“Hold on, I’m on my hamburger phone” – Juno & the “Desirable” White Body

The chapter “Queer Kinship and the Quandaries of Domestic Affection” from Juana Maria Rodriquez’ forthcoming book “Sexual Subject, Queer Gestures” identifies and discusses issues dealing with the notion of parenting and adoption. She especially looks at the implications of what it means to be a parent. By this I don’t mean the emotional value, etc. but rather the idea that as a parent, you have ownership over another body.  The section in which Rodriquez writes about Patricia Williams’ essay “Spare Parts, Family Value, Old Children, Cheap,” Williams writes:

“And if older African American boys are seen as “second quality” children within this system, queer households are seen as “second quality” parents even as they are sometimes deemed preferable to single black female-headed households that are similarly pathologized. This trauma of having a “free market” deem the value of both adoptive parents and their children, of not being afforded the social status of “real” biological kinship but indeed the only available approximation bought through the crassness of economic exchange, functions in discourses of adoption even in the absence of racial difference,” (page 15).

And I find myself agreeing with her adamantly. I don’t know a lot about the adoption process, but I have always heard that white babies are the most expensive and “desirable” on the “market.” If you think about it, or at least when I think about it, most depictions in popular culture of teen girls who give up their babies are white girls, and the child is readily adopted. I can’t think of a single black teenage mother who is encouraged to give up her child for adoption, let alone the baby getting adopted easily.

One obvious example of this is in the film Juno. I’m sure many of you have seen it and have an idea what happens in it, but if not, here’s a 2.5 minute trailer that gives you a basic idea of the plot.

The adoptive family is your “all-American” middle class white family, a woman and a man. SPOILER ALERT! In the end, the woman ends up adopting Juno’s baby alone, as the man is not ready for a child. But this film, despite highlighting the anxieties of many of its characters surrounding the birth of a child and their lives outside of that, shows that it’s easy for a white baby to get adopted and similarly, it’s easy for a white heterosexual family to adopt.

Another part of Rodriquez’ chapter that struck me was the part about Charis Thompson’s adoption experience:

“Haunted by histories of slavery in which human beings were exchanged for money, property and cattle, Williams finds herself faced with the reality of having to pay for the young black male body she will bring into her home. Furthermore she is confronted with a fee structure for her newly adopted son that marks him as “special” because he fits into the category of children that are “less requested,” in other words children that are older, black and/or handicapped,” (page 14).

This just goes along with my commentary about the “desirability” of white bodies vs. bodies of color in the adoption system. I don’t know any statistics about the ethnicity of adopting families, but I think it would be interesting to see how many white heterosexual couples apply for adoption vs. couples of color and/or gay, lesbian and/or trans couples, how many get accepted from each category and what ethnicity they request for a child.

As for how domesticity is queered, Rodriquez looks at Kath Weston’s book “Families We Choose,” in which she writes:

“Adoption, when it is recognized however, in fact undoes the easy binary of “biological family/chosen family” that Weston sets up in her book (40), potentially queering even those families marked as heterosexual. Of course, neither adoption nor any other form (or rejection) of kinship is inherently subversive, instead how families are created, imagined and perceived reveals the process through which social meaning is assigned to various forms of intimacies,” (page 11).

So in a way adoption is a way that domesticity is queered in society, because we don’t look at an adoptive family as a “real” family because they people in it are not connected by blood.

For me, the most provocative portion of the class was actually this chaper from Rodriquez, especially when she talks about NAMBLA and “Doing It For Daddy.” The latter discussion in the article as well as the one we had with Rodriquez in class made me very uncomfortable, but I think that’s a good thing because it forced me to think about something in a very different way than I normally would and provided a lot of insight into my own personal interest in sex and psychology. I found it most interesting that abuse survivors often find solace in BDSM communities/“Daddy” practices. Now it makes perfect sense to me and I feel like I have a greater understanding of some human sexuality practices now.

My favorite part of the class was watching “Delinquent,” I loved it. Our discussion about the film was also very stimulating and I appreciated the fact that what I didn’t get out of the film, others did and vice versa. As for what I would add, I would maybe try to add more media elements, just because those are what I found the most interesting.

