Heteronormativity at Gonzaga

Sexuality absolutely deserves a place in academia. It is as much of a condition about being a human as race, gender, or social class. Identities are shaped around what and who one prefers in bed (or elsewhere.) Certain identities, such as the homo/bisexual, are queered and deemed deviant and perverse. Individuals such as Matthew Shepard have lost their lives because of how sexuality in society is treated while men live lies, cheat on their wives with men in empty truck stop bathrooms. Studies such as those by Dr. McKenzie have concluded that not only has homosexuality been around for centuries, but bisexuality is the normal state of existence. Yet in society and many academic departments, the subject of any investigation is considered heterosexual. An example that set my passion for sexuality studies and queer theories ablaze was a recent all student sexuality survey sent out by Gonzaga’s social sciences department. In their search for Truth and understanding of sexuality, the authors of the survey posited a universal heterosexual subject; all queer identities had to answer according to heteronormative standards. The survey uses its power of seeking truth to engage in representational practices that exclude a large group of individuals who use their sexuality to construct identity; heterosexuality is both demanded and enforced. This is an inherently philosophical question because it is one regarding how truth is formulated and the politics of representation, all of which seem to be a heavy concern for the postmoderns as well as queer theorists.

First, it is important to explain the intention of the survey. Its purpose was to show how the student body felt about sexuality. Surveys are an attempt to come to terms with what the general population feels or believes about a subject. They are constructed so that a targeted audience could adequately answer. The point of the survey was to show how students were educated about sexually transmitted diseases and how comfortable students were with sexual intercourse. All of these are relevant and important questions; it is by all means a noble goal and an important site of research. However, as I will explain later, it is at the expense of queer identities and the very nobility of the survey shuts off any mode of criticism or critical thinking.


This particular survey engages in a representational practice before the survey is even taken. One knows before a single answer is asked that it is “student wide,” and thus anyone who is a student at Gonzaga should be able to participate and it reflect said identity. It is represented as all-inclusive and universal.


Yet as I took this survey, I realized this simply could not be the case. Sexuality in general was understood in heterosexual terms. First, there is an overbearing focus on the subject as “pre-marital.” Here are a list of questions that assumed such as subject:

TRUE OR FALSE:
I believe that intercourse before marriage is wrong.
It is against my religious beliefs to have intercourse before marriage
I do not feel ready to have pre-marital intercourse.
WHAT IS THE LIKELIHOOD OF THE FOLLOWING (1-4):
If you were in a close relationship with a partner who desired sexual intercourse and the opportunity were available, would you engage in pre-marital sexual intercourse?
How likely are you to engage in sexual intercourse before you get married?


Through these types of questions, non-heterosexual subjects are forced to answer questions regarding their sexuality as defined by the possibility of marriage. As a gay man, it is irrelevant whether or not I think intercourse before marriage is wrong: I can’t get married. The likelihood of me to have “pre-marital intercourse” is dependent on the likelihood of me having the opportunity to get married. By representing intercourse as inherently “pre-marital” for any student taking the survey, the student population becomes defined as heterosexual. Even though the possibility exists for me to move to a state that allows gay marriage or wait till it becomes legalized where I live, the survey must come to terms with present-day politics, where marriage is assumed and defined as a heterosexual institution between one man and one woman. The question that is the most inflammatory is the first likelihood question. It represents all “close relationships with a partner” as “pre-marital,” destroying the possibility of reading “partner” as non-heterosexual.


Another problem with this survey was the conflation of “sexual activity” and “intercourse.” Rather than exploring the complexities and many facets of sexual relations, it becomes represented as vaginal penetration by a penis. Even when the phrase “sexual activity” is used separately, it becomes one and the same as “intercourse.” Sex and sexuality simply cannot be reduced to intercourse. This is particularly true in the lesbian community where “intercourse” is artificial and generally does not involve any sort of “penetration;” rather it is a form of sexual activity that does not confine itself to the discursive limits of the word intercourse. This is also true for men who are attracted to other men but do not desire to engage in anal intercourse. The identities mentioned above are erased and disciplined to answer the questions according to heterosexual categories; it forces sexual assimilation.


Furthermore, this has consequences for people who are not homosexual. A focus on intercourse obfuscates other modes of sexual relations. As mentioned above, the very nobility of this survey comes from its importance of having students confront STDs and how comfortable they really are about sex. But STDs and sexual autonomy cannot be defined by vaginal penetration. Most STDs can be contracted through other modes of relation and other modes of sexual relations can have as much of an emotional effect on a subject as actual intercourse. Thus it seems very reductive to have this type of overbearing focus on intercourse.


Also, there is a focus on the question of the subject’s virginity. There are around four questions that all are synonymous with the question “Are you a virgin, yes or no?” The word “virgin” is very discursively powerful. I, as well as several of my sexually active friends, are virgins according to the Catholic church. Through the identification of a virgin/non-virgin binary, identities are disciplined and understood according to past heterosexual vaginal penetrating acts. There is also a question of purity at stake that has far-reaching implications for heterosexuals who have participated in sexual intercourse.



