Eli Clare’s “Freak and Queers” explores how certain bodies are deemed “other” or “abnormal” while others are considered to be “standard” or “normal,” highlighting the negative perceptions regarding disability, race, class, sexuality, and gender throughout the U.S. The concept of normality and abnormality is often socially constructed, which connects to the narrow definition upheld by society of “normal” that values able-bodiedness, whiteness, wealth, heterosexuality, and cisgender identities. This narrow definition perpetuates the marginalization and stigmatization of these groups of individuals whose bodies or identities do not fit within these “normal” categories. Clare argues that the negative perceptions are not universal or objective, …show more content…
Those who are poor or working class are often viewed as “others,” while those who are wealthy or middle class are often seen as “normal” or “standard.” Class has a history of shaping access to resources and opportunities for individuals, as well as the way that it is often used as a marker of worth or value. Race is another common factor in determining who is considered “normal” or “abnormal,” as mentioned in Eli Clare’s “Freaks and Queers.” In many societies, whiteness is seen as the norm, and people of color are often viewed as “other.” This is due in part to the history of colonialism and white supremacy in the U.S., which have positioned white people as superior and people of color as inferior. Sexuality and gender additionally shape perceptions of normality as those who are heterosexual and cisgender are often seen as “normal” or “standard,” while those who are queer or transgender are viewed as “abnormal.” This is largely due to the heteronormativity and cisnormativity of societal expectations and norms, as well as the way queer and transgender people are often marginalized or
Eli Clare in Reading Against the Grain mentioned that the mainstream culture has a tendency to stereotype people into eroticizes culture such as thinking all African Americans males and Latino women are hyper-sexual, perceiving Asians as passive beings, and assuming that disabled individuals have no sexual desires. Somehow people regurgitate these stereotypes as if they’re empirical facts. Objectification usually reinforces or maintains the institutionalized power differences, which can deprive some groups such as the disabled from self-determination. The section of Pride and Exile brings to light how some members of the disabled community feels that they are denied of their personal autonomy. In Clares case, she explains how the MDA fundraisers
The normalization of being a heterosexual presence would classify you as normal and you’d feel accepted by many different groups and communities by default. Certainly no one would deny that being true. What seems to be the issue is why is being heterosexual is the only type of normality society seems to accept. While reading Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/ La Frontera, the author brought up her personal struggles with her sexuality within her culture and with society. As well as other difficulties when being a female and being lesbian (Anzaldúa and Saldívar-Hull, 41). The scope of this essay should cover the many different borders we face as humans when it comes to where we draw the line on sexuality.
In certain countries such as the U.S, people discriminate against others to a certain extent based off their gender, race, and sexuality. Butler states that “to be a body is to be given over to others even as a body is “one own,” which we must claim right of autonomy” (242). Gays and Lesbians have to be exposed to the world because some of them try to hide their identity of who they truly are because they are afraid of how others are going to look at them. There are some who just let their sexuality out in the open because they feel comfortable with whom they are as human beings and they don’t feel any different than the next person. The gender or sexuality of a human being doesn’t matter because our bodies’ will never be autonomous because it is affected by others around us. This is where humans are vulnerability to violence and aggression. In countries across the globe, violence and attack are drawn towards tran...
As highlighted by the author, Mary Louise Adams in her article, “Excerpts from The Trouble with Normal”, ‘a norm’ “can be defined as something that is usual, typical or standardized” (Hacking, Adams, 2003). Norms are often already so established that most individuals do not realize how much they have shaped society and the people who live in it. Audrey Lord tells us that being a “White, thin, young, heterosexual, Christian, male” defines the characteristics of being “normal” and “privileged,” in which she calls “the mythical norm” (Perry, 2011). We use our sexuality, race and class as a way of giving ourselves an identity for the world to see. This identity will ultimately allow us to understand our place in the world and give
Saleem states that he’s seen in statistics that normal maybe seen in color and gender. Which in a way are very many schools and jobs use “normal views.” We know that reviewers will find more spelling errors in your writing if they think you're black. We know that professors are less likely to help female or minority students.And we know that resumes with white-sounding names get more callbacks than resumes with black-sounding names.” Why do we, use the norm to see the “difference” in people that have. Different in a way is good to be around, you get to learn new cultures and new ways of life. So why is normal so judged? Well “ Because of our expectations of what is normal.” (Saleem 2016) our expectations are what we see as the norm is, which is what we live around. “But studies also show that discrimination of this kind, in most cases, is simply favoritism, and it results from more from wanting to help people that you can relate to than the desire to harm people that you can't relate to.” (Saleem 2016) What if we don’t mean the norm in people? We need to start becoming one and enjoy each other's differences.