Lastly, I really appreciated all of my classmates and what we learned from one another. That is the most productive type of class in my opinion, one in which there are a lot of people from different backgrounds and interests who come together and all teach each other something. So, thank you ladies! =)

Juana Maria Rodriguez speaks at length about queer adoption and its implications for the heteornormative moral/perverse binary.  This binary uses policies and law routed through norms to mark certain bodies as unsuitable for domesticity, and therefore, for legibility at all.  She points out the markers considered inherent in normal, safe bodies and thus acknowledges that bodies which deviate from these state decided markers are considered dangerous and perverse.  I plan to connect this with the concept of marriage and the automatic privilege that comes with it, especially when parenting (or owning) a child is involved. What does marriage imply, at a perceptive level, about a relationship and its legitimacy and how? Also, what policies help paint the picture of legitimate and illegitimate relationships?

In heteronormative relationships, the concept of having or adopting children is matter of immense importance to and scrutiny from the state and society, in various ways.  First, there is an automatic connection with having children that the only legitimate bodies are produced from relationships which are recognized by the law.  This says a lot about the pervasiveness of policy in the realm of the private. By requiring for a person to specify their partnership status, this implies that it is apparently a matter of consideration.

From http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/pervert-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/%3Fp%3D37572&usg=__YS0P2cfNe-ZrHU3f98ucaI7AkgQ=&h=320&w=261&sz=20&hl=en&start=0&sig2=o5uUe-EoUS9r74Cps2UaIA&zoom=1&tbnid=IDvHWg-0LPnFLM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=109&ei=Qsf6TbD2Acbs0gHZ55HGAw&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dperverts%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1275%26bih%3D600%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divns&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=129&vpy=220&dur=428&hovh=139&hovw=113&tx=75&ty=109&page=1&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&biw=1275&bih=600

In terms of adopting, although it is legal for individuals who are single to adopt, the invasion of public policy and norms can and likely will influence adoption forms, especially by the individual who is reading them.  Rodriguez clarifies this nicely when she says, “Here children function as the excuse for secularization policies in which some bodies are constructed as always potentially criminal, and others as always potentially in danger…” (Rodriguez 3).  The decision as to what bodies are considered dangerous is informed through a recognition of a person’s relationship status and the norms which tag certain bodies as deviant in forms of gender, sexuality, and adherence to accepted discourses of a parental body.

Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Be_Perverts

An example of a common tactic which aligns relationship legitimacy with marriage is the inclusion of “marriage status boxes on medical forms and a plethora of other applications, which should not have any say in a person’s care or privileges.

2. I found this course to be extremely provocative in terms of its recognition of deviant forms of sexual expression.  Issues like S&M, role play, and personal versus enacted fantasy play a huge role in the public perception and discussion, and I was not accustomed to talking about these issues in terms that located them within the normal sphere of human sexuality and experience.  While at first perhaps a little awkward and strange, such discussion has led to a refreshing new view on the “other” bodies that I have for so longed wondered about and could not seem to situate in my mind in terms of mental and physical disfunction versus normal and functioning.

That being said, I extremely enjoyed the new knowledge I have gained and, as expected, feel empowered by this knowledge to re-situate public perceptions and government policies (even if only in an “eventually” mentality). That being said, I also feel as though some changes are within reach in my lifetime, and I hope to be a part of that, if even just a miniscule part.

Of course, knowing the path down which my thoughts always seem to travel, I would have been interested in more topics covering the current War on Terror and the policies, affects, and norms that have resulted in terms of immigration.  I found Toby Beauchamp’s article to be informative, intriguing, and thought provoking in this realm, and I enjoy hearing different readings of policy widely accepted as necessary and positive. Especially since this is the first step in truly instigating change, the previously stated goal for myself in learning about these issues.  I also think this is an interesting topic due to its “here and now” persona mixed with highly visible markers that decide the fate of bodies and groups.

I feel like Priyanka’s connection between immigration and mental health is a very intriguing topic.  This is a form of epidemic narrative and, as someone with extreme personal experience of the mental health system and the perceptions that come along with a diagnosis, I feel as though the narrative quite strong when considering native citizens and therefore the invocation of a foreign mental illness can be (and I’m sure has been) a site of intense policy making and public action/reaction.

Also, I really enjoyed Bekki’s somewhat weekly posts incorporating visual media in terms of Disney and children’s cinema.  This was truly indicative of the enduring impact of norms, as they are ingrained from birth.  Also, I have taken a class concerned with the “Disneyfication” of America, and I think that Bekki did a great job of speaking to this phenomenon through the analysis of these movies.

