September 23, 2007
Thoughts on "Community" (Do You Belong?)
Since we first began our discussion on “heternormativity”, the topic of a community and its importance has been a reoccurring thought-provoking concept for me. Specifically, how important is it really to belong to a community? Is it possible to simply (as Jedda termed) to exist outside the box? From our readings and just looking around our everyday society, it seems like it’s impossible to not exist within a community and even further to not identify with a community. I’m not only referring to gender, but it also extends to race and class. Why do we find it necessary to preserve the community we self identify with? From our readings such as D’Emilio’s Homosexuality and American Society: An overview, we’re able to see that if one exists outside of the community’s standards, they are automatically deemed the outsider, the “outlaw”. This concept I understood within the realm of heteronormativity and the development of the LGBT community, however, when I read Lillian Faderman’s piece on Butches, Femmes and Kikis, I was thrown for a bit of a loop. Faderman describes the experience of a lesbian woman in the 1960s who happened to be waiting in the “femme” line for the bathroom when she was clearly “butch” …she was redirected to the seemingly appropriate line (p.169). This struck me (and call me naïve if you may) but from the way I understood it, the rise of the lesbian community and respective subcultures were meant to "include" lesbian women, create a place where they were not the outlaws or outsiders. Yet it is almost ironic that the lesbian communities in the 1950s and 60s were perpetuating the exact same ideals of the heteronormative society (even more evident with the labels butch, femme and kikis). Jedda posed the question to what extent do we need stereotypes in order to have a community? From my perspective, it seems as though stereotypes unfortunately play an integral part of community formation and preservation, thereby making them necessary...Especially given that stereotypes are what defines a community.
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Stereotype as community definition seems a little harsh, no? There are certain ideas that define community, lines of demarcation, and stereotype is part of this. But what does it take to proactively define community? Is it a negative or positive appreciation, in other words? Are we defined by presence or absence, possession or lack? I think one could say that before Stonewall, and outside of Harry Hay's thinking, LGBT people were defined by what they were not (i.e., not heterosexual). After Stonewall, and even before, LGBT people moved to define presence (what *are* LGBT people?), and even if some of the answers were not satisfactory, this seems like a different step.
So, on one hand, Butch/Femme sexual politics could be seen as a simple mimicking of heteronormativity, but alternatively, also as a act of definition, in terms of erotic regime. While sartorially and perhaps even socially, Butch/Femme culture "looked" like heteronormativity, in the end it was still about lesbians, right?
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