Queer Community

Identities, Intimacies, and Ideology

Neal Carnes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367660505
• eBook ISBN: 9780429639319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The context for this work is defined by a second wave of social and political activity contextualized by queer. For example, three, self-identified black, queer women started the Black Lives Matter movement. For a new generation, the first-wave reclamation of queer speaks to their position in a world that continues to marginalize and oppress, particularly sexually and gender fluid and non-normative people.

Using empirical work carried out by the author, Queer Community describes queer-identified people, their intimate relationships, and how they are evolving as a unique community along politically-charged, ideological lines. Following an exploration of the history and context of 'queer' – including activism and the evolution of queer theory – this book examines how queer-identified people define the identity, with reference to 'queer' as a sexual moniker, gender moniker, and political ideology.

Queer Community will appeal to scholars and students interested in sociology, queer theory, sexuality studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and contemporary social movements.

Chapter 1

Queer in practice and in theory

A brief her/istory of “queer”

The origin of word “queer” (pronounced kweer) is traced to the sixteenth century ad in Germanic languages as describing the unusual, the non-normative (www.dictionary.com) – the lone yellow narcissus in a field of white. At the time, organized religion, i.e., the Catholic Church in European societies, held great sway over social perceptions of what was normal and usual, as well as what was queer, including as applied to sexual behavior and romantic relationships, as well as gender roles (Brown 1986; Tannahill 1980). In canonical law, prior to the thirteenth century, same-sex sexual behavior was grouped with any number of “immoral” sexual acts, such as bestiality and adultery (Goodrich 1976; Johansson and Percy 2000). We credit the cleric, St. Thomas Aquinas, with delineating same-sex sexual encounters as distinctly against canonical law (Brown 1986; Tannahill 1980). At (and since) that time, religious authorities argued “normal” sexual encounters were between a husband and wife, and primarily for reproductive purposes. Of course, people went against the canons; if caught, they faced harsh punishment. For example, the punishment for sodomy, as sex between two men or between two women, was death by burning, hanging, drowning, or beheading (Brown 1986; Crompton 1981). Sodomy, as anal penetration occurring between men, was noted as an especially heinous sexual act (Bray 1982; Brown 1986; Rocke 1996).

During (and also since) the Middle Ages, women were considered and treated as inferior to men. This position, like the sexual norms, was asserted and enforced through religious doctrine (Brown 1986). While a transition in attitudes toward women occurred as European societies moved from the Middle Ages to Renaissance, this did not equalize women’s social or domestic position. Tannahill (1980) stated,

At the beginning [around 1100 A.D.] they had been despised, not only by men, but often by themselves; at the end [around 1500 A.D.], they were respected, even admired. It does not, perhaps, sound like very much of revolution, but it was this reversal of attitude that made all subsequent changes possible, even if the psychological and genetic adjustments necessary after more than 5,000 years of inferiority were to mean that it took several hundred more before the most radical of them came about. Some, of course, have not come about even yet.

(pp. 256–7)

As a result, men whose gender identity corresponded to the sex assigned at birth, aka what we now refer to as “cisgender,” remained the privileged class, as did all things associated with cisgender men and their respective masculine gender expression. Of interest, shifts in attitudes regarding cisgender women occurred when the hegemonic dominance of the church started to wane. During the Renaissance era, political and social transitions took place giving way to more tolerant attitudes toward various sexual behaviors as well as toward women (Saslow 1990). Indeed, over the millennium plus covering the church’s authoritative control, social and political evolutions took place as to how sexual desire and behavior were understood and tolerated, as did general attitudes toward the “inferior” sex, and the feminine characteristics associated with women.

