29 Queer Feminism

Asma Naseer and Sutapa Majumdar

epgp books

 

 

 

Introduction: Understanding Queer

 

Feminism is a very broad set of ideologies and movements that focuses on

 

defining and achieving social, economic, and political equality for women. The term was coined in 1837 by a French philosopher named Charles Fourier and has undergone a great deal of change since then. This is just to give one broad understanding of feminism but this is not what the aim of this module is. This module is strictly engage in discussion on Queer Feminism (QF) and different ways of understanding and exploring the concept of Queer and the concept of Feminism and together then the whole concept of Queer Feminism.

 

Many of us are familiar with the term QF and for many of us it might be a very new terminology/ideology that needs to be explored. As a beginner, let us start with an understanding that feminism is varied and there are different forms of feminism that men, women and others follow and these varied forms of feminism may or may not have commonalities between them. Feminism as a movement emerged to challenge the invisibility of women and other marginalized communities in the making of the global world but in doing so the movement made the similar mistakes of being racist, homophobic, trans-phobic and being imperialist. Queer feminism in this regard was at the fagend of the margins and in a way excluded from the mainstream feminist movement.

 

In order to understand QF, first one need to understand what Queer is. The earliest recorded use of the word’ Queer’ as a form of homophobic abuse is said to be an 1894 letter by John Sholto Douglas, the Marquuess of Queensberry. He was the father of Alfred Douglas and famously accused Oscar Wilde of having an affair with his son. Queer in to time became a derogatory term for same-sex sex or for people with same sex attractions, particularly ‘effeminate’ or ‘camp’ gay men1.

 

Queer is an identity which stands on the other side of the hetero identity. Initially being queer meant being “strange” or “peculiar” states Wikipedia.

Queer was negatively used against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Around late 1980s, queer scholars and activists started reclaiming their identity as separate from the gay political identity to establish their own distinct community. Simultaneously, Queer identities became essential for those who shunned the traditional gender identities and were looking for a broader, less conformist, and deliberately ambiguous alternative to the label LGBT that is lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender population. Now queer feminism or Queer feminists are mainly those who identify themselves as a radical group in opposition to patriarchy. Not only this they define feminism as an inclusion of queer people and goes beyond LGBT and other gender/sexuality minorities. As Narrain and Bhan (2005) state the term ‘queer’ is an umbrella term to include both who are closeted and who are public about their non-heterosexual inclinations to those who prefer to label themselves and the ones who choose to reject labeling or unable to choose a label and name themselves’. Queer includes activism and protest through art, literature, academic criticism and included too forge alliance with any counter hegemonic project (Nayar 2010).

 

Queer includes those who openly wear sexual identities like lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and those who use indigenous terms like hijras, kothis, panthis to describe themselves. In addition to this, there are regional identities of sexual non-conformity, such as jogappa and jogtas (Karnataka) and ganacharis (South India). These are to be incuded in the movement if the queer movement has to make a mark (Narrain and Bhan 2005; pande 2004 and Menon 2007).

 

Queer feminism is feminism with a difference- a feminism that directly challenges the issues mentioned above and does not rest on its laurels. They further believe that the definition of feminism is very restrictive in nature as it focuses only on the equality between men and women by excluding non-binary genders and ignores the serious problems created by patriarchy that harm people of any gender and can be aggravated by people of any gender. Queer feminists’ stands in radical opposition to patriarchy, a system that encourages2:

  • Racism, imperialism, genocide and violence
  • Strict rules about gender and sexuality that hurt male, female, both or neither
  • Blaming and shaming trans people, queer people, sluts and anyone who does not fit a narrow and arbitrary body standard Rape culture
  • A tendency to claim that democracy and liberal politics fixes all ills, rather than addressing society’s problems.

Nadia Cho, a student at the University of California-Berkeley defines Queer as a means to describe someone’s sexual orientation and a political statement that one makes. Further she states that “being Queer is a state of mind. It is a worldview characterized by acceptance, through which one embraces and validates all the unique, unconventional ways that individuals express themselves, particularly with respect to gender and sexual orientation…..challenging everything that is normal.” Cho goes on to add a very extensive list of characteristics about what it makes one to be Queer. Here we will elucidate her points in a tabular form for easy reading.