Furthermore, students are asked whether the “in crowd” in high school was sexually active and if one felt like he or she could become popular depending upon one’s virginity. This ignores that the “in crowd” could never be “out.” While it is true that the most popular students at my high school were sexually active, I would never be capable of gaining social rewards for losing my “virginity” to another male; in fact, I would and was punished for such an act. One can conclude that a set of questions according to “what is popular” ignores the question of “who (according to sexual identity) is popular,” which is, in most cases, heterosexual.



A problem others and I have had with criticizing the survey was that many heterosexuals thought it achieved a good goal and thus it was ok to marginalize others for the sake of understanding STDs and sexual responsibility. Criticism becomes irrelevant because the survey is defined in its way of seeking good. It is acceptable to regulate and discipline queer identities for the sake of gaining heterosexual knowledge of STDs and sexual responsibilities. Thus, it becomes defended based on the terms it sets up and hiding the obscene underside which excludes queers.



Through the survey, sexuality becomes neutral and objective, rather than a question of social identities which has all too real rewards and punishments. It is represented as some invisible center upon which identities are disciplined in order to become normal. One must assimilate into heterosexual categories in order to succeed. The damage is not simply to the identities who take the survey; the results also take on a heteronormative slant. While it is important to be asking questions about sexuality, it can’t be at the expense of non-heterosexual individuals. Such an approach fails to realize that the knowledge produced assumes and enforces a heterosexual subject. The failure of this particular survey shows the inadequacy of Gonzaga in terms of sexuality in general. While there are feminist ethics philosophy classes and studies about women and gender, queer individuals and sexuality in general is only understood as a secondary concern while other schools have courses devoted to sexuality. Queer theory is a very important subject across philosophy, sociology, and sexuality departments at many schools, yet not a breath of it is mentioned at Gonzaga. Yes, we had a heavily sociological approach towards GLBT studies, which is a great start, but what is truly needed is a postmodern approach that recognizes how sexuality constructs identities and is intimately tied to power relations. Because heterosexuals have the power to define normality, identities are queered, excluded, and brutalized for the sake of maintaining a (false) heterosexual order.

A Beautiful Love

Here's a short story I wrote. It's rather creepy - hope you enjoy!

A Beautiful Love

The complex figure fissured into two bodies as he withdrew his hand from underneath the girl’s shirt. The crisp, spring breeze ruffled the girl’s hair into waves of mahogany beauty. She smiled at him, and he at her: it was love.

“Isn’t this wonderful, Lazarus? Is this heaven?” the girl sighed. Her pearly teeth illuminated between her slender, rose lips. Lazarus gazed upon her youthful visage: yes, this was heaven. Heaven was here: beaming into her brown eyes. The rest of the world did not matter, for the world reflecting back at him through her gaze was the only one that he cared about .

“Yes, yes it is.” He responded, blinking twice from the lumps of coal hiding beneath his grey-speckled beard. His age was showing as wrinkles crawled from the slits holding his dark eyes down to every visible part of his face. Sixty-five years young, he always said.

The couple collided once again. And as a cloud eclipsed the sun, a feeling of concern overcame half of the huddled mass. Lazarus pondered, “C-clara? You know, I read the obituary the other day… I hear God is dead and we have killed Him. Heaven… Heaven is not real. But this is, right?”

“Of course this is,” she moaned, moving her hand down his thigh, “now dance with me, my love! Dance! Enjoy every part of my existence with you! For it is here, in the now!”

And as if conjured by the grace of Cupid, a flock of birds perched themselves upon the white picket fence that separated the garden of Lazarus from his neighbor’s house and began to chirp a sweet song. The couple swung about, lovingly caressing each other as the world spun out of focus. Everything blurred. Lazarus closed his eyes. Solemn but youthful, Clara’s voice echoed throughout the darkness, “You know, they say in order to get into heaven, one must make great sacrifices. Do you believe in that, my love? Do you believe that, if God is dead, we could make heaven here? Because I do believe in it, Lazarus, I do. But where is our Isaac? What have you done to show me you believe? What have you done to show that I can have faith in us?”

“Yes Clara, I believe in it because you believe in it and I believe in you. I believe in us Clara. What can I do to make you believe in us Clara? What do I need to do?” he sobbed.

Cackling, Clara contended, “Is it so difficult to wrap your elderly mind around? You must kill her!”

Lazarus opened his eyes. His love: gone; the birds: gone. Reality and the two words his lover left with him were all that remained. He stood in the garden, bearing his dirty gardening jeans and ripped “I Love New York” shirt, stained from the previous night’s escapades to Denny’s. He gazed about the beautiful world before him: a light, spring day, a warm breeze, and his flowers blooming. But where was Clara? Where had she gone? Her desertion made this heaven on Earth into a living nightmare. He needed her. She sustained his happiness.

