Outing the Gays

I’m sitting in my living room drinking and eating with some of my closest friends and the topic of sexuality (inevitably) comes up. One of my friends starts to discuss a boy she has recently made out with although she believes he is gay. She goes on to tell us that even though he is “so obviously gay” he instead describes himself as “the most fashionable straight guy you’ll ever meet”. Of course, from there everyone else starts throwing out names of boys they have the same “issue” with. Quickly, the conversation has gone from boys we’ve made out with to boys who just will not “admit” they are gay. If these girls are so sure that these boys are gay then why do they need the boys to clarify it? Better yet, why do they even care? Suddenly it dawns on me: we are afraid of what we do not understand, and in this society, we do not understand people without labels.

From day one we are taught to believe people are sorted into categories: boy-girl; white-black; lefty-righty. Everywhere we look we are categorized and put into a group based on some trait that is supposed to define us and sexuality is one of the most prominent ways we do this. Like with all other categories, however, when someone defies or ignores the group other people have chosen for him the public becomes dismantled. For this reason, when our friend who has very effeminate mannerisms and everyone believes he is gay says he is heterosexual all of a sudden his sexuality becomes everyone’s business and everyone’s problem. In my opinion, the bigger problem is that it matters to anyone but the individual in question.

As the conversation continues all the girls declare (because God forbid someone accidentally gets labeled homophobic) that they don’t care if the boy is gay and they would like him so much more if he would just come out and tell the world he is. Which is where today’s society inevitably lies: a society that would like to be deemed accepting yet only accepts when everyone follows the rules and clearly labels themselves for the benefit of others.

 

Hegemonic Sexuality and Knowledge…how will we use what we know??

Our final paper focuses on hegemonic sexuality and how it is either reflected, maintained, or challenged. I chose to analyze song lyrics and after going through many songs by various artists from varying genres, it was quite apparent that hegemonic sexuality is maintained in a majority of all the songs. By actually having to look at the lyrics in depth so I could see what the artists were saying, it helped to see how people view the way that things work in our everyday lives. Take music for instance, probably all of us in this class alone listen to music almost everyday of our lives. What do we continuously hear? Songs that tell of broken hearts, money, sex, love, family, tough times, etc. All the while, almost all the subjects maintain the normative views that we have been raised to believe and not question at all. Well, this got me thinking to the grand level that we have been influenced to think this certain way. Almost everything around us, screams maintain hegemonic sexuality (with a few exceptions)! Sports, billboards that we see when we are driving on the streets, pictures of models posing together, t.v. shows, movies, commercials, stores in the malls, cars, alcohol, cigarettes, cologne, perfume, deodorant, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc. Almost everything that exists is made based off of male and female gender stratification and re-enforces these notions that the male gender is dominant, i.e deodorant for men called Axe and for women Secret.

Even condoms are distinctively differentiated: condoms for women are called “Her pleasure” and are purple in color, whereas for the names are “Trojan”, “Magnum”, “Champion”, and are black and gold.  Again, the notion of men being the penetrator and women being penetrated and being submissive is represented by condoms. When it truth, a man cannot penetrate a women unless is gives approval, and vise versa for men also. (of course under other horrible circumstances such as rape) Therefore, the act is and should be viewed as equal.

The more I have realized just how sexualized everything around us is, the more I want to try to use the things I have learned in this class to try to change it. Ever since our class discussion regarding sexuality and telling people that that we’re not homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual when someone asks us, I began using this in my life. I have tried to convince some of my friends to start doing the same but I have had a hard time explaining and changing their mindset. However, I sometimes get frustrated because I feel like I have gained so much knowledge from this class that I want everyone around me to gain some insight so that they could change their way of thinking. In the last class, we talked about what we can do with all the things that we have learned about in this class and I truly feel like this is the greatest challenge after taking a class like this. When things happen now, thoughts are triggered from this class and I think about the theories and class discussions we have had in class.

Knowledge truly does give us power, however, only if you know what to do with and how to influence others with that knowledge.I feel like I have grown and have changed many of my previous thoughts and beliefs. I look forward to using the things that I have learned from this class in my life from now on since the sociology of sexuality is truly prevalent in our lives.

