Status
Available
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Genres
Publication
Harvard University Press (2000), Edition: New Ed, 227 pages
Description
"Is gay marriage good for gays? Are queer people better off when they see themselves as "normal" Americans? What is lost when gays go mainstream? What, after all, is The Trouble With Normal? Here, Michael Warner, argues that gay marriage and other moves toward normalcy are bad not just for gays but for everyone. In place of the sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity."--BOOK JACKET.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ihardlynoah
Accessibly written and interesting, but has a number of flawed premises which lead to wrong conclusions. Warner's essential argument is that we should resist the "normalization" of queer folks -- in particular through marriage -- because queer culture, rather than being bad, has much to redeem it,
The problem with his argument is that it takes as a given that there is such a thing as queer or even gay culture, and that certain things are endemic to that culture. The reality is that there are numerous queer cultures and subcultures, some of them delimited by gender (e.g., stereotypically lesbian culture is certainly distinct from stereotypically gay culture), and other by other factors (e.g., queer punk). To suggest that certain features of what he terms gay or queer culture should be embraced by everyone is to assume the existence of a uniform way of being queer.
Moreover, Warner fails to address the crucial question of whether, even assuming that such a uniform queer culture exists, queer culture can be extricated from the oppression that created it. Counterculture cannot exist absent the existence of a "mainstream" culture -- Yiddish came into being as the result of the oppression of the Jewish people and their segregation into ghettos; likewise, much of what we now conceive of as "gay culture" or "queer culture" is the product of the marginalization of queer people. Yet Warner never struggles with whether embracing this legacy of oppression is problematic.
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in particular with regard to sexual liberation.The problem with his argument is that it takes as a given that there is such a thing as queer or even gay culture, and that certain things are endemic to that culture. The reality is that there are numerous queer cultures and subcultures, some of them delimited by gender (e.g., stereotypically lesbian culture is certainly distinct from stereotypically gay culture), and other by other factors (e.g., queer punk). To suggest that certain features of what he terms gay or queer culture should be embraced by everyone is to assume the existence of a uniform way of being queer.
Moreover, Warner fails to address the crucial question of whether, even assuming that such a uniform queer culture exists, queer culture can be extricated from the oppression that created it. Counterculture cannot exist absent the existence of a "mainstream" culture -- Yiddish came into being as the result of the oppression of the Jewish people and their segregation into ghettos; likewise, much of what we now conceive of as "gay culture" or "queer culture" is the product of the marginalization of queer people. Yet Warner never struggles with whether embracing this legacy of oppression is problematic.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9780674004412