Stonewall: The Book

My first impressions on this book were that it was definitely much more interesting than my last reading on American Studies, or "Butches, Femmes, and Kikis." The author's structure of the book is quite dynamic as it recounts each of the protagonists' experiences, because it starts by giving a small window into their lives, and actually shifts the order in which it is told to the reader. Something about these tales from the celibate Foster to the rather... loose Jim, the vivid recounts of how each of these people came into the realization of their sexuality.

Craig- Craig with his neglect from his mother and then immediate transference to the all boys school was a great way to start the book in my opinion. The sympathy that we have for his situation in the start draws us into the book and keeps us reading, but then when it soon turns rather raunchy in his relationships with the other boys in the school, it quickly engulfs readers. I personally was rather confused with the emergence of the sexual roles of the boys at such an early age, because they were actively engaging and sex and they were like... 7.

Jim- After like two pages of Jim's story, in both parts I was just like, "Wow, Jim is a complete and total slut already!!" Jim made me wonder how and why a child his age would develop a sexual identity so quickly and at such an early age because his story is actually not the first time I had seen such an occurrence, it happened exactly the same to one of my best friends, so I was confused then and I'm still confused now that I know that he wasn't the only ho.

Yvonne- I like that there was a black voice in the book, and even more so that she was so powerful as was her mother. I became a bit disenchanted with her though when she kept letting trivial things overshadow her education, and I really thought she could have risen to the occasion more. I also like how her role help give a more active voice to the readings from Friday.

Ray- Ray for me was a superstar because, while pretty much everyone had that visibility that we emphasized in the LGBT movement, Ray had it the most. For Ray to be in full-face makeup for me was just striking. I know personally I could never have been in full face and patio pants at that age. I didn't have the desire to, and I also think that I have the awareness that Ray lacked, that people have stigmas about people who don't conform to the schemas set forth by society for gender behavior. Thus I honestly wonder if a lot of Ray's courageousness comes from his pure oblivion at what other people thought, when he was younger.

So far these are the biggest impressions I have gotten from the book. I hope that I will see more intriguing things unfold from the others soon so I can raise questions about them as well

Gender Roles

How long has there been such a thing as a “gender role?” Depending on your believe system, it could be one of the inherent fundamental properties of human life. Believers of the Christian faith are taught that men are the caretakers of the world in a sense and women are there to be their companion and support them. Looking at America, and its dominant culture, the consistent trend had been that the women should be submissive to the men and the men are supposed to take care of the family and do the killing in war. That most people can agree has remained pretty static, but the realm of gender roles unfortunately are not quite so shallow. As such there are many other traits of both men and women that have changed and been accepted and there are those that are still resisted or stereotyped. If one looks far back to what men used to be in Eurocentric culture, the essence of male behavior, the knights (go Carleton!) were much different from what we as the descendants of such culture think of men today. Knights were kind, compassionate, and courteous, took extreme pride in their appearance and hygiene, and openly showed emotion. Today’s male is to pretty much smell, fart, or belch profusely, not really care how he looks when leaving the house, not show emotion, to cry is to make him weak and “girly” and should not be overly compassionate to people. What would the revered knights of such lore think about the men they see today? They would more than likely be appalled at the behavior exhibited by today’s men. Something interesting is if one were to watch movies about knights, they would immediately see they have been updated to fit the macho male role of today. What does someone say about such a metamorphosis in thought? It brings up lots of interesting questions. Also, if one were to refer to the same sources, they would note that the “independent woman” of today, is not all that new of a concept. Though they had husbands, many women of feuding eras had to bring in money, and support their community, while taking care of their children because their husbands were away at war. The difference of today is women are actually declaring their independence noting that they don’t actually NEED men, rather than just doing all of the work, while still holding on to that vacant male figure.

So now that there is clear proof that gender roles have not always been this way, why is it so shocking and upsetting that they are changing again? When researching gender roles one can actually find a list of “Atypical Gender Roles.”It is increasingly clear that due to the rise of Homosexuality as an identity, born of pathology, that this is what causes gender roles to hold so much weight now and is held to be so taboo if one is to deviate from them. The fact that effeminate males and masculine females are now the poster images for gays and lesbians respectively, brings in that ever present burden of heteronormitivity when talking about gender roles. If all gay men played football and drank beer, and all lesbians loved kids, were submissive and adored pink and frilly clothes, people who deviate from these roles would not be so examined when they do deviate.

Homosexuality begins as a Pathology?

So this is my first blog and let us see how this goes!! So in class we discussed how the thought of homosexuality as a category, and it being applicable to people therefore creating a new group of people, first arose from the pure pathological studies of things associated with homosexual behavior. In earlier days, it was basically considered sodomy, making gay people sodomites but an identifiable group nonetheless. Personally I had always remembered homosexuality being existent far before thing, as far back as in the days of ancient Greece and Rome, so I decided to do some research. I found some interesting information in this site: http://oregonstate.edu/~blakena/cs195/final/Other/Writing/RomanHomosexuality.html that has surprising contrasts to today’s society. I especially found the attitudes toward Lesbianism interesting how opposite they are from today. Today Lesbianism is more accepted and it is seen as “hot” or desirable to have a woman who will have sex with another woman, where it says clearly in the ancient societies it was completely taboo and unheard of.

There was also talk of the relationship between sexuality and race. How they can be very similar in aspects like acceptance and assimilation, while being different when it comes to the basis of how their identity may have come to be. I honestly found these two concepts to be very similar because, though people cannot freely choose their race (though it can now be debated if people can actually choose their sexuality) they still can have a similar experience that people incur as in cases of race categorization. For example it was said that the LGBT community coming about due to being made pathology could only be looked at in an LGBT standpoint only but that is not entirely true. If a person were to find out that the strange episodes they have when the blank out and convulse violently made them epileptic then they too could rally together as a body of epileptic people who maybe do not want to be marginalized and underestimated because of this issue they may have. Same can apply with race, if a person who lived in Africa all their life and had never seen a White person had never seen people as “Black” or “White” but just people, may start to rally with similar people because of the difference they notice. Because they now know of this category that exists, maybe not according to their will at first, it still exists so they begin to own it and identify it and turn it into something positive for themselves.