Week 9 Reflection

Both the articles Updating the Gendered Empire and Homonationalism dealt with the role of the minority or, perhaps more appropriately called, the subjugated majority (i.e. women and homosexuals) and their role in forming and shaping the "empires" within which they live. I thought one of the most powerful statements in Updating the Gendered Empire was the concept that a "feminized space is not the opposite of a political space." It's something that's such an obvious issue and yet, I've never heard it articulated before. I'll even admit that when I first read that one of the three Iraqi women sent to the delegation owned a beauty shop, I was highly skeptical of what her political contribution could be. My own assumptions are just a demonstration of how deeply penetrating the heteronormative influence is; it doesn't just affect the way we see the relationship between men and women and their spheres of influence, it can even affect the way we views the space of those sphere themselves. It's not that it's strange to view a beauty shop as a feminized space but there's such a heavy heteronormative notion that if it's a feminized space it can't possibly serve any other use, that makes it seem like there is this mutual exclusivity between being both feminine and political. The image of the Iraqi government council reminds me of something I recently watched on the political satire program The Daily Show. On the Daily Show they showed some video footage from a recent council on women's health with regards to religion, convened by fox news. There were all these religious and medical experts come together to discuss the rights of a woman's body (i.e access to birth control, abortion, etc) and yet there was not a single woman among them. And I wondered how anyone could bring together a group of people to discuss women without including women? When I saw that picture of the Iraqi government council a similar thought occurred to me; how can you discuss the future and restructuring of a nation without giving the other half of the population, women, any real form of representation or voice in the formation of that new nation?

In the Homonationalism article I was struck by the idea of homonormativity. Similar to what I experienced while reading Updating the Gendered Empire, it felt like the articulation of an idea I had always known existed but could never really explain. Puar seems to suggest that even though there has been this surge in gay pride and acceptance in American society that there are far more practical motives for this limited acceptance. She states that the surge in European and American acceptance of gay marriage serves as an "insurance premium" for Westerners to tout their superiority to the "backwardness" of the Middle East. This reminded me of the kind of flip flopping on the rights and role of women that occurred under Saddam's government. When men went to fight women were encourage to "step up to the plate" and become educated and to fill the gap they had left. But when the men came home and their morale was low, women were encourage to become more conservative again. I also wondered how accepting is the United States really when we've created a homonormative culture that is completely and totally based on the white, middle class, American family steroytype?I think that in the United States we've made a fundamental mistake, just because homonationalism has been used to justify the War on Terror, it doesn't justify the horrendous Islamophobia that runs rampant in our culture nor does our perpetuation of homonationalism mean that we do not still have deep running issues of homophobia. As I see it, homonationalism really only masks the symptoms rather than providing a cure for American homophobia.