The death of hetero and homo

"The Death of Hetero/Homo" is a theoretical examination of the ways in which sexuality, love, and desire are not merely abstract, innate concepts but have very real consequences as weapons in the process of abjection, particularly of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals. As gender is illegible and fluidly defined, it becomes impossible to dictate that one's attraction is oriented toward men, women, masculinity, femininity, and/or androgyneity. Ultimately, individuals are attracted or not attracted to particular body parts, personality traits, values, and life goals. None of these can be attached to a particular (a)gender as anyone of any (a)gender can have any number of these qualities. What then does it mean to have a discourse, as well as a movement, around conceptions of heterosexual and homosexual identities that deny such a reality? The answer to this question-the erasure and eradication of particular bodies-calls for the death of hetero and homo, allowing the rethinking of these terms and ideas. This shifts from a place where certain genders are abjected and silenced to a place where all genders are equally affirmed, no one identity superimposed over another. This is not an argument for attraction to all bodies and all beings. However, it is an examination of a discourse of sexuality that is posited on fixed and concrete notions of gender and the ways in which this discourse is used to abject trans, nonbinary, and gendernonconforming bodies.

THE DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO by Alithia Zamantakis A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies In The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Approved: ______________________ ______________________ Dr. Angela Smith Dr. Susie Porter Faculty Mentor Director, Gender Studies Program ______________________ ______________________ Dr. Kim Hackford-Peer Dr. Sylvia D. Torti Department Honors Advisor Dean, Honors College January 2016 ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 2 ABSTRACT "The Death of Hetero/Homo" is a theoretical examination of the ways in which sexuality, love, and desire are not merely abstract, innate concepts but have very real consequences as weapons in the process of abjection, particularly of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals. As gender is illegible and fluidly defined, it becomes impossible to dictate that one's attraction is oriented toward men, women, masculinity, femininity, and/or androgyneity. Ultimately, individuals are attracted or not attracted to particular body parts, personality traits, values, and life goals. None of these can be attached to a particular (a)gender as anyone of any (a)gender can have any number of these qualities. What then does it mean to have a discourse, as well as a movement, around conceptions of heterosexual and homosexual identities that deny such a reality? The answer to this question-the erasure and eradication of particular bodies-calls for the death of hetero and homo, allowing the rethinking of these terms and ideas. This shifts from a place where certain genders are abjected and silenced to a place where all genders are equally affirmed, no one identity superimposed over another. This is not an argument for attraction to all bodies and all beings. However, it is an examination of a discourse of sexuality that is posited on fixed and concrete notions of gender and the ways in which this discourse is used to abject trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming bodies. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful for the mentorship and support of Dr. Angela Smith It is through her support and guidance that I developed this idea fully and through which I have been able to write this thesis. I am grateful for my mom who has listened to me as I try to explain the concept to her, not always understanding, but always listening. I want to thank those individuals who have honored and validated my trans identity and have loved all of me. I would like to thank my community and my chosen family for being a source of healing, love, motivation, and support. I would not be able to do what I do without them. Last, I want to honor those trans folks who have come before me, such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who dreamed my being into existence. I also want to honor and thank those who continue to sacrifice their hearts and lives so that I may exist as I am and that I may write this very thesis. I hope to honor all of them. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 5 Current Representations and Understandings of Sexuality 8 A Critique of the Status Quo of Sexuality 17 The Death of Hetero/Homo 26 Re-thinking Sexuality 34 Conclusion 41 References 43 ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 5 Within the social imagination, love is often painted as an abstract, uncontrollable truth. Take for instance the television show, Charmed, in which magic is often a guiding force of love (The WB 1998-2006). The show ran for eight seasons and surrounds three sisters who are hereditarily gifted with the ultimate powers of witchcraft. In Season 2, Episode 14, the show reveals that each character has a past life and their love is cemented in their past lives, removing it from their hands in the present. In Season 7, Episode 1, two of the characters are overcome by the power of two Hindu gods that greatly increase their love for one another. Additionally, throughout multiple episodes, they are able to conjure "Mr. Right." Other popular shows that depict love in similar ways include Once Upon a Time, Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and Being Human. These are all magical, science fiction shows, but they are not alone as a genre. Other popular texts that depict love as an innate reality outside the realm of human control include She's the Man, any Nicholas Sparks novel-based film, most romantic comedies, Reign, and a plethora of other films and television shows. None of this is to say that love cannot be beautiful and/or life altering. It is to say, however, that love can also be a weapon, used to erase and eradicate folks of varying marginalized identities. Love, desire, and sexuality are weapons in the abjection of nonbinary, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals, and ideas of innateness surrounding romantic and sexual attraction protect them from being critiqued as social constructs. Love and gender are intricately tied together, as is understood through theory, research, and personal anecdote, but is it really possible to understand this connection and to rethink it in a way that honors all identities in a world that teaches that people cannot help the kinds of attractions they feel and that there are only two genders? This paper ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 6 springs forth from the experiences of myself and the (non)binary trans community I surround myself with. As a nonbinary, trans femme, I log onto dating apps, pull up OkCupid, head out to the bar, and keep my eyes open in class, hoping the entire time to find someone who will honor me the way I am-someone who will be able to hold all of my identities and honor them. In conversations of lesbian and gay identities, people often state that one is either attracted to people of the same-sex, the opposite-sex, or both. Male and female are somehow opposites, although they are not the only two sexes or genders, nor are the ways they are experienced and expressed necessarily opposites. In the construction of these terms, people lying within or outside of a binary system of gender are absent, as if they do not even exist. As many genders as there are, there are equally many ways to express each one of those genders. Sex and gender are often posited as separate beings, sex being biological, and gender being within the mind and heart. The terms "gender" and "sex" are used interchangeably within this essay, except for when differentiating between the act of sex and sex/gender as an identity/assignment. As Judith Butler has also theorized, sex is as much a social construct as gender is (1993). Butler writes, "identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes" (1993:308). They can either be used to erase and marginalize or they can be used as a method of creating social justice coalitions, however, they always have a function of control and of deciding who is permitted and who is not (Butler 1993:308). Butler continues on to explain, "these ontologically consolidated phantasms of ‘man' and ‘woman,' are theatrically produced effects that posture as grounds, origins, the normative measure of the real" (1993:313). In their1 1 I use they here as Butler often questions their own gender and pronouns throughout their work. I use they as a gender-neutral pronoun to prevent any misgendering. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 7 novel, "Gender Trouble," Butler writes, "If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender…the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all" (1998:8-10). When looking at the construction of a male/female binary of sex and comparing it with the multitude of genitalia, hormonal balances, chromosomes, and combinations of all three of these things, it becomes impossible to dictate which set of what is applied to which sex. In "Donner le temps," Jacques Derrida writes, "There is no nature, only the effects of nature: denaturalization or naturalization." Sex is no more natural than gender. The "natural" attachment of sex to bodies, genitals and chromosomes being inherently male or female is an artifice used to dictate which types of (a)gendered bodies are permitted to exist and are real enough to exist. This essay will attempt to discuss current representations, assumptions, and understandings of sexuality as made visible through media, education, and other social institutions as they are related to a naturalization of a gender binary. Not only will this thesis examine the ways in which heterosexuality has been constructed but it will also examine how lesbian and gay identities have sometimes been built on the same exclusionary premises. It is critical to understand the construction and representation of sexuality in order to simultaneously understand how such a construction is dictated by gender norms. It must be recognized that there is some biological/psychological aspect to physical attractions and sexual predispositions. However, the gendered ways those attractions are mapped out is what will be discussed, critiqued, and ultimately marked for death within this paper. