heterosexual

Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories

beth — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In a temporally queer attachment of my own, I was bound to Time Binds before it was even published. With versions of the preface, introduction, and three out of four chapters having already appeared in academic journals, Elizabeth Freeman’s arguments had already made an impression on me. This is not to say that Time Binds is a redundant publication. Bound together, the individual pieces only gain in strength, displaying Freeman’s commitment to theorizing the intersections of temporality, queer theory, and the body.

In what might by now be described as a new turn in queer theory—a more self-reflexive turn, a turn that seems to be a pulling back, a slowing down—Freeman is surely one of the leading voices. She describes feeling as though “the point of queer was to always be ahead of actually existing social possibilities.” Instead of this ‘kind’ of queer theory, Freeman describes her commitment to a politics of “trailing behind,” as being “interested in the tail end of things, willing to be bathed in the fading light of whatever has been declared useless.” Time Binds contains captivating and powerful arguments for the need to understand temporality as physical, history as erotic, and the body as a sight that can challenge the temporal limits of heterosexuality and capitalism.

In the first chapter, Freeman focuses on Diane Bonder’s film The Physics of Love (1998), and Bertha Harris' novel Lover (1976), two texts that explore the mother-daughter dynamic. Freeman considers these texts as they utilize the body and the body’s “bad timing” to present a queer challenge the heterogendered and class-marked temporality of familial intimacy. She unpicks how capitalism and heteronormativity depend on a certain temporality and suggest that the body and its queer pleasures may be a site to contest this keeping of time.

In the second chapter, Freeman turns to Elisabeth Subrin’s Shulie (1997) and the work of Canadian artist Allyson Mitchell to consider how ‘lesbian’ and ‘lesbian feminist’ pull on ‘queer'. She introduces and works through what she calls “temporal drag” to consider how the pasts of movements might productively surface in the present, insisting that there is transformative potential in moments that are not quite past, but not entirely present.

In chapter three, Freeman describes “erotohistoriography” as a method for encountering the past as already in the present and the body as a tool “to effect, figure, or perform that encounter.” The body, and its pleasurable responses, in Freeman’s usage, becomes a “form of understanding,” a means to do history. Through tender readings of Frankenstein and Orlando, Freeman pieces together a history of history as physical and considers how bodies in these texts become sites where history is felt—staging the “very queer possibility that encounters with history are bodily encounters, even that they have revivifying and pleasurable effect.”.

Finally, in the last chapter Freeman analyzes Isaac Julien’s The Attendant (1992), following through with her arguments to a site that, she admits, potentially poses troubling conclusions. Namely, the body in sadomasochistic practices as it iterates the past, particularly the horrors of the slave trade. However, through her reading of Julien’s work and S&M practices more generally, Freeman argues for their role as erotohistoriographic practice, and as such they present erotic means of challenging history and rewriting bodily possibilities.

Concluding her thrilling book with a new queer manifesto, Freeman stakes her claim as an influential voice in contemporary queer theory, and asks us to join her, to “use our historically and presently quite creative work with pleasure, sex, and bodies to jam whatever looks like the inevitable.”

Written by: Sam McBean, April 2nd 2011

Timer

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jac Schaeffer

Capewatch Pictures

I love a romantic comedy. Throw in some magic realism–even better. Jac Schaeffer's Timer ticks both of those boxes, but, unfortunately for a film that explores people’s fears about missed opportunities, this film missed a few opportunities itself, and lost me as a fan in the process. (It bills itself as sci-fi but I say magic realism–there is new technology, but it’s never fully explained. I call that magic. More on this later, though.)

The concept is great: a company has created a wrist implant that counts down to the moment you will meet your soul mate–but only if that person has also bought an implant from the company. Obviously, this service is incredibly popular, leading to new phenomena in the dating world: some desperate types insisting every new person they date gets a timer implanted to make sure they’re "the one," others only dating those with timers in the first place, last-hurrah flings as the timer counts down its final days, and even technophobic hold-outs who don’t trust this newfangled stuff (with parallels to social networking). The consequences of having the timers could have been explored further though. Things were briefly touched upon-class issues, young love, bigger questions about fate and chance. The ideas all had loads of potential, but as I watched, I kept feeling like Schaeffer tried to go too far down each road, without taking the opportunity to wrap up every angle.

