From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and The

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From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be More like a Fag?) Author(s): Suzanna Danuta Walters Source: Signs, Vol. 21, No. 4, Feminist Theory and Practice (Summer, 1996), pp. 830-869 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175026 . Accessed: 24/06/2014 17:21

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FromHere to Queer: Radical Feminism,Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, WhyCan't a Woman Be More Like a Fag?)

Suzanna Danuta Walters

Queer defined (NOT!) A LREADY, IN THIS OPENING, I am treadingon thin ice: how to definethat which exclaims-with postmodern cool-its absoluteundefinability? We maybe here(and we may be queer and not going shopping),but we are certainlynot transparentor easily available to anyone outside the realm of homo cognoscenti.Yet definitions,even of the tentativesort, are importantif we are to push forwardthis new discourseand debate meaningfullyits parameters. Queer is, in true postmodernfashion, a ratheramorphous term and still emergentenough as to be vague and ill defined.Perhaps it makes sense to open, then,with my laundrylist of the queer contemporary, a list admittedlymore aware of the female manifestationsof this "queerness" and in no particularorder:

Eve Sedgwick Teresade Lauretis ball culture JudithButler Queer Nation kiss-ins Madonna lipsticklesbians lesbianstrippers

I would like to thankDavid Bergmanand AmyRobinson for their helpful comments on earlierdrafts of thisarticle. Both have contributedmeaningfully to the developmentof thispiece. Erstwhilecomrade Ara Wilson gave detailedand substantivecriticism, improv- ing thisessay in numerousways. In addition,I would like to thankthe anonymousreview- ers at Signs.Their thoughtful and thorough(if at timesrather contentious!) readings forcedme to engagein thisprocess of revisionwith equal thoroughness.

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1996, vol. 21, no. 4] ? 1996 byThe UniversityofChicago. All rightsreserved. 0097-9740/96/2104-0002$01.00

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conferencesat Santa drag butch/femme Cruz, Rutgers, piercing Michelangelo Iowa, etc. Ru Paul Signorile "in yourface tattoos Sue-EllenCase activism" passing dildos Camille Paglia queer zines S/M go-go girls outing backrooms(for men in skirts cross-dressing lesbians) Riot Grrrls male lesbians Sandra Bernhard Foucault AnnieSprinkle camp On Our Backs lesbianswho sleep bisexuality Susie Bright withmen genderfuck

?* * *

These signifiers(and others,of course) constitutewhat many have called the "new queer sensibility."There is no doubt thata new tide of gayvisibility is sweepingthe country-from Time magazine cover stories on the new chic lesbians, to k.d. lang's VanityFair dress up with supermodelCindy Crawford,to gays in the military,drag queens on Donahue, outing,and our littlehypothalamuses and aberrantgenes. As usual in our media-saturated/structuredculture, these (largelyhetero) glam piecesintersect with unique developments,both intellectual and political, withinvarious gay communities.So these shiftingsignifiers of "queer" are neversimply our own products,located solelyin some sub- culturalnetherworld (if theyever were-rememberdisco?), but instead theymove uneasilyin and out of the "mainstream"as it recodes and cannibalizesthese new images,icons, activisms. It is not only "queer" theoryand politicsthat are typifiedby shifting icons and activisms;feminism and feministtheory are themselvesthe subject of muchcritical revision and rethinking,particularly in lightof both structuralshifts (changes in familylife, increasing numbers of women in the workforce)and ideologicaldevelopments (renewed media attackson feminism,the backlash phenomenon,the rise of right-wingChristian antifeminismand "familyvalues"). In addition,the development of queer theoryand politics(related but not identicalphenomena) emerges in the contextof changingdefinitions of feministtheory and politics.From chal- lengesby women of color,working-class feminists, lesbians, and others, feminismhas been undergoingprofound changes. These changes are markedby increasinglyfrequent criticisms of feministtheory's refusal to reckonwith the waysin which "other" differences(such as race or class) markthemselves on the body and insertthemselves into constructions of oppositional identity.In other words, queer developmentstake place

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withina changingfield of theoryand practice;feminism (and genderthe- oryand politicsgenerally) is no longerthe young upstart but, rather, has achieveda certain"stature" that now has produceda deeperand more thoroughgoinglevel of criticalanalysis and revision. Keepingthis in mind,I wantto examinethe relationship between new queer developmentsand feminismand feministtheory, with a specificfo- cus on the displacementsof radicaland lesbian feminismby a queer theorythat often posits itself as theantidote to a "retrograde"feminist theorizing.Let me begin by layingmy cards on the table: I am waryof this phenomenon.1These new developmentsare not whollypropitious for the (shared,I hope) goals of endinghomophobia, confronting compulsory heterosexuality,liberating sexuality. Nevertheless (and I would hope this goes withoutsaying, but I will say it anyway),this critiqueshould be taken as an immanentone, fromsomeone who liveswithin the gay and lesbian movementand who believesthe new queer politicsand theoryto be largelywell intentioned,however misguided and theoreticallysuspect.2 While my criticismsstand, I am also aware of the real strengthsand possibilitiesembodied in thenew queerdesignations. The fullexploration of sexual desirein all itscomplexity is of coursean importantmove, par- ticularlyas a neglectedaspect of progressivediscourse. And the queer challengeto the notion of sexual identityas monolithic,obvious, and dichotomousis a healthycorrective to our vexinginability to see beyond the limitationsof the homo/heteroopposition. In addition,the openness of the termqueer seemsto manyto providethe possibilityof theorizing "beyond the hyphen,"beyond the additivemodels (race, class, gender,

1 Let me note here,too, thatI am mostassuredly not alone in mycritique of "queer." Indeed,feminists have alreadyinitiated a substantialbody of workthat takes issue with the constructionof "queer theory"as the "replacement"for feminist and lesbianand gay studies.Often, but not always,these critiques of "queer" dovetailwith critiques of postmodernism,as will be broughtout in thecourse of thisarticle. See particularlyModleski 1991; and Bordo 1990. BiddyMartin's work (1993, 1994) has been particularlyhelpful. Wilson's1992 critiqueof bisexualityand de Lauretis's1991 thoughtfulintroduction to the differencesissue on queer theoryhave also added to the growingdiscourse. 2 I should note herethat queer theoryand queer politicsare not,of course,identical. The movementsof theoryand the movementsof politicalaction neverfollow one from the other,nor does one simplyexpress the otherin differentform. Nevertheless, the two are, as are mosttheories and practices,intimately connected, albeit often in an implicit manner.For example,the new queer politicsis markedby a wide embraceof all nonnorm- ativesexualities (witness the namingof recentmarches "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered")and muchof the theoreticalenterprise that goes underthe name "queer theory" is also concernedwith widening the net beyondwhat is typicallythought of as "gay and lesbian" studies.While I do not mean to conflatethe two,I am interestedin discussingthe connectionsbetween them and the implicationsfor a radicalpolitics given thesenewer developments. Moreover, this article works to addressa generaltrend, a direc- tion,a set of discourses,rather than the totalityof an individualtheorist's oeuvre. I thus see thisas a piece of politicalcultural criticism as muchas specifictheory critique, to ana- lyze "thatcertain something in the air,"in whichthe theoristsfigure as inspiration,expression, arbiters,and legitimation.

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters sexual orientation= oppressedidentity) that have so oftenseemed to set up new hierarchiesor retreatedinstead into an emptyrecitation of "difference."Indeed, race critiqueshave consistently insisted on challenging binarymodels of identityin thedevelopment of conceptsof position- alityand intersectionality.Queer discourseis clearlynot "the enemy,"3 but neitheris it unambiguouslythe new hope fora theoryand/or politics to lead us intothe nextcentury. But enoughof thoseprovisos, let us con- tinuewith definitions. Thereare many,often conflicting, ways of usingthis term queer. It can, of course,be used in the old-fashionedway, as nastyepithet. This raises a not insignificantquestion around the value of "reclaiming"the negative language thathas been used to oppressus. I cannot help wonderingif I would evermarch with a groupcalling itself "Kike Nation." Perhapsthe analogy does not hold, but "reclaiming"(or "resignifying")is nevera simpleand straightforwardmatter, and the use of the termqueer needs to reckonwith the arguments(made, for example, by older civil rights activistsover the currenttrendiness among African-Americanyouth of the termnigger) against recirculating a languageconstructed in hate and bigotry.Indeed, evenJudith Butler, one of the theoristsmost associated withthe new queer theory,questions the "reappropriation"of the term queer,wondering if the termcan "overcomeits constitutivehistory of injury"(1993a, 223). That aside, the termqueer can be used, loosely,as a synonymfor (trendy)gay and lesbianstudies and evenfor gay/lesbian identity. So queer can, on manyoccasions, be a ratherundeliberate way of referencinggay or lesbian. But thisis not the usage I will be examining,as it is merelya replacementterm for homosexual or gay or lesbian. Rather,more importantfor us here,queer is used as a signifierof a new kind of "in your face" confrontationalgay/lesbian politics (Queer Nation, etc.),particularly a politicsaround AIDS thatbrings together gay men and lesbiansin a directand powerfulattempt to changepolicies. So queer in thisusage would signifya politicsand theorywith a difference, typicallya generationaldifference but also a (asserted)difference of style, of strategy,of tactics,of ideology.As RosemaryHennessy puts it, "By embracingthe category used to shameand cast out sexual deviants,queer theorydefiantly refuses the termsof the dominantdiscourse. Touting queernessis a gestureof rebellionagainst the pressureto be invisibleor apologeticallyabnormal. It is an in-your-facerejection of the properre- sponse to heteronormativity,a version of actingup" (1993, 967). Queer discourseis oftenunderstood as nonreformist,in oppositionto

3 Indeed,one of mychief concerns here is the dangerof "queer" beingused to con- structan enemyof feminism.

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the "mainstream"gay/lesbian movement, or, as Michael Warnerargues, "no longercontent to carveout a bufferzone fora minoritizedand pro- tectedsubculture [that] has begun to challengethe pervasiveand often invisibleheteronormativity of modernsocieties" (1991, 3). So, in this reading,queer is reallyradically gay, moving "against both assimilationist politicsand separatistidentity definitions" (Sedgwick 1993, 28). Warneralso argues forthe differenceof queer people vis-a-visother social groups,other identities(race, gender): "It is partlyto avoid this reductionof the issues thatso manypeople in thelast two or threeyears have shiftedtheir self-identification from 'gay' to 'queer.' The preference for'queer' represents,among other things, an aggressiveimpulse of gener- alization; it rejectsa minoritizinglogic of tolerationor simplepolitical interest-representationin favor of a morethorough resistance to regimes of the normal" (1991, 16). This is a commontheme of queer theory,the move againstthe idea of gays and lesbians as an interestgroup, an op- pressedminority, and towarda moreuniversalizing (and dispersed)conceptionof queer as anti-or nonnormal.While I applaud the radicalism here-and the explicit admonitionagainst a desire for mere "tolera- tion"-I fearthat this definition of queer,as muchas it wantsto leap the bounds of binarism,finds itself defined against what it is not, "normal." JeffNunokawa wonderswhether "queer meansthe opposite of not queer, just as homosexualmeant the opposite of heterosexual.Queer is suppos- edlythe agentfor destabilizing that kind of binarism-but when,and for whom,and what exactlydo we mean?Do we mean somethingmore than a kind of academic effort?"(1992, 28; emphasisin original).I will come back to thisconcern later. Many haveembraced the term queer as a conceptthat traverses gender as it steersaway fromit as definitional:queer as a termof sexuality,not a termof genderidentity. Warner here states clearly both the universalizing move of queer and its insistenceon a separationof sexualityfrom gender:

