Permeating Queerness, by Cailin Osborne

After biking 8 miles rickety miles on to set foot on the DU campus for the first time, I walked into a lecture hall on the outskirts of the property, itching for knowledge and elevated conversation. Low and behold, upon entering the room I was accosted by a sea of white faces, including the presenter of this lecture on “Third World Feminism.” Perhaps the lack of oxygen and sweat pouring down my back exacerbated my annoyance, but I could not deny that it was there. The overwhelming whiteness of the space, of higher education in general, kept my excitement for the topic in question at bay. Thus, the never ending complexities of queer theory were highlighted for me in that moment. I, a white-bodied, heterosexual, cisgendered person who fits fairly neatly into gendered beauty standards, have a physical presence in the world is pretty far from radical, yet catch myself believing that because I tremble with a sense of righteous indignation at the words of Foucault when he speaks of deconstructing discourse that I must be different than the white body standing in front of me. That I, a person with significant lived experiences who has worked hard to educate myself on issues of oppression, have the right to be skeptical of someone who has done the same. We do have an obligation to question everything, especially fellow persons of privilege. But we must never forget that as humans we are mostly just a bunch of walking contradictions trying to make sense of the world around us. The work of deconstructing social systems and constructed values that fuel them is important, but as Donald Hall points out “Queer Theories”, we cannot so easily dismiss the power of these processes: “We need to preserve an appreciation of the powerful limitations socialized within individuals who may not be able to break easily from ‘herd’ behaviors,” (59). I, a person who condemns oppressive, patriarchal beauty standards but then proceeds to shop at Victoria’s Secret, I, a person who confronts the constructed and fluid nature of gender and sexuality but proceeds to live the life of a “straight” female, whole-heartedly believe in acknowledging these tensions. Deep internal change is hard, and take more than intellectual attention or conversations, but for many that is where it starts. In this instance, if a white queer person was not willing and even eager to speak about queer and feminist theories birthed from black and brown bodies, it is likely that these students could have continued forever without their lives being interrupted by this knowledge. Perhaps to force ourselves into these spaces of discomfort and disconnect within our own identities is very queer indeed. 

In terms of the substance of this lecture, the speaker focused on the evolution of feminist thought in the 20th century, and important discrepancies in views and values specifically relating to sex. While, as Hall discusses in his second chapter, early feminist literature and theory would often conflate sex and gender, the emergence of queer theory and the introduction of the sex wars disrupted this. The so-called “Sex Wars” took place in the 1970’s and ’80’s when new topics of sexual rights forced a binary in the conversation: sex-positive and anti-porn stances developed respectively among feminists. As blogger Andrew McBride from outhistory.org explains, anti-porn activists and organizations that formed around this ideology such as Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media espoused goals such as “To educate woman and men about the woman-hatred expressed in pornography and other media violence to women, and to increase understanding of the destructive consequences of these images.” This desire is hard to argue with, and the movement gained leadership from brilliant minds such as Alice Walker. However, the issue is more complex than meets the eye. The discrepancies in opinions among feminists display the systemic oppression of female-bodied persons, but also call into question the concept of “normal” and challenge us to look inward at our beliefs around what is natural. The complexities present on each side were largely trivialized through the “cat fight” narrative that was thrust on the situation, and each movement was dismissed by the mainstream public. As author Rachel Reinke describes in her essay, “Catfight: A Feminist Analysis,” the catfight narrative is “a caricatured image of female competitiveness widespread throughout popular culture today,” a tool that is used to invalidate the opinions and experiences of women. However, because the anti-pornography movement aligned more with internalized norms around gender and sexuality, the cause arguably gained more traction than that of sex-positive feminists.

  Working from the words of scholar Jacques Derrida, Hall asserts that the constructing of meaning is binary, framing a position or value of privilege relative to the opposite value marked by deviance, negativity, or lack. As you could imagine, while the anti-porn movement was rooted in complex intellectual theory as well as moral and experiential concerns, it still engaged with some accepted social norms regarding sexual activity, those posing engagement with these activities as deviant. For example, this sect of feminists condemned porn and prostitution for its patriarchal roots and inaction of power dynamics. However, this still inhibits ones sexual agency and supports the notion that their ought be norms in place for sexual conduct, if only to protect vulnerable bodies. I myself find both these arguments compelling, but ultimately, through my growing understand of queer theory, have come to find an unshakeable skepticism of engagement with and enforcement of norms. In the absence of an all-knowing creator that dictates some sort of objective reality which would inform a value system, it is always a struggle to find meaning in the postmodern world we live in, even though we crave that satisfaction that come from placing the contents of our world in neat categories. It is a struggle, if not impossible, to identify a set of rules for how the world should be, and I find it to be the height of hubris to suggest otherwise. Norms are socially constructed, and, as Hall points out through the introduced works of Foucault, are instilled according to who we want to frame as deviant, and the privileges we want to product. This rings distinctly truth for matters of sexual deviance, which are inseparable from the anti-porn agenda. Foucault, who believed that language, a focal part of discourse, profoundly shapes our understanding of self and the world saw potential for both oppression and power in this. Noting the way that language functions even influenced his development of a “Multidimensional investigation of oppression, reaction, metamorphosis, and group empowerment.” Complicating a basic, binary understanding of oppressor-oppressed, he came to acknowledge that oppression can shape identity. Thus, simply because queerness exists “without positive truth or stable identity” does not mean that a broad sense of identity, community, and solidarity cannot emerge, as these things are very much rooted in a common experience of marginalization due to the oppression of sexual deviance. In conversation around sexual deviance and socially constructed sexual restrictions, we ought to consider both the power of sexually deviant identities, and our capacity to continue and remain complacent in that type of oppression. By working to deconstruct the boundaries of what we consider natural, we are working to begin the process of deconstructing harmful systems of hierarchy. As I touched on early, we often begin to think and talk about change before we allow it to permeate our being and alter our behavior. Social conditioning is real- all the things we’ve been told about sex from that crappy “sex ed” lecture on the binary of abstinence or STDs to the Cosmo stories plastered with porn, it is so hard to mentally confront these internalized ideals, and even harder to change what feels like your “natural” responses regarding matters of sex. It is arguably a never ending process. However, in efforts to queer my own life and relationship to the world, I plan to keep trying in pursuit of a more loving, authentic life.