Category Archives: Queer Politics

The Anti-Homoness of Straight Hipster Politics: On Homo Family Values and the Question of Political Change

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Genet), 1990

1.

Hipster irony appeals to overly earnest straight people, especially straight men (and their sometimes adoring queer fans).

Here’s one version of straight hipsterism: Acceptance of homosexuality and homo marriage occurred relatively quickly in the U.S. because homosexuality and homo marriage aren’t really hip.

The homo who desires to marry and build a family wants nothing more, according to the hipster, than to be “one of the boys.” In other words, the legal/political recognition of homos and their family values is not real political change.

2.

Hipsters aren’t wrong, to be fair, for having some fun at the expense of homos who, like hipsters, want to keep their position high up the ladder of respectability and be cool.

Some homos want nothing more than to be straight (but not that straight).

The problem is that hipster self-righteousness requires a sacrifice: homo difference and dignity.

3.

To the hipster, homoness is the enemy of coolness. Homoness is the recapitulation of normie-cis-white-male-straightness. 

That’s why I think hipster irony is just really fucking dull. It’s more of the same: straight (male) resentment and self-righteousness masquerading as progressive politics.

Nothing irritates hipsters more than homo joy and affluence.

4.

That’s why, to riff on David Halperin’s description of straight hipster irony in How To Be Gay (2012), straight hipsters just love to turn homos and their family values into the new normie straight dude. Homos become “fodder for [hispter] irony”: 

By acknowledging straight hipsters’ affection for such quaint cultural forms and practices [like marriage], while refusing to express that affection except in a grotesque, exaggerated fashion, in case someone should get the wrong idea, straight hipster irony maintains and consolidates (though it’s much too cool to flaunt it) a distant and disengaged position for hipsters—that is, a position of relative social privilege (395-96).

Straight hipster irony enables you to distance yourself from your straightness while castigating the desires of homos who want to marry and build families of their own.

5.

Here’s an example of hipster homo (but not that homo) love: “It is weirdly possible to imagine a scenario,” writes one Substack hipster, “where the United States becomes a violently misogynistic white ethnostate, but gay marriage still remains the law of the land.”

Is our hipster arguing that the reason homos and homo marriage gained relatively quick cultural acceptance is that they fit, hand in glove, within the normie logic of “a violently misogynistic white ethnostate”?

Is our hipster asserting that homos and their family values enjoy popular support in the U.S. because they are entirely compatible with normie-cis-white supremacy-straight-guyness (pronouns: he/bruh)? 

Who needs enemies when you have allies like the hipster! 

6.

In his view, homos and their family values have achieved quick legal/political victories because they have chosen to suck the cock of cis-white-straight-dudeness.

“Pointing out that context,” our hipster claims, “is not a critique of the movements that succeeded as being ‘secretly’ conservative or oppressive, but instead a critique of the society that only lets itself do good things for bad reasons” (emphasis added). 

Who needs enemies when you have neighbors like that! 

7.

Anyway, according to the hipster view, Pete Buttegig won the Democratic presidential primary in Iowa in 2019 because he just loves sucking white dick.

Any evidence to the contrary is evidence of a cover-up. 

Yasmin Nair, for example, asserts that even the Buttigieg kids are part of a secret, oppressive conservative plot to win white-normie-straight-bruh political power: 

Given their talent for curation, it’s hard not to wonder if the Buttigieges didn’t also choose their [biracial] children as carefully as Melania Trump chose her outfits. This doesn’t mean that the pair don’t love their incredibly adorable children, but given that even Chasten looks like he was chosen from a catalog of ‘Good Gay Men,’ it’s safe to say that even the most seemingly personal details of Pete’s life are carefully chosen.

8.

Hipster paranoia (i.e., nothing good can happen in people’s hearts or society) may also explain why our hipster fails to mention the HIV/AIDS crisis in his essay.

While the hipster does recognize that straight opposition to homo love was (remains?) violent and horrific, extending well into the 1990s before giving way to growing support for homos and their family values starting in the early 2000s, he does not seem to know that the 1990s were also the worst years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in, for example, Chicago.

The hipster can’t even entertain the idea that witnessing homos suffering and dying in large numbers because of a demonic virus, which our government was too slow to address, might have been a bridge to compassion that led to a genuine change of heart among our fellow citizens. 

9.

And because any legal/political recognition is necessarily a form of assimilation, the hipster can’t risk acknowledging (or take seriously) the substantial legal/political recognitions won by Black and Trans* people over the past few decades.

So, he doesn’t mention that the vast majority of Americans support some form of police reform. Likewise, the hipster doesn’t seem to realize that most Americans do support Trans* people. Our hipster, however, dismisses the very real gender dysphoria experienced by Trans* youth, categorizing it as a common experience for all youth going through puberty.

Also, our hipster doesn’t mention that it was a conservative Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, who authored the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, which declared it unconstitutional to discriminate against Trans* people in the workplace. 

Finally, the hipster’s faith in the straight coddling of homo desire likely blinds him to the fact that the Supreme Court is considering whether or not to relitigate the constitutionality of same-sex marriage on Friday, November 7th, 2025 (Thankfully, the Court chose [for now] not to relitigate homo marriage. It sure must be nice not to have one’s dignity up for routine legal review.)

10. 

Homos and their family values gained quick acceptance, according to sophisticated hipsters, because they offered a lifeline to normie-cis-white-straight-maleness.

In reality, it was the other way around. 

Homosexual activists made surprising use of a straight male invention: the concept of homosexuality.

Homo identity politics was so successful (like all forms of Black, Trans,* and Women’s respectability/identity politics before and after it) precisely because it compromised with the protocols of the dominant masculinist culture, the culture—then, now, and for the foreseeable future—in power.

Specifically, homo identity politics accepted the conservative logic that sex(uality) is gender and gender is sex(uality). 

The idea that homoness is anything more than a sexuality, anything other than a sexual orientation/identity—like a culture, a specific lifestyle, or a uniquely “feminine” way of relating to women, men, and the world—remains a controversial subject in homo circles. 

Take a look at Andrew Sullivan’s Virtually Normal (1996) and Horace Griffin’s Their Own Receive Them Not (2010)–very different versions of homo identity politics.

In How To Be Gay (2012), Halperin cogently analyzes the history of homo identity politics—the history, that is, of what Judith Butler calls a “necessary error” (Bodies That Matter [1993], 175).  

11.

Homo political gains have, indeed, come at the expense of a different history: the history of (homo)sexuality.

The concept of homosexuality was created in the late 1800s (and with the publication of the RSV, incorporated into various biblical texts in the 1940s), but I am more interested in the history of what terms like “homosexuality” are meant to describe—namely, desire. 

We are, in a sense, “born that way.” We are born as wild and wildly desiring animals, entirely dependent on the care of our parents and society—the very “institutions” that frustrate our desires.

Although no one knows what causes one’s sexual orientation, David Halperin offers a promising idea. He claims that “[l]ong before they ever have sex . . . young people have genre” (343).

Briefly, genres are formal rules that govern specific social interactions. Halperin explains that what a server might say to a complete stranger in Ann Arbor differs from what a server in Paris might say in a similar situation without causing a scandal (131). 

Genres are also pragmatic. “[T]hey provide people, in their daily practices, with concrete means of interacting with one another and negotiating specific social situations—and they instruct them in the right ways to do so (132).

Halperin suggests that genre might be all that’s necessary to create consistent, persistent, and insistent non-standard or queer relationships with mainstream cultural forms, including marriage, masculinity, authenticity, abjection, and so on. Halperin writes,

[Genre] may be all [children] need in order to forge certain non-standard relations to normative sexual and gender identities. For by making non-standard emotional connections to cultural forms, they effectively refuse the pressing social invitation to assume a conventional, heteronormative positioning and they effectively acquire non-standard sexual and gender identities, identifications, and orientations (343).

Once acquired, a non-standard relationship to cultural forms becomes, like everything experienced in our youth, difficult to change in adulthood. There are no “fresh starts.”

The second chance that is your adult life is an opportunity to change, to the extent possible, your biological and cultural heritage. If you’re lucky, your adult life is a question: What am I interested in?

12.

Our hipster believes homos have failed to launch. For him, homos and their family values easily fit into the standard mold of normie-cis-white-straight-family values. Acceptance of homo family values is not, according to hipsters, a genuine legal/political change.

Queer theoretical differences, like those between Leo Bersani and Judith Butler (1995), David Halperin and Leo Bersani (1996), Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler (1999), Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004) and How To Be Gay (2012), are all about the character of and possibilities for real political change.

In a forthcoming essay, I argue that Martha Nussbaum misjudges Judith Butler’s politics as “hip quietism.” Instead, I argue, Butler’s politics is a subtle form of compromised resistance to the norms of straightness.

To be clear, Nussbaum is not opposed to resistance as a political strategy. She is not a radical political figure. For example, Nussbaum does not believe, as Michal Warner does, that “marriage is unethical” (The Trouble With Normal [1999], vii). 

In her review of Warner’s book, Nussbaum highlights the importance of cultural forms and routines for most people (232). Still, I believe she is too optimistic about the kind of change humans can achieve to appreciate the subtlety of Butler’s queer politics. 

13.

It is manifestly true that Butler’s theory is highly pessimistic about the potential for legal/political change. Our being here is premised on being subject to the desires, norms, and influences of the dominant culture. 

Even so, Butler clearly has faith in the possibility of change. Performativity is their term for a limited but creatively resistant form of freedom. 

“The structuring presence of heterosexual constructs within gay and lesbian sexuality,” Butler argues in Gender Trouble (1990), “does not mean that those constructs determine gay and lesbian sexuality nor that gay and lesbian sexuality are derivable or reducible to those constructs. . . . The presence of these norms not only constitute a site of power that cannot be refused, but they can and do become the site of parodic contest and display that robs compulsory heterosexuality of its claims to naturalness and originality” (158, emphasis original). 

The Butlerian subject is us. It is normal and queer. 

14.

In the essay on Butler I hope to finish soon, I also argue that How To Be Gay may be read as a redescription of Butler’s political ambition, as initially described in Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter.

Halperin’s understanding of the politics of homo subculture perfectly captures the character of Butler’s queer politics.

