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dailyanarchistposts · 2 months ago

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From anti-homophobia to anti-heteronormativity

In the 1990s North American queer activism and queer theory shifted from an anti- homophobic position that resisted the heterosexual imperative, with an emphasis on AIDS activism, growing gay villages, and same-sex marriage (particularly in Canada), toward more complex challenges to the heteronormativity of institutions, laws and cultural practices. The term homophobia has fallen out of use by activists, as it contains within it the suggestion that there are legitimate psychological grounds for individuals to fear or have a phobia of homosexuality. Instead we use ‘heterosexism’ which points to the systemic nature of oppression against queers through cultural, political and economic structures favouring heterosexual- ity and heterosexuals. Heterosexism is the form of oppression resulting from the ideology of heteronormativity. In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, Nikki Sullivan argues that heteronormativity does not exist as a discrete and easily identifiable body of thought, of rules and regulations, but rather, informs – albeit ambiguously, in complex ways, and to varying degrees – all kinds of practices, institutions, conceptual systems, and social structures. (2003: 132)

Similarly, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner suggest that ‘Heteronormativity is more than ideology, or prejudice, or phobia against gays and lesbians; it is pro- duced in almost every aspect of the forms and arrangements of social life’ reprodu- cing itself systemically in ‘nationality, the state, and the law; commerce; medicine; and education; as well as in the conventions and affects of narrativity, romance, and other protected spaces of culture’ (2000: 318–19). This affects life practices such as parenting, joint bank accounts, hospital or prison visiting rights, travelling, immigrating, movie watching and inheritance. Heteronormativity frames hetero- sexuality as a universal norm making it publicly invisible, whereas homosexuality is meant to be private and thus becomes visible in public (Duncan, 1996: 137). Furthermore, heteronormativity requires the stabilization of bodies into two cis- gendered categories (male, female), whereas queer bodies may be transgender, transsexual, intersex or otherwise challenge this stabilization.

Two anti-heteronormative strategies that engage publics have been used by activists. Groups such as ACT-UP and Queer Nation challenged cultural norms by making interventions in heteronormative spaces such as shopping malls and bars. Activists ‘reterritorialize various public spaces through an assortment of strat- egies like the policing of neighbourhoods by Pink Panthers dressed in ‘Bash Back’ T-shirts or Queer Nights Out and Kiss-Ins where groups of gay couples invade straight bars or other public spaces and scandalously make out’ (Hennessy, 1994– 95: 51). Interventions announce the presence of queers, interrupting the heteronor- mative public by challenging the assumption that queer sexuality belongs in private. As Hennessy argues, ‘The queer critique of heteronormativity is intensely and aggressively concerned with issues of [queer] visibility’ (1994–95: 36) in hetero- normative publics. The second strategy is the creation of queer counterpublics engaged in spaces like gay bars and villages that facilitate queer activism, dis- courses, cruising, and socializing. Berlant and Warner have found that sex-oriented queer commercial spaces such as S/M bars, cafes, porn shops and bookstores are important sites for queer counterpublics: ‘there are very few places in the world that have assembled much of a queer population without a base in sex commerce’ (2000: 327). In these spaces, the public is predominantly queer, as the spaces create ‘nonheteronormative worlds’ (2000: 329).

Exhibit A: ‘A garden-variety leather bar’ that ‘hosts a sex performance event’

‘A boy, twentyish, very skateboard, comes on the low stage at one end of the bar, wearing lycra shorts and a dog collar. He sits loosely in a restraining chair. His partner comes out and tilts the bottom’s head up to the ceiling, stretching out his throat. Behind them is an array of foods. The top begins pouring milk down the boy’s throat, then food, then more milk. It spills over, down his chest and onto the floor. A dynamic is established between them in which they carefully keep at the threshold of gagging. The bottom struggles to keep taking in more than he really can. The top is careful to give him just enough to stretch his capacities. From time to time a baby bottle is offered as a respite, but soon the rhythm intensifies. The boy’s stomach is beginning to rise and pulse, almost convulsively... the top inserts two, then three fingers in the bottom’s throat, insistently offering his own stomach for the repeated climaxes. (Berlant and Warner, 2000: 328–9)

This example of erotic vomiting engages non-heteronormative erotic play thereby creating a queer counterpublic of the audience. ‘Counterpublics are, by definition, formed by their conflict with the norms and contexts of their cultural environment’ (Warner, 2002: 63). A queer counterpublic then engages queer sexualities and pro- duces opportunities for the circulation of discourses about them that are in ‘conflict with’ or resistant to heteronormativity.

