Marriage and the Enlightened Lesbian

Following with the discussion on marriage Alex and Rue started, I wanted to share a link a friend sent me.

http://gracethespot.com/?p=103 (Grace the Spot: Stuff Lesbians Like Part 6: Looking down at the Unenlightened Lesbian)

Long story short, and putting the irony of the content aside, this blog entry describes the “enlightened” lesbian critique of the fight towards the legalizing of gay marriage, adoption, etc. This blog presents some of the ideas we have been discussing in class, especially with Between Women. Marcus described the ways in which the relationships between women served to strengthen the hierarchal and familiar status of women, instead of being transgressive. I was reading this blog entry and I thought about how the female marriages presented by Marcus exemplify the “enlighetened” lesbian’s point. As Marcus states, female marriages were tolerated in Victorian society because they followed the standards of male-female marriages. They were not the representation of a tolerant society or of transgressive behaviour as one might think. As we previously discussed with Katz, the problem that gay marriage as it is being framed now presents is that it keeps on defining the LGBTQ community in terms of heterosexuality.

Going back to Marcus, she claimed that the theories of sexuality we hold in this century make kinship and family exclusively heterosexual.(12) By framing gay marriage with heterosexual discourse, people in gay relationships are still being defined as the “man” or the “women” of the relationship, assuming that even when the couple is same-sex, gendered roles in the family have to be maintained. Someone has to be the husband, and someone has to be the wife; the hierarchies that have been established historically in the family have to remain. Someone has to take the “head of the family” position. This brings us back to the discussion we had a couple of weeks ago: are all heterosexual relationships oppressive? If so, and by framing gay marriage in heterosexual terms, are we making LGBTQ couples intrinsically oppressive also?

Sexuality in Mexico

I have been going to the same town (San Miguel de Allende, Gto) in México for about the past 10 years, and was there just last week for fall break to visit my Mother. I have often thought about the differences in lifestyle, gender roles, and sexuality in México, but going after doing some study on the History of Sexuality brought new thoughts and frameworks to mind.

In going to México this time, I came to the conclusion that their sexuality is influenced most strongly by two things: the Catholic Church and family. The Catholic Church is the foremost institution in many Mexican’s lives and has great influence over the values held by people and what behaviors are acceptable in society. The Catholic Church does not generally support contraceptives, comprehensive sexual education, abortion, or sex before marriage, which I take to have a huge influence on the sexual lives of those who live by its teachings. Before every marriage occurs, the betrothed couple must submit their information to their parish church and have it displayed for all to see for several weeks before they may marry. This information includes such information as whether or not each member of the couple is a legitimate or illegitimate child of their parents. I think that the fact that this practice is still in place and tells the public about the marital status of the parents at the time of the child’s birth shows the importance of waiting for marriage before being sexually active in México and shows the Church’s influence over the lives of its congregants.

Additionally, sexuality does not seem to be as much of a part of the public sphere in México as it is in the US, which is where the tie between family and sexuality comes in. It is clear that many women and men are sexually active because of their pregnant bellies and children in tow, but there is still no overt discussion of sexuality- it is relegated to the sphere of family. Also, as mentioned above, it is important in México to be married before showing any overt signs of sexual activity. However, having children is also a very important value for many Mexicans, which leads to early marriages and multiple children, and to my conclusion that sexual value in México is placed upon the reproductive capacity of sexual relations. The fact that sexual value is placed upon its ability to produce children lends itself very strongly to heterosexual relations and homosexuality is not something that I have seen or heard much of at all in my time in México. This is not to say that there are not homosexual practices or relationships, but because they do not work towards the reproductive goal, they are not highly visible in a society that places huge value on reproduction.

The Catholic Communication Campaign and Cullwick and Munby

Re: What have you done for your marriage today?

The other day, Alex wrote about a campaign funded by the Catholic Communication Campaign. As she said, the campaign was very targeted towards the wife, and did indeed seem to put the responsibility of keeping a marriage together on the wife, as she is her husband’s “helpmate” of sorts. I wanted to connect this message with the relationship between Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby as discussed in Anne McClintock’s work Imperial Leather.

