1. ETA, 2013.07.29: Cf. this piece on the word 'queer', by Yasmin Nair; i have been heavily influenced by the early-90s usages of the word 'queer' she describes therein.
2. i recently read an exchange where someone attempted to 'educate' someone else that the word 'queer' was offensive, apparently unaware that there are many thousands - if not millions! - of people who publicly proudly use the word to describe themselves.
3. So that, for example, i have on several occasions encountered forms where i have to specify whether i'm 'heterosexual', 'homosexual', 'bisexual' or 'transsexual'. :-/
It’s an issue of the state enforcing heteronormativity on people’s lives – which is not only a gay rights issue, but more generally an issue for anyone in Malawi who doesn’t fit heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality, such as this couple. And when the Western media – including sections of the Western lesbian and gay media – erase the existence of transgendered / intersex people by squeezing a story into simplistic dichotomous notions of gender and sexuality, they are supporting the same categorical structures as the Malawian state, and simply differing on the issue of whether people placed within one part of those structures should be persecuted.
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nyabn laments the lack of interest exhibited by many non-monosexual people in organising around bi-relevant issues and/or supporting bi advocacy groups. It very much put me in mind of an email i wrote to the Bi-Victoria e-list last year in response to someone suggesting that maybe most bi people don't really believe in the existence of a "bi community" and/or that a bi community based on activism and discussion is irrelevant to their needs:On the basis of my experiences, i suspect you may be right - at least in the Australian context. (i've very much got the impression that there are thriving bi activist communities in the UK and US, as evidenced by the bi-related cons in those countries.)Perhaps
As some background, i'd like to once again requote some data from the "Australian Study of Health and Relationships", which found that, of the more than 14,000 people who responded to the survey,97.4% of men identified as heterosexual, 1.6% as gay and 0.9% as bisexual. For women 97.7% identified as heterosexual, 0.8% as gay and 1.4% bisexual. Nevertheless, 8.6% of men and 15.1% of women reported either feelings of attraction to the same sex or some sexual experience with the same sex. Half the men and two thirds of the women who had same sex sexual experience regarded themselves as heterosexual rather than homosexual. This illustrates that same sex attraction and experience are more common in Australia [than] is indicated by the relatively few people reporting a homosexual or bisexual identity.Given that the combined numbers of bisexual-identified people are roughly the same as the combined numbers of lesbian- and gay-identified people, i personally would expect that the amount of activism in the bi community would be within an order of magnitude or two of the amount of activism in the lesbian and gay communities (which is rather considerable). And yet the amount of public bi activism in Australia appears to me to be minimal. Why?
Is it because, as i mentioned in my last post, and as many lesbians and gay men have said for ages, bi people generally aren't affected by queerphobia? Do most bi people feel that biphobia doesn't really exist, or that it does exist but doesn't affect them? Are most bi people in differing-gender relationships and not affected by the issues surrounding same-gender relationships? Are there not issues that affect bi people specifically to greater extent than other parts of the population, homosexual or straight? (At least some research suggests that there are, e.g. [1]). Are non-monosexual people less and less identifying as 'bisexual', an identity under attack from at least two sides: on the one hand, from the notion that one can't be bisexual, but only in transition between forms of monosexuality; and on the other, from the notion that identities are often too restrictive and the cause of much angst as people try to pidgeonhole themselves and others? (i know a number of people who identify as 'bisexual', yet in practice are not only attracted to people who identify as 'male' or 'female' but to people who have another gender identity altogether.) Is there an "I'm all right Jack"-type attitude prevalent amongst bi people? Do bi people on average have more commitments than lesbian and gay people, or are bi people on average more affected by adverse life events than lesbian and gay people, such that bi people are less able to involve themselves in activism?
Please note that i'm not saying that any of the above things /are/ true - i'm genuinely wondering any of those things are in fact the case, and a determining factor in the relatively low amount of bi activism in Australia when compared to the amount of lesbian and gay activism. Any research that people could point me to which may assist in answering these questions would be most welcome. :-)
. . .
[1] From an article published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in May 2002:METHOD: A community survey of 4824 adults was carried out in Canberra, Australia. Measures covered anxiety, depression, suicidality, alcohol misuse, positive and negative affect and a range of risk factors for poorer mental health. RESULTS: The bisexual group was highest on measures of anxiety, depression and negative affect, with the homosexual group falling between the other two groups. Both the bisexual and homosexual groups were high on suicidality. Bisexuals also had more current adverse life events, greater childhood adversity, less positive support from family, more negative support from friends and a higher frequency of financial problems. Homosexual reported greater childhood adversity and less positive support from family. CONCLUSIONS: The bisexual group had the worst mental health, although homosexual participants also tended to report more distress.
nyabn's post indicates that this issue is not as localised to Australia as i thought?
Personally, i feel /far/ more at home amongst a group of women (whether cis or trans) than amongst men; but i'm also conscious of the fact that at least some women will feel i'm male enough to make them feel uncomfortable and to warrant my exclusion.Cisgendered people get many privileges that trans people don't, many of which are described in the non-trans privilege checklist (itself based on the 'white privilege checklist' first described in Peggy McIntosh's influential essay "White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack"). The issue i've discussed here is point 4 in that list.
not_in_denial has just posted about the toxic attitudes that permeate the Melbourne queer scene. Combined with today's news that heterosexuals can legally be excluded from queer venues here in Melbourne, which raises questions of whether those of us queers who aren't "visibly" lesbian or gay would be allowed to attend such venues, i am reminded me of the old Groucho Marx quote along the lines of I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.:-/
The Victorian Government says a register for same-sex couples will remove discrimination under the law. . . .