The insistenceon "queer"-a termdefined against "normal" and generatedprecisely in thecontext of terror-has theeffect of pointingout a wide fieldof normalization,rather than simple intolerance, as thesite of violence.Its brillianceas a namingstrategy lies in com- biningresistance on the broad social terrainof the normal with more specific resistanceon the terrainsof phobia and queer- bashing,on one hand, or of pleasureon the other."Queer" therefore also suggeststhe difficultyin definingthe populationwhose interestsare at stakein queer politics.And as a partialreplacement for "lesbian and gay" it attemptspartially to separatequestions of sexualityfrom those of gender.(1991, 16)

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For queer theory,in particular,this has been a centraltenet, exemplified in the work of Eve Sedgwickand, in a differentand more cautious way, Butler(Butler 1990, 1993b; Sedgwick1989, 1990, 1991). Queer theory in thissense positions itself as challengeto the "obvious categories(man, woman,latina, jew, butch, femme), oppositions (man vs. woman,heterosexual vs. homosexual),or equations(gender = sex) upon whichconven- tional notionsof sexualityand identityrely" (Hennessy1993, 964). As Sedgwickwrites:

Partof what is interestingabout queer . . . is thatit suggestspossi- bilitiesfor organizingaround a fracturingof identity.... What I hear when I hear the word queer is ... the callinginto questionof certainassumptions: that once you know somebody'schromosomal sex, you are supposed to know a whole list of otherthings about them-including theirgender, their self-perceived gender, the gender people perceivethem to be, the genderof the people theyare attractedto, whetherthey definethemselves as heterosexualor homosexual, their fantasy life-which is supposed to be the same thingbut a littlemore intense-whom theyidentify with and learnfrom, what theircommunities are. What I hear in queer is the question: What thingsin that list don't line up monolithically? (1993, 27)

Here, Sedgwickarticulates a definitionof queer thatlocates its power in a particularlypostmodern (and deliberatelynonessentialist) context of fracturedidentities and incommensurableness.Queer, for her and for manyothers, tears apart the seemingly obvious relationshipsbetween sex and gender,sexual desireand objectchoice, sexual practicesand political identities,and renderssubjectivities infinitely indeterminant. We might say thatthis presents a paradox as queers in thisreading (say, Sedgwick) are not definedby theirsexual choice but,rather, by what? Some vague identificationwith perversion? Some feelingof nonnormalcy?A political affiliation?A desireto listento/be/watch Ru Paul? The termcan also be used in a more genericsense: queer as perverse difference(everything that is not vanillaheterosexuality or vanillahomo- sexuality).Queer in this sense is a sort of postmodernsexual pluralism or a radical constructionistchallenge to identitypolitics. As Alexander Doty argues in his book on queer culture,"Queerness ... is a quality relatedto any expressionthat can be markedas contra-,non-, or anti- straight" (1993, xv). Doty's purpose, like so many promoters of queerness,is "to question the culturaldemarcation between the queer and the straight... by pointingout the queernessof and in straightsand straightcultures, as well as thatof individualsand groupswho have been

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told theyinhabit the boundaries between the binaries of gender and sexuality: transsexuals,bisexuals, transvestites,and other binaryoutlaws" (1993, xv-xvi). Like the separationof sexualityand gender,the criticismof identity politics(and the dualismsthat identity politics are seen to impose)seems to be at the heart of queer theory,particularly in its more postmodern manifestations.In thisvein, there is the work thatlabels itselfexplicitly as "queer theory"or is labeled so by the arbitersof culturaltrends. This is generallyacademic writing, typically within departments of English and literature,but it is not alwaysrooted in the academy.It can sometimesbe found in the new (and fleeting)spaces of gay journalismand gay film- making. Nevertheless,queer theory,like most theoreticalenterprises, is by no means a monolithicand unifiedfield of ideas and practices.The writersI discussin thisarticle do not,of course,all hold thesame beliefsor adhere to the same politicaltraditions and commitments.Indeed, many have engaged in substantivecritiques of each other.For example,Warner (1992) has been quite criticalof what he sees as Butler'sundertheorization of the politicalramifications of a postidentityqueerness. There is no intention here to lump theoriststogether. Nevertheless, while theoristssuch as Sedgwick,Butler, Warner, and Gayle Rubin not onlyemerge from differ- entintellectual traditions but position themselves in quitedeliberately dif- ferentsocial spaces (and I should note hereparticularly Rubin's [1993] admirableattention to social and historicalspecificity), I would argue thatthey all, to a certainextent, share a problematicperspective on feminismand the women'smovement and have engaged,in differentways of course, with gay male identityas the site of privilegedsubjectivity. By speakingof a varietyof theorists,I do not mean to implytheir sameness, only that,in certainmatters (and not in others,many of whichI point out), theyshare certain specific positions, ideas, argument,tendencies. One such sharedformulation is offeredby Diana Fuss in the opening of her edited book on gay and lesbian theory(1991b). She argues that "many of the currentefforts in lesbian and gay theory . . . have begun the difficultbut urgenttextual work necessary to call intoquestion the stabil- ityand ineradicabilityof the hetero/homohierarchy, suggesting that new (and old) sexual possibilitiesare no longerthinkable in termsof a simple inside/outsidedialectic" (1991a, 1). This seemscrucial to the new queer thinking-a rejection(following poststructuralism) of therigid binarisms of a dualistmodel of sexual desireand an argumentfor the plurality and irreducibility(irreducible to gender,to the body,to social construction) of sexual desireand sexual play.The model of "inside/out,"while central to "helpingus to understandthe complicated workings of semiosis" (Fuss 1991a, 1), also confinesus and becomespart of thepolicing apparatus of

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters hegemonicsexuality: "Where exactly, in thisborderline sexual economy, does theone identityleave off and theother begin? And what getsleft out of theinside/outside, heterosexual/homosexual opposition, an opposition which could at least plausiblybe said to secureits seeminglyinviolable dialecticalstructure only by assimilatingand internalizingother sexualities (bisexuality,transvestism, transsexualism...) to its own rigidpolar logic?" (2). Of mostconcern to me hereare theselast definitions,the ways in which the termqueer is thoughtto signifya new kind of politicsas well as a new kind of theorizing,a theorizingmarked by the veryopenness that allows so manydefinitional possibilities. Now, manywould argue that this indeterminacy-thisinability to ascertaina precise definitionand frameworkfor the termqueer-is preciselywhat givesit itspower: queer is manythings to manypeople, irreducible,undefinable, enigmatic, wink- ing at us as it floutsconvention: the perfectpostmodern trope, a termfor thetimes, the epitome of knowingambiguity. Good-bye simulacra, adios panopticon,arrivederci lack, adieu jouissance: hello queer! But what is lost in this fun deconstructionof the cohesion of identity?If queer becomes the new reigningsubjectivity for hip activistsand intellectuals alike, what kinds of politics and theoriesthen become "transcended," movedthrough and overin the constructionof the queer hegemony?It is preciselymy concernover the implicitand explicitmarginalization and demonizationof feminismand lesbian-feminismembedded in this"transcendence"that provoked this article.

Homo politicus, homo academicus The growthof queer theoryand queer politics must be placed in a social and political context.The most importantpieces of this are, of course,the AIDS crisis,the rise of postmodern/poststructuraltheory, the politicsof academia, the sex debates,4and recentcritiques of feminism.I want to go througheach of thesebriefly to contextualizeboth the developmentof the termqueer and myown criticismsof it as well. As manywriters have noted,the AIDS crisisnot only prompteda renewed and reinvigoratedgay and lesbian movementbut radicallyopened up (or re-created)new waysof doing politics. Although this was surelynot the firsttime gay men and women had workedtogether, AIDS activism 4 Briefly,the termsex debates is shorthandfor a reinvigorateddiscussion of sexuality, power,pornography, and fantasythat was, to a largeextent, sparked by the eventssur- roundingthe 1982 BarnardConference "The Scholar and the Feminist."At thisconfer- ence, "sex radical" feministscame into oftenangry confrontation with antipornography activistswho attemptedto censorthe speech of conferenceparticipants. Thus began a long and complicatedseries of debates about feminismand sexualitythat has produced both acrimonyand meaningfulscholarship. See particularlyVance 1984.

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broughtus togetherin a time of crisisboth fromthe disease itselfand fromthe increasingattacks on gay and lesbian life fromthe religious Rightand the Republicanadministrations. It encourageda rethinkingof gay politicsin the lightof this crisisbut also in the lightof the way in whichgay men and womenhave learned more about each otherand their various communities.So, we would want to recognizethe specificityof queer politicsas emergingwith the crisisof AIDS and the development of groupssuch as ACT-UP and Queer Nation: "Many of thesenew gay militantsreject the liberalvalue of privacyand the appeal to tolerance which dominatethe agendas of moremainstream gay organizations.In- stead, theyemphasize publicity and self-assertion;confrontation and di- rectaction top theirlist of tacticaloptions; the rhetoricof differencere- places the more assimilationistliberal emphasis on similaritywith other groups" (Duggan 1992, 15). In addition,queer has developedas a way to broaden the definitions,so that the movementcan be more inclusive (e.g., bisexual, transgendered,etc.): "Queer culture... in its openness and itsnon-specificity, potentially suggests the truly polymorphous nature of our difference,of differencewithin the gay and lesbian community. The minuteyou say 'queer' you are necessarilycalling into questionex- actlywhat you mean whenyou sayit. There is alwaysan implicitquestion about what constitutes'queerness' that attendsthe minuteyou say the word. So, it seemsto me thatqueer includeswithin it a necessarilyexpan- sive impulse that allows us to thinkabout potentialdifferences within thatrubric" (Harper, White, and Cerullo 1993, 30). This has promptedno small amountof debate,as one mightimagine. On what basis are thesedifferent "identities" (practices?) joined together underthe headingqueer? Are queer politicssimply a politicsof the non- normative,as thiswriter seems to suggest?"An emergent lesbian politics acknowledgedthe relative autonomy of genderand sexuality,sexism and heterosexism.It suggestedthat lesbians sharedwith gay men a sense of 'queerness,'a nonnormativesexuality which transcendsthe binarydis- tinctionhomosexual/heterosexual to includeall who feeldisenfranchised by dominantsexual norms-lesbians and gay men, as well as bisexuals and transsexuals"(Stein 1992, 50). Giventhis logic, could not the category queer include pedophiles,incest perpetrators, hetero S/Mers, dis- satisfiedstraights, and so forth?5In otherwords, if all that we share is a nonnormativesexuality and a disenfranchisement,then why not be totallyinclusive? This reducesqueer politicsto a banal (and potentially

5 I do not mean to be facetioushere; indeed, the verypublic debatesover the "place" of organizationslike NAMBLA (NorthAmerican Man-Boy Love Association)in thegay and lesbian movementillustrates the verypressing political concerns raised by a simple politicsof nonnormativity.It is no accidentthat some of the strongestvoices against NAMBLA's inclusionin marches,organizations, and so forthhave been lesbian-feminist.

