Queer History and the Archives II: Mr. W. H.

Please comment below on Oscar Wilde's short story, "The Portrait of Mr. W. H."

Queer History and Archives I

Comment below on Isaac Julien's film, Looking for Langston, or on Annmarie Jagose's chapter, "Theorizing Same-Sex Desire."

Gay Rebel, Indeed

“For me flesh is a vessel . . . I frequently find myself shifting fluidly, engendering the masculine in one breath and the feminine in the next. At the time it occurs naturally, and yet in retrospect, it strikes me with confusion and concern, because certainly no one else transmutates quite as I do. I feel alone, alienated by my differentness, alone even among my most inclusive friends. I am struck by the conviction that, more than anything else, I wish I were a shape-changer, able to shed one sex in favor of the opposite, only to exchange them again the day succeeding.”

Above, I've provided an excerpt from a journal I've kept quite private for sometime. Six months after coming out, I entered into a new crisis of identity, having found a trap door in the floor of my closet. Gender fluidity. A nasty little curse. Not inverted enough to be transexual, not convicted enough to be transgendered, just a girl who likes girls and wakes up somedays feeling like a boy—and who's a girl again by sundown. I spent months in dark confusion before I learned to tread the ebb and flow, collecting my ying and overabundant yang into a gimpy rhythm.

But I don't offer these intimate details for nothing. I lay them out here as justification for ignoring the vast majority of Richard Bruce Nugent's selected works, focusing instead on the tiny, eight-lined poem tucked away beneath his prolific piece, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade.” Fittingly entitled , Nugent's “Narcissus,” caught me full in the chest, it's beautiful androgyny pouring two stanzas-worth of validation over my pinched psyche. Nugent understands. Echo's “double sexed smile” I've seen in the mirror, as “male into female seemed to flow.” The idea of male within female and female within male is boldly illustrated. Gay rebel indeed. I was not expecting to relate, since I am the the quiet antithesis to everything that Nugent stands for as an author—brave, black, male lover of men. But my throat closed at his tender illustration of Narcissus' mythical nymph, his careful treatment of gender fluidity.

As a piece, I found this poem most interesting for it's petite, gem-like quality. So succinct and feminine, yet not homoerotic. It lends me some confidence in the bisexual themes featured in “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” where Freudian subtext and overt homoeroticism are challenged by Alex's love for Melva. Having always been guiltily prejudicial of male bisexuality myself, I struggled to accept Alex's professed duality of affection, but “Narcissus” dashed my skepticism. I feel Nugent challenging his reader to crack open a turgid can of worms, one I myself would care much more to bury. Oddly, though not expecting to be taken by his work, I have adopted Nugent as an artist of interest, despite our inherent differences as people—or perhaps in spite of them.

Poetry: Sappho

Comment below on Sappho's "Fragment 31" or on Swinburne's creative translation, "Anactoria."

The Realm Between Two Worlds

The Realm Between Two Worlds

By: Kelsea Reeves

“Epistemology of the Closet” by Eve Sedgwick focuses on the ideology that the metaphorical closet that is often associated with homosexuality extends beyond the basic premise that most believe it rests on. Many people in the modern world have the belief that the closet is a onetime ordeal. When you’re out, you’re out. When in fact this isn’t always the case. Sedgwick highlights this on page 68 of her work when she states that “For many gay people it (the closet) is still the fundamental feature of social life, and there can be few gay people. . . in whose lives the closet is still not a shaping presence.” This passage sets the theme for the rest of the work and is something that can very easily be related to once brought to your attention.

As a reader initially beginning the work, I assumed it would be simply about how one goes about “coming out” or what it was like prior to “coming out”. Upon reading it though, I realized that this metaphorical closet is a place that a homosexual may never be able to leave. At the most there will be one foot out of the door. But no matter how out and proud one is, they will have to live with the social norm that most people abide by which states that everyone is straight until absolutely proven gay., So every time a homosexual has to clarify their orientation to anyone else, they are once again exiting the closet.

Another big center of Sedgwick’s writing is that the metaphorical closet extends beyond homosexuality but in a very different way. “Vibrantly resonant as the image of the closet is for many oppressions, it is indicative for homophobia in a way it cannot be for other oppressions.” (75). The truth in this lies in the fact that when one is black, female, old, young, they don’t get the opportunity to hide what they are, like homosexuals may. So in a sense, while still experiencing prejudice, they are thrown out of the closet. Some may consider this the easier of the two. While it is known in scientific basis that any of the above things aren’t “choices” but something that one has no control over, it is still a widespread belief that one chooses to be homosexual. Thus making finding the courage to embrace your sexuality a frightening event.

Works Cited:

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Epistemology of the Closet.” Epistemology of the Closet. Berkley: U of California P, 1991. 67-90. Print.

I'm Stumbling Out!

12 AM. It's the last night of the high school band trip, and I lay in bed, cautiously sliding my finger back and forth on the "send" button of my phone, just waiting for my conscious to pull me aside and give me a stern talking to so I can just delete the message and this debacle from my memory forever. However, in a random fit of bravery, I quickly press the send button, close my phone, and stare at the ceiling while my mind fills me in on what I just did. I have just sent a love text to the man of my dreams who I have been endlessly crushing on for the past year. Okay, sounds simple enough.

The problem? He's my straight best friend and he's been lying next to me this entire time.

Oops.

I didn't come out of my closet with a beauty queen wave to the happy chant of thousands of people cheering me on, I pretty much just fell out, landing right onto the asphalt. At that point, I thought my closeted days were very much over.

However, despite this less than elegant event, most of my fellow peers said surprisingly little of it. Of course it was the talk of the town in the Band Hall, but my peers in class kept it very hush-hush. No one brought up the situation unless I said something to the effect of referencing it, but then it was quickly put away. I couldn't figure it out. Why was I not the laughing stock of my local high school? Shouldn't everyone know?

I had literally fallen out of the closet with a bang, thinking my life was over, and no one noticed? In fact, while a few people helped me off the ground to pick up some pieces, it seemed like no one really cared about the "debacle" in the first place. 

This isn't what I'd seen on Glee. I was supposed to be slandered, bullied, pushed up against walls, and finally sing "Defying Gravity" to show how much I don't care about what people think of me, but that never happened. All of my fellow students just went on with their lives, minding their own business, so as the months wore on; I got to quietly slip back into the now-cracked closet to finish high school, where I lived my Senior Year in utter bliss.

So why should I tell this tale? Eve Sedgwick claims in her "Epistemology Of The Closet" that "closets" are still daily features of the gay lifestyle and entering and remaining in said closets can help avoid scrutiny and insult (Sedgwick 68). It's also not only a feature of the lives of gay people, and it affects anyone and everyone (Sedgwick 68).

Closets can be many things to many different people. For some, it can hold shameful secrets one wants to keep from the public eye, for others it may just hold scrapbooks and memories of days long since passed, but for a few, including me, it was a place where I was safe from public scrutiny. However, my peers let me venture back into my comfort zone, showing me how important closets really are to us all, even if it took me a crazy, love-struck text message to realize it.

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