Thinking "Straight" SOC 107-031 2024 PDF

THINKING “STRAIGHT” SOC 107-031 13 February 2024 Image source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality SEXUALITY This chart, from the Trevor Project, aims to decenter heterosexuality and promote sexual and gender inclusivity. But does it express an essential trut...

THINKING “STRAIGHT” SOC 107-031 13 February 2024 Image source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality SEXUALITY This chart, from the Trevor Project, aims to decenter heterosexuality and promote sexual and gender inclusivity. But does it express an essential truth of human nature, or a response to a specific normative regime? Will this kind of chart one day seem antiquated and unnecessary? DENATURALIZING SEXUAL IDENTITY dividing practices: actions that involve making value-laden distinctions between people, beliefs, and activities, typically in a hierarchical manner; a key ingredient in establishing social inequality sexual identity: how a person understands their erotic interests; distinct from gender identity denaturalize: to disrupt the presumption that a given idea or belief or practice is natural, absolute, or just always there THE SURPRISINGLY SHORT HISTORY OF HETEROSEXUALITY “Your behaviour creates your gender” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc “Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJOt70KiQQk “ABQH ep. 1: the "invention" of homosexuality” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTbiNXyDfak “The Shocking History of Sexuality” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgUCx3T7n1A READING SEXUAL IDENTITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUpSP1WVR84 (note, this video might be triggering, or at least uncomfortable, and that is part of the point) WHAT OTHER THINGS MIGHT BE PERFORMATIVE? Relationship status Religion Being student – being organized, having a work ethic, paying tuition Gender – and also things relating to gender, eg being a feminist DENATURALIZING SEXUAL IDENTITY means calling into question the dividing practices that produce such things as ‘sexual identities’ THE INVENTION OF SEXUALITY prior to the 1800s, same-sex eroticism was often prohibited, but the people who practiced it were not assigned a distinct identity the term ‘homosexual’ was first used in 1869 by Hungarian journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny , ironically while advocating for gay rights texts like Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1886) worked to pathologize homosexuality and all other non-heteronormative practices, giving rise to the modern notion of sexual identity or sexuality the invention of sexuality also contributed to the normalization of cisgender practices and identities and the pathologization of their trans* counterparts, including a politics of invisibility in which the very existence of trans* persons is denied THE CONSOLIDATION OF SEXUALITY the two decades after World War Two saw perhaps the high point of heteronormativity white middle-class women who had taken paid jobs during the war were pressured to return to the home white women who got pregnant “out of wedlock” were pressured to surrender their babies, to remain “suitable” for marriage, while Indigenous and racialized women often had their babies simply taken from them by force homosexuality was defined as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association until 1974, and not fully normalized until 1999 WHAT PRACTICES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH HETEROSEXUALITY IN THIS IMAGE, AND GENERALLY? Gendered division of labour, men doing paid work and women doing unpaid housework Nuclear family with children Women being nurturing, men being not emotionally present Holiday an especially rich time for heteronomativity Friendships – eye to eye (women) vs shoulder to shoulder (men) Suburban, middle class, ‘the American dream’ Whitenes THE CONSOLIDATION OF SEXUALITY homosexuality was a criminal offense in Canada until 1969 the police and the RCMP surveilled and policed queer communities, even after decriminalization the LGBT rights movement in Canada gained strength in the 1980s, challenging exclusionary laws and practices RESISTING HETERONORMATIVITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLtORC9CqSU (content warning: homophobic language) ISSUES/QUESTIONS How can Black protestors be taking space away from queer movements if they themselves are queer? Isn’t the space being defined in a way that excludes Black queer folks? Doesn’t Black queer liberation benefit all queer liberation, more than e.g. mainstream corporate sponsors? Don’t the interviewers questions invoke the stereotype of Black folk as violent/aggressive? Aren’t sit-ins supposed to be disruptive? THE CONSOLIDATION OF SEXUALITY same-sex marriage became law in Canada in 2005 heteronormativity still persists, however … alongside a newer homonormativity HOMONORMATIVITY AND HOMONATIONALISM homonormativity — practices that assimilate (mainly) gay sexual identity into otherwise heteronormative institutions like monogamy, marriage, neoliberal capitalism, nationalism, and so on critics argue that homonormativity is contradictory, pursuing equality for certain gay men while tacitly reinforcing other dividing practices homonationalism — use of gay rights rhetoric to stigmatize other countries, especially brown and Middle Eastern countries, as backwards, uncivilized, savage, especially to justify military intervention or exclusionary immigration policies (see also, pinkwashing) PRIDE AND HOMONORMATIVITY https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pride-parade-toronto-1.3662823 COUNTERSEXUALITY in The Countersexual Manifesto, Paul B. Preciado argues for abolishing the institution of sexuality here ‘sexuality’ is understood as the entire regime of power relations that maintain gender and sexual identities in a countersexual world, labels like ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ would be meaningless WHAT MIGHT COUNTERSEXUALITY LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE? A person’s “type” would refer to very specific, individual characteristics How we address people would change How we introduce ourselves would change – focus on personality, not markers of gender identity We’d need to find