I was fortune enough in my undergrad here at SUNY Cortland to be able to take a Queer Theory class. During that class, I was able to take my first real look into the actual texts of queer theory. Before this point, I had been writing papers about the LGBT community but it had always been in one way or another about justifying queer peoples right to exist. Now this isn’t necessarily a battle that needs to stop being written about, especially as queer folk continue to be killed, kicked out, and other horrible things based solely on their queer identity. What my engagement with stepping out of the realm of justification and into the realm of queer theory allowed for was a better understanding into what the hell I was fighting for in the first place. Cathy Cohen’s piece “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” was a text I was first introduced in that Queer Theory class. Reading it again, in the light of the pandemic we find ourselves in, I’ve found new meaning through Cohen’s question of “whether there are lessons to be learned from queer activism that can help us construct a new politics?” (438).
The argument that Cohen poses throughout this essay is an elaborate one. There are many factors that contribute not just in critiquing how queer activism had been performed during the time this was written (’97), but also how to expand the understanding of queer past just gender and sexuality. One of the most controversial arguments, in my opinion, that Cohen says comes in the section right before the conclusion. In this section “Heterosexuals on the (Out)side of Heteronormativity”, she argues in the inclusion of heterosexuals into aligning themselves with the queer. The justification for this comes from the other queering factors that can encompass a persons identity that have nothing to do with sexuality. Aspects such as: race, class, gender, and disability (my inclusion). All of these, Cohen argues, are all factors that can push a heterosexual person outside of the realms of what it means to be heteronormative. Thus, by including them within the fight for queer activism more voices are able to be used to enact change. These aspects, and the multilayering of these aspects, also create unique voices that have also been ignored by the systems put into place.
I don’t think this concept is entirely as controversial as when this article first came out, but the idea of encouraging heterosexual people into the queer community has often been debated. The benefits of this, as Cohen states, create the allowance for a plethora of voices all advocating for a very specific type of political reform. The more diverse an audience gets, in this case, should spread more attention to each without ignoring one in favor of becoming something more heteronormative. By having a black lesbian transgender woman on the same side as a cis hispanic heterosexual working class man should, in theory, gain more attention to all sides of the die. No one concept would overwrite the other and would not, inadvertently or otherwise, push another community down in the sidelines. Example being that by advocating the end of the wage gap, an attention would also be paid to how gay and racial minorities are being especially affected and forced into poverty through political and social circumstance.
Okay, great, I hear you say, Cohen is asking us to include everyone so that real change can be made politically. What does that have to do with what’s happening now? My answer is: how isn’t this about what’s happening now?
We are at a moment in history we have been calling the “new normal”. The “new normal” takes place between everything before March of 2020, and an indefinite future where theoretically we would be able to go out in public without masks and be able to be around large groups of humans again. This new normal has already, as we have discussed in class, been a place where people are beginning to recognize the inherent problems that we have created in society. Suddenly aspects of life that the large majority of people took for granted are brought to the front like never before. Like the articles we’ve discussed already in class, racism, sexism, and classism has been exposed in ways like never before. Beyond that, domestic abuse, sickness and disability, and many many other things are being suddenly brought to the attention of people who never had to think about it before. For so long we accepted the impossibility of working from home or extended sick days, at least until a national pandemic set in and suddenly we were able to accommodate people. Examples like this keep on piling up. This is where Cohen’s ideas need to start to becoming important Right Now.
Whatever the world is going to look like when we get out of this pandemic, it’s imperative that it doesn’t look like the world we came from. Queer activism might be the only solution to actually making the changes that we want to see in the world. Cohen’s idea of banding together everyone who does not fit within a heteronormative world is the only way to ensure we don’t end up at the opposite side of this pandemic with the same issues we started with.
Response Questions for you:
- What might queer activism look like in our pandemic age? How is this different than how activism has been previously done? What might that change actually look like? Do you feel like change can actually be made?
- This can be answered or not, depending on comfort level, but examine your own identity. What categories might you fall into that you wouldn’t have necessarily considered as queer until now? How might your unique perspective help create change?
Hey Jax!
I’m really interested in this idea of “the new normal” and queer activism because by normal has always implied heteronormative. One of the more interesting developments I’ve seen in the last few months has been the addition of “Black Trans Lives Matter” to the surge in recent protests. I think it’s safe to say that Black Trans Women are one of the most marginalized groups of people, and I believe this because I have seen them excluded from articles that list black women that have died at the hands of police in the last few years. There was a string of murders in June, eight black trans women: Brayla Stone, Merci Mack, Shaki Peters, Draya McCarty, Tatiana Hall, Bree Black, Riah Milton, and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells. And although Crenshaw told us that black lives must be lifted up across gender, mainstream social media still passively suppresses total inclusion. I bring this up because I believe that queer activism now would look like the active inclusion of these names when we shout “Say Her Name” because if you can see and acknowledge that these women exist as they do, you couldn’t then ignore the many other disenfranchised peoples you would meet on your way to supporting black trans women. We know the personal is political, but it needs to go a step further so that identity is not ignominious.
I like your second question though because it pressed me to reexamine interactions I’ve had in the past that I never would have thought twice about until recently. I once had someone ask me for seemingly no reason if I was a singer. I asked them why they thought to ask that, and their response was “You were whistling and guys don’t usually whistle”. To them, singing – or probably anything musically inclined – is inherently feminine and to hear that come from me (I was coaching at the time and spotting loads of tumbling passes) shocked them enough to provoke a response. I guess my musical inclinations have always piqued curiosities because I don’t match someone else’s image of a singer or musician. I don’t know, that’s the first thing that came to mind and hopefully it makes sense to y’all the way it made sense in my head, that’s all I got to say about that.
Cathy Cohen has an excerpt listing off different ways in which “every person comes to a queer self-understanding…” (444). Over each example of the ways in which I might view my identity, such as through gender, the family, and so on, I listed one example of how I would be considered as “queer”, in this context, different from the heteronormative expectations. For example, I am a woman, divorced, single mother, sole income provider/female head of household, poor (by the governments standards of a viable income), bisexual, introvert, minimalist (rather than a mass consumer), chickens as pets instead of a cat or dog, had a tubal litigation as a means of birth control, and I am on Medicare. However, if I were to try to form a coalition with people who were exactly like me, I would be a lone wolf in a world of strangers.
Cohen states that “identities and communities…must be complicated and destabilized through a recognition of the multiple social positions and relations to dominant powers found within any category or identity” (459). At first I did not understand this concept until I read further. Cohen later states “build a movement based on one’s politics and not exclusively on one’s identity” (459). After reading this, I realized the Cohen may have been suggesting that if I decide to join forces with divorced women, yet I feel excluded from the group because I have chickens, then I should point out how the group separates me from feeling “at home” within the group. By being a “Killjoy,” and identifying the issue, the group will be able to extend the range of the types of members the group can and will accept as a welcome part of the whole. In doing this, other divorced women with chicken may feel as though they can join in the efforts of divorced women fight for their rights.
(The “divorced women” and “chicken owners” could be substituted with any other identity one may choose to insert. The message remains the same).