Class Blog

“In its narrower sense, queer has been home since I became conscious of being a dyke.” (Clare, 31)

In this sentence, Clare constructs queer and the queer identity in relation to his characterization of a home. It’s significant to note that Clare states that “queer has been home.” The usage of “has been” indicates a sense of impermanence associated with the queer identity being home, because while he might currently characterize it as home due to his newfound consciousness of being a “dyke”, this wasn’t always the case and may not continue to be the case. Through the utilization of this language, Clare speaks to the way that being queer and the queer identity is not singular and cannot be defined in one manner, because of its ever-changing nature. The word “home” usually generates feelings of comfort and a sense of belonging, so by associating queer with home, Clare alludes to the fact that he can express and feel more like himself as an identified queer man. However, this idea is contrasted with how Clare, as revealed in other parts of the novel, fails to attain this sense of belonging within the queer community, because of the multiplicity of his identity.

The inclusion of the word “conscious” reflects a state of awareness, and the phrase, “became conscious of being a dyke” highlights the ways in which society attempts to conceal the LGBTQ community through the enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality, which leads to the repression of one’s queer identity. Clare had to discover that he was queer, and by stating that he became “conscious”, suggests that he was unconscious before when it came to understanding what it meant to be queer, which coincides with the themes of queer visibility and invisibility. The fact that he utilizes the word “dyke”, which has a negative connotation and often times used as a form of degradation, shows how Clare is reclaiming the word and demonstrates that being queer is not something he should be ashamed of.

“Stereotypes and lies lodge in our bodies as surely as bullets. They live and fester there, stealing the body.
The body as home, but only if it is understood that the stolen
body can be reclaimed.” (Clare 13)

In this chapter Clare describes the tension between his queer, disabled identity and his rural upbringing in the backwoods of Oregon. The first sentences that I selected conclude a bleak paragraph detailing the ways in which various bodies–queer, disabled, impoverished–are stolen from the people who inhabit them. He highlights “Leonard/Lynn Vines, walking through his Baltimore neighborhood, called a ‘drag queen faggot bitch’ and shot six times. Matt Shepard–gay, white, young–tied to a fence post in Wyoming and beaten to death,” displaying a nationwide trend of violence towards queer people within their own communities (12-13).

Despite this, Clare’s following paragraph attempts to remedy this paradigm and assert the body’s capability for reclamation. He encourages a revolution against biases and lies that have been weaponized against marginalized bodies, and it feels as though these acts of revolution/reclamation are central to the ways in which LGBTQ+ authors write about their experiences. I’m reminded of Sedgwick’s “Queer and Now” where she posits this hypothesis: “there are important senses in which ‘queer’ can signify only when attached to the first person. One possible corollary: that what it takes—all it takes—to make the description ‘queer’ a true one is the impulsion to use it in the first person,” (9). Allowing the body to be a home requires it to be lived through the first person, not through the stereotypes of others; for Clare, it must be lived from a perspective “that comes close and finally true to the bone,” (13).

“Before I left, I was a rural, mixed-class, queer child in a straight, rural, working-class town. Afterward, I was an urban-transplanted, mixed-class, dyke activist in an urban, mostly middle-class, queer community. Occasionally I simply feel as if I’ve traded one displacement for another and lost home to boot.” – (Eli Clare, p46)

The word “traded” here is really revealing. What is the author wants to trade for? He wanted to use family and home to trade for acceptance and a feeling of not being “queer”. However, the list of adjectives that are full of contradictions shows that he failed. “Mixed-class” vs. “working-class” vs. “middle-class”. “Rural” vs. “urban”. This long list of words is like “tags” on him that show how alien he is to the environment he lives in, either before or after, nothing changed. More heartfelt is the word “lost”: he doesn’t get what he wants, but lost something that is really important to him.

Moreover, the word “traded” also reminds us of the cruel fact that for queer people, acceptance is something we need to “trade” for. We can’t be easily accepted by just being ourselves. We must give up something, for most of the time the family, to get what other people are born with. This reminds me of the “Christmas effect” which is also caused by the conflict between family and identity. Without family, we lost the place to “boot”, and most people, like the author, failed to find another place to be home and thus being haunted by loneliness and isolation all the time.

