#special topic summary

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Unit Seven Post: “The Queer Hokey-Pokey” Summary

For my special topic post for unit seven, I chose “The Queer Hokey-Pokey” by Joy Young, another YouTube pick. This one represents my special topic, because Young is speaking about a friend whose sexuality is invisible because of her hair--until she gets a haircut, no one sees her as queer. Young’s friend “beamed about her hair, her own queer bat signal in the sky, announcing her lesbian arrival, though she’s been here as long as I remember.” This goes with the unit topic of performing gender and sexuality, because the poem is about how we present our sexualities and how other people perceive them, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. It links the visibility of sexuality with how people dress and act.

In Gender Stories, Foss, Domenico, and Foss explain that the social circumstances that influence a person has a lot to do with how they perform their gender. “The rules and norms constructed by an audience affect performances” (173). In Young’s poem, the friend wanted to cut her hair in order to be more visible as a queer person. The social situation that excludes more feminine-presenting women from the possibility of being queer influenced how this woman presented herself. She felt like she had to get a short hair cut--a stereotype of lesbians--in order to be accepted. (“She chokes out another gasp of ‘I’m gay’ when men come onto her, and they’ll believe her now.”) Just as Foss, Domenico, and Foss explain that a haircut is a way of performing gender, it is a way of performing sexuality.

In the article “Coming Out, Again’: boundaries, identities and spaces of belonging” by Kirsten McLean, she explores how insiders in lesbian communities felt when they came out as having a fluid sexuality. She finds that “while sexuality may indeed be flexible for some, perceived norms that create boundaries around sexual identity categories prevent this flexibility from being fully realised in certain contexts” (312). That’s to say, many women lost lesbian friends, because they didn’t accept the idea of sexual fluidity. The idea of sexuality being fluid and changing is a part of its performance--that every day, sexuality is re-performed because “everything you say and the tone you use...even small behavioral details...all contribute to distinct [sexuality] performances” (Foss, Domenico, Foss 164-5). The hostility the lesbians in McLean’s study felt to sexual fluidity is due to the norms that decide what makes a lesbian. And those same norms are why Young’s friend cut her hair. In Young’s words, “she snaps another photo to send, and we can all see her now.”

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Unit Six Post: “Labels” Summary

For my special topic in unit six, I chose Wyatt Fleckenstein’s poem “Labels,” which I found on YouTube under the recommended videos section. This represents sexuality, because the whole poem is Fleckenstein’s experience of being queer, namely in terms of dealing with family ignorance (Fleckenstein’s mother’s love despite difference). It also represents unit six, because, as I mentioned in my last post for unit six, slam poetry is a type of pop culture. Fleckenstein doesn’t specifically make pop culture references, but understanding this poem as pop culture allows me to analyze it within the terms set up in Gender Stories.

According to Gender Stories, one of the ways to rewrite the binary (out of the three: retell, revise, and rewrite), is through synthesis. In terms of gender, that means a “strategy [that] allows one body to carry markers  and meanings of both genders simultaneously without privileging either” (Foss, Domenico, Foss 128). While Fleckenstein does represent ambiguous gender roles (“she bought me men’s dress shirts for my job interviews.”), I would argue that this poem also synthesizes sexuality. When describing sexuality, Fleckenstein uses the term queer, which like gender can be, is “fluid, ambiguous, and multiple within the same person” (Foss, Domenico, Foss 128). As Fleckenstein says, “She (the mom) is trying to learn what queer means. I tell her for me, it’s mostly about the people I’m attracted to, but it’s a complicated identity; I say, don’t assume it’s the same for everyone.” This is also similar to how Gender Stories discusses asexuality, though they explain that asexuality opts out of the binary altogether because asexuality includes no desire to have sex and the binary is inherently sexual.

According to Pflag.org, queer is an umbrella term for someone “who feels somehow outside of the societal norms in regards to gender or sexuality. Relating to Fleckenstein’s poem, it is also a “fluid label as opposed to a solid label, one that only requires us to acknowledge that we’re different without specifying how or in what context” (“A Definition of Queer”). I would argue that this lack of labels--a big point to Fleckenstein’s poem--is a way to rewrite the binary. That’s because, for all the oppositions/sides to it, the binary relies on labels and categories. To refuse exact labels is a way to refuse the binary itself. According to Gender Stories, “openness and flexibility are the only rules for constructing and performing this kind of [sexuality]” (Foss, Domenico, Foss 132). Much like familial interactions, Fleckenstein’s sexuality is portrayed as open and flexible.

