Dictionary.com defines the word disorder as either a "lack of order or regular arrangement; confusion" or "an irregularity." Applying basic logic, it's not hard to see that one would characterize any sentiment with the word "disorder" attached to it with a rather negative connotation--after all, who wants to deviate the norm? Why would anybody want to set themselves apart from the "regular arrangement" of life? Alas, those labeled as possessing a gender identity disorder have to deal with this reality every day. Of course, the question that has been on many a mind since the medical condition was added to the DSM is: are we unnecessarily stigmatizing people who don't fit into one of two traditional gender roles? This writer thinks so--in fact, even Wikipedia has something to say on the matter. "People suffering from Gender Identity Disorder often question what a "normal" gender identity or "normal" gender role is supposed to be. One argument is that gender characteristics are socially constructed and therefore naturally unrelated to biological sex." When it comes right down to it, perhaps those characterized with a GID are nothing more than gender non-conformists; instead of pathologizing them, maybe we should try celebrating their difference. After all, it's not like anyone who hasn't stuck to universal modes of thinking has ever accomplished anything...
Recently in 4: Inventing Identities II (Sep 27/29/Oct 1) Category
It topped the top one hundred charts for seven consecutive weeks in a row. Katy Perry's, smash hit "I Kissed a Girl," the song that wouldn't have passed the radio censorship in previous years, is now the song that is on everyone's lips and minds. Is this because there is a small part of ourselves that is attracted to the same sex as Freud theorized? He believed that homosexuality is integrated into everyone's' sexuality, but varying in different degrees. With his theory, people are born with the capability of becoming heterosexual and/or homosexual; sexuality is a preference, a choice that people determine throughout their lifetime. I believe that in the past, the society has repressed and rejected homosexuality. As a result, the majority of the world is heterosexual.
But recently, pop culture has been publicizing the support of homosexuality (i.e. Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, Lindsay Lohan, Ellen Degeneres). This in turn lightens the social pressure that forces people in society to choose heterosexuality over homosexuality. This pressure has been lifted enough so that more people are experimenting with their homosexual tendencies, as demonstrated in Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" and Britney Spears's kiss with Madonna on MTV music awards.
Do you think the rise of homosexuality is being caused by today's pop culture or is derived from our human biology?
This week we spent a couple days on "Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body" from Siobhan Somerville's "queering the color line: race and the invention of homosexuality in American culture". The question I found most interesting regarding this piece was whether race, or homosexuality, exist. As one might guess from the title of the full book, Somerville pursued queering the understanding of both.
Last year, I saw this Youtube video of Edward James Olmos speaking to the United Nations about race.
Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller have launched a project and a national message for LGBT students and teenagers called "It Gets Better."
People from all over the nation are posting videos on youtube with the title "It Gets Better" and they share their experiences about being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Savage and Miller are doing this in reply to the spike in teen suicide that's been occuring around the nation regarding LGBT students. They are seeking to send a clear message of hope, and whatever you are experiencing now, whether it's rejection from your family, discrimination and bullying at school, or even thoughts of suicide, it will end.
Here is Dan and Terry's video:
At the end of class on Friday, Michelle asked us in more or less words, what happens when science does not appreciate individuals who do not fit into specific categories? Well, I think there's a chain reaction.
I think that because science doesn't appreciate unique individuals or individuals who do not fit into certain categories, it makes it hard for society as a whole to appreciate them, which then, in return, makes it hard for individuals to appreciate themselves. I think that's one of the reason why we've seen a spike in suicide amongst LGBT students recently. A big part of society has a complete misunderstanding of this group of people, and because of that, they are often treated with discrimination and LGBT youth face bullying and harrassment at school. This has been an issue for a long time, but because of recent news headlines, it's sparked debate about whether or not schools are trained properly to handle these situations or if they are even obligated to.
So my question is; Where do we start? How do we begin to fix this gap we've let grow? How do we reach out to students/youth facing issues with being LGBT and also facing harrassment or discrimination?
