2021 Blog Posts

Alison Bechdel created the comic Dykes to Watch Out For and in the process created queer joy in a time of devastation for the queer community because of the AIDS epidemic. She does so while also sharing relatable experiences for queer people in this time period, including bringing up the sexual history of someone’s past partners to try and safeguard from contracting HIV/AIDS. However, she also shares moments of joy and solidarity within the community during these years – most notably in the comic strip titled “Bringing it Home.” In this comic, Mo is sharing her experiences from the March on Washington. One panel includes her saying that “for one weekend we had a glimpse of real freedom. It was like being 100% queer and proud of it, but at the same time not being queer at all anymore…y’know?” (Bechdel 18). In this moment she is sharing the joy and freedom that she felt by being surrounded by other queer people and how freeing the solidarity of this was – but it is also important to note the overshadowing sadness in this joy as well. This feeling of freedom and solidarity is present in so many queer spaces and can feel so empowering and freeing, but underneath this is the acknowledgement that so many spaces are not safe and liberating like this and that the feelings experienced in these spaces are often rare.
Furthermore, the quote that it was like being queer and proud but “also not being queer at all anymore” stood out because of the idea that queerness is something that sets community members apart from other people but would not be present if everybody was queer. This feeling can only be experienced by members of a minority community in the sense that people who are not oppressed or separated by their identity will never know the feeling of not fitting in in most places, whereas when there are these spaces for queer people it is a rare thing that is appreciated and not taken for granted. This speaks to the bigger idea that most queer people learn to accept and celebrate their identities because with that identity comes the community of people who share similar experiences. Finding these spaces brings joy and comfort into the lives of queer people, and it is incredibly important that Bechdel chose to share these moments of queer celebration and joy rather than only sharing moments of anxiety and fear in a time where queer communities were being torn apart by both the epidemic and the homophobia that came with it.

In his autobiographical essay collection Times Square Red Times Square Blue, Samuel Delany recounts his sexual and social contacts with Rannit, a “good-looking East-Asian,” who frequents the same porn theater as him (84-88). Delany concludes that Rannit operates “outside an entire discourse of ‘normal’ male/female relationship” (88). Indeed, Rannit’s sexuality is convoluted: he seeks sexual gratifications from men; he is a “connoisseur of heterosexual porn;” he sexually harasses women on the street; but he is “naturally affectionate” and “friendly” (85-6). Rannit appears to hold at once too many contradictions; is he homosexual, heterosexual, both? How can he keep groping women and being so “affectionate” and “friendly” all the time? Following constructionist and intersectional lens, without attempting to categorize Rannit’s sexuality but only to examine how it forms, I underscore that Rannit’s sexuality and gender are simultaneously social-economically driven, racialized, “performative,” and historically situated (“Combahee River Collective Statement;” Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality; Judith Butler Gender Trouble).

Rannit comes from an immigrant and working-class background. He lives with his mother (85). He works full-time on the sidewalk distributing leaflets for a strip club (84). Given his inflexible working and living condition, he can only enact sexual outlet briskly during lunch hour at porn theaters and through his collection of straight porn cached at home (86). Alongside this constricted mobility, it would have been difficult for him to seek casual sexual encounters with women, for I speculate that Rannit is likely to be desexualized and feminized as an Asian American male within the American hetero and homo sexual-hierarchies (Richard Fung “Looking for My Penis”). (I can’t speculate about his sexual encounters with women from his own race, for it would require knowledge I do not have of his culture’s values on sex and the physical proximity of his racial group in his time among other factors).

Porn theaters, on the other hand, facilitate easy and frequent sex but are proliferated with male sexuality. Delany describes sex with Rannit as “protracted and friendly,” “fulfilling,” and “satisfying” (84, 88). Perhaps Rannit has been able to bend his sexuality however the situation affords it. Rannit goes to the theater not only to seek sexual pleasure but also homosociality. In another word, he goes to the theater to have social sex and experiences that would then shape his gender and sexual behavior. Rannit says of his sexualization at the theater and his persistent harassment of women: “That’s what I go to the movies for! Trying to cop a feel, that’s just what guys do, ain’t it? I see lots of other guys do it” (88). Rannit admits that his sexuality and gender are “performative,” shaped by his sexual interaction, socialization, and the porn materials in the theater (Butler Gender Trouble). After writing five pages about Rannit, even Delany declares Rannit’s sexual “habits” to be “a cross between social and obsessive” (88). He harasses women because he has incorporated such behaviors (pervasive in porn, mainstream media, and other men) into his sense of gender identity and without it, he wouldn’t know how to be.

