Category Archives: Language

On Queerness

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Feminism is for Everybody

photo by anouk124

I recently re-read bell hooks’s Feminism is For Everybody, an incredibly accessible book about reclaiming and re-understanding a feminist consciousness. So much of that book has influenced my thinking on how to view pop culture through a critical lens, of
keeping a class and racial analysis core to feminism and the concept of global feminism.

On this read, however, I struck by a comment on sexual identity and practice and its relation (or lack thereof) to a political identity. hooks writes: “transgressive sexual practice did not make one politically progressive, ” (95) meaning that non-normative sexuality does not or should not assume one’s politics, While hooks does not employ the word “queer,” I applied this notion to the political and politicized language of Queerness. For some, queer is used as an umbrella term to encompass many sexual identities (“Queer” being more succinct and yet more all-encompassing than LGBTQQIAP). For me, queer is not just who I fuck, it’s how I fuck and why I fuck, and how I approach my relationships. It’s how I perform my gender identity as a cisgender woman. It’s how I view the intersections of history, the intersections of privilege and oppression, on my own body. It’s the lens through which I read the world. I gravitated to the identity queer at a point where I had already claimed a bisexual and later a gay identity, and sometimes those labels still apply to me. But queer seemed to speak more to me, qualifying my particular sexual habits and desires and the way that my body operates and matters (or doesn’t) in the world.

Perhaps as a result of growing older, or perhaps as a result of spending time with many people of diverse sexual and gender presentations and identities, but I meet more and more people who self-identify as queer. With some of these folks, those who do not
seem to have an analysis to accompany their identity, I wonder about their use of the word queer.

Sometimes queerness is read onto my body; but most often I claim that identity for myself. While I do not want to presume someone’s “true” identity, nor do I want to prescribe what queer is (what I love about it is it’s ever-flowingness, that connects to my ever-shifting sense of self), I would like to call for a more critical use of “queer”. Why did we each
choose this word, a former and current slur, to reappropriate and reimagine? I am interested in the “why” behind the “queer”. I am constantly interested in my “why,” and how it changes or remains fixed. I wonder if others of my large and beautiful queer ”family” think about this too. bell hooks reminds me that a queer sexual identity and a  queerpolitical identity cannot and should be assumed. So it is up to me to hold both of those aspects of my being accountable and aligned to stay true to my critical, queer, anti-racist and feminist beliefs.

how i spent my summer vacation, or reflections on the fourth and freedom ticklers

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back in the unseasonable warmth of february (hello, record temperatures)
i decided that turning my fourth of july into a five-day weekend would
be a good use of p.t.o.  this proved to be true, as i was later
invited to a friend’s family cabin with ten other lovely people that
very weekend.  we journeyed to the woods of wisconsin to drink
beer, eat meat, shoot fireworks, and dance to drake.

an excellent time was had by all, but there was a group consensus
based on pit stops for food, beer, and gas that small town wisconsinites
were not feeling us. like, really not feeling us.  i personally
felt i was getting more side eye than mary-kate olsen and olivier
sarkozy (probably) do strolling through the city of lights.  it
could just be paranoia brought on by certain aspects of rural midwestern
culture, despite the fact that i’ve come to expect them, such as the
ubiquitous anti-choice billboards. the first one i noticed was a little
different than most, in that it shared half its space with an ad for
cremation services, as if to say “we are constantly thinking this whole
(what we think is the) life cycle ALL THE WAY THROUGH.”

while we are certainly a lively bunch, we are also far from
obnoxious, our politeness and hygiene both impeccable.
 nevertheless, it felt as if we were immediately recognized as
liberal, city dwelling outsiders and subsequently treated with an air of
disdain.  what i imagined them thinking was something along the
lines of, “we’re red. you’re blue. and purple doesn’t exist in this
country, so we hate you.”

full disclosure, i’m smack dab in the middle of franzen’s freedom, so
competing notions of freedom and the uglier memories of the bush jr.
administration have been occupying my mind a bit more than usual lately.
 but even if that hadn’t been the case, the following picture of
what i found in a gas station ladies room still would have sent me right
back there:

sweet liberty

the french freedom tickler.  now, as i’m sure most of you
remember, back in 2003 when the u.s. decided to invade iraq, our french
friends were strongly opposed and expressed this opposition loudly in
the united nations.  this led to some americans boycotting french
goods and, to really drive their point home, alter the name of perhaps
our most beloved fried food, french fries, to freedom fries.  as
far as i know, this phenomenon was relatively short lived, but the
evidence of its existence still lives on in google image search:

would you like some freedom with that?

i can only imagine that the maker of the french freedom tickler
thought that, unlike with fries, to completely replace “french” with
“freedom” might prove too confusing for people, and they would pass on
buying it.  so what they did instead, that clever person, was put
the word “french” up in the corner, ablaze in the fire held by the very
statue that the french themselves gave us in 1886. how does that liberté
feel now?

