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Displacing the Subject (Leo)

Musings on “Queer Phenomenology: Orientation, Objects, Others” and Me.

Reading Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology brought up a lot of personal “turmoil” / experiences for me. This piece is a written reflection on my adolescence and the development of my sexuality and the development of the awareness of my sexuality in the context of a few quotes from the reading. I’m aware that some of my reflections may misinterpret the point of these quotes or go off on tangents, but this post isn’t about discussing, exploring, and figuring out the reading, this post is about discussing, exploring, and figuring out my experience as a queer person via the readings.

Please be aware that my post includes mentions of: homophobia and sex.

 The reflections are extremely personal, mostly informal, probably too pessimistic, and sometimes sexual. These experiences are some of the more formative experiences in my development as a queer individual inhabiting space. What I’ve written below, however, is only a partial record of my development. I hope you enjoy it.

“Bodies that experience disorientation can be defensive, as they reach out for support or as they search for a place to reground and reorientate their relation to the world.” (158)

-       Me hurling through the metaphoric space of the adolescent developing sexuality

-       Me oscillating / or waffling / or going back and forth / or being pushed and dragged into out of and between “straight” “sensitive” “metrosexual” “girly” “bisexual” “gay” “queer” “confused” “in a phase” “straight” (again) ““gay” (again) “openly, but not exclusively gay” (I wrote that on a post it note once) “sexually fluid” etc. etc.

-       Me believing that the attempt to grasp onto the above labels would make things easier, more digestible, less disorienting

-       Me falling in love with my best friend (she’s a woman) and thinking that dating her would be a wise thing to do my senior year (After coming out to most of my friends as gay).

-       Me developing a repertoire of answers to heteronormative questions. Mainly just “y ya tienes novia?” which is Spanish for “So do you have a girlfriend yet?”

-       Me making up excuses (like the weather or being tired) for why I would always stay inside with the women at family parties rather than being outside with the men.

-       Me believing that holding hands with my boyfriend in high school is an act of defiance and courage and of stabilization – so much so that I walk around my house holding his hand. And even try to pour myself a bowl of milk, while holding his hand (this is true, and my friends don’t let me live it down).

-       Me at work this past summer in Salinas, California. I’m already used to and close to desensitized to the rampant and constant racism, sexism, and homophobia expressed at work. (Like dozens of comments a day). But after – for some reason that I fail to remember– sort of pseudo coming out to one of my coworkers (who is a 50-year-old Mexican man). The bearings that I developed to grasp onto while working here are jolted about. Or maybe I am. I don’t know. But he asked me if I was going to get breast implants. Or why I don’t wear a wig. It was a deep intense ignorance, that was not maliciously intended, but that made my body defensive.

-       Me realizing that I’m in a constant search for orientation, which is extremely disorienting.

 “Disorientation occurs when we fail to sink into the ground, which means that the “ground” itself is disturbed, which also disturbs what gathers “on” the ground.” (160)

-       Me losing my metaphoric footing on my metaphoric ground (that was never stable to begin with) when I don’t know how to fix a problem with the toilet and my father says “any normal kid would know how to do that”

-       Me losing my metaphoric footing on my metaphoric ground (that was never stable to begin with) when I was the one that had to deal with the awkwardness of the dynamic in my friend group. It shifted after I came out to Daniel and Jeremy (2 of my best friends within the group, they’re Mormon) who called me a “bisexual freak” and told me that they couldn’t be my friend because I was “walking down the wrong path” (or some bullshit like that).

-       Me losing my metaphoric footing on my metaphoric ground (that was never stable to begin with) when somehow a discussion of gay rights came up with my high school drama teacher (Who’s also Mormon) while I was sitting on the carpeted floor of her office, as I usually did when I would skip class, or get bored at lunch. She argued that she didn’t think gay couples should be able to file their taxes together (or some bullshit like that).

-       Me trying not to lose my balance, and trying to argue back intelligently.

-       Me feeling unable to challenge her because she was an authority figure over me, but also because I loved her and didn’t want to disrupt the ground we stood on.

-         Me coming out to my mom as “bisexual” – which was a sort of bargaining with myself to begin with: “bisexual isn’t as bad because I’m still half straight… right” – and her repeating the word back to her. It was a foreign word to her that sounded uncomfortable coming from her lips.