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters dangerous)politics of simple opposition,potentially affiliating groups, identities,and practicesthat are explicitlyand implicitlyin opposition to each other.To linkpolitically and theoreticallyaround a "difference" fromnormative heterosexuality imposes a (false) unityaround disparate practicesand communities.Politically, of course,these differentgroups/ practicesdo not necessarilyshare a progressivepolitical agenda on sexuality; nonnormativityis hardlya banner around which to rally.How- ever,for manywriters and activistsalike (inspired,perhaps, by Michel Foucault'swork) regulationitself is theproblem; the creationof normsis the fundamentalact of repression.With this logic, any unifyingof the nonnormativeraises the political stakes around regulationand thus opens the door to liberatorymoves. If,as bisexualwriter Elisabeth Daumer writes,these new movesliber- ate "thequeer in all of us" (1992, 92), thenwhat happensto anyconcep- tion of oppositionalidentity? Does thismove of inclusivity(and thechal- lengeto notionsof authenticidentity that it entails)run the risk of setting up another(albeit grander)opposition? And does it end up in a sort of meaninglesspluralism motivated only by a vague senseof dissent,as Lisa Duggan suggests:"The notion of a 'queer community'... is oftenused to constructa collectivityno longerdefined solely by the genderof its members'sexual partners.This new communityis unifiedonly by a shared dissent from the dominant organization of sex and gender" (1992, 20). The eightiesand earlynineties have also witnessedthe rise of postmod- ernismand poststructuralismin social theory:the demise of the "grand narratives,"a new suspicionof "identitypolitics" as constructinga poten- tialhegemony around the identity "gay" or "lesbian" as ifthat necessarily supposed a unifiedand coherentsubjectivity: gay person. Identityis cri- tiqued here as supposinga unity,squeezing out difference,perpetuating binarismsand dichotomousformations, and borderingon (ifnot instanti- ating)essentialism. So postmoderntheory challenges the idea of gayiden- tityas expressing"true"-not constructed-gaysexuality. Many feministshave produced trenchant critiques of postmodernism,6 and even more findthemselves (ourselves) in an admittedlyambiguous relationto thechallenges offered by postmodern theorizing. While thisis not the place to delve into thatwhole debate,suffice it to say thatmany feministshave been wary of the quick dismissal of "the subject" and politicalagency just when it seemedthat women weregetting around to acquiringsome. The critiqueof identityso centralto postmoderntheoriz- ing seems to manyto place feministactivism in a political straitjacket, unable to move (because movingrequires reliance on identityconcepts

6 See particularlyHartsock 1983; Bordo1990; Nicholson 1990; and Modleski 1991.

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thatare themselvessuspect), yet needing desperately to organizewomen preciselyaround those newly suspect categories. Postmoderntheory, in addition,has been markedby its fetishof the margins.If postmoderntheory finds resistance in the intersticesof the body politic,in the marginalspaces, thenqueer theorytakes up on that, dispersingresistance away fromthe locatable and specificbody of the lesbian or the gay man and onto thismore amorphous site of the "queer body" (which may or may not be gay). Postmoderntheory often tends towarda fetishof inconsistency,contradictions, and theever-present "difference."This can degenerateinto an assertionof thehipness or sexiness of contradiction.But progressiveshave long arguedthat some contradictions are not onlynot sexy but are actuallyreactionary and thatthere is indeeda relationshipbetween how one livesone's lifeand thepolitics one espouses, so that livingin a segregatedneighborhood or replicatingthe sexual divisionof labor in the home would not be "sexy" contradictions foravowed antiracists and feministsbut would insteadbe suspectto challenge. So this emphasison the delightin inconsistencyfor its own sake seemsto me foolhardyat best. Queer theoryin the academyis curiouslyplaced. Clearly,most queer theorytakes place in the contextof women'sstudies and/or lesbian and gay studies,even as it attemptsto move outside those parameters.And most queer theorists,I have no doubt,themselves embrace (albeit uneas- ily) the identity"gay." Nevertheless,there is a disturbingtrend in which queer theoryhas becomedisassociated from gay identity. Indeed, this dis- associationis oftencelebrated as the necessaryadjunct to the disassociation of genderand sexuality.One of the interestingaspects of thisphe- nomenonof queer theoryin the academyis thatyou do not have to be gay to do it, in factit is much betterif you are not.7Queer (as opposed to gay or lesbian)lets you offthe identity hook theway that gender studies has vis-a-viswomen's studies, while cashingin on the trendinessof postmodernism.What are the implicationsof a queer theorydisassoci- ated froma gay and lesbianidentity? This is not easy to answer,and I do not wantto be claiminga sortof essentialist(god forbid!)idea thatinsists one mustbe somethingin orderto teachit.8 Clearly, nongay scholars must

7 Isay thisonly half-jokingly. Although clearly most queer theoristsare gay,there does seem to be a proliferationof the "Sedgwick"phenomenon in whichmarried, heterosexual college professorsthrow off their married heterosexuality (but staymarried and heterosexual) and claim "queerness."Although Sedgwick is certainlythe mostnotorious, she is not the sole representativeof thistrend. 8 This is a verytouchy issue and one, I mustadmit, I am verytorn over. For, on the one hand, an essentialistposition (one mustbe somethingto teach it, and that"being" representsthe truthof the experience)is unacceptableon any numberof levels.On the otherhand, ifwe believethat knowledge is alwayssituated-that we alwaysspeak and thinkfrom somewhere-then to say it does not matterat all is equallyunacceptable. Indeed,we do not argue fora morediverse faculty just to be morerepresentative in our

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters teachgay "subjects,"as male professorsmust teach about women and whitesmust teach about people of color. But the thorny issues of authen- ticity,experience, and co-optationare notresolved by an assertionthat no identityis real.Are we reallyto evacuatethe centrality of experience forthe vacuousness of positionality (positionality as indicating the always provisionaland temporalnature of political location and action)?While compellingand suggestive,I fear that the concept of positionalitytends towarda voluntarismthat ignores the multiple, felt, structural determina- tionson people'severyday existence. If you are "gay loving" (as Sedgwick oftenrefers to it),is thatsynonymous with being gay? Does thatdiffer- encenot matter any more? Are gay and lesbianstudies simply to become anotheracademic commodity that anyone can buyin on, given the proper allegiancesand fashionstatements? The straightwhite married man at myuniversity who sayshe "does" queertheory in his English classes is in a structurallydifferent place than I am. Does thisperhaps have some relevance? Should he notspeak to this in someway? It is notto saythat I (as a lesbian)can speakthe "truth" of lesbianlife more than he can; it is to saythat this difference needs to be acknowledgedand reckonedwith in thecourse of academiclife. This meansnot onlybeing explicit about the different risks implied in our positionsbut also acknowledgingthe different ways we knowand present thisknowledge and theeffects that may have on ourstudents. I know it is hopelesslyretro to speakof structure these days, to insistthat material conditionsactually do imposereal, felt, and experiencedlimits on our livesin radically different ways. My straightcolleague may or maynot be wellintentioned. But, while this does matter, it is notat all clearthat his good intentionsalter his power to speakand myrelative powerlessness. I suspectthat these concerns about the politics of experienceget lost in theradical disassociation of identity from embodied practices. This is notto saythat oppression is themark of truth or authenticitybut that, giventhe hierarchies of power in academia, we cannotafford to losesight of "fromwhere we speak."The deconstructionof identitypolitics (the recognitionthat identity categories can be regulatoryregimes) may have somemerit, but it can also, in theworld of academiaas wellin other socialspaces, become the vehicle for co-optation: the radical queer theo- ristas marriedheterosexual. It becomesa convenientway to avoidthose questionsof privilege.What are theimplications involved in claiming "queerness"when one is notgay or lesbian?And, would we toleratethis passing(indeed, it is evenbeing celebrated!) in anothercontext, say the contextof raceor ethnicity?If it is clearlyco-optive and colonizingfor facultystatistics; we also do so because we feeldiversity is not simplyan intellectualac- quisitionbut is embodiedas well.

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the whiteperson to claim blacknessif she or he "feels" black (or even feelsaligned politically with the strugglesagainst racism), then why is it so strangelylegitimate for a heterosexualto claim queernessbecause she or he feelsa disaffectionfrom traditional definitions of heterosexuality? The whiteacademic says she is workingon antiracismand on issues of race and ethnicity;the straight(most often white) academic says she (or he, moreoften) is queer.There is a hugejump beingmade fromstudying/ teachinggay and lesbianwork to pronouncingoneself queer. That jump is, I believe,both intellectually and politicallydangerous. Straight faculty can and mustanalyze and teach about the logics of compulsoryheterosexuality,but theymust explicitly recognize that, for example, they are more likelyto be taken seriouslyand deemedlegitimate because of that verysystem they are critiquing.In addition,they must acknowledge that the "will to know" is different;"knowing" lesbian and gay studiescan neverbe simplyor only an academic commodityfor the gay or lesbian facultymember or student.It is not just a trope. Queer theory,particularly in itsmore academic manifestations, is often posed as a responseto a certainkind of feministand lesbian theorizing that is now deemed hopelesslyretro, boring, realist, modernist, about shoringup identityrather than its deconstruction.I will discussthis fur- therbelow, but therehas been a kind of reigningdogma in progressive and postmodernacademic circles these days that constructsan "old- time" feminismin orderto point out how the sex debates,postmodernism, and queer theoryhave nicelysuperseded this outmoded, reformist, prudish,banal feminismof old. Is itpossible that queer theory's unspoken Otheris feminism,or evenlesbianism, or lesbian-feminism? Queer theory'srelation to thepolitics and theorizingof racialized iden- titiesis no less fraughtthan its relationto feminismand feministidentities. It seems to me-in the littlethat has been publishedexplicitly ad- dressingthis relationship (and thisitself is a problem,because although thereis a growingbody of critiquefrom white feminists,I have found littlespecifically addressing questions of race and queernessper se)-that lesbian and gay writersof color are expressingboth optimismwith the new queer designationsas well as trepidation.The optimismis locatedin thequeer dethroningof gender and the(possible) opening up ofqueerness to articulationsof "otherness"beyond the gender divide. In otherwords, ifqueer can be seento challengesuccessfully gender hegemony, then it can make both theoreticaland politicalspace for more substantivenotions of multiplicityand intersectionality.However, queer can "de-race" the homosexualof color in muchthe same way "old-time"gay studiesoften has, effectivelyerasing the specificityof "raced" gay existenceunder a queer rubricin which whitenessis not problematized.Sagri Dhairyam, in "Racing the Lesbian, Dodging White Critics,"critiques the implicit

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters whitenessof queernesswhile stillattempting to instantiatethe category "queer women of color." "'Queer theory'comes increasinglyto be reck- oned with as criticaldiscourse, but concomitantlywrites a queer white- ness overraced queerness;it domesticatesrace in itselaboration of sexual difference"(1994, 26). Gloria Anzaldfuamakes a somewhat different point;she feelsmore affinity with queer as a termof moreworking-class and "deviant"etymology than what she sees as thehistorically white and middle-classorigins of the designationslesbian and gay. CherrieMoraga and AmberHollibaugh have made a similarargument in theiruse of the phrasequeer lesbian,stressing their embrace of theterm for its difference frommiddle-class lesbian feministidentities (1983). Yet Anzalduiaalso accuses whiteacademics of co-optingthe term queer and usingit to construct"a falseunifying umbrella which all 'queers' of all races,ethnicities and classes are shovedunder" (1991, 250). In addition,I would also suspectthat the inattention to materialsocial relations (commodification,the fluctuationsof internationalcapital, shiftingforms of familiallife, rise in antigayactivism, regressive social legislation,increasing disenfranchisement of people of color,etc.) and the academicismof much of queer writingwould be problemsfor a lesbian/ gay praxis thatis both class and race conscious. Marlon Riggshinted at thiswhen he deconstructedhis own situationas "black queer diva": "Le Butch-Girlwonders, for instance, if her/his permission to say gender-fuck is contingentupon knowingand articulatingFanon, Foucault,Gates, Gil- roy,hooks, Hall, West,and the restas well" (1992, 102). To what extent does queernessembrace Ru Paul and The CryingGame's JayeDavidson as queer icons but effectivelyignore the specificrealities of lesbians and gaysof color?

