Of plaid and ladies.

Merril Mushroom's How to Engage in Courting Rituals 1950's Butch-Style in The Bar was hilarious to me! The cheeky truth behind her stereotyping stands true today in my opinion but not just for butch women. What I take most from Merri's article is evidence that butch women USE the stereotypes surrounding them to express their intentions. Stereotypes (negative or positive) come to be because they can be associated repeatedly with people of a certain category. I suppose "positive" is an odd word to pair with the term "stereotype" because even such assumptions that ARE positive can be imposed on a person without his or her volition. But the volition! Why do some gay and women embrace certain styles and postures that are attributed to them by stereotype? I'll use myself as an example so I don't step on toes: My friends joke that my hair cuts have been progressively "gayer" since my point of departure from dating men. True enough my hair is shorter, darker, and edgier than it ever was when I was dating boys. While I wouldn't say I am determined to look "lesbian", I have certainly benefited from looking more like the flavour of the year as far as the 20's-something lesbian scene goes so I have a preference for that image. My friends mother added me on facebook a few weeks ago (we haven't seen each other in years) and called my friend to say "wow, Megan is looking more... gay?". Does volition undermine some stereotypes? Also, how many of these stereotypes arise from a dominant ownership of those symbols and postures among members of a queer scene? Aren't we generating the stereotypes in the first place?

A Soundtrack For The Queering Impaired

I've decided to take a break from textual analysis and try something more creative. When I read a really engaging novel I always find myself making a list of songs that I'd include on the soundtrack. Here's a compilation for three of my favorites on our reading list so far:

Girl Meets Boy
Song: "First Day of My Life"- Bright Eyes

This is a song about a revelation! A self-actualization that is realized through, by, and for love. I enjoyed every page of Robyn and Anthea's romance even though it seemed a bit too optimistic. This song is reminiscent of the moment Anthea sees Robyn up on the ladder.

"This is the first day of my life, I swear I was born right in the doorway. I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed. They're spreading blankets on the beach. Yours is the first face that I saw,
I think I was blind before I met you..."

Wide Sargasso Sea

Song: "A Rush of Blood to the Head"- Coldplay

My reasoning here is a bit abstract but I chose this song to reflect Jean Rhys' intentions for the novel. The mad woman in the attic has become an important feminist symbol since Jane Eyre. Rhys' writes to challenge patriarchal and colonial discourses by revealing Antoinette's voicelessness and making the reader sympathize. Rhyse justifies Antoinette's madness and destructiveness in Jane Eyre as symptoms of her oppression. She's burning down the walls we put around Antoinette as biased readers in Jayne Eyre!

"I'm going to buy this place and watch it fall. Stand here beside me baby in the crumbling walls.
Oh I'm going to buy this place and start a fire. Stand here until I fill all your heart's desires. Because I'm going to buy this place and see it burn. Do back the things it did to you in return."

Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a 

Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite

Song: "Half Jack"- Dresden Dolls

I chose this song for the speaker's loathing for her masculine sex characteristics. The song is about gender reassignment surgery but I think the identity crisis that the speaker voices really captures the crux of Alexina's suffering. Alexina simply could not relate to the world as an actor of the masculine gender. Like the speaker in her song, I believe she would have gone to drastic measures to reject the male features of her body so she could go on as she knew herself.

"Two halves are equal. A cross between two evils it's not an enviable lot. But if you listen
you'll learn to hear the difference between the halves and the half nots ... I'm not big enough to house this crowd. It might destroy me but I'd sacrifice my body if it meant I'd get the jack part out."

  

Boy [space] Friends

I found Brian Francis' Fruit: A Novel About a Boy and His Nipples a refreshing break from some of the heavier material we've been exploring in class. However, the complicated potency of language is still present, especially in the way Francis employs the term "boy friend". Let's break it down!

BOY [space] FRIEND   vs.   BOYFRIEND

I added the [space] to emphasize the void between the two words because Francis relies on this visible morphology to create tension. In popular language "boyfriend" denotes romance and the other usage of boy [space] friend to describe a platonic friendship between two males has become uncommon because of homophobic associations with the former. When the two words are spoken they sound the same and thus "sound" the same as they run through the mind. However, our eyes contradict what would otherwise be a homograph by registering the space that Francis has placed between boy and friend:

"The truth is, my nipples are right. I do need to get myself a boy friend." (p.62).

