Philosophical Musings

It's been far too long since a good philosophical rant, so here we go (don't try to hide your cringe from me, I can smell it).

I submitted a paper for the Undergraduate Philosophy Conference which was selected to be read and critiqued! I will read it on Friday, May 12th at 2pm in one of the River Rooms at the EMU. The "group" it's under is Feminist Thought, but it's about the subjectivity of women and gay men in the social sphere (namely, that they have theirs removed).

When looking at feminist philosophy, as a man, there is much for me to digest. I had to understand the nature of the subject and how, in society, it is constructed with regard to the heterosexual male. This didn't make me angry or upset, however, it did make me very uncomfortable. At first, I thought this class was going to be a bunch of man-bashing, but now that I've taken it, I believe all men should too. We speed through life without questioning and why and how our lives are socially constructed the way they are. Generally, we simply accept our place and play our gender roles accordingly.

Women have been without their own gender since the dawn of time. I say this not because of biological factors, because they obviously have different parts than men, but their identity has historically been constructed in the shadow of the male. It is an untruth that Eve came from Adam's rib. The actual Hebrew reads that Adam (pronounced, "Ah-Dahm") was an origin "being", without a sexual orientation. Furthermore, they never got married in the garden, that was added later by someone somewhere. Side note: don't consider yourself a real Christian if you can't read Hebrew and Greek; not because some things aren't the same but because the differences bring about an entirely altered understanding.

Men have usurped subjective primacy throughout the ages, because traditition dictated that they could and society generally placed them in a category so they would. The phrase, "it's a man's world" has new-found meaning for me, because it doesn't end there. What we value in ourselves and how we proceed through life depends largely on how we decide to fit into our social networks. Quite simply, if you don't fit, you don't belong. Therefore, even though women have made significant gains in the past decades (well, in the US and Europe at least), they still make $.76 to every $1 a man makes for the same positions and have not dispersed the responsibility of housework and other "wifely" duties (it's now estimated that over 90% of women with full-time jobs in marital relationships still do over 95% of the housework).

Which brings me to women and gay men. The project of my paper is to find paths of intersection between the socially constructed woman and gay man. This is a broad look, considering I don't factor in race or sexual orientation of the women. However, when looking at how our positions have been shaped in society, we have several things in common.

As I stated before, there is the issue of subjectivity. For gay men, they were not always socially "gay". They were of a gender that was being shaped as dominant until they decided to come out or in my case, be treated as a "faggot" anyway. So, even though they aren't aware of subjectivity, it's meanings or implications, young gay men, who once were part of a gender, are now all of a sudden finding themselves cast out into an amorphous realm of human-but-only-kinda. Adolescence is awkward for any person (heterosexuals too) but I don't think the "casting out" is later remedied when people "grow up".

So, where have gay men ended up (in part)? Well, my favorite example is to look at Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Here you have five overly-coiffed, larger-than-life versions of the "best" field they represent. They primp and prod at the straight guy, attempting to get him to try things he's never tried and cost a fortune (Armani suits, caviar, fine wines, etc.). They spend a ludicrous sum of money re-decorating his digs with designer label furniture and accoutrements (correction: they get a ludicrous sum of digs donated). They give him expensive facial care products, trim his unsightly hair, all in the hopes of making him appealing to some babe in his life. Is this a problem? Well, no, but it's naieve to say their only task is to rectify some physical inadequacies the guy has.

My point is that gay men are becoming constructed as "arbiters" between the masculine identity (which they still embody, kinda) and the feminine identity (which they also embody, kinda). Theirs is a task of arbitration between women who they understand and men with whom they are. They are "helpers" to the straight men and "confidants" to the straight women. My problem is that their identity has not been constructed of their own devices. Instead, the emphasis on gay culture is placed in physical appearance, monetary worth and posessions, posessions, posessions. They have the masculine physical identity with the attendance of the modern woman.

I know that on a smaller, more intimate scale, this doesn't always pan out. The gay men I know are strong, intelligent individuals who don't buy into the gay beauty ideal. On the same hand, all of them, at one time or another, did and went to great lengths to attain it. Sound familiar? Sound like a woman's plight in our culture? One has to have the tenacity of a bear to surmount the oppressive guilt associated with not "fitting in". Needless to say, the above is only a snipped of my larger argument and therefore, lacking in many respects. I am in no way divorced from my consumeristic tendencies, nor do I think gay media is a "bad thing". On the other hand, I remain critical because it's in my nature and this stuff is so damn interesting.