“I hate to say it, but the images of high school come rushing forward, images of the bigger, stronger guys, roosters in every right, images of who I should have been by social standards. In an instant I scoff at such an image, imagining myself sweating inside some rooster costume, wishing I could just use my brain, that I could just let my voice, steady and effortless, be something I am proud of. But then I realize I am not the rooster anymore; instead I am naked, stark naked, in the hallways, homo tattooed on my stomach, intellectual emblazoned on my arm; and all I can hear are the laughs, uproarious, as a new tattoo appears suddenly on my face, lachrymose, the perfect description for my state of mind.”
These words were part of a story I wrote over the summer. While it was a work of fiction, and the words themselves were an obvious dramatisation of actual events within the story, their core holds an undeniable truth in my own life. I do not write what I do not feel most strongly. I came out as gay at the age of 16 in October of 2005. I was in my second year of high school. For three years prior, I had been engaged in an inner battle, a battle that has shaped the very person I am as I put these words on a page. The quote at the top of the page reflected, for a time at least, the intense self-consciousness I felt over my sexuality. Before I came out, I was worried about other peoples’ responses. I was worried about being rejected, worried about being cast out to sea on some lonely raft, by all people, even those closest to me. But I was also worried about another threat, the threat of the roosters, of violence against me by men because of my proclaimed sexuality.
This fear of rejection and violence did not come without an intense period of reflection. Before I came to define the person that I was as gay, I was involved in a lengthy reflective process over what it meant to be gay. I came to find that gay meant only that I was attracted to other guys, but that it was also composed of a constellation of noticeable gendered behaviours reinforced for at least a century. It became clear that the homosexual was an anatomically male body with a female psyche, an idea developed at the very beginning of the creation of the modern homosexual by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in the late 1800s (Terry 43). While such a distinction is less articulated in society today, the stereotypical images of the gay man as effeminate, characterised by a particular voice, mannerisms, dress, and interests, remain. In this realisation, I began a self-consciousness process of evaluating my own actions and behaviours. What types of clothing was I wearing? What were my mannerisms? Did I fit the stereotypes? I began policing my own behaviours out of fear of being ridiculed or harmed.
Nevertheless, in October 2005 I reached a point where I felt that articulating a gay identity publicly would at least free from a silence that was tearing me up psychologically, allow me to find a community I belonged to. While there were positive effects from coming out, the emotions expressed in the quotation did not disappear in any sense. By coming out, I did not free myself from the fear of rejection or ridicule; if anything, these feelings were intensified. In brandishing myself as homosexual, I made myself an open target of examination and judgment without fully having the courage to articulate what I believed. In this state of fear and concern for myself, my state of mind—lachrymose as I put it in the story—led to the development of my feminist consciousness. The purpose of this essay is thus to define feminism in the traditional sense, utilizing various theorists, and explore a new feminist ideology that may seem more congruous to my own identification as queer and male.
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is both a “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” and “organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.” The two key aspects of this definition are “of the sexes” and “women’s rights and interests.” The first is important because in its definition of gender equality, it uses the word sexes, a term which immediately comes to my mind as meaning the “uncomplicated” categories of male and female, thereby limiting access to feminism to those of specific genders. As Riki Wilchins points out in several chapters of GENDERqUEER: voices beyond the sexual binary, anyone who chooses not to identify as male or female have “completely vanished from civil discourse” and have “for political purposes…ceased to exist” (54). This is erasure is further supported in the definition by making women the centre of organised activity, because it fails to acknowledge those who do not identify as women who nonetheless deal with gender inequities on a daily basis.
This definition of feminism is not merely confined to a dictionary; it has pervaded feminist writings since the 1950s. One of the earliest examples of this is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a hallmark text of feminism. In it, she boldly challenges male privilege and explores women’s status as Other, lacking any subjectivity of their own. Revolutionary for the time, it clear now the ways in which de Beauvoir’s theory is limited and how it is tied to the dictionary definition of feminism. The first clear tie is de Beauvoir’s reliance on both sexes, whereby men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed. This idea is demonstrated clearly when she states that “he is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other” (44) and that “the division of the sexes is a biological fact” (47). The second is in her heterocentric tilt. Throughout the introductory chapter, she describes heterosexual relationships exclusively and seems unable or unwilling to challenge the basic idea that the feminine is the object of masculine desire and vice versa. In supporting a particular ideology of gendered inequities that places women as the object of feminism, de Beauvoir unwittingly reinscribes a heterosexual matrix and denies voices outside of this model the chance of being heard.
Feminist theory evolved in short order after de Beauvoir, but such a transformation, rather than being wholly positive, brought women as the object of feminism to a new extreme. It is true that lesbian theorists challenged compulsory heterosexuality. Nobody better attacks heterosexual privilege than Adrienne Rich in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience.” However, she continues to assert women as objects of feminism, and particularly lesbian women as objects of feminism. Like other theorists of this nature, Rich also emphasizes something called “women-identification,” which does not include merely lesbian sexual interaction but also “women’s passion for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions and community” (199). Another theorist, Monique Wittig, in “One is Not Born a Woman,” goes a step further in asserting that “lesbianism provides for the moment the only form in which we [women] can live freely” (20). Thus women remained objects of feminism more strongly than eve; men, by and large a homogeneous category of persons, remained the oppressors; and the genderqueer remained completely silenced, hiding in some closet.