Throughout Clare’s book so far, we have seen the intense struggle of coming to terms with an identity that fits so many yet no boxes at the same time. Not only does Clare wrestle with the emotional ties of his hometown and those who reside within versus his current politics and beliefs on the logging industry, but he also talks in depth about how his “redneck” identity made it even more difficult to feel a sense of belonging in the queer community because of deviating from the urban queer identity that is seen as the norm. On page 33, Clare describes the word “redneck”’s denotation, connotation, and “usage by progressives, including many who are queer”(33). Here, Clare wrote the last interpretation of the word as “Any person who is racist, violent, uneducated and stupid (as if they are the same thing), woman-hating, gay-bashing, Christian fundamentalist, ect. 2. Use as a synonym for every type of oppressive belief except classism.”(33) Though “redneck” is something that Clare associates with his identity, he doesn’t fit this specific usage of the word that many others believe. Along those same lines, although Clare’s queer identity is also a main part of him, he doesn’t necessarily fit the urban image of queerness that was expected by others. This brings it back to how he is a part of, however cannot be completely defined by, many different and especially contradictory identities. This has led to the journey of his own acceptance and understanding of his identity that we have been following throughout the book. 

“I lie when I write that home is being a dyke in dyke community. Rather, home is particular wild and ragged beaches, specific kinds of trees and berry brambles, the exact meander of the river I grew up near, the familiar sounds and sights of a dying logging and fishing town. Exile is the hardest because I have irrevocably lost that place as actual home (p 32).” 

Clare connects himself to nature and the impact that had on his life growing up in Oregon. In every part of the book we can see the special connection he had with the landscape and wildlife of the area, from the long hikes to admiring the moss and lichen. In this specific passage, Clare emphasizes his connection to nature using a repetitive structure, describing features of nature he values while explaining his loss of that connection in what he explains as his exile. He describes exile as “not only loss, but a sense of allegiance and connection- however ambivalent – to the place left behind (p 35)” Clare makes it very clear to the reader that he could have lived his life in his hometown, but had he wanted a fulfilling life, not hiding his identity, he needed to leave. It is a battle between the love for a region, and the need for a gratifying life. 

He is shedding a light on the push for queer people to move away from their hometowns and their lives and move to more urban places where they know they will be accepted. It seems like it is a choice to move but not all queer people want to live in big cities, its the draw of not having to hide that brings people to a place they might not necessarily want to live. With being queer, there is an implied sense of having to forfeit your true home to live a life true to yourself, or forfeit your identity to live your life in the area you chose, not necessarily the space chosen for queer people.

One of the hardest parts of identifying as queer, or any other minority, is the burden placed on you to educate everyone outside of that group. From allies to bigots, it is a constant upward battle of explanations and justifications for something as simple as your mere existence. Eli Clare sums up this harsh struggle in the first chapter of his book “Exile and Pride” using the metaphor of climbing a mountain. In this passage of his novel, Clare states that “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” (Clare pg 1), this is extremely reminiscent of how that outside of minority communities always push for those being oppressed to take a stand against their oppressors even if it comes at a great personal cost to them. Clare even gives an example of his own experiences facing these unrealistic expectations. He details a story of trying and failing to hike up a mountain due to his disability, and hoe in response to this his able-bodied friends responded by telling “him with the right gear and enough practice you could climb Mount Adams” (Clare pg 9). On the surface, this seems like a very encouraging platitude, but in reality, it is shortsighted and placating. Clare’s friends and acquaintances should not have expected him to do something that would put him in harm’s way to feed into their underdog fantasies. Similarly, people who claim an LGBTQ+ identity should not be expected by cis straight people to always put themselves in harm’s way to fight for the recognition they should have by right. Queer people do not owe the rest of the world their lives. It is brave to go out of one’s way to fight for the lives of oneself and others, it does not always constitute a risk to one’s safety. Clare upped my sentiments on this issue when he wrote that he wishes someone had told him “you made the right choice when you turned around” (Clare pg 10).

