Natalie Reed has another excellent post. Her articles are long, but worth the read!

Excerpted from her blog:

One of the many problematic aspects of treating gay and lesbian (mostly just gay) experiences and narratives as the archetype against which all queer experience is measured is how it causes particular models and tropes of queer lives to be applied indiscriminately across the many varying identities that comprise our community All kinds of important nuances, subtleties and distinctions can get lost in this process, and entire identities erased. Concepts, issues and experiences which are complex or problematic in very particular ways for certain kinds of queer lives end up being expected to fit into the same patterns, and have all the same implications and meanings and values, as how they operate in relation to gay lives.

There are lots of issues that end up being treated as exceptionally meaningful and central to queer experience, often being sort of central rallying points for the LGBTQ rights movement despite their lack of universality, and how they really don’t have nearly the same implications for everyone. Marriage equality, for instance, is treated as sort of the priority objective in the push forward for legal equality even while the narratives used to support it can be dismissive of other queer identities, such as those who are polyamorous or asexual. Non-discrimination bills will be structured around sexual orientation while choosing to leave gender identity and gender expression out of the wording. The “born this way” narrative is pushed in increasingly dogmatic terms at the expense of bisexual, pansexual and gender-fluid experiences. Narratives of gay self-acceptance often hinge themselves on the idea of bisexuality not even existing. The “just like normal people” narrative pushes aside butch, effeminate, drag and transgender identities entirely.

And the concept of coming out, its significance and what it means, is applied indiscriminately across the queer spectrum, failing to consider the vastly different implications it carries for people who are not gay or lesbian… such as how it means something almost wholly different for transsexual experience.

In the archetypal gay/lesbian narrative, coming out is a singular moment of triumph and courage. It is considered one of the absolute most central and defining rites of passage in the life of the queer individual. Before that moment, there is a closet… stifled, ashamed, scared. After that moment, there is out… accepting, brave, unashamed, proud, free. The closet is self-denial, pretending to be something you’re not. Out of the closet and you are finally freely expressing yourself and your actual honest identity.

For trans people, it does not quite work like that.

Continue reading at her article!

Definitely worth reading!

I like that she really does think of everybody when she asks others to think of everybody; rather, that when she asks gay people to remember trans* people when they speak of queer experience/existance, she also remembers non-binary people when she speaks of trans* experience/existance. She points out that the closet isn’t a queer universal, but she also acknowledges that stealth isn’t a trans* universal, either.

That is a really great article.

Feb

2012

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