Because of all of the above, including my desire for more closure, I really wanted to like this film, and came very close to liking it. A few other things rankled, though. This may seem petty, but it struck a nerve with me: One of the opening shots of the film was of the logo of the company that created the timers–the silhouettes of a man and a woman, yet we briefly see later in the film that the company caters to couples of all sexualities. I don’t generally care what sexualities the main characters of a romantic comedy are, but it wouldn’t have taken much more effort to come up with a logo that was slightly less heteronormative. I mean, surely it would have been better advertising for the company itself within the confines of the film. Which brings me back to the world of the film. It was quite shallow–poke at it too hard and it was clear that there were a lot of unanswered questions: How did the technology work? How did the implants work? Why hadn’t anyone tried to hack the system? What if people’s bodies rejected the devices? Were they only available to wealthy westerners? Again, what made for a less than satisfying film could yet pave the way for a great series.

When it comes to the Bechdel Test, this film almost succeeds, but focuses just too hard on the guy-chasing and glosses over the other aspects of the relationship between the two main characters. Timer’s website purports to put across the message that you can escape your fate, but the message I got was these women needed to define themselves through their romantic relationships.

Great concept, but ultimately I was dissatisfied.

Written by: Chella Quint, August 18th 2010

Theology of the Body

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:31:00 +0000

By Donora Hillard

Gold Wake Press

In Theology of the Body, Donora Hillard employs a variety of styles and structures to present a complicated picture of the body, desire, and heterosexual relationships. She makes use of the language of theology and an unrelenting physicality in order to create a sense of faith not beyond the body, but through it of a human divinity that is also at once diabolic. It is no accident that the opening epigraph comes from William Blake.

Within this sequence, Hillard manages to portray women with threatening sexualities as well as women who have been made victims. In portraying women’s surprising and, to some, disturbing strength, she does not erase the brutality. With the lines "You can see muscles/ in my legs from running/ after men like you," “Pursuit” is followed by “Remedy,” which concludes with a literal punch that the tight lines and simple imagery of the first two stanzas allow to have a particularly strong impact on the reader. Reading the last verse for the first time, I jerked back a little as if I had been punched. (This isn’t the only place where I reacted so strongly: take that as a trigger warning.)

The only thing that separates these two poems is a line from Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, taken out of context in order to be made into an opportunity for poetic production and imagination. “Remedy” and the other poems interspersed with lines from this same source do more than dramatize or respond to the line which precedes each: poems and statements interact, forming machines that produce new possibilities for the spirituality of the body. The possibilities, no doubt, would have been heinous to the Pope from whom Hillard so skillfully appropriates. The spirituality of the body, after all, is really just the body and living in it. No need for robes, psalms, or Churches: "Every woman, by virtue of the nuptial meaning of her body, is called in some way to be both a wife and a mother."

This quote from the old Pope is followed by a poem that changes the meaning of the final two terms beyond anything he would have recognized. “Wife” opens, "My husband was a shotgun made of candy./ I wanted to kill his former lovers, especially/ the Strawberry Shortcake-looking one." The only allusion to motherhood made comes a few lines later, "On our anniversary,/ we made love in a kiddie pool full of sugar/ and afterbirth."

This strange and joyful sweetness, interrupted by scars and knives with uncertain intents goes beyond the bounds of traditional and restrictive theologies. In doing so, it represents (particularly since it blends sweetness and at least potential pain) the peculiar strength of Hillard’s theology, whether you take it as a theology or not.

Cross-posted with Gender Across Borders

Written by: Elizabeth Switaj, June 29th 2010

Privilege: A Reader

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Michael Kimmel, Abby L. Ferber

Westview Press

A historian once said that the more one can know about something, the more you can control it. Michel Foucault was specifically talking about the control of psychiatric patients, prison inmates, and people's sex lives, but we can certainly extend his thoughts to a plethora of other examples. What Foucault did not say, however, was how exposing and learning about power and dominance can lead to their dismantling.

After more than two decades since his passing, the inheritors of Foucault's ideas make an appearance in a handsome new book that explores the invisible power of privilege; namely the privilege of being White, heterosexual, and middle class in America. Privilege: A Reader is a collection of essays compiled and edited by Michael Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber, both scholarly experts in masculinities and ethnic studies respectively. The book takes on a welcoming and accessible feel with essays that come a personal place, many written from a first-person perspective by heavyweights like Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and Tim Wise.