Works Cited

  Rodríguez, Juana María. “Queer Domesticity.” Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures

Queer Coupling on Film: Homonormative Representations of Queer Domesticity

Juana Maria Rodriguez, in her unpublished chapter “Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures,” examines discourses of queer domesticity as it relates to LGBT politics. Rodriguez raises interesting and important points about queer familial kinship and children in her section “Adopting Children and Agendas.” She succinctly acknowledges of queer couples having children, “that openly bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender people are actively choosing to create, raise, nurture and cohabitate with children has raised anxieties in both conservative political corners and progressive queer circles” (5). Rodriquez goes on to highlight the complexities involved in queer communities’ anxiety:

With many queer openly objecting to a national political agenda that attempts to make queers palatable to these same middle-American enclaves through a reappropriation of family values discourse and political platforms focused on same-sex marriage and homonormative formulations of family life. Others object more privately and in hushed tones to a perceived sense of entitlement form newly minted LGBT parents emerging from a neo-liberal discourse that attempts to position parents has more valued and worthwhile members of civil society because they have taken on the task of the primary care of another. (5-6)

To elucidate this point I want to examine two films, separated by a 15 year span, that both position a gay/lesbian couple in conflict with the raising of their children. The Birdcage (1996, dir. Mike Nichols) stars Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane are featured as a gay couple who have raised a son, Val (Dan Futterman), who was conceived during a brief heterosexual relationship that Robin Williams had with a woman. However, the woman had no part in Val’s parenting. The plot is complicated by Val’s engagement to the daughter of a conservative Republican senator, who is seeking re-election as the co-founder of the “Coalition for Moral Order”, and centers on the intended meeting of both families.

Adding to this already layered plot, is that Robin Williams is the owner of a South Beach drag club called The Birdcage and his partner is the show’s star drag queen. Taking the form of a comedy, the film explores concerns over the quality of parentage that a gay couple can provide as well as an “inside” look into what gay domestic life entails. The film’s themes are reflective of the time in which it was produced as norms of queer parenting were only beginning to surface.

More recently, in 2010, the film The Kids Are All Right (dir. Lisa Cholodenko) takes a different approach to queer domesticity by presenting a lesbian couple who both had artificial insemination to conceive their two children at the same time, thus undergoing pregnancy together. Starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and Mark Ruffalo, the plot focuses on the children’s desire to find out who their sperm donor father is—thereby indicating a void felt within their current familial construction. Fitting within this model, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, lesbian mothers, are struggling in their relationship when the sperm donor father, Mark Ruffalo, “joins” their family. Despite the initial struggles that the father-figure presence has on the family, including the heterosexual affair between Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, the end culminates in an acknowledgement that the father-figure is a rightful and fitting addition to the family structure. Advertised as a comedy, the film in actuality is more befitting of a drama and certainly strays far from the comedic elements that The Birdcage offers which indicates the intended marketing of the film as a funny, light-hearted narrative but instead delivers a serious commentary on queer domesticity.

It is important to note the star casting in both films as it relates to a more “valid” perpetuation of homonormativity. Rodriquez recognizes the complexity involved in representations of the queer couple in “the current attempt to normalize queers in the public eye, has had troubling consequences, promoting homonormativity and assimilation rather than a radical rethinking of sexuality and queerness and its relationship to domestic life” (6). Both films uphold notions of homonormativity, conforming to Rodriquez’s assertion of queer representation in the public eye. Both couples featured are also white and wealthy which serves to further reinforce ideals of acceptable queer domesticity.

The Birdcage addresses (mis)representations of gender that are rife in depictions of queer couples—this is evident in the trailer with the clip of Robin Williams teaching Nathan Lane how to be “manly” while Nathan Lane conforms to ideals of femininity and the image of a “housewife.” The Kids Are All Right moves away from such stereotyped conventions—indicating a historical shift in the filmic production of queer couples—and instead addresses the instability in both relationships and familial structures.

Another, interesting, facet of the film The Birdcage is the subtle emergence of religion as a discriminating factor. When Val’s fiancé introduces Val’s father’s she changes the family’s last name from Goldman to Coleman to hide their Jewish background. Religion plays a large role in not only discourses of queer domesticity, but in queer studies as a whole. This course has explored intersections within queer studies as they merge with other disciplines involving sexuality, mobility, and citizenship. The course as a whole was highly engaging and informative, especially in the way it merged multiple disciplines. It would be interesting to have explored a religion more directly within this course of study.

