Justice, Gender, Sexuality: Fall 2018

After reading the first two chapters of Queer Injustice (for class on Tuesday, October 30), use evidence from the reading to answer this question:  How have LGBTQIA+ folks been criminalized in the United States? (Put another way, how has U.S. culture, society, and law defined "queers as intrinsically criminal" (23)?) To help you get started, you might want to review briefly how our authors explain what they mean by the criminalization of queers (see p. 23, for a starting point). Then, please discuss two concrete examples of how queers have been criminalized in the U.S. Aim for at least 250 words in your comment.

This past week, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is considering redefining "sex" in federal statute so that people's gender would be determined by the biological sex they are assigned to at birth. According to  the Associate Press , " LGBT leaders across the U.S. reacted with fury Monday to a report that the Trump administration is considering adoption of a new definition of gender that would effectively deny federal recognition and civil rights protections to transgender Americans." In today's Denver Post , transgender Coloradans respond  to this possible change in law. For Owen Flaherty, a staff member at the LGBT Center of Colorado, "it's the  pointed cruelty of the measure, to tell people you’re not going to honor their existence ... That you’re not going to honor your civil rights, you’re not going to honor our health care." Celebrity Caitlyn Jenner , a former Trump supporter published her regrets this week, t

Sexuality and politics, some of the most universal yet polarizing aspects of the human experience were integrated into Tony Kushner’s Angels in America , in a remarkable and provocative way. Not only does he present these themes in an interesting and confusing play, but challenges his audience, us, to think about these human conditions differently. He connects these human conditions (politics and sexuality) in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 90’s but also embeds an important component of justice: compassion.  The HIV/AIDS epidemic marks a time of widespread indifference/blame, civil unrest and polarizing distrust; it was a time in which our differences made more sense than our similarities. One of the most appalling and disturbing instances of indifference and polarization lies within the political scene. President Ronald Reagan and his administration, are notorious and infamously known for a lack of action concerning the epidemic. Scott Calonico’s, documentary short, Whe

Before class on Tuesday (October 23), please read the selections from Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde that are posted on WorldClass.  (There are five short essays.) In "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," Lorde writes, "There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling" (53). In your comment to this post, I'd first like you to explain what this passage means and define the term the "erotic," in the way that Lorde presents it. As you do so integrate at least one additional quotation from this essay to help you explain this concept more fully. Then, connect your discussion of the erotic from this essay to a related point that Lorde raises in one of the other essays you read for today. For example, what does the erotic have to do with poetry? Or, anger? Di

For my analysis of Angels in America the questions I want to answer are, “How does the play challenge its audiences (in the mid-1990s, or now) to think differently about HIV/AIDS, sexuality, religion, and/or politics?” and “How does the play represent the impact of AIDS on the characters, their relationships, and/or our country as a whole?”. For the first question I want to focus on the communities that the characters are involved in. I believe that Kushner is really trying to juxtapose themes and characters to represent society and America’s diversity as a whole. The character Roy, a lawyer who claims to be straight, ends up getting AIDS in the play. When told that he has AIDS, he gets very defensive saying to his doctor, “ No Henry no . AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” (Roy, Pt 1, Act 1, scene 9). To justipoze Roy, the character Prior Walter, a very flamboyant gay man, also gets AIDS. What Tony Klausner is saying about the AIDS epidemic is that it can happen to a

My Queer Excursion that I did was the Toxic Masculinity: Locker Room talk that was hosted in the chapel. The speaker Byron Hurt’s is a documentary and film maker who goes around the country giving these speeches to educate people on the issue. When Byron first started with this job he was not very knowledgable on the subject except for his past experiences.   The talk with Byron started off with him asking the crowd “What are the typical things that boys are told while growing up?” The answers usually come from men in the audience but he opened the dialogue up to women as well. The responses ranged from things that their dads told them while growing up to things they learned from society. The responses from the men in the crowd really were quite astonishing things I never truly thought about. I knew that a lot of young men were taught to be strong, independent and providing, but the toxicity from this was what impacted them the most.   The next question Byron asked is what is t

To each their own. And in that own there is a connective line that pulls each person together into one. This group becomes one because their lives are no longer independent from each other and while there is no longer any independence, there is still uniqueness of situation amongst individuals. What makes Tony Kushner’s Angels in America so powerful and so queer is the uniqueness of each story line, but also the underlying connection that each character has with one another. Every relationship is queered by the impact of AIDS, in this case AIDS is viewed from the eyes of two queer men. Even the characters that do not directly interact with each other, feel each other’s impact and parallel each other. Kushner manages to use this play to discuss a topic that during the 80’s was hardly ever discussed. The theme of miseducation about the victims of AIDS was common, in an interview CNN encounters a man, Edmund White , who recalls his AIDS/HIV activist work from the 80’s. He says that h

The question of calling is no stranger to me at this point. Having gone to a Jesuit school for five semesters the question of vocation knocks at my door with vigor at least a couple times a semester. Still, thinking about calling in the context of Angels in America is a new exercise altogether. Not simply because the characters are queer, but because the context wherein the characters are called is queer. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America seeks to take pieces of the world that people were living in the 1990s, the effects of Reagan politics, apathy, AIDS, and death, and challenge it— the themes and contexts of his work created a conversation about who and how one could be called into something bigger than them and how they might even say no. Kushner’s ending of the play offers much in the calling department. His main character, Prior, says to us in an aside after successfully refusing to be a prophet that he gives us a blessing of, “More Life.” More Life. How is that not a call? In a

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner addresses the social and political issues that arouse during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. As we have learned in class the last few weeks, this was a time in which, politically, America remained silent on a tragic crisis the country encountered because it seemed to only appear in marginalized communities (hemophiliacs, drug users, and gay men). The issue was only addressed after thousands of people had already died. Socially, the LGBT community was forced to be stronger, in their time of time of great need, and to come together to attempt to end America’s shortcomings. Although, I already understood the basis of what was problematic about AIDS/HIV in the 1980s, Kushner brought these issues to life in his play.  He builds a community of diverse people and creates unlikely relationships amongst this diverse group, showing the reader/viewer the importance of unity in the face of a crisis. Further, the play challenge

In the play Angels in America, Tony Kushner challenges us to think differently about HIV/AIDS and queerness, most specifically gay men. Most of Kushner’s analysis and questioning of the stereotypes and misconceptions about HIV/AIDS and queerness his audience may have come from the development of one of the characters, Prior Walter. In the play Prior is an openly gay man who is diagnosed with HIV/AIDS at the beginning of the play. The first way that I believe Kushner challenges stereotypes about HIV/AIDS is the way that Prior character seems to develop more and become stronger throughout the plot after his diagnosis. Shortly after his diagnosis Prior’s partner, Louis, leaves him because he (supposedly) cannot handle the strain that Prior’s illness has put on their relationship. Prior is initially beside himself and completely distraught but soon find strength and independence from Louis. This can even be seen in their initial argument in Prior’s hospital room bef