gender identity

Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin, and AIDS in Southwest China

tina — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Heroin. AIDS. Migration. Development programs. Gender roles. In Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin, and AIDS in Southwest China, Shao-hua Liu examines each of these issues and how they relate to Nuoso youth. An anthropological researcher, the author delves into how China’s evolution from the traditional to the modern intersects with drug use, disease, and development. The book focuses on the Nuoso, a poor and marginalized group in southwest China that has been disproportionately affected by the drug trade and HIV/AIDS.

The author does a commendable job of stressing the interconnected nature of migration, gender, drug use, and political economies. While these issues are naturally linked, too many authors focus on one of these aspects while ignoring the myriad forces that shape cultures and communities. Passage to Manhood features a fresh approach to understanding why heroin use and HIV took over the Nuoso to such a great extent. The author presents an answer that relies on the intersection of marginalization, stigmatization, modernization, and power dynamics within communities.

The author’s honest approach to gender stood out in the book. Instead of making sweeping generalizations about gender politics among the Nuoso, the author explains how she approached the subject and details the difficulties she had using male translators to interview women.

Acknowledging that her access to information was limited, the author conveys the basic framework of what she found. While drug use and HIV/AIDS shaped the entire community in some way, it affected men and women differently. The author explains that young men were first drawn to heroin because it was fashionable and demonstrated a particular social status. Drug use overlapped with the definition of masculinity among the Nuoso, which was based on a desire for adventure and mobility. The gender hierarchy, which placed women subordinate to men, played out in heroin politics: Women encountered the drug trade through small dealings and followed their husbands or partners, who were responsible for the larger trades.

The author is careful to note that gender dynamics not only shaped the details of the drug trade among the Nuoso, but also determined the effectiveness of state-managed intervention programs to combat drug use and HIV/AIDS. In a careful dissection of the failures of these intervention programs, the author examines how the program administrators viewed cultural taboos about sex as barriers to their work. Instead of acknowledging the fluidity of cultural norms, state-managed interventions overlooked honest sex education and contributed to misinformation about HIV/AIDS. By ignoring the unique cultural context of the Nuoso and using global AIDS messages from elsewhere, the architects of these programs inadvertently instilled a stigma about AIDS where one previously did not exist. This case study presents a sobering lesson for those working on global AIDS prevention programs; such interventions must be designed as a cooperative exercise between local groups and the program implementers, not cookie-cutter programs delivered from above.

It is difficult to pluck one nugget of information from the author’s interconnected web, but perhaps the greatest take away from the book is that AIDS and drug use do not exist in a vacuum. Gender politics, economics, migration, and urbanization each exact pressure on people’s actions and perceptions. A thorough understanding of drug use and HIV/AIDS within a community must begin with an expansive interpretation of how individuals, families, and societies grapple with these ever-changing forces.

Written by: Andrea Gittleman, February 25th 2011

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

brittany — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kay Whitlock, Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie

Beacon Press

In their near-exhaustive catalogue of violence, discrimination, and systematic abuse of LGBT people in the United States, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock outline the specific ways that the criminalization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people has perpetuated inequalities not only based on sexual identity but also within the complex interplay of race, class, and gender. While many leading texts in LGBT studies have argued that the policing of gender leads to toxic consequences for all members of society, this book reveals just how pervasive such policing of gender is and just how complicit we are in maintaining these systems of inequality. Most centrally, Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock argue that decriminalizing queerness has been sidelined by efforts to merely remove legal sanctions—a problem that fails to address the basic assumptions of queer deviance at play in our legal system.

Queer (In)Justice dispenses a legal history of LGBT oppression that spans hundreds of years, beginning with a sweeping review of the history of gender policing—indigenous abuse, constructions of African people as hypersexual, “contaminating” immigrant bodies, and even Biblical ideas about sodomy—and moving through a range of topics that collectively provide the most complete picture of LGBT criminalization I have ever encountered. Addressing queer criminal archetypes (e.g., the queer killer, sexually degraded predator, disease spreader, and queer security threat) early in the book, the authors then move to three stellar chapters on legal policing of gender in clubs and public spaces, courtroom battles about queer identity (where gender bending and violence are discursively linked), and, finally, the queering of prisons. This last chapter on prisons provides a haunting account of prison guards ignoring sexual identity-based violence, refusing care for HIV/AIDS prisoners, and constructing queer inmates as perverse. The authors conclude (in one of only a few hopeful moments of the book) that anti-police-brutality, the building of safe communities, prison solidarity, and community organizing must occur in order to tease apart the conflation of queerness and criminality.

