著者

吉原 令子

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

no.39, pp.125-141, 2009-03-31

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The movement to legalize same-sex marriage was revitalized in the 1990s in the US. This paper examines the reasons for this revitalization and analyzes the movement in relation to feminism. Gays/Lesbians called for same-sex marriage rights in the 1990s because of the influence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and a lesbian baby-boom in the 1980s. At the same time, NOW, a liberal feminist group in the US, officially declared support for same-sex marriage. One reason for solidarity between liberal feminists and gays/lesbians was that both groups shared liberal values, including the pursuit of freedom, equality, and justice through social reform and legal change. Both groups also resisted the conservative thinking expounded by the Moral Majority and Reagan supporters. These conservatives opposed same-sex marriage and attacked both gays/lesbians and feminists during the 1980s. However, queer theorists started to criticize this movement in the 2000s because the legalization of same-sex marriage leads to assimilation, normalization, and loss of sexual diversity. They also criticized activists for prioritizing legalization of same-sex marriage over issues of poverty and discrimination against lower class queers. I analyze their criticism of the same-sex marriage movement and explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of the movement.

著者

吉原 令子

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

no.30, pp.79-99, 2000-03-31

---

In writing about her childhood along the Texas-Mexico border, Gloria Anzaldua describes the experience of being caught between two cultures, as being an alien in both. The actual physical borderland that Anzaldua describes in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border, but the "borderlands" she refers to are something more psychological, sexual, and spiritual. These Borderlands are present wherever two or more cultures confront each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where all socio-economic classes touch, and where the confusion of sexual and gender identity exists. Her preoccupations with the inner life of the Self, and with the struggle of that Self in the borderlands provide the unique positioning consciousness. The quest for one's identity based on race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, etc., ends up in the system of binary oppositions. In my view, in this book Anzaldua criticizes an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other and insists that the Self is plural, transformative, and performative. She searches for a way of balancing, and mitigating the system of binary oppositions through knowing and learning the history of oppression. Anzaldua suggests that we should accept our differences and that our differences should open political lines of affiliation with other groups to challenge the specific forms of domination that we share in common.

著者

吉原令子

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化

巻号頁・発行日

no.30, 2000-03-31

著者

吉原 令子

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.30, pp.79-99, 2000-03-31 (Released:2017-06-20)

---

In writing about her childhood along the Texas-Mexico border, Gloria Anzaldua describes the experience of being caught between two cultures, as being an alien in both. The actual physical borderland that Anzaldua describes in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border, but the "borderlands" she refers to are something more psychological, sexual, and spiritual. These Borderlands are present wherever two or more cultures confront each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where all socio-economic classes touch, and where the confusion of sexual and gender identity exists. Her preoccupations with the inner life of the Self, and with the struggle of that Self in the borderlands provide the unique positioning consciousness. The quest for one's identity based on race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, etc., ends up in the system of binary oppositions. In my view, in this book Anzaldua criticizes an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other and insists that the Self is plural, transformative, and performative. She searches for a way of balancing, and mitigating the system of binary oppositions through knowing and learning the history of oppression. Anzaldua suggests that we should accept our differences and that our differences should open political lines of affiliation with other groups to challenge the specific forms of domination that we share in common.

著者

吉原 令子

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, pp.125-141, 2009-03-31 (Released:2017-06-20)

---

The movement to legalize same-sex marriage was revitalized in the 1990s in the US. This paper examines the reasons for this revitalization and analyzes the movement in relation to feminism. Gays/Lesbians called for same-sex marriage rights in the 1990s because of the influence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and a lesbian baby-boom in the 1980s. At the same time, NOW, a liberal feminist group in the US, officially declared support for same-sex marriage. One reason for solidarity between liberal feminists and gays/lesbians was that both groups shared liberal values, including the pursuit of freedom, equality, and justice through social reform and legal change. Both groups also resisted the conservative thinking expounded by the Moral Majority and Reagan supporters. These conservatives opposed same-sex marriage and attacked both gays/lesbians and feminists during the 1980s. However, queer theorists started to criticize this movement in the 2000s because the legalization of same-sex marriage leads to assimilation, normalization, and loss of sexual diversity. They also criticized activists for prioritizing legalization of same-sex marriage over issues of poverty and discrimination against lower class queers. I analyze their criticism of the same-sex marriage movement and explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of the movement.