World to Me: I am abnormal and I don’t exist
April 22nd, 2006Blogging against heteronormativity!
From Wikipedia:
Heteronormativity is a term used in the discussion of sexual behavior, gender, and society, primarily within the fields of queer theory and gender theory. It is used to describe (and frequently to criticize) the manner in which many social institutions and social policies are seen to reinforce certain beliefs.
These include the belief that human beings fall into two distinct and complementary categories, male and female; that sexual and marital relations are normal only when between two people of different genders; and that each gender has certain natural roles in life. Thus, physical sex, gender identity, and gender roles should in any given person align to either all-male or all-female norms, and heterosexuality is considered to be the only normal sexual orientation. The norms this term describes or criticizes might be overt, covert, or implied. Those who identify and criticize heteronormativity say that it distorts discourse by stigmatizing alternative concepts of both sexuality and gender and makes certain types of self-expression more difficult.
I have an anecdote to share: my ten-year-old brother, sweet, perceptive child that he is, one day remarked as we were watching commercials on TV, “Why do they only show straight couples?” (Sort of like the time he asked why human beings are called “man” and “mankind” since we’re not just made of men — yes, my siblings are pretty awesome.)
“That’s called heterocentrism,” I replied. “Being straight is all you see because it’s what everyone is assumed to be.”
“That’s stupid,” he said.
I agree.
Another anecdote: in my fiction, several of my central characters in my ongoing projects are queer. I don’t know how many times I’ve had parents/older authority figures/whoever ask me why “all my stories are gay”.
My stories aren’t all gay. Some of my stories don’t have any queer characters at all, some only have a few. The ones in which queer characters are the main ones are of course going to have a greater emphasis on and representation of queers — because we tend to like to make friends with at least some others who share our concerns and experiences. I think I overall have a 50-50 split in my representation of straight vs. gay characters. Perhaps not even that; my trans characters in my novel are technically straight girls, GLBT or not.
People ask me why I’m into slash and why I “choose to write gay love stories”.
Why do straight people choose to write about straight characters?
Everything I read is about straight people. I have been known to be subject to the occasional bout of heterosexual attraction; I think male/female couples are perfectly good writing material. (Even better than straight ones, though, are queer male/female couples. Just because you’re in a “straight” partnership doesn’t mean the individuals participating aren’t queer. Bi and pansexuals do exist. Sometimes, pretty fucking rarely unless they’re in the closet, homosexuals date people of the opposite sex, even — though I think lesbians seem to be more flexible on this point. Heteronormative assumptions strike again!)
Science fiction isn’t queer enough. It’s probably more queer than a lot of other genres barring stuff specifically aimed at a queer market. Speculative fiction that isn’t just science-based tends to be slightly more fabulous…but, still…
I write what I want to read. No one else is going to, so I should, right?
But it’s not “normal”. It’s not the “default”. Writing a book about a gay man suddenly makes me “weird”.
Why?
I am one of those people with the ability to read gay subtext into absolutely anything. (If queer media were prevalent enough, to be fair, I’d probably read straight subtext into that, too.) Half the movies I watch end up with me proclaiming how I think a character is gay or has a thing for another character of the same sex. I’ve read whole books secretly hoping a same-sex couple hooks up in the end, conveniently trying to ignore or downplay any heterosexual entanglements of which I am not fond. I played Kingdom Hearts and its sequel because of my desperate belief that Sora and Riku were meant to be with each other even though the love triangle actually involves their mutual crushes on the girl character, whom I despise (or, well, I did until the end of KH2, but that’s another story) and try to pretend doesn’t exist.
If the possibility isn’t explicitly precluded by the plot, or if I don’t like the male/female couples in a story, I’ll read gay subtext into everything I see. No one except maybe my sister and my friend Megan can really spot the covert homosexuality in just about anything the way that I can.
People think I’m nuts.
Perhaps, perhaps not, but I’ll tell you what this means, what it says about me — it’s a coping strategy. It’s my way of coping with the fact that most of the mainstream movies I watch don’t include people like me or my friends, except as a sexless footnote or a freakish joke. I do watch a lot of queer film and read a lot of queer lit, but not always, not exclusively — how could I, and why? It’s just so frustrating to know that, in most mainstream media, I’m either an abnormal anomaly or my existence isn’t even considered as a possibility. I think that has been getting better, but it’s still pretty bad.
The media’s probably the place where I feel most represented, as a matter of fact, because there are movies that at least acknowledge that gay people exist (in however clumsy or offensive a fashion). It’s the day to day experience of life that exasperates me. Unless I’m in the company of other queers, most people seem to be utterly ignorant about even the possibility of homosexuality, and if they think it exists, they just have to tell me their bizarre, totally offensive, and utterly flawed theories about it. They don’t even acknowledge people who aren’t monosexual.