At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities. The authors argue, essentially, that cases like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena are not isolated incidents of violent, hateful oppression, but rather, engendered by the very system that supposedly protects queer subjects. From senseless police brutality to justifying death penalty sentences based on sexual identity, from the fetishization of “lesbian killer” Aileen Wuornos to prison guards who allow continued sexual assault against “willing” gay men in prison, hatred of queerness exists at the heart of our criminal justice system. The question becomes: What legal, discursive, social, and institutional changes can we enact that more radically and permanently divides queerness from criminality? What stories must we tell (or learn) to communicate and understand the histories of violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people have endured? And, finally, what kind of queer justice should we seek?

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 12th 2011

The Last Pretence

payal — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By Sarayu Srivatsa

Harper Collins

In the South Indian town of Machilipatnam, Mallika gives birth to twins, Tara and Siva. Emotionally and psychologically damaged when her daughter dies during childbirth, Mallika finds herself unable to love Siva who is a constant reminder of Tara’s death. Pretending that Siva is Tara, both Mallika and Siva embark on a downward spiral of self-destruction that ends in tragedy. Sarayu Srivatsa’s The Last Pretence tells Mallika and Siva’s stories, their learning and unlearning of love and loss, and attempts to question, through stories of childhood, marriage, and motherhood, how identities and experiences of gender are shaped.

Its book jacket advertises The Last Pretence as a "novel that takes nothing for granted", and that "grapples with notions of love, gender and sexuality", a description that probably attracted readers who were intrigued by the idea that modern Indian-English writing was taking on gender stereotypes, particularly in the specific context of South India, where this theme has been relatively under-explored in contemporary Indian fiction. Alas, The Last Pretence falls far short of being revolutionary, both in craft and in plot.

Unimpressed by the writing, I asked myself if the author’s intentions had any merit. The principal character upon whom Srivatsa’s gender-play is enacted is Siva, who struggles with his gender identity because of his mother’s desperate inability to cope with her daughter’s death. But in what sense are we supposed to find Mallika’s behavior towards Siva troubling? Clearly, some combination of her delusion that her son is her daughter, but also that she sees her son as a girl, and that she treats him as such. Mallika’s ‘disturbing’ behavior includes dressing Siva up in girls' clothes; piercing his ears, and breast-feeding him for longer than necessary, which we are led to believe confuses his self-identity and his notions of what it would mean to be a girl (to be loved by his mother). Ultimately this leads him away from home, fuels his exploration of his own sexuality through his quick and sometimes brutal sexual encounters, and finally leads to his inability to negotiate his personal peace in Srivatsa’s fictionalized world.

In dabbling with issues of gender and sexuality Srivatsa appears like a young child with a stick—gently prodding some fascinating multi-legged creature under a rock. Curious, not intentionally cruel, but ultimately uncomprehending, she speaks as an outsider to the experiences of her characters, making them less believable and more allegorical in order to make broader didactic (but again, superficial) points about gender, culture and the nature of patriarchy.

Perhaps Srivatsa’s biggest failing is the superficiality with which she writes; for example, the historical context of Machilipatnam, a town "where the British first landed to trade in dyes" on the Coromandel coast of southern India – is more or less absent from the book, with limited interweaving of even its fictionalized history through the cursory mythology of George Gibbs and his incestuous relationship with his sister. It also includes a peek into the eunuch sub-culture in India (the stock shining symbols of gender subversion) where half-yawning, half horrified, the reader is dragged into a short (but seemingly necessary) scene of castration involving a sharp knife, hot oil and a grinding stone, cheaply highlighting the cruel repercussions of gender deviance in a straight world.