Contemporary secularized Western notions of gender and sexuality embrace scientific thinking over religious doctrine (Foucault 1979; cf. Casini n.d.). As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, Western societies increasingly looked to science and the scientific method to explain and resolve unknown phenomenon, including those involving sexuality, sex, and gender (Lauritsen and Thorstad 1974; Rueling 1997). Unfortunately, science and its method were bastardized by dominant religious-based paradigms and sociopolitical forces. As such, scientific inquiry resulted in the social reconstruction of sexuality, whereby medicine reformulated the religious doctrinal argument regarding spiritual possession (evil and angelic) into biological naturalness and unnaturalness (Krafft-Ebing 1906; Marcus 2008; Ulrichs 1997). Scientists argued what drives our desires and behaviors are not supernatural influences or poor moral character, rather the products of biological processes. Indeed, biological assertions reframed how we understand sexuality and gender (Geary 1998). The newly evolving scientific argument explaining same-sex desires and the inferiority of women centered on their unnatural nature, and a perceived observation of natural hierarchies. Natural law, in contrast to God’s law, is out of kilter in cases of queer or unusual, non-normative behavior or gender expression (Sedgwick 2015; Spade 2003). Nature, according to this scientific paradigm, has a normal state toward which all should aspire. Medicine’s intent is to reestablish and maintain biology’s natural, thus “normal” state, as scientifically discovered (primarily by cisgender, heterosexual men). From this Western way of thinking, framed by scientific beliefs, we have come to conceptualize sexuality, gender, and sex in accordance with the categories of “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” “masculine” and “feminine,” as well as “male” and “female” (McHugh 2004; Padgug 1979).

An early marker in the shift toward scientific explanations of sexuality occurred in 1868–69 when Hungarian writer Karl Maria Kertbeny coined the term “homosexual” in response to proposed legislation that would criminalize “unnatural fornification” (Katz 1997: 177). From a simplistic read of his assertion, the homosexual was born with same-sex desires. Homosexuals were not reflections of momentary deviancy; they were, to borrow from Lady Gaga, “born this way.”

The exact boundaries of homosexuality came into focus when “heterosexuality” was demarcated as its natural, thus normal, opposite. Once medical professionals took hold of Kertbeny’s terminology and his contemporaries’ ideas regarding classes of people distinguished by their desires and behaviors, sexuality took on more fixed notions, similar to what was perceived regarding sex and gender. These notions provided society, and specifically medicine and psychology, a means to assess normalcy and pathology. The new binary of homosexual and heterosexual helped shift sexuality away from immoral, demonically driven behaviors to natural and unnatural people. During this period of transition, a number of labels moved in and out of fashion to describe the boundaries marked by the appearances, desires, and behaviors attached to sexuality and the sex and gender of the participants. These terms are essential to understanding contemporary notions of sexuality and gender. In fact, as Foucault (1979) and queer theorists asserted, language, including identity labels (e.g., male and female, heterosexual and homosexual), allows us to understand our social world, thus each other (Kirsch 2000; Plummer and Stein 1994). This allowance imputes the importance of identities and their social power.

The evolution of the queer moniker

Chauncey (1994) argued that by the early part of the twentieth century, heterosexual society, aka society, labelled a homosexual man as “she-man,” “nance,” “sissy,” “fairy,” and “fag.” These labels tended to also gender sexuality, noting the subjugated position of anything or one associated with women or effeminacy. Women’s ongoing occupancy of a second-class social position regulated their sexuality to Victorian notions of chastity and motherhood (Marcus 2008; Vicinus 1984). As a result, women who engaged in sexual relations with other women remained taboo. Patriarchal views of female sexuality, as inferior and taboo, resulted in terms such as “sissy” and “fairy” being applied mainly to those perceived as the “female” during man-on-man action. As a result of women’s diminished social position, any posturing by a man viewed as feminine, or “woman-like,” led to his diminished social position. From this understanding, the terms used by heterosexuals to describe homosexual men, in particular, typically applied to those who took the feminized position during sex. The active partner (i.e., the penetrator) maintained some of his male privilege given his “dominant,” male-associated role when penetrating another man. As a result, the penetrator’s sexuality and gender were not as questioned. This was not the case for the passive male partner (i.e., the penetrated). Society viewed taking the penetrated role as outright sexual deviancy – an unnatural state. The result was that the penetrated partner bore the brunt of stigma and persecution attached to labels such as she-man, sissy, fairy, and fag.

In addition to fag, fairy, and the like, “queer” was also used to label men who had sex with other men (Chauncey 1982, 1994). To distinguish within their newly defined class, early-twentieth-century homosexual men described, and thus defined, themselves whereby same-sex desiring effeminate men were called fairies and faggots, and those seeking same-sex sexual encounters regardless of gendered posturing were called queer (Chauncey 1994). In support, Chauncey states, “By the 1910s and 1920s, the men who identified themselves as part of a distinct category of men primarily on the basis of their homosexual interest rather than their womanlike gender status usually called themselves queer” (pp. 15–16).

