In the media

[beetiger]

Interesting article on teenaged girls and queer identity.

Is the gay rights movement evolving the way the feminist movement did, so that kids today don't know why we old folks were so adamant about identity definitions?

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

"Kids today?" Am I a kid?

I don't refuse to love (or play with) anybody because of their plumbing or who else I already love (or play with). I'm willing to acknowledge that this makes me "bi" and "poly" and that I prefer to hang out with people who get that, but I don't feel the need to wear a label to that effect. The friends I still have from high school generally all feel the same way. Most of us are mostly straight in practice and tend to have or want primary long-term companions, but this is habit, not doctrine, and what I have wanted in both those fields has changed a lot over time. I generally just don't worry about it.

I suspect that strong identification with a group rises from conflict. There is a whole lot less male-female oppression these days, so militant feminism loses hold in society overall, but you'll find that it comes out pretty strongly when there's something to come out strongly against, like sexual harrassment or clitorectomies. I might well want to be more "out" if I were surrounded by people constantly bitching about the gay rights movement than I am here among tolerant Cambridge liberal types.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Well, by 'kids' I meant the young folks in the article, or perhaps their peers a few years down the line. I've heard a lot of young women today minimize the value of the feminist movement circa 1970, because they can't see that it was neede in its cultural time, since things are much better now, and they haven't got a perspective on the past. The first time I heard an prolife teen say something like,"The easy availability of abortion forces young women to make bad choices about their lives", I was floored.

I'm rather noncategorical in my personal sexual identity choices -- I usually call myself pansexual, and am attracted especially to androgynous types, glitterbois, tough but sensitive women who wear corsets and no makeup, neuters, and people who can cook, and other various queers. But I can definitely see where the value in lobbying for "gay and lesbian" rights is, and the value in the culture of a decade ago through to today in standing up and saying, "Hey, I'm gay, this means something." I'm all for us getting past labels. I'm not for declaring the fight over when it isn't.