Vol 6 No 1 - Page 3

The Homosexual as Pariah: Thinking about Homosexual Existence in the Context of Evangelical Christianity in the 1960’s

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Taylor Cade West, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Abstract

 In the 1960’s some American homosexuals began to speak; they worked to establish a dialogue between themselves and a society from which they were excluded. Evangelical Christians first followed the societal pattern of silence in regards to homosexuality. Later, as the clamor and presence of homosexuals increased, many evangelicals reacted pointedly. The historical coming out of homosexuals and evangelicals’ response, as it is documented in the pages of Christianity Today, serves as a supreme example of the pariah condition that many homosexuals and queer people were experiencing in the 1960s and continue perforce to experience today. It is the purpose of this paper to think about, in the context of evangelical Christianity’s reaction to homosexuality, the homosexual as pariah; to explore the character of a marginal existence.

 It is perplexing to live in a society of which one is not a part (as is the case of queer peoples in so many parts of the world). Where silence reigns, where speaking is a forbidden act, one very often will stumble through the world beclouded by a haze. There is no guide for the perplexed, very seldom does a hand reach through the mist and escort a person to a ground upon which one may speak, one may be. Seldom, if ever, does a whisper break the darkness of one’s insecurity and say, “Go elsewhere. Here you have no place.”

The act of the “Homosexual as Pariah” has not come to a close. Still, well into the twenty-first century, a queer person may be born into a family in the presence of which she may never be herself. A homosexual may live in a society from which he is excluded and at times violently oppressed. And as many gains are being made as far as political and social freedoms in some parts of the world, some states are attempting to restore laws that prevent homosexual activity, the meaning of which is a grotesque violation of the private realm of human beings; and other states have enacted legislation which equates public expression of homosexuality as a kind of “horror-propaganda” against a regime already sunk in a morass of civil rights violations.

Universally speaking, the homosexual—along with all queer peoples—is subject to an imperiled existence and it is in this context of simultaneously expanding and contracting freedom that we must contemplate what it means to be a homosexual or queer person in society. The purpose of this paper does not go beyond an attempt to understand.

In our endeavor to understand, it seems appropriate to fall back on the historical example of evangelical Christianity’s reaction to homosexuals as they began to speak out in 1960s America; through this moment in gay history, we may begin to see the quality of homosexual existence in society. In so doing, we will find that the worldview of those who are members of society is diametrically opposed to the reality of those who find themselves at society’s margins. It will also become clear that the price of assimilation into decent society is nothing less than existence itself. And lastly, we shall attempt to discover a possible alternative that is open to the pariah…Access Full Text of the Article


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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Politics of Global Gay Identity: Towards a Universal History

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Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract

Through the years, the LGBT community has established a universal network of social relations for homosexual people, defying social, cultural and political borders. What is promoted is a global community that shares a common historical past and an array of invented/established traditions that venerates it. Historically, the LGBT community has valorized the Stonewall riots of 1969 as the nodal point of gay and lesbian politicization and June has been set up as the month of LGBT Pride in order to keep the memory of homosexual revolution and liberation alive. Yet, the Stonewall riots along with the impulse of the LGBT movement and its subsequent traditions have been defined as solely Western practices that predominantly derive from the American experience of the incidents, thus excluding non-Western perspectives. Furthermore, the ideal global community often requires a common, unified identity based on codes and symbols of LGBT history. In my paper, I would argue that the politics of the gay community, despite its Western-oriented milieu, have managed to promote and affirm a universal gay identity through invented traditions in order to provide a “home,” to project an imagined community that evades cultural, social, and racial frontiers, but above all to make this idea of “home” an available option.

Perceiving the world as a global village where cultures converge and information is freely shared has been contested. Indeed, the conundrums posed from the effect of globalization have redefined this idea of the global village and nations have turned to set up physical and cultural barriers again in order to protect their own cultural heritage from external corruption. Glocalization is now forwarded as the ideological discourse that moves towards supporting ethnic distinctiveness, yet does not completely obstruct intercultural exchanges. Nevertheless, it is still hard for people to shake off the remnants of globalization and the need to belong in the vast global village is still prevalent. This sense of belonging, as inextricably tied to bonds within communities – where one “feels at home” – is an idea based on and solidified by common experiences between groups of people. The LGBT community – or simply gay community – stands paradigmatic to the realization of this idea, hence promoting a universal history for the formation of a global identity. Seeing the 1969 Stonewall riots as the nodal point of the gay and lesbian movement, the history of LGBT culture has been rendered universal, thus embracing social, political, cultural and racial diversity through practices of established traditions and codes. However, the Western impulse in the historicity of the culture is hard to miss, a matter that has instigated sociological and academic debates in defense of non-Western cultures threatened by homogenization. In this paper, I would argue that the politics of the gay community, despite its Western-oriented milieu, has managed to promote and affirm a universal gay identity through invented traditions in order to provide a “home,” to project an imagined community that evades cultural, social, and racial frontiers, but above all to make this idea of “home” an available option…Access Full Text of the Article


