complicate" things. Same with race; it's an excluded issue because it "complicates" the movement.

In reflection to the meetings the campus organization has had, regardless of the lack of diversity at ETSU, the club is 75-80% white, homosexual, males. I'm excited to hopefully win election as the President of the organization (which by the way, was voted on Monday to change it's name to H.E.R.O.E.S - Helping to Educate, Regarding Orientation, Equality, & the Spectrum) and will be working very hard to try to open up its door to becoming a more inclusive group toward race, orientation, sex, gender identity, class, and toward hetero allies.

"no one is free when others are oppressed."

Men Like That

On page 31 in this excerpt there is a discussion on the silence and silencing of gay identities and how keeping quiet about one's sexual identity does not necessarily mean that the dominant society and dominant society members are forcing the silence. I found this to be a very interesting point especially when paired with our discussion on how just coming out of the closet will not solve homophobia or heterosexism. So, my question is this: In your opinion, does keeping silent about being LGBT harm the goals of gay-liberation and equality?


I have two spools of thought about this question. On one hand I completely agree that a person's sexuality is their own business and if they want to keep it a secret they should have the autonomy to do so. There is a double standard where straight people are allowed to keep silent about their relationships and sexuality because they are considered "normal" but LGBT people are not. On the other hand I feel that that keeping your sexuality a secret is letting the dominant heterosexist culture win and continue to maintain dominance.  The more pandering that is done to heterosexism, the stronger it will become.

Finding the Movement

This has been my favorite article this semester.  Enke connected dots very clearly about how the women's movement evolved.  There were lots of historical nuggets that I was not aware of, like Amazon Bookstore being the oldest feminist bookstore.  My question is: although we have all acknowledged the progress made, wonder why a 'fourth' wave hasn't been initiated so that equality for sexuality and gender can become a reality.

Reliance on religion?

One aspect of both readings I found confusing was the strong presence of religion and political organizations holding meetings inside the churches. Today religious organizations and their members are, for the most part, strongly against homosexuality and feminist practice, so it was difficult for me to read these excerpts and understand how feminist activists and homosexuals were welcomed into the churches to organize and even worship.

It seems as if churches rely on patriarchy because the majority of religious leaders are male and religious doctrine suggests submissiveness in women to their husbands. With this in mind, the fact that women formed coffee houses in churches, planned feminist activism, and held women's socials/lesbian dances there was baffling. I feel that if this were common practice today, preachers would be spiking the punch and eliminating all the "crazy feminists trying to make all women lesbian and convince them not to have families."