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Queer Musings on Politics, Identity, and the Performance of Therapy

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Queer Musings on Politics, Identity, and the Performance of Therapy Resisting normativity: Queer musings on politics, identity, and the performance of therapy Julie Tilsen and Dave Nylund Julie Tilsen is a therapist and consultant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and is the Training Coordinator for the International Center for Clinical Excellence. Email: [email protected] David Nylund is Associate Professor of Social Work at California State University, Sacramento, USA, and works as a therapist and activist within the transgender and queer communities. Email: [email protected] What are some of the hazards of the modern gay rights movement? The authors propose that in attempting to secure ‘equal’ rights in various aspects of public and private life – for example, marriage, military service, and health insurance – modern gay rights engages in ‘homonormativity’ which seeks to limit the options for queer people by having them replicate aspects of mainstream, neoliberal, heterosexual lifestyles. Instead of this approach, the authors propose a ‘queer utopia’ based on ideas of sexual freedom and honouring diversity. Keywords: queer, heteronormativity, homonormativity, LGBT, homosexuality 64 The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work 2010 No. 3 www.dulwichcentre.com.au 2010 No. 3 www.dulwichcentre.com.au David Denborough asked us to write up the closing keynote speech we gave at the Therapeutic At the conference we showed a clip from Conversations 9 (TC9) conference in Vancouver, the popular TV show, Glee. For those of British Columbia, Canada in May 2010. We have you unfamiliar with Glee, actress Jane done our best to capture in writing the heart of the Lynch plays Sue Sylvester, a high school speech, which, for us, was as much performance as cheerleading coach who also has a weekly it was text. We relied extensively on images to help ‘editorial’ spot on the local TV news. The illustrate on multiple levels the ideas we were clip we showed was of Sue giving one of her weekly rants. interested in communicating, ideas that are reified through repeated discursive and visual performances Briefly, the clip parodies homophobic bigotry through its excessive use of in the mass media culture that permeates the North stereotypes of gay men and contemporary American world we live in. North American middle-class gay life. We’d like to acknowledge the hipness and Sylvester is upset that gay people have enlightenment that the participants of this integrated into the world in such a way conference hang out with. You attend TC9. You that she can no longer determine who is practice reflexively, you have an analysis of the and isn’t gay. These ‘sneaky gays’ turn up prevailing cultural discourses, you consider the at church, picking up their ‘meticulously social location of problems. As for the idea of dressed children from day care’ or could queer? We suspect you’re pretty much down with even be sitting next to you – wherever you that. For the Canadians present today, we’re sure may be. many of you can proudly recite Trudeau’s words The clip is full of stereotypes that rely on uttered in 1969 about the state having no business the feminisation of gay men, as Sylvester in peoples’ bedrooms and many of you likely have reminisces about ‘the simpler days of attended a same-sex wedding – whether it was your yesteryear’ when there was less confusion about who is gay. In order for her to re-live own big day or that of someone you care about. those bygone days, she beseeches gays to As for my fellow Americans, we’ve opposed ‘swish it up’ because, she asks, ‘if I can’t 1 Prop 8 and reconsidered the possible charms of tell who’s gay, how will I know who to judge?’ Iowa2. We know that, many if not most of you here, Here is the link to the clip – any readers are the choir. You support, fight for, and speak out that have internet access can take a look on behalf of, LGBT rights. for themselves: http://www.youtube.com/ Yet, today we’d like to pause to consider the watch?v=5ETSAIVSQhs complexity inherent in throwing our individual and collective support behind the contemporary gay rights agenda. For example, with the legalisation of gay marriage, has the state gotten out of peoples’ Jane Lynche’s send-up of over-the-top, egregious bedrooms? Just what kind of progress is having gays homophobia manages to condense in two minutes a compendium of constructions of absurdly serving openly in any military? stereotyped gay male behaviour from a heterosexual These are some of many questions we are frustrated with some of the successes of the gay interested in exploring. We will consider the rights movement. These successes include discursive climate that not only gives gay rights integration and assimilation into the larger culture social and political meaning, but that also continues as well as access to a normative middle-class to leave many on the margins, uninvited to the lifestyle. We’d like to consider some of the revolution. We’ll offer our imagined vision for an consequences of these successes – not on inclusive agenda of sexual and gender justice for heterosexuals who believe the value of their goods is all, a kind of ‘queertopia’. We’ll begin with a review compromised by gay rights, but rather the impact of some queer theory terms and concepts and on queer folks who don’t meet specifications of an provide a fast and dirty history lesson. increasingly normative lesbian and gay community. