queer | ENG 5020: Writing Theory & Practice

As someone who has never studied, read, or even talked about Queer theory (that I know of), I didn’t understand Jonathan Alexander and Michelle Gibson’s “Queer Compositions: Queer Theory in the Writing Classroom” when I first read it. I became frustrated with the new material and had questions like:

Is this about how gender has become racialized? Has it? Sexuality has definitely been racialized, with homosexuals being oppressed throughout history, but is it still? If gender is a social construct, does that mean we created it, like we did race, to label people who are different and not seen as ‘normal’ to keep certain stereotypes and expectations alive for systematic and capitalist purposes?

I’m also taking Race and Ethnic Identities, another theory class, so I’ve gotten used to questioning my own identity. I have been getting lost, however, on how my sexuality and gender could also inform the way I see myself, the world, and how I am treated because of these characteristics. Even how I treat others. During this reading, I was forced to face my own biases.

Bisexuality in media.

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If you’re into pop culture, then you’ve seen Dove Cameron’s wedding everywhere. Her custom Valentino dress was beautiful, and even her Giorgio Armani suit. Gender, and how traditionally women aren’t ‘supposed’ to wear suits to their own wedding, didn’t even cross my mind. Her sexuality did. Alexander and Gibson bring up a good point; identities can and often contain contradictions. (p. 4).

Whenever a woman celebrity identifies as bisexual, they usually end up with a man (from what I’ve seen). Like just mentioned Dove Cameron or global sensation Billie Eilish. I have never seen either of them out publicly with a woman, yet their music profits off of liking women. Dove Cameron’s (who married Damiano David) most popular song talks about “being a better boyfriend than him” to a girl she seemingly has a crush on while being in a heterosexual relationship at the time. This seems to be the trend.

This phenomenon is why Grammy Award-winning singer Rosalía has repeatedly broken headlines. She is one of the very few female celebrities who identifies as bisexual while simoultaneously has publically been seen in public with her girlfriend.

Can I still question?

Is it okay to call out these contradictions in identity when it comes to someone else’s sexuality? Should we then also call out our own rigid beliefs of how being a part of sexuality influences our own behavior? I identify as a straight Dominican/African woman. Parts of my identity in that include: straight, Domincian/African, and woman. The intersection of my sexuality is fucking me up.

Amanda Knoradi, along with the article’s original authors, warns against being contained by identity and only seeing things through the lens of the oppressor vs. the oppressed. I am a minority who has been subject to racism, yes. But I am also straight, which I am sure has awarded me some privileges against the latter. One’s that, because my sexuality is considered the ‘normal,’ I have been ignorant to.

They also state the fluidity of identity, how one can change and how, over time, the media’s perception can as well. Whatever is acceptable is profitable. I hereby apologize to Dove Cameron for my immediate judgment on her sexuality, as I know now it is not my place, but I can’t help but to wonder and question the contradictions in the context of media:

Have homosexual relationships become profitable when it comes to gay women? Would Billie Eilish’s songs “Lost Cause” and “Lunch” be as markabtable/ profitable if a gay man wrote them? Would she have even written them? Why is that Dove Cameron’s only notable song? Why did she release it now if she’s been publicly bisexual for six years now? Is it possible their sexualities have changed over time, even if I feel like mine has not/will not?

Perhaps I am still being too rigid in my thinking…In the end, I am left with more questions. Different questions, at least. Questions I will be reflecting on after this reading.

Queer theory posits that identity, much like the act of writing, is fluid. Ever-changing. It requires grappling with boundaries and definitions that might have never been under consideration before. If I had any takeaways from this article (with which I struggled—it just felt so heady at times), it was this. I initially started writing this blog post as some way to connect this lesson with the other realizations I’ve had over the course of our class, but I found myself continuously led back to one idea: writing memoir.

I know I’ve made it a habit of including anecdotes with my blog posts. To be honest: I struggled with this one. It reminded me a bit of our first reading from Lauer—a lot of ideas that I agreed with, but did not know what to do with. I did not want to just write about being queer and being a writer, because that did not feel in line with the spirit of the article. I ended up reflecting on part of the memoir I had written in a class taught by Edi Giunta. While the content was about me being bisexual, I ended up realizing that the act of writing it was in itself pedagogically queer.

no annotations bc i did not get time to print this week </3, so here’s the first line of said memoir

If identity is fluid, memoir is the act of capturing your identity at one point in time. Past that, you must decide which identity you are writing from. You may be writing about your seven year old self, but whose voice are you using? The child version of you, or the version of you now, who has experienced more and knows more? How do those identities live in the same piece? What do you do with the inherent tension between them?

Memoir is also an act of grappling with your perceived identity. When you write memoir, it is your perception of who you are and what you have experienced. However, we cannot discount the fact that you have also been perceived and experienced. It is a constant negotiation of truth, and is just one of the many distinct layers of identity and experience we have. If you remember an experience one way and someone else remembers it differently, you have every right to write it as you remember. However, you must always be prepared to have it seen another way. My parents do not know I am queer. To them, I am as straight and cis as one can be. It does not help that my partner is, in fact, a straight cis man. That is the identity I have chosen to take up around them. While writing this memoir—and subsequently having it published online—I had to reconcile with the fact that there were two different spaces for me and my identities, and that there was a very real possibility that they might cross over. Still, I decided it was worth it.

As a genre, memoir is also well-equipped to discover what is possible in and out of its boundaries. “Queer Theory in the Writing Classroom” pulls from Ki Namaste and their argument that heterosexuality must exist for us to be able to understand queer theory. The boundaries of one form the definition of the other. That means we can, as writers, use queer theory and memoir as a space to play and explore. My favorite memoir, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, is a beautiful example of this. Not only does Machado use its subject matter (confronting the lack of domestic abuse narratives in lesbian stories, even though it is a grim reality) to question what is normal, but she also uses form as a way to push against norm. In the Dream House’s chapters are each based on different styles, genres, and tropes (ie., “Dream House as Horror”, “Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure”, or “Dream House as Famous Last Words”). By acknowledging what is the norm, writers are given the tools to push against boundaries.

My attempt to write about my queer memoir, in the end, was not just an attempt at inclusivity, thank god. There are also so many ideas that we’ve discussed in class that I see reflected in this article: writing as social commentary, the power of discovery, how shame robs writers. It feels good to be able to have a throughline in places I didn’t expect.