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This queer body is not politically correct
Jul. 5th, 2011 12:50 amI'm currently working my way through Kate Bornstein's books: I'm spending my summer at a university where - to my shock - the GLBTQ library actually caters to all its letters. It's an interesting experience: Kate seems to alternate between saying things I disagree with profoundly, and single sentences that sort out problems I've been having for years.
Tonight I want to talk about one of the latter instances. In the book Gender Outlaw: on men, women, and the rest of us, Kate says:
And I thought yes.
My queer body is not politically correct.
I am white. I am thin. To that extent, yes, I am politically correct.
But I'm not straight. I don't have marriage equality. It's not politically expedient - though to be fair both the Liberal Democrats and Labour have now expressed support. I'm not taught in schools: Section 28 was repealed while I was in secondary school, and yet there was not even a whisper about queer sexualities during sex ed. It still seems to be the case that portrayal of a queer person is sufficient for primary schools to pull out of community projects (petition).
I'm not male, and I'm not female, but there's no way to get legal recognition of this. Things are only marginally easier for binary-gendered trans* people.
I'm sound of neither body nor mind. I have a progressive chronic illness. I receive Disabled Students' Allowance, but I'm highly unlikely to receive any state help with coping after I graduate: the cuts being made to benefits for sick and disabled people, as described in great detail at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, aim to get something like ninety per cent of existing claimants off support. I don't stand a chance: most of the time, I'm able to talk in complete sentences, and most of the time I can move around the house - albeit often slowly, painfully, and only with help. The burden of care is going to fall on the people who love me.
Oh, I can be your stereotype, all right - your queer disabled third-generation-immigrant English-as-a-second-language poster child - and I'll tell you this for free: my body is neither politically expedient nor politically correct.
I've known for a long time that "political correctness" is a term used to dismiss the concerns and hurts of minority groups, but it's only in the last twenty-four hours that I've realised just how back-to-front that term is.
Tonight I want to talk about one of the latter instances. In the book Gender Outlaw: on men, women, and the rest of us, Kate says:
This culture attacks people on the basis of being or not being correctly gendered (having a politically correct body).
And I thought yes.
My queer body is not politically correct.
I am white. I am thin. To that extent, yes, I am politically correct.
But I'm not straight. I don't have marriage equality. It's not politically expedient - though to be fair both the Liberal Democrats and Labour have now expressed support. I'm not taught in schools: Section 28 was repealed while I was in secondary school, and yet there was not even a whisper about queer sexualities during sex ed. It still seems to be the case that portrayal of a queer person is sufficient for primary schools to pull out of community projects (petition).
I'm not male, and I'm not female, but there's no way to get legal recognition of this. Things are only marginally easier for binary-gendered trans* people.
I'm sound of neither body nor mind. I have a progressive chronic illness. I receive Disabled Students' Allowance, but I'm highly unlikely to receive any state help with coping after I graduate: the cuts being made to benefits for sick and disabled people, as described in great detail at Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, aim to get something like ninety per cent of existing claimants off support. I don't stand a chance: most of the time, I'm able to talk in complete sentences, and most of the time I can move around the house - albeit often slowly, painfully, and only with help. The burden of care is going to fall on the people who love me.
Oh, I can be your stereotype, all right - your queer disabled third-generation-immigrant English-as-a-second-language poster child - and I'll tell you this for free: my body is neither politically expedient nor politically correct.
I've known for a long time that "political correctness" is a term used to dismiss the concerns and hurts of minority groups, but it's only in the last twenty-four hours that I've realised just how back-to-front that term is.