Marred by poor characterization, predictability, and unproductive diversions (inexplicable inter-religious riots seem to randomly pepper this slim novel) from an otherwise heavy-handed plot driven by unnecessary brutality and an unconvincing lack of detail, I found the long-listing of The Last Pretence for the Man Asian Literary prize undeserving. Lacking in originality and failing to deliver but the most prosaic of prose, The Last Pretence most damningly shrivels before a feminist gaze where it is slowly sucked into the quicksand of the hetero-normative aphorism that any deviations to established gender norms will be ruthlessly punished by society, and ultimately (spoiler alert!) cannot survive.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, February 4th 2011

Aarekti Premer Galpo (Just Another Love Story)

mandy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Kaushik Ganguly

Cinemawalla

Rituparno Ghosh completely reinvents himself from director to actor and delivers a gripping performance in this very lyrical film by Kaushik Ganguly. Just Another Love Story (original Bengali title: Aarekti Premer Galpo) is about a filmmaker Abhiroop Sen (played by Ghosh) who makes a documentary about Chapal Bhaduri, the legendary jatra (Bengali folk theatre) actor who spent his entire career playing female roles on stage, primarily as Goddess Shitala. Thus begins a journey where director and subject learn from one another—on the one hand is Bhaduri (playing himself), who was closeted for fear of social ostracism but openly accepted as a cross-dressing actor, and on the other is the modern urban filmmaker who is open about his sexuality, but still negotiating his gender identity.

The most striking thing about Just Another Love Story is that it doesn’t make a big exhibition about its very brave subject. It’s not a look-how-path-breaking-this-film-is kind of treatment. Instead, the transgender protagonist is introduced into the story with as much casualness as any other character. Ghosh lends to his character, and the story, such a complexity that you can’t help but empathize with his struggle. The film maintains a mature and sensitive treatment throughout, never resorting to unnecessary gestures to prove its point.

The parallel story arc of Chapal Bhaduri is sensitively told and enlightening. Bhaduri plays himself with vulnerability and Ghosh playing Bhaduri in the reenactment of his younger life does a great job of switching back and forth between his character as the documentary filmmaker and a portrayal of Bhaduri. In this way the film becomes multi-layered with each element building on the other. Sen’s relationship with his bisexual cameraman Basu (Indraneil Sengupta) is also handled with maturity and complexity, especially since the latter’s wife is aware (and oddly accepting) of their relationship.

Speaking about the taboo around trans identities in India, the director Ganguly said, “Trans identities, or the third sex, have been around since the mythological times, so this isn’t a new issue at all. We think it’s new because we’re still recovering from the colonial mindset.” Ganguly’s film is an ode to the traditions of jatra, a powerful yet subtle statement on the intrinsic presence of trans identities in Indian society, and another glowing feather in the cap of the talented Ghosh, who makes a stellar acting debut.

Cross-posted at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 8th 2010

Misframing Men: The Politics of Contemporary Masculinities

brittany — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Michael Kimmel

Rutgers University Press

The media’s obsession with the “crisis” of masculinity has long reached a feverish, cliché-filled pitch. “We’re losing our boys,” one article proclaims. “We must save the males,” says another. It’s unnerving, particularly since that identity crisis is pinned on the advancement of women in formerly male-dominated spheres.

There is a masculinity crisis, according to Michael Kimmel’s latest book Misframing Men. But it has nothing to do with women “invading” formerly men-only spaces or men taking on more responsibilities at home. Instead, Kimmel posits, men—particularly young men—are being confronted with media stereotypes and a public discourse that attempt to put them in a rigidly stifling box of masculine identity. And the more men struggle to fit themselves inside this frame, the more apparent it becomes that such a frame is doing a grave disservice to them.

Kimmel does an excellent job weaving together the economic, political, and social contributors to this masculinity crisis while avoiding the over-conflating (and overreacting) he is so critical of in the media. His debunking of gender symmetry in domestic violence articulately critiques a quantitative tool for measuring domestic violence (the Conflict Tactics Scale) through a stern analysis of the differing intentions and severity of male- and female-perpetrated violence. He negates the claims of gender symmetry supporters who believe the solution to violence perpetrated by both genders is to decrease the amount of funding for women who are survivors of domestic violence by suggesting an overhaul on how our culture approaches the causes (and solutions) of interpersonal violence.

His discussion of the struggle to make the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute co-ed—an arduous legal process for which he served an expert witness—is approached with no less of a degree of professionalism and intentionality. Critics bemoaned the attempt to “de-male” these institutions as another “threat” to men’s rights and happiness. Yet, as Kimmel points out, the rationale for keeping women out of these institutions has been mired in stereotypes and wholly ignorant of reality. As he poignantly concludes, the best way to strengthen these institutions is not to continue to seal them off from the outside world (and women). Rather, Kimmel states, “In a context of equality, the assumed differences between women and men will be revealed as stereotypes that help neither women nor men nor the institutions in which we find ourselves.” It is this striking eloquence that makes it my favorite chapter in Misframing Men.

