Everyone's an Activist

In Chong-suk Han's, "They Don't Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion," Han speaks of the existing discrimination against any race that is not simply white in the gay community.

In the beginning of the article, I was a tad lost.. Not truly understanding the direction this article was going to take, until I stumbled upon this paragraph:

"Whiteness in the gay community is every­where, from what we see, what we experience, and more importantly, what we desire. The power of whiteness, of course, derives from appearing to be nothing in particular (Lipsitz, 1998). That is, whiteness is powerful precisely because it is every where but nowhere in particular. When we see whiteness, we process it as if it doesn't exist or that its existence is simply natural. We don't see it precisely because we see it constantly. It blends into the background and then becomes erased from scrutiny."

Hans went on to show examples of this theory through pop culture and the media.When he included the tv show "Will and Grace," it dawned on me. YES! It's true. By why?

I was also intrigued by Han's article when he wrote,

"Gay organizations themselves promote and reinforce the whiteness of gay life. The gay movement that once embodied the ideals of liberation, freedom, and social justice quickly turned to the causes of promoting gay pride through visibility and lob­bying efforts that forced established institutions­ particularly media institutions-to re-examine mainstream heterosexist bias against gay men and women. Doing so, however, led to the unfortu­nate consequence of ignoring non-gay issues such as 'homelessness, unemployment, welfare, uni­versal health care, union organizing, affirmative action, and abortion rights'. Promoting gay issues meant promoting acceptance rather than liberation. To do so, gay activists adapted various whitening practices to sell gay America to the heartland of America by: mirroring the whiteness of men who run pow­erful institutions as a strategy for winning cred­ibility, acceptance, and integration; excluding people of color from gay institutions; selling gay as white to raise money, make a profit, and gain economic power; and daily wearing the palepro­tective coloring that camouflages the unques­tioned assumptions and unearned privileges of gay whiteness.

This is not some, "Oops, I didn't even notice," type of thing. They know. The gay community knows exactly what they are doing, with no care to stand up and equally fight for the minorities of their own groups. There is no such thing as a gay community. There are the more commonly known and accepted, "Gay Whites," "Gay Blacks," "Gay Latinos," "Gay Asians," and "Gay Native Americans." And consequently, not even those minorities fully accept each other. Han points this out in the following paragraph, 

"Rather than less, race seems to matter more to gay men than to straight men when it comes to mate selection. Examining personal ads, Phua and Kaufman (2003) found that gay men were significantly more likely to prefer one race and suggest that they may be more likely to exclude certain races as well. According to their data, gay men of color were much more likely to explicitly exclude members of their own race and much more likely to request another race (overwhelm­ingly white) than even gay white men."

While running the risk of sounding like a pyromaniac or an arsonist, I must say, Let Paris Burn!!

At the beginning of this article, I found it to be a burdensome read. I was in some ways "lost in translation." I had no idea was the authors point was. Although the beginning lost me at times, I did find some interesting points in the route to find my way.

"Given this cultural backdrop, it is not surprising that many black comedians appearing on television screens for the first time included as part of their acts impersonations of black women. The black woman depicted was usually held up as an object of ridicule, scorn, hatred (representing the "female" image everyone was allowed to laugh at and show contempt for). Often the moment when a black male comedian appeared in drag was the most successful segment of a given comedian's act (for example, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, or Eddie Murphy)."

The author caught my attention with this section because I have seen it true, many times.The author continues with, 

"Growing up in a world where black women were, and still are, the objects of extreme abuse, scorn, and ridicule, I felt these impersonations were aimed at reinforcing everyone's power over us."

That is where her point landed home for me. In basic words, I translate it to this: Jokes are made to be laughed at... When impersonating a black woman is your joke, it is stating that the act of being a black woman alone is something that should be laughed at. Shame on you Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx and Eddie Murphy, plus the countless other comedians who think this is by any means acceptable. These woman who you make fun of are your mothers, grandmothers, sisters and,  most times, your wives.There is nothing hysterical about that.

When the author began to speak in reference to "Paris is Burning," her message truly sunk in. She was showing me the subliminal messages I would have never caught on to. Yet, those messages were subliminal or hidden. They were thrown right at us! 

Here is one section of the reading I truly meditated on, 

"Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the  "feminine" that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to say when the idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a sexist idealization of white womanhood."

