Struggles inside the queer community and related struggles in a larger society - Essay Example

STRUGGLES IN SOCIETY AND WITHIN QUEER COMMUNITY Societies had been implementing their moors religiously for ages. Any change in status quo is handled ruthlessly. This abhorrence to "change" from box mentality by community compelled individuals to contain themselves in the "laid down moral rules". In the process individuals lost themselves, their identity and their feelings. Nietzsche pointed out that "we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law "Each is furthest from himself" applies to all eternity - we are not "men of knowledge" with respect to ourselves.

"(Nietzsche 15). This "misunderstanding ourselves" is necessary to really know what we think of ourselves rather assuming what we are compelled to think by the community. This urge to know ourselves lead to struggle within and resultantly in the community we are living in. The feeling of being "furthest from oneself" leads a person to new grounds which are taboo for the community. Homosexuality is one of such grounds. "Attitudes toward homosexuality are generally in flux, partially as a result of increased political activism and efforts by homosexuals to be seen not as aberrant personalities but as differing from "normal" individuals only in their sexual orientation.

" (Encyclopedia Britanica, 2007) Still the comfort with which queers would like to move in most of the societies is a far fetched dream. When a queer is subjected to opposition from the community he balks under the pressure and either forfeit his inner desires or tailor them accordingly. Myers compare this with Foucault's concept of reverse discourse and says "the regulation of homosexuality has provoked unanticipated responses and counter representations, unforeseen pictures of difference and self conscious staging of deviance" (Myer 10) Therefore, queers are depicted as someone "different" and due to such an identity most of them tried to deviate from their inner call and join back in the main stream of community.

"Homosexuals commence to speak on their own accord, and to insist that their legitimacy be acknowledged through the same vocabulary and categories by which they are medically condemned", (Foucault Vol 1) which depicts their fight for identity and an effort to relate themselves with reference to community they live in. This shows a fight within a queer. His inner self pulling him towards "forbidden ground" on one hand, on the other hand his instinct of being gregarious pulling him away from "inner self requirement".

This fight is more prominent in the women. She has to face another dimension. Apart from the inequality of relation between man and woman she by going unconventional sexually drifts to further smaller circle of individuals. Her dependence on man and her desire to follow her feelings has led to a situation in which "some of these women consider themselves bisexual. More often they simply consider themselves adventurous, since there was not yet a pressing need to declare, even to one's self, one's "sexual orientation.

" (Lillian Issue 13) Since the fight is within the queer it translates into the struggle in community. As no matter what the community does or says they are part of the community and had been so for quite some time. The community psyche is deeply embedded in the past moral frame work transferred to it. This moral frame work is totally different from what queers intend to follow. However, lately by bold initiatives by queers and their courage to get identified as such in most of the Western cultures they are now been taken as a part of the society.

Still most of the other societies of the world are not very receptive of the challenge posed by these queers. Therefore, we can say that struggle of queers for their identification has only yet started and has certainly generated a struggle within the society as to how to deal with them.Works CitedFoucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. New York:Vintage Books Edition."homosexuality." Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite.

Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica, 2007. Lillian Faderman, From Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: White "Slumming" in Harlem , Issue13 - Spring 2005 - Featured Lodestar Writer - ProseNietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Walter Kaufmann, trans. p.15.Richard Meyer, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality inTwentieth-Century American Art. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2002. 10 pp.