Important to this resistance is the liberation of the body from some of its private and public constraints. Theories of privates and publics tend to assign sexualities (homo/hetero), genders (male/female)[1] and races (white/non-white) to private or public domains in ways that re-enact binaries and stereotypes. Specific sexual acts, behaviours, objects, bodies, or spaces, however, are not inherently only either public or private. Warner suggests that the terms public and private ‘seem to be preconceptual, almost instinctual, rooted in the orientations of the body and common speech’ (2002: 23), whereas it seems that notions of appropriate public and private behaviour are highly socially constructed. The example he gives is not about publics but ‘privates’: ‘A child’s earliest education in shame, deportment, and cleaning is an initiation into the prevailing meaning of public and private, as when he or she locates his or her ‘‘privates’’’ (2002: 23). However, there is nothing intrinsically ‘private’ about one’s genitals, rather this is something children learn when they are told to cover up. Spaces where people may experience the pleasure of privates in public include nudity clubs, clothing-optional beaches, naked sports teams, saunas, naked yoga classes, and sex parties. In these spaces the body does not ‘naturally’ orient itself toward the privacy of sexuality or sex organs. Human sexual parts are not hidden away like our internal organs are (livers, kidneys, spleens), rather they are on the surface of the body. They are the surfaces of our bodies: almost every part of the body’s surface is potentially sexual in some way. Thus what Warner calls the ‘orientations of the body’ are not toward privacy as he claims, but rather toward a proliferation of public sensualities and sexualities. Bodies liberated through unlearning can be both private and public at once, or neither, as we choose. The liberation of bodies calls into question not just notions of privates and publics but the entire set of social norms that this binary frames. Part of this includes the liminal spaces of bodies, including clothing and affect, as specific instances in which the public/private distinction is thrown into crisis. Warner suggests that ‘Clothing is a language of publicity, folding the body in what is felt as the body’s own privacy’ (2002: 23). Humans emphasize the privacy of our ‘privates’ by covering them up. Similarly, feelings are meant to be experienced and expressed in private. ‘Some bodily sensations – of pleasure and pain, shame and display, appetite and purgation – come to be felt, in the same way, as privacy’ (2002: 23). Sensations emanating from the body and gazes fixed upon the body are thwarted in their attempts to cross the threshold from private to public by our socialized conceptions of propriety: we must cry, vomit, fall in love or have sex behind closed doors. However, if the body’s own privacy is intrinsic to it, why do we need clothes to fold the body into privacy? Is it not more liberating for sensa- tions and emotions to be shared rather than to be entirely private? Warner’s claim for what is naturally public or private with respect to the body risks the reinscrip- tion of norms emanating from heteronormativity.

Queer citizenship has provided another framework for rethinking heteronorma- tivity. Robert Corber and Stephen Valocchi argue that ‘sexual and gender norms... serve as prerequisites for membership in the nation’ (2003: 15). The nation, through the legal system and its heteronormative capitalist discourses, establishes rules for entry, belonging and success, from which queers are systematically excluded.[2] Belonging in a queer nation can be achieved by transgressions of sexual and gender norms. ‘Even as the nation-state establishes and enforces these norms of belonging, spaces open up in which individuals can exercise sexual agency, partly in resistance to these dominant understandings of sexual citizenship’ (Corber and Valocchi, 2003: 15). Warner situates agency for the sexual citizen within the queer counterpublic. He argues:

A public, or counterpublic, can do more than represent the interests of gendered or sexualized persons in a public sphere. It can mediate the most private and intimate meanings of gender and sexuality ... It can therefore make possible new forms of gendered or sexual citizenship. (2002: 57)

Non-oppressive queer social relations can be developed through counterpublics creating spaces for queer sexual citizenship yielding the agency to participate in a ‘process of world making’ (Warner, 2002: 57).

However with increasingly militarized borders, citizenship is a fraught category. A system of sexual citizens and non-citizens, with inferior rights accorded to the latter, entails a hierarchization of sexualities whereby some would have ‘sexual citizenship’ and others would not. Who would adjudicate such citizenship?

How would national citizenship intersect with sexual citizenship? Are non-citizens of the nation-state able to access sexual citizenship? Bobby Noble has shown that in Toronto same-sex bath-houses, presumably sites of ‘queer citizenship’, the current entrance policy is ‘show your dick at the door’, a trans-phobic white-centric polic- ing of bodies (Noble, 2009). The concept of sexual citizen holds within it a policed border that refuses some people (i.e. non-white, trans or intersex, immigrant, people who do not conform to western beauty standards, people in poverty, people with disabilities and so on) admission into queer counterpublics. Queer activists thus challenge theorists to consider the nation, capitalism and other inter- sectional forms of oppression in their challenges to heteronormativity.

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vvh0adie · 11 months ago

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an aspect of heteronormativity i don’t get is telling your friends they can’t date your ex

preface: no. don’t get with a person that was abusive towards anybody, friend or not. you’re not an exception to the rule because it will always creep up

that being said, if people don’t end on bad terms, why are you still holding ownership over that person -and quite frankly your friends?

now i can understand if the relationship was just fresh and your homie immediately jumping in dms and i honestly find it crazy that an ex would entertain it because it’s like you just got out of a relationship. give yourself a break (someone people have a fear of being alone and think they constantly need to be in a relaahionship)

but after some time you need to let people move on and you need to as well. whatever those people do does not concern you

you can’t keep memories tied up with a person. have them but don’t think they’re only unique to you. your ex was apart of the relationship to and they moving on

seeing someone you thought you’d end up with become intimate with your friend can be tough. but if things didn’t end tragically and this person is able to move on, is that not a sign that you may need to sit with why you can’t?

the more you dwell on them, having tunnel vision, the greater you are at missing out on your person

granted if you continue to be around, you shouldn’t be subject to jabs by the new couple and other friends every waking second about the relationship not working out. and honestly if your friend group is doing that, honey it’s time to cut them off

and also getting upset that they may be doing things for your friends that they never did for you can be bittersweet. i wouldn’t call that emotional abuse but rather a lack of commitment/passion which obviously made the relationship end. maybe not in the sweetest of terms but no break up is gonna feel good. nobody was at fault, you just weren’t compatible and that doesn’t make neither one of you bad people

i’ve never seen this amongst queer people -at least nonheteronormative ones and i’m sure it happens in ones that are, it’s just very rare. i actually have a tendency to want to date my friends. i want to get to know you then develop further

