Something I wrote on Blackboard for my LGBT Lit Class

The Gay/Straight Binary


I found it interesting in my reading of Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, when she mentions on page 55 the "attempts to name, explain, and define this new kind of creature, the homosexual person - a project so urgent that it spawned in its rage of distinction an even newer category, that of the heterosexual person."

This particular sentence seems to suggest that were it not for the search for a way to define a homosexual identity, there would not have been possible a heterosexuality, which by extension shows the inextricable link between the two. Which, as we've already discussed in our analysis of Judith Butler and Adrienne Rich, does not necessarily mean that homosexual and heterosexual practices have not existed, but that (and here I connect to D'Emilio) it is the rise of capitalist culture that allowed the emergence of a homosexual identity and by extension then it means capitalist culture allowed the rise of a named heterosexual identity.

Before the split that created this dependant binary system, there effectively was no heterosexuality. I call it a dependant binary system because without one the other would not exist. For lack of a better term, there were people and not-people. People, of course meaning parts of the nuclear family unit, and all others counting as abominations, witches or some other form of outcast from the norm of society.

So where does that put us now?

Clearly from the theory we've been reading the "gay" culture is a move to push past this restricting binary system would in many ways be beneficial, but as was mentioned at the very tail end of class, that is not the direction being taken by the LGBTQ movement. Is this binary essential to the establishment and creation of a strong queer culture that can work to break down what we've seen as the heterosexist views held (consciously or unconsciously) by the mainstream?

At one point, yes, this binary was essential. It has proven a valuable way to create a rallying point behind which to wave that rainbow flag, but it seems like this fight is progressing to a point where keeping the us vs. them mindset could actually prove a stumbling block. What's that tired adage? You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And while I propose no actual solutions here, I think the necessary step is to change the mindset of a culture, which means rather than forcing your existence into view and banging pots and pans, we must use our power outside the culture to recognize the problems within it and help remedy them.