A Synthesis of Thought-- The Final Post

With this being the final blog posting and our assignment essentially telling us to weave together overarching themes of the course, I would first like to reflect a bit on the blog assignment as a whole. Throughout my time maintaining this blog, I have struggled do separate myself from the conventional academic form of writing and infuse my own voice and opinions. This has happened for two reasons: 1) I have spent the last three years of college writing almost nothing but formal, informative papers from an outside standpoint, and 2) I feel that I have very little personal experience to add to the issues which we have discussed. I came into this class as a tabula rasa, bringing with me almost no knowledge about LGBT issues, especially those that came up more than 10 years ago, but with a strong sense that all humans are equal and a desire to learn more about this community of people to enable me to adequately argue such a point. I haven’t always felt comfortable passing judgment or expressing my opinion on certain topics because I have not lived these issues everyday, as many people have. The greatest struggle I have had with my gender and sexuality is talking to my parents about my relationship status, never having had to define my sexuality. That being said, I have gained a greater understanding of the social ramifications of identifying with the LGBT community and have come to really appreciate the struggles that they have gone through.

Reflecting on this course and my previous blog, I have come to really appreciate the fluidity of identity. I think that gender and sexuality, more than almost any other common categories, give the best example of identity fluidity and development. I have always been a strong advocate of allowing people to self-identify; if you are a woman who wants to sleep with women but identify as straight, there is something important about that. Society has a way of forming a category for every overarching group—gay, straight, black, latino, female, male, etc—and with each category comes an set of expectations. Gay men are supposed to act more feminine, for example, and so when a very “masculine” man comes out as gay, everyone is shocked. On the flip side, when a guy who likes to buy shoes and listen to Bette Midler dates women, people are equally shocked. These expectations of identity makes it hard for some people to fit into society’s categories. Specifically in regards to the identity of gay men, Mark Simpson and John Weir really bring this issue to the forefront. Both men are pointing out the stereotypes placed on gay men and, while Simpson does so more sarcastically, both men resent these expectations of gay men. Weir believes that those men who do conform to the expectations are ruining it for the rest of the gay male world by reinforcing these stereotypes.

I take issue with Weir’s stance in the same way that I take issue with those who accuse butch and femme lesbians of conforming to heterosexual norms. If a gay man enjoys being “flamboyant” and really identifies with the behavior that goes along with that, why shouldn’t he act that way? Because people will KNOW he is gay? Of course gay men have a connection and a common bond, but that bond is not necessarily any more unifying of behavior than race—there are expectations of how they will act, but such a wide spectrum of how they actually do act. Sexuality is not the ONLY identity that those in the LGBT community have, thus not the only standards to which they are subject, nor does it exemplify the only interests that they have.

This is especially apparent for those who are both a member of the LGBT community and a racial minority or a religion. As exemplified by our reading about chicana lesbians, these people are often forced to renounce one identity. During the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movements, and the Gay Rights Movement people were forced to choose which identity was most important to them and which one they were going to fight for the hardest. Splitting one’s identity is nearly impossible, but society’s difficulty with crossing categories has put many people in this unbearable situation.

Additionally, as exemplified most visibly by trans people, the identities that one forms for him or herself are likely to change over time. Going with this example, someone can be born a man, grow up liking to sleep with men, thus identifying as gay. Later in life this man can decide that he would better identify with women, undergo a transition (with or without surgery) and then identify as both straight and female. While, especially in this case, it isn’t always easy for society to accept this sort of fluidity of identity, people change and identities are not set in stone. Another example of this would be lesbian feminists—they began identifying with lesbian culture as a way of making a political statement, despite their actual sexual desires, going to show that each person has different motivations for changing their identity.

All people in the LGBT community have different needs, wants, backgrounds, and experiences. Various LGBT issues affect them all differently. Within each category (lesbian, gay, etc.) there are many subcategories and even more subcategories under each of those. Even those in the LGBT community have expectations of how others around them should think and act, as exemplified in many of our class readings, but it is clear that the interests and desires of these people are very different. They find common ground in their sexuality as a way of overcoming oppression and discrimination and as a way of furthering their cause and finding support.