“tickle her fancy with the real thing,” the tickler proclaims,
because everything real exists on american soil.  and just in case
you weren’t sure you were buying what you think you were buying adjacent
to the coin-operated condom dispenser, they put “adult novelty” at the
bottom.  for those of you who don’t know, this phrase is a rather
abhorrent one, because (in the united states) by selling products in
this particular category, you are entitled to all sorts of legal
loopholes that let you sell (cheap) toys that people insert into their
most private of parts containing b.p.a. and other shitty chemicals and
can also be totally porous and unsterilizable, allowing bacteria and
s.t.i.s to be fruitful and multiply (and, if you share them, shared!).
LET FREEDOM RING!

this trip to the ladies room made me sad at first, thinking that
perhaps the only “novelty” to speak of in this town was a sad,
heteronormative freedom tickler. then i remembered it’s the 21st century
and started to recall other things that made me think i shouldn’t fret
so.  like how there are a great number of sex toy stores that are
decent and don’t sell shitty toys and, most importantly, sell shit
online.  i thought back to my own days working in such an
establishment, and how i would smile a little when i would see that some
finely-crafted leather cuffs or high-quality dildo were being sent to
someone in bumfuck (pun intended) america. even target now sells a number of vibrators and (generally vibrating) cock rings in stores and online.

while this may or may not seem like a huge deal to you, i’m sure that
the people of alabama certainly appreciate it, seeing as how in
2009, the alabama supreme court upheld their ban on the sale of sex toys in
a 7-2 decision. so, you know, feel free to sell and stockpile weapons,
but pack up your leather harnesses and butt plugs and get the fuck out
of here.  this is what freedom sounds like in alabama:

public morality can still serve as a legitimate rational basis
for regulating commercial activity, which is not a private activity,”
associate justice michael f. bolin wrote in the majority opinion.

there is nothing `private’ or `consensual’ about the advertising and sale of a dildo,’” the majority opinion said.

after reflecting on ideas of sexual freedom in this country, i took a
moment to be grateful to live in a time and place where i can choose to
have sex only for recreation and not for procreation and can buy a
variety of birth control methods and sex toys, not to mention get an
abortion should that birth control fail.  this doesn’t mean that i
don’t hope for much, much better for the people of america when it comes
to having a nuanced and fully informed grasp of human sexuality, but i
do want to appreciate the battles that were fought to get us to where we
are now.

now, for the proof that i really was in wisconsin, the leinie lounger:

if my hair had been as long as it was a few weeks ago, i might have even tried a freedom braid:

International Day of They: Resurrecting the Use of “They” as a Singular Pronoun

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You don't think "they" can be used as a singular pronoun? HAHAHAHA.

The Llama Will Show You

Thursday, May 3, 2012, is the first annual (hopefully) International
Day of They-ing. The day was created by Minnesotan linguist Ryan Txanson and consists (so far) entirely of a Facebook invitation.
The invitation is public and anyone with a Facebook account can join
the “event,” thereby pledging that on May 3rd, every time you refer to
someone in the 3rd person you will use the pronoun “they” (not “he” or
“she”). I encourage you to take part: whether you’re a gender outlaw or
just someone who hates the awkward (and exclusionary) phrase “he or
she,” you’ll find freedom in the warm embrace of singular “they.”

Why use “they” as a singular pronoun? Because it’s not gendered, it should be used whenever the gender of the person is unknown or
irrelevant. Here’s an example by Oscar Wilde: “Experience is the name
everyone gives to their mistakes.” (Notice that Wilde didn’t say “his
mistakes” or “his or her mistakes.”) For some of us, the International
Day of They (I think that’s more catchy than “They-ing”) is an
affirmation of the linguistic choices we already make, and for others of
us using “they” this way sounds odd or ungrammatical. While some style
guides like the Chicago Manual of Style still frown upon the singular use of “they” in formal writing, other style guides and grammar experts encourage such use (Grammar Girl, New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, and the Random House Dictionary).

But using “they” as a singular pronoun is nothing new. Historians
have found the word used this way as far back as the 14th century. And
it was not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that grammarians
decided that singular “they” did not accord with the grammar rules that
they had borrowed from Latin and were applying to English. So, if on
May 3rd you use “they” as a singular, generic pronoun, you will be in
the good company of authors such as Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Thackeray,Whitman, and Dickens.

What is new is using “they” to refer to a known (not generic or hypothetical) individual in order to avoid the gendered pronouns “he” or “she.” This is the exciting and revolutionary part of the International Day of They!
It’s okay to say, for example, “Hollis got their first guitar when they
were eight.” Previous attempts to insert new non-gendered pronouns into
English (like “zie” and “hir”) have been made for hundreds of years,
and they have all failed. What is more likely to succeed is the
expansion of the existing “they” to meet the needs of gender-neutral
language. How do we change language and then push those changes into the
mainstream? Use. We have to use it the way we want it to be. And then
we have to keep using it to establish credibility and authority.

For me the International Day of They is personal (and personally
validating); “They”/ “Their”/ “Them”/ “Themself” are my preferred gender
pronouns (PGPs). I will be making a point on May 3rd to use “they” for all
3rd persons, both generic and specific. Please join me. And if you’re
skeptical about the ability to change something so entrenched in
language as pronouns, I ask you, when was the last time you used “thy,”
“thee,” or “thou”?