re: Judith Butler opposes homonationalism

Check out this article we saw about Judith Butler refusing a LGBTQ humanitarian award at Berlin Pride and her critique of homonationalist politics that exclude QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) as well as immigrants.  Also check out No Homonationalism, a multinational blog about queer politics. The video of her speech is below.

desperate houselives: on my queer adulthood and domesticity

Desperate for more!

I recall my parents telling me fairly frequently, “You’re too young,” or “Wait until you’re older.” As a kid who was constantly getting into things, occasionally causing a raucous, and almost always making a mess, I would wonder, “What is it going to be like when I’m finally old enough?” Will I stop picking things apart and just let them be? Is that what adults do? Do they stop asking questions?

Now that I’m of that ripe age when you don’t have enough experience to be qualified for anything, yet the last thing you want to do with your newly earned degree is stand behind a counter, I ask myself, “Am I old enough to ________?”

Seeing as I’m independent and free from the shackles of childhood and the numerous laws laid down by parents, I cannot see why I’m not old enough to do, well, basically anything I want. But then again, what is it that I want to do as I move through this liminal stage of ‘not being able’ to finally ‘being able?’ In fact, it’s not about being able to do it, at least in the eyes of the parental units, but it seems to me that it feels like it’s become my responsibility and social obligation to do it. Still then, what is it that grownups are expected to do? What is the it I’m finally capable of achieving? Do I now have the superpowers of adulthood?

Instead of thinking about capability in terms of one’s age or experience or history, can we find a way to lower the bar? Perhaps one creates one’s own limits of capability through the way one approaches everyday activities. If we make the it (that goal that is only truly achievable during a recognizable stage of adulthood) an issue of domesticity, then surely we can begin to unravel what the expectations of mature adulthood are or could be.

Independence through the assertion of one’s own (stable) domesticity seems to carry some respectable weight. Getting an apartment and a job, and then maintaining that housing and employment, displays some sort of control over one’s life; it announces that I am now a responsible, working adult, someone contributing to the greater good of society (or something along those lines). For queers, though, the next step is not necessarily marriage and a couple of kids.

Seeing as I’ve yet to reach a status of ‘stable domestic adult,’ accomplishing little domestic feats takes precedent over the rest of my personal or intellectual merits–like cleaning the coffeemaker after I use it instead of waiting until the next morning, washing my sheets more than once a semester, and actually mopping the floor with cleaning solution instead of just using a lint catcher to grab the junk. Am I clinging to stability?

Nobody can compete with the Cleaver

I have become obsessed in living the domestic life advertised to me in Lysol commercials, but with natural cleaning supplies. I want a kitchen that has jumped from the pages of Better Homes & Gardens or the IKEA catalog, but with a killer compost. I want to be a queer June Cleaver, complete with pearls, heels, and Hoover vacuum, but without the endless train of meat-filled casserole dishes. Sometimes I’m scrubbing the sink, which at our place is rusted over and stained, and then I stop myself and wonder, “What kind of satisfaction do I get from this?” Or better yet, “Whose satisfaction am I enforcing upon myself?”

Stopped dead in my tracks, sponge and sprayer in hand, I can’t help but challenge my own inclinations to incessantly sanitize. For whom am I doing this? Or rather, what role am I unconsciously playing? And what ideology am I mindlessly upholding?

That it I mentioned above refers to the trials and tribulations I could not wrap my mind around as a child; specifically, those of my mother, who worked full-time, cooked dinner nightly, and was still able to keep the toilet bowl looking like ivory. With three children that’s quite a feat, and my respect goes out to all the parents who are able to maintain a home and family. But as I bust my ass all the time trying to live up to the domestic expectations that were written in stone by my parents (and the history of parents that regulated, passed on, and reinforced these commandments) I begin to wonder what ‘adulthood,’ and specifically the responsibilities of domestic life, is doing to me? Have I lost my edge, my spunk, or my rebellion? Or, do I just have a new found taste for oven mitts and tidiness?

So, let’s use our brains a bit and figure out why a queer boy who never did anything the way he was expected as a child  is suddenly upholding expectations that were ingrained into him, even after he long abandoned the proverbial nest and the creature comforts that come with it.

I asked Rik yesterday about this post and he located the issue, as did I, at the site of normativity, specifically heteronormativity–or the social subjection to enlist in heterosexual expectations, responsibilities, trends, and modes of being in an attempt to be a recognizable social being. While meant to be facetious, my joke about June Cleaver is not far from the mark. As I move into a more secure form of adulthood, where other ‘adults’ recognize me as such and legitimize my position as such (most obviously based upon a combo of how these ‘adults’ read my looks and age as well my status as ‘postgrad’ or, as I think of it, ‘not a child’) I find myself upholding a heterosexually biased structure that I actively seek to eradicate, or at least poke holes into, so that there is room for more variable ways of being. And here comes the dilemma.

How do I get access to the privileges and satisfactions of ‘adulthood,’ being able to know the it and achieve or find the it, without subscribing to the expectations I have always despised. Moving from being a subject defined by inexperience and naivete, to a subject that, by definition, is responsible for oneself (and others, if we are Liberals) presents me with a very odd social position that is marked by it’s instability and constant re-definition by others. Is domesticity a trap that queerfolk (or at least I) must fall into in order to gain social recognition as adults (from others and from myself), or as Judith Butler would say, as having “lives worth living?”

Taking this critical position to the problem of adulthood elucidates connections to issues that many trans people deal with daily, no matter their age or gender(s). ‘Passing’ as an adult means that one is recognized as such by someone else based upon a culturally and historically defined role that has always been considered heterosexual in nature. Am I just passing as an adult by achieving domesticity, or actually succeeding in ‘playing’ the role? I mean, I don’t have a job. No insurance. No children (thank a supernatural being of your choosing). Am I not then an ‘adult’ in the same way that ignorant people de-legitimize and belittle trans identities and presentations as artifice, masquerade, and false proclamations? Do I make adulthood, as an identity, for myself, despite the stronghold that heterosexual norms of maturity have over how we recognize and privilege ‘adulthood’ as a social positionality?

Living like a total slob and completely rejecting a domestic adulthood doesn’t seem to be an option. As stated earlier, I have a subconscious urge to sanitize. I also like having a place to live. Perhaps a different living arrangement that does not assign domestic roles based on butch/femme, masculine/feminine, top/bottom, man/woman, husband/wife, older/younger etc.? The squats of Amsterdam seem pretty queer in their complete rejection of typical housing arrangements in favor of a more communal and fluid arrangement. Yet, the social roles of domesticity may not be a problem after all–having a clean house can be and still is fulfilling on some level. The problem is, do these roles define us, specifically people of that postgrad age, as adult persons?

Critically and consciously buying into heteronormative descriptions of domesticity undoubtedly will bring up issues of marriage, relationships, gender, sexuality, sex (or the lack of it), children, and open a can of worms concerning class, race, ethnicity, etc.

But perhaps most of all, to me at least, it feels like guilt. Guilt for not being the queer that never settles down, the unsinkable bachelor/ette. Am I losing something? Or did I just find it in a different place?

These quandaries will continue to pester me as I sweep floors and soak all the burners on the stove. Cleanliness maybe has nothing to do with it in the end, it merely signifies an ‘official’ domesticity that is socially attributed to ‘adulthood.’

It just makes me think: Is domestic life, even when lived by queers as queers (whether gender normative or not), a heteronormatively defined attempt to achieve adulthood or do I really, somewhere deep inside, get a mini-orgasm out of seeing those pots and pans shine?

*jareth nym