 

Identity What it means

Defining Queer Theory

 

Women, including queer women remain invisible in our history as if they never existed. Similarly feminism too kept away queer feminism for the longest period of time as if they didn’t exist. Like feminism, queer feminism too has feminisms within and it is not necessary that they match with each other. Likewise queer theory too has multiple theories, several of which contradict with each other. In fact many queer theorists refused to talk about any theory as they believed that it’s difficult to theorize ‘being queer’. Queer theory has been criticized for being inaccessible and for containing difficult words. In fact one of the pioneer queer theorists, Niki Sulivan said that, ‘it is a discipline which is difficult to be disciplined.’ Queer theory is a theoretical approach that goes beyond queer studies to question the categories and assumptions on which current academic and popular understandings are based. One of the main tenets of queer theory is that their understanding of sex and sexuality, sexual identity and pretty much everything about life is contextual- that is all their understanding is a lived experience in different ways over time and across cultures. Queering is the process of reversing and destabilizing heterosexuality as a norm (Nayar 2010).

 

Queer theory finds its roots in post structuralism and in deconstructionism. Queer theory is also closely tied to the multicultural theory in sociology and is integral to the rise of postmodern social theory. Hence in order to understand the rise and development of the queer theory, one need to refer to the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Butler who engaged in the deep understanding and theorizing of queer theory. Michel Foucault is one of the most important founder of queer theory and his main idea which he discussed at length in ‘archaeology of knowledge (1966)’ and ‘genealogy of power (1969)’ brings out the queer ethos in a major way as in line to the queer theory, he is interested in understanding, exploring and analysing the action and not interested in defining the origin. Foucault is important as his work in many ways attended to the discussion of sexuality and homosexuality in academia which remained absent in the mainstream sociological discussion for a very long period of time. Queer theory gained momentum due to the fact that it promised to be more inclusive and vast as against the ‘lesbian and the gay studies’ which in many ways remained limited and confined to a few identities and not include other.

 

It is indeed very hard to define any particular characteristics of queer theory as most of the queer theorists did not believe in particularity. Arleen Stein and Ken Plummer (1996) discussed some of the important ‘hallmarks’ of queer theory. First, Queer theory visualise sexual power to be located in different forms of social life and this power in central to the conceptualisation of one’s sexuality. Second, Queer theory attempt to displace sex, gender and sexuality. Third, the believer of queer theory celebrates a transgressive, deconstructive, anti-establishment and anti-assimilationist politics. Fourth, there is a consensus in reading and interpreting text as ‘queer readings’ which essentially remained heterosexual or not sexual at all.3 Further Seidman (1994), states that queer theory is much more complex than this as the queer identity is multiple, unstable and always shifting. Hence he believes that in this way queer theory cannot be limited to mere homosexual theory and should be analysed within the broader framework of social theory and a more general post modern theory.

 

Fuss, (1989, 1991) is another important queer theorists who understood sexual identities beyond the binaries-heterosexual and homosexual dichotomy. She believes that the ‘interior’ identity of a person is shaped by the ‘exterior’ experiences that one goes through or not. In other sense, Fuss argues that both heterosexuality and homosexuality gains its meaning by the virtue of what they are and what they are not and thus in many ways reproduces the existing dichotomy and remains limited. Terry (1995) argues that homosexual as a sexual identity has always been discussed in opposition to heterosexual identity. Sedgwick, another eminent queer theorist in her book, ‘The Epistemology of the Closet’ (1990) explores the concept of closet which according to her is the ‘defining structure of gay oppression for centuries’. Butler (1997) understands sexuality in terms of performances based on repetition. She believes that the continuous repetitive acts of heterosexuality around us in a way makes the action to be ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ against homosexual acts which is thought to be a ‘copy’ and ‘inferior’ to being heterosexual. But since she believes that every act or performances that human being does is a repetitive act hence the performances of sexuality too should not be gauged as superior or inferior but just as an act and an expression of ‘psychic reality’.

 

For Lacan, ‘the notion of identification is symbolic in nature as individuals are influenced by imaginary images that provide the individual with a base.’ For individuals, their identity is influenced by a range of different concepts and experiences which keeps on changing (Best 2003). Derrida on the other hand talks about deconstruction and dislocation of binary categories like masculine/feminine or male/female upon which patriarchy is based. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of ‘queerness’ itself. Italian feminist and film theorist Teresa de Lauretis coined the term “queer theory” for a conference she organized at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1990 and a special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies she edited based on that conference.4

Finally, Queer theory attempts at debunking of stable (and correlated) sexes, genders, and sexualities develops out of the specifically lesbian and gay reworking of the post-structuralist figuring of identity as a constellation of multiple and unstable positions. It examines the constitutive discourses of homosexuality developed in the last century in order to place “queer” in its historical context, and surveys contemporary arguments both for and against this latest terminology.