I was most interested in how performance was used in representing the production, regulation, and disciplining of queer bodies. I found the work of Mónica Enríques-Enríquez, activist group Gay Shame, and Keith Hennessy to be particularly engaging given my field of study in theatre and performance. Each presents a different mode of representation and exploration through physical performative art. Combined with critical readings by Eithne Luibhéid, Siobhan Somerville, Jasbir Puar, David Eng, Toby Beauchamp, and Pricilla Wald (among many others) the course draw out the continued complexity surrounding queer bodies and migration along with policy and citizenship.

Bye Bye Blog: Owning Children

Before reading this article, I never really thought about owning one’s children, and certainly never considered it under the context of gender studies. However, Juana Maria Rodriquez brings up a fascinating question about parenting, especially in the context of adoption, which is one of the only ways a queer couple can conceive:”[w]hile assisted reproduction technologies remain an increasingly available avenue for bringing children into queer kinship networks, adoption carries with it a more implicit separation of blood and genetic material that complicates claims to legitimate ‘ownership’ of children, and implies greater direct interventions from the state” (Rodriquez, 10). This quote spoke to me most from the entire article as I wondered why adopted bodies receive more attention than children born and raised by their parent(s). Having a child is one of the greatest responsibilities in the entire world, and the only one (at least that I can think of right now) that does not require a license or age minimum. Even to catch a fish in a lake requires a fishing license, in order to hop in a car and drive a mile to Giant Eagle requires a license, the ability to drink legally requires a body to be 21 years or over. But conceiving and having a child, OWNING another body requires no sort of license or age minimum. However, to adopt a child that either was not wanted by it’s unlicensed parent, unable to be taken care of, or orphaned requires all sort of state intervention and surveillance. And not only do queer bodies get surveilled in this instance, but any body who wants to raise (and own) a person that is not genetically “theirs”. I’m also not sure how we can fix this system. It is important that potential adoptees go to homes, and not just to any home, but a good home, be it a queer home, a single home, a heteronormative home. But I think it is equally important that genetically owned children are in safe and healthy environments, which sometimes they are not. I am certainly not advocating for a child-birthing license (which obviously would never become law even if I were advocating for such a drastic measure). However, the incredible surveillance of those who wish to own bodies but are otherwise unable (or who are kindhearted and adopting for the good of the children) is unnecessary and there must be a better way to address concerns about a child’s well-being.

I think the most interesting week was the one where we discussed the dichotomy between the Gay Shame movement and the BDSM advocates. Perhaps this is influenced by the fact that I facilitated discussion that week, But Mattilda ‘s article fascinated me as I couldn’t decide how I felt about her stances. I suppose it made me think of my socialist book club that often takes things to the extreme (which is one of the reasons I’ve stopped going). It is important in a political landscape to tone down rhetoric so that people will listen instead of passing by like residents of New York City who rush past the pamphlet pushers. At the same time, it’s important not to back down from a fight you feel strongly about. So it turns out that I still don’t know what to think about Gay Shame, which I guess is just an extension of my political ideals.

I was impressed with everyone’s blog connections. We all started with the same materials, the same prompt, and almost always went in completely different, intelligent directions. The final projects were especially interesting to me, seeing what everyone got out of the class. It was interesting to see where personal interests mixed with a project for a class about Queer Theory, a theory which often frightened my friends when I first told them about the class. They were OK, sometimes a little iffy about a course called Feminist Theory, but most of them (except a friend who had gone through a women’s studies program at IUP) thought that Queer Theory was perhaps pushing the envelope on class subjects. Fortunately, my friends are an open-minded bunch and, once I explained to them what the class was about, some of the connections I made, influencing some to read my blog, they understood and ACCEPTED the class, which was very uplifting. It was also fun to talk about what I was learning to my boyfriend’s very socially liberal father. He was usually encouraging about the subject material, though the name of the class frightened him a bit.

I feel like with everything I had learned and absorbed through the women and gender studies program at PITT, I will make a significant difference in the world. And I feel the same for everyone in our little session (perhaps too short to really call a class?). The intense submersion in the articles, having to digest and blog quite soon after reading, this session was the most intensely I’ve ever had to consider serious issues concerning real, live people. Majoring in history, I often ponder what might have been done differently so that terrible things might have been avoided, but women’s studies looks at what we can change now for a brighter tomorrow. Every little thing matters in the course of history, be it an acceptable immigration policy or having Gay Shame instead of gay pride.