While reading 'Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body,' by Siobahn Somerville, this week I was reminded of a couple of episodes from the Tyra Banks show (I know this show can be ridiculously stupid, but on occasion she comes up with some really good ones!). Somerville's article brought up questions of eugenics- race hygiene (the advocating of selective reproduction to keep the race pure) and she discussed how black people were believed to be "biologically inferior." I wanted to show you guys a clip from the Tyra Show about a family of white supremacists. Drew and Amy, the father and mother of three young children, are passing on their extremely racist beliefs to their children. Take a look!
Homosexuality was also discussed in Somerville's article. People thought of homosexuality as being some sort of disease or sickness. Although I would like to say this is a long forgotten belief of the past, unfortunately many people in the world today still see gay people and assume something is wrong with them or they are ill in some way. This next clip shows how far one priest at a church is willing to go to rid a sixteen year old of his "unclean homosexual spirit" by performing an exorcism on him.
I wanted to show these clips to the class to remind everyone how prominent these beliefs continue to be in our society. While we may read about eugenics as being part of the Nazi era and a thing of the past, obviously there are people all around us who live their lives around the idea of fighting to continue keeping their family line "pure." And it's the same with homosexuality. I would love to say that it is an old-fashioned view to look down on homosexuals as being "unclean" people, but as you can see, there are people all over the world who see it as a demonic threat that must be expelled from their bodies. I'm wondering if any of you have ever crossed paths with someone with extreme racist beliefs like this, or anyone who was against gays, and tried to discuss your point of view with them. How did you explain your opinions to them? How did you respond to theirs? Also, what methods can we use to educate people today?
In class this week we have discussed how we, as Americans, look at homosexuality. In the past homosexuality has been compared to a disease, an inevitability, and almost always negative. We have created homosexuality as a label the separates those that are outside of the cultural norm that we openly except. I feel that Freud's idea that everyone has gay tendencies added to homophobia by making straight men and women question their own sexuality for the first time. Our perception of homosexuals has shaped what we see on television and through out our culture. The universal view of homosexuality is changing. European media outlets have begun to fund commercials that support gay relationships and not just among adults but also among teens and adolescence. Sweden has been one of the countries behind the major push to put homosexuality on television and out in the open. A public support commercial was released through out Europe in support of homosexuality among teenagers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxqGOnvU6yI&NR=1. While watching this advertisement I found myself relying on stereotypes. Without knowing what the commercial is about it's easy to assume that the young boy is looking longingly at the girl. At the end when he extends his hand to the other boy no one looks alarmed or embarrassed. The link I included above is the American version of this commercial and while it has been airing in Europe for months we have yet to see it in the United States. How will this type of coverage effect American's perspective on same sex relationships?
This week's readings were quite interesting to me, especially the story of Blanche and Mary (a newspaper article inserted into the Alice Mitchell reading). The whole story about how their love at a boarding school ultimately was attacked and torn apart by their school faculty reminded me of a series of books I'd once read: the Gemma Doyle trilogy. It's a trilogy containing A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing. The story takes place in the late 1890's in London, following the adventures of Gemma Doyle at her all-girl boarding school by day while trying to understand the magical world of the Realms by night.
Gemma happens to befriend two girls in her first year there: Felicity Worthington. She is portrayed as an aggressive but beautiful girl with rebellious ideas and lavish good looks thanks to her family's high social and financial standing. She's one of the most popular girls within the boarding school, along with a few of her friends. As such, she often brags about how many male sexual partners she will have in the future to her peers just to prove her worth. However, it is revealed that she has bullied others and proven herself as strong and strong-willed as a man in order to hide the fact that she is a "Sapphist" to everyone else around her. At graduation, she tells Gemma that she will go to Paris in hopes that she will find a new female love.
Felicity's ideas are seen as highly radical, scandalous, and strongly feminine. Although the book takes place in an era where homosexuality was considered lethal and appalling, the idea of a high class daughter becoming a lesbian would still be considered as such today, albeit with a little more understanding and comprehension. But it also raises the question of discrimination by class as well as by race, because the boundaries between the lower classes and higher classes are more defined than the boundaries between races today as well. Why is it so? Being gay or lesbian these days is still looked down upon, but more so if your social status is high, no matter what sex you are. How do you feel about the idea of financial standing creating a barrier between your sexuality and your social standing?
