Critical Response 5

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria is a striking example of how heteronormative and whitewashed our entire culture is, even in our recording of historical events. Susan Stryker’s dedication to seeking out the truth of what happened and listening to the stories of all the people involved whose voices had been silenced is commendable. However, even after this riot it still took the government 25 years to finally repeal the law against crossdressing, which shows how long it can take for a social movement to finally spark legal change. What I also thought was really interesting, and it was something I never realized, was the separation between gay and transgender back then. The gay community pretty much rejected the transgender community as “others”. Their ability to eventually come together into the larger LGBTQ movement gives me some hope that someday we’ll finally figure out a way to sort out this whole mess.

In relation to that, I think Sedgwick definitely has the right idea in Epistemology of the Closet, about rejecting standard binary structures (such as homosexual/heterosexual). If you really think about it, binaries are such an unrealistic way to view the world, there’s so much variation in every aspect of our lives. I know that I personally have always considered a very black-and-white viewpoint to be a negative personality trait, but I’m finally starting to see how deeply that kind of thinking is integrated into our society and power structures. This is what queer theory is all about, rejecting this unrealistic oversimplification and exposing the power structures that use binaries as a way to manipulate and control. If Sedgwick is right and “the language of sexuality not only intersects with but transforms the other languages and relations by which we know” (3), then reinventing the language of sexuality would be very effective in transforming our overall worldview and interaction with the power structures that hold influence over us.