Their queer politics “reckons with the world as it is, with the way we lived and still live now, and [seek] less to change the world than to resist its inflictions (even at the cost of appearing reactionary, rather than progressive)—[thereby offering] an important emotional and political resource . . . to many different kinds of socially disqualified people, at least to those whose sense of irredeemable wrongness makes them willing to pay the achingly high price for it” (219-220). 

15.

In summary, participation in what’s normal is not a matter of personal choice.

You can’t choose your sex(uality) or gender (realities created and enforced by the dominant culture before we come into the world and learn to speak its language).

That comforts some homos. And why should homos be different from nearly everyone else? 

In any case, it is also true that the dominant regime can’t completely control what you do with its normative categories. 

As Fester from the Addams Family reminds us, “Normal is difficult to achieve.”

That’s why queer politics also appeals to many homos. Failing to take “normal” too seriously is the point of queer politics.

16.

But our hipster advises us to embrace a politics of fluidity. We are advised not to stress about sex(uality) and gender norms.

I guess we are to entirely forget our hipster’s essay, wherein he ranks similarly situated minority groups on a ladder of value. If homos are even on his ladder, we are farthest away from the heavenly clouds of political coolness.

17.

The hipster seems to believe that recognizing the legitimate suffering of the hip and queer, Black communities, and Trans* people requires a sacrifice: the difference and dignity of homos. 

If that’s right, the hipster’s argument collaborates with HIV/AIDS. It collaborates with evil. 

Meanwhile, the option of carefully attending to admittedly uncool forms of queer desire remains available, if seldom considered and even less often taken—at least by straight (male) hipsters and their adoring queer fans.  

Against (Virtually) Normal: Law, Politics, and the Trans/Queer Body

AI generated imaged based on the essay below. Notice the young Andrew Sullivan in the foreground?

Girl: “Are you sure you are not really a girl?

Boy Sullivan: “Of course not.”

Parent: My child knows who they are.

Adult Sullivan: “But do they? . . . I sure didn’t.”

I.

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Andrew Sullivan contends that the gay rights movement has “radicalized, and lost its way.” Sullivan asserts that the gay movement has abandoned traditional, virtually normal politics (i.e., the defense of marriage equality and the expansion of non-discrimination protections in the workplace and housing for gays, lesbians and trans adults) and adopted a fascistic queer gender ideology—a transgender ideology that disregards the naturalness of the “sex binary” and seeks to impose itself, like a “theology,” on society—and especially on children and teens.

The irony is that Sullivan’s argument perfectly aligns with conservative theological reasoning. Sullivan follows the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, naturalizing a conservative theology of sex while masquerading it as liberal neutrality.

II.

Taking sex as a synonym for gender and vice versa is a hallmark of conservative theological thought. For example, Associate Justice Thomas Alito, writing for the majority in Mahmoud v. Taylor, observes that “[m]any Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly” (24).

In queer and gender studies, the term gender ≠ biological sex. As David M. Halperin reminds us, “Sex has no history. It is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body and, as such, it lies outside of history and culture” (“Is There a History of Sexuality?,” in the The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 416 [416-431], emphasis mine).

In contrast to sex, gender (like sexuality) does have a history (although a much longer one than sexuality). It refers to the cultural habits and practices that a society determines make, for example, a male (= sex) a man/masculine (= gender).

Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology comes through in his definition of homosexuality. “My sexual orientation,” Sullivan shares, “is based on a biological distinction [= sex] between men and women: I am attracted to the former and not to the latter” (emphasis mine). What this implies is that (homo)sexuality is, for Sullivan, like sex: an entirely biological, neutral fact of the human condition.

Sullivan complains that “[d]issenters from gender ideology are routinely unfriended, shunned and shamed. . . . That’s the extremely intolerant and illiberal atmosphere that now exists in the gay, lesbian, and transgender space” (emphasis mine). If that’s true, it’s unfortunate because Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology does have an upshot: it implies that homosexuality “reflects divine creation.”

The drawback of Sullivan’s sex ideology is that it cannot account for the fact that some of us are, as Michael Warner observes in The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (1999), more marked than others by our sexuality (23).

Like many proto-gay boys, I learned in middle school that having a penis does not necessarily make one a legitimate boy. According to my peers, the way I walked, talked, dressed, and styled my hair all cast doubt on the legitimacy of my penis. Thus, I was a queer, fag, and so on.

My middle school experience amply illustrates an essential point: sex has a gender. Sullivan may insist that sex/sexuality is “a neutral fact of the human condition,” but sex/sexuality is not merely a natural/neutral fact. Sex/sexuality is also an object of human interpretation.

Sullivan and his fellow conservative Catholic/religious friends are all too aware that politics will ultimately determine what sex/sexuality means. Sullivan and company want to end the hermeneutics of sex. They want the last word, and they know the deciding battlefield is the public school system.

III.

Sullivan worries that queer gender ideology is akin to an insurrection, a “societywide revolution” against traditional sex/sexuality norms. He is especially concerned about queer ideology being taught in our public elementary schools.

To Sullivan’s mind, helping children recognize that the relationship of sex to gender and vice versa is wiggly, by allowing them to play with pronouns and their gender comportment in public schools, is to play God. It has the power to resurrect Anita Bryant!

She is risen! She is risen, indeed!

The Supreme Court recently ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents can opt their children out of public school lessons that include books with queer themes, including same-sex marriage, on religious grounds. Consider the mercifully brief sample of Associate Justice Alito’s “legal” reasoning for the majority below (for a complete analysis of the Court’s overreading and misreading of the relevant children’s books, listen to the recent episode of the podcast Strict Scrutiny):

In light of the record before us, we hold that the Board’s introduction of the “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable.

To understand why, start with the storybooks themselves. Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected. . . .

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, the only book that the dissent is willing to discuss in any detail, conveys the same message more subtly. The atmosphere is jubilant after Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend announce their engagement. Id., at 286a (“Everyone was smiling and talking and crying and laughing” (emphasis added)). The book’s main character, Chloe, does not share this excitement. “‘I don’t understand!’” she exclaims, “‘Why is Uncle Bobby getting married?’” Id., at 288a. The book is coy about the precise reason for Chloe’s question, but the question is used to tee up a direct message to young readers: “‘Bobby and Jamie love each other,’ said Mummy. ‘When grown-up people love each other that much, sometimes they get married.’” Ibid. The book therefore presents a specific, if subtle, message about marriage. It asserts that two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they “‘love each other.’” Ibid. That view is now accepted by a great many Americans, but it is directly contrary to the religious principles that the parents in this case wish to instill in their children. It is significant that this book does not simply refer to same-sex marriage as an existing practice. Instead, it presents acceptance of same-sex marriage as a perspective that should be celebrated. The book’s narrative arc reaches its peak with the actual event of Uncle Bobby’s wedding, which is presented as a joyous event that is met with universal approval. See id., at 300a–305a. And again, there are many Americans who would view the event that way, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. But other Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.

Next, consider the messages sent by the storybooks on the subject of sex and gender. Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. Id., at 530a–531a, 538a–540a, 543a, 625a. But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint. Intersection Allies presents a transgender child in a sex-ambiguous bathroom and proclaims that “[a] bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.” Id., at 323a. The book also includes a discussion guide that asserts that “at any point in our lives, we can choose to identify with one gender, multiple genders, or neither gender” and asks children “What pronouns fit you best?” Id., at 350a (boldface in original). The book and the accompanying discussion guidance present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children (23-24, unattributed italics mine).

The Court rightly observes that “there are many Americans who would view [the marriage of two men as a joyous occasion], and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so.” What the Court does not recognize is that such a view is not only that of “many Americans,” it is also the nonmetaphysical position of their Government.

If the Court’s majority were at all inclined to affirm the appropriateness of the Government teaching a nonreligious, nonpartisan view of sex in our public schools, it would have concluded the following: There are many Americans who would view the marriage of two males as contrary to their religious beliefs, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. However, the Government has no role to play in teaching theological metaphysics. Religious instruction is the obligation of parents of faith and their respective religious institutions.

We are right to worry that the majority opinion in Taylor takes religion from the football field (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District) into the classroom by implicitly questioning the legitimacy of the Government’s nonreligious view of sex. In my opinion, Taylor goes far beyond protecting religious liberty. It protects the status quo by incentivizing the teaching of traditional, religiously inflected sex ideology in our public schools.

But Sullivan is worried about Big Trans “overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well.” 

Sullivan does not mention Mahmoud v. Taylor in his opinion piece for The New York Times. Besides the shared insistence on the naturalness of a conservative theological understanding of sex, one other thread links Sullivan’s essay to the majority opinion in Taylor.

Sullivan, like the majority in Taylor, is expressly concerned about (gay and lesbian) youth being coerced by authority figures, such as teachers and doctors, into believing what he considers to be an unnatural gender ideology.

“As a child, uninterested in playing team sports . . . ,” Sullivan writes, “I was once asked by a girl when I was just 10 years old, ‘Are you sure you are not really a girl?’ Of course not, I replied” (emphasis mine). Nonetheless, Sullivan wants us to believe that he may not have given the same answer to the same question if the questioner had been “someone in authority—a parent or a teacher or a doctor [or a priest?].”

Alito expresses a similar concern in Taylor,

“The books therefore present the same kind of ‘objective danger to the free exercise of religion’ that we identified in Yoder. Id., at 218. That ‘objective danger’ is only exacerbated by the fact that the books will be presented to young children by authority figures in elementary school classrooms. As representatives of the Board have admitted, ‘there is an expectation that teachers use the LGBTQ-Inclusive Books as part of instruction,’ and ‘there will be discussion that ensues.’ App. to Pet. for Cert. 605a, 642a.” (25, emphasis mine).

Among the things Alito thinks coercion means is teachers communicating to young students a nonmetaphysical interpretation of sex, namely that it is not a synonym for gender and vice versa. Alito writes, “The upshot [of how Alito [over]reads Born Ready, written by Jodie Patterson and illustrated by Charnelle Barlow] is that it is hurtful, perhaps even hateful, to hold the view that gender is inextricably bound with biological sex” (25, emphasis mine).

The Court affirms the right of conservative religious parents to direct the public education of their children in Mahmoud v. Taylor. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case in which the Court’s majority allows states to ban gender-affirming care (while permitting the same treatments for minors not seeking gender-affirming care), the majority declines to resolve the legal question about the right of parents to direct the healthcare of their (trans) children. In this case, the Court neutralizes the authority of parents who are not (religiously) conservative or religious to care for their children, trusting the (conservative) Government to “parent” them.

