Eve
Sedgwick’s “Epistemology of the Closet” gives insight into the binary sexual
orientation classifications of Western culture. One of the first quotes to pop
out from me was “Knowledge, after all, is not itself power although it is the
magnetic field of power.” I found the quote powerful for a number of reasons.
It brought me back to what Powell discusses in her book, how these definitions didn't come from the minoritized themselves but from those who perpetuate a
power system over them. It was the white male academics who gave rise to these
definitions and made them commonplace in academia. If you weren't a heterosexual
than you were a homosexual, this binary system boxed in many when it came to
having their voice heard. Whether that was the intention behind creating the
word can be questioned; but what can’t is how those in the academia world and
also civilized culture have become ignorant to the problems that arise with binary
sexual identifications. Discourse on such issues have been pushed from public
eyes, especially so back when the book was written. When minoritzed views can
no longer be heard there’s a problem, any discourse, especially political or
cultural that does not include a wide range of views can be flawed due the fact
that you can’t get a clear-cut picture of the pie by just looking at one slice.
One
effect of this was the creation of the closet. To many it is a necessary step
in being yourself. If a child finds that he does not fit the “normal” category
of heterosexual than he will assume that he fits into the other category of
homosexual. Then it is up to the kid to decide when to officially reveal his
true self, someone he has known forever, to those around him. I believe that many
do find strength in coming out, when I came out I felt as though a weight had
been lifted off my shoulders but why was the weight there in the first place?
It’s odd because in other circumstances if a kid finds out they’re different
from other kids that difference is usually celebrated as a unique trait. But when
it came to being different from the heterosexual norm than that unique trait is
put into a closet. What caused this deviation is complex. The history behind
the word homosexual is long, the very word used to bring fear to some people as
it represented someone who was diseased during the late 1900’s. People who
identified as homosexual were again put into a box that was hard to escape
from.
How
can we escape this box? It’s hard because you have to look at in a realistic
way. In my opinion, the perfect world is one where humans don’t have to
categorize everything, if you love someone that person is your love, you have a
partner for life. But this categorization, especially in things such as gender
or sexual orientation, is deeply rooted into history so it would be an
incredibly difficult mission to alter this cemented idea in the minds of
everyone in the world. We have been making strides as a country, we have opened
discussion on different types of identities that people have but there is still
much resistance. That resistance isn’t always deeply rooted bigotry but
sometimes it is simple ignorance, and that ignorance can sometimes be easily
overcome.
I was actually having a
discussion that related to this with friends recently. One guy brought up how
as a straight male he felt bad when he would refer to someone by the wrong
pronoun but didn't like how the people would immediately snap at him for not
getting it right. He questioned how people who identify differently than what
their outward appearance may convey can get mad when wrongly identified when he doesn't know before-hand. This has been a gray area for me topic wise because I
partially agree with his struggle, unless we all go around wearing our sexual
identities and pronouns around our necks than how we do we get that point
across? My other friends and I basically gave the answer of being conscious of
those around you because labels are complex. Like I stated earlier, if we could
just get rid of them completely I think we would all be better off, there wouldn't be any way for the majority to assert this power over the minoritized.
Unfortunately achieving that would be impossible, so it is up to us to
realistically look towards alternative solutions to finally discarding these
binary classification systems that our society loves so much and putting those
views into different areas of society such as academia or culture.
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