Necrophilia and Pedophilia and Bestiality! Oh my!

I know that a post below me covered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a personal favorite of mine, and Twilight, but I want to look at the vampires in True Blood and New Moon. New Moon deals with some topics pretty far outside Rubin’s “charmed circle.” There’s cross-generational relationships—Edward Cullen, the dreamy vampire lead, is after all, over one hundred years old. However, that little factoid is quite obviously ignored, as he looks just like a teenager.

This idea of the ageless vampire makes me think of cross-generational relationships. Age differences are so easily accepted when it’s dealing with fictional vampires. Edward and Bella of Twilight fame, Buffy and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sookie and Bill in True Blood. In all of these examples, the vampire is always the man- because don’t we accept age differences when the male is older? While obviously vampires are not real, cross-generational relationships are the ones abhorred by the rest of the world. In a cross-generational relationship, people look at the older member of the dyad as being deviant. I wonder how people would react if Twilight featured a female vampire who was hundreds of years old, and a young boy? After all, avoiding cross-generational relationships purpose is to keep children “pure.” Well, in Twilight everyone stays pure, so I guess the age gap ceases to exist. 

Winter Formals, Prom… is it worth all the trouble?

The other night at Zea’s my friends and I went to celebrate my birthday and there was a party of teenagers dressed in formal wear because of winter formal, we assumed. My friends and I got to talking about winter formal and our prom nights and what happened. To cut a long story short I will begin with my prom night began with everything that was planned; we had a champagne party with all the other couples who were riding in the limo with us. After the champagne party was over, it was off to prom we went. Although I was not originally very excited about the idea of prom I was having a good time spending time with my comrades. The night was a complete success. We danced to our hearts content, took pictures, talked and laughed the night away. After prom, we went to Denny’s for a late night dinner. I was under the impression that we were calling it a night, as I was expecting to be dropped off back at home when I heard one of my female friends request to be taken to a hotel on the opposite side of town. Confused I asked “what’s going on at the hotel?” Apparently I was naive because I was the only person in the limo who was unaware why we were detouring to a hotel.

We pulled into the hotel entrance and walked to the front desk where one of my friends checked us in to two adjoining hotel rooms. We all went upstairs, went into the rooms and continued conversing and laughing for about an hour, then the other two couples disappeared, leaving my date and I in the hotel room by ourselves. My date then attempted to kiss me and when I asked him what he was doing he smugly replied “trying to kiss you…this is what happens after prom.” I was appalled. I explained to him that I had no interest in him in that way and that I was certainly not going to have sex with him. He took that as an invitation for coercion and kept trying to force the issue “come on, what do you think they’re doing in the next room?” “we’re friends, right?” “I thought you liked me. “ This exchange lasted for about 10 minutes; angry and embarassed, I left the room and called for a cab to take me home. I couldn’t believe one of my best friends would do such a thing.

As I told my story to my friends, they all agreed that the hotel scene was what most kids did after prom and that it was just the thing to do. This made me think about “learned heterosexuality” and how one learns to think heterosexuality is the way to be because they are socialized to believe that. This is the same for prom nights in which young girls and guys are pressured and taught to believe that having sex is just the thing to do. Also, I realize now that my friend then had pressures of his own because he felt like just because our friends were having sex that we had to also. Furthermore, he was socialized to think that he would be able to get me to say yes to him by trying to kiss on me and telling me certain things. However, I was glad that I realized I did not take the submissive role even back then. Although, it made me think just how many girls do end up taking that role on prom night when they truly don’t want to.  So, is Promworth all the trouble?

Lazyboys are the hegemonic icon!

 

My dad died last May.  He and my mom had been married for 62 years.  That is a long time to be married; much less to one person.  She is lost, not quite sure how to fill her days.  Also, not quite sure what her role is without my father around. 

My parents married in 1947, right after my father returned from the war.  He went to work, she started having children.  It was the time of Tupperware, Avon, come-as-you are breakfast fundraisers and MacCarthyism.  Sunday dinner was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and homemade yeast rolls.  Life was good.  My father was a union man, and every paycheck garnered funds into his pension.