-         Me losing my metaphoric footing on my metaphoric ground (that was never stable to begin with) when the first conversation I have with my mom about my queerness is 3 years after I come out to her. She was sad and concerned when I decided to tell her about my first boyfriend James. 

-       Me realizing that my relationship with my mother is a part of the things that also get disturbed “on” the ground

-       Me realizing that the relationship was disturbed, dislodged, fractured, fissured, and never normalized or reoriented because I had to make a new ground to sink into that didn’t include my mom.

 “A queer object hence makes contact possible. Or to be more precise, a queer object would have a surface that supports such contact…. It is not only that queer surfaces support action, but also that the action they support involves shifting grounds, or even clearing a new ground, which allow us to tread on a different path. (169 – 170)

 -       Me sitting in 8th grade PE -  outside in the hot stuffy Arizona heat on one of those table, bench seat things that was covered in holes - next to Jaime (a boy). And when our knees intentionally rubbed up against one another, feeling a sudden jolt of energy, or life that made sense and oriented me. Lifted me closer towards standing erect (both in the metaphoric sense related to the reading, and physiologically).

-       Me talking on a shitty LG flip phone – that belonged to one of my parents – to Tyler: the boy from North Carolina that I met on Facebook and soon fell in love with.

-       Me using that shitty LG flip phone – that belonged to one of my parents – to have phone sex with Tyler.

-       Me on my bed with my boyfriend James, thrusting whilst clothed. Feeling my bed transform into something new. It was the first time I interacted sexually with someone else on that bed.

-       Me watching Beauty and the Beast, next to Ken – for all of 5 minutes.

-       Me performing oral sex for the first time with Beauty and the Beast playing in the background.

-       Me in my mother’s car, blowing the “straight” guy in my high school theatre club, in the parking lot of the park next to my school.

-       Me realizing that a majority of the “queer surfaces” that served to put me in contact with, lay the foundation for, establish, and define, my queerness are sexual – or at least made to be sexual.

-       Me realizing this is the case because I grew up in a border town, a community where 8 out of 10 people were Hispanic, and this particular Hispanic community didn’t really have much else that served as a queer surface for me to hold onto.

-       Me walking in the lower park in Salinas California over the summer when I stayed with my grandma (dad’s side). I notice a rainbow flag in the window of a house. To me, at this point, it was more of a rainbow flag than it was the Pride flag, but nonetheless I recognized it.

-       Me knocking on the door of the house with the rainbow flag in the window and when the old white woman answers it I struggle to articulate a sort of thank you or appreciation for the flag as an object that helped shift the ground for me.

-       Me sitting in an uncomfortable seat in the community college’s theatre watching a shadowcast production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time. Lots of queerness there.

-       Me probably sitting on one of those white plastic party chairs, or probably sitting around a fire in the makeshift fire pit that was really this weird pothole thing in my great grandmother’s (mom’s side) driveway.

-       Me watching my uncle talk and interact with my family. There’s something queer about him. And there’s always a sort of unacknowledged truth in the air about his queerness. I still don’t know for sure if he’s actually queer.

-       Me typing on my Macbook. On the 4th floor of Butler. At 3:33 am. Realizing that I might become that uncle for a young queer person in my family in the future. And that I might have to bear that unacknowledged truth in the air, it already feels stifling.

 “After all, if there are different ways of following lines, there are also different ways of deviating from them, as deviations that might come “out” at different points” (176)

-       Me looking at my past experiences. Thinking about all the things I’ve written above. Thinking about all the things I could have written but didn’t. I’m both overwhelmed / exhausted and hopeful / ready for all the ways which I have found out and all the ways which are yet to be discovered that I can deviate from the lines of straightness and even queerness.

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Production photos from username. Please note: these images contain allusions to self harm. 

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Digital Divides (Leo)

I find this week’s topic particularly relevant to my life right now. The show that I just finished directing was literally about the ideas presented in Popat’s and Preece’s writing. username told the story of 17 year old – closeted – Toby and his need to express himself online via a female bodied avatar.

We discussed, at length, the physical and symbolic demarcations of the virtual and the real space. Our set literally divided the playing space into an upstage physical world and a downstage virtual world. The lights in the real world were simple and warm, but cold and elaborate in the virtual. Sound, costume and make up also further augmented this separation.

