In considering Sedgewick’s analysis of binary constructions in sexuality, her arguments center on disrupting ideas of homosexuality only in relation to its perceived adverse of heterosexuality, in or out of the closet, rather than questioning the discourses which locate binaries as a means of structuring and controlling people. In questioning knowledge systems and how queer is interpreted, Sedgwick troubles ideas of static sexuality or literature only meant to be heterosexual or homosexual rather than reading particular things as queer regardless of the intentions of the text. Things are not just queer or not, gay or straight, in or out of the closet in Sedwick’s arguments, and I think this is especially important in critiquing contemporary literature and activism. Much of dominant white gay activism is not just focused on the binary of gay/lesbian vs. straight, but it operates from an assumption of having institutional protection and recognition within policy and being safe and supported or having neither and being unsafe and oppressed. Rather than recognizing the debilitating nature of the binary in which sexuality is reified as either gay or straight rather than potentially gray, complex, and fluid. Sexuality can be read as queer regardless of being straight or gay in Sedgwick’s context, and structuring activism around the concept of protection both assumes inclusion within imperial systems as an end to oppression and assumes an inherent binary and division of sexuality rather than a complex system of socialization and definition that assumes either/or circumstances. Following from the binary has not only overlooked intersectional oppressions, bisexuality, and trans identity, but it also supports a system which assumes an inherent and innate identity—a born this way mentality that reinforces the sex binary and the invisibility of those with intersex variations and the notion of normativity. Inclusion within institutions built on heterosexuality as the norm takes the institutions as alterable for the better rather than fundamentally flawed. Inherently, there are queer people excluded from binary-focused activism due to defying the expectations of being queer in the correct way. Just as queer teachers in the beginning of the book couldn’t sue for being fired because of the assumption of them not being out and that thereby being unrelated info, there is a deeper insinuation of the proper way to be queer within US social and government institutions which offer protections based on the manner in which queer is performed.

Similar issues with binary constructions of activism are seen now with people pushing for legislative protection of trans people, arguing the binary between trans and cisgender, enforcing definitions of trans and non-trans, and policing those not doing trans correctly enough to be considered protected by legislation. Most of these discourses and the discourse within Sedgwick’s work as ignore the complexities of ethnicity and queerness, the specific barriers and oppression faced by queer people of color, and the control of racialized bodies within an imperial state. Trans protective legislation has done little to protect the bodies of trans women of color and has been a part of a system overwhelmingly focused on policing and imprisoning trans women of color through the criminalization of sex work and through profiting off of prison labor as with Dean Spade’s theories (2014). As the queer movement early on during the Compton Cafeteria riots and Stonewall soundly excluded the activism of queer and trans people of color represented in Screaming Queens and the accounts of activists like Sylvia Rivera, the binary constructed in a way that acknowledged white gay men and lesbians but not queer people of color, trans folks, or bisexual folks (2002). Groups continue to perpetuate systems of violence through the cooptation of identity within the ever-expanding acronym which people often lengthen to include the intersex community and two-spirit indigenous people, but, as Dr. Driskill has argued, have done nothing to confront system settler colonialism or systemic violence to intersex bodies—these groups have often argued for becoming a part of those systems rather than questioning the violence of the settler colonial state and the medical industrial complex.

Spade, Dean. 2014. Normal life. Brooklyn, NY: Southend Press.

Rivera, Sylvia. "Queens in Exile, the Forgotten Ones." GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Nestle, Joan. Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins. Los Angeles: Alyson, 2002. xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/21904777/.../name/Rivera+article%5D.pdf