Last night Bill O'Reilly demonstrated exactly what the gap between folks like himself and progressives are in regards to LGBT issues:
O- "What if you're a parent and you don't believe in homosexuality. For whatever reason, you just don't believe in it- why should you have to deal with your kids being taught about it? Why do they have to deal with these books like King & King?"
Guest- "Well, first of all, public schools aren't a forum for parents to try to dictate cirriculum."
O stares, stunned, and tries to digest this.
O to his guest-"What's your nationality?"
Guest- "I happen to be Jewish."
O-"OK, you're Jewish, I'm Irish. That's who I am, that's my identity, my bloodline. But why talk about what people do? Why put that on the same level?"
The issue here, of course, is that O'Reilly's definition of identity is extremely narrow. People identify themselves according to all sorts of different criteria- and frankly, classifying people by what they do, especially in terms of history, is by no means new. You study all the US Presidents, right? They're studied based on what they DID- a specific occupation. You don't study Garfield because he was left-handed. Identity (and significance) are measured by more than just genetics. (With all apologies to Disabled groups who like pointing to folks like FDR as "a famous differently-abled dude".)
On the other hand, using this argument, you might go on to critique the whole idea of identity studies, identity history, etc... and that might be a legitimate discussion. But if you're going to say "Irishness" and "Blackness" are legitimate identities, you have to recognize that for a lot of people, "Queerness" is also an identity- if you have an issue with Black and Irish history month, and I think there are legitimate points to be made there, than that's one thing- but you can't have Black History month and then bitch when the gays want to write about their famous people, too.
And who heard of Irish history month, anyway? Is this another public school thing I missed out on?
For the curious, here's a list of some people LGBT history month might- heaven forbid- teach kids about. Not Michaelangelo, Tchaikovsky and Jane Addams! Think of the children!!
(Oh, and apparently this isn't the first time Bill's gone after "King-Squared", which, for the curious among you, resulted in a sequel.)
2 comments:
If you're going to put sexual identity on the same level as ethnic or national identity then why draw the line at Queer Studies.
There should also be Bestiality Studies and Pedophilia Studies (after all plenty of great men were pedophiles...
From C.S. Lewis to Michael Jackson: A Definite Study of the Creepy Arts
Then to top it all off the argument for including people as part of LBGT identity who never identified themselves as such and were never part of the very modern construct of Gay Identity, is dishonest at best.
There should also be Bestiality Studies and Pedophilia Studies (after all plenty of great men were pedophiles...
If you could design the course or class in a way that this perspective might be useful, I don't see why it should be automatically rejected. I'm sure there have been a number of classes analyzing "the mind of the [insert criminal act here]", for instance. My interest is not so much in giving every group a piece of the pie (as this would lead to endless subdivision) but in determining what categorizations are academically and intellectually productive. I think there is a good case that LGBT identity is a "worthwhile" prism through which to view a period of history or a collection of writings or a group of individual achievements. Of course I'm also approaching this from a higher level than what would be spoon-fed to elementary children. At the same time, I don't think that, "here is a list of LGBT Americans" is any worse than "here is a list of Irish-Americans". At a certain point, a lot of identity scholarship starts boiling down to negotiating relative levels of meaninglessness.
Then to top it all off the argument for including people as part of LBGT identity who never identified themselves as such and were never part of the very modern construct of Gay Identity, is dishonest at best.
I agree, there is a definite issue there. A similar argument could be made for quite a few areas in identity scholarship (what do you do with the Egyptians? Do you count them as Arabs? Muslims? Africans?). I would say that there is a spectrum in which the label is appropriate, even if anachronistic. On the other hand I am sure there are also various personalities who would not meet this litmus test- particularly with bisexuality, which seems to be very complicated in terms of identity in times past (also, as Shmuley illustrated, you have the very basic problem of whether you define people solely by their acts, or their emotions and their self-identitication, as well).
However, I think the the basic argument- that LGBT identity is as substantial to LGBTs as, say, Irishness is to some Irish people- is sound. The question and problems then become focused around identity politics and scholarship itself, not whether LGBT is deserving of being placed on the same "level".
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