However, Rannit’s sexuality, as I have delineated so far, only develops as it does while the theaters still exist and afford it. I wonder, when they are closed down, how his sexuality would ramify in another direction or if he is able to continue it elsewhere.

Delany often presents us with complex people and situations that resist categorization and linear judgment, for it is impossible and even futile to fit Rannit into a sexual category. He inhabits no specific sexual identity but perpetuates sexual acts that are curtailed by his working and immigrant background, politicized by race, situated within a specific historical period and place, and determined by gender performativity.

I always had the inkling that Gene and Finny’s relationship in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace stretched beyond friendship, but it wasn’t until I read Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, which is explicitly a story of two gay men, that I was able to see how many implications of homoeroticism there are in A Separate Peace. Despite living in different eras, classes, and age categories, the doomed love story of Ennis and Jack in Brokeback Mountain mirrors, and consequently exposes, that of Gene and Finny in many ways.

It is never outwardly stated that Gene and Finny are attracted to one another sexually or romantically, instead it is cleverly hinted at. Finny, while on a beach away from the socially constructed confines of their strict boarding school, admits to Gene: “’You can’t come to the shore with just anybody and you can’t come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘which is what you are,’ and there was silence on the dune” (Knowles 48). Here, Finny is struggling to explain his want for an exclusive relationship between himself and Gene. Gene admits that he wants to express these feelings back but is unable to. Following this, there is the incident on the tree, which has been a place for reckless abandonment and fun within the confines of their school’s campus for Finny and Gene as there is the branch they can jump off of into the river below. One night, Finny suggests him and Gene jump together, which could be read as a metaphorical suggestion of sex, but once up there, Gene “jounces the limb” (60), and Finny hits the ground, shattering his leg and leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. This shows that when Finny tried to breach society’s unspoken laws that forbid homosexuality, he was punished for it. Gene wasn’t because he didn’t respond that day on the beach and wasn’t the one to suggest they jump together.

This brought to mind Ennis’s fear that Jack having sex with men outside of their rendezvouses could be a threat to his life. Ennis warns him in no uncertain terms that he could get himself into some serious trouble doing this (Proulx 41). Finny’s warning to not push societies’ boundaries was represented in his fall from the tree, but Ennis explicitly tells Jack that he is on a dangerous path. Ennis and Gene, while also partaking in homoerotic behavior/thoughts aren’t punished because they maintain a sense of “normality.” Ennis is married and has a family (at least for a little while) and never has sex with a man other than Jack, and after Finny falls, Gene jumps into the river, like he was supposed to (Knowles 60).

As they were doomed from the start, Finny dies in surgery after rebreaking his leg on a marble staircase (Knowles 177, 193), and Jack dies after a tire explodes in his face while he’s pumping gas (Proulx 45). Finny falls down the marble staircase because he learns the “truth” that Gene purposefully jounced the limb from some school bullies, a metaphor for society taking Finny and Gene’s sexual moment and using it against him (Knowles 176-177) and Jack, Ennis knows, is just as likely to have been hit by a tire as it is that he was murdered in an act of homophobic violence (Proulx 45). They may have been wounded by their lovers’ panic at their own feelings, suffered broken limbs and bloody noses, but they were killed by their situations in life and society’s inability to accept them for who they are. This is never stated outwardly in A Separate Peace and is presented through metaphors and symbolism, but Brokeback Mountain never tries to hide the fact that it would be a tragic story of two gay lovers. Consequently, one exposed the other.

“Complicit brutes, dumb brutes. I sit at my computer and imagine
you, my reader. You have never seen a clearcut, or if you have, you
were a tourist. Regardless of what you think about the timber industry, you believe loggers are butchers, maybe even murderers. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying. Maybe your people are coal miners or oil drillers. Maybe you’re a logger or fisherman. Or maybe, like me, you grew up among them. If so, you will understand my
need to talk about complicity and stupidity, although our understandings may differ dramatically.” (Clare 55)

I really loved this passage from Eli Clare’s Exile and Prejudice. One of my key takeaways from Clare’s writings is how well he breaks down different perspectives, especially that of perception of peoples and the “clearcut: brutes and bumper stickers chapter” is a great example of his ability to see things alternatively.