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 8 It is not the words "homosexuality" or "heterosexuality" that are the problem. The predisposed attraction to a penis, a vagina, a beard, soft skin, or any other physical characteristic is not what is critiqued. What is problematic is the construction of a "born this way" discourse in which sexuality becomes a force that cannot be questioned, as it is assumed through social discourse that there is nothing one can do to change their attractions. A discourse that does not allow the discussion of the problematic construction of sexuality makes it difficult to understand what is at the heart of this paper. If one can never know the gender/sex of another human being unless they disclose, it becomes impossible to gender the directions of attractions. Attraction often starts at a physical level. In that moment, it is impossible to know what genitalia, chromosomes, and hormones are a part of that individual. Additionally, until they disclose their gender, it cannot be assumed which they are, if they even have a gender. Attraction to another individual's coarse skin, beard, and penis does not necessarily equate to attraction to men, as people of all genders can have these same characteristics. This leads to a call for the death of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and a dictate to degender and redefine attractions in an attempt to make trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming less abject. Death is both an end and not an end, and through death, something new is discovered that was too long hidden from view. CURRENT REPRESENTATIONS/UNDERSTANDINGS It is important in understanding why the death of hetero/homo must come, to also understand the origin of these terms. Sexologists and psychoanalysts hoping to understand the pathological sexual orientation of being attracted to people of the "same" ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 9 gender originally defined homosexuality as a way of differentiating it from the "normal" form of love and sex-male/female procreation. Heterosexuality is often thought, unlike "homosexuality," to have always existed. Judith Butler discusses the ways in which certain gendered acts within gay communities, such as butch and femme relationships, are said to imitate a supposed "origin" of heterosexuality. However, Butler critiques this, starting with an understanding of gender as "a kind of imitation for which there is no original" (1993:313). Gendered and agendered (re)presentations are imitations of other (re)presentations. The supposed natural origin of heterosexual identities is "performatively constituted through an imitation that sets itself up as the origin and the ground of all imitations" (Butler 1993:313). Gender, like sexuality, is thus produced through the constant presenting and doing of gender. Heterosexuality, and ultimately all identity, is constituted through repetitions of certain performances perceived as either failures or successful enactments of gendered standards of living. Jonathan Katz attempts to map out the particular historical development of heterosexuality and homosexuality as constructions and (re)presentations, understanding identity similarly to Butler. Katz is a historian particularly within the field of Lesbian and Gay Studies. In, "The Invention of Heterosexuality," they follow the history of medical terminology to depict the construction of heterosexuality in order to understand its effects on other sexualities, as well as on gendered ways of living. In defining heterosexuality as a particular concept with effects upon various social facts, Katz states that "heterosexuality is only one particular historical way of perceiving, categorizing, and imagining the social relations of the sexes…the idea…is a modern invention, dating to the late nineteenth century" (Katz 1990:69). As Katz describes it, heterosexuality has a ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 10 historical and contemporary function of understanding, categorizing, and imaging social relations. Heterosexuality functions upon a supposed gender binary that allows for the construction of "opposite" and "same" sex understandings (Katz 1990:69). Heterosexuality, though, has a particularly strange history. Heterosexuality was first constructed as a way of pathologizing the attraction to both men and women (Katz 1990:72). Heterosexuality's very conception was similar to homosexuality's, in that the word is derived from the medical and psychological pathologization of identity. Heterosexuality was "defined by a mental condition, ‘psychical hermaphroditism.' It's symptoms were ‘inclinations to both sexes'" (Katz 1990:71). The "normative" mode of sexuality was defined by its characteristic attraction to the "other sex". This particular mode of sexuality provided for procreation, which was dictated to be the only proper method of sexuality and use of sex. However, this attraction lacked a name. (Katz 1990:72). It was not until between the 1900s and 1930s that heterosexuality was framed as the "normal" mode of sexuality, one in which folks were attracted to people of the "opposite" sex. (Katz 1990:73). Its definition remained posited around a "need" or "impulse" for procreation, and as Katz explains, its very root-hetero-"referred to a basic gender divergence…[which] by no means simply registered biological differences of females and males" but also social, psychological, and emotional differences (1990:73). Heterosexuality and hetero-defined sex had a specific function of perpetuating procreativity through supposed means of understanding how conception worked: as only a man and woman being able to conceive together. This idea can now be recognized as false with trans men publicly known for being pregnant. Additionally, the recognition of ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 11 genders outside the binary also mandates the understanding that people of any gender can ultimately be pregnant if they have the "right" parts. Procreativity has played a large role in hegemonic heterosexuality; Katz notes a push for individuals to maintain strict gendered boundaries after World War II in order to increase fecundity, so as to provide new troops and a new workforce for the future (Katz 1990:75). An understanding of the conception and invention of the term heterosexuality is important and critical to this essay not to somehow create the false conception that heterosexuality (or homosexuality for that matter) did not exist prior to the word's conception. However, "the titling and envisioning of heterosexuality did play an important role in consolidating the construction of the heterosexual's social existence," providing a name and a compulsive vision for the "normative" modes of being (Katz 1990:77). Additionally, it is critical to understand that gendered understandings of heterosexuality have changed and can change throughout time, allowing society to "consider that biology does not settle our erotic fates. The common notion that biology determines the object of sexual desire, or that physiology and society together cause sexual orientation, are determinisms that deny the break existing between our bodies and situations and our desiring" (Katz 1990:77). The increasing prominence of gay and lesbians in media, and of gay rights' movements, has made visible alternatives to heterosexual attraction and identity. However, the media often shows one monolithic way of being gay: white, thin, able-bodied, and cisgender. Additionally, media and celebrities that celebrate gay rights often perpetuate the idea that, as Lady Gaga sings, "I was born this way!" In an article titled, "No One is Born Gay (or Straight): Here Are 5 Reasons Why," the Social (In)queery highlights an example of such usage. During the 2012 elections, the Human Rights ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 12 Campaign, one of the largest gay organizations in the United States, "asked their members to ‘Tell Herman Cain to get with the times! Being gay is not a choice!'" (2013). In a 2015 article in The Guardian, Dean Burnett, a psychiatrist, asserts that it is absurd to believe that one would wake up one day and say, "‘I am going to be gay from now on'" (2013). Burnett asks, "WHY would they do this?" (2013). In a 2014 Huffington Post article, Noah Michelson, editorial director, claims that defining gay-ness as a choice is not only incorrect but that it is "dangerous". It is dangerous, as all three of these writers highlight, because of the supposed ability to "fix" lesbian and gay identities if they are not biologically wired but are actually grounded in choice. There is nothing inherently wrong in believing your attraction is grounded in some sense of biology. I, as a trans/queer person know there is something innate to the way I feel-not heterosexual and not cisgender. I argue what is innate and "fixed", though, is not the attraction to particular genders or gendered expressions. What is innate or "fixed" or pre-disposed is an