 

Difference between Gender Theory and Queer Theory:

 

Gender theory begins to question the ways in which gender is constructed by society. It looks at how society creates definitions for the gender assignments “woman” and “man.” Gender theory goes beyond a simple observation of physical characteristics of men and women and develops ideas about how these physical attributes are interpreted by the society and how various roles get written for the genders. You could consider queer theory a theory that takes into account all of the marginalized sexual identities that exist and gives permission for them to be acknowledged as a legitimate alternative to traditional sexual identities. Queer theory rejects the idea of sexuality as a stable concept and of heterosexuality as a norm. This destabilization of sexual identity places queer theory in the tradition of postmodern theories and deconstructionism.

 

 

Judith Butler, one of the leading theorists in the fields of feminism and queer theory, offers the idea that gender is constructed by society. In other words, she believes that gender—the concept of a female identity or a male identity—is formed by society rather than inherent to an individual. What it means to be a woman or a man, in Butler’s view, depends on a number of systemic and systematic features of larger society. What we get, then, are gender “norms”—the behaviors, practices, and other signals that constitute what is normal for a given gender category (1997).

According to Butler, even sexual practices are among these norms. Since Butler does not see anything inherent in gender, she suggests that gender is a kind of performance. “People perform their “womanness” or “manness” through behavior, modes of dress, activities, and so forth. Essentially, we act out our gender identity in the way that we might perform a role in a play,” she says.

 

Relationship between Queer Theory and Queer Feminism:

 

Before queer theory there were two genders (also known as “sexes”): men and women. Sometimes, they liked to battle. And history was written according to themes men cared about—land, political struggles, exploration, and settlement—from an entirely male perspective. With the coming of feminism, women pushed to expand the roles they were “allowed” to play in society, and have their voices heard. But, there was criticism that feminism also made the case that all men were aggressive. And that sex was always violent, and that if women ran the world, we’d all be better off. Onedefinition of “queer” is someone who moves between the identities defined by patriarchy and essentialist categories of femininity—someone who always questions who gets to define what the facts are in any argument.

 

The Third Wave of Feminism asserted that ‘’ gender is not real. A body makes sperm or a body makes eggs or maybe some bodies don’t make either, but beyond that, the rest is a social construct. Womencan be aggressive and challenging and men can be sensitive and caring.

 

Judith Butler, as part of third-wave feminism, applies Foucault’s ideas to the categories of gender and sexual orientation, and asks: Are there really masculine and feminine traits that come exclusively with the genes that make us male and female? Is anything really “abnormal”? Isn’t every behavior just a performance, meant to please someone or something? When examined within this framework, gender seems to be about living up to (or not living up to) a society’s expectations of what men and women should do and should be. It was this realization, accompanied by the fact that the broad swathes of the feminist movement have been plagued by racism, homophobia, transphobia, imperialism, sex-negativity, and similar ills that led to a whole new field of study called queer feminism.

On one hand queer theory aims to explore the diverse sexual identities, communities and politics. It aims to differentiate between the insider and the outsider, that is the queer theory aims to categories a set of sexual identities, demarcates them and enables contestation amongst a set of sexual identities which will form the inner world of queer community excluding the rest. Queer theory is well aware of the fact that it can only negotiate its limit of being associated with heterosexual identities. It can neither be completely detached from it nor can it be attached to heterosexual identities but they can only work towards maintaining the boundaries, regulate and contest them. On the other hand Queer feminism is a movement which challenges racism, imperialism, homophobia and transphobia. They stand is opposition to patriarchy.

 

 

 

Indian Queer Movement:

 

The first ever visible queer movement started in the year 1999, with the gay pride in Kolkata.

 

 

The queer movement in India focuses on sexual identity and the rights of lesbian, bisexual, gays, transgender, kothi and hijras and also work at a structural level whereby they challenge the norms of heteropatriarchy which dictate the Indian society at large. LGBT & I stands for ‘sexual minority that has challenged the hegemonic construction of normative gender and sexuality. Menon (2012) argues that ‘Q’ at the end stands for queer signifying that ‘every new initial fixes ass an ‘identity’ a form of sexual desire and behavior (2012:97) and Menon (2009:100) states that ‘biologically female body’ and the ‘gendered female body’, exist intension with each other at the intersection of feminist and queer politics. Thus LGBTIQ people include sexual diversity, which refers to the maximum range of sexuality in terms of orientation and practice.