Until recently I never heard my mother say what she wanted.  She was a responder.  She responded to the needs and wants of her husband, and her children.

Now, her husband was dead and her children long since out of the house. She was no longer a responder.  While visiting with her recently I noticed a photograph on her desk.  It was of my two nieces and my nephew.

My nephew is eight years old.  His sister and their cousin – a female – are seven.  They’re cute.  They’re too young to be otherwise.  For their holiday photo last year, the three of them had it taken together.  My nephew, all eight years of him, was seated in a miniature lazy-boy, his legs positioned in a “manly” type cross.  My two nieces were on either side of him.  One kneeling on his left side with her hand demurely placed on his arm.  The other niece was standing at his side with her hand place on his shoulder.  I shuddered!  Ohhh, Ohhh!

I turned to my mom “Mom, what do you think of this photo?”  “The photo?” she asked.  “Yea,” I replied “where John is sitting in a miniature lazy boy and Joyce and Janis are on either side.  Why is he in the chair they aren’t?”  “Because he is the boy?” she responded.  Her faced changed, the color seemed to drain away.  She looked at me in a way I had never seen her look before.

We spent the next hour talking about men, penises, women, girls; in essence the hegemonic world that she lived in, and the current one that was enveloping my nieces and nephew.  We talked about why.  Why men are privileged; just because they are male.

I watched her.  What I did not say was that the poverty rate for widows – which she was one – has persistently been three to four times higher than that for elderly married women.  And that today women earn just 76 cents for every dollar a man earns, doing the very same job. 

 The high poverty rates among elderly women results from a number of factors. Women generally earn less during their work lives due to lower wages, occupational segregation and more time out of the paid labor force for family care-giving responsibilities. They therefore usually qualify for lower Social Security benefits on their own earnings record than men. In addition, they are less likely to have participated in employer pension programs and therefore receive smaller pension incomes. Finally, women have a longer life expectancy than men and therefore a higher likelihood of outliving their assets or having their savings and non-Social Security income eroded by inflation.

 If she had only had a penis she may have gotten a higher education; a better paying job; earned more money, and be more financially secure.  But she doesn’t.

Hey, boss, I have a penis, can I have a raise?

Can I get a raise if I get a sex change operation?  What about if I just cross dress in drag?  What if I put a sock in my pants?  Really, women have made such a paltry advance over the last forty years in wages — women now make 76 cents to the dollar that men make (up from 72 cents in 1972!) for doing the very same work.  This is not progress; this is a slow assimilation into debt and death.

In these hard (pun) economic times, a penis may be the answer. I would probably get the nod from Gayle Rubin, Michel Foucault, Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook.  Think about it, if research shows that woman to man transitions are more socially accepted in the world of the hetero male, than the other way around, then the boss man would surely follow this transition with a raise. Right?

It is all about having a penis, right?  It is not about smartness, creativity, ability to work well with others, education, work ethics.  Right?  No, that would be too fair, you know, letting women earn what they earn; too much against the heteronormative.  Yea, got to keep things straight, you know what I mean?  Women, you just can’t let them get what is coming to them?  Where would men be?  Less money for beer and babes, right?

Is Everyone a Prostitute?

Prostitution is defined as money exchanged for sex. However, I can’t help but think of different ways in which prostitution goes on everyday without crossing the line. There are many other ways in which something- a product, a favor- can be exchanged for sexual favors between women and men, leading to hegemonic male power and the reinforcement of heteronormativity.  

Below, T-Pain describes buying a woman a drink with the knowledge that he will then take her home. 

 

Can we ever really Take Back the Night?

Don’t walk home alone. Don’t dress like a slut. Don’t trust anyone. Watch your drink at all times. Be careful at frat parties. Don’t be a tease, because then you’ll lead him on and then you’ll deserve it. Don’t get too drunk, because then it might just be drunk sex—not rape.  