IV.

Sullivan goes a step further than the Court’s majority in Skrmetti. Sullivan wants us to believe that no one is looking out for trans kids (except him and his fellow compassionate conservatives, of course). Even the supportive parents of trans children cannot be trusted to direct their healthcare.

Sullivan provides three reasons to remove the power to provide healthcare to children from the hands of their parents:

First, supportive parents trust their children’s testimony. Though young Sullivan was very clear with his female classmate about his sex, he questions whether or not trans children “know who they are.” He even contradicts himself, asserting that during the period between the ages of 9 and 13, he was unsure whether he was a boy or not.

Next, Sullivan argues supportive parents are the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology (i.e., of Big Trans). Specifically, they are illiberal cucks. They do as Big Trans tells them to do (i.e., force our kids to transition) for fear of being canceled—and they cancel others, like Sullivan, who refuse to obey the will of Big Trans.

Finally, Sullivan also believes supportive parents are reactionary cucks of a fascistic queer ideology. Sullivan asserts that if Trump (i.e., an election denier, encourager of insurrection against the U.S. government, Project 2025 supporter, and, according to one judge, a rapist) is for, say, the biological truth of gender, the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology are necessarily, unthinkingly against it.

What critics of the majority’s decision in Skrmetti (e.g., the 5-4 podcast) miss is that Trump’s conservative theological assertion of the “biological truth of gender” is underlying their reasoning.

State laws denying gender-affirming care to a teen male who desires to become a female is not, to the majority, discrimination based on sex. Healthcare providers may not deny gender-affirming treatment to a male because he is male. In many states, they must deny said treatment because he is a male who desires to become a female.

Recall that in Taylor, the Court’s majority similarly empowers parents to affirm a conservative theology, namely that sex and gender are inseparable. The rest of us must live with it—or else.

V.

Sullivan’s opinion piece for the New York Times is gross—and not principally because it is a conservative theological argument. It is also problematic because it is an example of the homophobic literary genre (e.g., queers are victims of queers; conservatives = persecuted; healthcare may be denied to women/queers; states should be allowed to decide the legality of queer life, etc.).

There is one aspect of Sullivan’s anti-trans/queer rhetoric that I find especially problematic: his deployment of the heuristics of fear. Echoing the logic of the late Cardinal Ratzinger (see, e.g., §10), Sullivan wants us to believe that we have only ourselves to blame for violence perpetrated against us as a consequence of our insistence on our difference from the (virtually) normal.

In The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks At Our Political Crisis (2018), a book inspired by Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss to Donald Trump in 2016, Martha C. Nussbaum draws on psychological research to describe two “heuristics” of fear. The first is the “availability heuristic,” and the second is the “cascade heuristic,” which has two aspects: reputational and informational (47-51). These heuristics can function to overwhelm our ability to carefully consider whether or not fear is warranted in a given situation, instead activating our instinctual impulses.

In his opinion piece, Sullivan employs the availability heuristic, creating an immediately recognizable image of imminent, life-threatening danger. He argues that the radicalization of the gay movement by trans/queer ideology is collapsing public support for gay and lesbian civil rights.

Sullivan combines the availability heuristic with the cascade heuristic, motivating people to come together to overcome an imminent, life-threatening danger: trans/queer ideology. If we don’t act, gay and lesbian civil rights, our rights, will be erased—and we will be subject to violent acts (the reputational aspect of the cascade heuristic).

Sullivan also offers us new information. He contends that advocates of trans/queer ideology are essentially raping children, forcing them to transition. Moreover, by forcing trans kids to transition, trans/queer advocates are ending the lives of gay and lesbian kids, as Sullivan believes a lot of trans kids are just confused gay and lesbian kids (the informational aspect of the cascade heuristic)

The heuristics of fear are highly motivating. They compel us to act together to avoid immediate danger.

The problem arises when the fear they amplify is not based on a sober assessment of evidence, facts, data, or our experiences. For example, there are good reasons to avoid the path of a tornado. However, when our fear is unwarranted, as it is in the public’s assessment of trans lives and experiences, it can destabilize democracy.

Unwarranted fear, especially combined with disgust, can destabilize democracy by motivating violence. Trans/queer ideology, Sullivan imagines, inspires “a sane backlash” against trans/queer people—and not only them, but virtually normal gay and lesbian people, too. As many trans people and queer gay men and lesbians already know: the threat of violence for being misaligned with (virtually) normative straight (male) society is not an idle one.

VI.

Queer gay men and lesbians stand in solidarity with their trans comrades (a word I use intentionally to enflame conservative passions) for many reasons, not least of which is our shared experience of the violence of (virtually) normative gendered politics. David M. Halperin observes, 

If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, emphasis mine).

Yet, Sullivan believes that the radicalized gay movement is the real threat to a liberal or reasonably pluralistic society (see John Rawls). He asserts that the ever-expanding alphabet of queer welcome (e.g., L.G.B.T.Q.I.A+), and the new colors added to the pride flag to incarnate it, nowadays “demarcates a place not simply friendly to all types of people . . . but a place where anyone who does not subscribe to intersectional left ideology is unwelcome.”

Youth are the worst offenders of Sullivan’s law of welcome. The “young queer generation” are contemptuous, according to Sullivan, of “those who came before them.”

Dear Andrew,

It’s true. Trans/queer youth and adults don’t want to hang with you.

It’s not us. It’s your habit of villainizing, demeaning, and disparaging our lives and loves.

I don’t doubt that you believe you care about trans/queer youth and adults. However, if you take a moment to listen, you’ll likely gain a better understanding of why hanging out with us just isn’t currently working out for you.

As they say in Chicago, “He only had himself to blame.”

Smooches,

Tony (he/him).

Gender Politics & the Indoctrination of Boys

Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett of Pod Save America recently interviewed the inimitable Representative Sarah McBride (D-Delaware). Among McBride’s interesting insights and arguments is the idea that the two major U.S. political parties are gendered. Republicans are gendered masculine (or identified in terms of fatherhood). Democrats are gendered feminine (or identified in terms of motherhood).

Here’s their conversation (if you prefer to watch, jump in at 12:44):

Rep. McBride: I’ve been thinking about how do you fight back against Trump in a smart way . . . because we are so susceptible to sort of this Trump derangement syndrome dynamic. We’ve been screaming about democracy. . . rights and the rule of law for so long—and clearly, this country voted for someone who incited an insurrection. . . .

The Democratic party is the woman of politics and the Republican party is the man of politics. It’s why Donald Trump can scream and yell and people see him as strong—and why when [Democrats] scream and yell we’re seen as hysterical and shrill. It’s why Donald Trump can hate and insult more than half of this country—because we tolerate deadbeat dads, but Democrats can’t say anything about any voters that [impugn] their motives and their good faith—because a mom has to love every single one of her children. So, I’ve been thinking about how do you grapple with that reality that is a real double standard. . . .

Lovett: Let’s test this new way of talking . . . . You’re trying to make people understand how dangerous it is that Donald Trump is coming after basic academic freedom, but you’re worried it’s not going to resonate with people. How do you talk about it?

Rep. McBride: With all of these actions that we’re seeing against immigrants, against institutions, [the Trump Administration is] picking on the most unpopular, the most vulnerable. They’re picking on people who are easy targets. I do think . . . you have to go back to what we were talking about before, which is that if they can do it [to them], they can do it to you . . . . They can do it to my constituents . . . . I think we can do a better job by making the main character [of our story] our constituents.

Changing our political situation requires, McBride claims, recognizing how political party affiliation is gendered. For example, Republicans can get away with being angry, but Democrats must always be empathetic. “[A] mom,” McBride says, “has to love every single one of her children.”

Motherhood is often the object of politics because the public sphere, the sphere of politics, is gendered masculine. The traditional story is that politics is for men; the management of the home is for women. For McBride, motherhood is the subject of political action.

But what is maternal politics, exactly? In her response to Lovett’s question about how to discuss maternal politics in the context of education, McBride attempts to clarify the character of partisan gendered politics. Her answer, namely that the mother protects “easy targets” of public abuse, isn’t specific enough–so it can’t inspire serious Democratic political action.

In what follows, I ask a revised version of Lovett’s question to McBride: How do you talk about maternal politics in the context of early childhood public education? To answer the question well, we need a definition of maternal politics that is specific enough to avoid confusion (e.g., terrorist organizations like Moms for Liberty claim to love all children) and to provoke serious liberal and/or progressive public action. I propose the following definition:

Maternal politics = public action(s) to secure and defend a boy’s right to become a man who desires like a woman/mother.

Why a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother? Consider recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States regarding an opt-out option for religious conservatives who do not want their children exposed to readings that mention/feature same-sex desire in the public school classroom. It was a book about male same-sex marriage that caught the attention of conservative Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

Conservatives are manifestly not as passionate or concerned about a girl’s public education. What they care about is the reproduction of traditional or normative masculinity. Hence their focus on male same-sex desire. Conservatives think that male homosexuality is especially threatening to the future of straight maleness.

I think my definition of maternal politics helps explain the recurring outbursts of straight anxiety about male homosexuality and the “indoctrination” of boys in our public elementary school. Furthermore, the specificity of my definition of maternal politics (one of many possible proposals) allows us to form a more direct and beneficially partisan answer to (the revised version of) Lovett’s question about gender politics and academic freedom in Trump’s U.S.

Here is the take I will explain and defend below: Conservatives have used the public school system to indoctrinate boys, and we have generally failed to resist it because we (unconsciously) agree with the “obvious” meaning of the conservative premise: boys should be boys. Instead, we should reform early childhood public education by securing and defending a boy’s right to desire like a woman/mother.

A traditional public school education entails learning skills, especially (though it is never explicitly acknowledged) the skill (and appreciation) of straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity). Between the ages of 5 and 6, boys are forced by law to leave the sphere of maternal power (i.e., the home/family) and enter the public school system. It is in the public school classroom that they begin to learn, formally (i.e., curriculum) and informally (i.e., socially), to desire “proper” manhood or straight maleness.

The irony is that the reproduction of “proper” manhood necessarily requires/inspires homoerotic desire. Boys must be motivated to undertake an education in normative masculinity. Thus, they are taught to want men/manhood.