 

 

In fact the queer movement in India developed around challenging the existing laws, which criminalized same sex act and also those who identify themselves with alternate sexuality. The most prominent figures of the Queer movement in India, Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan (2005) in fact argue that the queer movement in India is more of a movement for queer politics rather than an identity. Narrain and Bhan (2005:4), ‘Queer politics does not speak only of issues of these communities ass ‘minority’ issues but instead it speaks of larger understandings of gender and sexuality in our society that affect all of us, regardless of our sexual orientation. It speaks of sexuality as a politics intrinsically and inevitably connected with the politics of class, gender, caste, religion and so on, thereby both acknowledging other movements and demanding inclusion within them’.

 

Such a strong argument for in itself establishes the motive and the seriousness of the cause. In India, the entire queer movement could be understood in two broad perspectives- the academic engagements and in the activist engagement. Academic world aims to give us a history of how the movement took shape over the years, developed and the challenges that ‘queerness’ as an identity and politics had to experience in the face of a hetero-normative culture and even a stronger hetero-normative sexual preferences. Drawing upon Uberoi (1993) and Biswas (2011), Srivastava states that LGBT in terms of queer politics in shaping the politics of ‘desire and also thereby rescripting the rules of engagement regarding family, marriage and kinship’. When one refers to ‘disciplining desire’, it refers to the stand of the state, to perceive ‘heterosexual as not only ‘normal’, but also ‘legal’. The state in its legal framework does not allow any space to alternative forms of sexuality.

 

Along with this the academic world flourished in its engagement with the queer world with the help of various academicians, many of whom openly identified themselves as either, gay, lesbian and queer and also those who strongly believed in the queer ideology and showed their solidarity in continuing the queer debate. The activist engagement has been very vibrant at an organizational level and there are numerous LGBTQ organizations in different parts of the country who not only provide support to young and old minds who are drowned in queries about their own identity and how they relate to their social world but also help in voicing concern at the state level and impact the decision of the state.

 

The argument of Kumar (2014) pushes us to reflect upon the need to ‘queering Indian sociology’. This is to be done by incorporating the perspective of erstwhile marginalized ‘publics’- the sexual minorities. It includes a critical sexuality perspective, which foregrounds experiences like subaltern sexual subjects like ‘working class lesbians’, hijras and kothis to map the agenda of sexual transformations and erotic justice’. In this context Kumar argues that just as mainstream sociology tends to sideline gender as a serious analytical category, similarly feminist sociology in India fails to move beyond heterosexism. As Weeks (2010), argues sexual and intimate life are socially organized and hence are deeply implicated in power relations. Kumar cites, a leading queer feminist Chayanika Shah, who states that is compulsory heterosexuality is only about controlling desire or is it about dictating that the world can have only two kinds of people- women and men (2014). Drawing upon the works of Ingraham (1994), Kumar argues feminist pedagogy and praxis in general and feminist sociology in particular, does not stretch sexuality beyond an initial explanation of sex- gender. Gender has become synonymous with women and mostly heterosexual. Thus ‘normative heterosexuality’ lies at the surface of feminist sociology and the presence of gender identities beyond heterosexual binary is rendered invisible (Kumar 2014: 3-4). In line with the academic and activist engagement, LGBT issue found its ground within the debate around health and wellness, mainly around the discourse on HIV/AIDS and also in popular culture, mainly the popular media. The mainstream Bollywood movies started portraying same sex love, even though most as a caricature, but a couple of them engaged in serious narrative of the issue which led many men and women come out of their closet and challenge the heteronormativity.

 

However, a continuous struggle to talk about one’s identity and rights were spearheaded by a couple of organizations in India, who worked towards the protection of the rights of the LGBT, Queer and other sexually minority groups over the years and be part of the Queer movement in India- They are Voices Against 377 (Voices), Lesbians and Bisexuals In Action (LABIA) and Sangama/LesBiT. Based in three different urban centers in India- Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, they have been politically active over the past decade

 

The Delhi based group, Voices against 377, is a coalition of over a dozen Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and progressive Groups, many of which are queer based, that joined forces in early 2004 to overturn Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This law was a colonial residue that criminalized a plethora of sexual acts that were deemed ‘against the order of nature’ by the British and Indian governments, and was especially applied to consenting same sex adult relationships. Taken from the Voices against 377 website and “Rights For All: Ending Discrimination Against Queer Desire Under 377” Voices report, the law reads as follows: 377. Unnatural Offences.