Society is filled with outcasts. Everywhere one looks, there is someone who is different and has been labeled as an outcast by the others around them. People fear disturbance of their regular lives, so they do their best to keep them free of people who could do just that. An example of this in our society is shown in people of color. Whites label people who do not look the same as them as and treat them as if they are less important as they are. The white people in our society, many times unconsciously, degrade people of color because they fear the intuition that they could cause in their everyday lives. Society creates outcasts when people are different from the “norm.”
The other can be defined as, “one whose differences and experiences are judged to be “too alien” to be understood,” (Oppression, slide 8). People often consider those who are not like them to be inferior others. Thus, it is easy to discriminate against them if their gender identity, ethnicity, sexuality, or culture is different than one’s own. In the article “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal,” an experiment is performed to see if employers are biased towards people with names that sound anything other than white (Bertrand and Mullainathan, page 428). They found that people with names that sounded more African American tended to get fewer interviews and were disregarded easier (Bertrand and Mullainathan, page 433). This experiment proved that, as a society, we tend to think people of color are less qualified to do the same job as people who are white. Thus, people who fall into this racial ethnicity are the “other”. Sexuality is often a concept that people cannot grasp past the typical heterosexual relationship. People who identify as any other sexuality on the spectrum are lesser people. In the article “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, Lorde says, “Lesbians and gaymen are expected to educate the heterosexual world,” (Lorde 78). There are many heterosexual humans that support and understand the whole spectrum of sexuality. But, instead, they remain silent which makes it
Discrimination has always been prominent in mainstream society. Judgments are quickly formed based on one’s race, class, or gender. The idea that an individual’s self-worth is measured by their ethnicity or sexual preference has impacted the lives of many Americans. During the early colonial period, a social hierarchy was established with white landowners at the top and African-American slaves at the bottom. As equality movements have transpired, victims of discrimination have varied. In the late 1980’s when Paris is Burning was filmed, gay rights were still controversial in society. The lack of acceptance in conventional society created hardships in the lives of transgender women and gay men.
In learning about different ways that we as a society categorize and divide people, it is essential to understand what about people it is that we feel the need to label and differentiate between. When a person is born into this world, there are certain statuses that they automatically obtain, called ascribed statuses (Henslin 98). These statuses determine each person’s social location in society. This includes gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and ability. Each person has their own unique social location, and is affected in a different way than the next person may be. As a white, queer, cisgender, middle class, female, in relatively good health, I have always been relatively privileged.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Being born into a social class is something that every person should be proud of. You see it in all types of classes. People take pride in who they are and where they come from. Nobody is normal, because their is a uniqueness in all of us that separates ourselves from each other. Although a lot of times we look at the middle-class as being normal, the same can be said for the lower and upper classes. In our own eyes we are normal, but to others, we are always going to look somewhat different. As long as TV continues to run programs depicting "all-American" families, and the majority of our nations population remains in the middle-class, we will always look at the hard-working man, his wife, kids, dog, and cozy house as being the definition of normal in this country.
According to Gwendolyn Smith (2010), lesbians, gays, transgender, transsexual, cross-dressers, sissies, drags king and queens, have someone they view as freak. Smith considers this to be a human phenomenon, especially among marginalized groups. Smith expresses that those that consider themselves as gender normative finds comfort in identifying the “real” freaks, in order for them to seem closer to normal. Smith attempts to tear down the wall of gender normality as it is socially constructed as simply male and female. According to Smith (2010), “we are all someone’s freak” (p. 29). Smith asserts that there may be some type of fear in facing the self’s gender truth, “maybe I was afraid I would see things in my own being I was not ready to face, or was afraid of challenging my own assumptions” (p. 29).
Along with ethos and small touch of logos, the author Roxane Gay uses a strength appeal of pathos to persuade her audience onto her argument. “White people will never know the dangers of being black in America, systemic, unequal opportunity, racial profiling, and the constant threat of police violence. Men will never know the dangers of being a woman in America, harassment, sexual violence, legislated bodies. Heterosexuals will never know what it means to experience homophobia.” (Gay). In this paragraph, the author is identify the inequality between racial barriers, genders and sexual orientation which an emotionally involved topic to bring up. How people are treated differently how the way they look, where they come from. Woman would
Kevin Stotts’ essay shows family conflict from lack of sensitivity of emotions and communication among the family members. (Rather awkwardly expressed.) The mother’s reaction to the father’s decision shows a lack of integrity when the father states “don’t feed him or he’ll stay” and the mother’s reaction is undermining the father’s decision as it states in the text “Mom helped me sneak him food.” (No, you are putting the supporting evidence into the topic sentence itself.) which indicates the dearth of integrity and trust which leads to lack of communication between the family members.
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.