Tilsen Reading-1

49 Chapter 4 Queer as Youth: Resisting the Homonormative of Identity Development ...one of the things that “queer” can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically. Eve Sedgewick, Queer Theorist *** I think the most damaging part of labels is other people putting it on you and thinking they can understand you like that. Courtney, Q-Squad member <break> Gay-related content, gay imagery, and gay-identified people no longer carry the don’t- ask-don’t-tell patina in many areas of contemporary American society. As these very words are being written, another state moves closer toward legalizing gay marriage. The 2009 American Idol runner up’s hot and sexy gayness, not to mention his picture, were on the cover of the Rolling Stone, Lady Gaga has everyone singing that they were “born this way,” several Major League Baseball teams and other professional sports teams have produced an “It Gets Better” video,1 and Glee introduced a transgender African-American student during its third season. As a constituency, people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and (to a significantly lesser extent) transgender are at the epicenter of this shifting of cultural plates. In fits and starts, society is starting to see LGBT and queer people on their terms. Yet, the theories most available to us practitioners have failed to do so. They continue to rely on essentialist notions of identity Fromembedded Therapeutic within modernist psychological Conversations discourses of development. w/Queer As Langdridge (2008) Youth 50 points out, dominant models of development “present difficulties when working with...queer [italics added] clients” (p.23). This isn’t for a lack of alternative conceptual frameworks; queer theory offers us many useful theoretical maps. While the queer theory literature offering these ideas is ample, it is primarily found in areas not likely to be accessed by most practitioners, such as anthropology, sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, literature, and other interdisciplinary bodies of scholarship (Langdridge, 2008). The purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between these ideas and practice. Models of identity development are particularly germane to this discussion, as we have culturally and professionally coalesced around the notion (first introduced by Erickson some fifty-plus years ago) that developing a stable identity is young people’s primary task. In this chapter I present queer theory as a relevant alternative to the prevailing models of development for those who work with queer youth. STAGE ONE: Resisting Hegemony TEXT BOX--Society establishes the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories. Erving Goffman, Sociologist *** I feel like sex is a big part of being queer but you don’t lose your queer title because you’re not having sex. Dylan, Q-Squad member You’ll recall from Chapter Three that Foucault (1978a) traced the invention of the homosexual to 1870. While people had been engaging in all kinds of sexual practices with Frompartners Therapeutic of all genders across time, neverConversations before had a classification been w/Queer articulated based onYouth 51 these practices. Foucault (1978a) notes that, while sodomy had been a criminal act, rendering the “perpetrator...nothing more than the juridical subject” (p.43), the 19th century created the homosexual, who became “a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology...” (p. 43) Thus, an identity, and a concomitant specifying discourse, was constructed based solely on people’s choice of sexual partners. This has fueled the argument that people are “born gay” (something that will be taken up in greater detail later in this section) and perpetuates binary notions of male/female and hetero/homo. Essentializing specifications (for example, blue for boys, pink for girls; men are rational, women emotional; females are born with vaginas and clitorises and males are born with testes and penises) are produced and maintained through language and discourse (Tilsen and Nylund, 2010.) As we have seen, through the reverse discourse that is the embodiment of the contemporary gay and lesbian rights movement, naturalized accounts of sexual and gender identity have been leveraged in the name of civil rights for many who claim LGBT identities. From a queer2 perspective, however, this serves to reify essentialist specifications that regulate people whose lived experiences (or whose preferred lived experiences) fall outside the male/ female, homo/hetero binaries, as well as for those who construct families and relationships in ways that challenge the dominant and validated constructions of these social institutions (e.g., bisexuals, genderqueers, individuals who are transgender or transsexual, relationships that are open, and people in polyamorous relationships). Foucault (1978a) observes that claiming a fixed identity as homosexual, while perhaps Frompersonally Therapeutic liberating, unintentionally Conversations privileges heterosexuality. Cultural w/Queer theorist Lisa Duggan’s Youth 52 (2002) notion of homonormativity (discussed in Chapter Two) describes this discursive effect as an assimilationist, normative, and privatized political agenda. In this way, homonormativity is exposed as a tactic of heteronormativity. But what about the argument, to quote Lady Gaga, that, “I was born this way”? Where does that fit within the crossroads of queer theory and social construction? In deconstructing models of identity development, am I suggesting that people have a choice about their sexual identity? Doesn’t the “born that way” explanation account for identity constitutions, while providing the strongest platform for civil rights? First, a constructionist perspective rejects the “biology vs. construction” binary and assumes a “both/and” position. All knowledges are understood to be contextually contingent and mediated by culture, including those generated from “hard sciences” such as biology and genetics. However, social construction does not exist in binary opposition to hard science; indeed, hard science is an important frame, and social construction does not out-of-hand reject any particular discursive frame. Instead, it poses questions such as, What are the effects of this discursive position? and What position(s) will be the most useful? In practice, I would never challenge a client who understands themselves as having been “born this way.” I would support this, while also being curious about how this discourse is useful. What does it afford those who use it? Butler (2006) provides an excellent example of this approach to the Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis (GID).3 Noting that “for some the diagnosis seems to mean life, and for others, the diagnosis seems to mean death” (p.276), Butler emphasizes the need to ask, How is Fromthe diagnosis Therapeutic lived? Where sexuality Conversations and desire are concerned, I would w/Queer be interested in Youth 53 understanding how people live and embody a naturalized account of themselves and their sexual desires. How (and when and where) is this liberating? How (and when and where) is it limiting? Nothing goes unmediated (I would add, especially nothing about sex and sexuality given the hyper-sexualized commodification of sex in popular culture). We can, however, seek to understand how certain operations of discourse influence the meanings made in the production of identities. Furthermore, I make the critical distinction between “being born with” desires and “being born with” an identity that is a discursive production. Thus, we again have both/and rather than an either/or. What is problematic about constituting a fixed identity—inherent or constructed—based on desires4 is that specifications are created. That is why people who occupy the dominant center of sexual identity—those who meet the specifications of compulsory heterosexuality—don’t have to make the claim of having been “born this way.” This claim can have both positive and negative effects for those embracing the naturalized account of sexual identity. As part of the reverse discourse that is the contemporary gay rights movement, it provides further traction toward organizing for legitimacy. It also leverages an important and influential prevailing discourse in modern society—empirical science. Science shows us that nature likes variation. It is we humans who try to limit choices, often demanding either/ors. (On the other hand, some religious and conservative positions have appropriated the idea of an “inferior biology” and used this as an argument against legitimizing a variety of sexual orientations.) What about the idea that it’s a choice? An old anthem, one that is still heard at times within Fromthe contemporary Therapeutic gay rights movement, Conversations is, “You get to love whoever youw/Queer want to.” While thisYouth 54 would seem to be a sensible declaration to be made within a social system that privileges the rights of individuals, it has been appropriated by right-wing groups to legitimize so-called “conversion therapy.” In this practice (condemned by all medical and counseling organizations including the AMA and APA), people are counseled into heterosexuality. This practice only makes sense if

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