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I must admit it's taken me a while to let that visceral reaction settle out to leave the more reasoned response below.
Queer het seems to mean the stuff that's outside of the boundaries of preconceived notions of heterosexuality--thing is, how much territory must fall outside of the boundary before we can all agree to step back and question how useful those preconceived notions really are?
One or two folks have pointed to "Scientist, Astronaut, Nymphomaniac: The nine lives of John Crichton" as an example of what they might call "queer het"; het that is unconventional to the point of no longer being true het. Leaving aside the reactions of the POV character overcoming the niggling after-effects of his American male homophobia vaccination and also coming to terms with bodily penetration, my argument re: " 'Nine Lives' as 'queer het' " specifically is that gender play is just as much a part of heterosex as it is homosex. We don't tend to assume other fetishes or explorations are the home territory of one vs. the other (right? I mean, I don't, and while I'm not fresh off the farm truck I'm no wild child either). So why this need to label heterosex that plays with the conventional "ideals" of gender roles?
Just because our society takes a greater stake in prescribing certain roles for each heterosex participant doesn't mean that those strictures and rules apply in private, or that the blurring of those lines is therefore automatically outside of the territory of heterosex. It may be outside of the expectations of some particular portions of our society, yes. But outside of the very nature of heterosex? Hardly.
The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality.
These people and/or institutions wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep heterosex "in line" if it were naturally restricted to missionary-style penetration in order to conceive. But there has always been a push/pull dynamic in heterosexuality between the pleasure, the intimacy, the societal power of women vs. men and the fact that fucking very often results in babies (if anything, that fact has through history been a prime motivator to explore avenues of sexual expression other than the old in-and-out). Effective birth control is a relatively new thing, and our society is going to be figuring out the ramifications of this for generations.
I find I'm also concerned with the use of the word "queer" to denote interesting expressions of heterosex. It's a hurtful word that has been reclaimed and embraced by many in the community it used to be targeted at, redefined (it seems to me in context) as something both joyful and assertive. We're here, we're queer, get used to it; it's another way to be. It's a great word and a useful one. But I think using it as a modifier in "queer het" leads to ambiguity and confusion, and it allows for inferences that the speaker may not be aware of or support.
It's unclear what lines are being blurred with this deliberate oxymoron, or whether that blurring is even deliberate. Is it supposed to reflect the continuum of sexual expression; that there is no pure het or pure homo? Then why coin more labels at all, why not simply point to the wide variety of expression and say, "yes, this shows the continuum, this is what I like to see"? What about slash that conforms to traditional gender role expectations, would that be "het slash"? Wouldn't that mean conflating gender-preference with gender-role rigidity? If the purpose of a label is to clarify, "queer het" fails miserably.
One of those inferences that can be made, which was unfortunately one of my knee-jerk reactions to the phrase when I first read these discussions, is that by segregating "queer het" from "het", one condemns the whole of heterosexuality to the very worst of those gender role strictures I mentioned above. I don't think this has been supported by much of anyone in these discussions, but it remains a ramification that I can't help seeing and getting riled up about. It's as if those folks who keep trying to shove my unparalleled favorite flavor of sex into that small marriage/procreation box are right to do so; that the width and breadth and depth of heterosexuality can be pruned without killing the tree.
There's a struggle in this society over the roles of women and men, over the use and the nature of sex and marriage and family. It doesn't just involve gay marriage, or abortion or the right to die with dignity; it involves everyone who gets married, everyone who uses contraception, everyone who works, dates, expects protection from the law, seeks medical care, is a member of a family, everyone. I realize this is not what is under discussion, that "queer het" is a fluffy fandom label that has no truck in the real world, but it struck me as another stab at labeling and segregating, at defining the Squares as the negative space around the Cool Kids, and that it only muddied the waters and raised hackles instead of fostering any kind of useful discussion about: what the hell is het, anyway, if it also encompasses this weird shit?
Ziggy Stardust vs. the new Starbuck; androgyny in pop culture. It's a discussion still waiting to happen, it seems, and it's the one I really want to have. If you didn't know before, if it weren't apparent from the story linked above, I've got a bit of a gender kink myself.
So here's my stab at discussion: Have we been sold a bill of goods on het? Perhaps we have; so how about those nifty new androgynous characters in tv, you know, the ones who hook us like trout because they're so much like real people? Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
Discuss.