The case of the disappearing lesbian (or, where the boys are) My main critiqueof the new popularityof "queer" (theoryand, less so, politics)is thatit often(and once again) eraseslesbian specificityand the enormousdifference that gender makes, evacuates the importanceof feminism,and rewritesthe history of lesbianfeminism and feminismgen- erally.Now this is not to say that stronglyidentified lesbians have not embracedqueer theory and politics,or thatthose who do so are somehow actingin bad faithor are "antifeminist."Indeed, what makes queer theory so excitingin partis theway in whichso manydifferent kinds of theorists have been attractedto its promise.Many lesbians(including myself) have been attractedto queer theoryout of frustrationwith a feminismthat, they believe, either subsumes lesbianism under the generic category woman or poses genderas the transcendentcategory of difference,thus makingcross-gender gay alliances problematic. To a certainextent, I, too,

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share this excitementand embracethe queer move that can complicate an oftentoo-easy feminist take on sexual identitythat linkslesbianism (in theworst-case scenario) to an almostprimordial and timelessmother- bond or a hazy woman-identification.At the same time,however, I fear thatmany lesbians' engagementwith queer theoryis informeditself by a rudimentaryand circumscribed(revisionist) history of feminismand gender-basedtheory that paints an unfairpicture of feminismas rigid, homophobic,and sexless.As BiddyMartin notes, "The work of compli- catingour theorieshas too oftenproceeded, however, by way of polemical and ultimatelyreductionist accounts of the varietiesof feministap- proaches to just one feminism,guilty of the humanisttrap of makinga self-same,universal category of "women"-defined as otherthan men- the subject of feminism.At its worst,feminism has been seen as more punitivelypolicing than mainstream culture" (1994, 105). The story,alluded to above,goes somethinglike this: once upon a time therewas this group of reallyboring ugly women who neverhad sex, walked a lot in thewoods, read bad poetryabout goddesses,wore flannel shirts,and hated men (even theirgay brothers).They called themselves lesbians.Then, thankfully,along came theseguys named Foucault,Der- rida, and Lacan dressed in girls' clothes ridingsome verylarge white horses. They told these sillywomen that theywere politicallycorrect, rigid,frigid, sex-hating prudes who justdid not GET IT-it was all a game anyway,all about wordsand images,all about mimicryand imitation,all a cacophonyof signsleading back to nowhere.To have a politicsaround genderwas silly,they were told, because genderwas just a performance anyway,a costumeone put on and, in dragperformance, wore backward. And everyoneknew boyswere better at dressup. So, queernessis theorizedas somehow beyondgender, a vision of a sort of transcendentpolymorphous perversity deconstructing as it slips fromone desiring/desiredobject to theother. But this forgets the very real and feltexperience of genderthat women, particularly,live with quite explicitly.Indeed, one could argue that this is reallythe dividingline arounddifferent notions of queer;to whatextent do theoristsargue queer as a termbeyond (or through)gender? "Where de Lauretisretains the categories'gay' and 'lesbian' and some notionof genderdivision as parts of her discussionof what 'queerness'is (or mightbe), JudithButler and Sue-EllenCase have arguedthat queerness is somethingthat is ultimately beyondgender-it is an attitude,a way of responding,that beginsin a place not concernedwith, or limitedby, notions of a binaryopposition of male and femaleor the homo versushetero paradigm usually articu- lated as an extensionof this genderbinarism" (Doty 1993, xv). But, again, this seems to assume that feminists(or gays and lesbians) have somehowcreated these binarisms.

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Unlikethe terms gay and lesbian,queer is notgender specific, and this ofcourse has beenone ofits selling points, as itpurports to speakto the diversityof the gay and lesbian community and to dethronegender as the significantmarker of sexual identity and sexualexpression. Phillip Brian Harper,in a pieceadapted from a talkat thesecond OUTWrite Confer- encein 1992, arguesthat it is preciselythis attention to thediversity of gayand lesbian culture that marks off queer from lesbian and gay: "What I meanis thatthe dichotomous formulation ofgay and lesbian, that we've beentaught since the 1970s to usein politically correct contexts, is useful and has beena veryeffective educational tool, but has at thesame time suggestedin its dichotomy that there's only one relevant type of difference withinour culture,i.e., gender difference" (Harper, White, and Cerullo 1993,29-30). The pointthat gender is notthe only significant marker of difference is an importantone and one thatdeserves development and reiteration.9 This point,of course,has beenforcefully made in regardto bothrace and class.But in a culturein whichmale is thedefault gender, in which homosexual(a termthat also does not specifygender) is all too often imagedas male,and gay as both,to seequeer as somehowgender neutral is ludicrousand willfullynaive. Feminism has taughtus thatthe idea of genderneutrality is not only fictitious but a moveof gender domination. I applaudqueer theory's expansion of theconcept of differencebut am concernedthat, too often,gender is notcomplicated but merely ignored, dismissed,or "transcended."In contradistinction,I would argue that the critiqueof gendertheory from the perspective of womenof colorhas doneprecisely what the queer critique of gender is onlypartially and in- completelyable to do. In otherwords, gender in blackfeminist writing is not"transcended" or somehowdeemed an "enemy"concept. Rather, the conceptof gender-and feminist theory more generally-is complicated, expanded,deepened both to challengeits "privileged" status and to ren- der it susceptibleto theoriesof intersectionalityand multiplicity.The queercritique of the feminist mantra of the separation of sex andgender (sex beingthe biological"raw material"and genderthe sociallycon- structededifice that creates masculinity and femininity) is helpful in com- 9 I wouldnote, however, in disagreementwith Harper, that the simple construction of a "dichotomy"does not, in mymind, necessarily mean that those who use that dichot- omyare negating other identities and meanings. For example, the fact that this article cri- tiquesqueer theory primarily around its erasure of lesbian specificity and demonization of feminismdoes not mean that other critiques of queer are not important and valid (say, a critiqueof queer around its erasure of color in the universalizing move of nationhood). Be- causeI am primarilyspeaking of the queer occlusion of feminism and gender does not im- plythat I am myself"privileging" gender as themost important marker of difference; it simplyimplies that this is thecore subject of this particular (limited) article. In discussing otherdifferences throughout this article, particularly around race and ethnicity, I try to makethis point more forcefully.

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plicatingwhat has become a somewhatrote recitation of social construc- tionistargument, an argumentthat too oftenleaves the body and its various constructionsunexamined. But in the lightof recentlyresurgent theoriesof biological determinism(see particularlythe firestormof con- troversygenerated by the deterministtract The Bell Curveby Herrnstein and Murray[1994]), theinsistence on a righteoussocial constructionism (womenare made, not born;we are not simplyan expressionof our biological makeup,etc.) mightbe importantstrategically and politically.Too oftenin thesequeer challengesto thisdichotomy, sex becomesthe grand forceof excess thatcan offermore possibilities for liberatory culture, and genderthe constrainton that which would (naturally?)flow freely and polymorphouslyif leftto its own devices. Biddy Martin has made the argumentthat, for Sedgwick and others,race and genderoften assume a fixity,a stability,a ground,whereas sexuality(typically thematized as male) becomesthe "means of crossing"and the figureof mobility.In the processof makingthe female body the "drag" on the(male) playof sexuality,"the femalebody appears to become its own trap,and the opera- tionsof misogynydisappear from view" (Martin1994, 104, 109-10). But it is also not clearto me thatthis vision of a genderlessnonnorma- tivityis a worthwhilegoal. Is a degenderedidea of sexual identity/sexual desirewhat we strivefor? Is this just a postmodernversion of a liberal pluralist"if it feelsgood, do it" ethos?Also, theimages/signifiers for this transcendence(of gender)are suspiciouslymale (whycan't a woman be more like a fag?). If the phallus has been replaced by the dildo as the prime signifierof sexual transgression,of queerness,how far have we reallycome, so to speak? Queer discoursesets up a universal(male) subject,or at least a universal gay male subject,as its implicitreferent. (It is interestingto note in this regardthat the 1993 summerspecial "Queer Issue" of the Village Voicewas called "FaithHope & Sodomy.")We cannotdeny the centrality of gay maleness to this reconstructionof queer as radical practice.For example, Sue-EllenCase discussesher engagementwith the word queer by sayingthat "I became queer throughmy readerly identification with a male homosexualauthor" (1991, 1). This is not to say thatit is not per- fectlyfine to "identify"with gay men, but what thispassage illustratesis a trendtoward a giddymerger with gay men that is leftrelatively unprob- lematized.No one goes furtherwith this identification than Sedgwick.I am reluctantto focus on her in this way, yet she herselfhas so fore- grounded her own personal predilectionsthat she seems ratherfair game.10In a piece called "A Poem Is BeingWritten," Sedgwick bemoans

0ODavid Bergmanhas writtentrenchant critiques of Sedgwickand heroeuvre (1991, 1993).

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters her "failure... to make the obvious swervethat would have connected my homosexual desire and identificationwith my need and love, as a woman, of women" (1993, 209). Indeed, she goes on to note that her "identificationas a gay person is a firmlymale one, identification'as' a gayman" (209). In manyways, this does not evenhave the naivehonesty of thefag-hag who simplygrooves on thepanache of gaymen. Sedgwick, thepostmodern intellectual subject, must not onlyidentify or sympathize or politicallyally, she must be. And lesbianismhere, in this "tortured" self-study,simply becomes the unfortunate absence, not reallythe stuffof identitiesand identifications,merely the detritusof the grandnarratives of male homosocialityand homosexuality. Althoughlesbians are occasionallymentioned (usually when speaking of S/M),gay menmost assuredly have becomethe model forlesbian radical sex (e.g., the celebrationof pornography,the "reappropriation"of the phallus in the fascinationwith the dildo, the "daddy" fantasies,and reverencefor public sex of Pat Califia,etc.).11 This has entaileda denigra- tionof lesbianattempts to rethinksexuality within a feministframework. Granted(and we do not need to go throughthis one moretime), lesbian sexualityhas sufferedfrom both a discursiveneglect and an idealization on the part of lesbians themselves.The image of hand-holding,eye- gazing,woodsy eroticism,however, is not whollythe creationof lesbians but part of the devaluationand stereotypingof all women'ssexuality by male-dominantculture. Even in thathaven of supposedlyuptight, sepa- ratistnonsex (Northampton,Massachusetts, in the late 1970s and early 1980s), I seem to rememberwe were all doing the nastyfairly well, and, forall thetalk of the "lesbian sex police,"12 no girlever banged down my door and stymiedmy sexual expression.The straightgaybashers, however,did. We should neverforget this differenceas we gliblyuse words likepolice. Indeed,Vera Whismancriticizes those feministswho "policed" other lesbianswith charges of male identificationand says that "such charges of male-identificationwere rootednot only in anti-sexattitudes ... but also in essentialistunderstandings of womanhood" (1993, 55). Do we

' See particularlyCreet 1991; Reich 1992; Hall 1993; and Roy 1993. 12 I recognize,of course,that oppositional cultures (including lesbian culture)do tyran- nize theirown members.Indeed, the brutalhistory of the SovietUnion and the sad and dogmatichierarchies of the AmericanLeft provide vivid examples of thisprocess. To some extent,I thinkit feelseven more brutish when the "clampingdown" comes from withinone's own ranks,e.g., fromother lesbians. However, in recognizingthis and ar- guingagainst it, we should not constructa monolithicnew "other" who can now serveas a historicalreminder of the tediouspast we have since transcended.And we need to make carefuldistinctions about this "policing,"based on questionsof intentionality,power, structurallocation, etc. It seems to me thatthe "policing" of lesbiansby the homophobic statethat, say, takes away our childrenis not of the same typeor orderas the "policing" thatcomes fromlesbians themselves around issues of sexuality,sexual practices,style, etc.