And these theories on why people become gay? They are flawed because they conform to heteronormative theories of personality because, of course, most straight people can’t think outside of that box — which is understandable (hell, I don’t understand straight people, I can’t think in the heteronormative box), but annoying as all hell. For example:
Lesbians become what they are because they either have been abused by men or can’t find a man who wants them or are in some other way embittered. They just need to find the right one.
Weird oedipal shit about men being raised by women so they identify with the feminine gender role, not having proper masculine role models, or vice versa with queer women, blah blah blah, I’m sure you all know it.
Or, one that I’ve heard which is especially offensive because it acknowledges the validity of the trans and intersex experiences at the expense of the rest of us: that homosexuals are really just physically or mentally the opposite gender they think they are and once they realize that they can become perfectly happy heterosexual members of society. (The woman my dad is seeing explained this theory to him, which she believes, along with the conviction that bisexuality isn’t real; he told her never to say anything like that in my presence, ever, and then tried to explain to her why that’s totally wrong. Sigh. But at least my family members are cool.)
So I guess all I’m trying to say is, I’m not abnormal or unnatural, I’m just me, and I do exist. I kind of like to construct a world around me which reflects that, through my writing, my art, and through my interpretations or critiques of what other people have to say. Apparently, many straight people in my life can’t understand why I do this.
It’s their loss, I suppose. They’re the ones limited by that worldview, and unless I buy into it or let them upset me (too much), it doesn’t have to affect me.
But — ARGH! It’s so frustrating to be treated like a freak or have my experiences invalidated. How many guys hit on a girl even more after learning she identifies as lesbian because to them that means she’s into hot bisexual threesomes? How totally offensive is that?
And why does it matter? If I don’t allow people to safely assume I’m straight, and neither to put me in a narrow box of whatever they believe the alternative is, THEY. FLIP. OUT.
It’s terrifying to them. It’s a personal affront!
Whatever.
I’d rather be queer.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Well said.
August 28th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Sorry Im commenting late
Haha i just wanted to share to you that I do the same thing - in almsot every movie/book i read. But we are not alone! I know a lot of other people who do the same thing (( some who are even straight )). And if you delve into the anime/manga world - not that you have to - it is full of Shounen-ai and shoujo-ai (( boy love / girl love )), or as many other people just call it Yaoi. And on fanfiction.net you’ll find heaps of it. XD I love it
August 28th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Oh, definitely. I think that’s one of the big reasons I used to be so into anime and manga and their associated fandom. I’m not as interested in it anymore, but I think without all my yaoi-writing online friends I would have gone insane as a young teenager.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:48 am
I was in the Melbourne Immigration Museum last week when I saw the story of a young African boy, about 10 years old or so, whose family migrated to Australia. He was recounting how he and his family used to regulary walk all day (over 30kms!) to get water. This was his life, it was his family’s life, it was the also the life of everyone else in his village. He considered this to be ‘normal’. The thing that struck him most as a young boy arriving in Australia was how his ideas of what was ‘normal’ were ripped apart.
We’ve all had similar, though not as grave and poinent, memories from our own childhood. We assumed that life as we knew it as a young child was the same for everyone on earth. One stupid example is that when it came to Xmas presents, if we didn’t get the toy that ‘everybody else’ had, we felt cheated. We felt it was ‘normal’ to have it. We felt like we were the only ones not to have it, which was so unfair. It never entered our little heads that there were people who didn’t get as nice Xmas presents as we did, that there were even people out there that didn’t have a Xmas, that there were boys in Africa for whom being given a bucket of water, without having to walk 30 kms for it, would have been a great Xmas present.
So I’m continually being brought back to ‘what is normal’? When my mother asked me once at uni why I was living with a gay guy (my best friend), the best argument she could come up with was, ‘it’s not normal’. To which my reply was, ‘there’s no such thing as normal’. That was the best I could do back then. But upon further reflection, several years later, I would say that what is ‘normal’ is just a personal subjective thing. Everyone thinks their own life is normal, if there are lots of people in their own environment that share some of the same things, then that sense of ‘normal’ is strengthened. But in terms of an objective idea of ‘normal’, I would still say that ‘there is no such thing as normal’. I guess it’s all about ‘definitions’! So when someone says, ‘you are not normal’, they are really saying, ‘you are not like me (and my friends)’.
For what it’s worth, I’m a married, faithful, straight women… with a few kinks (if you count the occasional use of a strap-on, whip or paddle). So… perfectly normal!
Jenny.