Some, like Allan Bérubé's experience as a gay rights activist brings to light the complications of being White in anti-racist gay rights movement. Not being White, I found Bérubé's angst about pointing out the Whiteness of influential gay groups in the U.S. an eyeopener. For White people, it seems, it was convenient to remain racially invisible and to depend on the unspoken rules about keeping that Whiteness unchecked. Awkward silences, defensiveness, and hostility form the repertoire of White discomfort when the racial gaze is turned to Whiteness.

In Michael A. Messner's piece on "Becoming 100 Percent Straight," he raises questions that heterosexual people rarely ask: how do we know for sure we're straight? And what made us straight? Messner's question is interwoven in a study of his own sexuality that touches on his memories as a young man who was infatuated with a male classmate and friend. In repressing this infatuation, he belittles and rejects his friend—a process Messner calls the heterosexualisation of his masculinity.

With every chapter I am reminded of the discomfort the topic of privilege raises and how important that it should remain unsettling. I learn that Black men and working class White people, as privileged groups, are highly contested categories in the face of institutional racism and poverty. And dishearteningly, I discover that the gateway to social mobility undermined by the unearned privilege of being accepted to Ivy League colleges by virtue of having parents who are alumni.

Kimmel and Ferber's book takes us on a journey of self-reflection, of deconstructing the power of invisibility, and asks us some difficult questions about our many roles in maintaining oppression. But it does not try leave us beset with racial or class guilt. Rather, it invites us to pursue, both on a theoretical and practical level, ways of recognising the overlapping nature of social privileges and overcoming differences in the name of solidarity against oppressions.

Though Privilege: A Reader could be a more comprehensive, far-reaching catalogue of dominance, both insidious and overt, if it had taken on board the narrative of privilege from other non-White experiences and interrogated what being able-bodied and cisgendered mean. The absence of trans, disabled, Asian, and Native American voices speaks, ironically, of Kimmel's and Ferber's privilege of omitting these important experiences that are key to dismantling the edifice of privilege.

I praise Privilege: A Reader nonetheless, for its courage to speak from a place that prefers to remain silent, for raising attention to a things that want to stay hidden, and its overall critique of life's many taken for granted experiences and “common sense.” I'm sure Foucault would be proud of that.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, May 8th 2010

Don’t Be a Dick

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Paul Brown

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture has made an array of otherwise lofty topics accessible through the format of personal zines that aim to educate and inform—from bicycle maintenance to vegan cooking. In particular, the strong foothold that DIY culture has in radical politics and feminism has allowed for the creation of some radical, eye-opening work. Paul Brown’s zine, _Don’t Be a Dick, _is an archetypal DIY zine, complete with staples, a gray-washed Xeroxed background, hand-drawn pictures, and a curious layout. It looks as harmless as a playbill, but is unique to the DIY format in that it is a boldly personal account of a heterosexual male’s journey with consent.

Brown tackles a lot in the twenty-something pages that encompass his zine, such as constructions of masculinity, the United States as a rape culture, and definitions and approaches toward healthy consent. But Brown’s ambitious approach is also his major downfall. Don’t Be a Dick’s focus goes far beyond the limits of its pages, and while the topics Brown discusses are important and pertinent to comprehending consent and sexual assault as a whole, nothing more than a basic understanding is ultimately conveyed. This becomes a problem because, if Brown’s intention was to create a zine that is both informative and useful, neither goal is quite executed. He ends one section on the notion that men need to “wake up” and “hold each other accountable” but gives no clear indication as to how to accomplish either of these goals. Based on its ability to educate an array of people, I would be more recommend a zine like Cindy Crabb’s Learning Good Consent than I would this zine.

Brown’s zine is unique because of who he is—a man writing about male-to-female sexual assault. In the first few pages, the impetus for his zine is revealed—he once coerced an ex-partner into a non-consensual sex act and, after reading about consent, learned the true implications of his actions. Unfortunately, he went on to create a zine that is a digest of ideology found more thoroughly explored in zines like Learning Good Consent and Support rather than writing what he knows. My interest was most piqued by his perspective as a cisgendered man exploring the tricky landscape of consensual sex, such as the processing of the abovementioned story, or his deflated feelings towards pornography. I would like to see Brown adding his own voice into the discourse of radical consent instead of mimicking zines that already exist.

It is useful to have a heterosexual male narrative within the sphere of positive, responsible sexuality and refreshing, if not sobering, for a man to admit that he has committed an act of non-consensual sex. Stories like these are needed to aid in the awareness of consent, and Brown does a much better job than one of the only attempts I’ve read of a man taking accountability for his actions: zinester Rick Mackin’s column in Razorcake Magazine and subsequent zine that was far from the self-effacing, courteous, and sincere zine that Brown’s is.

