Please respond to question #1 under "Questions for Discussion" on page 213; however, you only need to pick one example from the textbook and try rewriting it with the added emphasis.
I think the part of the book’s representations that would most benefit from added intersectional analysis would be Chapter 7 when talking about transgender people. A lot of people do not understand the minds of transwomen and transmen, and I think that by letting us know more about a few certain examples of them would be very interesting. People reading this book could see that transpeople are not freaks and outcasts as many people have said about them. They have normal jobs and normal lives just like the rest of us, and I would like to learn where exactly some of them fit into their societies. I am sure many of us would be surprised to learn who exactly feels like they are misplaced, and who might actually be of the opposite sex that they live their lives as. I think another part of the book that would benefit from more intersectional analysis is the discussion of homosexuality’s place in the ancient world. Like in the Greek era, were the pederastic relationships only between younger men and older men of wealth and prestige? If people in a lower social ranking were in a relationship such as that, would they be considered outcasts, or would it still be considered such a high and prestigious relationship? I was also curious about the relationship between the poets in the Arab cultures. Their religion condemns homosexuality, though it did not seem like they were chastised for it. I wondered if it was because they were considered of a higher class or intelligence because of their professions. I just think it would add a lot if in this chapter civilizations were not so generalized. I would like to know the difference stages of acceptance based on gender, rank, and social class in these cultures in regard to homosexual activity and relationships.
I agree with Brittany. I think further intersectional analysis of transgendered people would benefit people like me who have never had a personal experience with a transgendered person understand a little better. I read an article when we were reading chapter six by Monica Roberts who said that the heterosexual African-American community has the hardest time accepting African-American transgendered people. I think further analysis on how they adapt to life and live with racism and transgender discrimination would be interesting. I also found the adoption cases of "In the Matter of Evan" and "White vs. Thompson" interesting and very disturbing. If an adoption is in the best interest of the child, why would a person take a child away from the person that they are most comfortable with? "I'm sorry, little boy/girl, you can't live with your mom because she is lesbian and works at a convenient store." Why couldn't her ex-husband's parents just help her by taking care of the children at night while she works? I can't imagine ever taking my two cousins away from their mom. That's who they know and cares for them since the day they were born. I can understand why a judge would grant custody to her ex-husband's parents because she left them alone at night while she worked because that is really dangerous. But her sexual identity should have nothing to do with it. That is just straight discrimination.
I agree with both Brittany and Sam. I think that just by examining our classroom discussions it is evident that the greater majority of us do not really understand those in the transgender community. The general concept of “living in the wrong body” is one that can be usually accepted but not dissected: there is not enough knowledge for most people to draw their own conclusions about it. There is a frequent statement of “I don’t really understand it because I’ve never felt that way” that many of us have expressed, and unlike relating heterosexual and homosexual desires for a love interest, a relation cannot be made for anyone not feeling like they are in the wrong body. I think the book should take a little more time and literature to explain the trans community. I feel like the prejudice against this group is stronger than some of the others. People have a tendency to want to ignore or destroy those things that they cannot explain or understand. There is a danger in not having in dept and valid descriptions and knowledge of different people. I also think that bisexuals are not always explained or described in the right light. I have heard from people all my life, both gay and straight, that bisexuals are being “greedy” or just not ready to come all of the way out of the closet yet. There is a lack of understanding in both heterosexual and homosexual communities as far as bisexuals are concerned that hinders all groups of sexual orientation. Feeling like you can only be one or the other or else you are just “bicurious” is not an accurate description of sexuality, I don’t think, and bisexuality probably stands a fairly good chance of being listened to by those in the homosexual community who typically avoid focus on these topics.
I believe the chapter that really represented queerness was probably the chapter on Queer Diversities and also the one on Nature, Nurture, and Identity. Since Brittany, Sam, and Brandy have all done a good job of talking about the book's representation of Queerness in Queer Diversities, I'll cover Nature, Nurture, and Identity. I thought this chapter was a very important section on Queerness, because I believe it showed how uncommon heterosexuality is. After reading this section, especially the part about the Kinsey Scale, it just made me realize how common being "queer" is. I believe it was a very good representation of queerness, and shined a lot of light on how common it really it is.