The chapter begins with Clare recounting the story of loggers who felt threatened by environmental activists, particularly the radical activist group Earth First!, where an article describe the loggers as “Neanderthal thugs” and no better than the Ku Klux Klan. Clare’s response to this is as follows:

“To clearly and accurately report unjust, excessive, and frightening violence is one thing; to portray a group of
people as dumb brutes is another” (Clare 52). Clare makes a powerful statement here on how we understand class structure in society. The general assumption being made are that the loggers are uneducated folk, who are actively harming the environment by their profession and being, and their retaliation of feeling threatened is blown up to a point where it is described as violence by a group fundamentally opposed to them. Clare however, in the original quote that I’ve brought in continues to further ponder what this dichotomy implies. He emphasizes the word ‘oversimplifying’, claiming there is more to what meets the eye. Clare goes on to recount a few stories to prove this, including one about Jim the timber cruiser turned environmentalist, and this passage accurately presents how nuanced identities can be:

“Is Jim the dumb brute you expect a logger to be? Probably not, but you don’t like the ambiguity. Or maybe you’re feeling tricked. Did you expect a story about a working-class redneck, a faller or choker setter, a bucker or truck driver, or maybe the man who pulls green chain — pulling the fresh-cut lumber off the saw — at the mill?” (Clare 56)

Clare is not afraid to embrace the nuanced complex worldview, and is not afraid to take a stance here some might find controversial. He is humanitarian in that aspect, willing to give benefit of doubt to people who might be seen as wrong to others. Some of these included people in his own hometown, and his ability to show compassion and empathy makes him a strong person, and it drives a larger theme in the book of acceptance and how complex identity can be.

PS. Here is a link to an archive of Earth First! journals, if you want to see what they were like and the kind of writings they used to publish

Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain is chock full of natural simile and metaphor, but perhaps the most consistent natural metaphor is fire, as it represents Jack and Ennis’ romance. At the beginning of the novella, Jack viewed Ennis as “night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain” (Proulx 9). This is meant to symbolize that Jack is beginning to feel desire for specifically Ennis, and no one else. When their relationship deepens further than friendship, the bed is described as “deep enough, warm enough, and in a little while their intimacy deepened considerably… Jack seized [Ennis’] left hand and brought it to his cock. Ennis jerked away as if he’d touched fire…” (Proulx 14). It is important to notice that the bed is described as deep and warm, which are the same conditions needed to kindle a fire. Yet fire itself is only described when Ennis touches Jack, meaning that the “fire” is something that happens specifically between them.

After the first time Ennis and Jack have sex, fire imagery and metaphor broadens itself to Brokeback mountain’s environment. “They never talked about sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow…” (Proulx 15). At this point, Proulx is describing a fire metaphor that exists in natural imagery, which is somewhat broader than Jack and Ennis’s relationship. Yet even with natural imagery’s involvement, Proulx only draws comparisons to fire when Jack and Ennis have sex, meaning that Jack and Ennis are now immersed in this personal, romantic, and passionate world they had the freedom to create on Brokeback mountain.   

Natural metaphor has appeared frequently in our assigned readings but each element is used to describe the queer community through a different lens. Adrienne Rich uses water metaphor in her poem Study of History, as the river she writes about represents both the individual queer body and queer community (see my first blog post for a deeper analysis). However, Study of History never focuses on relationships or interactions between queer people. Fire metaphor in Brokeback Mountain seemingly fills in the gaps that water metaphor leaves behind; it acknowledges the beauty of queer connections, queer relationships, and queer romances. Bodies of water, such as rivers, seem to last as long as time; they erode and divert channels to freely flow into horizons we cannot see the end of. Yet fires are kindled in very intimate, specific conditions, and burn brightly before fizzling out. While it is important to study queerness as an individual or communal body, acknowledging the brightly burning, unique relationships that queer bodies create adds a new level of depth and beauty to analyzing what it means to be queer.

Often, contemporary conceptions of the word “queer” connote an intersectional identity without a clear definition. In fact, “queer” is unique in that it seemingly resists definition. However, in the essay Queer Theory Revisited Michael Hames-Garcia highlights one of the problems with this understanding, “if my heterosexual friend begins to call herself queer, many people… will have many questions for her about what she means by that… the kind of identities that she [as a heterosexual woman] and I [as a gay man] already have determined differently the possibilities for our inhabiting a socially intelligible queer identity” (35). In short, established ideas of ‘queerness’ affect what we come to expect from queer identified people, specifically in that queer connotes a type of gay, white man. Yet, in Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist desperately avoid labels. In turn, this develops into a theme of silence which ironically comments on this problem in “queer.”

Proulx remarks how early in their relationship, “[t]hey never talked about the sex, let it happen… but not saying a goddamn word except once Ennis said ‘I’m not no queer,’ and Jack jumped in with ‘Me neither” (15). The use of double negatives, while common in southern and rural dialects, becomes a positive statement in formal English. Thus, in masking their affection, Ennis inadvertently declares himself “queer” with Jack also sharing in the declaration. And yet, neither party would likely identify openly as “queer.”

