Saturday, December 04, 2010
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Reflections on being a longhair
Shearing time = crying time. I'm like an infant at circumcision. Or now I know what it feels like to become a eunuch. Except in this case it's voluntary amputation, and its womanhood (of the strictly and crassly superficial variety), not manhood, to which I bid adieu.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Alien insect invader
It is not often that one comes into contact with an alien creature. With a beast so repugnant and otherworldly, whose existence belies any earthly explanation. Tonight I came jaw to mandible with such a beast. Train your eye to the image above to see the creature in question. Suppress your repugnance as I relate the circumstances of my alien encounter.Consider the bathroom. Although not the most pleasant and beautiful of places, I submit that there is a special serenity to the bathroom. Not just any bathroom, but one's own bathroom. It is something of a sanctuary, a place of ritual and ablution, a place of utmost peace and aloneness. In a word, the bathroom is a safe place. Or so I thought.
This very evening, I was in my bathroom. I was in a state of Zen, brushing placidly, at peace with my surroundings. All of a sudden, to my shock and dismay, I realized I was not alone - I perceived a beast menacing me from the shower knob. If I screamed, you can hardly blame me. Not only was the illusion of immaculate security shattered, the agent of destruction was an alien creature of unparalleled repugnance. Having seen the artist's rendering, you cannot but agree with me. Obviously, the monster is not of this world.
Naturally, my second reaction was to document the happening - it's not everyday that one encounters extra terrestrials. It is thanks to this enterprising impulse that you are able to view the beast in all its glory.
I cannot look at her but experience a shudder. The obsidian bug-eyes, the mandibles, the sinuous, probing antenna, formidable carapace, and hairy legs. Note the amputated posterior hindquarter - most likely a battle wound. What kind of demonic, alien freak?!
Although it took only moments, when I had returned from examining the photos on my computer, the beast had disappeared. I suspect that it recognized my superior fighting capabilities and slunk off back down its hidey hole -the drain pipe in my bathtub.
I accepted the creature's capitulation, craven though it may be. I decided not to eradicate the beast in a horrific wave of inescapable water. Who am I to kick a living thing when it's down? Empathy is the supreme anti-sin, of which even insects are deserving. If my challenger has retired to regenerate its blighted limb, so be it: I will accept her challenge anew when she returns!
UPDATE (Nov. 3, 2010): The narcoleptic freak returned last night only to find Brad in full martial mobilization. I stumbled upon the beast apparently harvesting or sowing some unspeakable evil from or into my washcloth. I approached with a glint in my eye and she moved. For a gimp, I was astonished nearly to the point of defecation by her alacrity. You know what they say: you can't fault a guy for sharting in moral peril. After doing a somersault or other aerial maneuver too fast for my eyes to follow, our bitch (a veritable Grendel's mother) clung to the bottom of the cloth, batlike. Taking my life in my hands, I used kitchen tongs to sweep the washcloth and passenger into a bucket. Once inside the rabid roach whizzed about like a pinball in circles. It must be that she was dazed, perhaps by the light, for to have climbed out and brought the attack to my eyes would have been the work of a millisecond. Using the tongs to grasp the side of the bucket, I swiftly clothed myself in bathrobe and rushed to exit the building. Take a second now to appreciate my superhuman concern for species rights. Even in open war, I avoid murder. If I was muttering imprecations in the stairs, what of it? Admittedly, it wasn't very gentlemanly or empathetic to start screaming, "Get out! Get the fuck out of my bucket! Fuck you," when I reached street-level. As if in conciliatory response to my hysterics, the beast transported herself beneath a leaf. I picked up my bucket, and the battle was concluded. VICTORY!
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Bad habits
Surely all people have bad habits. Because I cannot presume to know other people's self-destructive ways, and I am an unabashed egotist, I'll look at my own habits only. I don't see any reason why I cannot serve as a foil for the rest of the world.
By bad, I mean "messes your shit up" or, said differently, pernicious for personal happiness and progress. By habit, I mean ingrained and chronic action with subconscious fortifications.
Alright, lets get down to the dirty:
1. Severe head scratching. This is just about the best bad habit archetype I can imagine because it gives nothing back. There is no reason nor positive reinforcement for head scratching. I've dipped deep into my bag of sophist rationalizations and come up empty-handed. I do it because I can. I do it subconsciously, constantly. It accelerates when I'm stressed out or sedentary. My life is soured on a daily basis by this irrational habit. My scalp scoured, raw, deforested. I can recollect being well aware of this scourge as early as the beginning of college. There must have been a trigger in there. I thought I was balding Freshman year because of the slough from this degrading self-hate. Needless to say, as long as I've been scratching, I've been trying to stop, to no avail.