As far as the section on Queer Diversities goes, I was very pleased with it. However, I was very disappointed with the very small paragraph on Intersexes. I believe that the subject of Intersexes is such a controversial topic of discussion among queers and straights that I was horrified how dismissal the book was of it. Had I written that section on Intersexes, I definitely would have made it larger, and not crammed it into a little 400 word paragraph. Intersexes have always had issues with LGBT organizations not being supportive of them, and this book just goes along with it. Although I thought it was wonderful the detail they go into about transgenders, I thought they really could have talked more about intersexes.
I agree with everybody else, actually, about chapter seven. Transgenderism isn’t mentioned as much as being gay or lesbian is and there are so many things that could be brought to light about it that aren’t. I was surprised as hell once a few years ago when a soap opera my grandmother was watching turned out to have an MTF character, although they didn’t mention a whole lot about her experiences aside from her girlfriend’s family believing that she’d brainwashed the girl, and one man saying “In my day we all knew what we were!” which to this day strikes me as somewhat irritating to hear.
I have a friend named Keir who is black, Jamaican, Jewish and FTM. I’m sure at least a vague concept of the kinds of issues he has to face with that sort of intersectionality is obvious just from that list, and it would be nice to see something more about that in our textbook.
I never honestly think of something like social class affecting a person’s experience, which is probably because when you’re reading about discrimination in textbooks or in news reports that’s not mentioned very often, and I’d like to see more examples of that. Reading this text makes me feel so incredibly ignorant, honestly, because there’s so much that it talks about that I’ve never considered or heard anything about. Amber Hollibaugh’s essay (Queers Without Money: They Are Everywhere. But We Refuse to See Them) is a perfect example of what I mean: I guess it’s sort of normal for us not to think very much about people with lives so vastly different from ours, but she says in the title alone that we refuse to see them. What is that like? What’s it like to be not only gay, but poor? Or poor, transgender, Jewish, Jamaican and black like Keir is? What kinds of difficulties does a person like that face?
I do also agree with everyone before me. I think that adding Intersectionality to the mix when discussing the transgender community would definitely spice things up a bit. I think that they are already drastically misunderstood as a gender identity, and I think that if we discussed how Intersectionality affects them, we’d really start to get a grasp on the lives they have to lead. I’d like to discuss Intersectionality and the sex workers we discussed in the last chapter. We never really hear about sex workers, but I think that if we discussed Intersectionality when referring to them it would be such an interesting discussion. If you look at the chart by Gayle Rubin for “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”, you might notice that a sex worker would fit almost every aspect of the “outer limits” or the “abnormal, unnatural, sick and sinful” sex as she puts it. God forbid you think about a poor transgender black lesbian old disabled fat Catholic sex worker. I think that sex workers can easily be misunderstood because society is so quick to judge and categorize people into their stereotypes of what someone is supposed to be. If you’re gay, you’re feminine. If you’re poor, you’re stupid. I think we need to try to let go of these stereotypes. I think its interesting because a lot of us actually have different stereotypes of each other, as we have found out in our discussions in class. And it is all derived from how we were raised and what we were taught. So in the end we just need to teach our children to be accepting and the world will be a better place. Now in order to do that we need to learn to become accepting ourselves. Baby steps people. Baby steps.
To me I never paid attention to intersectional analyses of people. It’s hard for me to be sympathetic to anyone who is oppressed because I’m oppressed just by being a black man. The only people that come to mind are those women in Boston marriages. Because those women had an education and money were they allowed to do that? As well with the older Greek men with younger ones, I see the male bonding in the relationship as well them teaching them adult hood. The lesbians as well were sectioned off to an island where there developed their minds. Oppression is part of life and when you have multiple roles you play in at one time, you should be prepared to take all of the negative and positive feedback you get. How much money you have can easy some of the oppression but it can’t make it go away. People are natural cruel to things they don’t understand or believe. In the movie we watched Thursday they had a gay man who used to beat up other gays to prove he wasn’t gay. People will do anything to fit in. in order for gay people to be free they must stop worrying about what others think of them and stop hating each other. Even when we are in class, a lot of thought that members of the class have aren’t shared thought. Marriage seems to be one of these big topics. Time is also the key because in those other countries where gay people have more freedom, these countries have been around for a while. It takes time for people to embarrass each other. If that wasn’t the case slaves would have never existed in the US. With all of the things under the LGBT umbrella it’s going to take some time for things to work out.