Kimmel ends his book on a high note, reflecting that—despite allegations that young men are buckling under the pressure of women’s equality—young men on college campuses are happily adopting the “identities, practices, and ideas” of gender equality—in essence, constructing a new frame for themselves. It remains to be seen whether the media takes notice or chooses to remain mired in the sand of their manufactured obsessions.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, September 12th 2010

Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Birute Regine

Prometheus Books

In the eternal question of nature versus nurture, author and developmental psychologist Birute Regine leans comfortably towards nature. She embraces “feminine” qualities and calls for women the world over to do the same. While the anecdotes and reflections she chooses to share are indeed compelling and inspirational, the book as a whole can be off-putting if you do not necessarily prescribe to the idea of gendered personality traits.

One major theme running throughout Iron Butterflies is the need to reject and reform what she calls “gladiator culture,” which is defined by its aggressive, macho, and violent nature. This, Regine writes, is the source of many societal ills. The book is then a call to action for women around the globe to effect change through compassion, empathy, and caring—the antidote to gladiator culture. By accepting and uncovering innately feminine qualities, women can improve their own quality of life while also creating social change in their communities and in the larger world.

Though gender biases, discrimination, and violence continue to exist in full force, further emphasis on the “inherent” differences between men and women feels uncomfortable and one-sided. Instead of gendering characteristics, a more inclusive approach would have been to look deeper into how these traits have come into existence and examine the larger society as a whole for ways that everyone can integrate compassion, for instance, into their daily behavioral repertoire.

Regine does recognize this point in a few isolated moments, but looking at a scale with nature on one side and nurture on the other, she falls much closer to nature. With chapters entitled, “Tears: Heal the Hidden Wound,” and “Chrysalis: Shedding Self-Imposed Limitations,” the general tone of the book is New Age-y self help, with the inclusion of various ethnic and cultural metaphors. The core message is one of positive change and growth, but the means of achieving them may not resonate with all readers.

Written by: Shana Mattson, July 8th 2010

Diagnosing Difference

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Directed by Annalise Ophelian

Floating Ophelia Productions

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is referred to as “the Bible” by the psychologists and psychiatrists who utilize it to diagnosis and treat patients. A project of the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM was first published in 1952 and subsequently revised in 1968, 1980, 1987, 1994, and 2000; the forthcoming 2012 edition is currently in formation. If you’re feeling bored, dear reader, let me cut to the chase and tell you why this all matters.

As feminists well know—hello, hysteria!—a diagnosis of mental disability may simply be an accusation of difference or a punishment for refusing to comply with political, economic, aesthetic, or social demands. Diagnosis is not always, if ever, a neutral process. It is, instead, a process of translating behaviors (such as homosexuality or sexual fetishism) into identities (“deviants” or “perverts”). Paying attention to the historic and political context within which the DSM operates reveals not simply the prevalence of bias, but the fallacy of objectivity in social scientific inquiry.

Diagnosing Difference, directed by queer, clinical psychologist Annalise Ophelian, tackles the politics of diagnosis and the impact of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) on transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. The full-length documentary features interviews with trans-identified mental health professionals, activists, and scholars who speak to the burden of GID. Dylan Scholinski, for example, recounts being forcibly locked up in a mental hospital at age 15 for being “an inappropriate female.”

Public health advocates Willy Wilkinson, Cecilia Chung, and Renata J. Razza discuss the importance of re-educating health care providers with culturally competent and trans-positive information. The GID diagnosis, which is often required before doctors will administer hormones or provide gender reassignment surgery and government agencies will legally change a person’s name or sex on a driver’s license or birth certificate, does not represent the experience of many trans people. The GID criteria demands an individual unambiguously live and present as their “opposite” gender and deny any affiliation with their gender assigned at birth.

However, even the varied identities of transgender, transexual, gender queer, gender variant, and so on testify to the multiplicity of gender expressions beyond simply man or woman. The GID diagnosis reifies gender norms, privatizing gender variance as a “problem” for individuals. As Pauline Park, trans activist and founder of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, often remarks, “I don’t have a Gender Identity Disorder; society does.”

Diagnosing Difference builds an important bridge between mental health professionals and community advocates, and participates in the growing GID-reform movement. The documentary is a vital project for educators, public health advocates, social workers, and doctors, and anyone interested in the gender politics.