(hit dog will holler. if it don’t apply, let it fly for this next part)

cuz from my viewpoint, why would i be building that platonic relationship within our dating phase? that sounds like im just bumbling around with a stranger while learning everything about them as im kissing and holding their hand and possibly having sex with them

that’s scary to me. next thing i know, im married to a person and im learning the basics of who they are during our marriage. why didn’t i know you had all these complications before we became partners?

and of course you’re never really going to know how someone acts in a romantic relationship until you get with them, but you should at least know their basic disposition towards humanity. if they not a good friend -person overall- what makes you think they’ll be an even better partner?

i would def let my ex date my friend. cuz honestly im not “letting” them do anything. i can’t control them and i shouldn’t want to. is that really a friend?

and no i’m not exempt from having those bittersweet feeling but i do have the autonomy to dictate how i act around them. the same for them

if you can’t do that and you know you’re going to be combative and lingering on “what could have been” then maybe it’s time to leave them people behind

it’s okay for friendships to end

but i would hate to lose out over something like that. to sever those friendships. like you miss out on a wedding. baby announcements. friend trips. academic accomplishments

like yeah they can be built elsewhere but depending on how long you’ve known your friends thats gotta be hard

if your ex and friend aren’t causing you any harm (instigating emotional, mental or physically harm) then let them be happy with each other

your emotions are valid, but you must be accountable for your emotions/actions and know when you need to dip for your own happiness and theirs. (even if you can’t bring yourself to be happy for them, just do it for yourself)

cuz if we being honest some people sabotage or harm themselves by engaging with things that they know they can’t take. and they should seek therapy

note: i feel this way about divorced people too.

#preacha plym #i just think that life is too short #and some people call this a issue of morality #HOW?#if i’m not actively working to hurt you #then what’s the problem?#at that point you need to take accountability for your own emotions

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statecryptids · 1 year ago

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For Pride Month, I'm going to be reviewing books with Queer themes.

QUEER DUCKS (AND OTHER ANIMLS) by Eliot Schrefer with illustrations by Jules Zuckerberg

Many people have tried to justify their homophobia by claiming that queer identities and relationships are “not natural” and don’t occur in other living creatures (witness the tired classic “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”). However, Queer Ducks shows that same-sex relationships are just as common in the animal kingdom as they are among humans.

The book is as much a memoir about growing up closeted as it is a book about animal sexuality. Schrefer himself knew he was gay at a young age but could not be open about his sexuality at the time. Even when he came out, he initially thought of queer behavior in animals as a dead end, but after looking through scientific articles he discovered numerous examples of same-sex behavior throughout the animal kingdom from primates, deer, insects and more.

Queer Ducks is careful to distinguish between homosexuality and heterosexuality in humans and same-sex behavior in animals. The former two terms specifically refer to human orientations and identities, while the latter is an observation of animal behavior; researchers can’t directly know what goes on in an animal’s head, after all. The book does describe many animals as being “bisexual”- in this case referring to observed behavior where animals mate with and form close bonds with members of the same sex while still engaging in procreation with the opposite sex.

Male bottlenose dolphins, for example, regularly form strong, affectionate same-sex partnerships, though both will mate with female dolphins. A similar dynamic occurs with Japanese macaques, where females form strong same-sex bonds and will otherwise ignore males except for reproduction.

While Schrefer acknowledges it is hard to say if animals are transgender since humans cannot directly ask them about their mental state, Queer Ducks does talk about physically intersex animals such as “velvet-horn” deer, which have male genitalia but bodies that look more physically female. It should be noted that intersex animals are not the same biologically as hermaphrodites. Intersex animals can have a mosaic of both male and female secondary sexual traits, but they occur in groups where the majority of individuals have only one type of sex organ, such as mammals or birds. Hermaphrodites, on the other hand, are animals where each individual usually has both male and female gametes, such as slugs. Animals that change physical sex during their life- such as parrot fish- are also called hermaphrodites.

Schrefer is careful to explain that Queer Ducks is not arguing that human sexuality should be directly compared to animal sexuality. He is well aware of the long history of bigoted rhetoric equating homosexuality with bestiality. Instead, he clarifies:

“We can no longer argue that humans are alone in their queerness, that nonheteronormative human sexualities and gender identities are unnatural because they don’t exist in the rest of the animal kingdom… Queerness is a well-established and fundamental part of nature. If queerness is ‘wrong,’ then you’d better be willing to say that the entire animal kingdom is wrong.”

Queer Ducks is humorous and snarky but also sensitive and compassionate; the author makes a segue to talk about the usage of the word “queer”, acknowledging that while it has been reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community, there are still some people who are uncomfortable with that term, and their discomfort is legitimate. The book is also very frank about sex, but never vulgar. There are jokes about sex, but no “dick jokes��.

You can get a copy of Queer Ducks from HarperCollins

Or through Bookshop or Amazon.

#pride month #pride month 2023 #queer books #book review

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unfinishedbusincss · 1 year ago

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your character (anne and any of the ocs!)

send a number for me to talk about one of the following topics!

Yeah, you only THOUGHT you wanted this. Buckle up, buttercup!

The process of writing for Anne actually started before last year. I took a course on piracy back in grad school and my final paper was an argument for reading nonheteronormativity into piracy—something you wouldn’t think is so controversial but I guess homophobia’s a stronger drug than I gave it credit for. Anyway! Of the many points that paper made, it also made a real case study out of Anne Bonny and M. Read—themselves and their relationship with one another. My prof thought it had legs and pushed me to consider rewriting and refining it but honestly with the way actual history scholars are, I doubt my gay little voice pointing out all these gay little things that might make historical figures gay little people will have an impact. It’s literally to the point where one of the sources I use all the goddamned time actually has a note on both Bonny’s and Read’s pages refusing to address the possibility of a romantic entanglement between them. (Like you could have just said nothing, but you saying you’re going to say nothing is sus af.)