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work 65 2010 No. 3 www.dulwichcentre.com.au 2010 No. 3 www.dulwichcentre.com.au We consider this a kind of sneaky gaze of of bisexual, lesbian, and gay have significant, homonormativity. To understand what situated meaning. It would be very un-queer of us ‘homonormativity’ is, let’s first consider to impose the specification that everyone must heteronormativity. adopt ‘queer’. Heteronormativity (Warner, 1991) is the Both heteronormativity and homonormativity institutionalisation of what we’ve come to call require fixed, naturalised heterosexual and heterosexuality. It includes not only the sexual homosexual identities in order to maintain and relationships between born male-bodied/male- regulate the norms of these discursive institutions. identified people and born female-bodied/female- As queer theorists, we question fixity and identified people, but also all the practices and essentialism of identities. For example, in the clip values that have come to represent those from Glee, Sue Sylvester talks about homosexuality relationships. Central to this privileged structure being a ‘pre-existing condition’. This has been the is the gender binary, the arbiter of all gendered central argument of the contemporary gays right relationships. movement. Leveraging modernist notions of a Homonormativity (Duggan, 2002) is the same naturalised, essential identity is central to the thing but involves either two born male-bodied ‘we’re just like you’ argument as well as the search people or two born female-bodied people. It accepts for the gay gene. Claims that ‘we’re born this way, as preferred and desirable the same relational it’s who we are’ are positions reliant on – and structures and cultural institutions of reifying of – a fixed identity, be it genetic, heteronormativity and, as Lisa Duggan notes, is biological, or existential. anchored in – just as is heteronormativity – Yet, we must recognise that these arguments domesticity and practices of consumerism. have been politically necessary and strategic. Homonormativity is straight-acting gay folk. They demonstrate that the binary, ‘essentialist/ Heteronormativity and homonormativity are constructionist’ can be problematic, and that, at terms that have emerged from the body of times, we need to engage in strategic essentialism scholarship that makes up queer theory. Queer (Spivak, 1987): the strategic use of essentialist theory is a set of critical practices that seeks to group identities in order to leverage political complicate hegemonic assumptions about the resistance in the face of institutional power. continuities between anatomical sex, gender And still, importantly, taking up the position identity, sexual identity, sexual object choice, and that homosexuality is a ‘pre-existing condition’ does sexual practice. Queer theory rejects biological not account for all identity constructions. People theories of sexual identity and calls into question who perform fluid identities that are relationally so-called ‘natural’ sexuality. Central to these ideas constituted – identities that some people would call is the challenge to the gender binary system that queer – are not accounted for by modernist notions produces and maintains binary constructions such of the essential self. In this way, the contemporary as male/female and hetero/homo. gay rights movement has, at times, privileged Queer theory asks questions such as: Who do sameness over differences. these categories serve? Who do these categories It should come as no surprise that the notion include and whom do they exclude? Who has the of an essential gay/lesbian identity, fraught with power to define the categories? How are the multiple specifications, is historically and culturally categories policed? How do these categories change contingent. Foucault (1978) asserts that over time and across cultures? (Doty, 1993). It is homosexuality as an identity is a recent invention of important to underscore how we are not using the the modern era. While individuals across time and term ‘queer’. We are not using ‘queer’ as an place have engaged in all kinds of sexual activities umbrella term for LGBT. For us it is used as a point including same-sex activities, classifying people of resistance to fixed identities and normativity. based on those activities, thus rendering an identity Also, it is critical to recognise that the term ‘queer’ category, had never before occurred.
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