Written by: Jeanne Vaccaro, January 1st 2010

Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real-World Experience

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Edited by Rebecca F. Plante, Lis M. Maurer

Westview Press

What does it mean to be female or male in modern American society? How does this limit the endless ways in which human beings are capable of expressing themselves? More importantly, how do we promote open-mindedness in a world that grooms people from birth to fit in one of two check-yes boxes? I cautiously pose an attitude change as necessary, with all due respect given to gender’s role in society. Reading Doing Gender Diversity, a collection of essays and articles, only confirmed what I’ve suspected for years: what we need is not a dissolution of gender divisions, but rather a softening of expectations that allows for identities ranging from “elective-straight queer men” to heterosexual women with typically masculine qualities, and everything in between.

Jamison Green affirms this eloquently in his contribution, "Part of the Package: Ideas of Masculinity among Male-Identified Transpeople," by quoting sociologist Holly Devor: “The time is upon us to reevaluate how we think about gender, sex and sexuality. It now seems perfectly clear to me that we live in a world which is far more diverse than any number of simplistic dichotomies can describe.” Hear, hear.

Doing Gender Diversity is a skillfully edited collection of eye-opening accounts of gender issues from multiple perspectives—that of activists, social scientists, and individuals living gender expressions that make them virtually invisible (or worse). The academic leanings and sheer heft of the book make Doing Gender Diversity appear more like a textbook than casual reading, but don’t let that fool you. The majority of the articles have main points in layman’s terms and make for interesting reading. Not a page-turner, certainly, but thought-provoking in all the right ways.

The only criticism I have is that the summary of research methodology can be dry occasionally, and anyone who has not taken a statistics class might have difficulty deciphering the majority of the figures quoted. However, this doesn’t interfere with its overall accessibility, as every article includes a section that explains the significance of the quantitative data.

Americans are so anxious to catalog every individual into a cookie-cutter construction of gender. This is understandable: gender is one of the most influential ways with which we make meaning out of our lives and interactions. This collection of refreshing articles emphasizes that the real problem lies not with those individuals who, through no choice of their own, land in a gender-bending gray area (be it physical, behavioral, or emotional), but with a society that causes so much heartache and pain for anyone that doesn’t meet a stringent list of heteronormative gender criteria.

Above and beyond its educational use, this skillfully edited grouping of gender articles is the perfect read for anyone who has ever—in any way—felt he or she missed the mark in gender expression. Everyone can take something away from Doing Gender Diversity: the straight man who’s surprisingly nurturing, the “top” in a gay relationship who prefers being the little spoon, the straight woman who can fix a flat tire, and the lesbian who can’t. You are not alone—and there is nothing wrong with you.

Written by: Sam Williams, November 26th 2009

You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Edited by Laurie J. Shrage

Oxford University Press

Each essay in Laurie J. Shrage’s collection, You've Changed, takes on the challenge of analyzing the philosophical, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the—for lack of a better or more acute concept—umbrella category of “trans” identity. This same challenge, which underlines the collection’s creation, is the same challenge that often times handicaps its clarity and ultimate success. The breadth of scope of the volume on “trans” identities is awe-inspiring, but simultaneously hinders the conceptual clarity of many of the concepts discussed within the essays: “trans,” used primarily as an identity prefix, is applied indiscriminately, and, frequently inconsistently, to gender, sex, and sexuality throughout the essays. The difficulty, from the reader’s perspective, is the inability to grasp exactly, with precision, what—philosophical, phenomenological, or physical—concept the author is referring to in their his/her essay. Each author attempts to map out the concepts that they he/she engages with in their his/her essay, but the lack of conceptual consistency and coherence within each essay, and among the essays collectively, creates readerly confusion (for even the most adept of gender studies scholars!).

Take, for instance, the first essay of the volume, Christine Overall’s “Sex/Gender Transitions and Life-Changing Aspirations.” Overall logically begins the essay by laying out the terms of her discussion of transitioning. She writes, “I use the general term ‘trans’ to refer to individuals who go through changes from man to woman or woman to man, deliberately glossing over the differences among transgendered and transsexual individuals.” She then goes on to explain, that “gender is the presentation or identification (or both) of self as being a woman or a man or some permutation thereof. By ‘sex’, [she] mean[s] (human) female and male, as well as (human) femaleness and (human) maleness,” and delimits “femaleness” and “maleness” by “the presence of the genitalia standardly associated with each.” The first “gloss” is logically productive in that it allows Overall to employ “trans” to refer to any form of “transitioning” that an individual may experience in her life. However, the following clause, which seems an attempt at specification, only problematizes the concepts of gender and sex, which clouds the productive function of the “trans” prefix, and which is apparent by the author’s continual untangling of “gender” and “sex” throughout the essay.

