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
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.
1 comment:
There seem to be two threads here: one is the location of identity in pathology, and the second is the formation of identity and communal identities. Behavior vs. Identity would be an important distinction in the first case. Homosexual sex has existed since the beginning of time, of course, and has, in various times and places (such as ancient Rome or Greece, or in contemporary Papua New Guinea, for instance), functioned in a socially-sanctioned (i.e., approved) role. Again, though, the difference between sex and "LGBT" identity is primarily one of identification, not sex itself. What is potentially interesting about this historical shifting and sliding is the changing perceptions of virtually the same acts (in this case, sex, but we can think of other social practices whose meanings change, often times suddenly). What the emergence of LGBT identity in the 19th century might signal is a shift of this type, but moreover a movement towards grounding practice in being (i.e. sex vs. identity), which is what makes it an aspect of modernity. Heteronormative society had/has a vested interest in making this new formation pathological, and to a certain extent LGBT people have been struggling to get it (their new identity) out of that place ever since. All of which is to say that the identities we think of as ahistorical, transparent, and timeless are in fact constantly being built, and fought over, which speaks to your second point here.
As well, group dynamics always have (at least) two sides, right? Interior and Exterior. Race in this instance is instructive. White society has a particular view of what constitutes, say, Blackness, while within Black communities often the same question will elicit remarkably different perspectives. This does not even take into account the vast differences of opinion within identity categories, such as the category LGBT, which includes radicals, moderates, conservatives, fairies, butches, femmes, str8 acting, etc etc ad infinitum (and some would say, ad nauseam).
Maybe an interesting project would be to think about how you (or other potential commentators) have formed their own identities, and why?
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