This feels cliche, but I’m going to do it anyways. We can change the world by looking at things differently.

Photo Credit: http://tumblinfeminist.tumblr.com/post/5532695085/fool-proof-sexual-assault-prevention-tips

Work Cited

Rodriguez, Juana Maria.  ”Queer Kinship and the Quandaries of Domestic Affection (DRAFT).”  Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures.  1-39.  Print.

P.S. I am very excited that Kristi made a blog about midwives since I am very interested in using a midwife when I get around to having kids (right now it seems so far into my future that it’s barely worth thinking about, but being 23, I know how fast time goes when you aren’t watching. I’m pretty sure I was 17 3 days ago). Everyone else’s final project was also awesome and interesting and fascinating and fun, but I think this blog will be most useful in my life.

P.P.S. Women’s Studies courses (and history, but only because that’s my major and I might need my notes again) are the only classes I keep my notes from. From brilliant connections to funny things said in class to flawless drawings of the continental United States, these notes will be useful (and occasionally hilarious) forever.

The trauma of parenting and the joy of this class

Rodriguez’s piece, “Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures,” was as discomforting as it was illuminating for me.  Perhaps it illuminated through discomfort. I had never really thought to deconstruct parenting, because seems like such a natural process to me, and one which did not require much analysis.  Leave it to this class to change that!  I think it also helps that as I was reading this, I began babysitting for a family (let’s call them the Millers) which is very different from my own, so I was observing that family’s style of parenting while reflecting upon Rodriguez’s article and of course relating it to my own experiences.  The family I was babysitting for consisted of a young mom and a dad (married) with three young kids – pretty standard as far as American families go.  I don’t think I would call them queer.  Interestingly, the first thing Mrs. Miller said when I walked in the door was that she’d seen on my Facebook profile that I was studying women’s studies, and how cool that was, because that’s what she studied as an undergraduate too!  Given this introduction, I immediately began wondering about her parenting style.  I guess it’s important to note that all these opinions on parenting are merely based upon observations – I am not a parent, so I do not have my experiences to draw from.

Here is the quote from the article that formed the basis of my slightly subconscious analysis of the Kauras and the Millers:

“However, understanding that parenting can itself function as a source of everyday trauma demands that we name the unspeakable – not of the joy of children but of the loss of social, affective, and sexual anatomy that is demanded of us as parents” (24-5).

How is parenting difficult, and what does it mean if parents recognize that?  My parents would never be caught dead saying that parenting was hard.  They did not take breaks from it, and they did not seem to ever want to have social lives separate from mine and my sister’s.  They took my cousins with them on their honeymoon, because they thought it would be nice for the kids to travel.  They invited my friends’ and their parents over for awkward dinner parties all the way through my high school career, so that they could get to know my friends’ families.  I never once had a babysitter because if my parents had somewhere to go, we went with them.

As a child, I definitely did not enjoy this – even now, though I appreciate it, I recognize that it is a little odd.  Why didn’t they want to have lives of their own?  I think it can be explained by cultural differences in the way that parenting is constructed.  Immigrant culture is especially saturated with “discourses that define children as the future” (Rodriguez 25).  I remember one of the interviewees in Monica Enriquez-Enriquez’s film, “Un/Binding Desires” speaking of “immigrant guilt” that children of immigrants feel.  This is because of the importance that immigrant culture attaches to children.  The rhetoric of “doing it all for the kids” can fuel transnational migrations in search of opportunities for the next generation.  From my vantage point, it seems that my parents are truly happy with everything they have done for my sister and me.  Perhaps I am getting a slanted view of this because I am their child, but I honestly cannot imagine them ever describing parenting as “traumatic.”

On the other hand, the Miller family has quite a relaxed view of parenting.  In fact, they are moving across the country because they are bored with Pittsburgh.  In addition, though both parents work from home and two of their kids attend school, they are used to hiring a babysitter to help with the kids.  I am not trying to criticize this practice, but just mark it as very different from my own childhood experiences.  For these parents, parenting is quite obviously just one part of their life, and that does not make them worse parents. However, I do think that this attitude must have an effect on both the parents and their children.  They must have a different concept of what it means to be a parent.  It is interesting to me that both of our families, with these different styles of parenting, could be considered “normative.”