attraction to particular body parts and personality traits. Knowing that I like people who are vulnerable, socially just, dog lovers, and a little chubby is fine and allows me to find people I am interested in. However, it would be impossible for me to say whether the person I find that fits those qualifications is a man or a woman or an "other" unless they disclose to me how they identify. The attachment of particular parts and traits to particular (a)genders is sociologically ingrained as individuals are socialized to perceive certain bodies as desirable and certain bodies as abject. Abjection has been defined as those "boundaries between the clean and the dirty, the inside and outside, the private and the communal, the intimate and the personal…the ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 13 male and the female" (Cavanaugh 2010:426). Julia Kristeva, literary critic, writes of abjection in "Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection." Through literary and real life textual analysis, Kristeva theorizes around the horror of the abject (Kristeva 1980). Abjection is the disavowal and casting out of that which threatens the status quo and the maintenance of these boundaries. Speaking of a basic form of abjection, food abjection, which she links to the fraught self-other relationship of the child with the mother, Kristeva writes, "'I' want none of that element, sign of their desire. ‘I' do not want to listen, ‘I' do not assimilate it, ‘I' expel it," but through expelling it, "I expel myself, I spit myself out" (1980:3). The food has become mixed with parts of them self. They expel the food and their spit, confusing the boundaries between themselves and what is being expelled. Abjection is ultimately ambiguity-an ambiguity that causes tension and expulsion. Kristeva states that it is "not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order" (1980:4). Abjection is ultimately an act that seeks to establish clear boundaries and a "proper" self, but an act that is always under threat, since we are permeable, undefined selves. Identity is not fixed or absolute; it is fluid and changing. Additionally, queer and trans identities highlight themselves as failures of a gendered binary, and those very parts that are failures could be anyone's failures. Judith Butler discusses how the biological/psychological processes of abjection navigate their way onto social identities. Butler writes, "The category of ‘sex' is, from the start, normative; it is what Foucault has called a ‘regulatory ideal'" (Butler 1993:1). Categories such as sex and gender become "regulatory ideals" that function not only as a norm. Such regulatory ideals become controls over bodies and have "the power to ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 14 produce-demarcate, circulate, differentiate-the bodies" (Butler 1993:1) they control. It is critical to understand this in relation to a sexual discourse that relies on gendered norms of male/female. Sex is not merely "what one has, or a static description of what one is" (Butler 1993:2). Rather, it is "that which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility" (Butler 1993:2). The successful enactment of a controlled sex and gender materialization dictates whether one is marked for life or death, love or loneliness. Within the discourse of homosexuality and heterosexuality, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people and polysexuals (individuals attracted to more than one "gender"/"sex" as opposed to monosexuality) become abjected in attempts to maintain gender (binaries) boundaries. In both 1995 and 2007, a version of the Employee Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) was submitted to Congress for passing to protect LGB folks from workplace discrimination (Vitulli 2010). Both times, gender identity was either not included or was later removed from the text of the bill in order to further its "likelihood" of passing (Vitulli 2010). The Human Rights Campaign, both times, continued to push for the bill to pass and ignored calls to ask for its removal from a vote (Vitulli 2010). There are several reasons for the exclusion of trans folks from gay rights organizing and gay rights legislation. For a long time, gay rights organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis called for homosexual assimilation into the heterosexual "mainstream" (Healey and O'Brien 2015). This call has continued into present day gay rights organizing within marriage equality campaigns that seek relational assimilation. Additionally it continues through organizational use of slogans, such as ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 15 "love is love,"2 used by organizations like Equality Utah. Homosexuals cannot be just like heterosexuals if their identities begin to challenge the gender binary and the ideology that attraction only occurs along rigid lines. Alok Vaid-Menon, an activist, poet, and a member of the spoken word duo, DarkMatter, writes, "The separation of ‘gay' from ‘trans' and ‘sexuality' from ‘gender identity' has a political history. This distinction was a conscious strategy to make the gay movement palatable to straight cis white middle class society" (2015). Trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming bodies create the possibility of confusion of the boundaries, a cross-infection of heterosexual and gay, a cross-contamination. Through the production of homosexuality as a neat category that mimics the strict gender binary, gay groups are able to assimilate easily and quickly into heterosexual society. The depathologization of homosexuality occurs through the repathologization of gender nonconformity, allowing "the modern gay subject" to emerge "in distinguishing him/herself from gender nonconformity" (Vaid-Menon 2015). Through such assimilation, gay rights organizations have been able to achieve marriage equality, legal protection, and profoundly reduce the number of (white, cis) gay people who are murdered on the streets and by police. As noted above, Butler has argued that both gender and sexuality are a performance that must constantly be done over and over again in order to produce binary genders and sexual identity categories, an act that justifies erasure, violence toward, and death of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people. Sexuality is an act of imitation, production, repetition, and doing. And if this is true, then no one is "born this 2 At this link, fliers saying "Love is Love" produced by Equality Utah can be found. http://themuvegroup.com/2014/09/equality-utah-allies-dinner/ ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 16 way," at least not in terms of being born predestined to love or desire to a particular gender. Politicized identities have been hierarchized so as to label some bodies and identities more attractive (and more worthy of survival) than others. This hierarchization is an act of eradication, an act of abjection. If these bodies are unattractive, if they cannot be loved, they will be killed off, kill themselves off, or die off. They are marked unlovable and untouchable, because of systems of oppression that continue to maintain that the able-bodied, cisgender white person is the most attractive and pure of all, and the rest are second choice, or less. Love can be, and often is, beautiful. But love can be, and often is, an act and perpetuation of colonization and eradication. It is, however, obvious why gay and heterosexual "allies" often cling to notions of sexuality as innate. In a 2011 study, researchers found that children who believed sexuality was achieved through a socialization process were most likely to believe that "homosexuality" was wrong or immoral. Children who believed sexuality was innate, biological, or psychological were the least likely to hold "homosexuality" as wrong or immoral (Horn and Heinze 2011). Children in the study were asked to provide reasons for their exclusion of lesbians and gays. The children cited the idea that lesbians and gays negate norms, that they have chosen their particular sexual orientation, and that homosexuality is unnatural as being some of the reasons they exclude lesbians and gays (Horn and Heinze 2011). Additionally, they justified the exclusion through the idea that such exclusion affirms norms and is a part of God's law (Horn and Heinze 2011). When these same kids were taught that gay people did not choose to be gay, those reasons for exclusion became less important than "fairness" and "human equality" (Horn and Heinze 2011). The desire to assimilate and be validated in one's identity is understandable, but ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 17 such ideologies are used as a protection method to prevent critique of the ways in which individuals and groups identify their attractions, preventing the ability to shift the discourse around sexuality from one as attractions to particular (a)genders-a discourse that erases nonbinary individuals-to one of attraction to particular physical/personality traits. A CRITIQUE OF THE STATUS QUO OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION Heterosexuality and homosexuality are posited upon the idea that there are only two sexes and two genders: male/man and female/woman (and more specifically only cisgender men and women). Trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming trans individuals do not fit into the mix, leaving their identities out during the process of normalization. In the process of normalization and assimilation, cisgender lesbians and gays perpetuate the regulatory ideals of sex and gender that abject trans individuals, marking them as unworthy of life and love. Love, desire, identity, and politics intertwine, using abjection (of trans identities) to normalize queer identities. Racial justice activists have long discussed the political nature of love and desire in regards to desiring bodies of color, especially Black bodies. Black bodies were and still are often marked as undesirable. The authors of "Is Love Colorblind?" find that political orientation does indeed influence attraction to and permitted affection towards Black folks by white folks (Eastwick et. al. 2009). The research was conducted through two separate studies. The first study included a two-part survey with a Likert scale ranking of how conservative or liberal the participants identified themselves as, and the second had white participants interact with two separate women-one Black and one white. Participants were then asked to fill out a comparative romantic attraction survey. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 18 Eastwick et. al. find that white people who are either strongly or relatively conservative are less likely to date Black people and/or find them desirable than white liberals (2009). White liberals are found to desire Black people on paper; however, when interacting with a white person and a Black person, they are still more likely to be attracted to the white person (Eastwick et. al. 2009). In summary, white conservatives are more than unlikely to even consider dating a Black individual, whereas white liberals are more likely than conservatives to consider dating a Black person, but are still unlikely to choose a Black person over a white person (Eastwick et. al. 2009). Additionally, these results may be related to white liberals attempting to save face on paper to appear more progressive. Either way, though, the findings reveal that "political orientation seems to be one factor among both Whites and Blacks that predicts who is willing to venture across racial lines to form romantic relationships" (Eastwick et. al. 2009). Politics thus have an intimate relationship with love and desire. This relationship between love, desire, and politics is evident through the separation and exclusion of trans queer folks by cisgender queer folks. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, one of the main slogans of gay rights movements has been "love is love." A separation between love and gender, between marriage equality and trans/queer justice occurred purposefully, as leaders knew "that a politics of love would be much more palatable than a politics of gender" (Vaid-Menon 2015). A politics of "same love" allows for assimilation of white, cisgender gays and lesbians. A politics declaring that "we are just like you," assists with the process of assimilation. It reduces the risk of cisgender, heterosexual society perceiving lesbians and gays as a threat. It ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 19 shows support for the status quo, enabling gay rights' groupsthat they are not here to change things, merely to exist in a similar fashion. Such a strategy is extremely successful, as in the legalizing of marriage equality in 2015. However, as Alok Vaid-Menon writes, "Love won, because gender didn't" (2015). At a time when murder rates for cisgender, white gays are at a very low level, trans violence continues to increase. A report by the National Coalition of Antiviolence Projects found that "73.1% of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims in 2012 were people of color." Additionally, "53.8% of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims" were trans women and trans femmes (2012). Trans women of color face the most risk in terms of being the victim of physical assault and/or death. There are many reasons for trans folks, and particularly trans women of color, being the main victims of anti-LGBTQ violence. First, trans women of color face higher rates of poverty than white trans women due to systemic racism, making it much more difficult to obtain surgeries that would allow them to pass as cisgender women if they wanted them. A lack of passing, as well as a high rate of participation in sex work, and the abjection of poor bodies of color makes trans women of color high targets. Additionally, trans and queer folks of color are much less likely to argue to uphold the status quo as the status quo is founded upon racism and colonization, which directly hurts them. It becomes evident then, why, white, cisgender gay and lesbians would create distance and separation from white trans people and trans people of color. Trans bodies and bodies of color make normalization a more difficult process. Distinguishing "him/herself from gender nonconformity" became the method of "the modern gay subject" emerging into the twenty-first century (Vaid-Menon 2015). No longer are ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 20 cisgender gays and lesbians thought of as the same pedophilic, destructive threat they once were. However, threat, destruction, and difference have been piled onto trans bodies, exemplified through fear of using even a bathroom or locker room with a trans person present3. It is critical to understand the ways in which this difference and perceived threat situate trans subjects in society. In "Mutilating Gender," Dean Spade, lawyer, trans activist, and queer studies scholar, explores the ways in which the "mutilation" of gender by nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, and trans individuals is linked to a complication of sexual desires. Spade writes, "Because transsituated identities and bodies are different, sexual desires likewise defy the binary of heterosexual and homosexual and play havoc with the concept of bisexual" (2006). Heterosexual and homosexual sexualities and desires are constituted by and through assumptions of "a nontransgendered paradigm" (Spade 2006). Trans subjectivities question what it means to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Further, trans bodies complicate the notion that one can assume another person's gender. Women can have beards and calloused hands and men can have long hair and eye shadow. A woman can have a penis and a man, a vagina. Gender and sex become indistinguishable not only for trans bodies, but simultaneously, for all bodies. As bodies become illegible as particular (a)genders, it becomes necessary to identify new ways of identifying attraction. Trans bodies call for a "transsituated language to express multiple ways of being identified, of being embodied, and of being sexual" (Spade 2006:518). Such a demand-such a reality-makes assimilation impossible. It calls for a reimagination of the present, for a new vision of the future. Such a future can be 3 https://www.texastribune.org/2015/11/03/houston-anti-discrimination-ordinance-early-voting/ ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 21 envisioned through an individual Spade quotes asking, What is it when a transfag and a transdyke get together and make magic together with their bodies and hearts? It's beauty and delight and peacefulness and excitement and . . .Whatever else it is, it isn't lesbian or gay or bisexual or heterosexual, because all of those miss the crucial fact that his transsexuality and queerness, her transsexuality and queerness, are a major part of what gets them together in the first place and keeps it fun and exciting and hot and lets it pass into beauty. (2006) However, such a demand also comes with repulsion, fear, and violence. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) have displayed what occurs when such a body attempts to situate themselves within the bounds of lesbianism. Mary Daly, a radical lesbian eco-feminist, wrote in 1978 about the possible uses of technology at cloning and (re)creating "women's" bodies. In Gyn/Ecology, she discusses the use of photos, especially family photos, and their supposed purpose of fitting and (re)fitting women into specific presences and absences. She declared the use of such technology was headed "toward the production of three-dimensional, perfectly re-formed ‘women', that is, hollow holograms…the replacements for female Selves," which could eventually lead to the actual substitution of "‘flesh and blood'…produced by such miraculous techniques as total therapy…transsexualism, and cloning" (1978:39). "Transsexualism" was declared to be a way for "men" to invade "women's spaces" including "women's" bodies. Such a threat risked the perpetuation of patriarchy, violence in "women's" spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, and eventually, "the technological elimination of women" (Daly 1978:60). In Daly's work, then, trans people, and specifically trans women, become the dumping ground for revulsion, fear, disgust, and ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 22 patriarchal oppression. Trans subjects are thus perceived to be invaders of both a straight world and a feminist world. This fear of trans bodies and trans invasions occurs not only in the realm of radical feminism but also within the realm of gay rights. On November 4, 2015, a petition was created on Change.org, a website used by a multitude of activists to call for change from major leaders. This petition called for major gay rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and Lambda Legal, as well as news outposts like The Advocate and Huffington Post: Gay Voices, to "drop the T," arguing, "We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community" (2015). Their arguments rely on the idea that trans subjectivities pose a threat not only to gaining equality but also to the very existence of cisgender individuals. They specify their reasons as including The vilification and harassment of women and gay/lesbian individuals who openly express disagreement with the trans ideology… The infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex… The appropriation and re-writing of gay and lesbian history and culture, most notably attempting to re-cast the majority gay white men who