In Imperial Leather, McClintock discusses the Cullwick and Munby relationship in a way that I had not seen it before, and seems to overtly argue that Cullwick remained quite in control of the relationship even when carefully letting Munby think that things were his idea. Through Cullwick’s insistence that she wear her “slave-band” whenever she chose, as opposed to when Munby chose, she took control of her “bondage” and showed that though she may submit herself to him at times, it is her choosing to do so, and not her being forced to do so. For some reason, when reading Alex’s post about the Catholic Communication Campaign, it made me think about the wife’s ability to covertly control her marriage while still giving at least superficial supremacy to her husband, as the case seems to be with the unconventional Cullwick and Munby marriage.

Throughout my life I have seen many a marriage between a man and a woman, or even a family with the parents being a man and a woman, where the rhetoric seems to be that the dad has the final say in matters, but it’s really the mother running the show and making the majority of decisions for the family. The Catholic Communication Campaign wants women to fulfill their duties as wives and tend to their husbands every need- feeding them, cleaning, helping them sleep, satisfying them sexually, etc. What this brought to mind for me was whether or not within this rhetoric of the husband’s supremacy, is the wife the one really running the show? Are we still using the same Victorian norms of the wife being “in-charge” of running the family and keeping the marriage healthy; have we moved on from that male supremacy in marriages altogether; or do wives and mothers have their own ways of holding men accountable and making happen as they would like, as with Cullwick and Munby?

At the crux of this issue is the question of what is marriage today, who does it involve, and what does society think about it? Clearly some Catholic organizations want to adhere to the Victorian ideal of the woman keeping up the marriage for the man, but they probably don’t realize that such relationships such as Cullwick and Munby’s existed- relationships outside the norm in which the woman used her leverage to get things from the man, and not just the other way around.

The "Modern" Family (or at least what we can see of it)

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/10/modern-family-and-gay-marriage-its-complicated/64397/

I felt compelled to discuss “male marriages”—seeing as we spent all last week covering “female marriages.” However, the male marriages I’ll be talking about are not from the Victorian Era, but from 2010.

I found this article by Alyssa Rosenberg which critiques the television show Modern Family’s portrayal of gay couples. While many television critics have praised Modern Family for transcending stereotypes in portraying the show’s gay characters as dynamic and complex human beings (and presenting their relationships as equal to the other heterosexual ones), Rosenberg believes there is still room for improvement. She focuses her criticism on the lack of visible (to the audience) physical affection or sex life in the gay couple’s relationship. The heterosexual couples frequently kiss and exchange other signs of physical affection, but the gay couple rarely does so. Rosenberg questions if the audience is “just too jumpy” to view signs of physical affection (or suggestions of a sex life) between two men.

The questions raised by Rosenberg reminded me of our class’s discussion of Victorian “female marriages.” In Between Women, Sharon Marcus states that “sexual relationships of all stripes were most acceptable when their sexual nature was least visible as such but was instead manifested in terms of marital acts such as cohabitation, fidelity, financial solidarity, and adherence to middle-class norms of respectability (49).”

How far have we as a society (or even just a television audience) progressed since the Victorian Era in our acceptance of “all stripes” of relationships (sexual or not)? Are television audiences so willing to accept Modern Family’s gay couple because they don’t have to witness the physical or sexual aspects of the relationship?

Marcus states that women who left records of their female marriages glossed over the sexual aspects of their relationship by claiming the “privilege of privacy accorded to opposite-sex couples.” Physical affection was “assumed” rather than “displayed” and couples presented their “sexual bond” as a “social one (49).”

Now of course the women in Victorian “female marriages” weren’t hiding from epithets like lesbian or gay (the terms had not been “invented” yet), but apposite to Rosenberg’s argument is the idea of glossing over the physical and sexual aspects of a relationship and focusing on the social aspects in order to make the relationship more palatable for society.

If the viewing public is to assume that the gay couple’s relationship contains a physical (or even sexual) aspect, then why is the physical and sexual component of the heterosexual couples’ so clearly displayed for the audience? Unlike the Victoria heterosexual couples, the heterosexual couples of Modern Family are not claiming a right to privacy. Why must the physical and sexual component of the gay couple’s relationship remain invisible to the audience? It seems we as a society—or at least a television audience—still have very “Victorian views” when it comes to physical affection and sex in any relationship other than a heterosexual one. We’d rather simply “assume” than face reality.