"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."James Baldwin
Throughout the course of history, people have been treated differently for being different than the "normal" based on their race, gender, and sexuality. Today, there are laws that are enforced to protect people against such discrimination in public places. But when it comes to the society it all has to do with morality. The society determines what is "normal" or acceptable, and anyone who does not abide by it is "abnormal," is a "disgrace" to the community, and needs help. Like racism in the past, homosexuality is becoming an alarming subject worldwide. Like Baldwin's quote above, diagnosing sexuality as pathological abnormality points out the ignorance in society. Instead of accepting people as they are, the community discriminates against homosexual individuals. Teaching young children the role of gender brings them up to believe homosexuality is unacceptable; thus they grow up to be bullies in school at a young age. Teens and pre-teens have hard time finding themselves and fitting in without the addition of bulling. And when bullied, taking their lives is becoming their only alternative. But how long can this go on for? Will it really get better? Can the law really protect the homosexual community? Will homosexuality be accepted as natural, like race, and eventually learn to live with it peacefully?
I have attached two videos below. The first video titled The Storm is Gathering is an advertisement by the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-homosexual organization advocating heterosexual marriage.
This video is of actor Neil Patrick Harris' from MTV giving advice to the gay youth on the current teen suicide issue.
When we look at social constructions and identity politics in our society, we are faced with dualisms, contradictions, idiosyncrasies, ignorance, and, among other things, fear. As our class examines historically sexist, racist, and ablest "scientific" understandings of "essential" differences between people, we see these ignorances perpetuated to the betterment of heterosexual bourgeois men. Western science, according to Somerville in "Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body", has historically been used to catalog, organize, and pathologize human identities and physical characteristics in discreet, hierarchical terms.
This video clip below is from the movie 28 Days Later (2002). Be warned, it is highly graphic and disturbing. You are required to enter your age in order to watch it to prove you are over the age of 18. While watching, keep in mind the historical legislatively practiced "one drop rule", where by one would be socially classified and assigned as black with any amount or "drop" of African ancestry.
It is not my intent to compare the racial/political identity of black or "blackness" to the fictitious state of being a zombie, but rather to compare and exemplify the notion of a single drop of blood affecting one's perception by society and the role society constructions for him or her are used. The single drop of blood was sufficient to automatically change his physiology and, therefore, deemed him a lower status in (or offensive to) society. This is, metaphorically, the same sort of situation that can/does happen in our culture, where by your perceived identity and "nature" can be pinpointed on your DNA (or blood). When science itself is taken for granted as unmotivated, essential, and as ultimate "truth", questioning it becomes problematic.
Being that it is close to Halloween, can you think of any other horror movies that we could use to look at race politics in our culture? Do we see these movies exploring, perpetuating, or normalizing (all? Something completely different?) our fear of differences?
In every day society we automatically place judgments on people who act or look a certain way. For example, if we see someone with darker clothes on along with darker hair we automatically assume they're "emo" and we make judgments about what they're personality is like. If we see a jock walking around we might assume that he's in easy classes and only in college for the aspect of playing a sport. The same thing is true about making judgments about someone who may appear homosexual. We picture lesbians as being someone with short hair and maybe wearing a flannel shirt. We would never expect someone say who personifies the meaning of "femininity" to be homosexual. A prime example of this comes from the movie Miss Congeniality when the New York Contestant suddenly gives a shout out to all the lesbians saying that if she could make it so could they. In the picture below it shows how New York is an extremely feminine appearing woman and therefore no one would expect that she is a homosexual. 
This shocks the entire crowd as well as the crew, so much to the point that one of the workers asks "are we allowed to say lesbians on T.V.". No one expects this beautiful woman to be homosexual because she does not fit the mold that we create of the "masculine partner", which is the only person we ever expect. Thus, this ties back to the ideas that one partner will always have to personify "the man" in a relationship, and that partner is the only one ever bothered or discriminated against, even though the "feminine" partner is just as equally involved in the relationship. Therefore, the fact that no one would ever suspect someone in a pageant because they personify femininity is a great example of how we make out homosexuals to look and act a certain way.