You may argue that what boys are taught is the protocols of normative masculinity rather than to desire adult males–but the foundation of straight logic is that sex, gender, and sexuality are inextricably linked. Male/penis > masculine > heterosexual. In other words, a boy can’t want masculinity without also wanting men.

A second irony: the propagation of masculinity requires a boy to desire like a woman/mother. The transmission of normative masculinity from one generation to the next requires, at least initially, the misalignment of sex, gender, and desire (i.e., male/penis desiring man/masculine). It is at this early stage that normative masculinist logic shows its ass (= its vulnerability).

The vulnerability of normative masculinity is its unnaturalness. In other words, “proper” maleness does not inevitably proceed from being born with a penis. “Proper” maleness must be taught.

The fact that straight maleness is taught is not exactly the problem. The way normative masculinity is taught is the source of its tyranny. “Normal” masculinity is presented uncritically, and it requires uncritical acceptance to be mistaken for normal (i.e., natural) or, as the Trump Administration prefers, for “biological truth.”

Traditionally, this is why the acknowledgment of (male) homosexuality in public schools has been a source of straight panic. It exposes the hole of straight maleness: straight masculinity is not natural. It is optional.

Nowadays, homosexuality is not as often considered inherently opposed to straight masculinity. It’s an interesting development. Today, dudes sucking dick (homie head, brojob, etc.) is just another way for boys to be boys.

Straight ideology is flexible, and gay identity politics is clever. It’s a win-win situation: straight masculinity remains (if not natural) inherently desirable, and male homosexuals are welcome to enjoy its privileges–well, at least if they are good students, willing to learn/embody the protocols of “proper” masculinity.

So, recent arguments before the Supreme Court about readings in public schools that mention same-sex desire may be read as a form of social progress. Before books that acknowledge the reality of happy adult male homosexual relationships (happiness being what I think Justice Alito means by the “subtle” moral message of the book that offends religious conservatives) defiled God’s male children, the biggest threat to the “proper” education of our male children was the gay male English teacher. And before the English teacher became sus, the “gay” male philosopher was considered the corrupter of male youth.

“In a famous passage in The Divine Comedy,” writes David M. Halperin in “Deviant Teaching” (2007, 146-167), Dante represents himself as encountering, in the course of his journey through Hell, the soul of [philosopher] Brunetto Latini . . .” (146). Why did Dante put poor Brunetto in Hell? “His sin is tellingly not named in Canto 15, but other passages in Inferno remove any doubts about its identity. Brunetto is damned for sodomy” (146).

When Dante asks him about his companions in Hell, Brunetto answers that “all were clerks and great men of letters, in the world defined by one [and the] same sin” (148). “Sodomy,” Halperin declares, “is evidently a sin to which literary scholars, critics, and writers (such as Dante himself) are particularly prone” (148).

Halperin, a public university English professor trained as a classicist–and no stranger to controversy–reminds us of “how ancient is the association between teaching and sodomy, between paedagogy and paederasty” (149). “[T]he abolition of any clear or firm distinction between the relation of teacher and student and the relation of lover and beloved is,” Halperin writes, “one of the most notorious consequences of Plato’s metaphysical theory of erotic desire” (149). Teaching “has an extended history of association with deviance and has long figured as a deviant practice” (151).

If gender were a “biological truth,” as the Trump Administration claims it is, then straight anxiety inspired by the fantasy of homosexual indoctrination in public schools would be a genuine absurdity. The reality of old school straight anxiety exposes a glitch in the code of masculinist transmission: gender is a social–not a biological–reality. It must be taught and learned.

For a boy to become a man, he must leave the maternal sphere, the home. He must also leave his father’s side. A boy’s father “is too closely tied to the boy by blood and domesticity . . . so they cannot fully . . . incarnate the cultural ideal of male identity . . . ” (151).

“Every proper boy,” Halperin writes, “has to have at least two daddies” (151, emphasis original). Boys learn to become traditional or “proper” men in the public sphere (e.g., schools, sports teams, etc.).

The glitch in the heteronormative educational regime is further exposed by how it represents the social transmission of masculinity (154-155). Consider how the Sambia of Papua New Guinea ritualize the reproduction of strong warrior men.

Elder males take boys ages 8-9 off into the forest where they are forced to perform oral sex on adolescent males. Halperin observes that the young boys are taught to think of “cock-sucking as a kind of breast-feeding” (155).

Ingesting semen, the boys receive the nourishment they require to grow “into real men who will be strong warriors” (155). They continue to ingest semen until they turn 15, at which point they become “the breast” for younger boys.

Listening to social and religious conservatives today, one would never know that third and fourth grade boys in the U.S. are not being taught to suck cock in public schools. What they are being taught, and in ways not entirely different from how the Sambia “represent to themselves symbolically the means by which they reproduce themselves socially,” is how to become proper Western men (156, emphasis original).

Halperin considers the 1953 Western movie Shane an example of a Western form of masculine transmission. The movie’s focus on the mechanics of masculine reproduction makes it a standout Western (157).

Shane is about how a 9-year-old boy, Joey, is made into a man (i.e., taught how to shoot a gun and fight) by a mysterious stranger, “a gunfighter and a killer” (i.e., a social deviant), a cowboy named Shane (158). Joey’s father cannot teach Joey how to become a man because he is too busy managing and defending the family farm. For obvious reasons, Joey’s mother can’t possibly teach him how to become a man.

Halperin compares Shane to the Holy Ghost. “It is only when Shane’s potent shadow falls across the holy American family that the family succeeds in . . . reproducing masculinity . . . and ensuring its own futurity” (159–for my reading of the Holy Ghost, go here). And “[g]unfighting in Shane is,” Halperin observes, “like cock-sucking among the Sambia: both are cultural practices connected with initiation into the symbolic order of masculinity and heavily laden with phallic meaning” (160).

The relationship between Shane and Joey mirrors the relationship between Shane and Joey’s mother, Marian. It is not sexual, but it is erotic. Marian wants to play with Shane’s pistol, too.

Like his mother, Joey feels some kind of way about Shane. In desiring him, Joey gives Shane the “charismatic power necessary to enable those enamored of him (Joey and male viewers) to accede to manhood by means of identification, emulation, and endless, unfulfilled desire for him” (160).

Moreover, Joey’s desire for Shane is no accident. Like Socrates, Shane has a way with his young male students (160-161). Shane makes his manhood hot to both Marian and Joey (= it’s object a). He inspires Joey (and male viewers) to observe his gun obsessively. Masculinity is transmitted “ocularly” in Shane (162).

In seeing/receiving Shane’s manhood, the male viewers “make the supposedly identity-affirming, gender-consolidating experience of masculine identification coincide, as if nothing could be more normal, with the urgent and inescapable solicitation of homoerotic desire” (162).

Question: Did Shane indoctrinate Joey? Did Shane require Joey to accept his warrior manhood uncritically to begin becoming a “real” man? No. Joey wanted the manhood Shane offered him.

Masculine indoctrination requires boys to accept Shane’s manhood as “biological truth.” In that way, Shane becomes the “proper” man, the kind of man boys must become to be considered real men, the type of man women must desire and whose prerogatives they must support to be identified as pious/conservative/real women.

Shane’s “Republican manhood,” if you will, undoubtedly continues to appeal to women/mothers and their boys. I accept that, and I am prepared to secure and defend a boy’s right to want Shane and to become a man who either desires women/mothers or other men who desire men like Shane.

There is nothing inherently wrong with conservative masculinity. That is, I think, a liberal (if not progressive) position to hold–and it is consistent with McBride’s–and my own–definition of maternal politics. “[A] mom has love every single one of her children.”

Apparently, dads have a choice in the matter.

What I reject is the fascist spirit that often animates a traditional education in straight maleness. Republican manhood is manifestly not appealing to every boy. It is not even appealing to every boy’s parents, and there is no reason to believe it will appeal to all who will enter a boy’s life as an adult male.

Moreover, it is an offense to common sense and reason (and I, as a biblical Christian theologian, think it is an offense to the gospel of Jesus Christ) to enforce, as a matter of (unacknowledged) policy or law, Republican manhood. If “biological truth” requires the enforcement of norms and/or the sword of law, just how biological–or true–is it?

The assertion of the biological truth of gender reveals that social and religious conservatives have, like a God, forgotten themselves:

For with the old Gods things came to an end long ago–and verily they had a good and joyful Gods’ end! Theirs was no mere “twilight” death–that is a lie!

Rather: one day they–laughed themselves to death!

This happened when the most godless words issued from a God himself–the words: “There is one God! Thou shalt have no other God before me!” . . . a God, most jealous, forgot himself thus:

And thereupon all the Gods laughed and rocked their chairs and shouted: “Is just this not Godliness, that there are Gods but no God?”

He that hath ears let him hear (Thus Spoke Zarathustra [(1883) 2003], 201, italics original).

In a gloss on this passage, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes, “God, in Nietzsche’s fabulation, forgot Himself, and even His own name; He thought he was God, THE God, when He was simply one among many others (inner superiority means we are on the wrong track, it means we are too intimidated) (Unforbidden Pleasures [2015], 42).

In another text–but in a similar context–Halperin describes how the “inner superiority” of straight maleness may work out in the context of sexuality and gender, nowadays:

If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer [remember: declaring “no homo” after receiving, e.g., homie head will protect you from appearing (too) queer] it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, italics mine).

As we discovered earlier, the propagation of straight maleness can accommodate a disconnect between sex and sexuality. Nowadays, being a homosexual doesn’t necessarily make you a sus male (i.e., gaaaaaay).

The chronic misalignment of sex/penis (male) and normative gender style (straight maleness) does, however, remain socially problematic. At some point, one must put childish ways behind them.

At this point, straightness has shown a lot of ass. It concedes that heterosexuality is not natural. No one (bi, lesbian, gay, straight, none) knows what determines one’s sexuality (or lack thereof). It also concedes that straight maleness (i.e., normative masculinity) is not natural: it does not proceed naturally from having a penis. It must be taught (and even enforced).

And given that gender does not proceed naturally from sex or depend on one’s sexuality, it follows that anyone, of whatever sex or sexuality, can, if they so desire, learn a specific gender style. Women can, at least in principle, learn to embody normative masculinity.

What all this means is that the claim of straightness to have no other Gods before it is laughable. But the Gods before it need not laugh themselves to death! Instead, they can get on with baptizing newly persuaded converts.

