Here’s to reasonable, pragmatic feminism! Down with outdated polemics!

I’m going to blog about something that happened a whole week ago. Everybody else has probably moved on by now, but being the self-appointed passer-of-judgement and ranter-in-chief of all the land is hard enough without having to worry about being timely as well. I have a rant brewing, so I’m just going to jump right in.

Last week, two male Sky Sports presenters were fired for having made a few comments belittling women. Times columnist Giles Coren, never one to pass up on making a few acerbic remarks, wrote a piece in the Daily Mail, pointing out that while making disparaging comments about women can get you fired, whole careers can be built out of ridiculing men. Case in point: Loose Women. I was very dedicated in researching this post, and braved a visit to the Daily Mail site to read the whole article. It was about as balanced as it gets with Coren, and he argued his point well. This view was not shared, however, by the Scottish Socialist Youth, whose vilifying response was kindly posted by Coren on his twitter feed. According to the SSY, Coren’s article is rampantly sexist, “like he’s tried to pack every offensive trope out there into the one piece”. Quite frankly, the SSY article was even more sexist, not only reinforcing outdated gender stereotypes, but undermining its own premise by embodying everything that is wrong with feminism.

To be quite honest, I didn’t make it to the end of the article. The strategy of the writer, identified only as Sarah, is to “demolish [Coren’s] pish line by line”, which doesn’t exactly make for an engaging argument. In any case, quoting a line and following it up with “stop making shit up” or “YOU SEXIST SHITEBAG” is not what I would call demolition. If the article is so badly written, you may wonder, why do I even draw attention to it in the first place? Because it represents perfectly many of the problems that, as feminists, we need to work against. Sarah claims that “MEN (the concept, i.e. how men as a whole act and are encouraged to act) ARE deeply unpleasant”. But when Coren dares to make a similarly sweeping statement about women as a whole, it’s evidence of his “deep-rooted misogyny”. This kind of mis-informed double standard gives feminism a bad name. Sarah also demonstrates an absolute inability, or refusal, to recognise irony. The content of Coren’s central point, that “while sexism from men is the outstanding social crime of the modern world, women can say exactly what they want about [men]” is completely ignored. Instead, Sarah takes the line out of context and uses it attack Coren as a person: “sexism from men is not ‘the outstanding social crime of the modern world’. Do you EVER read newspapers?”. Is it any wonder feminists are seen as angry man-haters?

Where Sarah really betrays her misunderstanding of the whole point of feminism is in her assertion that “sexism involves power relations”, and that because men hold all the power, there can be no sexism by women against men. Apparently it doesn’t cross her mind that power relations might change over time. If they didn’t, how do you explain the decline of the church’s influence, for example? Even 15 years ago, what Sarah is saying was true, but if she honestly believes that women’s voices are no more audible now than the were before the feminist movement, she needs to brush up on her history. Not so long ago, women were not allowed to open a bank account or get a job without their husbands’ permission. The very crux of the matter is that the feminist movement has changed attitudes towards women to such an extent that sexism against men is now conceivable. When certain feminists forget to recognise this, and focus instead on isolated incidents of misogyny, they fall into the trap of rehashing old debates at the expense of the practical issues at hand. The gender pay gap, the deficit of women in government and business, and the issue of maternity leave are just a few that pop to mind. Feminism is NOT dead, but if we don’t challenge them, articles like this one will soon kill public opinion of it.

Perez Hilton, the undercover queer theorist?

Next in my series of celebrities and queer theory: Perez Hilton!

First, as an educated person, let me defend my interest in celebrity gossip, and my love of Perez in particular. Celebrities these days are, it is true, often famous for being famous than for any extraordinary talent or achievement, but our much-bemoaned ‘obsession with celebrities’ is hardly a new phenomenon. In centuries past, people were just as interested in the personal lives of public figures as we are today. Today, we don’t view this interest as evidence of the dumbing down of society; we’re grateful to be able to study these past celebrities as products of and symbols for their time. In any case, associated as it may be with perma-tanned, straw-haired nail technicians reading Hello magazine in the hairdressers, celebrity gossip is not necessarily reserved for those of limited mental capacity: 86% of Perez readers in the UK have attended university. Full disclosure: I got that stat from Perez’s site. But despite my journalistic laziness, this only serves to highlight Perez’s influence. This influence is not something he takes lightly. When taken to task about the hypocrisy of supporting the anti-bullying campaign ‘It Gets Better‘ while simultaneously scrawling vicious comments and nicknames across photos of celebrities, he apologised, and gave up this bitchier practice. Some might say the site has lost a bit of its magic as a result, but that’s by the by. Regardless of his influence, drawing a connection between an academic theory and the self-styled ‘Queen of all media” may seem like a bit of a stretch, but in terms of popular culture at least, Perez is one of the most high-profile gay activists in the US (and therefore the world…?).