I guess I should catch up on that BSG now, huh?
edited for clarity, 10:32am 4-15
Queer het seems to mean the stuff that's outside of the boundaries of preconceived notions of heterosexuality--thing is, how much territory must fall outside of the boundary before we can all agree to step back and question how useful those preconceived notions really are?
One or two folks have pointed to "Scientist, Astronaut, Nymphomaniac: The nine lives of John Crichton" as an example of what they might call "queer het"; het that is unconventional to the point of no longer being true het. Leaving aside the reactions of the POV character overcoming the niggling after-effects of his American male homophobia vaccination and also coming to terms with bodily penetration, my argument re: " 'Nine Lives' as 'queer het' " specifically is that gender play is just as much a part of heterosex as it is homosex. We don't tend to assume other fetishes or explorations are the home territory of one vs. the other (right? I mean, I don't, and while I'm not fresh off the farm truck I'm no wild child either). So why this need to label heterosex that plays with the conventional "ideals" of gender roles?
Just because our society takes a greater stake in prescribing certain roles for each heterosex participant doesn't mean that those strictures and rules apply in private, or that the blurring of those lines is therefore automatically outside of the territory of heterosex. It may be outside of the expectations of some particular portions of our society, yes. But outside of the very nature of heterosex? Hardly.
The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality.
These people and/or institutions wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep heterosex "in line" if it were naturally restricted to missionary-style penetration in order to conceive. But there has always been a push/pull dynamic in heterosexuality between the pleasure, the intimacy, the societal power of women vs. men and the fact that fucking very often results in babies (if anything, that fact has through history been a prime motivator to explore avenues of sexual expression other than the old in-and-out). Effective birth control is a relatively new thing, and our society is going to be figuring out the ramifications of this for generations.
I find I'm also concerned with the use of the word "queer" to denote interesting expressions of heterosex. It's a hurtful word that has been reclaimed and embraced by many in the community it used to be targeted at, redefined (it seems to me in context) as something both joyful and assertive. We're here, we're queer, get used to it; it's another way to be. It's a great word and a useful one. But I think using it as a modifier in "queer het" leads to ambiguity and confusion, and it allows for inferences that the speaker may not be aware of or support.
It's unclear what lines are being blurred with this deliberate oxymoron, or whether that blurring is even deliberate. Is it supposed to reflect the continuum of sexual expression; that there is no pure het or pure homo? Then why coin more labels at all, why not simply point to the wide variety of expression and say, "yes, this shows the continuum, this is what I like to see"? What about slash that conforms to traditional gender role expectations, would that be "het slash"? Wouldn't that mean conflating gender-preference with gender-role rigidity? If the purpose of a label is to clarify, "queer het" fails miserably.
One of those inferences that can be made, which was unfortunately one of my knee-jerk reactions to the phrase when I first read these discussions, is that by segregating "queer het" from "het", one condemns the whole of heterosexuality to the very worst of those gender role strictures I mentioned above. I don't think this has been supported by much of anyone in these discussions, but it remains a ramification that I can't help seeing and getting riled up about. It's as if those folks who keep trying to shove my unparalleled favorite flavor of sex into that small marriage/procreation box are right to do so; that the width and breadth and depth of heterosexuality can be pruned without killing the tree.
There's a struggle in this society over the roles of women and men, over the use and the nature of sex and marriage and family. It doesn't just involve gay marriage, or abortion or the right to die with dignity; it involves everyone who gets married, everyone who uses contraception, everyone who works, dates, expects protection from the law, seeks medical care, is a member of a family, everyone. I realize this is not what is under discussion, that "queer het" is a fluffy fandom label that has no truck in the real world, but it struck me as another stab at labeling and segregating, at defining the Squares as the negative space around the Cool Kids, and that it only muddied the waters and raised hackles instead of fostering any kind of useful discussion about: what the hell is het, anyway, if it also encompasses this weird shit?
Ziggy Stardust vs. the new Starbuck; androgyny in pop culture. It's a discussion still waiting to happen, it seems, and it's the one I really want to have. If you didn't know before, if it weren't apparent from the story linked above, I've got a bit of a gender kink myself.
So here's my stab at discussion: Have we been sold a bill of goods on het? Perhaps we have; so how about those nifty new androgynous characters in tv, you know, the ones who hook us like trout because they're so much like real people? Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
Discuss.
I guess I should catch up on that BSG now, huh?
edited for clarity, 10:32am 4-15