But feminism has come to change. Not overnight, of course, but in time feminist ideology has become different, celebrating a postmodern ideology whereby we are all engaged in acts of gender performance. As Riki Wilchin’s says “gender refers not to something we are but something we do, which, through extended repetition and because of the vigorous suppression of all exceptions, achieves the appearance of a sort of coherent psychic substance” (24). What is important in this is that there is no essential masculine and feminine, only social construction of a heterosexual matrix, a matrix that places masculine in a binary with feminine, where all aspects of masculinity are seen in opposition to femininity. Necessary for this deconstruction of the heterosexual matrix, power relations are also reconceptualised through the theorist Michel Foucault. Rather than previous descriptions of power as held by men over women, power is opened up as “power relations,” relationships between people that are “mobile, reversible, and unstable” (Foucault 292). There is no holding of power in one’s hands. Power is no longer evil. This new model of feminist thought no longer “presumes, fixes, and constrains the very ‘subjects’ that it hopes to represent and liberate” (Butler 148). For once, there is chance of a politics that does not belong to a set of “ready-made subjects” (149). Women are not all victims, men are not all powerful, and the truly transgressive—the genderqueer—may very well have the greatest tools for challenging systems of gender inequities.
I have so far articulated at length a traditional view of feminism and provided a sense of this new feminism, but I must now resituate my self in this theory by talking about my own experience. In the beginning, I described how it was that I came to identify as gay and how my exploration of its meaning involved the realisation that to be gay is to be necessarily implicated in a series of perceived gendered behaviours, whether or not you actually practise them. These gendered behaviours arose from the construction of homosexuality in the late 1800s at a psychical inversion, an effeminate mind with a male body. I come back to this point because I believe that it is the foundation for movement into the world of feminist thought. Sexuality is gendered. I do not agree with other theorists (or those in my daily life) who deny a direct link between sexuality and gender. From its historical creation, the homosexual was entirely gendered. Just as important, these gendered stereotypes have persisted to the present day. Through this process of sexual identification, I came to discover gender inequities and became a feminist.
Let me be clear in saying that it is not merely because of my attraction to other men that I am feminist. Nobody just is a feminist by having an attraction or unexamined identity. To become feminist, one must reflect on hir own behaviours, actions and relationships with others. As once a self-identified gay man, I can say wholeheartedly that many other men who identify as gay should not be considered feminists for a very important reason. The heterosexual matrix I have frequently brought up in this discussion is anchored in a binary that places masculine desire for a feminine object and feminine desire to be an object of masculine desire together. Many (self-identified) men who have sex with men do not lose this heterosexual anchor. It takes only a quick glance on the Internet to discover the pervading top/bottom distinction during sexual acts, where one man’s interest lies only in an active role, the penetration of another typically more passive man. Throughout this process, misogyny is perpetuated and rigid sexual boundaries, heterocentric in nature, are re-inscribed.
What is it then that separates me from other men who have sex with men? I think the first lies in my rejection of rigid definition of my own sexual practices. I practise whatever sexual roles I see fit. I certainly have preferences (as I think any person does), but that does not mean I lack flexibility in what I practise, nor do I vigorously assert a particular sexual role. This action is my re-appropriation of sexual desire. It is itself a feminist act in my mind because it seeks to directly challenge the anchor of the heterosexual matrix. My re-appropriation lies in my belief that desire can indeed be flexible, not defined by an oppositional binary. That is to say, masculine desire does not have to be for a feminine object. What this desire can entail is expanded. But it also is my assertion that the sexual partners we have do not have to be the same (in their roles and desires) that it is also challenging. The heterosexual matrix functions on the belief in a constant and fixed identity; my re-appropriation denies constancy.
The other, perhaps the explanation for the switch of my identification from gay to queer, lies in my support and desire to organise politically with diverse groups of people. This identification—with women, transsexuals, and those who are genderqueer—is at the heart of a new feminist ideology. The function of feminism today is not a movement beyond gender oppression; this belief is unachievable and thoroughly utopian. The function of feminism today is thus adopting “games of strategy” to minimise gender inequities (Foucault 298). True games of strategy can, and ought to, be adopted on the level of individual subversion. For example, an individual who plays with gender such that there is no gender constancy is using subversion to challenge gender inequities and a heterocentric framework at a local level. This means of challenging binaries is effective.
However, individual subversion is not the limit of postmodern feminist ideology. While postmodernism makes problematic categories of essence, I think that it is wrong to attribute postmodernism only to individual action. A new politics of being can be created, but it will not function in the same way as modern liberal identity politics. Instead, it will be based in a dynamic process of continual re-evaluation of actions, goals and aims formed by a diverse coalition of individuals. There will be nobody speaking for a monolithic group, people will express their own stories and combat these gender inequities. Women will no longer be the objects of feminism; men will no longer be the only ones who can perpetuate unequal relationships.
As I have demonstrated, my own personal experiences (and the pain inseparable from them) have led to the development of a feminist ideology. From the very beginning of labelling myself as “gay,” I came to find sexuality as entirely gendered, operating within a framework that established the homosexual as psychically inverted. I fretted over the sweaters I wore, the music I listened to, the glances I took. I was afraid of the laughs, of hearing ‘faggot’ uttered, of being harmed because of this framework. My story, supported by postmodern theorists, demonstrates the ways in which this traditional view of feminism is inadequate. Women and men both have erased genderqueer and transsexual from civil discourse. Women have perpetuated hierarchies related to sexuality, ethnicity and economic background. Men too can face gender inequities. The feminist model I have proposed is one in which power is reconceived outside of subject/object distinction. It is a model that entails individual subversion and dynamic political organisation against a heterosexual matrix by all people who have bore witness to gender inequities. We cannot seek to remove ourselves from the world we live in, but being more open and limitless will allow us to more appropriately challenge gender inequities still achingly visible. In believing that “what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic,” we open up so much possibility for feminism and provide me with a chair at the table (Wilchins 36).
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