Around the same time, government and medical institutions used “queer” to label “pathologically deviant behavior,” such as same-sex sexual relations (Pigg 2000). Institutionally speaking, in the early twentieth century, the US Navy conducted an investigation into allegations regarding activities at the Newport Island Training Station in Rhode Island, and in the local community (Chauncey 1985; Murphy 1984; Simopoulos and Murphy 2014). The investigation resulted in a trial of 36 enlisted and civilian men for engaging in same-sex sexual relations and/or acting in non-gender-conforming ways. From the trial’s transcripts, we learn that queer described men in sexually gendered terms, meaning only the men who took the sexually passive/penetrated role were deemed queer. This understanding is not in keeping with how the term was used among homosexual men; thus, the term varied in its application.

Queer as a sexuality and gender-based label remained in vogue to describe homosexual and gender nonconforming men, used both within and outside the homosexual community, until post-World War II. It was the homophile movement that initiated the transition to gay as a favored means to distinguish homosexual men, and lesbian to reference homosexual women (Pigg 2000). While the transition away from queer was the case within the homosexual community and many societal institutions, queer remains a derogatory term slung colloquially by bullies and haters (see, Burn 2000).

Currently, those who engage in or desire same-sex sexual encounters as well as those who embrace a gender identity different from the sex assigned at birth have evolved into what is believed to be an identifiable class of people. Like what Tannahill noted previously as occurring for women hundreds of years ago, rapid social acceptance is said to be taking place for those who embrace an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) identity, yet this is not universally the case between, nor within societies (Baunach 2012; Loftus 2001; Pew Research Center 2015; Smith, Son, and Kim 2014; Tilcsik 2011; Whitehead and Baker 2012). For example, recent events tell of religious extremists using Sharia law to justify putting homosexual men to death (Senzee 2015), and it was not so long ago Matthew Shepard died from a fatal beating motivated by hatred toward his sexuality (Ott and Aoki 2002). These examples signal sexuality as socially constructed, thus ever evolving and shifting in how they are conceived as well as received (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Browning 2016; Foucault 1979). This is also the case for gender (Browning 2016; Hughto, Reisner and Pachankis 2015). In fact, the hostility aimed at gender nonconforming people is problematic for sexual minorities as well as transgender/gender nonconformists (Gordon and Meyer 2008; Grant et al. 2011), especially black transwomen.

While paradigms regarding gender and sexuality have shifted, these shifts do not outright abandon the preceding dominant paradigm’s logic. For instance, in 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops proclaimed,

The Church seeks to enable every person to live out the universal call to holiness. Persons with a homosexual inclination ought to receive every aid and encouragement to embrace this call personally and fully. This will unavoidably involve much struggle and self-mastery….

This position indicates a shift in religious doctrine away from automatic condemnation, or at least severe punishment when found guilty; yet, it does not exclude such a possibility. This assertion is mirrored in context to gender when looking at the current debate raging over which public facility a transgender person should have access. Indeed, some use medical authorities’ designation of sex at birth to support their claim that biology determines one’s sex and gender, not the person’s sense of self (Steinmetz 2015). All of this is to say that the current environment for queer people is one in which a plethora of competing, complex, and sometimes antagonistic beliefs abound. No one paradigm has emerged as victorious, let alone explanatory as to what sexuality is and how it is determined, let alone what is sex and gender and how they are determined. In addition, no one institution dominates how we navigate these competing, sometimes antagonistic belief systems. This backdrop results in an environment conducive to queer as a reaction to dichotomizing, normalizing forces as there is no one dominant paradigm anymore, or conformist means to reinforce the homosexual/heterosexual or male/female choices we were previously led to believe defined who we are. Now, you can be who you want to be, yet must be so in a fractured world.

The first wave’s reclamation of queer

The work of academics, such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Gayle Rubin, and the actions of activists, such as those involved in Queer Nation, led to the reclamation of queer in the 1980s and 1990s. Their efforts reflect liberationist assertions and narratives that emerged during the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s (Jagose 1996; Plummer and Stein 1994; Puar 2005). When activists and academics reclaimed and reconstructed queer, the label was grounded in a political air contesting homonegativity and social subjugation, as well as reflected an attempt to escape the confines of bounded identities. The reclamation of queer countered proselytizing gay men and lesbians (Jagose 1996), as much as larger societies disdain for all things non-normative. According to Jagose (1996), queer reemerged in the context of the sexuality debates within the feminist movement as well as AIDS activism effectively framing the terms of reclamation in overtly political tones.

