UNI101Y1 Chapter Notes -Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Katherine Kennicott Davis, Judith Butler
Document Summary
The idea of sexuality as constitutive of truth, according to foucault, has made reverse discourse possible where homosexuals speak against the medical and scientific voices that use the existence of homosexuals to establish their legitimacy (1) This reverse discourse (ex. saying that homosexuality is not sinful or a disease) has been important to the lgbt fight for civil rights (1) However, this reverse discourse assumes there is a homosexual/heterosexual binary (1) Many people have taken a very fixed idea of sexual orientation under the idea of anti- homophobia (ex. Saying they"re born this way is less homophobic than saying it"s a choice, but this reinforces the idea of the binary) (1) This discourse fails to consider sexual orientation as a cultural or historical construct (1) The boundaries of sexual categories are constantly shifting in the personal, pedagogical, and historical realms (1)