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Queer Tableaux

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Daniel J Sander, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Introduction

Let me begin with an attention to my title, Queer Tableaux. I use the word tableau not only to gesture to the specific aesthetic strategy of the tableau vivant that I will discuss later, but also, here, in a more general, introductory sense as a point of entry into my present project. In this sense, I am implying Sara Ahmed’s work in which the table is significant for its status as a preferred object of phenomenological inquiry. Her work, which posits the table as a synecdoche for the house, serves in part to set the tone and orientation for what new directions in queer studies might do, to where they might point. Whether or not one accepts Ahmed’s rejection of the so-called affirmative turn in favour of a politic of unhappiness, I think there is something to be gleaned from the way in which she sets the scene of such a politic:

A revolution of unhappiness might require an unhousing; it would require not legitimizing more relationships, more houses, even more tables but delegitimizing the world that “houses” some bodies and not others. The political energy of unhappy queers might depend on not being in house. [ . . . ] Indeed, reflecting back on The Well of Loneliness, we might note the significance of “the walls” as a motif: the walls create spaces; they mark the edge between what is inside and out. The walls contain things by holding up; they bear the weight of residence. In The Well, the walls contain misery, and the revolution of the ending involves bringing them down. In this film, the walls are container devices, but “what” they contain depends on the passing of time, shaped by the comings and goings of different bodies. Inside the house, we are occupied. Things happen.

I begin with this extended quote not only because the character I pursue later in this paper is literally homeless, but also because it speaks to the work of queer geography, whether of the rural/anti-urban or the suburban, insofar as Scott Herring and Karen Tongson locate queer energy precisely out of the doors of the house, as well as out of the walls of the Roman city.

The Gayborhood

Jumping historical time periods and locals from the Roman city to an Old French designation of class is one way in which to move from the architectures of tables, walls, and houses to the comings and goings of different bodies that Ahmed locates within and outside them. Speaking of the kind of uncritical anti-urbanism he is decidedly not interested in doing, Herring mentions the ‘gentrification of U.S. queer life in general.’ For me, gentrification is a useful way in which to think about the discourse of metronormativity in which and against Herring inserts/asserts his arguments and one extendible to archives both actual and virtual if we think in terms of what Sarah Schulman has referred to as the general ‘gentrification of the mind.’ Gentrification and metronormativity, like what gets contained by Ahmed’s walls, are both stories of movement and how movements both happen in and make happen spatial and temporal configurations. This is to say that to think about the literal position of a queer subject, that is, the place where the subject is materially and in relation to other subjects, is to confront the myriad ways in which that subject will be conditioned depending upon how proximate space is normatively differentiated and vice versa. In the context of urban space, by which I mean less a quantity than a quality of density, the spatial narrative that supports the queer subject is twofold — emigration and speculation. First, queer escapes a repressive and oppressive rural environment to seek amnesty, either in the form of celebrated welcome or anonymity, in an urban one. Subsequently, queer forages into the concrete jungle, creating and in pursuit of circuits of sexual partners and diverse sociabilities.Read Full Text of the Article


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The Invisible Closet: Pressures and Difficulties of the ‘fringe-queer’ Community

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Joe Weinberg, University of Minnesota, Crookston

Abstract

LGBT studies is generally focused on the members of the queer community who are/were at some point ‘in the closet.’ That closet becomes a focal point of their identity, and the process of coming out of the closet is seen as an important and momentous occasion in that person’s life. But there are some groups that fall under the wide umbrella of the queer community that live in an ‘invisible closet.’ While their particular practices are not considered ‘mainstream,’ they are so tightly focused that sharing that identity with others is tantamount to involving others in their sexual practices. In particular, the fetish community lives in this invisible closet. If they tell anyone of their interests, they are literally sharing the details of their sexual activities, something that is often seen as “none of their business.” When a homosexual ‘comes out’ to friends and family, they are not providing details or involving these groups in their sexual activities. This ‘coming out’ instead allows them to express their identity freely, but maintain a modicum of privacy. When someone involved in the fetish, kink, or bdsm community ‘comes out,’ they express their identity, but by the nature of the beast, they do NOT maintain that privacy.
That said, the ‘invisible closet’ is no less restrictive to those within it, and often times it is a worse place to be, because the person inside has a conflicting desire: they want to maintain their privacy, but also be true to their own identity.