In the poem “Slow dance,” by Cherrie Moraga, the reader is met with a scene involving three women on a dance floor. Moraga, throughout the poem, uses language that suggests that she has been longing for the attention of a woman, however, has been forced to observe from the outside in as these women are not interested. Throughout the poem Moraga italicizes certain thoughts that highlight her desires and how she feels about them, including strong repetition of the words “want” and “that she can handle them” (Moraga 25). The repetition and italicization of these words and phrases places an emphasis on them that could have ambiguous meanings, however, I believe that Moraga is attempting to convey to these phrases and words bring up extremely intense emotion for Moraga.  

Moraga, as much of the LGBT+ community, likely experienced having to hide her own sexuality throughout her childhood and adulthood. This concealment makes it extremely difficult to date, often building up frustration and longing for emotional or physical connection within the person. This situation is all too familiar to much of the LGBT+ community, as many queer individuals also are forced to stay closeted for their own protection from their parents, friends, or community in general. This often can make one feel completely isolated and makes it incredibly difficult to find a partner. Moraga, throughout the poem, does an excellent job of conveying the intense desire caused by this concealment. The poem finishes with the powerful line, “I am used to imagining what it’s like.” This constant state of desire and imagining unfortunately plagues the LGBT+ community today, and Moraga conveys that using intense language and repetition of intense language. 

Eli Clare’s use of repetition on page 41 demonstrates the fluidity of identity, as it changes with new experiences but depends on the environment which cultivates it. Clare conflates his queer identity with his roots and his present politics, mixing all three together in order to find his identity. Clare mentions how tangled his queer identity and understanding of class/roots has become, and how relocating to an urban space with its urban politics helped to untangle the the two.

The inclusion and repetition of words such as class and urban, as well as descriptions of various lifestyles, help to define his point about the muddled mess surrounding his identity. Only once he was away from his home town and in a new urban space did he gain an understanding of what exactly his home was like and how it affected his perception of his identity. While attending an urban liberal arts college, Clare was able to better explore his identity as a lesbian and got to experience a whole new queer world. At the same time, his time at college introduced him to a new level of middle class that Clare had not experienced when growing up in Port Orford.

I think this particular passage, and overall what Eli Clare is trying to convey, is that identity is like water. It flows and changes as you grow older and experience the world, but conforms to the space it is shoved in. Identity, especially queer identity is shaped by the experiences people have, both in urban and rural spaces. By leaving his rural home, Clare was able to expand his own ideas about his queer identity and how it relates to his roots as a lower middle class “country bumpkin” while also discovering where Clare feels most at home (pg 41).

Saeed Jones’s poem “ Boy Found Inside a Wolf’ starts with a description of Jones fighting his way out of his father’s body (or the “wolf” in this poem). Through this, Jones references the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Jones, like Riding Hood, is an inexperienced young individual who is still finding themselves in a complex world because of this, they depend on the authority figures in their life to help them understand the world and their role in it. Unfortunately, not all adults have their well-being in mind which can lead them to difficult places in life. In Riding Hood’s case, she is misled and later consumed by the wolf. Jones opens his poem by using this as a metaphor for his life. Starting with his repetition of “ red” and “black”, he creates a vivid image of the gruesome and uncomfortable conditions of the body that he is fighting his way out of. (Jones 13) Jones also emphasizes the feeling of suffocation he experiences in his “father’s body” as a way of metaphorically representing the nature of his father’s expectations, restrictive and overbearing on Jones’s gender expression and sexuality. Jones being trapped in his “father’s body” also represents his father’s attempts to make Jones like him, to the point where he feels trapped in his father’s sense of self. 

Similar to Jones, Eve Sedgwick also discusses the relationship between queer kids and authority figures or parents. She writes about how unaccepting and hateful parents can be towards their queer kids, to the point of either isolating themselves from Queer adults or rejecting them from the family. Jones and Sedgewick’s discussion of the influence of familial relationships on queer kids and their sense of self highlights this common theme in LGBTQ+ literature and experiences. More specifically, Jones’s poem highlights how despite parents’ attempts to change their children, these attempts are futile as a true sense of self can not be stopped. He shows this resistance through his fist breaking through the wolf’s body, showing how despite numerous challenges queer people face, they will always continue to resist and create change. (Jones 13)