The epigraph of How To Be Gay, a description of gay male masculinity, or masculinity that is gendered feminine because it is resistant to straight maleness, reads: “Let the pagans beget and the Christians baptize” (see also How To Be Gay, 532-533).

The epigraph of How To Be Gay echoes the central argument of Halperin’s essay, “Deviant Teaching”: The “introduction . . . to [non-sexual methods of instruction in maleness,] to non-standard ways of seeing, to distinctive ethical and aesthetic modes of relating to the surrounding culture, to a unique set of sensibilities, and to dissident ways of reading cultural objects (movies, opera, Broadway musicals, emblems of fashion and styles, embodiments of masculinity) [is] what I have been calling deviant teaching,” and what, in How To be Gay, is called gay male subculture (“Deviant Teaching,” 165).

Gay male subculture, as a deviant form of masculine propagation (i.e., it resists the allure of straight maleness), is similar to straight maleness in that it does not depend on either one’s sex or sexuality. It is a style that anyone who finds persuasive may learn to embody.

Gay maleness is among the gods a boy may reasonably desire. Accordingly, maternal politics entails defending and securing a boy’s right to become a man who desires women/mothers or other men who desire gayness.

As a non-normative gender style, a lifestyle misaligned with one’s sex, gayness is a form of Trans*ness (I use the * to indicate gender nonconformity in addition to sex nonconformity). However, Trans*ness moves us well beyond gender misalignment to sexual misalignment.

In her interview on Pod Save America, McBride addresses one of the challenges of Trans* politics (42 minutes in):  

I think one of the challenges that we have in conversations around Trans identities that’s different than conversations around gay rights is that most people who are straight can understand what it feels like to love and to lust –and so they’re able to enter into conversations around sexual orientation with an analogous experience. People who aren’t Trans don’t know what it feels like to be Trans–and for me the closest thing that I can compare it to is a constant feeling of homesickness, just this unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that would only go away when I could be seen and affirmed and live as myself . . . .

I imagine one reality that Rep. McBride is expressing here is that her body initially provoked a conversation: Is this you? She answered either “No” or “Not exactly.” I am guessing (because I am unfamiliar with the details of her experience) that McBride desired a new alignment of sex and gender–and one made possible by a radically new understanding of sex: sex, like gender, is not a natural fact. Sex is an opportunity for conversation rather than indoctrination.

Although Evangelical men really want women to have penises, male to female Trans* experience constitutes an upheaval of normative thought. It inspires intense—and, unfortunately, intensely irrational—emotions.

The animus directed toward Trans* women is a fruit of the fascist spirit that often underlies the commitment to the reproduction of Republican manhood–and one that more than a few fruits enjoy. We have only to think of Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan is usually an interesting and nuanced public intellectual, but his screeds against “big trans” are becoming increasingly overdetermined (i.e., inspired by irrational forces). On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Sullivan comments:

I love the idea that Democrats should get back into building things, into making things happen, into deregulating, into supercharging the economy. I just think that until the Democrats address some of the core issues, they seem not to want to control immigration. They have extremist views about race. They think that boys should compete with girls in sports, and that children should be… have their sex reassigned. Until they grapple with that. . . .

We have not taught civics in this country. They’re too busy learning that America is white supremacist without learning that there are three branches of government. They’re all separate. They’re kept apart so that we can be freer than other countries. Why are we teaching that? We should be teaching that (italics mine).

The claim that Democrats “think . . . that children should be . . . have their sex reassigned” is blatantly false. I am curious, though, about the Levitical themes of Sullivan’s commentary: separation and purity.

Sullivan seems to think biological males should not be separated from their penises–even when they desire to be so separated. In his view, effeminate gay boys are being misled by “big trans” into thinking they are Trans* women rather than gay males. “Big trans,” again in Sullivan’s view, is “transing away the gay.”

The second of Sullivan’s falsehoods, related, I think, to the first, is: “We have not taught civics in this country.” Sullivan seems to believe that “we” have not learned anything about the separation of powers–and too much about the separation of racial groups enforced by those same powers for several centuries.

Is his argument that “we” would become less preoccupied with white supremacy if “we” were taught the philosophy of “separate but equal”? If I am not mistaken, “we” were taught in school that Sullivan’s approach is not unique in history. Hence the focus on white supremacy.

I don’t think it’s uncharitable to read the argument of the unruly forces underlying Sullivan’s Leviticus-like political theology this way: In a good society, penises should remain attached to their original bodies; races, like the branches of the U.S. government (like the sexes?), should be separate but equal.

Maternal politics, at least as I understand it, entirely rejects Sullivan’s (unconscious) definition of a “good” society. Instead, it defends and secures a biological male’s right to discern who they are, really–including a woman/mother who desires women and/or men who desire a new alignment of sex and gender.

Maternal politics, as I understand it, is a form of deviant politics. Securing and defending the right of boys to become (wo)men who desire like women/mothers takes us into scandalous and fraught territory.

How do we talk about maternal politics across a range of issues that are important to our fellow citizens? In other words, how do we make it an electorally desirable politics? If we allow ourselves to have a real conversation about the political body, what is our answer to the question, Is this us?

If maternal politics appeals to us, it could be defined more broadly as taking public action(s) to secure and defend everyone’s right to have complicated conversations about the political body, especially now. Among the lessons Trump has (unknowingly) taught us is that we require a genuine upheaval of political thought.

Political Desire: A Challenge for U.S. Democracy

Political desire into democracy will not go.

Political desire feeds on the ideal. It does not compromise. It hates frustration. It must have exactly what it wants, its ideal, or . . . else. Democracy is perpetually threatened by a people’s political desire.

In the U.S., Congress is where the ideal goes to die. Political desire rages. So, “good” politicians have become experts at deflecting and/or deferring the political desire of Americans. Deflection might look like blaming those people; it’s their fault you can’t have what you want! Get rid of them, and you will have what you have always wanted! Deferral often times takes the form of calls for more time; just keep electing so and so (and their party), and you will finally get what you want. Deflection may also take pious forms, as in calls for patience, for civility, and so forth and so on. The goal is to keep political desire aflame, to inspire loyalty to party (i.e.,  partisan madness), all the while trying to prevent it from burning the citadel of democracy to the ground.

Political desire consents to be managed for a time (provided that the fantasy of possessing the ideal is kept alive), but desire qua desire is ungovernable. And we are living in a moment where it is manifestly clear that political desire is no longer willing to be distracted or deferred (think January 6th, think Trump 2024, think unrelenting calls for President Biden to step aside because he is old). Political desire is once again calling for revolution, this time for freedom from the boredom of democratic government. Once again political desire is revealing attempts to successfully manage it as irresistible, pure fantasy.  

It is a fantasy to think that political desire can be managed forever. This fantasy is, however, maintained by two powerful forces in American political life: the state and religion, specifically Christianity. As noted above, the state’s management of desire keeps alive the idea that possessing an ideal (or realizing one) is actually possible, imminent even. Americans just need to make the right electoral choice(s). Likewise, religion keeps alive the idea that the ideal (i.e., God) can be incarnated (a second time) in a particular political candidate.

Take, for example, the MAGA slogan, “Jesus is my Savior. Trump is my President.” The slogan explicitly makes a distinction between Jesus Christ (for Christians, God made flesh) and Trump. Implicitly, however, the slogan functions to keep Jesus and Trump in very close proximity to one another. That proximity is the basis of the MAGA assertion that only Trump can “save America.”

Idealism is the miracle grow of inherently ravenous political desire. Idealism is the transcendent, immaterial (or metaphysical) basis of political revolution(s). Paul of Tarsus (or, as the C/church knows him, Saint Paul) understood this well, and he offered an alternative to it, to the revolution(s) of political desire, to the idealism(s) of the state and of religion.

Paul offers us an a(n) (a)theology of revolution (without revolution). His alternative to political desire is a redeemed political desire, a desire without idealism and so without revolution: a no less revolutionary messianic desire of immanence rooted, not in an ideal, but in the material body of everyday existence.

(to be continued . . . ).

Possessed by “Demons”

A sermon based on the Gospel of John 19:25-29 (FYI: the word “home” is NOT in the Greek text):

*

As Jesus is dying on the cross, the disciple he loves—the boy he loves—the one, we are told, who is responsible for the Gospel of John, is on his mind. In the final moments of Jesus’ life, his beloved’s future is his ultimate concern.

We don’t know the identity of the man Jesus loved, but what we do know is that he is the only disciple Jesus is explicitly said to have loved.

We also know that he is the kind of guy who prefers the company of women. He is with the women at the foot of the cross.

We know too that the relationship between Jesus and this man is one characterized by physical and emotional intimacy. And their intimate connection is no more pronounced—or obvious—than it is in this moment, in the final moments of Jesus’ life.

As he is dying on the cross, Jesus no doubt feels like a motherless child: ripped from the circle of maternal security, cursed and abandoned to the whims of colonizers. Maybe he is even second guessing himself. Why could he not just be normal, act like every other king? In his moment of despair, doubt, questioning—Jesus is concerned that his man learns the lessons that will ultimately result in his resurrection.

Jesus makes sure that the man he loves is adopted by the maternal figure. Jesus declares, “Woman, here is your son.” To his beloved he says, “Here is your mother.” The text tells us that Jesus’ beloved “from that hour took her into his own.” In other words, the man Jesus loved accepted being placed under the exclusive care of the one the narrator calls Jesus’ “mother,” the one Jesus calls simply “woman.”

This text—indeed, the Gospel of John—clearly reveals Jesus as a lover of another man, as one who is concerned in his final hour with the well-being of his boyfriend. Here at the end of Jesus’ life, we are once again reminded that Jesus is not like all the other boys, like all the other rulers and kings. We are reminded that Jesus is a “mama’s boy,” more like a queen than a king.

And that is what the Romans were getting at when they plastered, in the languages of both the colonized and the colonizer, “King of the Jews” above the crucified Jesus’ head. They were calling Jesus the F-word, the 6 letter homophobic slur. The message of Rome is clear: the cross is where not being like all the other boys, not being like all the other kings and rulers, the cross is where being queer will get you; the cross is where being a mama’s boy will get you.

Not much has changed. Consider how we are taught to think about a boy’s secure attachment to his mother.

