Some shared features of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism Some questions lesbian, gay, and queer critics ask about literary

everyone’s experience can be understood. Heterocentrism renders lesbian and gay experience invisible, making it possible in decades past, for example, for fans of Walt Whitman to be blind to the homoerotic dimension of his poetry. It is interesting to note that the words homophobia, heterosexism, and heterocentrism are sometimes used interchangeably, the difference among them apparently being one of degree: homophobia suggests the most virulent antigay sentiment, heterocentrism the least virulent. By focusing our attention on gay men and lesbians as an oppressed group, the words homophobia, heterosexism, and heterocentrism tend to spotlight the ways in which gay people constitute a political minority. As a minority they deserve, of course, the same protection under the law afforded to racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in America. Another concept that emphasizes the minor‑ ity status of lesbians and gay men is biological essentialism, the idea that a fixed segment of the population is naturally gay, just as the rest of the population is naturally heterosexual. Conversely, some lesbian and gay theorists argue that, although gay people constitute an oppressed political minority in America, all human beings have the potential for same‑sex desire or sexual activity. Accord‑ ing to this view, which is called social constructionism, homosexuality and het‑ erosexuality are products of social, not biological, forces. Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on their minority status are called minoritizing views. Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on the homosexual potential in all people are called universalizing views.2 Interestingly, both essentialist (minoritizing) and constructionist (universaliz‑ ing) views have been used to attack homosexuality: for example, (1) gay people are born sick (or evil); (2) gay people are sick (or evil) products of a sick (or evil) environment. By the same token, both essentialist and constructionist views have been used to defend or celebrate homosexuality: for example, (1) it is bio‑ logically natural for some people to be gay, no matter what environment they’re born into, and therefore they should be accepted as natural; (2) homosexuality is a normal response to particular environmental factors, and therefore gay people should be accepted as normal. Finally, two oft‑used words that refer to same‑sex relationships are homoerotic, which I used earlier to describe Whitman’s poetry, and homosocial. Homoerotic denotes erotic (though not necessarily overtly sexual) depictions that imply same‑sex attraction or that might appeal sexually to a same‑sex reader, for example, a sensually evocative description of women in the process of help‑ ing each other undress or of nude men bathing in a pond. Such depictions can occur in any medium, such as film, painting, sculpture, photography, and, of course, literature. The word homosocial denotes same‑sex friendship of the kind seen in female‑ or male‑bonding activities. For example, the relationship among

the three prostitutes—China, Poland, and Miss Marie—in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) is homosocial, as is the relationship between Huck and Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and between Edna Pontel‑ lier and Adèle Ratignolle in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). Furthermore, in the descriptions of Edna’s sensual response to Adèle’s voluptuous beauty, the relationship between these two characters is homoerotic as well. So far, I have discussed gay men and lesbians as a group. Indeed, even the inclu‑ sion of gay and lesbian criticism in the same chapter implies that they consti‑ tute some sort of homogenous collectivity. Certainly, they share in common the political, economic, social, and psychological oppression they suffer as members of a sexual minority. And for many thinkers, the enormity of this shared experi‑ ence, and the potential for political power generated when gay men and lesbians act as a group, is sufficient to support the claim that they should be considered in this light. Many lesbians and gay men, however, argue that oppression is one of the few experiences, if not the only one, they have in common and that, in most other ways, gay men and lesbians are polar opposites. For example, many gay men and lesbians have their most significant social, political, and personal experiences, if not all of their experiences, in same‑sex groups. In addition, many lesbians identify exclusively with women, while many gay men identify exclusively with men. Furthermore, lesbians, even if “closeted” (posing as heterosexuals), have experienced the gender oppression that all women, straight or gay, have experi‑ enced, while closeted gay men have had the opportunity to enjoy the patriarchal privileges extended to straight men. And whether closeted or not, gay male writ‑ ers have enjoyed an incomparably greater representation in literary history than lesbians (or heterosexual women) because, until recently, works by male authors were much more readily canonized than works by female authors. In order to appreciate the distinctive features of lesbian and gay criticism, we’ll discuss them under separate headings. Then, in order to consider the most recent developments in lesbian and gay criticism, we’ll discuss a relatively new field of inquiry called queer theory, which is based on the insights of deconstruction and is relevant to issues of heterosexual identity as well as to issues of gay and lesbian sexual identity.

Lesbian criticism

Perhaps because lesbian criticism and feminist criticism grew from the same soil—as responses to patriarchal oppression—and because lesbian critics are generally feminists, lesbian criticism is concerned with issues of personal identity and politics analogous to those analyzed by feminists (see chapter 4). However,

while feminism addresses issues related to sexism and the difficulties involved in carving out a space for personal identity and political action beyond the influ‑ ence of sexist ideologies, lesbian critics address issues related to both sexism and heterosexism. In other words, lesbian critics must deal with the psychological, social, economic, and political oppression fostered not only by patriarchal male privilege, but by heterosexual privilege as well. And this second form of privilege has often put heterosexual and lesbian feminists at odds with each other. Indeed, feminism has been, at various times, vulnerable to charges of heterocen‑ trism in its tendency to focus on the oppression of heterosexual women rather than on the oppression of all women, including lesbians, and of heterosexism in the heterosexual orientation of its most visible leadership and in its legiti‑ mate fear of being “branded” a lesbian movement by the homophobic patri‑ archal power structure in America (legitimate because homophobia is such a pervasive and disarming force). Analogously, lesbians of color and working‑class lesbians have suffered a history of marginalization, if not exclusion, within the lesbian‑feminist movement, which, like the feminist movement, emerged largely from the white middle class and, therefore, has been limited—until relatively recently—by white middle‑class perspectives and goals. I mention these problems up front because, especially since the mid‑1980s, les‑ bians have refused to be marginalized by heterosexual feminists; and lesbians of color and working‑class lesbians have refused to be marginalized by white middle‑class lesbians. As a result, lesbian criticism has become one of the richest and most exciting domains of theoretical inquiry and political activity. Ques‑ tions that have long been central to lesbian critical inquiry—such as “What is a lesbian?” and “What constitutes a lesbian literary text?”—are problematized in very productive ways when lesbian critics take into account both the limita‑ tions imposed on their viewpoints by their class origins and race, and the beauty and importance of the complex heritage bestowed on all of us by the ultimate inseparability of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation in our daily lives. In addition to generating fundamental issues of lesbian inquiry, the questions “What is a lesbian?” and “What constitutes a lesbian literary text?” belong to a self‑questioning form of theoretical activity not generally performed by gay criti‑ cism. So let’s take a closer look at these two questions. Can a lesbian be defined as a woman who has sex with another woman? What activity constitutes sex? (Must there be genital contact?) How would such a defi‑ nition work if we applied it to heterosexuality? Presumably, it would mean that virgins who thought of themselves as heterosexuals would have no right to call themselves heterosexuals unless and until they had genital sex with men. So one’s sexuality must be defined, it seems, in terms of one’s sexual desire.