Anyways.

Last year I put her on a blog and ended up really loving her, but really struggling to find people who wanted to write with her. At the time, most of my followers were interested in muses I wasn’t as comfortable with, and getting them to interact with a woman character was like pulling teeth. I eventually gave up, grew despondent, got busy, and abandoned the blog. I’ve thought about going back to give up the URL, but otherwise I don’t think I’d go back.

Anne turned into this really special muse that I’m actually very protective of. Not, like. In the sense that I don’t want her to get hurt or look stupid—she should do both, regularly, for my own amusement—but in the sense of…being really fucking proud of the way I write her. She isn’t Black Sails’ Anne Bonny, despite her face claim; she isn’t ever going to be Our Flag Means Death’s, despite that being the group I get to write her most with; she’s just Ren’s Anne Bonny. Born from history and headcanon and exploration and projection. I’m probably pretty full of myself for this, but I’ll out myself: I think I’m the best goddamned Anne Bonny writer out there, and no other Anne is half the Anne I am.

And I say this having recently asked a friend of mine who also writes her to let me write with her sometime. Because I also have a big dumb lesbian crush on her.

I’m lucky to have fallen into the D-RPG I did with her; I still feel like no one actually wants to write with her here except to indulge their weird friend Ren, and I don’t love that feeling. (I s2g Orion, Ken, don’t start!) Even there I feel weird asking for people to tolerate her—especially since they recently had a different Anne who was Very Important to them—and yes, Orion, second direct call-out cause I’m not being down on myself when I say “tolerate,” I mean that I know she’s abrasive and doesn’t make good first, second, or third impressions outside of certain psychopaths and so hers is a matter of toleration—but I’m lucky there. People are nice and they agree to tolerate her. They talk to me and I’m really getting to develop who she is under circumstances that have just…ended up more relaxed despite being frought with danger. Maybe because she didn’t join, and so has (almost*) no one there she wants to impress.

*She did recently meet Izzy and he complimented her piracy so yes she is trying extra hard to impress one of her idols.

And that’s all the steam I’ve got for that one, folx!

#lovepurposed #✗ anne bonny #✗ out of character #quran

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angstics · 2 years ago

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“lgbt movie” is a shortcut to finding nonheteronormative art that sometimes backfires

#which is to say that there is a bunch of non lgbt movies that are non heteronormative #nobody’s perfect!#movies

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hoursofreading · 4 months ago

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I am so glad you asked this question and detangling care from the patriarchy can absolutely feel like a tight-rope act. This is largely in part because care and the patriarchy are still very much tangled up in our culture. So yes, there is a risk to saying, “hey, wait a minute, care is great,” even when these words are said by me, a pro-choice feminist who loves her job and autonomy and premarital sex and that some of her friends are choosing not to have kids and feeling supported for this decision, while other friends, queer friends, are building these nontraditional, nonheteronormative family units that bring them so much stability, meaning and joy. I think there is a risk to letting the patriarchy/ those whose aim it is to perpetuate the patriarchy, own the good side of care. To me, this must also be feminist project because care isn’t just something that held women back, historically speaking. Care is also what shaped us for the better, and made us more empathetic, relational and willing to accept that humans are needy, vulnerable, fragile and dependent beings. Men could have used more of this type of cultivation. I found some of my courage in embracing care in lesser known feminisms, mostly Black feminisms, in which a culture of raising up care and caregivers was much more common than it was in more career-focused White feminism. We forget that while some women fought for the right to work, other, poorer women who, who have long been working, fought for the right to care. Also, I fell absolutely in love with the work of philosophers known as care ethicists who were like: “Wait a minute, how did philosophy ignore the reality of human dependency for so long?” They took care super seriously, valued it very highly, and wrote about it with the same intensity they would any other concept. Did men treat them like their work was smaller for it? Yep. But they weren’t afraid and I carry a little bit of this chutzpah with me. Sometimes I think about all this through the lens of a Virgin Mary portrait, of which we have all seen hundreds if not thousands. In the patriarchal fetishized version of valuing care, she stays there, locked up in a glossy painting, harmonious and unconflicted and silent. In my version of valuing care, we start with asking her if we can carry the baby for a bit -- her arm must be very tired! Then we ask her what it has been like for her. What has she learned? What can she teach us? We let her speak.

Elissa Strauss

#quote

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nikolettphilippovitssns23 · 11 months ago

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8 -

Video games influence their audiences. Their portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters can shape the perspective of society about gender and sexuality. These characters add depth and unique perspectives to game narratives, making stories richer and more engaging. Positive representation can also boost the mental health and self-esteem of LGBTQ+ players by providing a sense of community and belonging. As the gaming audience becomes more diverse, there's a growing demand for characters and stories that reflect this diversity. I believe, understanding and including LGBTQ+ characters can help game developers connect with a broader audience. Furthermore, games with thoughtful representation can educate players, increasing awareness and acceptance.