Especially in proximity to "my nipples" (not mine people, I mean Peters. Sheesh!) the use of boy [space] friend heightens the tension between Peter's sexual ambiguity and the assumptions of homosexuality that can be extracted from his behavior (think homoerotic dreams and cross dressing). Francis uses the cherry nipples as a feminine quality that might be read as the mark of a homosexual but cannot be confirmed by Peter's usage of boy friend because a simple [space].

PS: I love that [space] at family reunions. When a distant relative asks if I have a boyfriend (and I don't feel like a tedious heart to heart because I've been into the special fruit punch that is a crutch on such occasions) I hear boy [space] friend instead and answer honestly: "More than I can keep track of!"

Homographesisisms

I was very taken by Edelman's analysis of homosexual recognition prior to the 19th Century and the advent of queer labeling in Homographesis. I understand homographesis as a process of labeling and language manipulation that transforms homosexuality from a category of nameless acts to an essence of being. More concisely, with the invention of signifiers such as homosexual, gay, or queer, the acts become defined by the signified rather than the signified being defined by the acts. After reading the article I was curious as to how homographesis affects my own life. The situation with my parents is curious.

I have been "out" for seven years and cannot recall an instance in which my parents or grandparents used the words lesbian, gay, or homosexual to describe me to others or even myself. Very rarely they will imply my sexuality by saying I have a "girlfriend" or that "I see women" (doesn't everyone with eyes?!!). Of course I can only account for those times I am present but my parents apprehension about using a label for me suggests that it must be more comfortable to keep me ambiguous as a sexual being.

Is it easier for my parents to accept my sexual difference as acts rather than essence because the disapproval I meet in others can then be differed as a criticism of my behavior rather than my being? They have never taken personal issue with my sexuality but sincerely worry for my happiness and safety. However, as Edelman argues, after a metaphoric paradigm (homosexuality as a mode of being distinct from heterosexual being) has been established, its impossible to go back to namelessness (acts as metonyms). My parents don't live in a vacuum so even if they don't say it, they do understand me in terms of labels as much as acts. Any thoughts?

But Would I?

I expected the works by gay and lesbian writers to resonate most for me in this course but it seems Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite has affected most deeply thus far. Of the queer spectrum I was least intersexuality before I took this course. I was apprehensive about reading Herculine because I expected the writing to be self-involved and dry (bad experiences with memoirs!). Instead I found Alexina's writing sincere in such a way that her passion and heartache could easily have been my own. On several occasions I caught myself reading Alexina as a lesbian rather than an intersexual which brought about two questions for me: First, how does Alexina's writing work to prevent me from fixating on her intersexuality and refocus me on the essential humanity of her life? Secondly, if I can relate to someone like Alexina as a lesbian, could I also be sexually attracted? I'd like to focus on Alexina's language in another blog article and opt now for the racier topic. Let's begin hypothetically: if I was a modern day Sara and discovered that Alexina was a hermaphrodite would I continue to feel romantically and sexually about her?


I believe Doctor T.'s reaction to Alexina's genitals offers an honest prediction of how the majority of us might react to such a discovery (or confession). Shock and curiosity or sadly fear and disgust are likely reactions simply because many of us have minimal exposure to concepts and appearances of intersexuality. But what comes next? Throughout Alexina's memoirs I longed to know what Sara might have done if she was given access to the truth. Was Sara a lesbian? At the very least she was attracted to Alexina as a woman. The medical documents that accompany Alexina's memoirs indicate that her genitals and reproductive functioning were the only potential "deviations" from "womanhood" that Sara wouldn't have noticed on her own. Recall that Alexina mentions her excess body hair  and unusually masculine build were noticed but accepted or ignored by her female peers. Perhaps Sara did question these things but was able to ignore them for the sake of love.

In spite of my jaded nature, I truly wanted Sara and Alexina to remain in love. I also wanted to tell myself that I could easily love Alexina unconditionally if I was Sara. I decided to imagine how things might have unfolded for Alexina and I in a modern context and write my thought flow:

"if she met all those criteria i first sought in her as a woman wouldn't it be fine? If when i closed my eyes she still made me feel the same ways, and I felt her in the same ways, wouldn't it be fine?"

 

When I analyzed my own words I thought to myself: Good. I'm not a total flake; my emotional and sexual self is not threatened by other modes of being. But the thought flow also suggests that I would close my eyes when intimate with Alexina. I read this as evidence that I would need a period of adjustment to be sexually and emotionally comfortable with the new conditions of my romance. There's really no way of knowing without actually being in such a relationship but I'd like to think the amount of energy put into working this out hypothetically is evidence of my openness to gender and sexual diversity and that my apprehensions are honest, not phobic.