I believe a topic that the chapter should have provided more information about would be regarding disabled people who would also be categorized as homosexual. Despite the many laws we have in place to grant federal protection to those who are disabled; society as a whole still has a downward look towards them. They are among the highest proportion of society who has trouble finding a job. When this is coupled with homosexuality the result could be even more catastrophic towards the individual. There are also many agencies that lobby for disabled people in the workforce, however, though there is federal law protecting the disabled from being fired or being turned down from a job because of their disability, no such protection exists for homosexuals. So, disabled people already have trouble finding a job because many companies do not want to deal with the liabilities surrounding them, and since they cannot discriminate against them based upon that, they can instead look towards their sexuality and deny them a job based upon that. This is despite the much progress in the area of organizational research especially towards diversity that points into the direction that having a greater amount of diversity in the work place, including those who are disabled, increases creativity and makes the environment better for the whole. Also, it has been shown that they also have an increase in revenues based upon the type of people they employ, such that, disabled people tend to buy more from companies that openly hire disabled people. This trend is also seen in the homosexual populace, they tend to buy and like companies more that openly accept them. So, a company could hypothetically open their consumer base by double simply by hiring homosexual handicapped people.
When I think about intersectional analysis, like the others, I do think about the transgender people but not as much as pederasty because it is the love between an older man and a younger boy who is between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Once a boy grows a beard they are considered a man. It was intended to provide pleasure to the older man in exchange for protection, training, and social advantage for the young boy. Therefore, the older man in the pederastic relationship has to be in a somewhat high rank or on a high level on the social scale. Intersectionality is also related to chapter six titled “Inclusion and Equality” which talks about other types of discriminations that people face even while facing discrimination for their sexuality, such as race, colour, sex, orgin, property, and birth. Chapter six also talks about how the Danish legislators denied lesbians and single women access to artificial insemination in public hospitals.
I think there were two sections that the authors could have given more info on. The first would be nature vs nurture. They could have talked a bit more on the "gay gene"and on how finding one would affect mother's. There was an interesting writing at the end of the chapter but it could have been incorporated in the chapter and explained a bit better. They overdid all the different types of scales to me the gay gene is a way more interesting title to talk about. Second was the gays in the military section of the book. They could have went more into depth about that. After reading the chapter I still don't feel like I have a clear understanding on Why? I understood the "dont ask dont tell policy" but i want to kno more like who originated all of that and why. Did they have a bad experience with a queer in the military? Those are the things I want to know. I gess what i'm saying is it would have been nice for the authors to focus less on statistics and the boring things and more on the gossip and good stuff. Get beneath the surface.
Like everyone else pointed out, Chapter 7 really represents intersectionality well. I also think that the chapters that focus on the gays in the military is a good expansion on intersectionality too. People have to kind of hide themselves in the military if they don't want to be dismissed. They are trying not to be discriminated against and they are trying to be just another soldier so they won't have to deal with discrimination.
I also guess I never really thought about intersectionality until now. Being put into so many classes such as race, sex, gender, social class and so on is ridiculous. Everyone wants to put labels on everyone to give them more reason to discriminate. I think that people should stop worrying about how to classify people and just allow them to live their lives. Like Epiphani said her friend was black, Jamaican, Jewish and FTM. There are probably not many, if any other people like that in the world. This makes those people feel exceptionally outcasted because no one else is like them. I think the LGBT community should look within itself and stop discriminating. The more you discriminate within your own group, it gives other people outside that community more reason to persecute you. Intersectionality makes me think more about the labels I put on people and makes me stop worrying about what "group" they're in and looking at who they are as a person.