These are the conflicting ideas that girls are taught about their sexuality. Be sexy, not sexual- a sexual object, not an agent. These ideas are perpetuated in sex education in schools and through the penetrable nature of women’s bodies. 

 After attending Take Back the Night, I was asked by someone “Was it an event for girls who were really raped, or just girls who were drunk?”

Chicks and Vamps

For my Sociology Capstone, Sociology of Culture, I’m researching Vampire Culture through consumers of vampire media.  As you can imagine, even if you have a limited or minimal amount of knowledge about vampire media, gender plays a big role in the culture.  Something that I initially set out to avoid discussing in my research has now resurfaaced in my data analysis and presents itself as something almost immediately relevent to this class.  As one might imagine, vampire culture is not the most mainstream form of fiction (although, with the recent creation of works such as the Twilight series, this is becoming increasingly less true).  However, through content analysis of different forms of vampire media, everything from Nosferatu, the first vampire movie ever made, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, numerous renditions of Dracula, film versions of several of Anne Rice novels, such as Queen of the Damned and Interview with a Vampire, up until the most recent works of Twilight, there is an interesting progression of gender roles and sexual identity. Although the vampire is simply a literary figure, I think it can be thought of as a social narrative in the context of a specific subculture.  Through my analysis, I’ve found that the most common reason people are consumers of vampire culture, no matter what form of media, or what works they were intersted in, is that they feel displaced from mainstream society.  Therefore, they look to the vampire as a symbolic character which represents the same anguish they feel over being an outcast.  Therefore, people are interested in vampires because they feel like they, themselves do not fit in, so they are able to relate to the vampire in this way.

For this discussion post, I’ll go ahead and keep things simple, though, so that we can focus more on the dialogue of gender roles aspect than the vampire aspect.  The three works that seem to stick out the most in this dialogue of gender through this subculture are: Nosferatu (Which is loosely based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula) in which an evil vampire prays on young, helpless women, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my personal favorite television show of all time) in which a teenage girl is selected to defend the human world against the forces of darkness, predominantly vampires, and finally, Twilight, the new and strange fantasy novel about a human girl who falls in love with a vampire.

One thing that’s become overwhelmingly apparent to me in this analysis is the shift in gender roles from Nosferatu (1922) and Twilight (2008)., specifically with regard to the female.  In Nosferatu, the female is portrayed as simply a helpless victim, and from the way the movie is shot, she almost seems to be portrayed as the sexual object of the vampire.  However, in Twilight (the movie at least, out of principle I refuse to read the books), the female has a different role.  She has moved from the role of victim to the role of savior, almost.  Now, in the content analysis of these sources, it still seems as if the role of the female is still the submissive one.  The female has gained some agency, but it seems that this is only through her sexual objectivity.  Because she is using her power as a sexual object to now gain some form of agency in the symbolic narrative of vampire culture, it’s intersting to parallel this to what this might mean in terms of social representations of gender roles.  It seems as if the parallel of the gender role of females over the course of the past 50-70 years has been one in which the female gender has done just as the female characters in vampire culture: they’ve developed thier sexual agency in order to move themselves from the subserviant role, into one of pseudo-power.

However, the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ran for 7 seasons from 1997 to 2003 tells a much different narrative regarding gender roles of women.  Since the main character, Buffy, is portrayed as the most powerful force… in the world, she is valued for her strength rather than her agency as a sexual object.  However, this does not mean that she’s without sexuality.  In fact, her sexuality does have a big role in the show, it is simply not what she gains her power from.

From these different forms of vampire media, we can see that gender roles are given an intersting meaning in vampire culture, which in some ways can be seen to parallel the development of gender roles and performativity that are present at that time in society, while other works can almost be seen as agents that are working toward the empowerment of women by giving them strength or powers that are both superior to and inaccessible to men, both in conjuntion with sexuality and independent of it.

By Any Other Name

In a casual conversation with one of my friends we began talking about his support for us queers. We spoke about his disliking for individuals who practice homophobia and heteronormativity, how he thought gays should be able to get married, just like everyone else. He even went as far to compliment the queer relationship I was building with my partner.  How we were doing a really good job and all that stuff. Now, my response to that was, “Thanks! Thanks for being a supporter and friend. You’re such a little queer guy!” And that when things started to get a bit messy.