 One of my biggest issues going in, was how to sustain Toby’s presence, experience, and perspective in the space while having the focus be on the action that was happening in the virtual world via the avatars.  This specifically relates to a quote in Popat and Preece’s writing: “We discussed earlier how the body disappears when attention and/or intention is directed elsewhere, courtesy of the body schema’s ability to operate quietly and effectively in the background” (Page 170).

 We had to strive to strike the perfect balance between Toby in the real world and the avatars in the virtual world. Toby’s function and presence was a quiet but necessary one in the background of the space, serving to anchor the action in the virtual world. We tried to plant part of his experience in the foreground via a projection of his face, reacting and thinking about his interactions in the virtual world with his virtual friends. I found myself, at times, forgetting about Toby (a sort of disappearance) when attention was clearly directed in the virtual action, but could always check back in with Toby (both the projection and his physical body in the upstage area) to see him operating and driving the force of the entire show.

 More importantly, the production challenged the logic of this separation and explored what it meant for the physical to spill into the virtual. As his online relationship with another avatar developed rapidly, Toby became too invested in this virtual space and began to further expand the way he spanned the two subjects. As stated in the writing: “The flow of information and feedback between body and avatar through the umbilical cord of the interface means that neither is fully physical and neither is entirely virtual, since the embodied agent spans the two subjects, with one foot in each metaphorical camp” (173). We staged a moment where Toby crossed the threshold and stepped into the virtual world, Toby faced the avatar and the avatar gingerly tussled his hair and kissed him on the cheek. She then stepped back and let Toby continue the interactions with the other male avatar. This moment seems to be the representation of the actual being realized as truly as possible within the parameters of the virtual. Toby felt so close to Rickie the Avatar that he was able to bend the rules and touch him physically.  

 Another huge thing we explored was how one feels more compelled to be honest and vulnerable in a virtual body as opposed to a physical one. In a sense, this is another instance of the disappearance of the physical body with an increased attention and intention in the virtual body. What is it about virtual space and body that makes people so vulnerable and open? Or alternatively, what is it about physical space and bodies that make people guarded and closed off. What is the threat in physical space that is absent in virtual space (threat not referring to situations where virtually you’re offered an actual safety from violence rooted in discrimination that you don’t have in the physical world, but rather threat in the sense that it infringes on your comfort in the physical)?

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Denaturing the Body (Leo)

My thoughts on this are unorganized and under developed, so I decided to share a couple articles (about the best PMS movies) that I thought were ridiculous, funny, and relevant. However, I will try to organize my few thoughts below. And as a disclaimer, I anticipate I’ll be taking a somewhat oppositional position to a few specifics of the arguments and material this week, and that’s mostly to serve as Devil’s advocate and only minutely influenced by some tiny unformed, and uninformed perceptions I have in my head.

First: In response to Haraway’s article I was both nodding my head in agreement and rolling my eyes with a groan. My experience with the reading is as follows: I couldn’t help but feel that Donna Haraway was indirectly representational of those people on Facebook that many of my misinformed, conservative (and all together problematic) acquaintances from home would hate. Arguing that science, as it stands, can not serve as objective truth would seem ridiculous to them, and it did to me as well, when I began reading.  

However, I’ve seen (via Facebook) what a non wavering commitment to science in the face of non normative practices (particularly in race, gender, and sexuality) looks like. And it isn’t pretty. So the need and desire to move away from a reliance on science, as it stands, as a beacon and marker for irrefutable truth and objectiveness was something that I relate to tremendously. However, I’m only saying that in so much as I want that moving away from reliance on science for issues that either affect me directly or that I perceive to be more nuanced than the science pushers make them out to be. But an expectation and norm to use “radical multiplicity of local knowledge” as a substitute or supplement to the objective knowledge science currently offers is worrisome to me. In so much that “local knowledge” - to me- is dependent on environment and those around you. And if there’s anything I’ve learned by growing up in Arizona (in a predominately Mexican - Catholic immigrant community) and then spending 4 years at Columbia is that the language used to speak about things and even more simply the things spoken about are on two monumentally different planes. From the little I know about science and research, I know a big focus is the reproducibility and applicability of results to a general population. For me, that seems impossible with this move to truth because it’s  informed by an aggregate of local knowledge, which at the end of the day is local, and not global. So where does Objectivity come from now? 

Second: In response to Robyn DeLuca’s Ted talk. 