I think the part of the book’s representations that would most benefit from added intersectional analysis would be Chapter 7 when talking about transgender people. A lot of people do not understand the minds of transwomen and transmen, and I think that by letting us know more about a few certain examples of them would be very interesting. People reading this book could see that transpeople are not freaks and outcasts as many people have said about them. They have normal jobs and normal lives just like the rest of us, and I would like to learn where exactly some of them fit into their societies. I am sure many of us would be surprised to learn who exactly feels like they are misplaced, and who might actually be of the opposite sex that they live their lives as. I think another part of the book that would benefit from more intersectional analysis is the discussion of homosexuality’s place in the ancient world. Like in the Greek era, were the pederastic relationships only between younger men and older men of wealth and prestige? If people in a lower social ranking were in a relationship such as that, would they be considered outcasts, or would it still be considered such a high and prestigious relationship? I was also curious about the relationship between the poets in the Arab cultures. Their religion condemns homosexuality, though it did not seem like they were chastised for it. I wondered if it was because they were considered of a higher class or intelligence because of their professions. I just think it would add a lot if in this chapter civilizations were not so generalized. I would like to know the difference stages of acceptance based on gender, rank, and social class in these cultures in regard to homosexual activity and relationships.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brittany. I think further intersectional analysis of transgendered people would benefit people like me who have never had a personal experience with a transgendered person understand a little better. I read an article when we were reading chapter six by Monica Roberts who said that the heterosexual African-American community has the hardest time accepting African-American transgendered people. I think further analysis on how they adapt to life and live with racism and transgender discrimination would be interesting. I also found the adoption cases of "In the Matter of Evan" and "White vs. Thompson" interesting and very disturbing. If an adoption is in the best interest of the child, why would a person take a child away from the person that they are most comfortable with? "I'm sorry, little boy/girl, you can't live with your mom because she is lesbian and works at a convenient store." Why couldn't her ex-husband's parents just help her by taking care of the children at night while she works? I can't imagine ever taking my two cousins away from their mom. That's who they know and cares for them since the day they were born. I can understand why a judge would grant custody to her ex-husband's parents because she left them alone at night while she worked because that is really dangerous. But her sexual identity should have nothing to do with it. That is just straight discrimination.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Brittany and Sam. I think that just by examining our classroom discussions it is evident that the greater majority of us do not really understand those in the transgender community. The general concept of “living in the wrong body” is one that can be usually accepted but not dissected: there is not enough knowledge for most people to draw their own conclusions about it. There is a frequent statement of “I don’t really understand it because I’ve never felt that way” that many of us have expressed, and unlike relating heterosexual and homosexual desires for a love interest, a relation cannot be made for anyone not feeling like they are in the wrong body. I think the book should take a little more time and literature to explain the trans community. I feel like the prejudice against this group is stronger than some of the others. People have a tendency to want to ignore or destroy those things that they cannot explain or understand. There is a danger in not having in dept and valid descriptions and knowledge of different people. I also think that bisexuals are not always explained or described in the right light. I have heard from people all my life, both gay and straight, that bisexuals are being “greedy” or just not ready to come all of the way out of the closet yet. There is a lack of understanding in both heterosexual and homosexual communities as far as bisexuals are concerned that hinders all groups of sexual orientation. Feeling like you can only be one or the other or else you are just “bicurious” is not an accurate description of sexuality, I don’t think, and bisexuality probably stands a fairly good chance of being listened to by those in the homosexual community who typically avoid focus on these topics.
ReplyDeleteI believe the chapter that really represented queerness was probably the chapter on Queer Diversities and also the one on Nature, Nurture, and Identity. Since Brittany, Sam, and Brandy have all done a good job of talking about the book's representation of Queerness in Queer Diversities, I'll cover Nature, Nurture, and Identity. I thought this chapter was a very important section on Queerness, because I believe it showed how uncommon heterosexuality is. After reading this section, especially the part about the Kinsey Scale, it just made me realize how common being "queer" is. I believe it was a very good representation of queerness, and shined a lot of light on how common it really it is.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the section on Queer Diversities goes, I was very pleased with it. However, I was very disappointed with the very small paragraph on Intersexes. I believe that the subject of Intersexes is such a controversial topic of discussion among queers and straights that I was horrified how dismissal the book was of it. Had I written that section on Intersexes, I definitely would have made it larger, and not crammed it into a little 400 word paragraph. Intersexes have always had issues with LGBT organizations not being supportive of them, and this book just goes along with it. Although I thought it was wonderful the detail they go into about transgenders, I thought they really could have talked more about intersexes.