participated in the Stonewall riots as transgender…[and] the trans movement is regressive, insisting upon re-asserting and codifying classic gender concepts of what is masculine and what is feminine. (Drop the T 2015). As Kristeva argues, the basest example of abjection is the process of "shitting". This petition highlights the very real ways that trans subjects become the "shit" that cisgender lesbians and gays have forcefully and violently cast off from their selves onto the dumping ground that is "trans". Trans people are depicted as attacking those who are transphobic, rather than the other way around. They are thought of as invaders of spaces ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 23 and the perpetuators of violence. Ironically, they are marked as gender essentialists, and most historically incorrect, they are re-writers of history, despite the fact that they have been written out of history themselves. At the end of the petition, the anonymous authors of the petition state that they do not endorse violence against trans people, that they "recognize and respect the right of adults to determine their own path in life, including transitioning to the opposite gender if they so wish. However, that cannot occur by infringing upon the rights of women, gay men and children" (Drop the T 2015). The Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD responded in support of trans people. However, within one day, the petition had over 609 supporters. Within two, it had over 940. A mere search of tweets connected to the post highlight the number of lesbians and gays willing to abject trans bodies for the protection of their own rights. One individual wrote, "Well to be fair ‘trans' is actually a mental illness, it's called gender dysphoria." Another asked, "Is transphobic even a valid word spell check says it isn't?" In direct response to Caitlyn Jenner, one wrote, "You can't surgically remove the children you fathered. He will always be Bruce." Trans bodies and trans identities are not only vilified but pathologized and deemed falsities. A repeat tweeter wrote, "You want to talk about offensive? What about trans telling lesbians they are transphobic if they don't want sex w/ penis?" This particular tweet gets most at the heart of what is being discussed in this essay. Cisgender lesbians have their notions of sexuality and gender complicated when they get into bed with a trans woman and find a penis awaiting them. For some lesbians, they may merely not like penises, which is not problematic. However, for others, the attachment of a penis to a woman's body erases womanhood and re-identifies it as a "man's" body-the very body a lesbian does not want to have sex with. There is no way ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 24 to separate the transphobic, gendered ways in which genitals are coded and the disgust of cisgender lesbians and gays when they find their partner with different genitalia than they were expecting. Desire and love are not mere arbitrary forces that exist in the world. It is their conceptualization as such that disguises the reality of their use as weapons to erase, make invisible, and/or eradicate identities that trouble "normalcy" and the status quo. It is not important, necessarily, to this essay to understand what role biology and psychology play in attraction or sexual orientation. As Edward Stein notes, it "is not whether biology is involved but how" (2008). How does biology act as a way to prevent the questioning of the ways in which sexuality is enacted? How do ideas of innateness and immutability prevent the questioning of the racialized and gendered politics of sexuality? In a 2008 article entitled "Born that Way? Not a Choice? Problems with Biological and Psychological Arguments for Gay Rights," law professor Edward Stein analyzes the supposed etiology of sexuality as posited by mainstream gay rights movements and individuals. They discuss the range of suppositions involved in arguing that people are "born that way," and have little to no choice in becoming who they are sexually. In doing so, they analyze the roles that hormones, genes, and heritability contribute to the development of an individual's sexuality, and finally lay out the ethical, political, and bioethical dilemmas involved with making the claim that folks are "born this way" (Stein 2008). Stein does not deny the role that biology plays in a predisposition for attraction to particular bodies. However, they write, "Just as every human characteristic is partly biological in nature, so too every human characteristic is partly environmental" (2008:33). The ways in which predispositions are categorized and bodies, ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 25 body parts, and bodily acts are compulsorily gendered and are given meaning through a hetero/homo discourse relying on "known" opposites and sames is not biological but environmental/sociological. Ultimately, "born this way" paradigms are a conscious move to normalize LGB sexualities and to make assimilation and integration easier (2008). If individuals are born gay and they cannot help but be gay, the argument goes, then there is ultimately no reason they should not treated like a decent human being. Through such assimilation processes, LGB sexualities begin to mirror heterosexuality. Heteronormativity becomes homonormativity, and together, they perpetuate both transphobia and cissexism-a system that enforces compulsory cisgender-ness, as well as the idea that bodies are legibly gendered. It is not wrong for someone to believe they were born gay or heterosexual. It is wrong, however, to constitute their idea of "gay" or "heterosexual" around certain conceptions of gender while using ideas of "innateness" as immunity. Sexuality must thus be degendered in order to recognize and honor the many ways of living as (a)gendered bodies. A person of any (a)gender can have a penis, a vagina, body hair, breasts, or soft skin. A person of any (a)gender can wear makeup, nail polish, perfume, or cologne. A person of any (a)gender can walk in any manner, speak with a high pitch or a low pitch, or cross their legs or spread them wide. Heterosexuality is to be attracted to the "opposite" gender and homosexuality is to be attracted to the "same." Once the endless possibility of genders and agenders is realized, though, ideas of "opposite" and "same" become illogical. Sexuality and gender cannot be separated but have been through a process of (trans) abjection and (gay) normalization. If it is realized ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 26 that love, desire, and politics are intrinsically intertwined, then it becomes necessary to mark a hetero/homo discourse of sexuality for death. THE DEATH OF HETERO/HOMO As stated above, trans bodies have become constructed as the monsters of the LGBT acronym. In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual4. However, that pathologization has continued to be dumped on trans individuals.5 In 2015, gender dysphoria is a still listed as a mental illness in the DSM, described as "a marked difference between the individual's expressed/experienced gender and the gender others would assign him or her,"6 which in reality is just a description of the word transgender. Transgender is defined as an individual whose gender identity does not correlate with their gender assigned at birth.7 Further, in a 2014 article by Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice, titled "Transphobia is Perfectly Natural" transphobia is mocked as an actual form of oppression, stating instead that it is a natural response to unnatural people. McInnes writes that, "They [trans people] are mentally ill gays who need help, and that help doesn't include being maimed by physicians" (2014). McInnes continues on to say that, "To fight against transphobia is to justify trannies. To justify trannies is to allow mentally ill people to mutilate themselves" (2014). Trans people, then, are constructed as gays and lesbians who are delusional as to their knowledge of their gender and need to be prevented from hurting themselves. In the construction of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people as the dumping ground of the filth and pathologization once attached to gayness, there is a 4 http://www.aglp.org/gap/1_history/ 5 It is also important to understand the way in which ableism maps itself into this conversation, however, it is not possible to fully develop such an argument here. 6 http://www.dsm5.org/documents/gender%20dysphoria%20fact%20sheet.pdf 7 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transgender ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 27 certain monstrous attribute that simultaneously becomes attached to trans identity. Susan Stryker, a professor of Trans Studies, in 1994, wrote "My Words to Victor Frankenstein," theorizing about the monster attribute that is attached and mapped onto trans bodies. Stryker declares, "Like the monster, I too am often perceived as less human" (1994:238). Stryker continues on to quote Janice Raymond, a feminist theorist, saying, "The problem of transsexuality would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence," and they connect this quote to the a line directed at the monster in Frankenstein, "Begone vile insect, or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust" (1994). This cultural desire to eradicate trans people is reflected in statistics on their murder and incarceration rates. In August 2015, The Daily Dot, reported that twenty-two trans women, primarily trans women of color, had been murdered within the year. These twenty-two were just the ones that were reported, however, as well as only ones in which the victim self-identified as trans publicly. This number seems low to some, but considering that transgender people comprise .3 percent of the population, it's incredibly high (2011). In 1997, when the San Francisco Department of Public Health decided to conduct a study on the criminal legal system, they "found that 67 percent of transgender women and 30 percent of transgender men had a history of incarceration" (Mogul et al. 2011:xii). These issues of hate and oppression are not merely caused by cisgender, heterosexual individuals. As Stryker details, cisgender gays and lesbians, too, have a historical relationship of denouncing and disavowing trans identity. Trans identity, although Stryker speaks specifically of transsexuality, "represents the prospect of destabilizing the foundational presupposition of fixed genders upon which a politics of personal identity depends," (1994:237) which causes complications for cisgender gays ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 28 and lesbians who often rely on notions of attraction around fixed and legible ideas of gender and sex. This attachment of "monster" to "trans," though, has implications beyond death, pathologization, and incarceration. Historically, "monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers, heralds of the extraordinary" (Stryker 1994:240). Trans people, gendered monstrosities themselves, prophesy an extraordinary future where people are not coercively assigned genders, where genders, sexes, and genitals that come in all shapes, sizes, and descriptions are validated and honored, where people are no longer killed during their walk home at night for being perceived as invaders of female/male spaces (Stryker 1994). While this attachment of monster to trans leads to isolation, exclusion, and murder, such exclusion also galvanizes a struggle for a more equitable future. Comparing their own loss of community to the monster's, Stryker writes, "My exclusion from human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me that I, like the monster, direct against the conditions in which I must struggle to exist" (1994:238). Such a struggle includes the push for a new version of a gendered and genderless world. Trans bodies are "the transcendence of an absolute limit," (Stryker 1994:242) the transcendence of a binary of reality/imagination: the transcendence of a world that tells people there are only two options of how they may exist, that other attempts are fictions and are immature imaginations of what is reality, and that love must revolve around the absence, eradication, and erasing of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming bodies. This struggle towards a new vision of sexuality, desire, and love, ultimately leads toward the death of a discourse. It is critical to understand that the death of "hetero and homo" is not the death of individuals who are homosexual or heterosexual, nor is it the ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 29 death of their identification categories. Rather, it is the death of a gendered discourse that lays the foundation for present and historical conceptions of "same- and opposite-sex attraction." It is the death of a conception of sexuality that absolves itself of critique, because people were "born this way," and it is the death of a construction of sexuality that relies on the abjection of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals. Death, although something every human experiences, has very political implications for marginalized bodies that are deemed abject and disposable. Death, as used in this paper, surrounds and centers the concept of necropolitics. Achille Mbembe, a political scientist and theorist from French Cameroons, discusses necropolitics in terms of the political meaning attached to who dies and what happens after they die. Necropolitics is defined as the "power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die" (Mbembe 2003:11). It is an ultimate expression of sovereignty; the ultimate capacity to determine who matters and who does not (Mbembe 2003). While, the Center for Disease Control estimates the average life expectancy of the entire US population to be 78.8 years old, (2013) the average life expectancy of a trans woman of color in the United States is thirty-five (Vincent 2015). The National Center for Transgender Equality highlights the suicide rate of forty-one percent among transgender individuals in the United States (2014). Mbembe states that biopower, one of the fundamental components of necropolitics, is "the right to kill, to allow to live, or to expose to death" (2003:12). They then ask, "Who is the subject of this right?" (2003:12). Mbembe links necropolitics to colonization and racism in relation to necropolitics, with the latter being "above all a technology aimed at permitting the exercise of biopower, ‘that old sovereign right of death'" (2003:17). Subjects gain control of the "right" to exercise biopower as sovereign ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 30 beings through the assertion of their own narratives (2003:17), often constructed and vetted via a supposed "divine foundation" (2003:17). The assertion of narratives of "properly" gendered ways of life are thus connected to acts of transphobic violence reiterated throughout this paper. Aren Z. Aizura, a professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at University of Minnesota, also writes about necropolitics in a 2014 piece specifically about "Transfeminine Value, Racialized Others, and the Limits of Necropolitics." Aizura writes, "Death might remind us of the structural exclusions that dehumanize and diminish gender-nonconforming bodies" (2014:119). The death of trans individuals via murder and/or suicide highlights their disposability and their lack of humanization in society. Aizura highlights the lack of value for transfeminine bodies and especially, transfeminine bodies of color, stating, "If one ‘intersects both the categories of trans woman and sex worker, one is subject to ‘double the risk' for violence; being a person of colour adds another overlapping circle… ‘tripling' the risk" (2014:136). The more marginalized identities an individual has overlapping their body and being, the less valued they are; thus, the more disposable they become. The high rates of death of gender-nonconforming bodies and the exorbitantly high suicide rate for trans people serve to display the disposability of gender-nonconforming bodies (Aizura 2014). Necropolitics is about theorizing death not merely as death. It is about theorizing a person's death "as a reflection of the non-value of her life" (Aizura 2014:132). The non-value of trans lives discussed within this essay is also very similar to the non-value of both trans people and gay men during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties. In 1987, Leo Bersani, literary theorist, asked the question, "Is the Rectum a Grave?" ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 31 Through asking this question, Bersani explains the ways in which disease and social stigma both led to perceptions of the rectum as a self-shattering, self-abolishing grave. This paper, although racially unaware and cissexist at times, provides an insight into the way in which death serves a political and societal function. Bersani starts the paper discussing the sex lives of gay men. Gay male communities could be compared to residence halls in terms of size. As individuals have sexual contact with multiple individuals among a small group of people, the small size of the community begins to serve as a vehicle for high rates of HIV/AIDS, among other sexually transmitted infections. In discussing the violence that AIDS inflicted upon entire communities, Bersani moves on to discuss the ways in which "violence is sex," (1987:214) through readings of MacKinnon and Dworkin, two radical feminists who were heavily anti-pornography. Pornography is equated with violence through the hierarchization of bodies, identities, and beauty. Cisgender men are thought to embody the position of power, and all bottoms become the powerless. As Bersani explains, "To be penetrated is to abdicate power" (1987:213). The violence MacKinnon and Dworkin specifically reference is this hierarchy. Violence and hierarchy become synonymous, as the penetratee relinquishes their self to the "shattering force" that is the penis, and sex is perceived to enact the death of the self. Bersani writes, "The rethinking among gays…of what being gay…means is a certain agreement about what sex should be" (1987:222). If to be gay is to perpetuate violence via sexual hierarchization through the relationship between two individuals, then gayness is primarily a reproduction of heterosexuality. However, as Bersani explains, AIDS has quite literally, symbolically rendered the rectum a biological grave. And "if the rectum is the grave in which the masculine ideal (an ideal shared-differently-by men and ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 32 women) of proud subjectivity is buried, then it should be celebrated for its very potential for death" (Bersani 1987:222). The rectum then becomes the death of the phallus as a force of control and a vehicle for the assertion of power. Instead, gay sex "never stops re-presenting the internalized phallic male as an infinitely loved object of sacrifice," (Bersani 1987:222) serving as a vehicle for the death of the phallus as power and the rethinking of the phallus an object of sacrifice: giving instead of taking. It is the brutality of AIDS and social conditions that lead to the brutality of the death of "the masculine ideal…of proud subjectivity" (Bersani 1987:222). Similarly, the brutality of transphobia leads to the brutal need to mark the hetero/homo discourse for death. It is necessary to differentiate between two types of death being discussed in this paper: first, the death of marginalized, specifically trans, beings via hate