This idea goes back to the beginning of the semester when we were discussing privilege. That quote takes me directly to McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". It is basically saying "IF you're a going to be a man trying to be a woman (yuck!), you should at least be the best form of a woman, which is a white woman.

I will end with this quote from the reading,

"Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates "whiteness." These folks left the film saying it was "amazing," "marvelous," "incredibly funny," worthy of statements like, "Didn't you just love it?" And no, I didn't just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The "we" evoked here is all of us; black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness."

In an effort to refrain from constant procrastination, and a day off of work due to an injured finger, I decided to complete all my work early. Many, including myself, claim to produce their best work when under pressure. Whether that is an excuse or an actual fact, I am not sure. I am leaning more towards the truth side of that theory.

I found this article to drag terribly. I thought I would indulge into this reading, being that I am some sort of advocate for abstinence. I enjoy understanding opposing views on the subject. I, contrary to the Christians in Unity University, promote sex education and believe in order to make "virginity pledges" (which I am totally against), you should be educated on sex, sexual protection, sexually transmitted diseases, sex this, sex that.. You should know the different angles and positions of the idea of abstinence and being sexually active (All the pun intended). Although I believe abstinence and celibacy is best in my life, I have also vowed to just be an accepting person. I chose celibacy because I saw it as a way to value myself. As a female constantly being objectified, I saw celibacy as a way of keeping control over my life. In a world were sex was almost expected of me by this age, I wanted to be different. I saw myself in a world where we see girls constantly being trafficked as sexual items, rather than human beings. I saw the media putting so much pressure on women to just "give it up" and decided I wouldn't. I realized, girls were being robbed of the chance to be girls and prematurely tossed into womanhood. The first questions kids were asking their peers in an effort to get to know each other was their sexual limits and "how far they'd gone." We see human trafficking as a tragedy in other countries, but push it as a norm here. I didn't want to be part of that world. Sex was never meant to be the disaster it is now. Sex was made to be beautiful and intimate, and it was my personal choice to keep it that way in my life. However, it took for me not to be a virgin anymore to see it as that. I attended church, similar to Unity where if I had confessed my "sin", I would have been outcast. Not enough people were saying, "It's ok." I knew I wasn't a terrible person for not being a virgin, but did they? For me, I didn't see sex as empowering as the Goths do. But I am just one of many different ideas and views. Excuse me, for that short novel on my personal views.

I also might have this article to drag due to the fact that I had to Google the definition to at least three words per page and lost some of the fluency in the writing. I will list some of the words I had to look up without making myself seem completely illiterate.

stringent: (of regulations, requirements, or conditions) strict, precise, and exacting.

flout: openly disregard (a rule or law).

proscribe: forbid 

repudiate: refuse to accept or be associated with.

misogyny: the hatred of women

I must say, I really enjoyed reading articles about the opposite side of the spectrum. Growing up with five sisters, I was never really exposed to this box. But if I say so myself, I think I fit into that box quite nicely. I can see the variation of lifestyles that led me straight to that box as oppose to this ideal image of femininity. I see my two sisters and myself raised by a single mother and how manly we turned out, in a sense. On the other side, my three sisters who were raised with our father are all the words on the "Verbal Abuse" side of the box. "Wimp!" "Girl!" "Sissy!" They are emotional and dependent. My mother raised me to be my own man, and they were raised to be their father's girls. Its quite funny actually. But now I have a nephew and a niece, who are both still very young and I already see myself putting them into their perspective boxes. 

One thing that I think is important to point out is that, although no one is born into these boxes, some just fit into them right away. It is a smooth transition for some, while for others, usually the ones who have to fight to prove their ascribed membership into the box, it takes some work. My sister's husband is the manliest man I know. But he's 6'7 and roughly 280 pounds. He's been that height since he was in ninth grade. He played many sports, liked women and cars.. He never had to fight to prove anything. But he constantly had to fight for his best friend, who was a small rich boy, who liked sports, but wasn't good at them, liked girls, but didn't look good enough for them. For my brother's friend, it took much more work to get into that box. 

I have to say this is the most blunt of all the readings we have read. As soon as it begins I am struck with,

"But first we must ask: what is a woman? 'Tota niulier in utero', says one, 'woman is a womb'."