There is a tradition that is made up of the writings of primarily white psychologists talking about white boys and their relationship to their mothers. Their fear is that a white boy left under the care of his mother will become chronically effeminate, a hopelessly effeminate boy, a monstrosity, one who lacks a positive masculine self-regard.

There is also a tradition of primarily white scholars talking about African American boys and their relationship to their mothers. In this tradition, the dangers multiply: African American boys cared for by their mothers become incapable men—not only gender deviant but also unable to take care of themselves and their families economically, and so end up in jail.

These are the white lies we are told about our secure attachments to the maternal—and their power should not be underestimated. They clearly tell us that if we are mama’s boys, we will be defined as monsters, demons, Satan himself. They teach us that our particular lives and loves are hellish and evil, cursed, and that we will be treated accordingly. Hell is for queers.

But as Lil Nas X has shown us, hell is not such a bad place—especially if you’re the King of it.

In his now in/famous music video, Lil Nas X, judged and condemned, descends—in fact, he slides down a stripper pole, into hell. He feigns interest in Satan before ultimately wringing Satan’s neck.

Lil Nas dethrones Satan and becomes the king of hell, Satan himself. Lil Nas X becomes what Rome said he should fear: the face of damnation itself.

In his music video, Lil Nas fully embraces what Rome names as a hellish lifestyle. He quite literally puts himself in Satan’s shoes. This is his liberation, his resurrection.

Lil Nas X perfectly understands his situation. He knows that he is not really a hellish creature. But he also knows that that is how Rome sees him—really.

And not just him. You will recall that when Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown, testified before a grand jury, he described the young African American man he killed this way: “It looks like a demon.”

Lil Nas X understands his situation. Like Jesus, he descends into hell, and he embraces fully what Rome condemns, tortures, and murders. In fact, Lil Nas X and Jesus may have learned this from their mothers.

As Hortense J. Spiller argues in her now classic essay, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” speaking specifically of the symbolic situation faced by African American women, an African American mother may “[actually claim] the monstrosity . . . which her culture imposes in blindness, . . . might rewrite after all a radically different text for a female empowerment.”

Hellish creatures: that is what we are to Rome, that is how Rome sees all of us who dare to defy its laws in the name of Justice. Why not claim it? We know the truth; we know the Gospel, that “now, apart from the law, Justice is revealed.”

But where we see Jesus, where we see Justice, Rome sees Satan.

Rome sees Satan, but to us, Michael Brown is a child of God.

Rome sees Satan, but to us, Lil Nas X is a preacher of the Gospel.

Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Messiah.

Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is the Word of God.

Rome sees Satan, but to us, Jesus is our Salvation.

What Rome thinks is foolish, we know as the wisdom of God.

To those of us being saved, Jesus Messiah is the wisdom of God. Jesus Messiah is the way, the truth, and the life.

And what he wanted for the man he loved is a secure attachment to the maternal figure. That is what he wants for all of us who love him: that we may be(come) what Rome fears most, the desecration of its power over us.

May it be so.

Amen.

Rest From Cruel Dominion: Embracing Mercy on the Sabbath Day

A Sermon Based On Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-3:6

[5/20/24: Sermon writing is a laborious process, and most clergy spend a lot of time, in the midst of hospital visits, countless meetings and emails, and other obligations, getting it just right. I posted my first draft of this sermon, to be given June 2nd, on May 15th. It has undergone a lot of changes, but I think I am hitting the right notes now. **Guiding statement: I propose to preach that we rest from cruel dominion, from thwarting animal justice and restoration, and to the end of becoming compassionate and merciful sovereigns of the earth.** We all need help with (sermon) writing well. Thomas Long is, in my opinion, the best help for writers of sermons.]

I.

Human animals rule the land. We rule the air. We rule the seas. We have dominion over the earth.

I completely agree with Matthew Scully, a Republican, when we argues in his eloquent and moving book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy—I entirely agree with his argument that “[t]he term dominion carries no insult to our fellow [,non-human animal] creatures. We are all set forth into the world with different gifts and attributes. Their gifts, the ones their Creator intended for them, are good for many things—governing just isn’t one of them. Someone has to assume dominion, and looking around the earth we seem to be the best candidates. . . ” (12).

That truth doesn’t make us better or more valuable or less animal than, say, pigs, octopuses, cows, elephants or bats. Our dominion merely reflects our difference, our unique—yet completely animal—place in the world.

So the question we face today—and every day—is not whether we have dominion over the earth—we manifestly do—the question we face is a much more difficult one: What kind of sovereigns are we?

Are we merciful, compassionate, filled with wonder at the sheer diversity of life all around us and so are sovereigns committed to respecting and protecting the inherent dignity of all animal life?

Or, Are we cruel sovereigns, rulers who thwart animal access to justice and to restoration.

II.

We are so very often cruel sovereigns of the earth.

Our cruel reign is sometimes expressed through our faith in what Martha Nussbaum identifies, in her powerful and life-changing book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility—in what she identifies as our faith in a Romantic view of nature.

We enjoy Romantic thoughts of “Natural” spaces—and of “Natural” people, too. We love to imagine that there are, out there somewhere, pristine, self-regulated, balanced places and self-sufficient, rural people.

The Romantic idea of “Nature” intoxicates us, but when we sober up and actually observe nature, I think we start to agree with the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill: “Nature is cruel and thoughtless.”

When we sober up, when we are truly in nature, I think we begin to learn what ecologists teach us: “balance of nature” is a nice slogan for fruit and veggie supplements, but no such thing exists in nature.

And rural poverty and isolation from needed resources, like quality healthcare, may be, from the Romantic point of view, the “Natural” order of things, but that is just another reason for us to sober up.

Our faith in “Nature” makes us neglectful; it enables us to ignore the suffering of our fellow creatures. But we are not always neglectful, are we? Sensing that our fellow creatures, including members of our own species, can serve the needs of some dominant group, we force them to serve the free market.

Consider the slaughterhouses throughout our county. Who works there? What do they do all day? And what creatures are killed there? How many are killed there? And how are they killed there? And what’s the big deal? For some answers, read a book like Steven Wise’s An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River.

If we open our hearts, we may feel the cries for mercy coming from slaughterhouses all over our country and from those allegedly pristine Natural places. Feeling those cries, we may even be persuaded to rest from our cruel dominion.

III.

God asked us, in the 4th Commandment we read earlier, God asked us to take a break from our cruel dominion. We are asked to rest from cruel dominion on the Sabbath and to remember that God liberated us from the regime of cruelty.

That’s nice—but carefully consider the logic of the Sabbath Commandment: Liberation from slavery in Egypt is the justification for pausing the institution of slavery among those liberated from it. You heard the text: Let your male and female slaves rest on the Sabbath day. I guess you can take the slaves out of Egypt but you can’t take the Egypt out of the liberated slaves—except, maybe, on the Sabbath Day.

But there is a reason the command to let female and male slaves rest on the Sabbath is repeated twice: cruel dominion is all too often the policy of the Sabbath Day.

The story we read from Mark teaches us that cruelty has become a Sabbath Day tradition. Consider this story, another version of the pious cruelty Mark critiques:

All of 17-years-old, I attended a winter church retreat in McCall, Idaho. I managed to get very sick while at the retreat.

I will spare you the details of all the ways my body was trying to expel the sickness.

Anyway, I ended up in hospital, stayed the night on an IV, and returned to the retreat in the morning, in time for breakfast. I walked into the cafeteria and nearly vomited at the sight and smells of sausages and bacon. I consigned myself to hunger.

Later that morning, we gathered for worship and for communion. The chunk of communion bread I ate was so satisfying that, after the service, I went back to the communion table, and I started to chow down on the huge loaf of leftover bread.

It felt so good.

As I was being restored, clergy So-And-So walked over to me and calmly, but with a tone, reminded me that I was eating the body of Christ—and he suggested I stop eating it like a wild animal, by which he meant I should just stop eating it altogether; communion was over.

Being a good teenager, I just completely ignored him. I was not going to be blocked from what I needed to heal.

I hope we have the courage to teach our youth that lesson: sometimes holy trouble will look like totally ignoring religious people. Sometimes, even as your hand is being swatted away by church folks, you just have to keep reaching out your hand and ripping off huge chunks of bread, of justice, of healing. Even on Sundays, in the name of Jesus, you may have to find the courage and tenacity to resist cruel dominion.

Cruel dominion, all the ways, through our inaction and action, we block animals from justice and restoration—cruel dominion is so often a Sunday tradition. But tradition is not destiny. We don’t have to be like clergy So-And-So, blocking people from food, from healing, from justice. We can do something different, if only for one day a week. We can obey the 4th Commandment; we can rest from our cruel dominion.

IV.

Some of you have may noticed a story about the Hurricanes a few weeks ago. I know we have Canes fans in here today. Maybe you saw a story about them entitled, in part, “Hurricanes Use Rest As A Weapon.”

What they did was refuse to practice early in the morning on game day. They went out of their way to get on the ice the day before the game, choosing to rest on the morning of the game. The Canes know what we all know: rest impacts how we perform.

Rest makes us smarter. Rest makes us stronger. Rest makes us patient. Rest makes us merciful and compassionate. Rest makes us woke. 

Woke just means that cruel dominion exhausts us. If we’re woke, that just means we want a break from all forms of cruel dominion.

Rested, we may wake up woke, ready to forsake all forms of slavery, all forms of cruel dominion.

Rested, we may even begin to hear that part of the 4th Commandment that asks us to give animals a rest. Rested, we may start to consider animals as something other than property to be used and as something other than food to be eaten. Rested, we may find it in ourselves to liberate animals from slavery to us.

V.

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham was right when he compared our treatment of animals to slavery. Our cruel dominion over animals can even be hidden in practices that are actually good from our fellow creatures. Think about some of the reasons we stop eating meat:

We stop eating meat to save rainforests, as our meat eating habits require more and more land to raise all those cattle. There are 1.7 billion cows on the face of the earth, and all those cows weigh more than all wild land mammals combined.

We stop eating meat because cows produce more greenhouses gases than our entire transportation sector, changing our environment.

We stop eating meat because it is not healthy for us.

We may even stop eating meat because we oppose cruelty to animals, and industrial farming is terribly cruel to animals. We have an intuitive sense that if we are cruel to animals, that if we support such cruelty, we will also be cruel to one another.

But notice: all that concern, it’s all about us.