new signals for who is safe to be around Diversity quotas would no longer be meaningful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando,_My_Political_Biography THE INVENTION OF INDIVIDUALITY INDIVIDUALISM atomistic individualism is the belief that individual human beings exist and have an identity independently of their position in society or their relations with other people moral individualism is the belief that individual human being have inherent rights as individuals, which are the basis of all other moral and ethical norms neither form of individualism is culturally universal so how did individualism come to be as prevalent as it is in modern societies? why do we think of ourselves as individuals at all? INDIVIDUALISM: CAPITALISM in pre-modern Europe, people’s identities were based mainly on their position in the family and in the class structure, on ascribed status materially, a person depended on inherited rights for their existence, because wealth came from land, which was inherited the commodification of land and labour changed this when land could be bought and sold, the hereditary elite were replaced by capitalists whose wealth was ‘achieved’ in their own lifetime when labour could be bought and sold, individual workers could break away from their families INDIVIDUALISM: CAPITALISM “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned …” — Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto INDIVIDUALISM: SOVEREIGNTY in medieval Europe, a king ruled by force of arms Henry VII of England became king through civil war; his son, Henry VIII, subdued the nobility, destroying many older houses and raising up many who were personally dependent on him; his granddaughter Elizabeth I was able to rule despite not being able to lead armies into battle the consolidation of sovereignty in the 1500s and 1600s made political authority increasingly impersonal, which paradoxically gave individuals more room to define themselves INDIVIDUALISM: SOVEREIGNTY 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself. - Willian Shakespeare INDIVIDUALISM: DISCIPLINARY POWER spectacular power is the power through concentrated shows of force disciplinary power is power exercised as efficiently as possible through power-knowledge in power-knowledge, the cultivation of knowledge and the exercise of power reinforce each other through discourse normalization is a technique of power-knowledge that establishes a standard or ‘norm’ and disciplines people according to their conformity to or deviance from that norm in governmentality, disciplinary power cultivates specific ways of thinking through which people know themselves, and which people therefore use to govern themselves and each other SUBJECTIFICATION subjectivity is our sense of who we are each person’s subjectivity is fluid and constantly evolving, based on perspectives, values, and experiences people are constituted, and become knowable, in the context of the power and knowledge relations of their time and place techniques of the self are the ways in which we are compelled to be constantly working at self-care and self-improvement, through our manners, education, employment skills, body image, self-understanding, and so on SUBJECTIFICATION we do not simply discover ourselves because the self is not fixed and static rather, we produce ourselves but we do not produce ourselves out of nothing we produce ourselves out of the materials available in our environments, and via the power relations that our environments afford us SEXUALITY sexual identity, Foucault argues, is a product of these processes – disciplinary power, governmentality, subjectification we define ourselves as straight, gay, bi, queer, etc., because sexual practice has been politicized PROBLEMATIC a problematic is the ideological framework that informs intellectual inquiry on a subject by centering certain questions faced by certain actors ideology is the broad prescriptive framework of beliefs, assumptions, and values furnishing people with an understanding of their world Karl Marx proposed that ideology emerges out of the practical social relations through which people produce their material existence, i.e. through class relations Michel Foucault extended this idea into the study of power relations SEXUAL PROBLEMATICS the ancient Greeks approved of same-sex relations, but only in certain circumstances, especially between adult men and prepubescent or adolescent boys Foucault proposed that the reason for this lay in the power dynamics of Greek society, in which patriarchal men owned their wives and slaves, and sex was an act of domination the founder of Christianity, Paul the Apostle, wanted to prohibit all sex but allowed sex for procreation in marriage the Pauline problematic aims at sublimating individual satisfactions into the doctrine of salvation after death (soteriology) SEXUAL PROBLEMATICS the invention of heterosexuality in the late 1800s-early 1900s marks the culmination of a shift away from the Christian problematic, into a scientific and disciplinary problematic the concern here is how to make sexual practice serve the interests of the state, and also of other governing authorities in society (doctors, educators, scientists, etc.) but this exercise of power (like the others before it) provokes resistance SEXUAL PROBLEMATICS TODAY what problematic do we operate under today, by decentering heterosexuality? who benefits, and how? Sex as something to benefit your health, as selfcare/self-improvement (techniques of the self) Sex for pleasure, sex as liberation – but seems to benefit men more than women Pleasure as individualizing consumption as opposed to connective, relational Men’s pleasure is centered more than women’s ASEXUALITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMhix4nr _0g why do the people in this video want asexuality to be recognized? what effects does that recognition have? WHY DO THE PEOPLE IN THIS VIDEO WANT ASEXUALITY TO BE RECOGNIZED? WHAT EFFECTS DOES THAT RECOGNITION HAVE? There’s a potential for harm or violence without that recognition Decenters the assumption that you need a romantic or sexual partner to be fulfilled in life Fulfilling romantic relationships don’t necessarily require sex Decentering sex highlight what else is involved in a fulfilling relationship