Teaching Gender in Lesbian and Gay Studies

Abstract

Teaching an introduction to lesbian and gay studies may seem like a natural for someone who calls herself a lesbian and a feminist, and indeed, when I was offered the chance to teach such a course, I leapt at the opportunity. However, teaching in that new and growing field presents problems for those who claim lesbian and/or feminist identities. One of the foundational theoretical texts for that field is, of course, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990). Butler's intent was to unsettle the presumed congruence, between sex, gender, and sexual desire. Her contention is that while feminists had deconstructed the social category of gender, they had failed to recognize that sex itself was a socially constructed category. According to the editors of the influential text, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (1993), the field of lesbian and gay studies has emerged in order to do for sex what feminists have done for gender: deconstruct the category in order to reveal it as a social institution that confines people to narrowly proscribed identities. Those who write in lesbian and gay studies agree with Foucault that the category of sexuality developed in the nineteeth century under the guidance of early sexologists. They argue that movements such as feminism and gay and lesbian liberation make a critical mistake when they use socially constructed categories in order to agitate for civil rights and liberation. Rather than freeing the oppressed, use of identity categories ultimately reinforces the regime of sexual differences that supports a heterosexist patriarchy. And ironically, those who make their identities within those categories end up policing the bound-