Mr Hulls says the State Register will make the system consistent.
He says it is not a step towards gay marriage but will give all couples equal rights under the law.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has threatened to cancel an important once-a-decade conference of Anglican bishops because he fears it will breakdown during debate over gay rights. . . .Personally, i think the bible is fairly clear in its condemnation of same-sex-oriented sexuality1 (refer to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible for the details); but that's okay, because unless we're also willing to go along with the Bible's failure to condemn such things as slavery and genocide, it's clear that it's not the be-all and end-all of guidance on issues of morality.
He accused many international Anglican bishops of misreading the bible on questions of homosexuality. . . .
Archbishop Williams said that the conference could become a dysfunctional debate over gay rights, gay marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian priests.
A man who was beaten and stabbed after a street fight with seven avowed lesbians testified Wednesday that he thought he was going to die after they jumped him last year."Avowed lesbians", eh? i'm sure that the use of "avowed" wasn't an attempt to give a subtext of "Yeah, we hate men, and we're proud of it!" :-P But how did this situation come about?
[The victim] said that as the women walked by, he spoke to one of them because he found her attractive. Buckle said a heavyset woman in the group said something rude.Oh yes, that's right, i forgot: we all know it's impossible for heterosexual men to quietly find someone attractive; indeed, they have an obligation to approach that person and say something to them. And then, too, women should obviously just accept the compliment, regardless of the fact that it's come from a complete stranger whose opinion they may well not give two hoots about. So there was no need for one of the women to be rude! :-P
"She just started dogging me out, being loud and disrespectful," he said. "I think I called her an elephant and told her I wasn't talking to her."Yeah, because hitting on strangers in the street is in no way disrespectful itself, and making sizeist remarks should in no way inflame the situation.
Buckle said she spoke disparagingly of his looks and clothing, saying he was wearing cheap sneakers."Unfair! Just because i called you an elephant, doesn't give you the right to criticise my looks!"
Meanwhile, another woman spat on him and he spat back.And finally we get to the point of incommensurate response on the part of the dykes in question - the first point at which it seems to me that they went too far. On the other hand, the article is dominated by Buckle's version of events, and i think it's reasonable to want to know the dykes' version in a bit more detail than the article provides.
The women surrounded and attacked Buckle, he said.
It is the Board’s experience that discrimination and vilification against people on the ground of their bisexuality is a reality and that this treatment has serious consequences for bisexual people in their public life. In many cases the unfair treatment of bisexual people flows directly from their bisexuality and not from presumed homosexuality. Accordingly the ground of homosexuality is ineffective in addressing discrimination and vilification experienced by bisexual people.On a related note, New South Wales' anti-discrimination legislation forbids discrimination on the grounds of actual or assumed homosexuality, and actual or assumed transgenderism - but not actual or assumed bisexuality. :-P
curlygrrrl, which have provoked some thoughts i wanted to set down here.
postqueer community, an article entitled "Imagining Queer Studies Out of the Doldrums". The article author writes that:[M]y classes have always remained well enrolled (today I still turn away students, even with an enrollment cap of 40), but gradually the political energy has died away almost completely. The students in California (before I left in 2004) and now in West Virginia have become remarkably blasé concerning (what they consider) the few lingering vestiges of homophobia and increasingly eager to claim that life is actually pretty good now, with our many queer television shows, product lines, and other lifestyle components. While vicious gay-marriage debates rage in the media, Brokeback Mountain stirs up heated local controversy, and Fred Phelps's "God Hates Fags" picketers show up at local gay-pride events, even self-identifying queer students seem stunningly dismissive of politics generally, relying often on eye rolling as both critique and response.The question is, though, what constitutes 'politics'? Another post to the
postqueer community, about the Post Porn Politics Symposium Berlin 14. + 15.10.2006 at Volksbuehne Berlin, perhaps offers a hint: Today, queer theorists like Beatriz Preciado or Marie-Helene Boucier re-evalue the term post-porn to theorise sex in the age of transgender subjectivity and disidentification, drag and cyberspace. When understanding pornography as a central dispositif of late capitalism for the normalisation and disciplination of pleasures and bodies, political ambivalences and counter-strategies are needed to be discussed and mapped out without totalising cultural pessimism.In this context, it would seem that to be politically 'active', one has to be an artist of some sort. The summary doesn't mention things like building alliances between diverse sexual and/or gender communities. i don't know what things are like nowadays, but when i was doing Women's Studies at uni in the early 90s, there was much talk of diversity and plurality and subjectivity and well-deserved critiques of universalising and/or totalising theories (e.g. Marxism), but much less talk of commonalities between particular people and groups. In other words, in response to decades of politics dominated by attempts at overarching theories, the pendulum has now swung towards on overarching emphasis on differences rather than commonalities. So it doesn't surprise me to discern two main trends in queer politics: firstly, queer assimilationism, with its blame-the-victim mentality and its inability or unwllingness to grasp the concept of solidarity; and secondly, "performance as protest", exemplified by the Berlin symposium mentioned above.
This symposium, which features theorists, performers, filmmakers, artists and musicians, understands itself as a political intervention into both the heteronormative landscape of commercial porn production and the discourses of the mainstream public which make it impossible to think and practice criticism and pleasure at the same time.
In two conference-days, a performance night and a final party, queer-feminist approaches to porn are discussed, reflected, valued and affirmed in a wide range of contributions between utopia and scepticism.
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