The gay rights movement of the 1970s focused on promoting the equality of gay men and women, and working towards their acceptance by mainstream society. By the mid-1980s, the AIDS crisis, along with the US government’s reaction to it, had begun to cast doubt on the effectiveness of this approach. Those affected directly by AIDS were no longer content to be accepted as long as they lived by the rules of the majority. By the time queer theory emerged in the early 1990s, a more radical approach to campaigning for gay rights has emerged, one less concerned with being accepted by the mainstream than with subverting it.

These days, the view that gay men and women are equal to straight people is, thankfully, widespread, but this has yet to be recognised by law, as has been recently demonstrated by the campaign to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell‘, and the furore over Proposition 8 in California. These are issues Perez has commented loudly. He reported twist and turn of the passage of DADT repeal through Congress and the Senate, and he doesn’t pull any punches in denouncing those who opposed it as ‘ignorant‘ or ‘unacceptable‘. Perez has also adopted other tactics pioneered by early gay rights campaigners, such as ‘outing’: check out the ‘Gay Gay Gay‘ section of his site to peruse the public figures whose sexuality he has questioned. All this serves to celebrate homosexuality for itself, not as a minority in need of acceptance by the mainstream. The institutionalisation of queer theory may have dampened its radical edge, but many of its tactics and goals are still being used, albeit by the least likely of people.

James Franco: more than just the thinking person’s hottie?

It seems to be turning into queer theory week here on my blog, and as it’s also the subject of my lecture this afternoon, it’s only going to get worse, I’m afraid.  But who cares?   I love queer theory, and it’s my blog.

I went to see 127 Hours the other day, which got me thinking about a feature I read on James Franco in New York magazine website a while back.  I don’t have the time to read through the whole thing again, so apologies if I misquote anything.  As you might not expect from someone who starred in Spiderman and Eat Pray Love, Franco is not your typical leading man movie star:  last year he took four MA programmes at once, and he’s currently doing a PhD at Yale.  What caught my eye in the article was his interest in queer theory, and how he’s “systematically challenging mass-cultural norms”.

At this point, though, I think we should all just take a moment to appreciate James Franco: the thinking person’s hottie.  And so obliging!  Just as I’m thinking about writing a post about his interest in queer theory, he comes out with this gem (thanks to perezhilton.com for the quote):

It’s funny because the way that kind of stuff is talked about on blogs is so black-and-white. It’s all cut-and-dry identity politics. ‘Is he straight or is he gay?’ Or, ‘This is your third gay movie — come out already!’ And all based on, gay or straight, based on the idea that your object of affection decides your sexuality.

There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys. And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I’m interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it’s coincidental, in other ways it’s not. I mean, I’ve played a gay man who’s living in the ’60s and ’70s, a gay man who we depicted in the ‘50s, and one being in the ‘20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I’m interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition. Or, you know what, maybe I’m just gay.”

Most blogs and celebrity gossip sites ignored most of the content of this and ran screaming headlines along the lines of JAMES FRANCO MIGHT BE GAY!!!!!  This (obviously) entirely misses the point, and also overlooks the importance of what he’s saying, particularly at the moment: in the context of the recent controversies over California’s Proposition 8 and the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, to have a mainstream, public voice talking intelligently and knowledgeably about the real issues at stake around sexuality, is a crucial counter to the shrill and sometimes irrational opinions being voiced at both extremes of the debate.

In response to Michael Glatze, the “former gay activist who left homosexuality”

My post the other day got me thinking about something that I read a few weeks ago.  When I was a teenager I listened to a lot of Christian music (I still maintain that it’s not all bad!), and I spent a lot of time on the Cross Rhythms website, listening to the radio, buying CDs and reading some of the articles.  I was nostalgically clicking through the site recently, and I came across an article which genuinely horrified me.  Michael Glatze, a former editor of Young Gay America magazine, became a Christian in 2005, which completely changed his outlook on life: once a “rising star in the gay movement”, he now claims to have left homosexuality.

Not much of the article is entirely new: the debate around Christianity and homosexuality is so current that the issues involved are well known.  However, this interview is one of the most extreme examples of anti-homosexual thought that I’ve read, and as such, I think it’s worth thinking about more thoroughly.

First, Glatze’s suggestion that the early death of his father contributed to his homosexuality is nonsensical, even discounting the fact that he acknowledges that he has no real knowledge or authority to make this kind of claim.  His father was cheating on his mother, and Glatze claims that not wanting to hurt anyone in the way his father did was a factor in his ‘becoming’ gay.  But why would this, or the loss of such a role model, change his orientation in any way?

