Queer : An Archetype Of The Ideal Queer

The LGBT community has been silently suffering through generations. But in this generation, they are finally showing the world their voice. There have been many instances where young adults were denied their right to be who they are and now they are speaking out about the mistreatment. Even though the united states have begun to be more open about the LGBT community here is still more change it come. These changes can be explained through many sociological perspectives including: functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionism and interactionism. Along with these perspective religion, norms and deviance all impact these individuals who are striving to be open about who they really are inside and out.

Everyone has their own take on controversial subjects faced in society, and no matter what age we live in, this particular subject seems to stay just as relevant in the generation before as it does today. The poem written by Richard Blanco titled â Queer Theory: According to My Grandmotherâ (2012), which

Jones observe (2002: 15). In these ways, institutionalized heterosexuality is central to some of the key motivation(s) behind and design of public policy frameworks in the United States. By “institutionalized heterosexuality” I am referring to the set of ideas, institutions and relationships that make the heterosexual family the societal norm, while rendering homosexual/queer families “abnormal” or “deviant” (Ingraham 1999). My queer analysis of social welfare involves examining how sexuality and gender can be rethought and reorganized in economic and social policy frameworks, theories and practices. Throughout the article I examine how heterosexuality is assumed to be the natural basis for defining the family, and by extension, society, both explicitly (by excluding LGBT people from the analysis and by stigmatizing certain individuals as “non-family” or “anti-family”) and implicitly (by assuming that all people are heterosexual, that marriage is a given and exists only between a traditionally-defined man and woman, and that all people fit more or less into traditional gender roles; see Foucault 1978; Fraser and Gordon 1994; Ingraham 1999; Phelan 2001;

Yoshino states “[…] assimilation is not an escape from discrimination, but precisely its effect” (Yoshino, The Pressure to Cover). The incorrect notion that covering is an acceptable way to limit discrimination is one almost unique to the expression of one’s sexual orientation. This form of discrimination is one that is less pronounced than its counter parts but is equally harmful. The harm comes for the dilution and eventual destruction of gay culture caused by the societal pressure to act “straight”. Forcing the gay community to act straight should not be crowned as a solution to homophobia just as “When a Jew is forced to convert to Protestantism, for instance, we do not celebrate that as an evasion of anti-Semitism” (Yoshino, The Pressure to Cover). It is not a solution to homophobia because homophobia has not been dispelled; it merely limits the number of possible targets. The only solution is one through significant societal and political change.

Surely, ensuring the physical safety of LGBT people is more immediate than marriage rights, and while gay and trans people are still killed every day simply for existing as themselves, nothing else should take priority than working towards safety. This does not mean, however, that marriage rights are not important. By accusing proponents of same-sex-marriage rights of being assimilationists, these critics are implying that being abnormal and illegal is an inherent part of being gay, and that establishing a normal, loving, stable relationship such as a marriage is something that is foreign to the gay experience. This concept is perfectly in line with the homophobic stereotype of gay people engaging in exclusively sexual, short-term relationships. Brandzel even states that she “believe[s] that “queer” and “citizen” are antithetical

The struggle for equality has been intense, and still continues to this day. With this being said, much progress has been made in establishing respect and external acceptance for all individuals sense of identity. For example, in 2015 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Same Sex Marriages, marking a pivotal point in the civil rights movement for the LGBTQ community. For many, this act helped to support their sense of self, a right that been denied for so long. The United States effectively validated the LGBTQ community, giving this group all rights granted to all other citizen’s, However, the creation and acceptance of this community has not had positive benefits for all members. The Gender Binary has been changed, but many distinctions

As being developed by poststructuralism, feminism, lesbian & gay studies and even American pragmatist theory (Parker,2001; Seidman,1997), queer theory has become one of the most important theories, which contributes to the research of sociology, arts and organizations. On the one hand, queer theory has been used to study the relations between the sexuality, gender and workplace. On the other hand, by utilizing denaturalized, deconstructive and performative methods to queer the presumptions of the taken-for-granted norms, queer theorists question and disprove the traditions which people cherish (Seidman,1995).