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reallywant to relinquisha critiqueof male identification?After all, the feministinsight that a centralimpediment to women'sliberation (yes, liberation)is an identificationwith and dependenceon males and male ap- proval,desire, status, and so on is so obvious as to be banal. Chargesof male identificationmay have been spuriously made at times,but the analysis of male identificationis centraland important. The constructionof an old, bad, exclusive,policing lesbian feminism is necessaryfor the "bad girl" (dildo in tow) to emergeas the knightin leatherarmor, ready to make the world safe for sexual democracy,as TerraleeBensinger argues: "Anythreat to the 'unity'of the ideal feminist community(as well as to the more 'general' lesbian community)is branded'outlaw' activityand purgedfrom the networksof inclusion.In thiscase, pro-sexlesbian pornographers function as the expurgedexcess against which the illusionof communityunity is maintained(in reified form).Lesbian feminismhas a historyof exclusionas muchas anything else" (1992, 71). In her historyof this exclusion, Bensingercites the political event known as the "lavendermenace" (the action to challengethe purge of lesbians in the National Organizationfor Women) to "indicatehow it stuntedthe historical'writing' of lesbian sexual identityand subsequent practicefor years. The resultof this group's strategicmaneuver was a discursive/historicalrepression of the specificitiesof lesbian sexuality whichwas subsumedunder the reifiedsign of Woman" (1992, 73). Gee, and I thoughthomophobia and antifeminismwere the problem! In an articleon the "decenteringof lesbianfeminism," Stein traces the historyof the lesbian movement,from its early attemptsto shiftaway fromthe medical models of sexual devianceto the constructionof the "woman-identifiedwoman" and thedevelopment of a lesbiansubculture and "women'sculture" in general.She takesus to theperiod of rupture- the 1980s-where "a seriesof structuraland ideologicalshifts conspired to decenterthe lesbian-feministmodel of identity.First, the predomi- nantly white and middle-classwomen who comprised the base of the movementaged, underwentvarious life-cyclechanges, and settled into careers and familiesof various stripes-often even heterosexual ones. Second, a growingrevolt emerged from within: women of color, working-classwomen, and sexual minorities,three separate but over- lappinggroups, asserted their claims on lesbian identitypolitics" (Stein 1992, 47). But, in an otherwiseastute and fairchronology, Stein engages in the kind of reductionistreading that has marredother similar narratives. In discussingthe challengesof the "sex debates" and the AIDS crisisas re- introducingsexuality and desireinto lesbian discourseand identity,she

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters engagesin a simplisticsubstitution: "As thewithered body of the person with AIDS replaced the once-pervasiveimage of the all-powerfulmale oppressor,the sense of male threatwhich underlay lesbian-feminist politics diminishedfurther" (Stein 1992, 49). But, of course, "male threat" (or even patriarchy)has hardly withered,although it has certainly changed. Curiouslyabsent fromthis historyis the rise of the religious Right,which broughtwith it an unprecedentedbacklash against feminism,women's rights, and poor people-along with its attackson gays and lesbians. It is not that the image of the AIDS sufferer(and we will leave aside thaticonography for the moment)has replacedthe image of male oppressor; indeed, the images (and policies) of Reagan, Bush, Quayle, Helms, Robertson,Falwell, Terry(and now the new terror- Newt Gingrich),and othersare vividand imposing. Even further,not only are those repressedand repressivelesbians responsiblefor putting a major damperon our nascentsexuality, but feminism itselfis responsiblefor that horrorof all horrors:THE BINARY. Bensingerindicts "the binariesgenerated within feminist movement: feminism/patriarchy,inside/outside, and porn/erotica"(1992, 88). Certain strandsof feminismmight indeed have perpetuated some of theseopposi- tions (and is feminismnot opposed to patriarchy?),but, alas, theylong predatesecond-wave feminism. Seventies feminism here becomes the ogre thathaunts queer kids of today."By the seventiesfeminism had sanitized lesbianism.Lesbophobia forcedlesbians to cling to feminismin an attemptto retainrespectability. However, in the eighties,discussions of sa- domasochism permanentlyaltered the relationshipof many lesbians to feminism"(Morgan 1993, 39). I would have hoped most politically astute lesbians (and gay men, for that matter)were/are feminists; this should be a theorywe embrace(not "clingto") and, of course,transform and challengein thatembrace. Many queer activistsand theoristsseem to believethe media fiction that feminismis either(a) dead because we lost or (b) dead because we won: "1988. So feminismis dead, or it has changed,or it is stillmeaning- fulto some of us butits political currency in theworld is weak, itsradical heart excised, its ploddingmiddle-class moderation now an acceptable way of life.Feminism has been absorbed by the same generationthat so proudlyclaims to rejectit, and insteadof women'sliberation I hear,'Long live the Queer nation!"' (Maggenti 1993, 250). As Whisman notes, "Today's 'bad girls'rebel as much againsttheir feminist predecessors as againstmale power" (1993, 48). In herreview of the differencesissue on queer theory,Hennessy challenges those writerswho set up feminism as theenemy, "substitut[ing] feminism (the Symbolic Mother) for patriar- chyas the most notable oppressiveforce that lesbian sexual politicsand

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eroticismmust contend with. For feministsthis should seem a verydis- turbingperspective shift, especially when feminism, among young people in particular,is morethan ever a bad word" (1993, 969). This is not to denythe importanceof the "sex debates" and the new discussionsaround lesbian sexualitythat, I agree,are long overdue.The open and volatile discussionof sexualitypermanently altered feminist praxis and allowed fora complex debate around the politicsof passion and desirethat recognized that the simplisticrendering of women'ssexu- alitywas in need of major revision.And thisis not to saythat some lesbians, and some feminists,do not "judge" and indeed condemn sexual practicesthat they have deemedantithetical to theproject of constructing a postpatriarchalworld. This censuringis to be heartilycontested, as it has fromnumerous writers and activists.But I simplysuggest that we apply our own theoriesconsistently: the narrativeof "sexless uptight dykesof the 1970s" is, afterall, a narrative,and as we havebeen so adept at deconstructingnarrative for the relationsof power that inherein the tellingof history,we should be equally able to "read" this storywith, well, a grainof salt at the veryleast. Now gay male sex and its historiesbecome the verymodel of radical chic: the backroomreplaces the consciousness-raisingsession as site of transformation.Feminist critiques of objectification,concern with abuse of women, and desire to constructnonpatriarchal forms of intimacy become belittledand denigratedas so much pruderyand "politicalcor- rectness,"creating an ahistoricalnarrative that furthers the separationof feminismfrom queer politicsand theory. In an articleon her adventuresin the new lesbian backroomsof the Village,Donna Minkowitzsees sexual and politicalliberation in thecon- structionof spaces foranonymous sex, neveronce questioningthe male model or her own location. She clearlyenvies the gay men of the pre- AIDS days and bemoansher own teenagefate: "I have a girlfriend,not a transgressiveerotic world where I can do it withfive strangers in an eve- ning,or suck offgirl upon girlin thedarkness of themeat district" (1992, 34). But why is this practicedeemed transgressive (and, consequently,a "girlfriend"deemed dreadfully banal and prudish)?The model of libera- torysex beingconstructed here is one where"sex ... is separatefrom the world outside-it doesn'tviolate vows of monogamyor enterthe part- nersinto a 'relationship"'(34). This mayor maynot be a liberatoryprac- tice (or it may just be fun),but its transgressivenessis not self-evidently radical unless one sees transgressionitself as the supremeact of radical identitymaking. I fear,here, we have a real failureof imagination.Are lesbians unable to construct,envision, imagine, enact radical sexualities withoutrelying so fundamentallyon male paradigms?Must we look to

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters the boys in the backroom as our Sapphic saviors?Why are "gay male sluts" (as Minkowitzputs it) the model? And whythis (theoretical)obsession withthe questionof whetherto call oneselfa lesbian? In an articlefor the gay and lesbian anthology Inside/Out,Butler (1991) spends severalpages ponderingthis puzzle, an analogous puzzle to that posed recentlyby feministsabout whether there really are "women" and whether our use of that category reinscribesits abilityto constructus in powerrelations. Sure, to a certain extent,all categoriesare, as Butlerand othershave put it, "regulatory regimes,"but so what?How can resistingthese regimes be anythingother than an intellectualexercise, a game that can be reduced to that old canard "don'tcategorize me" (as liberalsand college studentswould put it)? Is this just an emptygesture or, rather,a gesturefull with self- importance,postmodern hubris, rebellious nose thumbing?It is not to say thereisn't much truthto the claim thathomosexual identity,like all categoricalidentities, is a "fiction"to a certainextent, is a collection of regulationsand positions that can, perhaps, constrainas much as enable, impose as much as liberate,police as much as free.But I think that,in fact,the queer frameworkremains within the binarismit so des- peratelywants to explode, in that the assumptionis that gay identities necessarily-in a structuralsense-act like all other identities.13All categorieshave rules,to be sure,but not all followthe same rules. The historicalconditions of growingup "gay" or "lesbian" in a homophobic culturemay, in fact,produce categoriesof identitythat are more fluid, more flexiblethan the categories of other identities,such as heterosexuality.Why must we assume that all identitiesform around the same structuralbinarisms and with the same inherentrigidities? Is that not essentialist? And does thisdifference not makea differencein how we "think"identity?When Butlersays that she is "not at ease with'lesbian theories,gay theories,'"referring to the titleof the anthology,because "identitycate- goriestend to be instrumentsof regulatoryregimes, whether as the nor- malizingcategories of oppressivestructures or as therallying points for a liberatorycontestation of thatvery oppression" (1991, 13-14), does she not want to stressthe differencebetween these two moments-the moment of oppressionand the momentof liberation?Are those different uses of identitycategories just the surfacethat belies the "deep meaning" of identityas "really"about "oppressivestructures"? Or can we see these differentuses and meaningsof identityas radicallydifferent, not just

13 It is also interestingto note thatthese critics of identityshy away fromthe obvious analogies of racial and ethnicidentity.

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somehowsuperficially different? Indeed, does it not actuallysound a bit strangeto speak of heterosexualidentity (or WASP identity,etc.) and should thatnot indicatesomething about the differencesin thesetwo us- ages/meanings?This is not simplyto argue that we need to adopt the termswoman or lesbian as a sortof "strategicessentialism" as has been argued elsewhere,but ratherto say let us thinkthis concept lesbian throughthe historicaldevelopments of lesbian desires,bodies, passions, struggles,politics. Butlergoes on in the articleto questionnot onlyidentity as a lesbian but the processof "comingout," as it furtherimplicates the "subject" in the subjectionof beingnamed and known: "Is the 'subject'who is 'out' freeof its subjectionand finallyin theclear? Or could it be thatthe sub- jectionthat subjectivates the gay or lesbian subjectin some wayscontin- ues to oppress,or oppressesmost insidiously, once 'outness'is claimed?" (1991, 15). She furtherasks, "Can sexualityeven remainsexuality once it submitsto a criterionof transparency and disclosure?"(15). Hmm,that old devil moon is back again. Sexuality,she must be, how you say,an enigma,hidden, dark, unconscious for her to be ... fun.Shhh, don't talk, don't know,don't even thinkyou know,don't claim, don't reveal:desire needs dark curtainsof mysteryto be pleasurable. Shane Phelan, writingin the Signs special issue on lesbianism,joins othersin critiquingthe prominenceof the "comingout" processfor lesbian identity,asserting that the language of "comingout" implies"a process of discoveryor admissionrather than one of constructionor choice" (1993, 773), thus producingan essentialistnotion of a "real" lesbian identitythat existsbeneath the layersof denial or hiding.But I am not surecoming out is as unitaryand simplea processas thesetheorists make it out to be. Granted,for many it can be thatsort of a revelatorymove, revealingthat which was "reallythere" but hiddenall along. But foroth- ers, coming out is, first,not a momentbut rathera contradictoryand complexprocess that involves (perhaps) self-revelation, construction, po- liticalstrategy, choice, and so forth.Second, it seemsludicrous to pretend thatinternalized homophobia and the realitiesof heterosexismand het- erosexualprivilege are not operativein and around these "comingout" processes.Phelan and othersseem to writeas ifwe "come out" in a social and politicalvacuum. Phelan cites Barbara Ponse and Mark Blasius as arguingfor a conceptionof comingout as a sortof "becoming,"learning the ways of being gay or lesbian (Phelan 1993, 774). But, again, I do not see these as mutuallyexclusive. Of course "coming out" impliesa becoming,a constructionof the selfas gay,now not "hidden"within the fictionof heterosexuality.But this "becoming" is, for so many,also mergedwith a profoundsense of "revealing"a "truth"that one had

