This was a piece for a doc class I am taking, and is specifically targeted toward the academic environment, but it raises issues about other vanilla environments. While it specifically address the LGBT community, I, like other theorists, extend the word queer to the BDSM community.

My questions for this post, what are your thoughts on disclosure and openess about your lifestyle? What are your thoughts about the application of queer to O/ur community?



The topics of sexuality, and its visible/invisible subsets of heterosexuality/homosexuality, have exploded into the public/media/political arenas of exposure and debate. If we accept that education is never apolitical, we must admit that these topics are ever present in the educational environment. In Teaching to Transgress, hooks notes an eroticism in education that can never be fully denied, but that most of us seek to repress. It can be taken for granted that our world is a predominantly “straight” world regarding sexuality and expressions of sexuality, barring a few token counter examples in the media that, nevertheless, remain firmly at the margins. The classroom and educational structures replicate and reinforce these positions of sexuality. So, where does this position gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and by extension, BDSM instructors? An issue arises: Should LGBT instructors disclose their counter-normative sexualities in the educational space?

This letter will examine this issue, and the problems essential to it, through the lens of queer theory, a critical philosophy with roots in feminist epistemology. Queer theory challenges the position of heterosexuality’s normative state (heteronormativity), the dualism of gay/heterosexual, and the essentialism of sexuality as a fixed aspect of identity. It is a theory of destabilization regarding each of these uncritically accepted positions and of the power relations/distributions contained in the claims that derive from them. But what of this word queer? Queer in this context refers to two notions: queer as subject position and queer as politic inquiry. Regarding queer as position of subject, queer refers to the marginality of the placement of those who view themselves as queer, that is anyone occupying spaces outside of normative sexuality, while simultaneously challenging the existence of the center and the margins. This includes individuals who practice homosexual sex (gay, lesbian, an bisexual), who are outside of normative gender constructions (transgendered), and those who practice sexuality outside the norms of sexual practice (i.e. those practicing BDSM: bondage/discipline, Domination/submission, sadism/masochism). Regarding politic, queer critically examines the power structures constructed around gender and sexuality political position of all participants in relation to each other. Paradoxically, Queer rebuffs its position outside of the normal and challenges approaches to assimilate it within the norm.

When examining queerly the issue of whether or not LGTB or otherwise queer (LGTBQ) instructors should disclose their sexualities in the classroom, the conclusions are not as simple as one might suppose. While on the surface, the act of disclosure, or “coming out” seems to be an act of challenge to the heteronormative, it is decidedly more complicated through this philosophical lens. Without context of purpose, disclosure is an act of revealing something hidden, and the purpose for that covering is related to its counter-normative position. The act of coming out immediately admits to things: my subject position is marginal and the politic of my position is opposed to that which is heterosexual (or in the case of BDSM, that which is vanilla, or encompassing normal sexual behaviors). Taken one at a time, the notion of marginal subject position is counter to the philosophical tenets of queer theory in that it acknowledges the subjects complicity in heteronormative structures, that is there is the norm and there is the non-normative, and S/he occupies the later. It also acknowledges the essentialness of this subject position, that is, sexuality is a fixed and unchangeable state. Regarding the queerness of politic, there is overlap with the queerness of subject. Coming out, uncritically, reinforces the power-dynamic that is structured into the heterosexual/homosexual/BDSM/vanilla/singular gender/multiple gender dualisms. Admittedly, there is perceived and actual cultural capital present on one side of these dualisms that is gained at the expense of the other position. Coming out, as a political act, can easily reinforce the power inherent in these dualisms by acknowledging Power’s presence by omission of its existence.

As noted, coming out is a complex act, and just as coming out can represent an act complicit to the heteronormative, silence represents an act that is equally complicit. When done out of political necessity, it acknowledges the marginality of a queer position and the domination of the heteronormative power structures i.e. the lesser amount of cultural and political capital of a queer position. Omission or silence at the subject level is an axiological confirmation of the value of the heteronormative at the vast expense of the queer. It reinforces the centrality of a non-queer subject and relinquishes the queer position to the margins; furthermore, it acknowledges that there is a center and margin regarding sexual identity, as well as the fixed essentiality of such positions. Fluidity is denied as an option.

Queer theory radically problematizes this issue of whether or not LGBTQ faculty disclose their sexuality in the classroom. For one, it presupposes that there is a fixed sexual identity. It also acknowledges the normative at the expense of the queer by maintaining that there is a reason for closedness, or in this case, closetedness. If nothing more, it raises problems of complexity and complicity in the issue at hand.