On December 29th, 2014, seventeen year old Leelah Alcorn stepped out into traffic and was hit by a truck. Her suicide caused an uproar on social media platforms like Tumblr, where her suicide note was originally published. This is because Leelah Alcorn was a transgender girl – meaning that the gender she identifies with does not match the sex she was assigned with at birth. After she came out as transgender to her parents, they isolated her from her friends, school and social media. During that time, she developed depression. Her parents sent her to therapy, but the therapists, who were religious and biased, attempted to change her gender back to male. This deepened her depression, subsequently

LGBTQ social movements have evolved over time from liberationist politics of the 1970s to an enormous contemporary focus on gay and lesbian marriage rights, a controversial and arguably assimilationist priority for mainstream LGBTQ advocacy groups. Different forms of activism have approached assimilationism versus societal reformation or preservation of unique constructions of queer identities with a myriad of arguments. In “The Trouble with Normal” by Michael Warner, the author focuses primarily on a criticism of gay marriage rights activism in which he posits that all marriage is “selective legitimacy.” He points to other LGBT movements and issues as more worthy of pursuing, particularly intersectional pursuits of equal rights for people regardless of coupled status. In “Marital Discord: Understanding the Contested Place of Marriage in the Lesbian and Gay Movement” authors Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor give a snapshot history of LGBTQ activism since the 1970s and offer similar arguments as Warner about the heteronormative and neoliberal nature of placing the fight for legal marriage rights at the forefront of LGBTQ activism, although they do also introduce emerging improvements with the increasingly intersectional awareness of modern advocacy efforts.

The one person I’ll be focusing on in this essay is Dr. David M. Halperin a professor at the University of Michigan, and a graduate of Classics and Humanities from Stanford University. In the article titled The Normalation of Queer Theory, Halperin fulfills his purpose of enlightening the readers concerning change in perception regarding the phrase Queer theory, as well as the transformation in implication of sole word queer. He begins by elaborating on Teresa de Lauretis, and her inadvertent affect catalyzed by her conference. The terminology used for that conference got her in quick sand amongst the faculty at UCSD, “Why do they have to call it that?”(339). Lauretis initiated the crowd immediately by acknowledging her provocation; she constructs clarity by saying she solely wanted to “unsettle the complacency of lesbian and gay studies”(340). She anticipated to construct queer theory as a “placeholder for a hypothetical knowledge-practice not yet existence”(340). Numerous characteristics and factors play into an individual's distinctiveness, it is offensive to place a threshold on an individual, or mold labels for individuals. Instead, queer theory enlarges the debate on distinct uniqueness,

The token queer identity may be easily accepted by a cishet culture if queerness becomes two-dimensional and stagnant. For instance, queer women are fetishized for straight male sex drive. A queer woman may face less overt social rejection if she is a tool for sexual gratification. This social acceptance, however, is not a legitimate form of social equity but instead furthers the deviance of LGBTQ+ people by forcing them into a dichotomy: queerness is socially inappropriate but it can be allowed if the queer person abides by specific, demeaning

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

The realization of the homosexuality in the modern western world as a cultural, sexual and a social category has been a result of complex power relations that surround sexuality and gender. The acceptance of homosexuality in the society has met its fair share of resistance and skepticism. The view that homosexuality can be in the same league as heterosexual has led it to be viewed as a normal behavioral and moral standard (Gallagher & Baker, 2006). Inasmuch as the skeptics may not want to accept the existence of homosexuality studies show that the habit is rampant today with many gay people coming out in the open. Of interest is the political acceptance of homosexuality with passing gay rights so that it can be recognized by law. This move has given homosexuals the ability to engage in legal entities like marriage (Gallagher & Baker, 2006).

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.

It’s widely known that the LGBT life is spreading. There’s Pride month, same sex marriage is now legal, and more people than ever are starting to show who they really are. Even though it’s starting to be more accepted, I still struggled for months to find a way to tell people. I was scared my mom wouldn’t let me be happy and embrace who I really wanted to be. Then I had to consider how my friends would react, and it was an awful feeling losing some of the people that I thought was my friends through everything. Good definitely came out of the whole process though. Although, there are definitely still people who discriminate and banish people from their lives. All because others cannot accept who people choose to be. According to Morris (2017), in the 1950s, there was an investigation into homosexuals holding government jobs. This in turn, led into the first American demand for equality. In 67 years, we still cannot find a way for the life styles to be nationally accepted. “In 1965, as the civil rights movement won new legislation outlawing racial discrimination, the first gay rights demonstrations took place in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.” Also, in 1970, is when the pride marches started taking place in June every year Morris (2017). Acceptance is a hard pill for many to swallow, and it may even be