Overall’s essay, like all essays in the volume, is praiseworthy for its sophisticated and serious effort. Gayle Salamon’s essay, “The Sexual Schema: Transposition and Transgender in Phenomenology of Perception,” is particularly brilliant for its appraisal of Merleau-Ponty’s text and how it manages to illustrate how Merleau-Ponty’s work in general—once shunned for being too “airy-fairy,” poetical, or qualitative—proves quite useful to discussions of trans identities.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, October 2nd 2009

The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture

admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:52:00 +0000

By Warren Hoffman

Syracuse University Press

Once homosexuality has been fully incorporated and accepted into “mainstream” society, I wonder what group will be placed at the bottom of the totem pole. I use the word incorporated because it symbolizes a capitalistic tolerance without a desire or need to understand a person's totality. What makes this subject matter doubly difficult is when being part of one group becomes the default for another.

In The Passing Game, Warren Hoffman explains how the term homosexuality was coined at the very same moment in history as anti-semitism, how the stereotypes of Jews from 1880 to 1920 included homosexuality, and how synonymous Jew and queer were at that time. Hoffman’s first example is the Yiddish play Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance) by Sholem Asch, which first appeared in 1907 and depicted prostitution and homoerotic female love. When the English version of the play was performed on Broadway in 1923, it caused a scandal, in which the entire cast was arrested and found guilty for performing an immoral drama. The issue of homosexuality was virtually non-existent and non-recognized by wider audiences in 1907, but Hoffman shows that the uproar in 1923 indicated a shift in thought on sexuality between 1907 and 1923.

Further along the book, Hoffman focuses on the term queer and its association outside of a sexual context. In the 1946 publication of Wasteland by lesbian writer Jo Sinclair (Ruth Seid), Hoffman explores the way in which this term is used in a non-sexual context, but still somehow tied to sexuality. The main character, Jake Braunowitz, is a second-generation heterosexual Jewish American, who is ashamed and embarrassed to be Jewish. Debbie is Jake’s sister, who learns through her psychiatrist to accept her lesbian identity. Jake seeks the help of this same psychiatrist, and learns that by accepting his sister as queer, he can also accept his Jewish identity.

In Hoffman’s examination of Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance) and Sinclair’s Wasteland, as well as his study of cross-dressing and gender ambiguity in short stories, shows how queerness can be related to subject matter outside the context of sexuality. For example, Hoffman analyzes how the feminization of the Jewish male has shaped many Jewish men and women as they have been forced to deal with their own sexuality.

Readers of Hoffman's work may realize how anything that deviates from the mainstream culture and society, be it, culturally, “racially”, or religiously, can be considered abnormal. The Passing Game reminds us why these predominant cultural and societal mores should be changed by any means necessary.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, September 17th 2009

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:32:00 +0000

By Heather Love

Harvard University Press

Feeling Backward is a brilliant book that attempts the “impossible” and succeeds. Using Michel Foucault and Eve Sedgwick as theoretical touchstones, and incorporating Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling,” Heather Love “feels backward” to reimagine and connect with aspects of a queer past that had been rendered invisible. In doing so—in risking (as she puts it) the fate of Lot’s wife in turning back to revisit a painful past—she embraces the ruins, the “fugitive dead,” the loneliness and failures and all the “negative affect” that need to be reclaimed as part of that history.

She invokes José Esteban Muñoz’s idea of a “gay shame day parade” to help insist, in her reconception of queer history, on those aspects of queer experience otherwise rendered too painful, too unhelpful, too outside the margins of “modern gay identity.” All of the literary figures she chooses to exemplify her project are liminal, largely rejected as part of gay historiography as it has been constructed since the early 1990s. And yet it is figures as diverse and complex as Walter Pater, Willa Cather, and Radclyffe Hall that provide Love with opportunities for “emotional rescue.” She dismisses the ancient admonitions against personal involvement with historical subjects and seeks passionately the play of recognition she feels in the struggles of these figures and their often subtle and disguised “queer performativity,” to use Sedgwick’s term.