And it could be said I was sufficiently insulted there. However, this reading was full of these insults! Insult after insult after the harsh realization that there are people who actually hold these beliefs. The most striking paragraph, however, was on page four for me.

"Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: 'Woman, the relative being ... ' And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d 'Uriel: 'The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself ... Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.' And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called 'the sex', by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex - absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute .- she is the Other'."

Through each reading, my outlook on life changes. Even if it is a slight change, college is doing its job. It is helping me expand my views on life. I find myself feeling more empowered as a woman, even if most of the articles we read are about minorities and women, both who I am, being oppressed. I may be oppressed in sense of privilege and status, but my mind is not oppressed, or as oppressed as it used to be. Wisdom not only grows through years, but mostly through experience. I can be sixty and experience very little and twenty and experience a lot. Thank you for this experience.

I rather enjoyed this article. The other articles talk about the environment of women stereotypes. The other articles spoke about the outside, if you understand what I am saying. This article focuses on the inside, and not the mushy emotional inside, but the actual way in which our bodies were designed to work. I truly appreciated Emily Martin's sense of detail and research. My favorite part, I believe, sums up the entire article.

"The real mystery is why the male's vast production of sperm is not seen as wasteful.12 Assuming that a man "produces" 100 million (108) sperm per day (a conservative estimate) during an average reproductive life of sixty years, he would produce well over two trillion sperm in his lifetime. Assuming that a woman "ripens" one egg per lunar month, or thirteen per year, over the course of her forty-year reproductive life, she would total five hundred eggs in her lifetime. But the word "waste" implies an excess, too much produced. Assuming two or three offspring, for every baby a woman produces, she wastes only around two hundred eggs. For every baby a man produces, he wastes more than one trillion sperm. How is it that positive images are denied to the bodies of women? A look at language-in this case, scientific language-provides the first clue. Take the egg and the sperm. It is remarkable how "femininely" the egg behaves and how "masculinely" the sperm. The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey, but passively "is transported," "is swept,"or even "drifts" along the Fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, "streamlined,"  and invariably active. They "deliver" their genes to the egg, "activate the developmental program of the egg," and have a "velocity" that is often remarked upon. Their tails are "strong" and efficiently powered. Together with the forces of ejaculation, they can "propel the semen into the deepest recesses of the vagina." For this they need "energy," "fuel,"so that with a "whiplashlike motion and strong lurches" they can "burrow through the egg coat" and "penetrate" it.

The title of a book or article can really make it or break it. When I read "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Aren't Enough," I was very intrigued and even inclined to read this one first. As I read about Levi Suydam, I was a tad confused. His story is history.. Get it?  Anywhoo, being that his case took place in 1843, I felt the need to do more research on it and the elections in which he decided to vote in. I acquainted myself his his/her story. S/he was complex indeed. This individual did not "lean" to any side for than the other. S/he confessed to at times sexually desiring women, but also held "feminine propensities" such as his/her fondness for gay colors. (Being that this took place so long ago, I believe we also have to ask ourselves if they meant gay colors as in "happy color" or homosexual colors.) His/her story was never quite completed from what I read, but it was nevertheless interesting. Fausto-Sterling continues to write about the sub-types included in hermaphrodites. She so kindly gave each nicknames such as "herms", "merms" and "ferms" which sound like language written in a Dr. Suess book or different types of diseases. But the most preposterous thing I read came soon after. 

"Intersexuality itself is old news. Hermaphrodites, for instance, are often featured in stories about human origins. Early biblical scholars believed Adam began life as a hermaphrodite and later divided into two people - a male and a female - after falling from grace."

I understand it was not even her idea, but come on. This was definitely  news to me. Reading this definitely made me lose complete interest in the reading and although I finished it, I had already lost the appeal for her words. 

PATRIARCHY, THE SYSTEM: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us 

ALLAN G. JOHNSON

"It is certainly possible for heterosexual men to love women without mentally fragmenting them into breasts, buttocks, genitals, and other variously desirable parts. It is possible for women to feel good about their bodies, to not judge themselves as being too fat, to not abuse themselves to one degree or another in pursuit of impossible male-identified standards of beauty and sexual attractiveness. All of this is possible; but to live in patriarchy is to breathe in misogynist images of women as objectified sexual property valued primarily for their usefulness to men."