Many Paths

As I understand it, the first accessible message when we acknowledge queer people is this: there are many paths. There really are all kinds of people out there and gender, sex, and sexuality are all over the map.

I find a lot of queer theorists (myself included) forget that message and try to queer things in very specific ways, or understand gender and sexuality with one size fits all approaches.

When I was at a Christian school I aligned my feminism with the constructionists to show that femininity was not a God given natural designation. I hoped this would allow for some freedom from the incessant subordination many Christian women experienced because their subordination was supposedly God ordered. This worked for me until I made the observation that trans people can reinforce the essentialist paradigm rather than subvert it.

While arguing for constructed gender, I simultaneously espoused an essentialist view of sexuality. The claims that homosexuality was unnatural and a choice were the reasons many Christians used to argue that homosexuality was sinful. That was hard to deal with intellectually. It is hard to say "women are a construction but, essentially, I'm attracted to them" without realizing you're either full of shit or in over your head.

Now I'm spending my time with ecofeminism and deconstructionism, earth based religions and Buddhism. The tension is difficult. Are queer people given to shamanism? Or are we performing? Is this world even real?

I find it tempting to try to find a singular way of understanding sex, gender, and orientation that will work for me every time. But to do so, I have to forget the first lesson I learned from queerness: there are many paths.

Currently Reading:
Allen, Paula Gunn. "Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures," in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions : with a New Preface, 245-261. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Gaard, Greta. "Toward a Queer Ecofeminism," in New Perspectives on Environmental Justice, edited by Rachel Stein, 21-44. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Park Hi-Ah. "Sickness and Health: Becoming a Korean Buddhist Shaman" In Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal, edited by Ellison Banks Findly, 393-403. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000.

Prince-Hughes, Tara. "Contemporary Two-Spirit Identity in the Fiction of Paula Gunn Allen and Beth Brant." Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 10.4 (1998): 9-31.

Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007.

Spretnak, Charlene. "Radical Nonduality in Ecofeminist Philosophy," in Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, edited by Karen Warren and Nisvan Erkal, 425-436. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.