Cather is one of those authors who, like Love herself, reaches into the past for a sense of community and identity and yet who does so with great ambivalence and a complicated pathos concerning her own gender and sexual identity. It is precisely that ambivalence—and the loneliness and melancholia it stirs—that need to be understood and confronted.

Another object for reclamation in the backward march is romantic friendship or, more generally, the examination of a mode of intimacy that has remained relatively free of stigma and yet contains much of the erotic and social connection between same-sex people that also needs to be included in queer historiography. And yet the indeterminacy of the term and its historical ambiguity renders it a kind of shadowy and poorly understood phenomenon in literature and history.

Queer theory has challenged the categories of sexual identity, even the notion of identity itself. As Love reminds us, so many have felt left out of the categories which were designed, in part, to help forge the sorts of connection and recognition, current and historical, that Love sees as desirable in our backward reach. The troubled, the alienated, the stigmatized, the personal catastrophes are a necessary part of queer history, as traumatizing as that history can be. Love moves bravely backwards to that murky time, the “queer life before Stonewall,” and then crosses the modernist line backwards to feel what has been lost. In doing so she has made a profoundly imaginative and powerful contribution to queer history, and yet her book remains reasonably accessible to those with some background in queer theory and literature.

Written by: Rick Taylor, July 1st 2009

Learning to Behave Naturally

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:30:00 +0000

Directed by Tamarah Cohen

Learning to Behave Naturally is a seventy-six-minute documentary based on a series of interviews in a language class at the University of Western Japan. A cross-section of students and faculty of diverse ages, gender, race, and social classes talk freely about childhood experiences regarding their gendered roles, interests, and behaviors. The film re-affirms our stereotypical divisions between boys and girls, and confirms our “accepted truth” that young children in any country and of any social class, race, or gender play happily together without being aware of any differences between them until conscious parents, teachers, or other adults teach them to be view and participate in society though gendered roles.

All participants state that boys in any country wear blue colors while girls wear pink, that this has been the norm for centuries. Japanese elementary school children will be placed in a “boys only class” or a “girls only class,” with boys being the “chosen people.” They have to be strong, are allowed to be “wild”, and can go out at night. They can play football or basketball, and appear controlled and powerful. Boys are not allowed to cry from an early age as it is not a “manly” emotion. Girls, on the other hand, have to be sensitive, graceful, and play with their Barbie dolls. They play while learning to be homemakers.

This gendered identity is decided by parents and society at the children’s early age. The rules and traditions of adults make children aware of their differences and, in fact, curb their freedom to behave naturally. Therefore, the title of the video is very appropriate to the message conveyed in it. We learn to behave in certain ways because of our conscious society, not because we are made up this way. Cohen’s film can serve as a valuable visual source in a sociology or women’s studies class at any university in the world.

Written by: Anna Hamling, June 3rd 2009

Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

By Kathryn Norlock

Lexington Books

Forgiveness is everywhere. Oprah is extolling its necessity when not engaged directly in seeking it for herself. Female celebrities seem to be forever forgiving (or not) someone, though among the most talked about are unresolved differences between mothers and daughters (a la Jennifer Aniston and Tori Spelling). Adulterous and embezzling politicians regularly ask for forgiveness in public—a request of their families as much as their constituents. Self-forgiveness is a frequent topic among the most high-minded and thoughtful among us. Spiritual leaders and renowned writers like Desmond Tutu and Hannah Arendt have said that forgiveness is an essential aspect of everyday life.

In Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective, feminist philosopher Kathryn Norlock attempts to reframe the conversation about forgiveness and fill the existing gaps in psychology, philosophy, and gender studies. Norlock argues that despite what many philosophers have ignored in the relationship between gender and forgiveness, the act of forgiving is very much a gendered act. Women are overwhelmingly expected to forgive—not necessarily because they are more wronged, though that argument could certainly be made—and often, forgiveness is associated with a particular type of femininity, though Norlock is clear to separate “femininity,” “forgiveness,” and “weakness.” To deal with the blatant sex bias in forgiveness studies, Norlock debunks the historically gender-neutral approach to understanding the moral power, compassionate communication, and radical activism of forgiving.

Norlock’s work is highly academic and departs from a specific self-identified perspective—that of a white, heterosexual, middle-class, Western feminist academic. While her point of view may therefore be limited and lack engagement with certain texts and cultural scripts, it wouldn’t be fair to assume Norlock should begin her investigation from an impersonal point of departure. As feminists of varied persuasions, backgrounds, and vantage points, we understand too well the necessity of searching for answers from your own experience.