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters previously"hidden." That truthmight indeed be a fiction(in that no identityis everpresocial, inhering in some untouchedpart of the soul or psycheor body), but it is a fictionthat manylive throughand in quite deeply. StevenSeidman also writesthat he now feelsmore uneasy with the act of coming out and makes a similarleap that associates "coming out" witha necessarilyregulatory process:

To the extentthat the positiveeffects of comingout have turnedon announcinga respectablehomosexuality, this politics has thenega- tive effectof pathologizingall those desires,behaviors, and lives thatdeviate from a normalizedhomosexuality-or heterosexuality. Such a relentlesspolitics of identity-"homos are reallyno different fromstraights"-reinforces an equally relentlessnormalization of conventionalsexual and gendercodes. In otherwords, coming out is effectiveonly if the homo made publicis announcedto be likethe straightin everyway but sexual orientation.Thus all the ways that homos may be queer-for example,those who like to cross-dress, role play, have multiplesex partners,or engage in commercial, rough,or public sex-are pathologizedby the strategyof coming out as a respectablehomo. (1994, 170)

This constructsa totalizingnarrative of comingout thatdefies logic. Why does Seidman assume that all who come out do so as "respectableho- mos"? Surely,that is part of the discoursebut obviouslynot the whole of it. What about the veryact of "coming out" necessarilyimplies the pathologizingof certainpractices? It certainlycan (as can everything), butI see no necessaryrelation unless one viewsany declaration of identity (howeverprefaced by caveats) as an immediatesmoke signal to theforces of dominationthat all is clear.And what of our responsibilityto others? If one less youngperson feels alone and vulnerable,one less colleague isolated and marginalized,is that not something-at the veryleast-to consider? But queer theorygets its mostFelliniesque when it startsmulling over the (exciting!)possibilities of the "male lesbian."Indeed, Jacquelyn Zita devotesan entirearticle to this subject. Zita proposes the male lesbian as radical genderbender, "challenging the naturalnessof 'maleness' and 'heterosexuality'by the bizarre-nessof his self-intendingsex and gender attributions"(1992, 125). Once again, men in the frontlines in the fight forequality and justice.Just like Tootsie!

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I cross-dress,therefore I am I worryabout the centralityof dragand camp to queer signification.14 As Carol-AnneTyler notes, gay camp is no longerjust funin an unfun world, gay campers "have become draped crusadersfor the social con- structionistcause, catchinggender in theact-as an act-so as to demon- stratethat there is no natural,essential, biological basis to genderidentity or sexual orientation"(1991, 32). From"Chicks withDicks" to Ru Paul to butch/femmebravado, crossing has become the metaphorof choice and the privilegedsign of the new queer sensibility.As muchas lesbians may now be "playing" with these signifiers(and giventhe realitythat thereare women who cross-dress,etc.), these are, afterall, historically primarilymale activities,particularly in themode of publicperformance. In addition,"playing gender" for male dragqueens or cross-dresserscan- not, in a world markedby the power of genderwithin patriarchy, be the same forwomen. As muchas we mightintellectually want to talk about a more fluidand shiftingcontinuum of both genderand sexual desire (and the separationof the two) we cannot affordto slip into a theoryof genderas simplyplay and performance,a theorythat, albeit attiredin postmoderngarb, appears too much like the old "sex roles" framework or evenan ErvingGoffman-type "presentation of self"paradigm. As the editorsof the special issue of Radical America("Becoming a Spectacle: Lesbian and Gay Politics& Culturein the Nineties") ask, "What are we to make of the pervasiveinterest in 'cross-dressing'?Has 'cross-dressing' replaced'coming out'-does 'performingyourself' catch some of thede- sire formobility, the fearof beingpinned down, foundout, leftout, or fixed,that 'coming out' (discovering,revealing, expressing your 'true self') cannot?" (Radical America1993, 9). The conceptof "performance"has dominatedrecent feminist theory as well as gay/lesbian/queertheory. Butler is obviouslykey here,as her work has come to signifya radical move in both theoreticalarenas, and the notions of gender play and performancethat she elaborates have found themselvesthe startingpoints for any numberof new works in

14 I willforgo here any substantive discussion of the long and complicated history of dragand camp (themselves not synonymous, ofcourse) within the lesbian and gay movement.Clearly, the simplistic reading of drag (particularly female impersonation) as only misogynistparody has beenrightly subjected to seriouscritique (which is notto saythat thisreading did not have some merit). But while drag is notunproblematically misogynis- tic,neither is itunproblematically theprivileged sign of gender-bending radicalism or sexual transgression.Carole-Anne Tyler's article on thepolitics of gay drag offers up a com- pellingcritique of the claims of radicalism. Specifically, she wonders how one is to makea distinctionbetween gender-bending camp and misogynist masquerade when all identities arefictions, and when a "white,bourgeois, and masculine fetishistic imaginary" reigns (1991,62).

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters feministtheory and queer theory.I want to be carefulnot to simplifyher complexand compellingcontributions to thesediscussions. I thinkshe is much more carefulabout theorizing"performance" than many others who have constructeda less nuanced analysis.Indeed, in Bodies That Matter,Butler sets out to clarifywhat she sees as a misconstrualof her stance on performativity,particularly when it comes to the question of drag.Just as she is explicitthat the performance of genderis nevera simple voluntaryact (like choosingthe clothesone puts on in the morning) and is always already constitutedby the rules and historiesof gender, she reiteratesthat ambiguity of drag,arguing carefully that "drag is not unproblematicallysubversive . . . [and] there is no guarantee that exposingthe naturalizedstatus of heterosexualitywill lead to its subver- sion" (1993a, 231). Yet, provisos (as in "performanceis neversimply voluntaristicaction") do littlewhen the performancesremain removed froma social and culturalcontext that either enables or disenablestheir radicalenactment. Clearly,cross-dressing, passing, and assortedtropes of postmodernde- lightare sexier,more fun, more inventive than previous discourses of identityand politics.Indeed, I thinkthe performancemotif the perfecttrope forour funkytimes, producing a sense of enticingactivity amid the de- pressingruins of late capitalism.It obviouslyspeaks to the pastiche-like worldof imagesand signsthat have come to signifywhat it means to live in thepostmodern (see Madonna and Michael Jacksonif you doubt this), yetthis hand can, and has, been overplayed.In particular,this trope becomes vacuous when it is decontextualized,bandied about as the new hope fora confusedworld. Theoriesof genderas play and performance need to be intimatelyand systematicallyconnected with the power of gender (really,the power of male power) to constrain,control, violate, and configure.Too often,mere lip serviceis givento the specifichistorical, social, and politicalconfigurations that make certainconditions possible and othersconstrained, as Hennessyhere notes in her critiqueof Butler (and others)for the lack of attentionto the materialcontext of "gender performance":"What does it mean to say thatwhat can be seen as pa- rodic and what genderparody makes visible depends on a contextin which subversiveconfusions can be fostered?What exactlyis meant by 'context'here?" (Hennessy1994, 40). Withoutsubstantive engagement withcomplex sociopolitical realities, those performance tropes appear as entertainingbut ultimatelydepoliticized academic exercises. There is greatinsight and meritin understandinggender and sexual identityas processes,acquisitions, enactments, creations, processes (and Butleris rightto creditSimone de Beauvoirwith this profound insight), and Butlerand othershave done us a great servicein elaboratingthe

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dissimulatingpossibilities of simulation.But thisinsight gets lost if it is not theorizedwith a deep understandingof the limitationsand con- straintswithin which we "perform"gender. And withoutsome elabo- rated social and culturalcontext, this theoryof performanceis deeply ahistoricaland, therefore,ironically (because postmodernismfashions it- selfas particularismpar excellence)universalistic, avoiding a discussion of the contexts(race, class, ethnicity,etc.) thatmake particular"perfor- mances" more or less likelyto be possible in the firstplace. It is not enoughto assertthat all performanceof gendertakes place withincom- plex and specificregimes of power and domination;those regimesmust be explicitlypart of the analyticstructure of the performancetrope, ratherthan asides to be tossed aroundand thenignored.15 I worry,too, about the romanticizationof the marginsand of the outlaw that this emphasison "genderbending" oftenaccompanies. Rear- rangingthe signs of gendertoo oftenbecomes a substitutefor challenging genderinequity. Wearing a dildo will not stop me frombeing raped as a woman or beingharassed as a lesbian. And while donningthe accoutre- mentsof masculinitymight make me feelmore powerful, it will not,short of "passing,"keep me out of theghettos of femaleemployment. This deconstructionof signs-this explorationof the fictitiousand constructed natureof genderencoding and genderitself-must be a partof anyradi- cal gay politics,but if it becomesradical gay politics,we are in trouble. Phelan thoughtfullypoints out the dangersof a limited,deconstructive politics:"Voters in Colorado, or homophobeswith baseball bats,will not be persuadedby discussionof genderambiguity; I suspectit will exacer- bate theiranxiety. Telling them that I am not 'really'a lesbianis different fromsaying it to readersof Signs;what the Signs audience can understand as deconstructionbecomes simplya returnto the closet in others'eyes" (1993, 782). So, I have a concernhere about queer politicalactivism (and theory)degenerating into a self-styledrebel stance. It can again become a simpleinversion (we're here,we're queer,get used to it), a revelingin our otherness,embracing it, claiminga "dirty"identity. Ironically, the rebelqueer has also been toutedby mainstreammedia: "Meanwhile,de- viantsexualities are in culturalfashion. From the unexpected response to The CryingGame to the popularityof Dame Edna and Ru Paul ('Queen fora Day'), fromthe seemingly endless parade of cross-dressers,transgen- derists,and drag queens on daytimetelevision to the spate of filmsabout to emergefrom Hollywood ... it appearsthe culture is slantingqueerly" (Doty 1993, 8). Nevertheless,the recent public fascination with

15Again, I wouldnote here that Butler's most recent work seems to address,rather suc- cessfully,many of my concerns. Nevertheless, I still am concernedthat much of the discus- sionaround drag, performance, crossing, etc., remains deeply decontextualized orthat the contextseems to be solelya textualand representational one.

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters queernessin no way impliesan antihomophobicmove; indeed, it is often quite the opposite.16 Readingthese tales of modernqueer lifereveals the obsessivefocus on the self,the relentless narcissism and individualismof narrativesof queer theory:"I pack a dildo, thereforeI am." It is sort of like,let us make a theoryfrom our own sexual practices(e.g., "I'm a cross-dressingfemme who likes to use a dildo while watchinggay male porn videos with my fuckbuddy who sometimeslikes to do it withgay men. Hmm, what kind of a theorycan I make fromthat?"). But,in myreading, the notion of the "personal is political" did not mean let us constructa theoryfrom indi- vidual personalexperiences. Rather, there was some notionof collective experience,shared experience. So that,in the earlyconsciousness-raising sessions,developing theories out of,say, the inconsistency of male leftists not doing anyhousework or childcare grew,not onlyout of an individu- al's experiencewith "her man," but out of a real sense that this was a significantsocial problemand social reality.Now, it mightbe thatdrag, cross-dressing,S/M, and otherassorted practices might have a collective basis, butthat is certainlynot how it is beingaddressed in mostliterature. Indeed,I am astoundedat theextent to whichthe distinction between the social and the individualis constantlyelided, resultingall too oftenin eithera naive social-psychologicalview of theworld or a narcissisticob- sessionwith oneself as theworld. Now, I would be the last to decryexperience, to want to rope it off, out of the reach of theory.Indeed, one of the strongestand most lasting aspectsof feministtheorizing has been an adamantrefusal to isolateper- sonal narrativesout of the reach of theorymaking. But I fearthat much of thiswork is taking"the personalis political" in an unintendeddirec- tion: my life,my personalstory is theory:I am the world. In addition,I thinkthese are personal storiesdesigned to be outrageous,to articulate the authoras inheritorof themantle of Sadean dissidence. Susie Bright,self-styled maven of sexy hipnessand hip sexiness,has been a centralfigure in this new queer sensibility.17From her tenureas editorof the sex magazine On Our Backs to her sex shows and advice columnsto hernew statusas queermom of theyear, she has been lionized by the purveyorsof radical chic and postmodernwackiness. In a grand (and simplistic)reversal, Bright champions porn as the finalfrontier of liberatedsexuality. While the porn and sex debateswithin feminism, for

16 I am currentlyworking on a book thataddresses precisely these questions: "The Gay 90s: Media, Politics,and the Paradox of Visibility." 17 I am by no means conflatingthe work of someone like Brightwith theorists such as Butler,Sedgwick, or Rubin. Indeed,however much I disagreewith them, these theorists are complicatedand surelysophisticated in theirvarious analyses of gender,sexuality, and the anatomyof desire.Bright, while oftenentertaining, is certainlynot in the same category.