Whether their secrecy is entirely due to the hostile culture around them or arising from internalized homophobia, neither situation really gives room for readers to see Ennis nor Jack as queer individuals. Somehow, they evade the label, while still alluding back to queer culture and identity. Paradoxically, this exemplifies both everything we expect and what Hames-Garcia finds problematic with “queer”—gay men who simply aren’t gay men.

In Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride, he discussed many deep and emotional topics. In between all of the heaviness, there was also happiness. One of the moments he discussed at the end of the book was his experience with gender. He describes getting a caricature done by a woman at a carnival and then his mom having a conversation with the artist a few days later. Speaking about their conversation and his reaction to it he writes, “Finally after much confusion, she asked, ‘Didn’t I draw your son?’ I remember the complete joy I felt when my mother came home with this story. I looked again at the portrait, thinking, ‘right here, right now, I am a boy.’ It made me smile secretly for weeks, reach down into my pockets to squeeze a stone tight in each fist. I felt as if I were looking in a mirror and finally seeing myself, rather than some distorted fun-house image” (Clare 146). Even after finishing this book, I couldn’t stop thinking about this quote. It is such an important scene because it’s one of the first times Clare felt seen for who he truly is.

This quote and the feeling of being seen for the first time reminded me of another book I read. In the book Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, the main character Yadriel is a trans boy trying to prove to his magical Latinx family that he is a real boy. Throughout the book Yadriel gets misgendered many times by his family members who don’t understand him and his gender. This causes Yadriel a great deal of sadness because all he wants is to be accepted by his family. However, by the end of the book he is able to prove himself to his father and Yadriel experiences a moment of being seen for the first time just like Clare did. In this scene in Cemetery Boys, Yadriel’s dad is giving a speech and tells him “You will be a great brujo, and a great man, and we honor the sacrifice you made…You are here because you have already proven you are exactly what you were meant to be” (Thomas 340). Just like the part in Eli Clare’s book, this scene made me tear up. The amount of pain both Clare and Yadriel had to go through in their lives, not only for their transness but for other things as well, is heartbreaking, but having moments of acceptance like these make it just a little bit better.

To be seen for who you truly are is a wonderful thing and it’s so important for people like Eli Clare to share their positive experiences along with the negative because that way others in the trans community can have a beacon of hope. This is why it’s also important for books featuring trans main characters like Yadriel to be published and become part of mainstream media. Representation, now more than ever, is vital so that people in the trans community can see characters similar to them and so that non-trans or people can become more accepting so that there is less hatred and discrimination in the world.

Here’s a link for more info about Cemetery Boys and the author: https://www.aiden-thomas.com/

       The mountain as a metaphor describes an end goal, it is a point in one’s life when we can truly say we have made it. It implies that you can only experience the accomplishment of life once you reach the summit. However, as Eli Clare points out, this metaphor was created for and by a heteronormative ableist society. It disregards the people that they label as ‘others’ and blames them for their failure to get to the top. For Clare, the mountain metaphor describes more than an end goal, it describes an accomplishment that society has made impossible for him to achieve. 

       “We hear from the summit that the world is grand from up there, that we live down here at the bottom because we are lazy, stupid, weak, and ugly…. We speak the wrong language, with the wrong accents, wear the wrong clothes, carry our bodies the wrong ways, ask the wrong questions, love the wrong people” (Clare 1).

As he describes, this metaphor blames them in their failure to reach the top. Implying that by being who are, for having been born a certain way or loving certain people, we are the ones who choose to stay at the bottom.

       This metaphor is what drew me to the metaphor of Brokeback Mountain. For Brokeback Mountain this location is more than just a place, it represents a time and a series of memories. For Jack and Ennis, Brokeback Mountain was a place filled with passion, affection, and love. It was the one place where they could spend months together without people questioning their relationship. In a way, Brokeback Mountain is the summit. It is the place where they were free to indulge in the pleasures of mundane affection – where “Ennis [could] come up behind [Jack] and [pull] him close” (Proulx 43). Emphasizing that while this was a place where they could be sexual, it was also a place where they can just be. This moment, where Ennis can “pull him close,” is a moment full of love – a moment of affection beyond the pleasures of sex. A moment that would otherwise have been rejected by their heteronormative society. In Brokeback Mountain, they could freely love.