[Epiphani]
ReplyDeleteI agree with everybody else, actually, about chapter seven. Transgenderism isn’t mentioned as much as being gay or lesbian is and there are so many things that could be brought to light about it that aren’t. I was surprised as hell once a few years ago when a soap opera my grandmother was watching turned out to have an MTF character, although they didn’t mention a whole lot about her experiences aside from her girlfriend’s family believing that she’d brainwashed the girl, and one man saying “In my day we all knew what we were!” which to this day strikes me as somewhat irritating to hear.
I have a friend named Keir who is black, Jamaican, Jewish and FTM. I’m sure at least a vague concept of the kinds of issues he has to face with that sort of intersectionality is obvious just from that list, and it would be nice to see something more about that in our textbook.
I never honestly think of something like social class affecting a person’s experience, which is probably because when you’re reading about discrimination in textbooks or in news reports that’s not mentioned very often, and I’d like to see more examples of that. Reading this text makes me feel so incredibly ignorant, honestly, because there’s so much that it talks about that I’ve never considered or heard anything about. Amber Hollibaugh’s essay (Queers Without Money: They Are Everywhere. But We Refuse to See Them) is a perfect example of what I mean: I guess it’s sort of normal for us not to think very much about people with lives so vastly different from ours, but she says in the title alone that we refuse to see them. What is that like? What’s it like to be not only gay, but poor? Or poor, transgender, Jewish, Jamaican and black like Keir is? What kinds of difficulties does a person like that face?
Hmm.
[Epiphani]
I do also agree with everyone before me. I think that adding Intersectionality to the mix when discussing the transgender community would definitely spice things up a bit. I think that they are already drastically misunderstood as a gender identity, and I think that if we discussed how Intersectionality affects them, we’d really start to get a grasp on the lives they have to lead. I’d like to discuss Intersectionality and the sex workers we discussed in the last chapter. We never really hear about sex workers, but I think that if we discussed Intersectionality when referring to them it would be such an interesting discussion. If you look at the chart by Gayle Rubin for “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”, you might notice that a sex worker would fit almost every aspect of the “outer limits” or the “abnormal, unnatural, sick and sinful” sex as she puts it. God forbid you think about a poor transgender black lesbian old disabled fat Catholic sex worker. I think that sex workers can easily be misunderstood because society is so quick to judge and categorize people into their stereotypes of what someone is supposed to be. If you’re gay, you’re feminine. If you’re poor, you’re stupid. I think we need to try to let go of these stereotypes. I think its interesting because a lot of us actually have different stereotypes of each other, as we have found out in our discussions in class. And it is all derived from how we were raised and what we were taught. So in the end we just need to teach our children to be accepting and the world will be a better place. Now in order to do that we need to learn to become accepting ourselves. Baby steps people. Baby steps.
ReplyDeleteTo me I never paid attention to intersectional analyses of people. It’s hard for me to be sympathetic to anyone who is oppressed because I’m oppressed just by being a black man. The only people that come to mind are those women in Boston marriages. Because those women had an education and money were they allowed to do that? As well with the older Greek men with younger ones, I see the male bonding in the relationship as well them teaching them adult hood. The lesbians as well were sectioned off to an island where there developed their minds. Oppression is part of life and when you have multiple roles you play in at one time, you should be prepared to take all of the negative and positive feedback you get. How much money you have can easy some of the oppression but it can’t make it go away. People are natural cruel to things they don’t understand or believe. In the movie we watched Thursday they had a gay man who used to beat up other gays to prove he wasn’t gay. People will do anything to fit in. in order for gay people to be free they must stop worrying about what others think of them and stop hating each other. Even when we are in class, a lot of thought that members of the class have aren’t shared thought. Marriage seems to be one of these big topics. Time is also the key because in those other countries where gay people have more freedom, these countries have been around for a while. It takes time for people to embarrass each other. If that wasn’t the case slaves would have never existed in the US. With all of the things under the LGBT umbrella it’s going to take some time for things to work out.