Brown’s path to writing this zine is admirable and humble, and it is this path that I find to have the most potential for change and transformation within conversations about men’s role in consent and sexual assault. By taking the zines that inspired him and building from that, I believe Brown has a powerful jumping-off point for the hard and honest truths that will surface as consent and sexual assault continues to be discussed.

Written by: Krista Ciminera, February 25th 2010

Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Edited by Ben Karlin

Grand Central Publishing

I have a love/hate relationship with liberal publications, like the New York Times, that discuss progressive issues and at the same time print articles that seem to use stone age mentality to “prove” the differences between women and men. I am forever intrigued by science’s never-ending love affair with sexual dimorphism, and articles with the headlines “What Do Women Want?” and “Varying Sweat Scents Noted By Women” seem to fill the pages of publications every day.

I have a similar love/hate relationship with Ben Karlin’s collection of essays, Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, which expounds on gender differences for the sake of humor and, at times, offers a bit of insight. I am not alone in my intrigue because, unsurprisingly, this book is a national bestseller.

It also comes as no surprise that the “I” in the title refers exclusively to men, as heteronormativity runs rampant in this book. With the exception of one essay, written by Dan Savage, most of the essays detail the faults and failures of previous relationships and how those relationships prepared the dumped ones for marriage. Marriage is a reoccurring theme in these essays, and it is depicted as the final, succeeding goal for most of the men. Not much seems to be learned in these essays, as the men just realize ways to finagle their way into a less demanding, more comfortable relationship.

While the matters mentioned above encompass the latter part of the love/hate relationship, there is the part of me that loves to read a book like this. As it is a humor book, I release the hold of my feminist lens a bit, and relax into what is otherwise an engaging book. Part of me is curious what the average, mainstream male thinks today of their relationships with women. This book is not so much a birds-eye-view into the hearts and minds of men, but more of a carefully crafted, one-sided story of woe, and nonetheless an honest exposure of feelings.

While many of the essays rest on age-old stereotypes, some essays reveal insights that are often overlooked in the discussion of men and sexuality. In the opening essay, Dan Vebber discusses his lack of sexual drive and utter fear of intercourse, Andy Richter writes about coping with male body issues, and Rodney Rothman tells a tale of teenage heartbreak. It is essays like this that make this book unique and unlike the common portrayal of gender dynamics that is present in contemporary media.

This book offers readers more to think about than the average easy read, while still maintaining its funniness and fluidity. You might not learn much from this book but it is at least a fun way to further your love/hate relationship with indulgent gender commentary.

Written by: Krista Ciminera, April 14th 2009

Sex and the City: The Movie

admin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:05:00 +0000

Directed by Michael Patrick King

Far as I can tell, there’s never been a consensus on Sex and the City’s feminist appeal. It shows intimate female relationships, but it’s heteronormative, white, and the characters often talk past each other. The women live (mostly) sexually liberated lives, but they’re nevertheless forever in search of the perfect man to fulfill their emotional needs. The ladies are also all highly successful in their own careers, but their love of expensive shoes and sex toys supports a patriarchal, capitalist model.

I was not an original follower of the show—never had HBO, for one. But over the past two years, thanks to several series-devoted female friends, I suspect I’ve seen every episode at least once or twice. A fan of the individual characters more than their sum total, my expectations for the film felt reasoned. Not skeptical or enthusiastic, I walked in knowing product placement was rampant, it was a sometimes-tedious 2.5 hours in length, and that I was in for a film a bit below its cable-television standards.

After rewriting this review several times, I’ve concluded that the easiest way to explain this film is to expound on its shortcomings, of which there are simply too many. The film opens to a truly unbelievable wedding planning frenzy for Carrie, the forever marriage-phobic writer, and we soon find her on the outs with her commitment-averse fiancé, the phallically named Mr. Big. Gee, when will he show up and make it right again over the next two hours? I was bored and insulted and mostly annoyed. How many times must we watch the same woman make such painfully bad decisions?

(SPOILER ALERT: keep reading this review only if you want key pieces of the plot revealed to you.)