       Connecting Jack and Ennis’ experience in Brokeback Mountain to Clare’s mountain metaphor makes it easier to understand why they could not return to Brokeback Mountain. Just as the mountain metaphor describes an impossible goal for Clare – as it was constructed to be impossible for him – so too is Brokeback Mountain a love that Jack and Ennis could not experience. In a society that values heteronormativity and disregards disability, the mountain metaphor makes it impossible for people who do not fit the ideal to partake in it. For Clare, society has made the summit impossible to reach. For Jack and Ennis, society has made the summit impossible to return to. For all of them, the summit represents a desire that they cannot have.

The “copperheaded waitress,” Ella, lives her common life withstanding the struggles as a woman in a society that actively works against her (63). In Judy Grahn’s collected poetry, The Work of a Common Woman, she can speak on topics of the vengeful feminist narrative that dictates resentment against women who speak up or act out of the innocent, soft-spoken bubble placed upon women. In the poem, “Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80,” the title indicates the story of a common working woman as a “copperheaded waitress, / tired and sharp-worded” (63). Women who work in the foodservice industry often are harassed through catcalling or unwarranted sexual advances that they feel they must endure in order to keep their jobs. Being described as sharp-worded may be seen in a negative connotation as rude or impudent for speaking their mind, their truth. This can grow to be a defense mechanism since the word ‘tired’ implies she has endured much of this harassment for a while.

As the poem goes along it becomes evident that she is not foreign to these advances and often responds back to not feel as though she needs to bite her tongue. Ella “flicks her ass / out of habit, to fend off the pass / that passes for affection” (63). The catcalling women endure as harassment are a common, everyday occurrence yet women are told to accept them as compliments. In a society that actively works against women and establish an inert gender hierarchy will go at lengths to pit women down even through menial remarks or gestures. By using her body, specifically her bottom, she can reclaim what is hers and use it to her advantage to fend off men quickly enough to not endure any feelings of remorse. Those feelings of remorse or guilt come from the idea instituted through society that women should be grateful for these “compliments” and thus at the very least give men the time of day and make small talk out of obligation.

Even so, Ella is human and has her own struggles, and it is exhausting having to constantly dismiss these advances. The struggles that haunt women leave her to understand “the necessity for pain, turns away / the smaller tips, out of pride, and / keeps a flask under the counter” (63). These unhealthy coping mechanisms of abusing alcohol has its faults, yet it is her way of coping, enduring a not only laborious but also menial job with everyday annoyances from customers. By deflecting the tips, she can keep her pride, a seemingly menial task that keeps her going as an independent woman. Another struggle imposed by society is the faulty government system of handling domestic and sexual cases. She is sorrowful of losing her child after “she shot [her] lover who misused her child,” hinting at rape or sexual abuse. Yet, “before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced / and given the child away” alluding to how the system that should have helped her gain justice after being wronged as a mother was further let down.

Although all of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain is beautiful, the following passage, on page 39, speaks to me unlike any other. The passage begins with, “without getting up he threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies”. I interpreted this section as Proulx using sparks from a fire as a metaphor for the individual and specific yet fleeting moments in time. The words “truths” and “lies” seem to embody the sparks, illustrating these burningly specific realities we disclose and leave unsaid. Furthermore, the “sparks flying up” implies that, although these moments are important at the moment, they do not matter in the larger picture of one’s life because they will eventually disappear, evaporating into the air.

The passage continues with, “a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces” which I interpreted as the attachment truths and lies, and more generally interpersonal conflicts with one’s identities, have with an individual in an overwhelming yet also subconscious way. Sparks flying towards you can startle someone while at the same time failing to be noticed by someone when they land on them in increments that are few and far between. The points may be hot at the moment, but they are quickly ignored because of their fleeting nature. Similarly, the identities one has may cast quick doubts and questions in their minds but they ultimately choose not to pay attention to them because of their fleeting nature and their seeming insignificance in the moment.

The passage continues with, “not for the first time”, implying that these ‘sparks’ are experienced so frequently by the two boys that they have become routine and therefore are quickly disregarded. The flashes of identity questions and concerns they experience are brief as they are too caught up in the moment with each other to think about who they really are. The passage ends with, “and they rolled down into the dirt” which further illustrates the boys’ concentration on one another in the moment and subsequent disregard of themselves on an individual basis. These final words illustrate their choice of choosing the (literal) action of rolling as opposed to noticing the “sparks” of the truths and lies they tell themselves and thinking deeper about these things. This stanza ties into the book’s broader theme of choosing to simply live and love in the moment as opposed to understanding the why and how of one’s desires.

In conclusion, this matters because it illustrates the beauty individuals have of simply existing in the moment and getting lost in the “fire”, or passion. Life can, and usually does, get hard and complicated and, as Ennis and Jack show us, we can always step back and let ourselves exist in relation to one another; love for another person can sometimes be the greatest escape of all.