Rested, we may realize what Aristotle did: animals like pigs, cows, and chickens “are self-maintaining systems who pursue a good and matter to themselves.” Rested, we may grasp that most animals, including all the ones we like to eat, are sentient creatures.

Sentience is about a lot more than feeling pleasure and pain. It also means that you have an opinion of yourself; you see yourself in a certain way, and you see others in your group, and other objects in the world, in a certain way. And you move accordingly, you move in a way that aligns with your sense of yourself and your sense of how the objects in your world conform to your understanding of what is good and what is bad for you.

Rested, we may grasp that the sow is sentient; she was not created to be food for us; she was created to pursue her goods: a long, satisfying life, and friendship, intimacy, family, nutrition, play, secure housing; rested, we may now understand that the sow desires to pursue her projects and to accomplish her goals.

Rested, the smell of sausages and bacon on the Sabbath may make us want to vomit.

Rested, we may come to this table and reach out our hands, not to kill and eat our fellow creatures, but to be restored by the taste of bread and of grapes.

VI.

Now, I understand if you were with me until that last bit about not eating sentient animals, like pigs. I get it.

I became a vegetarian just last November after I read Nussbaum’s book—and by the reactions of many family and friends, you would think being a vegetarian is the most weirdest thing to be in the world!

Yes, of course vegetarianism is weird, especially if the reason you are a vegetarian is rooted in animal studies, in the fact that most animals, including all of the ones we just love to eat, are sentient in the most expansive sense of the word.

Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy.

Of course vegetarianism is weird; from day one we have been taught that justice is not a thing for non-human animals to enjoy. Humans animals are entitled to justice; cows, pigs, and chickens are entitled to ketchup.

Again, I completely agree with Matthew Scully. He writes, “I am betting that in the Book of Life ‘[They] had mercy on the creatures’ is going to count for more than ‘[They] ate well” (45).

Rested, we may even learn that it’s possible to forsake cruelty and to eat well!

VII.

On the sabbath day, just for one day, let’s rest from our cruel dominion; let’s eat more bread and drink more wine (I mean, grape juice).  And if you just can’t, there is good news for you: right now, in Singapore, synthetic meat is on the menu. It’s “real,” and it’s lab grown. And I imagine it will come our way soon.

For today, let’s start simple; let’s embrace the deepest truth of our faith: God liberated us from cruel dominion.

Today, let it be heard and believed that God gave the middle finger to cruel dominion: God delivered the Messiah Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, from the grave. 

So today, let us really rest from cruel dominion; it’s just done day; it’s just one small act—but tomorrow, rested, you may wake up woke, ready to play the game of dominion differently, ready to become the human animals God created us to become: kind and merciful sovereigns of the earth.

May it be so.

Amen.

The Social Meaning(s) of Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

*

Lori Lightfoot is, according Gregory Pratt, a political failure.

“Some of Chicago’s problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor. . . ,” Pratt contends in his recent book, The City Is Up For Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led And Lost A City In Crisis, “[b]ut some are the result of [Mayor Lightfoot’s] poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn’t been told in full until now. . . ” (xii). Pratt continues, “In some ways, the past four years of Lightfoot’s tenure as mayor are a model for how not to lead a big city. Her failures weakened the office . . . ” (xv).

Pratt’s literary portrayal of Lightfoot is more complicated than it may first appear. His reading of Chicago’s first lesbian Black mayor exceeds his intended framing. In fact, Pratt’s (un)intended portrayal of Lightfoot as perfectly (ill-)suited to be Chicago’s mayor is compelling, comprehensive, and coherent, all of the qualities that make a book worth reading.

But why do I care about Lightfoot?

I was born and raised in Idaho, but I consider Chicago to be my birthplace. In 2002, a twentysomething, I moved to the city with a bar on every corner and bridges that (until weed was legalized in 2020) smelled like chocolate.1

I grew up in Chicago during the Daley regime. I moved to the East Coast during the first few years of the Emanuel regime. I entirely missed Lightfoot’s surprising rise to power, her 4 year reign, and her just as surprising fall from grace.

Nonetheless, I continue to care about Chicago, and I care about women in politics. More specifically, I am interested in how women in politics become political figures, how they (actual women politicians) get defined/portrayed in art (literature, film, etc.). Specifically, I care about Pratt’s artistic rendering of the former Chicago mayor and what it may tell us about how Chicagoans feel and what they want for themselves.

Pratt would likely reject the idea that his book is an artistic rendering of Lightfoot. Yet, the real Lightfoot refused to participate in his project (xv). So, whatever Pratt’s book is about, it is not about the real her. Nonetheless, and this is important to grasp, Pratt’s rendering of Lightfoot does tell us something true and accurate about how she is perceived as a political figure, a figure of what Chicagoans want and what they can do about it.

How is Lightfoot figured by Pratt? What is true about it? Why does it matter? 

**

What follows is a description of Pratt’s picture of Lightfoot. The quotes below are numbered to indicate groupings of interrelated texts that, when taken together, constitute Pratt’s figuring of the mayor. In the ensuing analysis of these texts, I refer to each grouping as a set (e.g., Set 1 = quotes 1[a-d]).

1(a): “Noticing a couple of ornate chess sets hand carved by members of a church in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, I asked Lightfoot if she played. She chuckled and responded that she’s more of a checkers player. Her brother tried to teach her, Lightfoot said, but she wasn’t able to get into the game. It showed over the next four years of chaos” (ix-x).

1(b): “[Mayor] Emanuel came out of the meeting boasting to staffers that [Lightfoot] said [she would not run against him for mayor]. Weeks later, she bought campaign websites . . . . It’s one of the top points Emanuel’s people make when they say she isn’t trustworthy. For her part, Lightfoot says she wasn’t running for mayor but wanted to keep her options open. It’s a level of hairsplitting that makes someone hard to trust” (28).

1(c): Jeanette Taylor, “heart and soul of Chicago’s left-wing City Council slate,” describing Lightfoot: “The difference is, Toni [Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners] will say, ‘Bend over, I’m about to fuck you.’ With Lori, you look up, and your ass is sore’” (86).

1(d): “Though the conversation [with Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union] was amicable, the aftermath worsened the dynamic between the mercurial mayor and street-fighting union” (108).

2(a): “Originally from small town Massillon, Ohio, Lori Lightfoot grew up working class” (4).

2(b): “But she made a big splash at the University of Chicago when she wrote an article about a Baker McKenzie law firm partner asking racist questions to prospective hires” (4).

2(c): “Contemporaries recall Lightfoot as a hard-charging prosecutor with a mean streak, in the courtroom and at the office. Everyone respected her intellect, but she was considered controversial for how she treated people” (5).

2(d): More aptly, she’s a corporate lawyer who appreciates the status quo for what it is while trying to change things around the margins. She appreciates order” (32).

3(a): “In one interview, Lightfoot promised not to be ‘window dressing,’ according to a Chicago Defender profile that praised her as ‘petite, apparently feisty and scheduled to take the reins [of the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards]” (7).

3(b): “In truth, Lightfoot ran the agency in a way geared at protecting the system’s legitimacy and promoting the bad-apple theory of policing that most problems are isolated” (8).

4(a): “Like her denunciation of the Baker McKenzie racist interview, Lightfoot’s handling of the reform efforts after being appointed to the task force [publicly criticizing Emanuel’s ‘memorandum of agreement’ with the Department of Justice] was arguably her at her best (23).

4(b): “But it also highlighted a certain opportunism from Lightfoot, who was angry with Emanuel and lashed out. Channeled effectively, that sense of grievance and clarity of purpose could do a lot of good for the city” (23).

4(c): “Nothing really came from Lightfoot’s [negative] public comments [about the Chicago Police Superintendent], which meant the incident didn’t do anything other than piss people off and illustrate that her tough talk is often just bluster” (96).

5(a): “Years later, she gleefully recalled her relationship with Emanuel in a New York Times interview. ‘He supposedly once said to somebody about me, “I gave her a platform and a microphone, and she took it and shoved it up my ass” (31).

5(b): “While she attempted to portray herself as a progressive alternative to Emanuel, she didn’t embrace particularly left-wing policies . . . (32).

5(c): “Lightfoot spoke a big game about equity and underdogs, but it never jibed with her conservative views on spending and taxes, or her history as a corporate lawyer. ‘Frankly, you take the rhetoric about equity and racial justice out of what Lori Lightfoot says, and she’s a pretty neoliberal politician,’ Sharkey [a leader of the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU)] told me” (43).

6(a): “Depending on perspective, the story [a situation when Lightfoot was a prosecutor, being confronted by a bank robber in court] highlights Lightfoot’s loyalty to a friend [a fellow prosecutor, harassed by the bank robber for being a Jew] and her decency in the face of nastiness—or her tendency to suddenly wind up in a fight [Lightfoot responded to the robber, “That’s about enough, Mr. White]” (8).

6(b): “The confrontation [a press conference interruption by state representative Robert Martwick] has taken legendary status. . . . [I]t helped show people the best of her, standing up for herself and diagnosing a problem . . . .The only downside was the lesson it internalized for the candidate: that slapping rivals works. . . . [T]he occasional beatdown is fine, particularly when someone else starts it, but nobody wants to be around someone who’s in a daily brawl with a new opponent” (56).

6(c): Critics weren’t able to get anything to stick against Lightfoot, who kept the worst elements of her personality under control, though she showed flashes of it off camera” (61).  

7(a): “[After she won the election] [h]er treatment of people started to change. There was a growing sense among some in her circle that she didn’t think she needed anyone. . . . The victory went to her head” (69).

7(b): Describing an incident with the aforementioned Alderperson Taylor at a City Council meeting: “To me, the scene highlighted how Lightfoot didn’t fully understand her power. The mayor presides over City Council from an elevated dais. To speak with her, alderpersons must get permission to walk past security. It is, simply, a throne. And the king [Lightfoot reportedly claimed ‘to have the biggest dick in Chicago’] or queen never vacates the throne for a fight, particularly not one they then lose” (164).

8(a): “Lightfoot staff would tell [Gilbert] Villegas [floor leader of Chicago’s City Council], ‘She isn’t a politician.’ [Villegas] would respond, ‘When you become mayor of the third largest city, you’d better become a politician.’ It was a common refrain for Lightfoot and a recurring theme worsened by staffers who indulged her feelings rather than explaining that she was, in fact, a politician the moment she put her name on the ballot and won” (78).