In the journal article of Martin Látal, I was introduced to the topic of queer representation within video games. The author highlights that this representation in games is often only found in extra materials, not in the main game. This limited inclusion shows issues with internal censorship and the balance between artistic freedom and market demands. (Látal, 2022)

Bonnie Runberg wrote an article about Undertail highlighting the “straight-washing” factor in the gaming community. "Undertale" is packed with LGBTQ content and broader queer themes, but these aspects often get overlooked in the game's popular reception. It features nonheteronormative characters, queer romance storylines, and gameplay mechanics that reflect LGBTQ experiences and ideas from queer theory. For example, the game's main character is nonbinary, and there are plenty of other queer characters and interactions like flirting with enemies. Even outside the game, fans on platforms like Tumblr celebrate these queer elements through fan lore, fan fiction, and art. Despite all this, mainstream discussions about the game tend to ignore its LGBTQ themes, effectively downplaying its queer identity (straight-washing). (Ruberg, 2018)

I would like to look into the representation of the Overwatch hero, Soldier: 76 to see how LGBTQ+ is present in this popular game.

Soldier: 76 is a central figure in Overwatch known for his leadership and tactical skills. In Blizzard's storytelling expansion, particularly in the 2019 short story "Bastet," Soldier: 76 was revealed to be gay. This added depth to his character and marked an important step for LGBTQ+ representation in video games. The reveal about his sexuality is part of his backstory, where it's shown he had a past romantic relationship with a man named Vincent. I think its challenges stereotypes by presenting Soldier: 76 as a respected soldier, demonstrating that sexual orientation doesn't affect one's abilities or personality. Beyond entertainment, Soldier: 76 's portrayal educates players about different sexual orientations, fostering empathy and understanding. It raises important conversations about LGBTQ+ representation in media and its role in creating inclusive gaming spaces. Through characters like Soldier: 76, Overwatch promotes social progress and aims for a more inclusive future in gaming. On the other hand, the character's sexuality wasn’t revealed when the game was published. It happened 3 years after the release of the original game in the form of a story. It wasn't represented directly in the game. I think its supporting the statement of Martin Látal about the limited representation of queer communities.

I think in our century diversity, empathy, and self-representation are in a central position yet game developers tend to not communicate well their intentions with the representations of queer characters, leaving room for second-guessing their identity. As I mentioned before, games have an influential effect on the audience, therefore I believe games should be more direct about the accurate and direct portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters.

Blizzard Entertainment (n.d.). Overwatch 2. [online] overwatch.blizzard.com. Available at: https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes/soldier-76/.

Látal, M. (2022). LGBTQ+ Representation in Video Games through the Eyes of the Queer Community. Iluminace, 34(3), pp.139–163. doi:https://doi.org/10.58193/ilu.1742.

Media, O. (2019). Bastet. [online] Overwatch. Available at: https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/media/stories/bastet/.

Overwatch. (2016). [Video Game] Blizzard Entertainment.

Ruberg, B. (2018). Straight-washing ‘Undertale’: Video games and the limits of LGBTQ representation. Transformative Works and Cultures, 28. doi:https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2018.1516.

Undertale. (2015). [Video Game] Undertale.

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moontheoretist · 5 years ago

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Some random thoughts about ending of BNHA chapter 264.

The last few panels of newest BNHA chapter shows very well how much detached from reality heroes are... and as much as I love Hawks, he is one of those heroes as well. He cannot possibly understand the pain and sadness of being rejected by the society, the struggle to get by every day in a place which hates your existence so much it wants to erase who you truly are... that’s why when he says to Twice “I will help you start over” it is so insensitive and insulting to Twice, as Hawks just proposed him to erase himself, to be someone who society wants him to become and forget about everything he suffered through. That’s also why it activated Sad Man’s Parade, as Twice due to his golden heart understands the most how much wronged they had been by the society and how much they deserve to get their happiness in the way which doesn’t try to make them part of the system which wronged them, which doesn’t make them remake themselves for everybody else’s good. It really hits very close to home for people like me, who hear we are broken when we do not act/feel as society wants, people who aren’t like the majority, but are expected to be, blend in and forget who we truly are for the sake of not burdening others with our weirdness.

#bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha manga #bnha manga spoilers #neurodiversity #nonheteronormativity #literally people like me is about LGBTQ+ community #but also about all people who aren't able-bodied or neurotypical as well #even though I myself am able bodied #as I feel this whole message is about #everybody who doesn't fit into society for whatever reason

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hummussexual · 6 years ago

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Netflix Presents: The Valentine's Day Special

It isn't love if it doesn't turn your life upside down. Director: Reema Sengupta Music: (written & performed by) Dot. Cast: Jason Arland & Kush Patel Cinematographer: Harshvir Oberai Production Designer: Madhur Madhavan & Swapnil Bhalerao Styling: Indrakshi Pattanaik Hair & Make-up: Zahabia Lacewalla 1st AD: Farooq Dehlvi Editor: Rohan Kapoor Colorist: Vinneesh Vijayan

@khofnak @korakaghaz @thottistani

#Queer #Nonheteronormativity #Desi #India #Netflix #lgbt

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enbyboiwonder · 4 years ago

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#dq #dqb2 #dqb2 den #mine #ebw plays dq #i love the queerness/nonheteronormativity in this game #yeah it's always played in a humorous way (just like p much everything else) but it doesn't feel like a joke at our expense?#and none of the characters are treated any differently for not conforming?#it's great

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highly-important · 3 years ago

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Still thinking about Heartstopper: feeling very traumatized and healed.

There is this type of narrative that José Esteban Muñoz calls “queer futurity”- the imaginative construction of an upcoming era that is not dominated by homophobia, and by extension, the hardships that arise from it. And I think some queer media engages with this idea in really exceptional ways: the YA novel Boy Meets Boy, and the TV show Schitt’s Creek are two really notable examples. (There are also stories like Aristotle and Dante and Our Flag Means Death that construct a past that is not dominated by homophobia.)

