Sedwick and Lee

Eve Kosofosky Sedwick’s essay “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay” explains modern culture’s desire to have a world without homosexuality. Sedwick takes into consideration the current psychoanalytic strategies concerning homosexuals and suggests that the tactics are merely to remove the homosexual tendencies within “already gay” individuals instead of alleviate the anxiety or pressures they may feel from society. He suggests that many parents put their homosexual children into therapy in hopes of removing their gay desires and making them straight; although the parents may seem interested in protecting their children from the cruelty within society, they often kick them out when they fail to change. Sedwick shows how this idea does not only apply to parents but also to society at large as he points out that there is a vast scope of individuals who prioritize the prevention of the development of gay people, but there is no major institution to resist this undergoing.

The conversation within Sedwick’s essay relates to some of the ideas found within Joon Lee’s “Joy of the Castrated Boy.” In his essay, Lee describes this joy that he speaks of in his title to ultimately be the relief an individual can eventually realize when he is mistaken for the someone that he is. Lee accounts for this joy on a personal note as he tells his own story, illustrating the struggle he had with his identity when he was younger to his eventual acceptance of his gender role. As an effeminate young man, Lee was often mistaken for a woman, which greatly frustrated him due to his fear of society’s perception of the castrated boy. Lee illustrates how many individuals see the castrated boy as inadequate and unworthy as they find themselves the negative image of both heterosexual and homosexual males, relating to the idea in Sedgwick’s as the majority of modern culture wishes for a world with no gays. However, Lee describes how this first unwanted mistaking of identity results in a sense of relief and joy. He came to recognize the good and liberation in being mistaken as he realized that an individual can never escape who they really are. By being mistaken as a girl, Lee came to accept his true being after years of resistance and finally embraced his femininity. This idea suggests that the psychotherapy treatments described in Sedgwick’s essay are ultimately futile as individuals reach a conclusion of their inner self on their own without a therapist’s help; the therapists who may try and suppress the homosexual tendencies found within gay individuals will ultimately fail because in the end individuals are the one who come to their own deductions.