The Power of Labels

In the past month, there has been a string of young teen suicides. These individuals had been harassed and bullied into taking their lives because they were gay. Bullying is powered by the strength of words - insults, put-downs, and using terms that society deems as derogatory. In these cases, and many more in recent years, calling a young adult a "homo" in front of classmates and peers creates shame, embarrassment, and disgrace.

Since when did the term homosexual become so humiliating and offensive? It's opposition, heterosexuality, wasn't even coined as a term until at least the 1860's (Katz, pg. 51). So when did this divide and change begin to occur? Although it is difficult to point out exactly where and when labeling one's sexuality became imperative, it seems that today's society has developed the notion that being part of one sexual orientation is "normal" and being part of another is "abnormal". People today have furthered this notion with the usage of the words "homo" and "gay", which have derived from their original definitions and now can be used to describe something that is stupid or wrong.

With this modern notion of labels and words, it comes as no surprise that so many gay men and women are afraid to be a "homosexual." Furthermore, tn light of the recent suicides, its obvious that labeling one's sexual orientation is now offensive when used with what society believes is a derogatory connotation. The creation of heterosexuality as a term and its definition today has created a particular set of norms that exclude a significant portion of the population, and creates a hostile environment for anyone who considers themselves not heterosexual.

What have you done for your marriage today?

I saw this billboard, funded by the Catholic Communication Campaign, somewhere in central Pennsylvania when I was driving home from Oberlin this summer. It seemed so surprising to encounter this message on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. While the overall message of remaining vigilant and keeping up communication is valid, it is obviously targeted at women. I found this image on a website accompanied by:

Like a garden, [marriages] require constant attention: fertilizing, watering, and weeding. More often they fade away from a gradual lack of attentiveness, letting things slide, taking each other for granted.

The woman's role as a wife is clear: child-bearing, attending to her husband (in more ways than one), and generally making life easier for her family.

In Anne McClintock's section, "The Labor of Leisure," she discusses the middle-class Victorian housewife's responsibility to not only clean and manage the household, but also to conceal all of her efforts. She must erase every sign of her work in order to appear as though she lived a life of leisure. This billboard portrays a middle-aged woman in a sweater and pearls, happily thinking to herself, "what more could I be doing?" She must fulfill her responsibilities and do so gladly and cheerfully.

The Wife's role seems to have evolved from 17th c. New England's emphasis on child-bearing and populating. But there is a similar religious force impelling women to conform to a certain model of wifehood. Her value and work are recognized by God, accruing her spiritual capital -- an idea put forth by McClintock when describing an S/M relationship between Cullwick and Munby. Christianity offered Cullwick the promise of deferred recognition for her debasement. While I wouldn't equate being a modern wife with being in an S/M relationship, putting yourself before your family similarly makes the "low exalted" (McClintock 158). The role of the wife is portrayed as noble to rationalize the inequality of the responsibility for the success or failure of the marriage.

Welcome to HIST 458 - The Blog Version

Dear HIST 458-ers,

As promised - here is our blog!

As described in the syllabus, this is a space we will use to discuss sexuality in the contemporary/modern era, paying particular attention to two issues:

1. Can we make valid and valuable connections between the past and the present, i.e. how sexuality was understood in Victorian England novels vs. how it is portrayed in Glee today?

2. How do we theorize human sexuality today? How do we de-naturalize what we consider to be normal, and therefore invisible?

You are free to choose the topic but think of what might appeal to your colleagues and be sure to be thoughtful about your posts. Treat these posts as seriously as you would a response paper and I encourage you to think deeply about the phenomena that surround us -- we, too, are living in historic times!

I invite Mac, Alex V., and Jordan to kick off the blogging. Those posting will have until next Thursday at 5 p.m. to craft a 250-500 word post and those responding will have until noon on Monday to respond. We will follow this Thursday/Monday schedule for the remainder of the semester.

Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions! I am also happy to read any posts you are considering posting.

Happy writing!

Prof. D.