Genderqueering

Leelah Alcorn, Ash Haffner, Aniya Knee Parker, Yaz'min Shancez

This post is a response to a recent blog entry on Feminism and Religion titled "Who is Gender Queer?" on from scholar Carol Christ.  The post can be read by clicking here.  I want to thank my friend, advocate, and upcoming scholar Martha Ovadia for reasons only she knows!  Stay brave, speak up, be heard! 

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It is terrifying to know that something is wrong but not be able to speak truth to power.

It is even more terrifying to know something is wrong, be able to speak to it, and then silence those voices that do not have that same privilege, power, or position as you.

The struggle that many of us in positions of privilege and power aren’t just the ostracizing and essentializing forces that we, as allies, members of communities, or even those dedicated to a cause, can participate in the oppression we are fighting against and do harm.

It’s taken me a long time to not only be comfortable with who I identify as but also how I go about fighting and defining my life based on said identity and experience. However, the one thing that I have the ability to do is choose that identity, more freely than others. Unlike Leelah Alcorn, Ash Haffner, Aniya Knee Parker, or Yaz’min Shancez, I did not have to face the types of oppressions that they did and sadly lost their lives to as a result because we exist in a society that can’t deal with the inability to leave things undefined or to allow people to define who they are on their own terms. It is vital that although my lived experiences could never meet nor match the same types of oppression that these brave individuals had to face, I, as a white, cisgendered gay male do not, through my own position and privilege become part of their oppression.  

As a man who exists in the world of feminism and within various women’s communities, I walk a daily tightrope of privilege and power to insure that I do not silence those that I consider allies, friends, mentors, or colleagues. As a man who exists in the world of the LGBTQ community, I walk an additional tightrope to additionally take away or diminish from the experiences of those members of our community that do not have the same type of lived experiences as myself.   Even within minority communities, positions of hierarchy exist and within these hierarchies of knowledge, identity, or power, comes a responsibility to insure that the oppressed do not become the oppressors.

We find our versions of home in these communities and it is within these spaces where our home not only begins to define who we are but we, as a reflection of that space, begin to outwardly redefine the spaces we exist in.   If we slowly begin, through our experiences to shape our homes based on privilege and power without self-reflection and acknowledgment of others, then we are no better than those oppressive forces we say we’re against.

I can’t speak for what identity feels like –I can only speak for what essentializing does and what it does is reflected in the deaths of Lelah, Ash and many others who die nameless.   It is our responsibility, as allies, members of communities, and those fighting to end sexist, patriarchal and even now homonormative oppression to make sure that no more deaths occur on our watch or that truth is spoken to power even when power is masquerading around as truth.

Don’t Worry, I Won’t Marry Your Girlfriend: Sexuality, Identity, and the Easy Laugh

Although finals are upon us and I am busy doing a multitude of things, I always welcome the ability to take time out of my day to blog for the Feminism and Religion Project.  I hope you enjoy this post and are both able to laugh and reflect upon the serious issues at hand.

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I must say, I will be the first to admit that the recent outbreak of videos promulgating the idea that gay men will marry a straight guy’s girlfriend or lesbians will marry a straight girl’s boyfriend all for the sake of marriage equality left me stifling my laughter as I attempted to pay attention in class.

However, after the calamity died down I took a moment to reflect upon the intrinsically embedded aspects of misdirected norms of sexuality, gender, and misogyny latent within the laugh lines and the guffaws throughout each video.

The images that are present within each video not only work to reinforce the cultural and sexual stereotypes that propagate that ideas that gay men are inherently more sophisticated that their heterosexual counterparts (as well as better dressers) or that lesbians are just like a straight girl’s boyfriend who loves videogames, sports, and beer (and has no problem with his World of Warcraft Addiction) but also work towards breaking down the proverbial bridge that activists have attempted to build between individuals and groups, such as religious organizations, in order to get them to not see the error of their ways, but rather understand that love and committment, comes in multiple forms.

Although these videos were created to shed light on some of the issues that are present within popular culture as well as to get the easy laugh and adoration of fans from across the world who are fighting for marriage equality, the creators must be held accountable for the responses that have developed as a result of the challenge each of these videos presents to heterosexual society.  These videos dare to tackle the inborn quality that men not only should marry women but also that they are suppose to marry them as an acquisition of property rather than an object of affection.

These videos create a world that is reinforced by the idea that straight men have something to fear from gay men and that both gay and lesbian individuals are lacking an important aspect that signifies their identity as a member of society: the acquisition of a woman.  The dialogue that remains, after we essentially walk through the proverbial smoke and mirrors that these videos create, is both dualistic and reductionist at best.  No longer having to deconstruct the larger cultural and sexual narratives, heterosexuals who do not support marriage equality or feel threatened by homosexuals return to their one source of power that reinforces the ideology that they are on the right path: the Bible.  “Marriage is between a man a woman,” or “A man shall not lie with another man as he would a woman,” becomes the newly reinforced heterosexual rallying cry and the progressive progress that occurred in the past becomes nothing more than a joke.

Although these videos make it difficult to ignore the issue at hand without breaking into a fit of laughter, the issue of equal rights or marriage equality should never be reduced to a laugh line. 

Visions of My Grandmother

Writing has been very hard lately.  With classes, teaching, and working in West Hollywood, I often find myself wanting to lay on the couch more than read a book or write a blog post.  However, I am continually honored to be a part of the Feminism and Religion Project and I hope you enjoy my post this month.

xoxo

John

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I haven’t dreamt of my grandmother since her passing one hot summer July evening.