Just from the collection of my “local knowledge” and experience with female friends, I feel like a vast majority of my close female friends experience significant  PMS. So for me, the percentages that were as low as 8% of women experiencing PMS were new and surprising to me. 

But more importantly a lot of my issues with the Ted Talk (in conjunction with Haraway’s reading) is that she’s trying to refute scientific research with more scientific research. And while she did a great job of delineating the differences in older research and more current research, I just can’t help but feel that her presentation of the science and statistics was not 100% objective, because nobody can present science and statistics in a 100% objective way, it just isn’t possible. For instance, the distinction between retrospective and prospective reporting to me was sort of moot because while prospective reporting is better than retrospective, self reporting in general is still not a super reliable way to collect data. 

But beyond the science aspect of it (which I’m not qualified enough to comment on, to be honest). A Ted talk like this worries me in so much that it seems to be trying to sway the current to a more “dispel the myth of PMS” direction. Which, in and of itself, is productive. And I understand, as much as I can as a biological male, that a lot of this sort of argument is a push back against society’s ridiculous depictions and limitations and judgments of women based on menstruation. I can see the need to try and correct the perceived social knowledge from “all women get PMS” to very few do, or at least very few are affected in a way that aligns with representations in media. But the direction this Ted talk seems to be going is a sort of delegitimization of the experience of those women that do experience PMDD in a severe way. And while I think trying to educate the general public on a more nuanced view of PMS and menstruation is never a bad thing, I think this rhetoric - of trying to dismantle the conception and minimize the relevance of PMDD and menstruation when discussing women’s competence (while completely necessary, in most senses) - has a similar influence on young woman (and how they experience, identify, and discuss their experiences with menstruation) as the rhetoric of the irrational, moody, and emotional menstruating female. 

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10 Films That’ll Give You The Perfect Outlet For Your PMS Outbursts

Must cry it all out.

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Netflix to Award 'Best PMS Drama' Because Ladies Be Sappy

Look, let's just put this out there right away — Netflix does more good than it does bad. I am very grateful for the many hours that the site has kept me away from that whole "being productive" thing and for the amount of times it has given me the opportunity to ignore phone calls from my own dear family so that I can rewatch the first season of Skins (UK, obviously) for the eighth time. Really, I am grateful, as we all should be, which is why I say this with such heavy heart. Netflix, your Flixies awards, particularly the "Best PMS Movie" category, are a little bullshitty.

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Sex Sells (Leo)

I think Jennifer Tyburczy’s reading brings up a valid point. I think examining the curation of sexuality and queerness within museums is a fruitful endeavor. However, I feel that her perspective is academically skewed in the sense that she may be overestimating the reach and influence museum displays and exhibitions have on society as a whole. That is to say, when she calls museums “… Western modernity’s quintessential space of display” (Page 5) she very naively assumes that a museum is the foremost, and most effective space for display, which I find wrong. 

Simply in terms of geography, museums tend to be much more concentrated in urban areas, and hard to come by in more rural areas. Furthermore, the act of visiting a museum as a past time is something that is relevant to a very specific and narrow audience and is certainly not an accessible experience or one that can be disseminated. Aside from the classist and exclusionary undertones that I read into her placing so much emphasis on museums as the quintessential medium for display and curation of sexuality, I think museums pale in comparison to the influence and reach that the media has. Which was a perfect entry point into engaging with the primary curations this week. While the “mobile elements” that intersect in a museum display that Tyburczy describes – which I found quite fascinating and relevant – aren’t applicable to music videos, I think that the display and curation of sexuality in music videos offers a more fruitful, relevant, and generalizable indication of the history and progression of sexuality and how we as a society interact with it.

