"I was not a girl, not yet a man, I thought. What I did not realize was that I was a male, not yet a woman"-"Joy of the Castrated Boy" by Joon Oluchi Lee
In "How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay" by Eve Sedgwick, one of the Friedman's concepts that stood out to me was that the reason some boys end up gay is because they were not deemed masculine enough by society, especially other men. And thus, the idea that even the most feminine boys naturally have a male, masculine identity. The fact that even if a boy identifies himself as a homosexual, he is a male, not a female. Joon Lee also brings up a concept similar to Friedman's view in his essay, "Joy of the Castrated Boy": "a salient part of his girlhood is his own acceptance that his membership into the female tribe is not guaranteed"(45). No matter how feminine a boy is, he is not guaranteed an identity as a female because a he can "at any time, turn into the violent aggressor or oppressor of the female"(45). There is a masculine part of a male that even if he identifies himself as a homosexual or as a transgender female, can come up.
Also, Sedgwick's statement that "culture's desire that gay people not be"(26) exists stood out to me. Sedgwick says that society wishes that gay people did not exist, hence views like Friedman's view that people are not gay because they choose to be, but rather they are gay as a result of social influence, their lack of acceptance as masculine by other males. But if according to "traditional assumption that anyone, male or female, who desires a man must by definition be feminine"(20) as stated in Sedgwick's essay, and also at the same time, Joon Lee's statement that "a salient part of his girlhood is his own acceptance that his membership into the female tribe is not guaranteed"(45), then in what category does a homosexual man fall under, because if both Sedgwick and Lee's statements are true, then a gay man is neither feminine or masculine, as shown in Lee's statement that he "was not a girl, not yet a man, [he] thought. What [he] did not realize was that [he] was a male, not yet a woman"(53).
I'm not sure Sedgwick settles for gayness being a result of a lack of masculine identification of the boy BY society. She may play with that notion, but doesn't settle for it. Also consider how different it is to say a gay man may be "neither feminine or masculine" (he can clearly be one or the other, both, or neither, just as everyone else) and a gay man being "neither male or female" (which one could claim, perhaps, no one really "is" neither).
ReplyDelete