I would also like to note how much I have enjoyed this class, and how much I have learned from it.  It probably won’t really sink in for a little while, but I have already noticed that the way I read any essay or watch any movie has been seriously altered over the course of these six weeks.  If I had to pinpoint the one area in which I gained the most understanding, it would be state surveillance and control over bodies.  I am certainly becoming more aware of the strained, uneven relationship between government and citizens in other areas of my life – especially in my internship with a state-funded nonprofit organization and my research of a former government representative.  I do wish that the class were longer and we were able to talk about more texts.  The ones I found most challenging were the two by English professors – Schweik and Wald, and I was a bit confused about the place of the two trans activist pieces in the fifth week of the syllabus.  But all in all, I really think I have gained a huge amount of knowledge from this class, and made some great friends, and I plan to continue engaging with this subject material for a long time to come.  I hope to stay in touch with all of you!

Works Cited:

Rodriguez, Juana Maria.  ”Queer Kinship and the Quandaries of Domestic Affection (DRAFT).”  Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures.  1-39.  Print.

Enriquez-Enriquez, Monica Un/Binding Desires. Film.
*I’m sorry, I really don’t know how to cite this!

Law & Order, Queer Parenting, and My Love for the Queer Mobilities, Queer Citizenship

Juana Rodriguez writes in this chapter: “Before the perceived gay and lesbian baby boom of the 1990s, children were often seen as the unwelcome vestiges of previous heterosexual relationships, as the unplanned evidence of lusty slippages outside the gay and narrow” (Rodriguez 9). Now, children are “another symbol of the unrestricted rights of citizenship that have become the basis for a national gay and lesbian political agenda” (Rodriguez 10).
In about 20 years, gay and lesbian couples have gone from seeing having children as bad to good.  Before, children were something only heterosexual couples had.  Homosexual couples who had children were seen as deviant to the homosexual community. Now homosexual couples who have children are seen as pushing the LGBT agenda by saying it is my right as a citizen to have and raise a child.  LGBT Couples have children through different means: sperm donation if a lesbian couple, surrogacy for gay couples, or adoption.

I believe I must write about Law and Order: SVU here in my last blog post since it seems to have a representation of everything.

One thing Law and Order does often in its shows are racialized adoption.  Most adoption cases featured in Law and Order have non-white children as those who are adopted.  I can think of few episodes where the child is not white.  They also have many episodes where gay couples are featured and are so very often seen as deviant.  In most of the episodes, when a child is harmed in anyway sexually, Detectives Stabler and Benson search the databases for pedophiles and when the pedophiles don’t pan out they search for homosexuals.  If you are a convicted sexual predator and a homosexual, then you are usually the first sought out by the detectives.

I am not sure if I understand what Juana is trying to say but I am going to try to sort of my views. I feel that SVU shows this struggle of being a homosexual parent and deviating from this heterosexual norm.  The heterosexual normative of parenting sets up this hierarchal framework where the parent owns the child.  However, in a homosexual household the parent cannot be seen as owning the child because of this homosexual=pedophile stereotype.  A pedophile controls their victims and homosexual parenting makes this hierarchal framework even messier because is the homosexual being a parent or being a pedophile? SVU shows that the homosexual parent is the most scrutinized, next the homosexual pedophile in the neighborhood, and then when those avenues do not lead to any arrests they search for the straight pedophiles.

Overall I felt the entire class was very helpful to my political science major and what I hope to do with the rest of my life (working in the legal and political fields).  The ideas that we discussed regarding the immigrants and queer bodies in the United States will help me in ways that other classes cannot.  Before this course, I received such a one-sided political view of many of these topics.  This class allowed me to open my views to a more rounded understanding of each group: immigrants and queers.  I think everything about the class was astounding for me because of my politics background and I enjoyed coming to class, listening to others thoughts, and being able to put in my own knowledge of politics and law into our course discussions.  I plan on broadening my final paper about Birth Tourism and the entire immigration topic with my Capstone Seminar in American Politics and will definitely be taking the ideas I learned in this class and using them to help me write my final paper needed to graduate.  I loved Somerville and Luibheid – some of the first authors we read – and also loved being able to listen to what two of the authors thoughts and feelings were while writing their pieces (Toby Beauchamp and Juana Rodriguez).  I think as a political science major, this course is the best class to be taken as an elective (even though I took it for my certificate). I was constantly finding topics discussed in class that had some sort of political background or something that I could tie to politics.
I site my memory and love of Law and Order for my visual text: Law and Order SVU reruns play on USA or Channel 25 here in Oakland.