and oppression; second, the death of the discursive means through which such a binary/dichotomy is used to erase, silence, and eradicate those whose identities cannot or will not assimilate. If trans bodies are to be valued, transphobic conceptions of gender, sexuality, love, and desire must ultimately die. The marking of this sexual discourse for death and the eventual accomplishment of this death make clear that trans lives hold more value than a violently constructed discourse. The grave of the discourse of heterosexuality/homosexuality heralds what is to come. Death is recognition of the failure of old ways of existing. Social relations, primarily among and between individuals within dominant identities, give rise to the norms of sexuality that create a sexual discourse posited upon the abjection of trans folks. Trans people, in addition to cisgender people, fail at what it means to be an (a)gendered body in this society. As queer folks try to construct a better world in a society that was ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 33 never meant for their bodies, ideas, and beings to exist, failure is a part of the process along the way to rethinking social ideas, structures, and identities. In "The Queer Art of Failure," (2011) Judith Jack Halberstam writes about failure as a productive means of critiquing and resisting heteronormativity. Halberstam discusses how "the queer art of failure…imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being" (2011:88). Failure becomes a moment of productive possibility. Halberstam writes, "…Queer, or counterhegemonic modes of common sense lead to the association of failure with nonconformity, anticapitalist practices, nonreproductive lifestyles, negativity, and critique" (2011:89). Failure becomes a way of critiquing common sense, which Halberstam equates with norms (2011). Failure, on the part of trans folks, has dictated the rethinking of what sexuality, love, and desire can be in regards to gender, possibly requiring "imagining, not some fantasy of an elsewhere, but existing alternatives to hegemonic systems" (Halberstam 2011:89). As trans people have existed for centuries, so have alternatives been created and embedded in what already exists. What failure creates in the process of marking a hetero/homo discourse for death is provide a way of navigating the rethinking of sexuality. As will be pointed out further in this essay, it is not new for trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals to critique sexuality and to rethink it in terms of their own existence. Trans folks have had to do it for as long as they have existed. However, it is not enough for only trans folks and their partners to rethink sexuality and mark the hetero/homo discourse for death. Ultimately, all of society must also contribute to its death, and historical failure via trans folks provides the map for how sexuality, love, and desire can look after the death. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 34 RE-THINKING SEXUALITY It can seem difficult to create a world where everyone has value and worth in an equitable manner. After centuries of white supremacy, cissexism, heterosexism, and ableism, how does society shift from a place of constant conscious and subconscious hatred, oppression, and dehumanization to a place of compassion, accountability, and equity? It can be daunting to imagine such a utopic world. In "Cruising Utopia," José Esteban Muñoz discusses the nature of utopic thinking, constructing, and existing in relation to queerness. Muñoz writes, "Queerness is essentially about the rejection of the here and now and an insistence on potentially or concrete possibility of another world" (Muñoz 2009:1). Queerness is not static; thus, it is the constant doing, saying, and enacting of new realities. As Muñoz points out, "Queerness is not yet here," but "the future is queerness's domain" (2009:1). The feeling of utopia is present because of a lack within what presently exists. Queerness is an acting agent that critiques the status quo and calls for a queer ideal. Muñoz explains, "Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present" (2009:1). Queers exist in the present and in the past, but the world is not yet queered nor has it created space for marginalized beings to exist freely and safely or to be loved and desired. Nevertheless, the innovation by queers and for queers in order to exist continues to place "queerness…in the horizon," (Muñoz 2009:11) allowing folks to continue longing for the utopic ideal and working towards it. There is no definitive way to prove that the death of hetero/homo that is being ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 35 called for in this paper will become reality. It takes more than just a collective of particular queer and trans folks engaging in this ultimate slaughter. It requires that people who would not gain from such a death begin to care, to move from a place of trans-ignorance and/or transphobia to a transsituated place of true accompliceship and caring. Muñoz points out, "concrete utopias are relational to historically situated struggles, a collectivity that is actualized or potential" (2009:3). Utopic dreams are born out of the collective desire of oppressed peoples to live in a world where their people are no longer slaughtered, disenfranchised, and dehumanized. They are born out of the desire of such a people for a world where there is no longer the need to argue with folks about the validity of the oppression they have experienced. Such longings for utopia and placements of utopia in the horizon are exemplified by individuals that presently exist and work (either consciously or not) to subvert the status quo of love and desire in relation to gender. The first example is in Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues. This novel is both fiction and nonfiction. However, it is important to recognize that fiction has often been used as a means by oppressed groups to understand the oppression they experience, as well as to imagine the reality they desire to exist. In Stone Butch Blues, the characters transcend the realm of sex, shattering the idea of man and woman as dichotomous opposites. The novel is set in various queer communities and locales, including gay and lesbian bars; however, Stone Butch Blues is a novel of shared-oppression attraction through desires of individuals with a common understanding of classism, sexism, and oppression. In one instance, Jess, the main character, mentions that "Yvette didn't have a butch who worked in the factories," implying that a majority, if not all, butches worked in the factories in order to prevent their femmes from living as "pros" (Feinberg 1993). The ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 36 identity of butch, therefore, becomes a signifier of working-class identity. Additionally, the majority of femmes in this novel are, or have been, sex workers and/or exotic dancers in order to survive (Feinberg 1993). Working-class identity plays a large role throughout this novel, much larger than a shared sexuality or a shared understanding of gender as is realized later on. Throughout the novel, Jess is constantly unsure as to who she is in regards to her sex. Before she "transitions," she does not feel wholly woman, and afterward, she does not feel like a man. When she stops using hormones altogether, she describes herself as falling into a middle ground of man and woman (Feinberg 1993). After the "transition," Jess meets Annie, a straight, cisgender woman who works as a waitress and is a single mother. Jess frequents the diner with working-class men, and eventually asks Annie on a date. Jess and Annie are not the same sex, as Jess and the reader are both unsure as to what sex/gender Jess is (Feinberg 1993). It is thus impossible to label this relationship as either a homosexual or heterosexual encounter. On a date with Jess, Annie declares, "I wouldn't let a faggot near my daughter" (Feinberg 1993:195) not knowing that she already did with Jess. Jess at the time was not straight. Nor was Jess a man or a woman. Annie, however, perceived Jess as a man and as straight, and their relationship worked up until this point as they had similar interests and they had similar understandings of working-class experiences. This novel highlights the fact that attractions and desires are often based on socialized perceptions of arbitrary categories of gender expression rather than the person's self-identity. Annie made it clear that she would have no relation to a "faggot," but she did. The relationship between Annie and Jess is an example of the complication of the idea that gender is ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 37 legible, and when gender becomes recognized as illegible, it is simultaneously recognized that the direction of one's attraction has already crossed over many genders, opening the bounds of sexuality, and marking multiple bodies as desirable and worthy of love. Outside the realm of fiction, it is possible to find a number of stories of trans people in love with cisgender individuals. During their relationships, a number of people, "come out" to their partners as trans, and in the process of "transitioning," alter the meaning and definitions of their relationships as well. A BuzzFeed video titled, "Trans People and Their Partners Talk About Their Relationships," displays three different couples discussing their relationships, exemplifying the fluidity of sexuality in relation to gender. One individual, Miles, states, "We were together almost three years before I started ‘transition'" (Levine and Kayiatos 2015). His partner mentions that adjusting to having "a male partner was a bit different," but "I just love him; that's all I know" (Levine and Kayiatos 2015). Another, Ada, mentions that after six or nine