I think it's this reading that serve as the introductory to start queering. I revisit the article again and realized that I have understand more from what I have learned from the class and most importantly from my fellow course mate.
When I read through my first entry about this reading engagement I realized that all I talked about is just Education and how it facilitate the changing of the heteronormative society. But instead this article very much touch on the issue of cyber space, on how it can used to facilitate in the change.
I agree with what she is saying on page 3 that we should not see the "virtual" and the "real" as two separate entities. This just reminds me of what I have wrote on my (S)mashed Bibliography and relate to it. I mean the virtual would not exist with the existence of the real as it is created by the real for the purpose of what the real wanted it to be, may it be of pleasure, entertainment, politics, personal, economics... It is an extended space that is created for ideas, for the mind to live. Besides, some country where discourse of certain issues are silenced, the virtual world provided a space for the discourse but since their "real" are not allow to exist in the "real" space they have to move to another real space in order for the virtual space to exist.
While reading at page 5, when she is talking about how gay people are portrayed in the media and creating the "acceptance" of the heterosexual society, the convey of the idea have to be translate heteronormatively so that it can be understand. For example at page 4, where she was mentioning about a scene in American Wedding, whereby Bear, a gay club goer were assured his masculinity through his "management of girls" and this image sort of brought the idea of letting the straight knows that he is still somehow similar to them. A connection to the assumed normative world must be made in order for the image to be acceptable. Back to page 5, where she mentioned about how television programmes have normalized and fictionalized high-class gay and lesbian culture, this seems to be pretty much talked about in our class. That a lot of gay or lesbian culture are being shown through people with certain privilege like whiteness, financially and etc... This makes me think that it excluded a lot of things from the circle, like the bears, people of colour or people of other sexual practices, and due to this phenomenon anything that is queer of the "norm-queer" circle are usually considered as fetishes.
While on page 7, at the ending of the page where she mentioned about identity negotiation when one is in the virtual world, and the work of negotiation might not work out well for people who does not confirm with the understanding of another of how an identity should be perceived. I would like to think that one usually "enter" the virtual world as a non-identity body and they get to define and redefine them as time goes by. That the virtual world provide the freedom of defining identity, one can even have different identity at the same time. The pro of this is that it helps in self identification but the cons is when it is abused by people it can do harm to another verbally and psychologically. Like those verbal assault that have been reported and the teen suicide.
In page 10, she also mentioned that the protection of "innocent" in children is dangerous. Or maybe I should say that the maintenance of innocence, that is it is censorship, that is the total forbid of discussion of sexuality is harmful. And that the adult, the protector of innocence should try to let the innocent understand about it, as they might one day grow out from their innocence.
Well these are the new thoughts or perceptions that I have got from reading the article again at the end of this semester with all of what I have learned this semester.
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