He responded to me, “no, no, no. I’m not that. I’m not gay. I’m straight. Don’t try that shit with me. I support you, but not like that.”  My first reaction was, complete and utter shock. My second thought was, “look at this bitch here!” My third thought was how were we going to handle this. I mean after all we both just spent the last hours talking about our queer sensibilities and mores. How we both knew it was our mission to “make the world a better place.” And after I heard, from him, a rather notable amount of support for us queers (in all our shapes, forms, and sizes) I assumed he could be categorized as queer. After all, as Calvin Thomas points out in his article, Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality, a quote by Karl Knapper saying, “queerness is about acknowledging and celebrating difference, embracing what set you apart. A straight person can’t be gay, but a straight person can be queer” (12) .

This distinction is noteworthy because it opens the possibility of straight people, indeed, viewing themselves as queer identified.  In regards to my friend he had the opportunity to destabilize normalcy, to queer it right in the face. But he didn’t. In no way am I suggesting or advocating that one MUST identify with anything, after all to be queer is really an refusal to identify with anything.  However, what I find most interesting was not that my friend would not identify, that would have been cool. No, what was disturbing was the stern disavowal of being identified as queer and later identifying as a staunch heterosexual. I suppose what was most insulting was his comments of “don’t try any of the funny business with me.”

I’ll start with the latter of his comments.  I find the thought that I would remotely be interesting in him appalling. It hinges on notions that all us LGBTQ individuals desperately like and want someone of our same sex, at any cost—we will even take friends, which is so far from the truth. His comments represent the stereotypic thoughts of the straight world about us queers that we are highly sexual, lacking any serious consideration for anyone else. Secondly, his comments are what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her Epistemology of the Closet consider the “contamination effect.” In other words, that funny business that I might try on him might very well contaminate his clean, pristine, straight boy person. And why doesn’t he want that happening?

Therein lies the truth behind our conversation.  Contamination.  If I’m gay what does that say about him? He has to keep the hetero/homo binary strongly in place as an attempt to “protect”, for whatever reasons, his masculinity, his sexuality. To identify as queer is a bit too queer. In his renunciation of being queer and proclamation of being straight my friend upheld the binary. Essentially, what he said was that I’m really not like you people. I don’t do the things you do with your bodies and so my difference is certainly not like yours.  To uphold the hetero/homo binary is to also stabilize the gender binary.  What does that mean? As aforementioned, his masculinity is a source of stability. To be identified as queer might say something about his masculinity, in other words to identify as queer would be to lack some essential part of being male. Dominant discourse/feelings might suggest that one can’t be straight and queer. As D.A. Miller states, “straight men unabashedly need gay men, whom they forcibly recruit (as the object of their blows or, in better circles, their jokes) to enter into a polarization that exorcises the ‘woman’ in man through assigning it to a class of man who may be considered to be no ‘man’ at all” (135).

Essentially, my friend was terrorized by the thought of being mistaken for queer. As Thomas notes, “the terror of being mistaken for a queer dominates the straight mind because this terror constitutes the straight mind…heteronormativity, ‘straightness as such,’ is less a function of other-sex desire than of the disavowal or abjection of that imagined same-sex desire upon which straightness never ceases to depend” (Thomas, 27).  And just as importantly claiming and affirming to be a heterosexual is to say, “I want the privilege, power, prestige, and authority.”

My friend represents the countless other “supporters “ who for some reason (perhaps fear of contamination, fear of being mistaken, fear of being “less than a man”) decide to go by any other name. Thomas notes what the queer straight needs to examine, confront, and work towards rebuilding is less their sexuality practices than their condition of possibility. Calvin Thomas put it best on page 26 of Straight with a Twist:

“this power of horror dominates the straight mind, particularly the straight male mind, not simply because the dominant culture’s most repetitive message to men is that it is infinitely preferable for them to compete with each other viciously, to battle each other violently, even to murder each other brutally than it is for them to fuck each other passionately.”

Can we talk?