months into their relationship she decided that she "really needed to transition" (Levine and Kayiatos 2015). Evelyn, an individual in another relationship, asserts, "I don't think it matters if you're transgender or if you're straight or if you're gay or if you're somewhere in between. If you find someone you love and you're happy being who you are, it shouldn't matter" (Levine and Kayiatos 2015). Ada's partner concludes that "This relationship has taught me what love really is" (Levine and Kayiatos 2015). Both Miles' and Ada's partners entered the relationship with individuals they thought were cisgender. Later on, they discovered that their partner was trans and wanted to engage in the process of transition, and their definitions of their own sexuality, desires, and love altered as their partners' bodies altered. People who had identified as solely heterosexual learned that ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 38 their sexuality could not be constructed on an axis of gender and that gender was not enough to dictate the orientation of their love, desire, and attraction. As gender is not legible and can constantly shift for some individuals, it ceases to serve as a legitimate function for organizing sexuality. Cate Gary, on Everyday Feminism, writes an article about her partner "coming out" as a transgender women and how they are now "happier than ever," (2015) once again questioning notions of what it means to be heterosexual or homosexual when we dispense with fixed notions of gender. When Cate's partner came out to her, it brought to mind all sorts of questions: I knew this wasn't a joke, and I certainly wasn't laughing. I was scared. I didn't want to lose what we had. Would Robert still want to be with me? Would I still want to be with Robert? I'd never consciously been in a relationship with a woman before. (Gary 2015) However, eventually, she moved beyond these concerns to feelings of happiness for her partner. She had "signed on" for a heterosexual relationship, but she stayed in the relationship based on her feelings for Robin (Gary 2015). The way she understood her sexuality changed. Her understandings of gender, including her own gender, changed. Robin's queerness was not only a "transition" for her, but had a domino effect on Cate's own identity and on their relationship (Gary 2015). Multitudes of trans people "come out" to their cisgender partners. Some of their partners leave them. However, some like Gates and like Miles' and Ada's partners, interrogate their own identities in the process and find new realities of their own perceived and assumed straight-ness. Cate and Robin's relationship is another example of the ways in which gender is rarely a fixed and constructed idea. Instead, it shifts, it is illegible, and it is often complicated, and in turn, it ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 39 complicates sexuality, calling for individuals to rethink what it means to be straight or gay or bisexual. In 2014, Mike Iamele wrote an article about the shifts in his sexuality within the previous two years. In 2012, "straight" guy Mike Iamele fell in love with his gay best friend. He found himself utterly confused when he, "the unquestionably straight guy - realized that I was in love with my best friend, a man. A man I had known for seven years. A man I had never before even thought of in a romantic way. But, there I was, in love" (Iamele 2014). The summer of 2012, Iamele became sick and his best friend took care of him for over two months. Through the months of daily massages, home-cooked meals, taken-care-of errands, and thoughtful conversations, he began to realize "that I loved him" (Iamele 2015). At one singular moment, "one moment when he was cooking me dinner…he looked over and smiled at me. I knew this was it" (Iamele 2015). Iamele confessed his love to his boyfriend, and his boyfriend in turn did the same. Iamele's attraction to his boyfriend transcended socialized assumptions of gender and sexuality: So, yes, I'm an otherwise straight man in love with a man. But I would never reduce Garrett down to just being a man. Because he's more than that. He's a pharmacist and a good cook and a great cards player. And I love him for all of those reasons and so many more. I love him for who he is, not what he is. We're more than our gender. We're more than one attribute. And sometimes we need to remember that. (Iamele 2015) Iamele fell in love with personality traits of Garrett's and eventually, physical traits of his that are not necessarily attached to one particular gender. Their relationship marked for death Iamele's own construction of heterosexuality and further necessitated the need to rethink what it meant for him to be heterosexual. It was about what "brought me love," (Iamele 2015) not about their sexual orientations or gender identities. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 40 What all of these couples display is the fluidity and dynamic nature of their love, sexuality, and desire. They fell in love with individuals who they perceived to be one gender but who in fact never were. These individuals worked past their fear of what it meant to love a trans person-of what it meant in terms of their own sexuality and gender as well. Rather than abjecting their partners, as many individuals do, they committed themselves not only to their partner, but also to learning more about trans justice and engaging in the fight alongside their partner. It is critical that all members of society begin to use these examples and more to rethink their own sexuality. The death of the hetero/homo discourse necessitates a rethinking of the way in which the particular language of sexuality is defined. For instance, the straight man that fell in love with a gay man continues to identify as straight, but he now defines attraction as more than attraction to one's gender identity. Rather, his attraction is defined by the person's personality traits, their physical traits, and their love of him. Death is about rethinking words like homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexual, and queer beyond definitions that posit themselves around gender and instead posit themselves around a word that feels like home to that person-a word that feels as though it is a comfortable space to exist. What is necessitated is not the end of identity groups. I am not calling for the obliteration of words like heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, or gay. Rather, what is necessitated is a rethinking of what it means to be straight-so that it no longer means attraction to the "opposite" sex, but instead comes to mean something else. What that will mean is unsure, as it is a process. As Muñoz pointed out, queerness is not yet here, it is a process that must be engaged in to come to a new state of sexuality, love, and desire. It is necessary to shift to a place where all (a)genders are equally affirmed and one is not ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 41 superimposed over the other. This does not mean the end of sexuality or gender. This does not mean the end of attraction to particular personality traits, body parts, or life interests. It does, however, mean that all members of society must mark for death the hetero/homo discourse that perpetuates an idea of opposite/same in relation to attraction to gender. It means the rethinking of what words mean so that they no longer rely on gender but begin to rely on degendered aspects of bodies and beings. It means the end of a maintenance of sexuality that requires the abjection of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals. CONCLUSION Love, desire, and attraction are at the core of social justice movements. In December 2015, Hari Ziyad of Race Baitr interviewed Jamal T. Lewis, the director of an upcoming documentary called No Fats, No Femmes. Jamal explains the reasons behind this film: "I was scrolling through Jack'd one evening and found myself completely frustrated by numerous profiles boasting a "masc for masc" bravado and listing "no fats no fems" as their "preference" and something that they didn't want" (Ziyad 2015). Jamal continues to explain in their interview that who is desirable and who is not is indeed political. The forest of headers in dating apps dictating "no fats, no femmes, and no people of color," is not just a mess of preferences. Rather, such "preferences" are informed by socialized notions of who is worthy of love, who is desirable, and who is welcome in a community. As Jamal points out, "Whom we decide to (and, not to) lay with (and, love) is political. It is a decision that we all make, myself included. It informs whom we save, whom we fight for, whom we deem worthy, whom we deem disposable, and vice versa" (Ziyad 2015). Love, desire, and sexuality inform the community one ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 42 surrounds them self with and with whom they are willing to engage in a struggle against oppression. Socialized notions and prejudices of gender, race, class, and size inform love, desire, and sexuality. The call for the death of the hetero/homo discourse is the intentional cry against a sexual discourse that is used as a weapon of oppression through the abjection of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming bodies. It declares that sexuality is not so sacrosanct that it cannot be questioned because individuals "were born this way." This marking for death recognizes that no one's gender is legible, necessitating the rethinking of sexuality, so that society may assert the value of trans individuals over ease, comfort, and prejudice. ZAMANTAKIS, DEATH OF HETERO AND HOMO 43 References Aizura, Aren Z. 2014. "Transfeminine Value, Racialized Others, and the Limits of Necropolitics." 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