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all theirdivisiveness and tendencyto hyperbolize,did open up significant theoreticaland politicaldiscussion for feminists, this new (uncritical)embrace of porn seems somewhatempty. Porn was once reviled,now it is celebrated;dildos were once tarredwith the brushof heteroimitation, now theyare lauded as thegrooviest addition to sexual pleasuresince the clitoriswas "found."Strippers, hookers, and othersex workerswere once pitiedfor the abuse theyreceived at thehands of thepatriarchy, now they are applauded as the heroinesfor a sex radical future.Butch/femme was once "understood"as thedebased detritusof theforce of thecloset, now it is the veryepitome of radical sexual politics.Once therewas a vision of mutual,tender, nonhierarchical sex as the model of liberation,now the model of liberationis premisedon power and conflict,theorized as "essential"to sexual desire.This reversal,this pendulum-like movement, is bothcounterproductive and reductive,setting up a new hierarchyof the sexual sophisticateversus the old-fashionedprude. Is pornographynow to be unproblematicallycelebrated? Is theprostitute the heroine? Is using a dildo and doing butch/femmewhere it's at (and only at)? This move "pits renegadesex 'radicals' againsttheir bad 'feminist'mothers and, in theprocess, simplifies the complexity of lesbianhistory, which was never quite as sexlessas theymake it out to be" (Stein1993, 19). Sue-EllenCase has attemptedto elevatethe butch/femme couple to the position of privilegedsubjectivity and politicalagency;18 indeed, butch/ femmeis even seen as the culturallycorrect mode of being,"the lesbian who relatesto her culturalroots by identifyingwith traditionalbutch- femmerole-playing" (1993, 295). Case, too, reinscribesthe narrativeof exclusionaryfeminist hetero police who tryto tamperwith the bangee realnessof butch/femmebravado. Case develops her theoryof the privilegedsubjectivity of the butch/ femmecouple throughthe theoryof femininityas masquerade,first pro- pounded by psychoanalystJoan Rivierein 1929 and laterdeveloped by Mary Russo, Mary Ann Doane, and Butler.The premiseof masquerade is strictlyFreudian, as the processof masqueradeinvolves the possession of the father'spenis (thushis castration)and the concomitantconstruc- tion of the mask of womanlinessto avoid retributionand avertanxiety (Case 1993, 300). Case argues that "this kind of masquerade is con- sciouslyplayed out in butch-femmeroles, particularly as theywere consti- tuted in the 1940s and 1950s. If one reads themfrom within Riviere's

18 Case is by no means the onlyrepresentative of theoriesof butch/femme.Indeed, manyothers (such as JoanNestle) have writtenabout butch/femmein morehistorical terms,attempting to place butch/femmein thecontext of repressionas well as to locate the liberatorymoments. Case is used hereas emblematicof a sortof queer/postmodern readingof butch/femmethat, I believe,is both theoreticallytroubling and politically limited.

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters theory,the butchis the lesbian woman who proudlydisplays the possession of the penis,while the femmetakes on the compensatorymasquer- ade of womanliness"(300). This, of course,leads to ironyand camp. But are we thento assumeirony and camp as necessarilyradical? And radical forwhom? And what happensto thistheory if we pull out the Freudian rug,if the floatingsignifiers of "penis" and "castration"disappear or are at least renderedlimp? This also leans towardthe worst sort of postmodern delightin self-referentiality.In other words, there exists underneath Case's argumenta theoryof postmodernsigns that seems to say thatthe veryact of revealingthe constructedness of something(gender, sex, advertisements,films, music videos) is an act of deconstructingits power to exertregulatory control and dominativepower. But, certainly,we know thisnot to be the case when it comes to popular culture.Advertisements are no less seductivein theirability to sell productsand produce ideologies when theyturn away fromrealism and heap on that "wink-wink" ironyand self-mocking,self-revealing attitude. Even if we buy the argumentthat butch/femme"plays" with the codes of both sex and gender, then why must that necessarilylead to a challengingrevision of those codes? And has it, historicallyspeaking? And for whom? And if Case privilegesbutch/femme as thenew radicalsubject/couple for the next mil- lennium,then is everythingelse out of the running?Is a new hierarchy beingset up? So, our identities,then, are whollyencompassed by particularsexual acts, appetites,tastes, positions, postures. And those acts themselvesare conceivedas separatefrom the genders of theactors who do them,paving theway fora constructionof thequeer personas someonewho performs certainkinds of sexual practicesor has certainsorts of desires,regardless of thegender of themselvesor theirvarious partners. What we have here is then a new sort of sexual essentialism.Now no longer "known" by some self-definedunitary identity that encompasses sexual acts but perhaps movesbeyond and throughthem, we are now knownonly by what we do sexually(and not at all by whom we do it with). Again,personal transgressionor predilectionhas metamorphosedinto political and theo- reticalaction. Sexual hobbies do not a theorymake.

From queer to where? Murmurs of dissent Fortunately,many feministsand lesbians are beginningto challenge the new politicsof "genderplay" and expressconcern both with a new commodificationof gay life and an evacuation of substantivepolitical concernwith changing actual social relationsof powerand domination.I would note,too, thatmuch of thiscriticism is comingfrom within "queer studies" itselfand that this process of self-criticismbodes well for the

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future.Many writersexpress ambivalence about the trashingof lesbian feminismand recognizethat "those thingsthat are real dangers-ran- dom, vicious violenceagainst women and gay men and people of color, the decimationof a generationfrom AIDS and complacency,the slow, sure destructionof the air and waterand land, the miseryof urbanpov- erty,and the latestwars-weren't createdby lesbian feminists.Increas- ingly,I wonderwhether we take each otheron because we've lost faithin our abilityto fightthe big fights"(Whisman 1993, 55). Whismanalso speaks of the alliance betweengay women and men: "Some may play aroundwith men, but lesbianqueers see themselvesas morelike gay men thanstraight women. New lesbiansmake their chief political and cultural alliances withgay men,arguing that lesbians and gay men are two sides of the same coin" (56). I thinkthis alliance has importantpolitical and intellectualpotential and mustcontinue to growand expand. But all too often,this alliance is forgedat the expense of a deepeningof feminist commitment. Whismanalso takespeople likeBright to task forconstructing lesbian cultureas "sexuallyrepressed" while positing "male sexuality[as] unrepressed,authentic, the norm.... It's simplisticto thinkthat some 'authentic,''unrepressed' lesbian sexuality would look likemale sexualityeven of the gay male variety.The femalesof the emergentQueer nation seem to have forgottenthat we're not just fightingfor access to what the boys have" (Whisman1993, 56-57). Again,the alliance mustgrow but needs to moveaway fromthe tendency to assumegay male sexualityand iconographyas the pinnacleof radicaltransgression and lesbianismand lesbian feminismas a tired,PC remnantof dayslong gone. Many are waryof the easy dismissalof feminism,as if "gender"was now a done deal and we neededto moveon to a new discourseof sexuality: "It would be prematureto dismissthe insightsof feminism-of a gender-basedperspective-in favorof a queer discoursewhich sets up universal,that is, male, subjectsas its implicitreferent. Lesbians and gay men have everyreason to be suspiciousof 'queerness'and its promiseof an instantidentity" (Kader and Piontek 1992, 9). The universalizing move of "queerness" also has the potentialto make a similarargument about race,thus evacuating the specificities of racializedidentities in favor of a queer universalismthat claims multiracialstatus without ever seri- ouslydeveloping a race-basedcritique of heteronormativity. In a piece on thechanging dimension of lesbianidentity, Alisa Solomon warnsagainst the superficialityof muchof theyoung lesbian persona:

Young dykeswho lipstickup claim power by assertingtraditional femalecoquettishness and withholdingit fromthe traditionalmale beholder.In the giddyprocess of unleashingtheir libidos fromthe

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reigning,constraining hegemony of their lesbian predecessors, though,they fail to recognizea double bind: theirappropriation of sluttishfemininity is occurringat the momentwhen the dominant cultureis rollickingwith a headyantifeminism. Butch-femme dykes of the past dressedas an emblemof identity,but style-nomads- who wear lipsticktonight and Doc Martenstomorrow-are lost in the surfaces, and their ironic androgynymasks deracination. (1993,213-14)

She raisesthe possibilitythat the new queer radicalismis not so much a move of empowermentas it is a sign of despair and tiredgenerational rebellion,the jaded groans of women beset by backlash and anxious to findsexual space beyondwhat is typicallyavailable. Into this sexual stew steps what writerAnn Powers calls the "Queer Straight,that testy lovechild of identitypolitics and shiftingsexual norms.... At first,it may have seemed like a splash made by Madonna and Sandra'sdouble dip-but the Queer Straightthing has begunto per- meate the culture" (1993, 24). Powers describesthe phenomenonas it works its way throughpopular culture (The CryingGame) and hip nightlife(drag) to finda strangehome in academia: "Nattilyattired aca- demicclimbers led panel discussionon homosocialityin thebeatnik scene and the filmsof JohnWayne, affecting camp attitudeseven as theystole kissesfrom their girlfriends in thehall .... Straightmarchers at domestic- partnerrallies dared to chant, 'We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!'" (24). Powers,while sympatheticto the "queer straight"(true to form,she is one), calls into question the political ramificationsof this mode of passing:

Any of these Queer Straightswould probablybe horrifiedto think theirbehavior might translate as a tease. They mean to practice whattheorists call 'genderperformativity'-the act of definingyour sexualitythrough manner and style.Postmodernism's logic of surfaces has turnedthe closet inside out, makingthe projectionof a queer attitudeenough to claim a place in homosexualculture. Yet Queer Straightsdon't practice the fundamental acts of intimacythat groundhomosexual identity. They are neitherbisexual [n]orexperi- menting.They're not ambiguouslydefined companions of gaymen, as werethe fag-hags of yore. Queer Straightsdon't just hang around; what theydo is pass.... In addition,the notion of passinghas con- notationsfor queers-and people of color-that hardlysuggests liberation.... Then there'spassing raciallyin the opposite direc- tion. Posing as a "WhiteNegro" became fashionablein the 1950s,

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when bohemiansthought they'd conquered racismby identifying AfricanAmericans as morevirile and expressivein theirnoble sav- agery.The currentwave of lesbian and gaychic mirrorsthis reverse racism,as it ascribestempting attributes such as hot sexuality,tragic courage,and devastatingwit to homosexuals.(24)

As Celia Kitzingerand Sue Wilkinsonnote, "Queer theoristshave never satisfactorilyanswered the question, What makesstraight heterosexuality 'queer'?" (1994, 455). Are straightqueers marked by their willed critique of heterosexualityor by theirchoice of sexual practices(S/M insteadof vanilla,fetish fantasies, etc.) or by theirallegiance to gaypolitics? In this vague assertionof straightqueerness, heterosexuality seems rather benign and absent. Many othersare waryof theterm queer itself,as feminist,lesbian per- formanceartist Holly Hughes expresses:

