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Abstract
Recent cover stories about queer teenagers mark a noticeable shift in the discourse surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) publics. Contemporary media reports have repositioned the multifarious identities of queer teens as sites of unease for contemporary queer politics. Employing a framework that emphasizes the dialogical relationship among the tropes of utopia and apocalypse to scrutinize media coverage, this analysis explores the anxieties and possibilities generated by queer teens. Young queers are simultaneously understood as both political separatists from earlier movements, as well as disinterested assimilationists. The thematics of sexual fluidity and neoliberal individualism are highlights of this discourse, each being carefully tempered by the cultural force of assimilation.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Isaac West, Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, Robert Ivie, Eric King Watts, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on drafts of this essay. He is also grateful to the faculty at Vanderbilt University for providing an opportunity to engage these ideas in a public forum.
Notes
1. A trope is typically understood as a recurring figure on which an argument “turns.” Nietzsche famously used tropes to explore language and the ways its empty signifiers materialize realities. Invoking Cicero, Nietzsche (Citation1989) argued that tropes are like clothing: they were born of human necessity and deficiency and later positioned as decoration (p. 51). As such, all words are tropes because “language never expresses something completely but displays only a characteristic which appears to be prominent to it [language]” (p. 23).
2. These tropes are pronounced not only in religious discourse, but feminist movements (Keller, Citation2004; Mellor, Citation1982; Jones and Goodin, Citation1990; Schönpflug, Citation2008), environmental movements (Gottlieb, Citation1993/2005; Kassman, Citation1997; Jennaway, Citation2008; Callenbach, Citation1975), economic movements (Webb, Citation2000; van den Berg, Citation2003; Hodgson, Citation1995; Jameson, Citation2005), and disarmament movements (Nehring, Citation2004; Wojcik, Citation1999).
3. One notable exception is Mary Gray's Out in the Country (Citation2009).
4. In this paper I usually refer to “queer” youth, as opposed to LGBT youth. As the essay will demonstrate, some teens are now actively not identifying with any of the traditional identity markers, making “queer” the most encompassing phrase.
5. This paper privileges cover stories that offer structured coherence to the thematic narratives surrounding queer teens over the last decade. Staying close to the emergent themes, a search of EBSCO and Lexis/Nexus databases was used to employ additional evidence. Because of its popular circulation (not to mention inclusion with other popular sources in the databases), The Advocate was included as a mainstream publication.
6. Utopia is a pun of two words, ou-topos (“no place”) and eu-topos (“good place”). See Neuman, Citation2008, p. 96.
7. While some assert that utopian rhetoric dissolves political action, others argue that utopian projections manufacture hope. Some lament the passing of utopian visions, saying the disregard of utopian rhetoric signals an aversion to universals. Jacoby (Citation1999) asserts if “not murderous, utopianism seems unfashionable, impractical and pointless. Its sources in imagination and hope have withered” (p. 179). Others, such as Jameson (Citation1979), warn that utopian longings sometimes materialize in problematic forms. For example, they have the potential to create nostalgic longings for a falsely idealized past in the imagined solidarity of resented ethnic groups in the present.
8. For more on apocalyptic rhetoric see Darsey, Citation1997.
9. To avoid participating in what Christopher Castiglia (Citation2000) calls “counteramnesia,” other movement histories are useful for a more complete reading. See especially: D'Emilio, Citation1983; Shilts, Citation1978; Clendinen and Nagourney, Citation1999.
10. There are conflicting histories about the cohesiveness and membership composition of organizations like ACT-UP. I am not interested in determining the “correct” history so much as I am the rhetorical fantasy created using utopian imagery. For accounts that run counter to Cohen's see Gamson (Citation1989, pp. 354–356); Cvetkovich (Citation2003, pp. 156–204).
11. Of course, utopias are sometimes used to imagine a world free of LGBT people. See Sedgwick (1990, p. 128).
12. Proponents of unified movements accuse defenders of queer theory of reiterating utopian ideals of liberal individualism. Seidman (Citation1993) pondered “is it possible that underlying the refusal to name the subject … is a utopian wish for a full, intact, organic experience of self and other?” (p. 133). Dana Cloud (Citation2000) writes that queer theory “poses utopian experiments in intimate fulfillment—akin to the 1950s suburban family ideal—in lieu of a collective, political struggle” (p. 72).
13. LAMBDA estimates that a U.S. teen takes his/her own life every five hours because of his/her sexuality, approximately 40% of homeless teens self-identify as gay or lesbian, and that 25% of gay and lesbian youth have drug and alcohol problems. A GLSEN survey found that “LGBT students are three times as likely as non-LGBT students to say that they do not feel safe in school (22% v. 7%) and 90% of LGBT students (v. 62% of non-LGBT students) have been harassed or assaulted during the past year.” About 57% of those harassed never report incidents to school officials.
14. To drive home Larry's impending fate, the killer was articulated with none other than Adolf Hitler, with whom he supposedly had a fascination (Setoodeh, Citation2008, p. 44).
15. One exception to this narrative was Sullivan who observed that even “in evangelical circles, gay kids willing to acknowledge and struggle publicly with their own homosexuality represented a new form of openness” (p. 18).
16. While generations of gay men and lesbians have celebrated sexual liberation as a symbol of non-conformity, some young people are subscribing to more heteronormative approaches to relationships. Amico (Citation2005) notes that the “notion of virginity fits neatly into young gay lives at a time when political and moral agendas promote abstinence for straight people and offer no support at all for gay sex acts … By buying into the language of virginity, gay youths are allowing the straight majority to limit their options and diminish their integrity” (p. 36). This is especially perplexing when contemplating the notion of virginity in relation to queer sex.