Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014

Queer theory discusses the history of sexuality, the roots of discriminate language, the effect it has on our society, and social criticism. In this work I will briefly discuss the queer history, and the contributions of four main pillars of Queer Theory: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Alfred Kinsey, and Judith Butler. Jacques Derrida is known for his theory of postmodernism and felt language is judgmental. His classic example is a chair. The word chair does not consider that a it can mean something different for different people, or different cultures. Derrida felt language is exclusionary and binary, because to know what something is, we define it by what it is not. A good example would be the word man. We know what a man is, by knowing a woman is not a man, or a gay man is not a man, or a child is not a man. Language being exclusionary and binary in this way creates the basis of discriminate language. Derrida was the father of deconstructionism. He felt deconstruction was the answer to all social injustices. Deconstruction brings to the surface, and then reverses the often-doubled opposition that underlies our typical way of thinking in western culture. To deconstruct we need to break things down in to smaller pieces and examine the defining qualities it carries. Deconstruction invokes the process of discourse, creating change of the defining qualities of what something is and/or is not. Discourse is the actions and discussions of society at both large and small levels. It is the way society speaks to itself, via media, television, books, TV, etc. By changing the defining qualities of something, we change what it is not, therefore change everything that it embodies.

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014 The human mind sees things as a series of binary judgments. We define a word by what it does not mean. This is what the word-idea is. Outside of what something is, we determine what it is not. Language is binary in that either something either is, or is not. There are many more descriptions to a word by deciding what it isnt, rather than what it is. This is why language is exclusionary. Deconstruction is the taking apart of the whole to study its smaller parts. This is necessary because we must understand the smaller parts in order to understand how it impacts the entirety. Derrida argues that we must deconstruct the word in order to find the traces of what something is, and is not. It is through this deconstruction that we can break down words to see their underlining traces and to reveal what they are made up of. We need this in order to analyze it, its opposite, and gain understanding of it within the social construct. Michel Foucault was a French historian and philosopher. Foucault is best known for his studies of social institutions including psychiatry, medicine, human sciences, the prison system and his study in history of human sexuality. Foucault described sex for the Greeks and Romans as a physical need, no more than eating, drinking, and eliminating. Foucault discusses the influence of Catholics, and the link created between chastity and celibacy. Chastity is the act of saving virginity for marriage. Celibacy is the act of not participating in sexual activities whatsoever. The link between the two becomes apparent when the Catholic church related sex with marriage and love, and required that all Priests be celibate. Catholic Priests would require

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014 confession of sins. This requirement of the Catholic Church created guilt regarding acts of sexuality, therefore celibacy, chastity, sex, marriage, and guilt all become related. Foucault utilized the Panopticon as an allegory, to describe how people self-police to fit into the normal constructs of society. The Panopticon is a prison where every cell can be seen from a central location, but the people in the cells do not know when they are being watched. They only know that there is always a possibility of being watched and therefore punished or rewarded. This prison is a circle, with each cells interior shielded with glass. In the center of this circular building, there is a viewing cell, which is surrounded by a one-way mirror. This creates a situation that all prisoners can be viewed, but never know when they are being watched. In our society we self police in this way every day. We act in certain ways because we know that someone could be watching us. We have a fear of being judged by others, and this fear is what drives us to stay within societal norms. Foucault also expressed the notion that we have no self. We are multifaceted people, and we react differently given any situation. We believe we will act a certain way in a situation, but in reality it comes back to the Panopticon, and the fear of being judged. We cannot say that we are the type of person who... because we will react differently in any given situation. This brings home the fact that we are not generally the people we think we are, and we can never really know ourselves.

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014

Source: "Dogmat." : A Modern-day Panopticon. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.

Alfred Kinsey was a biologist who dramatically changed the discourse on human sexuality with his studies and publications of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. These publications were radical in that they challenged the social construct, and norms of society. His research was groundbreaking because the mass of his information was obtained by asking people what it is that they do and participate in. Kinsey utilized The Kinsey Scale to categorize the level of sexuality, and determine sexual orientation in people. The Kinsey Scale is a chart which displays how humans rank sexually, in terms of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Interviewees are

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014 ranked according to a scale of 0-6 with 3 being completely bisexual. The Kinsey Institute has yet to find a man or woman who is 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual.

Source: "Kinsey Scale." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Apr. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.

Judith butler is a leading scholar of gender and sexual studies. To resolve the social ailment of traditional categories of identity she asks important questions regarding the cause of symptoms. Butler is primarily known for her performance theories. The following is a description of speech acts and performance, gender and performance A speech act is the realization of an idea, event, or object as soon as that object, event, or idea is said. A good example of this is I now pronounce you man and wife. As soon as this is said, the man and woman become man and wife. Butler builds on this

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014 by seeing what other ways reality is created through everyday language constructs and speech. She concludes that by unceasingly referring and deferring to social ideologies and constructions, we incorporate them and enact them within our own bodies. Thus making a normal social construct appear real and natural. To sum it up, we are performing conventions and making them a reality. It is our constant repetition of mundane actions and adherence to heteronormative hegemony that keeps it in power. When we walk, talk, dress, and behave as a certain social construct, we give in and enforce that construct as reality. In our society, we are often told that sex is the root of gender. However, seen through the notions of speech acts and performance, we are only performing masculine or feminine. In nature, gender is obsolete. Males and females are both masculine and feminine. Butler takes this to explain that we can fight back to correct the issue by simply being. The norms are just artificial rules and do not have a claim to privilege. We can change these\rules by understanding the difference between gender and sex, and by challenging them via unconventional or alternative performance acts. It is the repetition of these different acts that create social discourse, and break down the understanding that to be male is to be masculine and to be female is to be feminine. As you can see, these contributors to Queer Theory have given us the root of the problems in society surrounding queer people. We have been given the tools to disassemble our language and begin speaking differently about queer people in general. We have been shown the ideals, given the motives and handed the knowledge we should

Dustin Lacy Jonathan Stowers ENGL 2850 April 01, 2014 utilize in our language and actions to create healthy social discourse to create a more loving and accepting society for people of all kinds and orientations.