Norlock’s search for truth is dense and compelling, drawing necessary attention to relational power imbalances. It isn’t light, everyday reading, but maybe understanding forgiveness should be a bit heavier than that.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, June 1st 2009

Feminist and Queer Performance: Critical Strategies

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:35:00 +0000

By Sue-Ellen Case

Palgrave MacMillan

Feminist and Queer Performance is a collection of eleven previously published essays by Sue-Ellen Case, a Professor of Theatre and Critical Studies at UCLA. Exploring topics as diverse as butch-femme aesthetics, cyber-minstrelsy, W.O.W. Café, and performance artists Kate Bornstein, Annie Sprinkle, and Split Britches; Feminist and Queer Performance illustrates the history and breadth of Case’s scholarship and sustained engagement with feminist politics and lesbian cultures. In her introduction Case describes the intellectual and political “climate changes” that influenced her thinking about identity and performance. This personal narrative also functions as a history lesson, tracing the evolution of Case’s writing from 1989-2007—when the essays were originally published in various journals and anthologies—and her emerging interest in self-representation, bodily knowledge, and new technologies.

Case is invested in methodological forms that challenge the “objective” and universalizing voice of history–such as performative language and identificatory speech (“I” statements). She argues for writing practices that disrupt the unmarked, patriarchal voice of research, and embarks on a journey to find a “lesbian voice.” In fact, Case compares writing lesbian theory to hanging out in lesbian bars. In “Making Butch: An Historical Memoir of the 1970s,” she evokes the first-person to produce a campy critique of masculinity. Case foregrounds “everyday” performances like bar culture, clothing, and attitude to theorize lesbian culture and identity, especially butch-femme aesthetics.

The voice of Feminist and Queer Performance is an inviting one–curious, self-reflexive, and hopeful. Case is no doubt committed to bridging the divide between theoretical language and political praxis, and easily mixes anecdote and activism into her scholarship. Although not exactly “jargon” free, Feminist and Queer Performance is accessible to a diverse readership. It’s essential reading for burlesque dancers, radical cheerleaders, drag kings, and anyone else interested in the performance of feminist and queer politics.

Written by: Jeanne Vaccaro, April 30th 2009

He Likes Guys

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:29:00 +0000

Directed by Various Directors

Wolfe Video

As a member of my college cinema club, I would show a film a couple of nights every month. Usually, the featured movie would be preceded by a surprise short film—nothing too long, but always something entertaining. Recently, I showed "Laundromat" by Edward Gunawan from a collection of acclaimed gay short films, He Likes Guys, to my unsuspecting audience. Little did I know that the DVD's menu page featuring a buff torso would draw a variety of gasps—some amused, some more ambivalent, and even a rather repulsed, “Whaaat?!”

Fortunately, "Laundromat" (2007, 13 mins) promised nothing loaded with hackneyed gay stereotypes. In this smile-inducing drama, newly-cohabiting couple Lawrence and Joey bicker over their differences when doing the laundry. Their squabble later gets the attention of an elderly man who teaches them a small but profound lesson in the value of love, life and relationships. So far, so Zen-like.

Another short film that I felt moved by was "Traces" (2008, 19 mins). Directed by Rachel Zisser, "Traces" examines the tragic side of trans acceptance (or rather the lack thereof.) After seeing his handsome college-going son off at the airport, a father is shocked to hear of his son critically injured in a car accident some miles away from home. Arriving at the hospital too late, he is shown the body of his son, in women's clothing and bewigged. He is later consumed by a desire to piece together his late son's hidden identity, using different objects once belonged to his son that eventually lead him to uncover not only a secret double life but also a man who had stood between them for years.

The mixed response from the audience at the prospect of watching a film with gay themes that night says a lot about the position of homosexuality in the margins of cinematic discourse. But He Likes Guys is an anthology with an important social message at its heart. Part of the pleasure of watching the mini social commentaries is attributed to the film-makers' measured use of thought-provoking drama and humour to humanise gay culture. Perhaps the only weakness can be found right at the beginning—in the first short film, "Steam" (2008) by Damien Rea. At (mercifully) three minutes long, it is effectively a music video and an exercise in male objectification—a bland starter to the far superior films that are definitely worth a watch.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, April 21st 2009