These stories offer a window to what might occur in the lives of LGBTQ people if they weren't spending their lives dealing with the Serious Queer Problems that come from being LGBTQ. Because the characters aren't dealing with these issues, they are able to explore other facets of their lives and identities as well. Often it just means they are free to pursue love.

But its also way more complicated than this. Sometimes, I just don’t relate to gay characters in queer utopia stories. I don’t know a better way to say this, but being gay caused a lot of problems in my life. My teenage years were especially sad and painful and humiliating and traumatic. Stories that take place in queer utopias often aren’t equipped to (or interested in) exploring Queer Pain.

But it’s not just my past, it’s LGBTQ history. for centuries, nonheteronormative people were seen as mentally ill, sexually deviant, morally sinful, physically freakish. We can want to just move on and pretend this never happened, but damaging aspects of the past don't just go away. Trauma and pain haunts us.

In Feeling Backward: Loss and Politics of Queer History (2007,) Heather Love argues for "Feeling Backward" - a stance that embraces rather than avoiding difficult moments in history. “We need a genealogy of queer affect that does not overlook the negative, shameful and difficult feelings that have been so central to queer existence in the last century". This is how we make peace with our past pain, trauma, and suffering.

Sorry. I’m finally making my point. I think this is why I found Heartstopper to be so meaningful. I relate to nearly every one of the hardships these characters face. I see myself in their suffering. I especially relate to the ways Charlie was bullied and used and how that shaped his personality. (I think I’ll leave that for another post.) Hearstopper is like revisiting my own traumatic past, but this time, through the characters I am able to experience the love and joy I missed, the kindness I was denied.

(It also means; for better or worse, by rewatching Heartstopper I am reliving a lot of my own trauma.)

A quote from Catherine Gallagher's "Telling it Like it Wasn't: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Culture": “to change the status quo in the present, we should try to imagine what sort of past could have led to a present we’d like to inhabit and a future we could wholeheartedly desire”. Narratives like Heartstopper can be healing and restorative

I have a lot more to say about it, but I'm glad that Hearstopper mixes the pain, shame, sadness and anxiety with pleasure, joy and happiness.

(As a source, I have to say I shamefully plagiarized many of these ideas and quotes from this article by Michelle Ann Abate. Sorry. I’m tired.)

#Heartstopper #queer joy

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obi-troll-kenobi · 3 years ago

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Gotta love it when internet fighters call nonheteronormative people “homophobic” for reclaiming slurs and using slurs for themselves.

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woman-loving · 3 years ago

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Lesbian Unintelligibility in Pre-1989 Poland

Selection from ""No one talked about it": The Paradoxes of Lesbian Identity in pre-1989 Poland, by Magdalena Staroszczyk, in Queers in State Socialism: Cruising 1970s Poland, eds. Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta, 2021

The question of lesbian visibility is pertinent today because of the limited number of lesbian-oriented activist events and cultural representations. But it presents a major methodological problem when looking at the past. That problem lies in an almost complete lack of historical sources, something partly mended with oral history interviews, but also in an epistemological dilemma. How can we talk about lesbians when they did not exist as a recognizable category? What did their (supposed) non-existence mean? And should we even call those who (supposedly) did not exist “lesbians”?

To illustrate this problem, let me begin with excerpts from an interview I conducted for the CRUSEV project [a study of queer cultures in the 1970s]. My interlocutor is a lesbian woman born in the 1950s, who lived in Cracow most of her life:

“To this very day I have a problem with my brothers, as I cannot talk to them about this. They just won’t do it, I would like to talk, but. . . . They have this problem, they lace up their mouths when any reference is made to this topic, because they were raised in that reality [when] no one talked about it. It was a taboo. It still is. ... I was so weak, unable to take initiative, lacking a concept of my own life—all this testifies to the oppression of homosexual persons, who do not know how to live, have no support from [others], no information or knowledge learned at school, or from a psychologist. What did I do? I searched in encyclopaedias for the single entry, “homosexuality.” What did I learn? That I was a pervert. What did it do to me? It only hurt me, no? Q: Was the word lesbian in use? Only as a slur. Even my mother used it as an offensive word. When she finally figured out my orientation, she said the word a few times. With hatred. Hissing the word at me.”

The woman offers shocking testimony of intense and persistent hostility towards a family member—sister, daughter—who happens to be a lesbian. The brothers and the mother are so profoundly unable to accept her sexuality that they cannot speak about it at all, least of all rationally. The taboo has remained firmly in place for decades. How was it maintained? And, perhaps more importantly, how do we access the emotional reality that it caused? The quotes all highlight the theme of language, silence, and something unspeakable. Tabooization implies a gap in representation, and the appropriate word cannot be spoken but merely hissed out with hatred.

Popular discourse and academic literature alike address this problem under the rubric of “lesbian invisibility” (Mizielińska 2001). I put forward a different conceptual frame, proposing to address the question of lesbian identity in pre-1989 Poland not in terms of visibility versus invisibility, but instead in terms of cultural intelligibility versus unintelligibility. The former concepts, which have a rich history in discussions of pre-emancipatory lesbian experience, presume an already existing identity that is self-evident to the person in question. They assume the existence of a person who thinks of herself as a lesbian. One then proceeds to ask whether or not this lesbian was visible as such to others, that is, whether others viewed her as the lesbian she knew she was. Another assumption behind this framing is that the woman in question wished to be visible although this desired visibility had been denied her. These are some of the essentializing assumptions inscribed in the concept of (in)visibility. Their limitation is that they only allow us to ask whether or not the lesbian is seen for who she feels she is and wishes to be seen by others.

