The Trouble With Normal
sanguinity has recced me a bunch of books recently, and the first I've finished is The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life by Michael Warner.
Overall I enjoyed this book, it was informative and readable and made me think which is all you can really ask for. I wrote up some notes as I went but keep feeling too sleepy to write them out properly, so instead you get vague meandering thoughts. Or you could just read the Wikipedia article :)
Then main premise is that rather than trying to make people think of being gay or lesbian as normal, we should get rid of the whole idea of "normal" as an ideal. Any standard of normalcy is going to be
(a)Skewed against certain groups and
(b)Applied inconsistently.
The main thing he targets is the way the GLBT movement focusses so exclusively on same sex marriage, since it's only helpful for those people in stable monogomous relationships which aren't "abnormal" in any other ways and doesn't do anything to fight gay bashing, AIDS etc.
It's shifting the goalposts of "normal" slightly to include otherwise "normal" GLBT people but does absolutely nothing to help those still on the "abnormal" side ie trans, polyamourous, kinky etc people.
Instead he argues for a more open, pluralistic society where all sorts of relationships are recognised and there's no one "normal" way to be. Like with the Pacte civil de solidarité in France. Sentimental ideals of marriage should have nothing to do with the law, and it's not like monogamous heterosexual marriage is actually all it's cracked up to be.
Overall he argues against the "it's icky" approach to public policy.
"Queer" sex in all it's forms is an integral part of human society and should not be hushed up or demonised. "Public" sex in places where noone goes except to have sex is not harming any innocent bystanders. "Weird" porn helps people with less mainstream sexualities figure out their identity. (imo he glossed over the feminist issues with het porn and concentrated on gay porn which is less problematic in this respect) He talked about the way shutting down gay club/porn etc areas breaks up queer communities, whether it's done out of homophobia or concern for property values.
I liked the way he poked at the dichotomy between "Sex is shameful and dirty and should be confined to marriage for procreation" and "Sex is healthy and normal and freeing". Like or not many people have a strong mental connection between "sex" and "badness" which leads to deliberate risk taking etc, and dealing with this is complicated. We have to both fight against sexual shame and deal with it's consequences sensibly.
He criticises the growing tendency for white middle class gay men to dominate the GLBT movement, who are complicit in classism/racism etc and stand idly by while AIDS support is cut since they can afford decent medication and education etc.
I liked the way he talked about feminist/trans/bi/poly/class/race etc issues, but it felt to me like he wrote out an argument about gay and lesbian issues (and urban gay and lesbian issues at that) and then added in those extra bits where it came up but made very little effort to talk about specific queer/intersectionailty issues which don't also impact on urban gay and lesbian people. Perhaps his arguments feel less shallow if you're involved in those communities already but I would have liked a bit more about it myself. Perhaps I'm not the right audience. He made the odd vague complaint against age of consent laws which bothered me a bit.
There was a bunch of other stuff which was really interesting but I didn't write it down and can't really remember it. You'll have to go read the book yourselves :)
EDIT: As a straight married person I don't think it's my place to say whether or not the GLBT movement should be fighting for same sex marriage. But his arguments against it really made me consider my own reasons for getting married.
EDIT 2: I found the rest of my notes! :)
nb I have a cold which means I may suck at comments and this may make no sense.
Overall I enjoyed this book, it was informative and readable and made me think which is all you can really ask for. I wrote up some notes as I went but keep feeling too sleepy to write them out properly, so instead you get vague meandering thoughts. Or you could just read the Wikipedia article :)
Then main premise is that rather than trying to make people think of being gay or lesbian as normal, we should get rid of the whole idea of "normal" as an ideal. Any standard of normalcy is going to be
(a)Skewed against certain groups and
(b)Applied inconsistently.
The main thing he targets is the way the GLBT movement focusses so exclusively on same sex marriage, since it's only helpful for those people in stable monogomous relationships which aren't "abnormal" in any other ways and doesn't do anything to fight gay bashing, AIDS etc.
It's shifting the goalposts of "normal" slightly to include otherwise "normal" GLBT people but does absolutely nothing to help those still on the "abnormal" side ie trans, polyamourous, kinky etc people.
Instead he argues for a more open, pluralistic society where all sorts of relationships are recognised and there's no one "normal" way to be. Like with the Pacte civil de solidarité in France. Sentimental ideals of marriage should have nothing to do with the law, and it's not like monogamous heterosexual marriage is actually all it's cracked up to be.
Overall he argues against the "it's icky" approach to public policy.
"Queer" sex in all it's forms is an integral part of human society and should not be hushed up or demonised. "Public" sex in places where noone goes except to have sex is not harming any innocent bystanders. "Weird" porn helps people with less mainstream sexualities figure out their identity. (imo he glossed over the feminist issues with het porn and concentrated on gay porn which is less problematic in this respect) He talked about the way shutting down gay club/porn etc areas breaks up queer communities, whether it's done out of homophobia or concern for property values.
I liked the way he poked at the dichotomy between "Sex is shameful and dirty and should be confined to marriage for procreation" and "Sex is healthy and normal and freeing". Like or not many people have a strong mental connection between "sex" and "badness" which leads to deliberate risk taking etc, and dealing with this is complicated. We have to both fight against sexual shame and deal with it's consequences sensibly.
He criticises the growing tendency for white middle class gay men to dominate the GLBT movement, who are complicit in classism/racism etc and stand idly by while AIDS support is cut since they can afford decent medication and education etc.
I liked the way he talked about feminist/trans/bi/poly/class/race etc issues, but it felt to me like he wrote out an argument about gay and lesbian issues (and urban gay and lesbian issues at that) and then added in those extra bits where it came up but made very little effort to talk about specific queer/intersectionailty issues which don't also impact on urban gay and lesbian people. Perhaps his arguments feel less shallow if you're involved in those communities already but I would have liked a bit more about it myself. Perhaps I'm not the right audience. He made the odd vague complaint against age of consent laws which bothered me a bit.
There was a bunch of other stuff which was really interesting but I didn't write it down and can't really remember it. You'll have to go read the book yourselves :)
EDIT: As a straight married person I don't think it's my place to say whether or not the GLBT movement should be fighting for same sex marriage. But his arguments against it really made me consider my own reasons for getting married.
EDIT 2: I found the rest of my notes! :)
nb I have a cold which means I may suck at comments and this may make no sense.