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Unit Three Post: “The Virgin’s Lament” Summary

My special topic post for unit three is the poem “The Virgin’s Lament” by Talia Young. I found this poem while scrolling through recommended videos on YouTube. I picked it for my special topic of sexuality, because in it, Young is speaking openly about her sexuality. This relates to gender and sexuality stereotypes, because Young both embodies and breaks certain stereotypes. Her presentation of the poem and her sense of humor is best defined as awkward or quirky. The fact that she is speaking about being a virgin fulfills the stereotype that it is only a certain type of woman who “gets” men or has sex. Also, the desire with which she talks about having sex could be twisted as desperation—which is another stereotype put upon women who are more open about their sexual desire. However, the fact that Young does speak so openly about her sexual desire breaks the stereotype that women are too pure to have and discuss sex.

This poem reminded me of our class reading by David Freedman about the sperm and the egg. In that article, Freedman explains that most scientific reports of the fertilization process depict that the egg is a passive vehicle that the sperm takes over and fertilizes. However, Freedman explains, the reality is that the egg is the one that attacks the sperm—it is U.S. cultural stereotypes of men being aggressive heroes and women being helpless and waiting for a man to save them that get transposed over the sperm and the egg. This relates to Young’s poem because, in it, she discusses how she isn’t just sexually frustrated—she longs deeply for sex, for romance. She says at one point that masturbating isn’t enough; she feels like she needs sex with another (man) to truly understand her body and her sexuality. Though she isn’t enthusiastic about that, she sees herself in that passive role—the same stereotype that Freedman describes.

An article called “"I'd be just as happy with a cup of tea": Women's accounts of sex and affection in long-term heterosexual relationships” by Nikki Hayfield and Victoria Clarke interviewed several heterosexual British women and found that they mostly found sexual desire healthy; however, they all described not experiencing sexual desire very often. Rather, they would have to have sex in response to their male partners’ excessive sex drives. I found this article interesting in light of Young’s poem. She experiences the strong desire that these women do not express. It raises questions, on my opinion, about how place and age affect sexual desire. How much is Young describing sexual drive and a desire for love or romance? How are they conflated for young people in the U.S.? In light of this article, would Young’s sexual desire change with the status of her virginity—i.e. is the main point of her poem that the elusiveness of sex, for her, is what makes it most desirable?

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Unit One Post: “God Is Gay” Summary

I found “God is Gay” by Elliot Darrow from a Buzzfeed article about LBGTQ slam poetry. This represents my special interest topic (sexuality in [slam] poetry) and unit one, because while Darrow obviously is speaking about sexuality, it confronts the basic gender/sexuality topics that we discussed in unit one, such as social construction. I think this is apparent in when he discusses the etymology of a certain slur used against gay people, as well as how many Christian sects construct the idea that gay people are sinners based on a few Biblical passages. As he discusses the topic of Christianity, it is apparent to me that religion is a huge force in constructing ideals of gender and sexuality in people's lives.

This reminds me of Sonja Foss, Mary Domenico, and Karen Foss’s explanation of gender as a social construction and the aspects of society that construct it, “Religion is another part of life that may have taught you the roles expected of men and women in the binary... The two genders are seen as physically and emotionally different” (66). While the poem doesn’t discuss gender difference, Darrow is dealing with other inequality that is taught from the Bible. Foss, Domenico, and Foss explain that while the Bible helps construct gender roles, it is up to us to unlearn them--and possibly, then, realize to take the Bible’s statements less literally. Darrow is helping us see that Christianity as demonstrated in the United States often preaches ideas (like gay people being sinners) that need to be unlearned in order for acceptance and equality between all sexual identities. He also expresses the hypocrisy of straight Christians being bigoted but still assuming they’re entitled to God and God’s grace when queer people are not solely on account of their sexuality.

This relates to an article by Caryle Murphy from Pew Research Center that over the past several years, many groups of Christianity in the U.S. have become more accepting of homosexuality. As stated in the article, “a majority of U.S. Christians (54%) now say that homosexuality should be accepted, rather than discouraged, by society. While this is still considerably lower than the shares of religiously unaffiliated people (83%) and members of non-Christian faiths (76%) who say the same, the Christian figure has increased by 10 percentage points since we conducted a similar study in 2007” (Murphy). This is good news the topic of Darrow’s poem--hopefully Christianity will continue to accept homosexuality and that gay people should be able to be a part of whatever churches they desire. However, it also makes me wonder how accepting Christianity is of sexual identities outside of homosexuality. This all makes me think of same-sex marriage being legalized: while it’s an important victory, it is also just one step for acceptance and safety for many more issues in sexuality. And how do intersections, as I talked about in my last summary, play a role? Aside from God just being gay, perhaps we should consider God being queer or trans or one of many different identities that ought to be accepted, too.