Feminism, Post-Feminism, Queer Theory: Super Condensed

Feminism arose in order to even out the binary relationship between the male and female genders.

2nd-wave French feminism is the genre therein with which most people are familiar, earning the movement its bad name for bra-burning and refusal to shave, etc. The idea was that because women could do anything that men could and certain things that men couldn't (i.e. carry children), then women were better and should therefore take the top spot in a gender binary. Therefore, instead of evening out the binary, they just went to flip it and put themselves on top.

Post-feminism came along and looked at all this and said "No, no no. That's not right, either." And went back to setting out to even the binary again. This time, however--at least in terms of literary criticism, with which I am most familiar (imagine that)--they looked not only at the way that women have been represented and shoe-boxed into particular roles, but also the way that men have been. Just like women, men have expected cultural roles and are berated when they neglect to live up to their set expectations. Post-feminism decided that both genders were equally important and therefore worked to examine both of them throughout history and the modern period.

Queer theory is more of a literary criticism method than anything else, at least as far as I'm familiar with it. It looks at literary relationships between characters or even just particular characters on their own and questions whether there might be something not-quite-hetero about them or their motives, and that's what's influencing the play out of plot. Etc. Etc. Whether it's ever accurate or not isn't really the point; it's merely a lens through which to examine literature, and I think it's particularly interesting (although I must admit I never did fully get the hang of it).

So now you know!

Cheers!

Arizona's Vetoed "Religious Freedom" Bill and Tammy Bruce's Disturbing Op-Ed

So here's the deal: A girl I used to know in high school--we were in band and FBLA together, but that's pretty much it because she's 3 years younger than me--shared this link this morning with the tagline "Worth retelling" attached to it. Now listen; I identify as Christian, but over time I have found that I dislike church. I could go on and on about why, but I don't think I have to. It boils down to the idea that people use pieces of the Bible and completely disregard the rest of it purely for the sake of attempting to run other people's lives.  And I'm not okay with that.

So then comes this Really Bad Opinion Post on Fox News Online and really completely disrupts my otherwise calm and relaxing Sunday. Tammy Bruce decides to start out this post with "As a gay conservative woman," and you should always recognize that as a massive red flag. (And I realize that I basically just did the exact same thing above, which acts as the same kind of flag, telling you that there's 'not-good' up ahead.) She goes on to say that she supported it. How can a gay woman support a bill that promises to turn modern-day America back into 1920's-style segregation but against non-heterosexuals instead of another race? I don't understand.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, it tells us that for a man to lie with another man the way he lies with a woman is "an abomination," etc etc. But in the same section of the Bible, we find an entire section which says things like: 

• A man can totally own slaves
• Not only can a man own slaves, but he can beat them to within an inch of their lives so long as they live three days afterward. If they die after that, who cares? They made it three days. Totes not your problem anymore.
• A man can totes sell his daughter for livestock
• Because lets be serious here; what good is your baby girl when you can get an ox? Amiright?
• It's super sinful to cut your hair. Like, let that shit grow, man.
• It's also def not-okay to mix fabrics when you dress yourself. Dudes; all wool or nothing.
• If that girl down the street has sex before she gets married, y'all should totes visit a gravel pit and throw it all at her, because Biblical punishment for that is a stoning.
• But if that one guy who lives next to her has pre-marital sex, high five that muthafukka, cause he da man
• Oh, also, don't go poking holes in your body--like your earlobes or your lips or anything? Yeah, definitely not cool. 
• Putting ink and stuff in it isn't okay either. Like, you were given that body, man; treat it nicely.

Also, just a side note: the way the Bible phrases that whole 'no dudes with dudes' caveat realistically just prohibits bisexuality, not homosexuality. I'm just sayin. You can't lie with a man the same way you do with a woman. So, if you're lying with a woman, no men. If you're lying with men, no women. Apparently orgies were a big no-no.

Anyway. Moving forward, the gist of the Arizona bill in question was to basically make it legal to segregate the state's population based upon their sexual orientation. It would give business owners the right to deny service to people purely because of what they might like to do with their genitalia. This bill would have opened the door for returning modern-day America to a state of 1920's-style segregation, and honestly, even living in one of the most conservative states in the entire bloody nation, I am horrified that this even made it as far as it did. 

Your religious beliefs do not get to dictate whether or not you provide the same business-services to gay people as you provide to fellow straight people just because you're morally against one of their sins.
Under that logic, you should also then by denying those services to anyone who has had sex outside wedlock or committed adultery or gotten divorced. See my helpful bulleted list above.

Seriously, the writer of this article is appallingly misled and the fact that she's so adamant about there being a "gay gestapo" completely revokes any sort of credibility to her argument.

A "gay gestapo"? Really? Are you fucking kidding? This is just as bad as that mormon woman who decided that Frozen was an embodiment of the "gay agenda" and working diligently to indoctrinate the country's youth to liberal thought processes. I just got done watching Frozen in the theater here, and I watched it with her argument in mind, and I seriously have to tell you that she has the single weakest analogy I have ever come up against--and I'm an English major. 

Frozen has nothing to do with being gay or coming out; it's about realizing that you are who you are and neither you nor the people who care about you can honestly be happy until you're happy with/being yourself. Every single one of us has felt oppressed at some point in our lives by something, and this movie is about escaping that oppression, regardless of how its inflicted. Elsa learns that hiding who she is from the world only makes things worse; Anna escaped the seclusion of the castle and learned that sometimes people suck, but there are others who will make things okay again; Olaf escaped a ceaseless winter. The list can go on. Can you make the parallel to being gay and accepting it and coming out of the closet, world be damned? Sure. But is that what this is about? No.

What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that there is no "gay agenda." There is no "gay gestapo." People feel "bullied", as Tammy Bruce says, because others are putting their methods of oppressing others into their faces and they don't like it. No one likes to have their mistakes or wrongdoings put in front of them because we don't like to look at what we've done wrong. Sounds a lot like what a lot of church organizations, doesn't it? Think about it.

Certainly, there are people who go much too far with things. But there are people who go too far with everything. 2nd-wave French feminism, for example--See this helpful breakdown here--took feminism too far. Joseph Stalin mutilated Marxism and took it way too far. 

"As Americans, we did not go through the growing pains of the civil rights movements only to capitulate to 21st century bullies who have the gall to use the importance of minority rights as a weapon to extinguish those with whom they disagree," she says at the end of her op-ed.

USE THE IMPORTANCE OF MINORITY RIGHTS AS A WEAPON

TO EXTINGUISH THOSE WITH WHOM THEY DISAGREE.

DO YOU READ THIS, PEOPLE? DO YOU SEE WHAT SHE'S SAYING?! Your religious freedom and/or values should not be more important than my mother-in-law's right to receive whatever service it is you're offering to the public just simply because you don't like the fact that she's gay. The minute your religious preferences deny our neighbors access to things because they make you uncomfortable, we have a problem. That's oppression.

Blacks were made to sit in the back of the bus because they made whites uncomfortable. Were made to drink from separate water fountains, eat at different counters, use different laundromats, BECAUSE THEY MADE UNCOMFORTABLE PEOPLE WHO FELT THEMSELVES SUPERIOR.

I understand that she's saying what she is because Christians have been having our religious freedoms/values/beliefs/etc stomped on for years because, after all, we're Christian. But what I'm saying is that your religious freedom ends at the point where you stand in front of me and tell me that you'll provide your business services to me and my sins but not to my mother-in-law for hers. The one verse we all so love to quote from the Bible is "judge not lest ye be judged", and this entire situation is one of people trying to be judges.

Remember the other side of that judging coin, guys.