Rebuttal: Gender studies' narrow lens

When you’re as disagreeable and irritable as I am, you have to learn to turn a blind eye to much of the stupidity that surrounds you.

If you try to rail against it, you will inevitably be overwhelmed and probably wake up in prison with bits of human pituitary gland stuck between your teeth.

So while I frequently disagree with a number of my fellow writers, I can respect the divergent opinions and beliefs of others, as long as they are presented in a logical, rational way.

That said, I found Alex Carlisle’s most recent column on gender studies, in which he discussed the uselessness of queer theory, to be a breathtakingly misinformed and dismissive rant, devoid of critical thinking.

To paraphrase Burke, the only thing necessary for the triumph of ignorance is for the informed to say nothing.

I suspect Carlisle, along with many others, does not fully grasp the nature of queer theory. Its job isn’t to manufacture sexual undertones where there are none but just bring the existing ones to light.

As my fingers move smoothly yet insistently over the keyboard, eagerly typing the next willing word, I’m thinking about sex.

You probably are, too. That’s my point. Humans are inherently sexual creatures. Why should we assume that authors, aware of it or not, are free from such urges, feelings and impulses?     

Reading a text through a gender studies lens does not preclude alternate, simultaneous understandings of the same text from other viewpoints.

For example, that preceding suggestive paragraph is both an editorial and something for you to think about later when you’re alone and staring at my picture.

Carlisle seems to have confused the workings of literary interpretation with Instagram filter settings. One does not simply flip a cognitive switch and superimpose images of gay sex over all the other salient portions of text.

The idea that only certain texts should be read from certain viewpoints would be preposterous if it didn’t sound so fascistic. We aren’t in middle-school. We don’t need teachers, or any other authority, to tell us how to read a book or what it means.

This is not to say that every literary interpretation will bear fruit, but we ought to encourage exploration.

The point of literary analysis isn’t to find a single “correct” interpretation. It’s to use the text to meaningfully discuss multiple facets of human life, often including sex.

However, what infuriates me isn’t the misrepresentation of queer reading. It’s the characteristically dismissive scorn Carlisle applies to things he doesn’t understand.

Past columns have none too tactfully insinuated that the Occupy protesters were rapists, women were voting for Obama for free birth control and now, and I quote, “[These are] notions of a nonexistent ‘patriarchy’ that used to subjugate women and keep gays in the closet.”  

I feel as if I have to have misread that.

It seems like the pay gap between men and women, the victim blaming of rape survivors and the sheer prevalence of rape itself, or the prominently anti-gay Tea Party, suggests otherwise.

This isn’t an attack on anyone’s politics or personal beliefs. Rather, I want it to be read as an exhortation of opinions on the realities of modern life, not ignorant, hate-filled straw men.

Instead of vitriolically attacking things you don’t fully understand, make an effort to do a little research and critical thinking.

We aren’t idiots, and we haven’t adopted contrary positions just to spite you. We just want you to acknowledge our reasoning.

That’s where critiques should be leveled. I don’t accuse conservatives of being unilaterally homophobic, inbred half-wits. All I expect is the same courtesy.

­— stefsoko@indiana.edu