This balancing act is all the more difficult to maintain because it is invisible. While those within invisible closets don’t have to worry about the same discrimination faced by other members of the LGBT community, as they can easily ‘pass’ or ‘hide,’ this very capacity makes the pressure to break out of the closet even stronger. It is frequently driven home, both by society at large and by the members of the LGBT community who DO and CAN come out, that members of these other groups face a much more subtle, but no less intense, discrimination. By drawing attention to this closet, it can be seen how important it is to allow these subcultures to identify themselves without facing discrimination. There are no laws or even politically correct trends that support these groups, and while it is easy for them to hide, it is nonetheless incredibly hard ON them to do so.

Introduction: Coming out of the Closet

Coming out of the closet can be seen as a sort of rite of passage for the queer community. And the closet is not limited to homosexuality. As Sedwig writes: “The gay closet is not a feature only of the lives of gay people” (p. 68); anyone who does not fit into the heteronormative definition of sexuality is potentially in a closet, and coming out of that closet is a significant moment. This moment where a young man informs his friends and family of the identity that he has hidden from them for so long can be cathartic, can be dangerous, and can be freeing. Sometimes it is met with anger. Sometimes it is met with misunderstanding, suggesting that maybe this is a phase, something that can be gotten over. Some people come out of the closet to support and applause. Some come out only to find that no one was surprised in the slightest.

Whatever the reaction, the moment of coming out of the closet is a significant one. When a girl tells her parents that she is a lesbian, she is exposing her inner most self, raw to their criticism and desperate for their acceptance. But she is also doing it with the knowledge that things may end badly, with results ranging from ostracism to outright physical violence. Somehow, though, the possibility of acceptance has finally outweighed the fear of rejection. Maybe she wants to bring a girlfriend home for the holidays. Maybe her parents don’t have the same authority they once did. She has finally come to terms with her identity, and is ready to present that identity, that true self, to those whose opinions truly matter to her…

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“The godhead is unstrung “: On Gloria Anzaldúa’s Celebration of the Body and the End of Patriarchy

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J. Edgar Bauer, Germany

“Until there is complete Presence there can only be mythology and metaphysics. Meanwhile poetry marks the vicissitudes of the attempt at immediacy.” Lewis Thompson, 1984, p. 54

 1. Indexes of resistance  

U.S. American poet, essayist and cultural theorist of Chicano extraction Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) once depicted herself as “[a] third world lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings” (Anzaldúa, 1983a, p. 205. Italics in the original). Accordingly, her writings were highly critical of America’s political landscape and advocated resistance to sexual, racial and cultural assimilation. Anzaldúa’s defiant nonconformity is discernible even at a linguistic level, inasmuch as her texts often include untranslated Castilian, Chicano Spanish, and Amerindian expressions and sentences that constitute hurdles for the English-language readership she primarily addressed (Anzaldúa, 1987, pp.55-61).   As regards the contents of her writings, Anzaldua’s shamanistic self-understanding as a “shape-changer” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 66) and her full-fledged espousal of “spiritual activism” (Anzaldúa, 2000e, p. 178; Anzaldúa, 2009d, p. 292) have appealed to ethnic minority groups and academic specialists, but have failed to attract the interest of wider audiences. It is thus not surprising that although Anzaldúa’s texts marked the emergence of gender and queer studies in the late eighties and early nineties, their general reception has hardly been commensurate with their emancipatory and theoretical relevancy.

2. “The mark of the Beast”

Among the late twentieth-century critics of the Western conception of sexuality, Anzaldúa took a singular stance. While her intellectual peers were mostly concerned with structural factors—socio-economical or otherwise—that hinder sexual fulfilment, Anzaldúa focus on the sexed body reflects deep autobiographical associations with her experience of pain, suffering and shame. As Anzaldúapointed out, she began having menstrual bleedings when she was three months old due to a rare hormonal dysfunction (Anzaldúa, 2000f, pp. 19, 23; Anzaldúa, 2000g, pp. 78, 92;Anzaldúa, 2000d, p. 169), and her adult life was marred by “very severe menstrual periods” (Anzaldúa, 2009e, p. 78). To alleviate the pain that had become her “normal way of life” (Anzaldúa, 2000g, p. 93), Anzaldúa decided in 1980 to have a hysterectomy (Anzaldúa, 2000g, p. 92). The psychological wounds her illness left behind were however more harrowing than the immediate physical distress. Since “[t]he bleeding distanced her from others” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 43), she grew up convinced “that something was fundamentally wrong” with her (Anzaldúa, 1987, pp. 42-43), and eventually developed an intense sense of shame “for being abnormal” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 43). Anzaldúa encapsulated the quandaries of her condition in one of the most personal texts in her entire published corpus: “La vulva esunaheridaabierta / The vulva is an open wound.”…Access Full Text of the Article

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