8(b): “[Inspector General Joe] Ferguson had been optimistic about her potential to be a great mayor but was worried she had ‘completed the transformation’ into ‘politician who cares about things politicians care about” (100).

9(a): “Lightfoot felt like she was on higher ground due to her popularity and landslide victory. Lightfoot’s team would defend her to people who didn’t like her approach, saying she won the election by being demanding and prosecutorial. It fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the election win and the elusiveness of political popularity” (109).

9(b): “He [Lightfoot aide Michael Fassnacht] took a lesson from the memes [of Lightfoot during the Covid pandemic]: people liked Lightfoot and wanted to see her in authentic situations” (125).

9(c): Heading into more forums, Lightfoot faced a tough balance: Be tough, but not off-putting” (198).

10(a): “She made a decision [to shut down the lakefront] and stuck with it, even after it became clear that the [COVID] virus was less likely spread outdoors. Leadership requires resolution, but unwillingness to adapt to new facts is death” (125).

10(b): “Her early waffling about shutdowns and false threats to close businesses if cases spread in the fall highlight the indecision and lack of vision that plagued her administration” (129).

11(a): “Lightfoot can’t acknowledge fault” (155).

11(b): “Lightfoot addressed her broken promise to reopen Chicago’s mental health clinics shuttered by Emanuel in a rare example of successfully taking a change of mind head-on” (197).  

That’s Pratt’s artistic rendering of Lightfoot.

***

We now stand before Pratt’s figure of Lightfoot, but what are we to make of it?

Set 1 defines Lightfoot as lacking any interest in a game that requires strategy to win. At the same time, she is portrayed as a very strategic person: Taylor didn’t know she was being fucked by Lightfoot until it was too late. Lightfoot is not always blunt, but “mercurial,” assessing her opponent’s strategy. Like all political operatives, she does not wear her plans on her sleeve, refusing to give her opponents an opportunity to move against her objectives. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)strategic.

Set 2 situates Lightfoot in an unremarkable social position. She is from small town Ohio, and she grew up working class. Her hard work also earns her a spot at the University of Chicago Law School where she is said to make a “big splash,” calling out racism at a prestigious law firm. She is also a status-quo loving, wealthy corporate lawyer who doesn’t give a damn about people or meaningful change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (anti-)elitist.

Set 3 paints Lightfoot as a true reformer. She is not “window dressing.” She is also, “in truth”, just that: a facade, another Chicago politician that gives cover to corruption. According Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)authentic.

Set 4 gives us a Lightfoot who speaks truth to power. At the very same time her words are self-serving. Her truth is also just “bluster.” According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)trustworthy.

Set 5 describes Lightfoot as the progressive alternative to moderate Democratic mayor, Emanuel. She is also a moderate politician in sheep’s clothing. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (im)moderate

Set 6 defines Lightfoot as either friendly or prone to picking fights. It is always unclear which Lightfoot one will meet: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)predictable.

Set 7 presents Lightfoot as a loner, above the need for help. She is also criticized for not acting like a king or queen, for not understanding her power, improperly leaving her throne to seek help from Alderperson Taylor. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)democratic.

Set 8 offers us a Lightfoot who unwisely rejects the governing style of a politician. Lightfoot is also a politician, a politician who cares only about what politicians care about. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (a)political.

Set 9 reveals a Lightfoot liked for being herself: tough and demanding, a (grand)mom-like figure for the city. At the very same time, she is disliked for those very same qualities. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (un)likeable.

Set 10 is a Lightfoot who is decisive and unyielding. She is also “waffling” and without resolve. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (in)decisive.

Set 11 leaves us with a Lightfoot who is unable/unwilling to adapt to change or to admit the need to change. She is also someone capable of changing course and of explaining the need for such a change. According to Pratt, Lightfoot is (mal)adaptive.

To be fair, Pratt likely intended to portray Lightfoot in a singular way, as a political failure. In his figuring of Lightfoot, he places the emphasis on her negative qualities. In fact, he calls out what he believes are her good qualities only a few times, namely Lightfoot’s toughness, her champion spirit, and her sometimes willingness to take “a change of mind head on.”

Yet, as the final chapter of Pratt’s book, “Breaking Up With The Mayor,” suggests, he was once into Mayor Lightfoot. So, it is not surprising that his portrayal of her exceeds, like Lightfoot’s suits, his intended framing. In fact, I think Pratt’s (un)intended portrayal of Lightfoot as perfectly (ill-)suited to be Chicago’s mayor is compelling, comprehensive, and coherent, all of the qualities that make a body of art pleasing to a viewer.

****

Pratt figures Lightfoot as ill-suited for Chicago politics. But he makes little of her ill-fitting suits.

The City Is Up For Grabs begins with a cute story about four-year-old Idris Lockett dressing up as Mayor Lightfoot for Halloween: “[Idris’s] mother, Catherine, had picked Idris up from her cousin’s home and found him in a jacket that was way too large for his little frame. This visual reminded Catherine of the city’s new mayor, who often wore suits that exceeded the limits of her arms and legs” (vii).2

Pratt uses Lockett’s story to bookend Lightfoot’s single term as mayor, one that begins with her celebrating a cute kid who went viral for dressing like her and ends with her refusing to meet with him after he sat for hours at her last City Council meeting. But he makes nothing of Lightfoot’s fashion style. I don’t fault him for that, as many of us think style is trivial, unimportant, meaningless. But there is a reason Lockett went viral: Lightfoot’s style has social meaning.

And so the question arises: What is the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits?

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits are what set her apart from another female politician who wears a kind of suit and is (in)famous for it: Hillary Clinton. Sketching the social meaning of Hillary’s pantsuits (a decades long topic of popular conversation) will hone our sense of what is relevant in our interpretation of Lightfoot’s suits.

I do not know if the real Lightfoot has shared why she wears ill-fitting suits, but we do know Hillary’s reasoning for wearing pantsuits. Hillary switched out skirts (the typical style of the First Lady) for pantsuits in the 1990s when photographers started taking (or attempting to take) up-the-skirt shots of her. Hillary started wearing suits to prevent these sexist violations of her bodily integrity.

But Hillary’s clothing style(s) did nothing to protect her from the normative male gaze. One cover of Spy Magazine, for example, reveals the gendered politics that framed Hillary as First Lady. According to the cover of Spy Magazine, what Hillary’s dress attempts to hide from public view is her dick.

Throughout the 1990s Hillary was portrayed as “the man.” And when you are a woman, being framed as “the man” is not a compliment. A masculine woman is a man-hating woman, an emasculating woman, a kind of dominatrix eager to stuff a man’s asshole with her cock. She is a monstrosity, at least from a normative male perspective.

Whatever the intentions of the real Hillary Clinton, the pantsuits actually called attention to her masculinity, to her dick. Suits are a fashion staple of professional males. Yet, the way she wears them (they are well fitting) and the way they are styled (usually elegant in their own way and/or colorful) help to feminize her masculinity.

Discerning the social meaning of Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits requires attention to the same kinds of details we identified to make some gendered sense of Hillary’s suits, but those details must always be understood in their own right, in their own context.

To start, Lightfoot is a Black lesbian, and so she is (like Hillary but for different reasons) masculinized from the start, and (unlike Hillary) doubly so. Black women are gendered masculine. Ditto lesbian women. They are women who, according to a racist, homophobic, and sexist logic, depart from the norms of “proper” (i.e., white and straight) women.3

On the one hand, Lightfoot’s suits do not serve to feminize her. They don’t fit well, and they are not flashy. Lightfoot’s suits more closely resemble working-class(?) male fashion. Moreover, Lightfoot seems to enjoy publicly displaying her BIG dick. She reportedly claimed to have the biggest dick in Chicago. Lightfoot does not seem to care about downplaying her phallic prowess. Lightfoot’s suits, quite unlike Hillary’s, seem to masculinize her masculinity. Lightfoot seems to take pride in being “the man.”

On the other hand, Lightfoot’s suits exceed her masculinist presentation, highlighting the petite figure wearing the big suit. Her suits may invite us not to take her big dick too seriously. Lightfoot’s suits may (like Hillary’s but in a different way) ironize her masculinity.

Lightfoot’s ill-fitting suits correspond perfectly well to Pratt’s portrayal of her as ill-suited to lead the City of Chicago. Her suits reveal the social truth about her. And the reason for that is a whole host of social terms are, like Lightfoot’s suit, gendered.

Terms like (in)authenticity, (anti-)elitist, (a)political, and so forth are other ways of getting at what is masculine (and so legitimate) and what is feminine (and so trivial). Authenticity, elitism, and politics are all socially gendered as masculine, as they speak to what is taken socially as real and powerful. And so they speak to what “we” should desire.

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot, like the figuring of Hillary, confounds straightforward, normative political desiring. That is what Pratt’s book, perhaps unintentionally, helps us to grasp as the social meaning of Mayor Lightfoot.

*****

Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot is but one instance of such cultural manufacturing. Each figure of Lightfoot should be understood on its own terms and in its own right. Although, I imagine there will be common themes across the different portrayals of Lightfoot.

But why does Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matter?

I think it matters not for what it teaches us about the real Lightfoot. “Feminine” political figures are obviously related to the real women who inspire them, but we should always mind the gap between social perceptions of such women and the women themselves. I think Pratt’s figuring of Lightfoot matters for what it may reveal about the distinctive subjectivity of Chicagoans, their specific way of feeling about the City of Chicago and what is possible in it.

Chicagoans once felt like the figure of Mayor Lightfoot, and might they feel it again?

And what does Pratt’s figure of Lori Lightfoot have to offer the real Mayor Lori Lightfoot? What do feminine political figures offer, if anything, to the women they are based upon?

I don’t have answers to those questions. But I think that if Chicagoans want Chicago to be(come) a uniquely great American city, then it is worth their time and the effort it takes to grasp the social meaning(s) of their first Black lesbian mayor.

END NOTES:

  1. See here, Act 3. ↩︎
  2. The story is cute, but the gendered dynamics of it could be read in less cute ways. For example, Pratt likely does not intend to define Lightfoot as a petulant little boy (especially during her last days in office), as that would be homophobic, sexist, and racist–but as we have already noticed, one’s writing often exceeds one’s conscious intentions. ↩︎
  3. e.g., see https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Spillers_Mamas_Baby.pdf ↩︎