Homogenizing The Homosexual Essays - Same-sex Sexuality,

Homogenizing The Homosexual On a hot June night in 1969 the sexual discourses of theology, law and psychology encountered resistance so strong that millions of lives were changed. In a small gay bar in New York, the regulars, an eclectic mix of drag queens, transexuals, effeminate men and butch women, offered up the most visible resistance ever witnessed to the relentless exercising of public power on their private lives. The three-day street riot, began by Stonewall patrons, spilled onto the front pages and television screens of a nation. The exposure placed the queen, queer and dyke in the living rooms, kitchens and supermarkets of straight America. The resistance of gays to the external and internal subjectification of themselves as sinners, sodomites and psychopaths began. Before this seminal event, gays were known, but their lives operated in the back streets and alleyways of urban life. They were invisible to mainstream North Americans and expected to stay in the shadows where their deviant bodies belonged. The patrons of the Stonewall bar lived at the precipice of gay life. Their adoption of cross dressing was an affront to prevailing sexual norms. Women in suits and men in scarves and chiffon were the most identifiable of deviants and they relished their disobedience. Strutting through urban nights they gleefully thumbed their noses at the heterosexual world. They embraced every stereotype and took the constitution of the gay subject to extremes. The visibility of these men and women made them easy targets for random displays of force by police. Haphazard attacks on gay bars and clubs instilled fear of the unknown. The visible cared little about the repercussions of these raids for they had nothing to lose. For this they were shunned by their gay brethren who viewed them as circus sideshow freaks. These queens, queers and dykes were dangerous. Their openness put ?average' gays at risk. The physical and verbal abuse by police, abandonment by families and lack of social opportunity experience by the most identifiable queers kept most of North America's gays firmly underground. Under the guises of religion, law and science, power was being exercised to keep gays marginalized and hidden. Most happily acquiesced. With the fear of verbal, physical or social reprisals looming large, they became prisoners of their own making in Michel Foucault's vision of panoptic power. Invisible gays continually surveyed themselves for any outward signs of their sin that would lead to public detection. With only the images and words of repressive discourses to constitute themselves, the invisible queers, internalized disgust and spent their lives under constant self-surveillance. These stifling conditions ignited the need for the relation of power between straights and gays to shift focus. Near domination and the excessive uses of force were producing an entropic situation in need of diversion to a more productive state. Stonewall provided the necessary response. Three nights of fighting, shouting and revelry that confounded police commanded the immediate attention of heterosexuals everywhere. More importantly it garnered the ?freaks' the respect and admiration of the millions of silent women and men across North America. For gays, a movement was being born and a new, more productive power structure was emerging. In the aftermath of Stonewall, many gays felt empowered to go public and change the repressive statutes that governed their lives. Collectively, the truth that they were not deviants to be beaten, souls to be saved or in need of psychiatry materialized. Nothing was wrong with their psychological or spiritual states. Claims of normalcy were becoming self evident through the eyes of the new scientific discourse of biology. No blame was to be laid nor pity bestowed, nature had made them. The prescience of this biological discourse laid the fertile ground for the exercising of Foucault's bio power upon the gay subject. The reduction of fear and militancy generated by the rioters helped to usher in the ascent of bio power. By giving gays the courage, legitimacy and collective will to move out of the shadows, Stonewall's riots gave bio power access to the private lives of gays. If their sexual nature was blameless then remaining cloaked kept them from participating as productive social beings. Out in the open bio power could classify, subjectify, survey and normalize the modern gay. To produce

French Revolution4 essays

French Revolution4 essays By the end of 1971, Europe was preparing to witness the end of a seemingly triumphant revolution in France. The country was restructuring its government in a forceful and bloodless manner, while the tyrant King Louis the XVI agreed to the demands of the masses (albeit without much choice). However, due to the fanatical aspirations of men such as Danton, Marat and Robespierre,it would be only a matter of months before the moderate stage of social and political reform was transformed into a radical phase of barbaric and violent force. In their quest for freedom, equality and fraternity, the leaders of the Jacobins inadvertently turned the revolution into an oligarchic dictatorship that threatened to destroy all that was achieved in the previous two years of insurrection. The revolution took a sharp turn on August 9th, 1792. The Municipal government was overthrown in Paris and a Commune was established by the leaders of the radical forces. During this time there were continual food riots erupting in every area of the country and, with the threat of war against Austria and Prussia looming, it was vital that order was to be maintained during such tumultuous times. Although the constitution was already enshrined and the citizens had their freedom and liberties, there was still plenty of public dissent and disapproval as to whether or not these laws would help create a new government and prevent the country from breaking apart. The people had come this far and were not prepared to watch their efforts lead to failure or the restoration of an absolute monarch. As a result, the radical forces were able to gain the support of the citizens in declaring that the constitution of 1791 was ineffective and useless since it did not suit the needs of ALL the population of France. Moderate forces preferred to concentrate on the foreign affairs of "new" France, b...

Odalisque, Harmony in Red Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Odalisque, Harmony in Red - Research Paper Example These paintings are infused with southern light, bright colors, and a profusion of decorative patterns. They emanate a hothouse atmosphere suggestive of a harem†.2 The painting’s dimension is noted as 15 1/8 x 21 5/8 in. (38.4 x 54.9cm). As exemplified through the title, the predominant colors seen in the painting are red, with other colors ranging from white, yellowish orange, lavender, shades of gray, pink, green, and brown. The focal image is the reclining figure of a woman, researched to be â€Å"Henriette Darricarrià ¨re (born 1901), a young woman skilled in the arts of ballet, piano, violin, and painting who lived near Matisses studio†. 3 Viewers are given a glimpse of the model’s exposed left breast; yet, the rest of her body as skimpily covered with a white thin overcoat. The model’s skin illuminates as she lounges in a peaceful stature with her eyes closed and her left arms raised where her hands are noted to rest just beneath her left cheeks. Both her ankles are adorned with foot anklets, one in green emerald color (right ankle) and the other in intermittent colors of yellow and brown. The background is predominantly red, with the walls seemingly covered in geometric triangular patterns. A gray side table rests beside the bed and another oval yellow table with similar decorative figure in the same shade positioned beside it. Matisse’s style in painting was noted to be diverse. As explicitly noted, â€Å"Matisses painting moves quite freely from one style to another, from an almost naturalist, contoured technique, in which the play of light and shade is translated into classic perspective, to a concept in which large flat areas of colour dispense with volume and offer themselves up for audacious ventures into geometric, even abstract, forms†. 4 The geometric patterns shown in the painting evidently proved the contoured technique and effectively manifested binges of naturalism and realism in