By contrast, (un)intelligibility looks first to the social construction of identity, especially to the constitutive role of language. To think in those terms is to ask under what conditions same-sex desire between women is culturally legible as constitutive of an identity. So, instead of asking if people saw lesbians for who they really were, we will try to understand the specific epistemic conditions which made some women socially recognizable to others, and also to themselves, as “lesbians.” This use of the concept “intelligibility” is analogous to its use by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble, as she explains why gender conformity is key to successful personhood[...].

For Butler, cultural intelligibility is thus an aspect of the social norm, as it corresponds to “a normative ideal.” It is one of the conditions of coherence and continuity requisite for successful personhood. In a similar vein, to say that lesbians in the People’s Republic of Poland were not culturally intelligible is of course not to claim that there were no women engaged in same-sex romantic and erotic relationships—such a conclusion would be absurd, as well as untrue. It is, rather, to suggest that “lesbian” was not a category of personhood available or, for that matter, desirable to many nonheteronormative women. The word was not in common use and it did not signify to them the sort of person they felt they were. Nor was another word readily available, as interlocutors’ frequent periphrases strongly suggest, for example, “I cannot talk to them about this. ... They ... lace up their mouths when any reference is made to this topic” (my emphases).

Interviews conducted with women for the CRUSEV project are filled with pain due to rejection. So are the interviews conducted by Anna Laszuk, whose Dziewczyny, wyjdźcie z szafy (Come Out of the Closet, Girls! 2006 ) was a pioneering collection of herstories which gave voice to non-heteronormative Polish women of different ages, including those who remember the pre-1989 era. Lesbian unintelligibility is arguably a major theme in the collection. The pain caused by the sense of not belonging expressed by many illustrates that being unintelligible can be harmful. At the same time, unintelligibility had some practical advantages. The main among them was relative safety in a profoundly heteronormative society. As long as things went unnamed, a women-loving woman was not in danger of stigmatization or social ostracism.

Basia, born in 1939 and thus the oldest among Laszuk’s interviewees, offers a reassuring narrative in which unintelligibility has a positive valence:

“I cannot say a bad word about my parents. They knew but they did not comment. . . . My parents never asked me personal questions, never exerted any kind of pressure on me to get married. They were people of great culture, very understanding, and they quite simply loved me. They would meet my various girlfriends, but these were never referred to as anything but “friends” (przyjaciółki). Girls had it much easier than boys because intimacy between girls was generally accepted. Nobody was surprised that I showed up with a woman, invited her home, held her hand, or that we went on trips together.” (Laszuk 2006, 27)

The gap between visceral knowing and the impossibility of naming is especially striking in this passage. The parents “knew” and Basia knew that they knew, but they did not comment, ask questions, or make demands, and Basia clearly appreciates their silence as a favour. To her, it was a form of politeness, discreetness, perhaps even protectiveness. The silence was, in fact, a form of affectionate communication: “they quite simply loved me.”

Another of Laszuk’s interviewees is Nina, born around 1945 and 60 years old at the time of the interview. With a certain nostalgia, Nina recalls the days when certain things were left unnamed, suggesting that there is erotic potential in the unintelligibility of women’s desire. Laszuk summarizes her views:

“Nina claims that those times certainly carried a certain charm: erotic relationships between women, veiled with understatement and secrecy, had a lot of beauty to them. Clandestine looks were exchanged above the heads of people who remained unaware of their meaning, as women understood each other with half a gesture, between words. Nowadays, everything has a name, everything is direct.” (Laszuk 2006, 33)

A similar equation between secrecy and eroticism is drawn by the much younger Izabela Filipiak, trailblazing author of Polish feminist fiction in the 1990s and the very first woman in Poland to publicly come out as lesbian, in an interview for the Polish edition of Cosmopolitan in 1998. Six years later, Filipiak suggested a link between things remaining unnamed and erotic pleasure, and admitted to a certain nostalgia for this pre-emancipatory formula of lesbian (non)identity. Her avowed motivation was not the fear of stigmatization but a desire for erotic intensity:

“When love becomes passion in which I lose myself, I stop calculating, stop comparing, no longer anchor it in social relations, or some norm. I simply immerse myself in passion. My feelings condition and justify everything that happens from that point on. I do not reflect upon myself nor dwell on stigma because my feeling is so pure that it burns through and clears away everything that might attach to me as a woman who loves women.” (Kulpa and Warkocki 2004)

Filipiak acknowledges the contemporary, “postmodern” (her word) lesbian identity which requires activism and entails enumerating various kinds of discrimination. But paradoxically—considering that she is the first public lesbian in Poland—she speaks with much more enthusiasm about the “modernist lesbians” described by Baudelaire:

“They chose the path of passion. Secrecy and passion. Of course, their passion becomes a form of consent to remain secret, to stay invisible to others, but this is not unambivalent. I once talked to such an “oldtimer” who lived her entire life in just that way and she protested very strongly when I made a remark about hiding. Because, she says, she did not hide anything, she drove all around the city with her beloved and, of course, everyone knew. Yes, everyone knew, but nobody remembers it now, there is no trace of all that.” (Kulpa and Warkocki 2004)

Cultural unintelligibility causes the gap between “everyone knew” and “nobody remembers” but it is also the source of excitement and pleasure. For Filipiak’s “old-timer” and her predecessors, Baudelaire’s modernist lesbians, the evasion, or rejection, of identity and the maintaining of secrecy is the path of passion. Crucially, these disavowals of identity mobilize a discourse of freedom rather than hiding, entrapment, or staying in the closet. The lack of a name is interpreted as an unmooring from language and a liberation from its norms.