The night, and the days that followed, continue to be a blur.  However, as my family members continue to see her in their nightly visions, I, go on unabatedly longing to see and hear the voice of a woman who made me feel the presence of the divine with each passing story. 

My sister saw her in a dream when she was buying shoes, my mother has seen her multiple times when she would be undergoing a particularly stressful situation, and I, left alone and oftentimes wondering through an abyss of loneliness and disarray, wake up each morning wondering why, I am left all alone.

We often question the divine, his/her intentions, and specifically whether or not we will ever see resemblances of those long gone in our daily lives, but I’m here to ask and ponder whether or not my inability to see my grandmother has to do with the fact that she was the one person I was not honest to during her lifetime.    

I never told my grandmother I was gay.  I’ve often wanted to visit her grave, clench my hands together, and pray that she forgive me for betraying the trust she instilled upon me long ago.  However, even today, I cannot bring myself to make that trek, up the hill into the countryside where her ashes lay below the ground.

Yes, my grandmother would meet the boys I was dating and yes, I would talk about my life in a way that it would be obvious to anyone else that I was gay, but I never uttered the words, “Gladys, I’m gay” to her.  I could handle rejection from my parents, I could face the dismissal from certain family members, but her rejection, the rejection of my hero and best friend, was one thing I was not willing to face.

The only time she ever entered into my dreams was a year ago when I found myself entering her house and seeing her sitting in her chair with its back turned towards me.  I called her name, I kept questioning whether or not she had heard me (she was always hard of hearing), and the more I called out her name the more she just sat there, in her chair, silent, and unable to  turn around and look at me.  

How does one who doesn’t really believe in the divine pray?  How do we manage the complex emotions that we feel when loss and heartache overcome our power in faith?   More importantly, who, when we are unable to deal with the guilt and pain we have inside, do we agnostics pray to? 

I’ve never really pray, but when I do I pray to my grandmother.  I do not pray to a God or Goddess that I do not know exists or not, but rather an entity who I hope still watches over me. 

However, like with many of the prayers that we cast into the unknown, I too find myself on the same boat, hoping that one day, my divine grandmother will forgive me of my sins and welcome me back into her loving arms.

I look forward to finally walking into her house in my dreams and seeing her warm smile greet me at the door but until then, I’ll continue to sit here and pray. 

 

Sodomy and Gay Men's Lives

Make sure to check out the Feminism and Religion Project where this blog originally appeared!

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How do we begin to deconstruct the word sodomy so that it no longer associates and elicits hateful propaganda regarding the sexual activity of consenting gay/queer adults?

Meaning is often produced, not through a one-to-one relation to things in the world, but by establishing the difference you or a particular group of people have in relation to the activity/object you are distancing yourself from. The word sodomy is inextricably linked to the Old Testament (Genesis 19:1-11) and has become a popular manifestation for conservative and fundamentalist social and religious critics to use whenever they are critiquing why gay men are different or deviant from normal, heterosexual adults. Furthermore, sodomy has been and still is highly involved in constructing both positive and negative sexual ethics that often define and rule over the lives of those who participate not in sodomy but other forms of non-vaginal intercourse.

The word, action, and taboo of sodomy have blurred the real meaning of consensual non-vaginal sex between people of the same sex. Defined as “anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex,” sodomy has become the sign that defines the lives of gay men and keeps them in the social and religious shackles that perpetuates the public opinion that sex between men is deviant, devious, and dangerous to society at large.

We all can point out news stories that have involved men, both young and old, taking sexual advantage of innocent, non-consenting adolescent boys. This blog has even been home to articles discussing former Penn State Assistant Football Coach Jerry Sandusky or the abuses the Catholic clergy inflicted upon adolescent boys for decades. However, what we are looking at is, and has been, the constant recapitulation of the word “sodomy,” through deviant social actions of specific individuals, non-heteronormative sexual acts, and abuses on both national and transnational scales.

The problem with headlines that read “Man Sodomizes Little Boy” or briefs discussing how Jerry Sandusky “sodomized a young boy in the shower,” is that these acts get bundled up and categorized as sodomy without further explanation into the matter. As we saw before, the definition of sodomy, provided by Merriam-Webster, does not provide a negative or positive connotation of the word itself, but nevertheless as a result of these horrible actions, the word sodomy is recapitulated as the deviant and abusive behavior of disturbed or mentally ill men who inflict sexual abuse upon children instead of the social and sexual actions of a larger group of gay/queer individuals who have been longing to define their lives and sexual actions themselves. Ultimately, sodomy, regardless of if it is consensual or not, is always defined and used in a negative light rather than creating or using a new term or sign to describe the perverted and horrific actions of certain individuals and not a larger group of individuals in general.

The word sodomy is used to keep the sexual and emotion lives of gay men in a frozen state and mindset of being. The creation of sodomy has inscribed a blazoned S on the chests of all gay/queer individuals who perform consensual “oral or anal sex with members of the same sex,” as a way to culturally stagnate the positive sexual revolution of ascribing the public opinion that gay/queer individuals are not all deviant or dangerous. Gay/queer individuals are from a community who have had their sexual acts defined for them by heteronormative society at large and who still, to this day, cannot define their own sexual acts without the fear of being labeled a sodomite.