Solidifying My Understanding of Sexual Subjects and Queer Gestures: A Final Look

Two quotes I find most important and descriptive of Juana Maria Rodriguez’s claims about parental function, recognition, identification, and ownership through the lens of queer politics are:

“The queer imperative becomes how to talk about parenting, and the circuits of affective and material labor, exchanges and power that underlie its social function, without normalizing or naturalizing heterosexual reproduction.  In a world with proliferating bodies and depleting resources, heterosexual biological reproduction–like all other forms of parenting–is deeply implicated in larger circuits of transnational labor, and political circuits of economic and material exchange” (17-8).

I feel like I may not be understanding this quote thoroughly, but I believe it is getting at the fact that variations of parenting are what produce the norms and discourses through which we may understand, identify, and discuss modes of parenting.

Secondly, she states:

“It is through this repeated performative act of affective ownership, ownership that defines who we care about and who we don’t, that we come to be validated as parents as well as citizens of the nation.  As Judith Butler has stated ‘Kinship is itself a kind of doing, a practice that enacts the assemblage of signification as it takes place” (19).

Here, I believe she is referring to the ways a parent confers ownership onto his or her child through modes of performance recognized, through the absorption of social and cultural parenting norms, by that parent as an intelligible way to identify as parent in relation to the child.  This performance requires an exchange of power, emotions, and knowledge, where the parent is likely exerting power while the child receives emotional and intellectual support in exchange for those given up powers over him or herself.

Next, I would like to briefly focus on Rodriguez’ section of Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures’ Chapter 2 entitled “Disciplinary Paternalism, or Doing it for Daddy.”  This portion seemed to stir up quite a bit of conversation, ideas, and opinions in class this week.  I also found it the most confusing and surprising.  She states, “[t]he idea of intimate familial power serving as a source of erotic pleasure has wide rhizomatic reach in queer communities…In these fantasy sexual scenarios, daddy can be kind, he can offer us lollipops and fondle us gently, or he can be the harsh disciplinarian that utilizes his sovereign authority over the family as the means to demand (or allow) complete submission.  Daddy as fantasy subject position is a possibility that locates the erotic at the very core of heteronormative family life.  This daddy, that we are so anxious to ‘do it for’ may or may not have any direct correlation to the embodied figures that may have occupied these roles when we were ourselves under the legal and social guardianship of others” (27-8).

With this in mind I would like to merely provide some art I found today that immediately I linked with these ideas:  Gawker artist group, Daddy.  Here’s how the group describes themselves, their art, and purpose, and the link and some of their work:

“DADDY is an interdisciplinary art collective dedicated to the study of use in contemporary practice. Through fine art platforms, DADDY produces industrial and communication design, objects and installations that investigate the relationship between object and user.  Currently, DADDY is engaged in a series of projects traversing psycho-sexual characteristics of consumer goods as well as installations responding to aesthetics of ‘neighborhoods in transition.’  DADDY IS A TYPE OF DECADENCE” (DaddybyDaddy).

http://daddybydaddy.com/index.html

http://artists.gawker.com/post/6358919612/iso-daddy

Obtained from: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmjb5fmXG21qzg2j4.jpg

Obtained from: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmjb5iQmj21qzg2j4.jpg

Obtained from: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmjbm5MxuV1qzg2j4.jpg

Lastly, I would like to express just how much this course has benefitted me.  I have strengthened my understanding of the ever-changing relationships between sexuality, mobility, and citizenship and how they produce, regulate, and discipline bodies, identities, intimacies, and interpersonal relationships.  I feel that with this insight I have a gained capability to analytically and queerly parse through these relationships in social, educational,  economic, and political sites I encounter daily, focusing on how power relations directly and indirectly utilize qualities of race, gender, class, and sexuality to produce certain desired and undesired outcomes.  I feel I have acquired a greater sense of tolerance for the products of these relationships, whether a body, identity, institution, or idea.   And, I feel I have found these skills useful not only in school, but in developing and delving deeper into my own personal interests and relationships, something I am truly grateful for.

Works Cited:

Rodriguez, Juana Maria.  ”Queer Kinship and the Quandaries of Domestic Affection (DRAFT).”  Sexual Subjects, Queer Gestures.  1-39.  Print.

“Daddy by Daddy.”  Daddy.  Web.