The other characters fared marginally better along the functionality spectrum. Miranda spends the movie separating from a cheating Steve, only to reconcile later. Her choice is perhaps the most complicated, and it also seems to be the one least deserving of feminist scorn, for who hasn’t been there? Samantha finds herself bored and undersexed after five years with Smith Jerrod, and after a few blowups, she leaves for good. For his part, Smith was always a compassionate, sensitive character in the television series, and the movie robs him of this. Or, maybe we forget that the nice guys end up being complacent, selfish assholes too? The message, in whatever way you perceive it, is troubling. We can at least be satisfied that Samantha goes back to single life because her relationship with her authentic self is ultimately the most important to her, superceding her role as business manager and part time girlfriend of a movie star. Charlotte, in her comfortable domestic mothering role, finds herself pregnant and gives birth off-screen. While true to her previous TV-era character, the updated Charlotte feels a little stifled and serves all too often as everyone else’s doormat.

The problems with all of the Sex and the City women stem from the same problems they have always had, only in movie form, they seem larger than life. Why does Charlotte have imperialist tendencies while vacationing in Mexico, only eating pudding from the States because, “It’s Mexico!”? Why is her primary comedic moment a lowly scatological joke? Why is Samantha chastised for her “gut” when the slim fifty-year-old gains fifteen pounds? Why is the only character of color Carrie’s personal assistant? Played well by Jennifer Hudson, her lines nevertheless make her into a one-dimensional, label-loving, yes-woman. This is the diversity of New York City circa 2008? You don’t have to have been in Manhattan recently (or ever) to know this is a movie-made myth.

Maybe my current Sex and the City discomfort would have manifested itself sooner if I’d ever watched four episodes on the TV show in a row. Maybe I did have higher hopes than I thought. I’ve heard plenty of critiques—the children had no character development, the actresses are too self-conscious in revisiting their famed roles—but how much more can be crammed in? The film didn’t drag, but it pushes its genre limits at two and a half hours. In the end, the Sex and the City movie is nothing more than an overinflated romantic comedy with disempowering messages about the depressing state of modern love. Maybe it’s someone’s reality, but it couldn’t be much further from mine or one I would ever desire.

I would recommend seeing the movie if you’re far more devout than I ever was, or, alternately, if you’d like to cement your distaste for the series once and for all. Since seeing the film well over a week ago, I can’t stand to look at or hear any of the characters, let alone watch the show. To immediately swear off a regularly consumed guilty pleasure—a group of intelligent female characters—based on one two-hour sitting has to say something, right? Your money is better spent on a book.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, June 27th 2008

Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:07:00 +0000

Edited by Michael R. Kauth

Haworth Press

The style and content in a sentence: Professional enough for an academic, but thought provoking for the general public. If you’re reading this with thoughts that the “Evolution” part of this title might limit the diversity of coverage of “Human Sexuality,” read on. Most of what we might have learned about evolution and sex on public television, in high school biology, health class and even in psychology 101 leaves everything other than heterosexual, reproductive, cave-man sex in the archeological dust. Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality balances out former schooling in an extremely intelligent way.

The chapters are peer reviewed articles, also published as part of the Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality. Chapters include The Evolution of Sexual Pleasure, How Ecology, Genes, Fertility and Fashion Influence Mating Strategies, Sexual Strategies Across Sexual Orientations and several chapters on same-sex orientation. The authors, mostly US & UK leaders in psychology, include an independent researcher, a clinical psychologist and an archeologist well read in sex, art and ethno-botany.

Artifacts in the form of art and traditions are provided and sociological explanations for sexual orientations and behaviors throughout human evolutionary history are proposed. Early images of women are interpreted as images of power rather than simply as sex-objects. Male-male sexual interactions are explained as adaptive alliances rather than subversions of society. Cross dressing, transgender and trans-sex are given a history much older than this century in places other than metro-sexual.

The articles are written to stand intellectual scrutiny, but the average person could probably read parts as an amendment to traditional text-book biology. Fascinating observations about same-sex interactions in social species are described. Historical evidence of accidental and intentional hormone alteration by humans with natural agents - such as consumption of hormones in mare’s urine (think 'premarin'), estrogenic plants and plants used for birth control - make the handbook memorable, quotable and eye opening to a history of human use of drugs affecting sex, often considered to be new or unnatural.

Sociologists, biology nerds, LGBTQ allies, alternative academics and anyone who’s spent lonely evenings reading about the science and history of sex could enjoy this book. Evolutionary psychologists ought to keep it as a professional reference. Though written to expand a discipline’s understanding of human behavior, this book appeals to curiosity about diversity in sexuality and individual choice.

Written by: Heather Irvine, July 4th 2007