Next door, tears welled up in Mrs. Mayfield’s eyes. She had been watching Lazarus zone out for the past twenty minutes from her window. She knew it was him: he was the one who took her daughter away. He was the one who had taken away her only reason for living. And he would suffer. She was sure of it. “Mr. Benedict, could you come over for a second?” she yelped from her patio, swiping the tears from her face.

Lazarus gazed at the pesky mother of his lover; Clara had said to kill her. Mrs. Mayfield, the woman who had birthed his precious angel, was always the barrier between a true relationship between him and Clara. Tonight, oh yes, tonight he was going to eradicate that barrier once and for all. And then all his wildest dreams could once again be reality. Maybe then he could feel her touch, her soft skin once more.

He strolled through the gate and into his neighbor’s yard. Straining to bear a smile, he answered: “Why hello Mrs. Mayfield. Excellent day for gardening, it is. Did you need something?”

Mrs. Mayfield fantasized momentarily about fetching her 12 gauge shotgun from the bedroom and blasting the geezer’s face in. But being the good Christian she was, she frowned and said, “Have you heard from my Clara? It has been two weeks and the officers have found absolutely nothing…”

Lazarus interrupted.

“Now now, Mrs. Mayfield, I will tell you this for the fifth time—Clara seeks adventure outside of our suburban neighborhood! She is only sixteen after all. And surely you remember how you were at sixteen: a free spirit yearning to venture into the world. But she will come back. They always do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to, but is there anything else?”

Mrs. Mayfield grunted: he was lying. She walked into her house and climbed up the stairs—she needed a nap. Before laying down for what would be her final rest, she gazed out her window. Lazarus was carrying an unlit torch as well as two plastic canisters that looked to contain gasoline. Mrs. Mayfield made her fatally final thought: Lazarus Benedict was just an odd, old man. She was being paranoid. She was a good Christian woman and had no need to spy any longer. A gust of wind howled outside and witht that, she closed the blinds, shrouding the last rays of sunlight she would ever see in her all too lonely abode.

The fire climbed high into the sky. What was this feeling Lazarus felt? Was it guilt? Was it relief that he could have his everything? The fire certainly got him feeling hot and bothered, but it was unlike any eroticism he had experienced before.

Trudging into the foyer, his soot laden boots left tracks of ash as he stride to embrace his lover. Clara wrapped her youthful limbs around his body and then stood back, admiring the aged man. She wore a magnificent red evening gown that evoked the most perverted of thoughts within Lazarus’ imagination. “Oh my love, can you hear the sirens!?” she shrieked with pleasure, “They are so wonderful! Oh Lazarus! You did it!”

The couple’s lips touched momentarily, but then Clara broke free. “ But I must show you something, Lazarus. Then forever we can be together!”

She danced to a side door, swung it open, and glided down the stairs to the basement. Lazarus sprinted after his true love, but tripped down the rickety stairs as they crumbled beneath his feet. There was no escape. Not from Clara and certainly not from the basement.

It was dark; old furniture was shoved against the walls with the smell of something grim staining the air. He froze. In front of him was a path of light from the solitary window in the basement. The light, made of flashing red lights from the fire trucks next door, revealed an opening in the stone floor. A large part of the floor rest upon the wall. Within the hole lay the corpse of his love: her hair no longer mahogany waves but rather muddy masses clumping together; her face no longer youthful but broken, the jaw crookedly ajar from the brown, scarred visage revealing bloody gaps and chipped teeth. Her lips, no longer plump and rose with beauty, but stained with crusty lumps of congealed, dried blood. Her eyes closed, sleeping forever. Lazarus sobbed. He scanned the rest of the mangled corpse, bare of all clothes with only mud and blood covering her body. Arms and legs were crushed and angled in inhuman directions from the force of the stone that had concealed her resting grounds.

Reality finally came to Lazarus—he remembered life before Clara, life before he realized his love, life before he offered her a ride, life before he confessed his love, life before he was rejected, and life before he slay the girl who refused to acknowledge his feelings. As tears trailed down his face, sweeping the soot into clumps at his chin, he recalled the feeling of the rope burning his hands as he lashed Clara’s arms together in the back of his car, the shredding of her clothes, and the bludgering of her tender body with a metal pipe.

He rest his head upon her breast. “Oh Clara, my darling Clara, why did this happen? Where is heaven? Where is love? Why did you leave? I thought this was real! We were bringing heaven here, my darling! What is this?” he moaned.

Embracing her tightly within Clara’s grave, his question was answered by a loud thump; the stone propped against the wall collapsed upon the hole containing the sullen old man and corpse of a bad romance, closing the final gate between fantasy and reality. The thump, followed by the cracking of bones and the severing of Lazarus foot from his leg, echoed momentarily but was drown out by the sirens next door.

Within this room on this spring night, there was nothing in the air but love and the stench of rotting flesh. Simply put: it was beautiful.