Those who put forth the first-wave queer ethos asserted difference over normalization in keeping with the word’s linguistic origins (Warner 1999). Anecdotally speaking, those embracing this ethos in contemporary times, the second wave of queer activity, include a range of people who intend to problematize the inherency of categorically fixed and “normalized” identities beyond those originally conceived. The second-wave queers appear to be collectivizing around their political, gendered, and sexual differences from normalized sexualities, e.g., the dyadic couple who embrace and are embraced by a traditional family structure and a capitalistic society, and binary gender system defined by male and female.

The first-wave reclamation of queer took aim at assertions put forth by the homophile movement, which blossomed in post-World War II gay and lesbian communities. The homophile movement in the United States began in earnest when the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis organized around the idea that homosexuals should benefit from the same rights that their heterosexual counterparts enjoy. This new narrative asserted gay men and lesbians mirror their heterosexual counterparts in nearly all manner other than the sex of their romantic/sexual partner choice (Esterberg 2000; Silverstein 1997). The homophile movement’s argument being akin to, “We maintain jobs, pay taxes, own property, and as such we deserve equal protection under the law” (The Mattachine Society 1997). The movement’s “normalizing” perspective contrasted the deviancy narrative that remained in vogue at that time. In the pulpits, legislative halls, and medical offices, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people remained immoral and pathologically out of kilter with God and nature.

The homophile movement paralleled the civil rights and feminist movement in their demand for equality. These movements exposed various social narratives, norms, policies, and laws as discriminatory, even hateful. The cultural and political shifts fought for by these movements, and the hostility they encountered, sparked a radical liberationist perspective grounded in difference over normalization (Bredbeck 2000). The emerging liberationist perspectives argued variation from the socially dominant position does not equate to abnormal or wrong, let alone warrant second-class citizenship and violence. Liberationist perspectives, as applied to sexuality, and gender and sex, moved that those who are outside the privileged, thus normalized groups, i.e., heterosexuals and cisgender people, do not need, nor should we concede to a hostile society; we must stand against it (Kissack 2000).

This period of social change set the stage for a series of events within social movements that paved the way for the first-wave queer reclamation. Armed with the culture war’s radical liberation ideologies, lesbians and bisexual women confronted sexuality-based discrimination in the feminist movement, and LGBT people took aim at the antihomosexual hostility resulting in the lack of response to the AIDS crisis. The battles within both movements occurred along normalizing/liberationist ideological lines (Jagose 1996). The reclamation and reconstruction of queer occurred in context to these ideological fights.

An example of an early battle came during the 1970 Second Congress of the National Organization of Women when several dozen women donned the title “Lavender Menace” to protest lesbians’ position within the organization, as well as the feminist movement in general (Bensinger 1992; Jagose 1996; Whitlock 1977). This event helped ignite a sexuality debate within the feminist movement and emboldened a new position for gay liberation as well as extended the liberationist vantage point to lesbians (Reger 2000). From this event forward, lesbians were a collective in their own right. The sexuality debates that transpired were of critical importance to the reemergence of queer, as the term would now apply to women as much as men. Some scoffed at such an application given the terms patriarchal roots, but that became a point of interest during the queer reclamation process and a point of inclusion.

On the heels of the feminist battle over sexuality, LGBT people confronted one of the most devastating events to hit their conjoined community. In 1981, the then Centers for Disease Control reported five cases of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP), diagnosed among sexually active gay men (Epstein 1996a; Shilts 1987). Soon after, PCP and a rare viral infection, Kaposi’s sarcoma, began occurring among gay men living in San Francisco, New York City, and other urban enclaves. While other marginalized communities, such as heterosexual injection-drug users, also manifest the new illness, the media focused its reporting on incidents among gay men. This focus produced a narrative exclusive to a “gay cancer” or the “gay plague” (Dowsett 2009; Halkitis 2013; Herek and Glunt 1988). By association, larger society implicated lesbians, even though relatively few cases of HIV were (or have been) diagnosed among women who have sex exclusively with women (Carter 2014; CDC 2014; Herek 1997). The government, and society in general, blamed affected communiti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments or credits list
• Preface: a “first-waver’s” lens in a “second-wave” world
• Introduction
• 1 Queer in practice and in theory
• 2 Profiles of participating queers
• 3 Is there queer community?
• 4 “We’re here, we’re queer, and we ain’t going nowhere”: The evolution of queer community
• References
• Glossary
• Appendix: Methods
• Index