He also claims that “our culture is very actively trying to destroy this notion of manhood”.  What notion of manhood is referring to here?  He gives no definition of what masculinity means, and yet he claims it is being destroyed.  He seems to be referring to feminism and the gay rights movement and the way they have challenged traditional ideas of gender; does he think of this as a challenge to masculinity, and not as resistance to conformity and persecution?

But it’s his description of the LGBT community as hypocritical which interests me the most.  He refers to queer theory, disparagingly noting that “all these high thinkers have analysed it and said that sexuality is fluid” (since when has thinking been a bad thing?).  He conflates this with what he calls “sin number one for the gay community”: gay people questioning their sexuality.  If sexuality is fluid, he asks, why is the gay community so unwilling to allow people to decide they are no longer gay?  His thinking here is based on a misunderstanding of queer theory, and the major misconception that it is one and the same with the gay community.  Queer theory aims to challenge conformity and show that heterosexuality is not the only ‘normal’ orientation.  To say that sexuality and identity are fluid is not to say that no one has preferences; rather, it refers to how the labels we use (gay, straight, transsexual, etc.) are arbitrary, and these boundaries can be crossed.  Quite separate from this is the idea, prevalent not only in the gay community, that sexual preference cannot be changed at will.  However, the two positions are not mutually exclusive: it is quite possible to believe that homosexuality arises from nature, not nurture, and that traditional sexual categories and labels need to be challenged.

I just hope that these kind of half-developed theories and opinions based on misunderstanding of the facts aren’t seriously accepted by any young people browsing the Cross Rhythms website for music as I once did.  After all, surely the fact that I’m so disgusted by something I used to love not so many years ago is an indication that identity is fluid?

The toilets of Utopia. Best. Title. Ever.

I’ve spent the day preparing for a lecture on queer theory, and I came across this anecdote in the reading material;

Have you ever been to a restaurant or somewhere, and you go to the toilet and you find two doors, one marked women and one marked men, and they’re both open and inside they’re both identical? well,the other day I was in this restaurant and there they were, the two identical rooms, side by side: but there were no signs on the doors. And I just stood there for a minute. And I wondered why they weren’t marked. It occurred to me that they could be marked with any words—and that at other times, and in other places, they might have been marked ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’. And could they even be marked ‘straights’ and ‘queers’? But these toilets belonged to some other era. They were the toilets of Utopia.

Lots to think about here.  Are these really the toilets of utopia?  Wouldn’t utopian toilets all be in one room?  Or are two rooms that we can enter and leave as we please a more utopian option?  But if that’s the case,  surely there should be an infinite number of unmarked rooms?  Or, totally abandoning the associations of the metaphor, surely a world without toilets would be truly utopian?

Before we fall into the abyss of the arcane (and the ridiculous), let’s take a few steps back from the brink.  Queer theory is a branch of critical theory that emerged in the early 90s.  One of its main assertions is that sexual identity, and indeed all identity, is not stable and unchanging, but fluid, subject to all kinds of influences.  Gender is a role that we play, rather than a natural state.  This draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s assertion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”:  if women of Beauvoir’s time lived up to stereotypes, for example, of being less intelligent, this was not due to an innate difference from men, but because society had made them that way by limiting their education.  In the same way, sexuality is a role, rather than a natural destiny.   Freud suggested that homosexuality is not a product of a different basic instinct to heterosexuality, but only differs in its choice of object: neither persuasion is more normal than the other.  In defining heterosexuality as the norm, society labelled homosexuality, for example, as deviant.  The irony is that rather than marginalising homosexuality, this demarcation actually created another group to which people could belong, and on which they could base their identity.  The idea of a stable sexual identity is therefore imposed by society, rather than nature, obscuring the individual’s true identity.

Coming back to the anecdote, the two identical bathrooms are a metaphor for sexuality, and the labels ‘women’ and ‘men’ represent the arbitrary labels we apply to different sexual behaviours.  The values we place on the differences between genders and sexualities are not natural, but have been imposed by history and society.  The unmarked rooms are utopian because they symbolise a world without these labels, in which people are not defined by their sexual identity.

Even beyond the content, though, there’s a lot to say about this anecdote.  Its structure mirrors the gradual enlightenment of contemporary Western society to this kind of thinking about identity and society.  At first glance, she (he? it?) is confounded by the lack of labels, just as any orientation other than heterosexual was once inconceivable in mainstream society.  Then she begins to wonder why the doors aren’t marked, just as people began to question whether heterosexuality was indeed the only natural expression of sexuality.  Finally, it occurs to her that they could be marked with anything, reflecting the emergence of queer theory and the idea that identity and sexuality are more complicated than society’s labels allow.

I love the construction “it occurred to me”, as though this thought was given to her.  She’s not imposing her view, it’s coming from the outside; it’s more like she’s been granted a glimpse of an underlying truth.

Don’t you just love picking things to pieces?