Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
Whenever I hear the word queer, I immediately remember the show, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Back when I was in high school, Queer Eye was one of the most watched shows in ETC. I don’t know who influenced me to watch this show. But my main reason for watching this show was that I found it amusing to see five gay men called the “Fab 5” transform the lives of straight men in terms of their physical appearance and how they live. Now that I have studied about the queer theory, I realize that there is more to being queer than just being gay. Queer is an “umbrella term referring to the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered individuals (LGBT) (Wikipedia, 2011). According to our class discussion, queer theory tells us that identities are “inherently fluid” and therefore, are not fixed. This means that the gendered positionality and perception of men and women are blurred. These don’t matter much because in the end, we cannot be categorized into just two binary oppositions, as men and women, girl or boy due to the various characteristics that comprise our identities. In this sense, queer theory emphasized bisexuality for both men and women to diminish and deconstruct the so-called binary opposition. This means that there is flexibility for men, women and LGBT in a sense that they don’t have to follow the expectations of society. According to my friend who got it from her professor in gender development, the expected behaviors of being a male and a female are just socially constructed. Queer theory “insists that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers which create certain types of social meaning” (Colorado University). An example of this can be gender-bending. Genders have a certain set of expectations in society. For instance, women are all supposed to be soft spoken and meek while men are supposed to be tough. But society nowadays is characterized by gender-bending wherein some women portray tough chick roles whereas there are men who play the geeky and timid roles. At present, it seems like we deliberately challenge all notions of fixed identity. Believing that sexuality should not be classified into binary oppositions, I, for instance, shouldn’t be judged when I like extreme sports (associated to masculinity) and cooking (associated to femininity). At the same time, men shouldn’t be conscious of crying (associated to femininity) and his love for cars (associated to masculinity). Moreover, gay couples can be considered as women since they take care of the households and can be like “mothers” when they adopt a baby. In relation to the gay couple and marriage hype, I recently heard that Facebook, with the help of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), has advanced gay rights with its new relationship status. According to the article in Yahoo! News, “The U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia have included new gay-specific relationship status options on Facebook. When filling out a profile for the social networking site, users can now choose "domestic partnership" or "civil union." In relating this with queer theory, you will see that these gay couples can be like women whose experience consists of subjugation in society since they are not “fit for the word marriage”.
References:
Yahoo News. (2011). Can Facebook Further Advance Gay Rights with New Relationship Status Options?. Retrieved from
Klages, M. (1997.) Queer Theory. Retrieved from
Wikipedia. (2011). Queer Theory. Retrieved from
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