ReplyDeleteI believe a topic that the chapter should have provided more information about would be regarding disabled people who would also be categorized as homosexual. Despite the many laws we have in place to grant federal protection to those who are disabled; society as a whole still has a downward look towards them. They are among the highest proportion of society who has trouble finding a job. When this is coupled with homosexuality the result could be even more catastrophic towards the individual. There are also many agencies that lobby for disabled people in the workforce, however, though there is federal law protecting the disabled from being fired or being turned down from a job because of their disability, no such protection exists for homosexuals. So, disabled people already have trouble finding a job because many companies do not want to deal with the liabilities surrounding them, and since they cannot discriminate against them based upon that, they can instead look towards their sexuality and deny them a job based upon that. This is despite the much progress in the area of organizational research especially towards diversity that points into the direction that having a greater amount of diversity in the work place, including those who are disabled, increases creativity and makes the environment better for the whole. Also, it has been shown that they also have an increase in revenues based upon the type of people they employ, such that, disabled people tend to buy more from companies that openly hire disabled people. This trend is also seen in the homosexual populace, they tend to buy and like companies more that openly accept them. So, a company could hypothetically open their consumer base by double simply by hiring homosexual handicapped people.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about intersectional analysis, like the others, I do think about the transgender people but not as much as pederasty because it is the love between an older man and a younger boy who is between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Once a boy grows a beard they are considered a man. It was intended to provide pleasure to the older man in exchange for protection, training, and social advantage for the young boy. Therefore, the older man in the pederastic relationship has to be in a somewhat high rank or on a high level on the social scale.
ReplyDeleteIntersectionality is also related to chapter six titled “Inclusion and Equality” which talks about other types of discriminations that people face even while facing discrimination for their sexuality, such as race, colour, sex, orgin, property, and birth. Chapter six also talks about how the Danish legislators denied lesbians and single women access to artificial insemination in public hospitals.
I think there were two sections that the authors could have given more info on. The first would be nature vs nurture. They could have talked a bit more on the "gay gene"and on how finding one would affect mother's. There was an interesting writing at the end of the chapter but it could have been incorporated in the chapter and explained a bit better. They overdid all the different types of scales to me the gay gene is a way more interesting title to talk about. Second was the gays in the military section of the book. They could have went more into depth about that. After reading the chapter I still don't feel like I have a clear understanding on Why? I understood the "dont ask dont tell policy" but i want to kno more like who originated all of that and why. Did they have a bad experience with a queer in the military? Those are the things I want to know. I gess what i'm saying is it would have been nice for the authors to focus less on statistics and the boring things and more on the gossip and good stuff. Get beneath the surface.
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else pointed out, Chapter 7 really represents intersectionality well. I also think that the chapters that focus on the gays in the military is a good expansion on intersectionality too. People have to kind of hide themselves in the military if they don't want to be dismissed. They are trying not to be discriminated against and they are trying to be just another soldier so they won't have to deal with discrimination.
ReplyDeleteI also guess I never really thought about intersectionality until now. Being put into so many classes such as race, sex, gender, social class and so on is ridiculous. Everyone wants to put labels on everyone to give them more reason to discriminate. I think that people should stop worrying about how to classify people and just allow them to live their lives. Like Epiphani said her friend was black, Jamaican, Jewish and FTM. There are probably not many, if any other people like that in the world. This makes those people feel exceptionally outcasted because no one else is like them. I think the LGBT community should look within itself and stop discriminating. The more you discriminate within your own group, it gives other people outside that community more reason to persecute you. Intersectionality makes me think more about the labels I put on people and makes me stop worrying about what "group" they're in and looking at who they are as a person.