on the discursive limits of queer

In this week's New Yorker Comment, Hendrik Hertzberg addresses Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s recent eponymous “offenses.”  Detailing the rather lackluster attempted rendezvous from the police report—“After exchanging stares with the seated officer through the crack of the stall door, Craig entered an adjoining stall, sat down, and tapped his foot. In response, the cop wrote, ‘I moved my foot up and down slowly.’ Craig touched the side of his foot to the side of the cop’s. Then he swiped his fingertips three times along the bottom of the stall divider. Then he got arrested.”—as well as Craig’s “snarky” spin, Hertzberg aptly sums up what is most offensive about the entire debacle:

[Craig’s] real misdemeanor is to be a conflicted, closeted homosexual who is driven to seek furtive (though consensual) sex by sending coded signals in public toilets. The real offense, the real obscenity, is that even a jurisdiction as enlightened as the Twin Cities still feels free to devote police resources to compounding the unhappiness of such people.

As Hertzberg continues, a question of what, at first glance, would seem to be semantics arises. Craig has repeatedly declared, “I am not gay,” and his political position certainly supports that claim; Hertzberg in response writes, “if gayness is an identity as well as an innate predilection he may be right. He is, however, evidently homosexual.” 

The issue then is one of identity politics—and politicking identity.  Is it possible in the 21st century, when identity is as easily subsumed, assumed, and consumed as not, to be homosexual but not gay?  Is queerness as much a political as sexual choice—and is it even really possible to divorce the two? 

If the Senator’s public politics contrast so severely with his private actions, if he might be homosexual but not gay, then does that mean in turn that, for instance, a straight couple choosing to have a domestic partnership rather than a legal marriage because of their concern for gay rights (what Erik Baard calls “hetero holdouts” in a 2003 Village Voice article) constitute as aspect of queerness?  That would seem to lead to a slippery slope as far as other identity politics, those concerning race and sex, say, go.  (I’m biased here, but I’ve never taken a women’s studies class taught by a male professor…) Yet identity itself is a slippery issue, and politics rarely offer a secure grip—particularly when the politic at hand is one so entwined in both public and personal power dynamics.  Does queerness suggest a different division of power—and does Craig’s foiled restroom tryst fall outside this if it does? 

If identity, and politics for that matter, might be considered a performance (thinking of Ms. Butler here), then identity politics become performative—based on the capacity for doing, for action.  And Hertzberg offers one possible positive outcome of Craig’s actions: that if Craig reverses his guilty plea, “the resulting trial, whatever its outcome, might help discourage the kind of treatment to which he has been subjected.”  A “happy performative,” for sure…

Comments

[Snarky]

Crack-potty, indeed. I didn't even notice the pun! Thanks for raising it up from the sublimes of my gutter mind to the surfaces. :)

The "LUG" phenomenon leads me to wonder if sexuality (or at least sexual choices) can't be fluid for a much longer time than the years one spends in college. And as you point out in your comments about the communicable nature of this phenomenon, perhaps sexuality is also sometimes a contextual thing: informed by the people whom you meet and what their interests/behaviors are like? Just as some people take to playing with model airplanes for a while, or vandalizing houses, or knitting in circles of friends, or doing aerobics, perhaps their recreational sex is also shaped by who they happen to know and care about? Or maybe that is too loosey-goosey? I don't know.

Anyhow, your blogging about Craig's train station pass-times has at least caused me to think, which is a good thing in itself.

[sharkskin girl]

Snarky-
The pun, whether intentional or not, on "crack-potty," given the context, is one of the funniest things I've read in quite some time! And a LUG = lesbian until graduation. It was a bit of a communicable disease at Oberlin...

And, yes, I absolutely agree: society is filled with people doing so much worse than what poor Craig didn't even have a chance to.

Thanks, as always!
sharkskin

[Snarky]

Thanks sharkskin girl,

For you, I always try to be at my most erudite. :) I think this is what bothers me most about the Craig incident:

"The question of whether Craig is gay or homosexual or not--or, more significantly, the question of why we need to define his sexuality for him--is the pressing one here."

I don't need to define Craig's sexuality for him. I think I am fine with accepting his claim that he is a straight man (albeit a straight man caught in a rather deviant sexual situation). If he is straight in his mind, then that's good enough for me.