 The music videos were a generally good mix between the traditional video format of using female bodies as props and a more recent trope of self-empowering sexual woman in the foreground of the videos. However, one thing that exists through almost all of them, is the (heterosexual) male gaze. Even though in Dangerous Woman or Good to You we see Ariana and Selena (respectively) exercising agency as sexual women – sexual to the extent that they are rolling around beds and couches while caressing their bodies - it doesn’t yet seem to be divorced from the association to a man. That association to a man is visually represented by the way in which they both look and interact with the camera. I feel that it teeters the line between a progressive video featuring a woman in command of her sexuality without the physical presence of a man and a POV (Point of View) porn video. It is very obvious that the flirtatious / coy / seductive/ sexual, etc. etc. looks to the camera in both videos are directed to an audience that would respond to that. However, in Fade we also have a woman alone (for the majority of the video) but without the implied sexual connection to a man that comes with engaging with the camera as if it were the gaze of a man. This to me, is the most “progressive of the videos” in the way in which it features the female body and the female as an active agent. A huge part of the success and allure of the Fade video is an appreciation for Teyana Taylor’s amazing talent with dancing. However, we know that it’s not a video meant to solely highlight her talents, because otherwise – I venture to assume – there wouldn’t be such an obvious effort to display the female body via the minimal clothing choice. However, I think that the choice to have her covered up in an effort to subvert/avoid/resist the male gaze would only legitimize it further. Which I think brings up a difficult paradox of how to navigate, subvert, and ultimately dismantle the rampant misogynistic and patriarchal influence and expectation of music, videos, and film while not breaking down women along with it.

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Looking, Learning (Leo)

My experience watching Too Many Cooks was a rather infuriating and uncomfortable one because I am not an inherent fan of the “let’s sustain this moment beyond its initial moment of funny and push and push and push until it becomes funny again.” Another thing that factored into my physical discomfort and vocal anger about this piece was trying to view it with an academic lens (which ironically enough Dominick Mayer sort of denounces in his Daily Dot article that Christine included in the supplemental material) and failing to understand how it fit into a class called Performing Women, and just plainly understanding it. Sure, there was the references to the slasher film and the objectification of the female body; not that I’m excusing it, but rather it didn’t seem to be what was at the heart of the “comedic” short.

After actually doing the reading, my mind began to shift in relation to Too Many Cooks, and I realized that a lot of my frustration came from a dissonance between my spectatorship or “gaze” and that of Casper Kelly or the one he intended it for or the one he implicitly had when creating the short. I did some further research and watched an episode and a half of Casper Kelly’s other show on [Adult Swim] Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell. And immediately, I realized that the humor at play was a humor that was catering to a narrow and specific audience or spectator. The protagonists were all (white, cisgendered, heterosexual) men. Furthermore, women were used as commodities for their inherent sexual value: the ex girlfriend, or the “piece of ass” that satan uses only for sex. The first episode dealt with a famous, fictional baseball player from Venezuela. The episode relied on the trope of the Central American baseball player that has become at this point a caricature and representation of one of the scarce options white men seem to have one sharing the narratives and stories of Latin Americans. Furthermore, the main character also says at one point – when having a conversation over lunch – “And then it turns out it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Dave Matthews. It was just a Mexican.” Which, sure might be funny to some (i.e. white people who don’t have an understanding or acknowledgment of Mexican culture). But as a Mexican American individual the joke lands differently with me. Because “just a Mexican” isn’t a strong punchline for a joke, because the Mexican identity isn’t something that I will allow to be a commodity to trade in for laughs.  

 In the EW interview Casper shares (in regard to the infomercials airing schedule that Too Many Cooks fit into) “I think we did nine of them, just for people to stumble across and be confused. That’s the kind of thing that amuses us at Adult Swim.” That specific quote, also, really irritated me. What I think of when I read that is establishing a power dynamic between creator and spectator that is rather inaccessible and uninviting. Moreover, I think this specific amusement that these creators get is at the expense of those who would fit into the camp that Drew Magary so vocally denounced. Those that have a need to over analyze. However, this complaint that nothing can ever be “just a thing and not what we say it is” as Mayer describes can be assumed to come from mostly a place of privilege. This privilege is structurally similar to the privilege of those students on campus that mock, and criticize the implementation of Content and Trigger warnings. That is to say, that more often than not, the desire to just watch a funny show without worrying about or considering the ways in which it can be offensive, insensitive and harmful is a desire that usually comes from being in a position of privilege in which your identities are mostly respected, accepted, and acknowledged in society and pop culture. Or that mocking at TW or CW usually means that you’ve never had to suffer the very real and physical affects of a panic attack triggered by something that reminded you of a past trauma. And I definitely don’t venture to say that members of marginalized identity groups can’t at times have a similar desire, but it’s much less frequent and ardent than those in position of privilege. And for me, all I can sense and feel and see is this privilege, when viewing Casper Kelly’s other works or reading articles that criticize the relentless stream of think pieces.