I'm ambivalentabout the termqueer. I thinkit's usefulin certain ways-it has the cringefactor, it's confrontational.And thereis somethingabout the experienceof beingan outsiderthat's embed- ded in the word. When you throwit back in people's faces,it can producea certainsense of empowerment.It also has limitations.In some ways,it remindsme of the wordgay. I workedreally hard to get lesbian into usage, and so did a lot of otherpeople who came beforeme. Lumpingus togethererases the differences, the inequali- ties betweenus. At certaintimes it can be useful;at othersit can reallybe throwinga rugover our diversities.... I feellike I see the word queer used a lot to erase my identityas a lesbian.... That 'fuckyou' queer identityis moreeasily accessible for men thanfor lesbians,because of sexismand justthe overwhelming reality of sexual violence.Lesbians can't stop beingwomen and dealingwith that reality.(1992, 29)

Hughes (and others)points out thepossibility that queer will, in itseager- ness to universalize,actually serve to ignoreor erasethe embodied power of gendereven as it claimsto movebeyond it. I thinkshe expressesquite accuratelythe ambivalencemany lesbians and gay men feeltoward the term-an embraceof its confrontational stance, a joyin its refusal of assim- ilationistliberalism, while at thesame timea discomfortwith its too-easy gloss overgender and theimplications of sexism and sexualviolence. Queer mayhold out some possibilitiesfor a politicsand a theorythat challengethe fixityand clarityof identity,that speak to the fractured (non)selfof postmodernsubjectivity. In addition,the queer encourage- mentof new alliances betweengay men and lesbianscan offerboth new knowledgesand the developmentof innovativepolitical formations. And

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters we shouldembrace its recognition that much slips out of therigid distinc- tions of hetero/homo,man/woman and thatour theoreticaland political engagementsneed to reckon creativelywith the excess that dares not speak its name. The queer attemptto understandthat sexuality and sexual desire is not reducibleto genderand also not simplyexplicable by referenceto it is important.But whilesexuality is not reducibleto gender, it is also not possible to "think" withoutit. For even the lionized drag queen, genderexerts a powerfulforce, one (perhaps)to be challengedor deconstructed. Indeed,this reexamination of therelationship between gender and sexualityhas seemedto founderon two fronts.On the one hand, it can re- assert(as in Sedgwick'scase) a notion of a seamlesscontinuum-rather like AdrienneRich's (1980) lesbian continuum,which was criticizedfor effectivelydesexualizing (or, in Sedgwick'scase, disappearing)lesbian sexual identity.In this case, we aren'twhat we do in bed; we are what we defineourselves as not. Queer hereis a sortof rebelliousand radical voluntarism.On the otherhand, it can reassertthe old understandingof gayidentity as markedwholly by sexual practice,thus making the lesbian or gayman definedsolely by our sexual practices.In thiscase, (a la Bright) we are what we do in bed; sexual acts are determinativeof identity.We are back to the old antinomies,garbed perhaps in more (post)modern clothesbut unable to tryon radicallynew ones. And repeatedclaims of multiplicityand play do not, in mymind, constitute serious and rigorous theoreticaland/or political alternatives to the (re)establishedantinomies. The inclusive,universalizing move of queer theoryand politicsappears laudatory,but it can all too easilydegenerate into a "we are the world" pluralismthat refusesto see the lines of power as theymark themselves on thelives of gendered,raced, ethnic subjects. The inclusivemove (queer as anything/everythingnot irredeemablyheterosexual) seems at first glance like a model of coalitionpolitics, but all too oftenis more like a meltingpot, wheresubstantive structural and experientialdifferences are erasedin the battleagainst the het (really,the normativehet) enemy.And what of otherenemies? And otherallies? Is it possible thatrace, forex- ample, gets erased (or rathercommodified to the point of invisibility) whenwhites appropriate working-class (or poor) African-Americandrag queens as cutting-edgemetaphors?19 What happens,then, to a sustained and systematicanalysis of theworkings of a racisteconomy? Indeed, Butlerexpresses just such an instrumentalistand voluntarist notion of identitywhen she claims,approvingly, that "'queer' was supposed to be one in which it didn'tmatter what you did, or how you did it, or how you feltabout what you did; if you were willingto affiliate, thatwas politicallyviable" (Kotz 1992, 83). If what you think,how you

19See particularlyReid-Pharr 1993.

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act, and what you feeldo not matter,then what does? Only ifyou show up at the demo and claim solidarity?Or feelpeeved at dominanthetero- sexuality(even though you takeprivilege from it)? Have we learnednoth- ing about processand the transformativenature of truecoalition build- ing? Barbara Smithcriticizes the contemporarymovement for its lack of politicalradicalism and itsrefusal to deal systematicallyand substantively with issues of race and class: "When the word 'radical' is used at all, it means confrontational,'in your face' tactics,not strategicorganizing aimed at the rootsof oppression.Unlike the earlylesbian and gaymove- ment,which had both ideological and practicallinks to the left,black activismand feminism,today's 'queer' politicosseem to operatein an his- toricaland ideologicalvacuum. 'Queer' activistsfocus on 'queer' issues, and racism,sexual oppressionand economicexploitation do not qualify, despitethe factthat the majorityof 'queers' are people of color,female or workingclass" (1993, 13). In otherwords, queer herecan become a new, all-embracingdesignation that falls into manyof the trapsit pur- portedlysets out to avoid in positing"queerness" as some sortof post- modernuber-identity. What is to keep queer frominstantiating the same old exclusionsof race and class? Why are so manyof the purveyorsof queernesswhite, male (or gay male identified),and economicallyprivi- leged?The real and substantiveissues of inclusionand coalitionalpolitics cannotbe addressedsimply by a new rhetoricthat names itself all embracing and expansive.As Zita writes,"To constructa new fieldof queer studieswithout addressing misogyny, gender, male supremacy,race, and class as theseare differentlyexperienced by a wide diversityof femaleand male queers,is to seal thehappy marriage of gayand lesbianstudies with a Hallmarkcard and a Falwellianblessing" (1994, 271). The "answer,"such as it is, is surelynot to dismissqueer theoryalto- gether,as I thinkI have made clear throughoutthe courseof thisarticle. But the partof "queer" thathinges on a separationfrom feminism (both theoryand politics) seems to me misguidedat best. A more profitable directionmight be theconstant and creativerenegotiation of therelationship betweenfeminism and queer theoryand politics,with the "goal" not beinga severancebut rather more meaningful and substantiveties. In thesedays of ChristinaHoff Sommers and Katie Roiphe, Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf,I thinkit needs reiteratingthat there can be no radical theoryand surelyno radical politicswithout feminism, however much thatfeminism might be renderedplural and reconfigured.This is nowhere moretrue than in recentright-wing rhetoric regarding "the family"and the scarydiscourse of familyvalues. Here, a nuanced and subtleunder- standingof theways in whichboth patriarchy and heterosexismconstruct the discourseand producethe politics would be fruitful.For example,in analyzingthe attacks on lesbian and gay parents(brought home most depressinglyby the recent defeat of SharonBottoms's attempt to keep her

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This content downloaded from 199.79.170.81 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:21:49 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FROM HERE TO QUEER Walters son),20we mightdevelop frameworks of knowledge that explicitly address the mutual"concatenation" of bothgender discourses and sexualitydis- courses. Yes, Bottomslost her son because she is queer,but one cannot understandher "queerness" withoutreference to ideologies of appro- priatemotherhood and familialformations that are always deeplygen- deredas well. Bottoms's"working classness" is also not assimilableunder a genericcategory of queer and mustbe reckonedwith in any attemptto read thisevent. Indeed, I would preferqueer theoristsspend a bit more timeon the mundanefigure of the working-classlesbian motherand the horrifyingspectacle of theremoval of herchild than on the endlessrhap- sodies for drag and dildos. A feministqueer theorymight focus more on the materialrealities of liveslived under patriarchal, capitalist, racist regimes,not as backgroundor aside, but as the verystuff of a political and politicizedanalysis. Thus, the situationof, say,Bottoms would be analyzed around somewhatdifferent questions. It is not that we would not ask about her "performanceof gender" or her seeminglybutch/ femmeengagement with her partner,April Wade. But the feministqueer scholar mightinvestigate the social and historicalcontext in which this awfuldecision emerged-a contextof antigayactivism and simultaneous gay visibility,of attackson singlemothers (which is the onlyway she is understood,given our dominantconceptions of family)and lesbian baby booms,of familyvalues and right-wingpopulism. Bottoms could thenbe read not as simplya "queer" subjectbut, rather,as a particularwhite, working-classlesbian in a veryconservative state whose relationto any "queer nation" is tenuousat best. Or the relation between queer and feminismcan also proceed on queer'sown turf.If queer theoryinsists on the separationof sex and gender (the studyof sexualityas distinctfrom the studyof gender),then I would be interestedin studiesthat affirmatively and persuasivelydemon- stratethis new analyticstrategy. In studyingany particularconfiguration of sexualities,is it possible to be fullyoutside of an analysisof gender? The regimesof sexualityand genderare not identical,either historically or theoretically,but I remainskeptical of theirpremature separation. A substantivedemonstration of thisnew queer analyticwould be helpful. With all the righteousrage and empoweringspectacle of queer per- formativepolitics, it is importantto rememberthat "genderfuck"and kiss-insare necessarybut not sufficientaspects of a progressivepolitics and theory.As a culturaltheorist and educator,and longtimeactivist, I

20 The SharonBottoms case is familiarto manyas thecase in whicha Virginialesbian was sued forcustody of her youngson by herown mother,even when the biologicalfa- therhad no objectionto Sharon'scustody of the child.Bottoms and herpartner lost cus- tody,then regained it, onlyto lose again in the finalappeal to the VirginiaSupreme Court. The child is now livingwith his grandmother,and his motheris allowed limitedvisitation (althoughnever with her partner).

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am more than aware of the power of the semioticand of the absolute necessityto engageon thelevel of theimage, particularly in a culturethat is so thoroughlyinfused with representation. And, god knows,progressivepolitics has longsuffered from a failureof imagination;the new queer politicsadds muchneeded panache and witto theseemingly interminable strugglesfor basic equity.Yet this is not enough,or, rather, it mustalways be coupled with a recognitionthat playingwith gendermay engage in destabilizingit somewhatbut will not, in itself,stop the power of gender-a power that stillsends too manywomen to the hospital,shelter, rape crisiscenter, despair. We mustask how images,representations, performance,gender scripts relate to "broader" structures,contexts, econo- mies,histories.21 Sexism, homophobia, racism activate themselves in multiple realms,but too oftenqueer theoryoperates as if our oppressionis solely a matterof sexualityand its representationand regulation.As I have argued elsewhere,we cannot affordto lose sightof the materiality of oppressionand its operationin structuraland institutionalspaces.22 Hennessy's recent piece, "Queer Visibilityin Commodity Culture" (1994), is an exemplaryattempt to hold on to theinsights of queer while forcingan examinationof the class-baseddiscourses that constructthe new queer visibilities.Hennessy forcefully demands that queer theorists pay moreattention to the processesof commodificationand avoid valo- rizinga politicsof theoutrageous at theexpense of attendingto thereali- ties of structuredsocial relations,relations not reducibleto thediscursive or cultural,although certainly not determinativeof themeither. Destabilizinggender (or renderingits artifice apparent) is not thesame as overthrowingit; indeed,in a culturein whichdrag queens can become the hottestfashion, commodification of resistanceis an omnipresent threat.Moreover, a queer theorythat posits feminism (or lesbiantheory) as the transcendedenemy is a queer thatwill reallybe a drag.

Departmentof Sociology GeorgetownUniversity

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21 In thisregard, the work of writers such as KathWeston (1993), John D'Emilio (1983),Jonathan Ned Katz(1995), Martha Vicinus (1992), Elizabeth Kennedy and Made- lineDavis (1993), Esther Newton, and Joan Nestle are important correctives to the often ahistoricaland decontextualized readings of such putatively queer practices as butch/ femme.Weston's alternative, ethnographic account of a lesbian"Prom Nite" exposes the limitsof a performancetheory that eschews historical specification (1993). 22 SeeWalters 1995.

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