Needless to say, cultural unintelligibility may also lead to profound torment and self-hatred. In the concept of nationhood generated by nationalists and by the Catholic Church in Poland, lesbians (seen stereotypically) are double outsiders whose exclusion from language is vital.[1] A repentant homosexual woman named Katarzyna offers her testimony in a Catholic self-help manual addressing those who wish to be cured of homosexuality. (It is irrelevant for my purpose whether the testimony is authentic; my interest is in the discursive construction of lesbian identity as literally impossible and nonexistent.) Katarzyna speaks about her search for love, her profound sense of guilt and her disgust with herself. The word “lesbian” is never used; her homosexuality is framed as confusion and as straying from her true desire for God. The origin of the pain is the woman’s unintelligibility to herself:

“Only I knew how much despair there was in my life on account of being different. First, there was the sense of being torn apart when I realized how different my desires were from the appearance of my body. Despite the storm of homosexual desire, I was still a woman. Then, the question: What to do with myself? How to live?” (Huk 1996, 121)

A woman cannot love other women—the subject knows this. We can speculate that her knowledge is due to her Catholic upbringing; she has internalized the teaching that homosexuality is a sin, and thus untrue and not real. The logic of the confession is overdetermined: the only way for her to become intelligible to herself is to abandon same-sex desire and turn to God, and through him to men. Church language thus frames homosexuality as chaos: it is a disordered space where no appropriate language can obtain. Within this frame, unintelligibility is anything but erotic. It is rather an instrument of shaming and, once internalized, a symptom of shame.

For many, the experience of unintelligibility is moored in intense heteronormativity, without regard to Church teachings or the language of national belonging. Struggling with the choice between social intelligibility available to straights and leading an authentic life outside the realm of intelligibility, one CRUSEV interlocutor, aged 67, describes her youth in 1960s and 1970s:

“I always knew I was a lesbian ... and if I am one, then I will be one. Yes, in that sense. And not to live the life of a married woman, mother and so on. This life wasn’t my life at all. However, as I said, it was fine in an external sense. So calm and well-ordered: a husband, nice children, everything, everything. But it was external, and my life was not my life at all, it wasn’t me.”

She thus underscores her internal sense of dissonance, a felt incompatibility with the social role she was playing. The role model of a wife and mother was available to her, but a lesbian role model was not.

The discomfort felt at the unavailability of a role model may have had different consequences. Another CRUSEV interviewee, aged 62, describes her impulse to change her life so as to authentically experience her feelings for another woman, in contrast to that woman’s ex:

“She visited me a few times, and it was enough that I wrote something, anything ... [and] she would get on the train and travel across the country. There were no telephones then, during martial law. Regardless of anything, she would be there. And at one point I realized that I ... damn, I loved her. ... She broke up with her previous girlfriend very violently—this may interest you—because it turned out that the girl was so terribly afraid of being exposed and of some unimaginable consequences that she simply ran away.”

The fear of exposure, critically addressed by the interlocutor, was nonetheless something she, too, experienced. She goes on to speak of “hiding a secret” and “stifling” her emotions.

A concern with leading an inauthentic life resurfaces in the account of the afore-quoted woman, aged 67:

“I couldn’t reveal my secret to anyone. The only person who knew was my friend in Cracow. I led such a double life, I mean. ... It is difficult to say if this was a life, because it was as if I had my inner spirituality and my inner world, entirely secret, but outside I behaved like all the other girls, so I went out with some boys. ... It was always deeply suppressed by me and I was always fighting with myself. I mean, I fell in love [with women] and did everything to fall out of love [laughter]. On and on again.”

Her anxiety translates into self-pathologizing behaviour:

“In 1971 I received my high school diploma and I was already . . . in a relationship of some years with my high school girlfriend. . . . But because we both thought we were abnormal, perverted or something, somehow we wanted to be cured, and so she was going to college to Cracow, and I to Poznań. We engaged in geographic therapy, so to speak.”

The desire to “be cured” from homosexuality recurs in a number of interviews. Sometimes it has a factual dimension, as interlocutors describe having undergone psychotherapy and even reparative therapy—of course, to no avail.

Others decide to have a relationship with a woman after years spent in relationships with men. Referring to her female partner of 25 years, who had previously been married to a man, one of my interlocutors suggests that her partner had been disavowing her homosexual desires for many years before the two women’s relationship began: “the truth is that H. had struggled with it for more than 20 years and she was probably not sure what was going on.” Despite this presumed initial confusion, the women’s relationship had already lasted for more than 25 years at the time I conducted the interview.

Recognizing one’s homosexual desires did not necessarily have to be difficult or shocking. It was not for this woman, aged 66 at the time of the interview:

“It was obvious to me. I didn’t, no, no, I didn’t suppress it, I knew that [I was going], “Oh, such a nice girl, I like this one, with this one I want to be close, with that one I want to talk longer, with that one I want to spend time, with that one I want, for example, to embrace her neck or grab her hand”.”

Rather, what came as a shock was the unavailability of any social role or language corresponding to this felt desire that came as a shock. The woman continues:

“It turned out that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, that I couldn’t tell anyone. I realized this when I grew up and watched my surroundings, family, friends, society. I saw that this topic was not there! If it’s not there, how can I get it out of myself? I wasn’t so brave.”

The tabooization of homosexuality—its unintelligibility—is a recurring thread in these accounts; what varies is the extent to which it marred the subjects’ self-perception.

#lgbtq history #poland #lesbian history #unintelligibility #lesbian unintelligibility #this might be deleted in the future so read it while you can

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