 

“Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine. The extremely vague language of this law allowed the Indian government to prosecute individuals for sexual acts ranging from oral sex, even if it was heterosexual, to sodomy to sexual abuse of children; anything that constituted an affront to ‘the order of nature’”.

LABIA, a queer feminist collective, based in Mumbai, first began as the lesbian and bisexual women’s collective, Stree Sangam, in 1994. At present, the LABIA collective is comprised of lesbian, bisexual and trans women and focuses primarily on queer and feminist activism. LABIA is uniquely situated within both the women’s and queer movements, thereby providing an important intersection of identities for queer discussions of gender and sexuality. By focusing on queer women’s issues and applying a queer feminist political approach to their activism, LABIA is able to reach a very specific group of marginalized identities based on gender and sexuality, while also maintaining a broader mission of universal sexual and gender equality and acceptance.

 

Sangama is a human rights organization, based in Bangalore, and advocates for the rights of sexual minority groups, with particular attention given to poor, non English speaking transgender identities Although they do not explicitly identify using the term ‘queer’, Sangama’s politics are rooted in queer social critiques of gender and sexuality. They explain their involvement in the ‘sexual rights movement’ on their website as, based on not only the discourse of sexual identity/orientation and gender identity but also on discourses of human rights, sexual rights, gender equality, social justice, etc.

 

The movement has since developed and articulated its arguments very clearly shunning fear, hatred and violence and creating its own space to live a life of dignity and enjoying the constitutional and other rights as any other citizen of the country. Section 377 has had a far reaching impact not only in establishing an identity of the ‘other’ but also for HIV/AIDS intervention and intervention on child sexual. Homophobia amongst mental health practitioner has long denied support to mental health patients who identify themselves as homosexuals. Their rights have been violated time and again because of their identity. Further, “Queer” discourse in India is now limited homosexuality or same sex love orientation alone. The fluidity of sexuality and identities is being forgotten. And a new binary is being constructed where one can either be a homosexual or heterosexual, there are no in between, if there are any, they are probably “confuse people”. And this makes Queer Movement- merely homosexual or “gay” movement and the marches “gay” or “homosexual” pride marches.

 

The LGBT activism challenges the hegemony of the heterosexual state. Drawing from the arguments of Uberoi (1996), Srivastava, states that the LGBT community and movement hold the state responsible for criminalizing the multiple forms of desire and on the other hand emphasize on the need of the state to protect them and safeguard their fundamental rights of sexuality. According to Kumar (2014), the LGBT movement in India focused solely on sexuality, without adequately engaging with the issue of caste and class. In India, queer movement is mostly about abolition of Section 377 and less about the caste, class and political economy (Tellis 2012). Such a limited approach limits the possibility of the movement. As Kumar (2014:7) argues that a sociological understanding of sexuality issues in Indian context or elsewhere in South Asia cannot distance from the issues of caste, class, religion, ethnicity, rural, urban and a complex interplay of these institutions.

 

Further as Srivastava (2014: 378), states since 2000, the public sphere has been captured by the LGBT community through gay pride walks across the country. He cites the work (Sharma and Das 2011:99) to state that, ‘while there is evidence that gays and lesbians are finding increasingly visibility and support, there are major threats, mainly from religious right-wing groups and a continued wide spread social marginalization and stigmatisation of non-normative sexual identities. Such a development has posed a major challenge to the LGBT community.

Thus as Kumar (2014) states that queer activism to be relevant need to define their agenda not solely in terms of identity politics and challenging Section 377, of IPC, but also by linking of ways to foreground the material condition of hijras and working class lesbians while chalking out liberation agendas. The politicization of queer identity in India is mobilized more around ‘law’ than the issue of class ad political economy. In conclusion we can state that the challenges that Queer Feminism is facing:

 

  1. Marginalization within the feminist discourse and within larger feminist sociology
  2. Lack of engagement of the discourse of queer with class, caste, religion, and other axis.
  3. Weak linkages with the larger feminist movement.

Queer activism to be relevant in the present day neo liberal regimes need to define their agenda not solely in terms of identity politics and reading down section 377 of IPC but also by linking with caste, class, and political economy.

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