As for Craig's past political stances on gay issues, I think they are pretty sad regardless of whether he is straight or a closeted gay dude. I've never understood why politicians think it is their business to defend the "sanctity" of heterosexual marriage; if there's something threatening about gay people getting married, I figure it must be economic. I don't understand the moral or sexual threats involved, and think it's wrong to mask socioeconomic discrimination in crap about family values or procreation. How many straight couples actually get married for the purpose of having children or upholding the sanctity of the family??

But then again, Craig is a product of the bizarro American culture in which he lives, and a production of his generation. I don't know a lot of men his age who would celebrate the act of cruising for sex in bathrooms. However, I'm not sure how a younger generation feels about such acts. I think it's fine. Whatever turns you on!

Your comment about women's bathrooms and the apparent lack of surveillance that takes place in them made me laugh. :) I've never heard of a woman busted in the can for trying to engage in sex with another woman. Maybe if Craig IS totally straight and just likes anonymous sex, then he has to resort to male restrooms because no woman would be crack-potty enough to take him up on sexual advances in a ladies' room? I mean, most women at least have enough sense to take this sort of stuff to a motel room!

What's a LUG? Where I came from, women who experimented with other women were called "heterosexual pretenders." I found that term richly ambiguous--which way does the pretending go? Are they pretending to *be* heterosexual, or are they heterosexuals pretending to be lesbians?

In any case, I am sure that our society is full of people who've done a lot worse things than poor old Craig.

[sharkskin girl]

Dear Snarky,

Thank you for your, as ever, erudite comments. While I agree that Larry Craig is, indeed, a "strange duck" and that one's political temperament should not necessarily be determined by one's personal behavior--and certainly not by one's sexual preference--I do pause over the notion of genitalia-blind politics.

It's a tricky area: one doesn't want to regress into a biological determinism, yet might it not be somewhat irresponsible not to consider the way sociopolitics play into the way sex, gender, and sexuality (like race, ethnicity, and class) are read and performed? I admit to taking a moderately essentialist feminist stance on this one--a stance that has haunted me since my early days as an undergrad, and as a woman who was once referred to as "Mr." in a blind orchestra audition simply because I play double bass and it was apparently easier on the part of the audition committee to assume that bassists are always men than to choose a more gender-neutral mode of address.

But, I digress. The question of whether Craig is gay or homosexual or not--or, more significantly, the question of why we need to define his sexuality for him--is the pressing one here. I concur: the police report is at best inconclusive and at worst absolutely homophobic in its intent and accusation. Would an undercover officer be going after straight couples sneaking into restrooms for a bit of illicit action? And does the same surveillance occur in women's restrooms?

I don't know the Foucault -- perhaps Tweed can offer up something on that. As for "straight" men, or women, who partake of same-sex encounters without needing to rethink their hetero-, bi-, or homosexuality... again, a tricky one. There's a reason why a number of lesbians I know shake their head in dismay over college encounters with LUGs. But has the notion of a sexuality continuum completely fallen out of favor? Are we still stuck in the linear tropes of straight and gay without any recourse to a more fluid structure?

Identity, no matter how it is determined--and, sadly, perhaps no matter whether it is self-determined or imposed--is inseparable from politics. And when these politics meet other politics in a bathroom stall, the results are apparently never pretty.

Best,
sharkskin

[Snarky]

“if gayness is an identity as well as an innate predilection he may be right. He is, however, evidently homosexual.”

I disagree with Hertzberg: there is nothing "evidently" homosexual going on with Craig. Based on the snippets of the police report, there was some footsies going on in the bathroom. What else might have happened (or not) is open to speculation. In short, straight men can inadvertently play footsies with undercover police officers, too.

Even if Craig went on to perform a sexual act on the police officer (or if the cop performed a sexual act on him), I see no reason to define such an act as "homosexual." Like gay, homosexual implies an identity category. If Craig does not identify as homosexual (or gay), then maybe he is a straight man who enjoys the possibility of sexual encounters with other men (straight or gay) in public places?

Didn't Foucault do a historical study of the ancient Greek men who married and had children, yet who sometimes performed sexual acts with other men (usually much younger men or socially inferior men)? I don't remember the details, but I think there was a time when what you did with your genitals did not necessarily define you as a person. I think Craig is revisiting that model of sexuality, or identity, or politics, or whatever...

He's a strange duck. So what? People should let him do his job and if he sucks at it [okay the pun is intended:)], then they can vote him out in the next election.