2. Sleep habits. Now I enter the realm of the cost-benefit and the sub-optimal. My sleep habits have been wacky since adolescence. They reached their nadir during high school summers when I played a shiz-ton of Starcraft (the computer game). Starcraft was so mesmerizing and time-consuming that it impinged on sleep normalcy in a bad way. I'd stay up later and later playing and then be incapable of falling asleep afterward. I'd lie and listen to the infernal birds as the morning glow encroached on my window. I'd cry, whine, scream, pummel things. That, I say, was the nadir. This certainly sub-optimal hell was caused by the lack of parentally imposed structure, the fact that I couldn't give two craps, and the household culture - my two bros had similar sleep habits. I lacked a stable sleep schedule until summer 2010, to which you might say, "No bigs," but I say, "Bigs." I've long been pierced by the paradoxical double horns of: (1) difficulty falling asleep at night and (2) lethargy during the day. I could never find equilibrium: I'd always tilt towards the nocturnal. And getting up was always an existential struggle. The up-side was that night invoked leaps in productivity. Even during high school, I accomplished most of my good (and inspired) work during the wee hours of the morning. This would make me recalculate the 'bad' part of habit in this case if I were not now convinced that I can be equally or more fertile during the day. Unlike my owl habits, diurnal productivity must be predicated on discipline and good habits. The principal reason I was productive at night was that I could never accomplish anything during the day due to:
3. Procrastination. It would be difficult to overestimate the evil effect of this inherently irrational menace. Procrastination is the habitual manifestation of an underlying lack of fortitude, will, and 'The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.' I believe strongly that I can go heel to toe with any procrastinator out there. Of those I know personally, I'm right up there in terms of severity. Even worse, I suffer all the heinous side-effects that some souls somehow obviate: namely, guilt and stress. Anxiety is my best friend (because he stands by me always) and my worst enemy (because he stabs me in the back perpetually). If you're wondering what I do when I'm expressly not working:
4. Facebook and other masturbatory internet time-consumption. By MASTURBATORY, I do not mean GENITAL SELF-STIMULATION. Rather, I'm referring to "excessively self-indulgent or self-involved" (the free dictionary). Combine this with the characteristic of a woefully inadequate and inferior substitute, and you're getting close to my understanding of the term. I've been using it to describe my habit of engaging in all sorts of depressing internet sink-hole nonsensicality for years. Facebook is a paradigm for this kind of waste. Belonging to Facebook is useful, because of its enormous positive network externalities, but one can waste away to a human sliver in its void of superficial voyeurism. More generally, I think my brain overdoses on internet without much provocation, blasting focus and mental acuity to hell, inducing an over-stimulation seizure like Pokémon. (For my rap on Facebook from this blog, click)
5. Lateness. I detest late people and being late, yet I'm regularly that bunghole. This is intimately related to procrastination because, before failing to allot sufficient travel time, I fail to allot sufficient time to accomplish requisite pre-departure tasks (e.g., teeth-brushing, materials gathering, etc.); I do that because it's right before I have to go somewhere that my productivity peaks and I don't want to halt my progress. I usually end up scrambling, forgetting important items or occasions and then running, bike-sprinting, or driving madly to my destination. Of course, this isn't good for my blood pressure... "Hello anxiety, my old friend."
There are more, but this is a long post. Allow me to note that I am trying to eradicate/change these bad habits. I'll keep you posted on the results of my change campaign.
By bad, I mean "messes your shit up" or, said differently, pernicious for personal happiness and progress. By habit, I mean ingrained and chronic action with subconscious fortifications.
Alright, lets get down to the dirty:
1. Severe head scratching. This is just about the best bad habit archetype I can imagine because it gives nothing back. There is no reason nor positive reinforcement for head scratching. I've dipped deep into my bag of sophist rationalizations and come up empty-handed. I do it because I can. I do it subconsciously, constantly. It accelerates when I'm stressed out or sedentary. My life is soured on a daily basis by this irrational habit. My scalp scoured, raw, deforested. I can recollect being well aware of this scourge as early as the beginning of college. There must have been a trigger in there. I thought I was balding Freshman year because of the slough from this degrading self-hate. Needless to say, as long as I've been scratching, I've been trying to stop, to no avail.
2. Sleep habits. Now I enter the realm of the cost-benefit and the sub-optimal. My sleep habits have been wacky since adolescence. They reached their nadir during high school summers when I played a shiz-ton of Starcraft (the computer game). Starcraft was so mesmerizing and time-consuming that it impinged on sleep normalcy in a bad way. I'd stay up later and later playing and then be incapable of falling asleep afterward. I'd lie and listen to the infernal birds as the morning glow encroached on my window. I'd cry, whine, scream, pummel things. That, I say, was the nadir. This certainly sub-optimal hell was caused by the lack of parentally imposed structure, the fact that I couldn't give two craps, and the household culture - my two bros had similar sleep habits. I lacked a stable sleep schedule until summer 2010, to which you might say, "No bigs," but I say, "Bigs." I've long been pierced by the paradoxical double horns of: (1) difficulty falling asleep at night and (2) lethargy during the day. I could never find equilibrium: I'd always tilt towards the nocturnal. And getting up was always an existential struggle. The up-side was that night invoked leaps in productivity. Even during high school, I accomplished most of my good (and inspired) work during the wee hours of the morning. This would make me recalculate the 'bad' part of habit in this case if I were not now convinced that I can be equally or more fertile during the day. Unlike my owl habits, diurnal productivity must be predicated on discipline and good habits. The principal reason I was productive at night was that I could never accomplish anything during the day due to:
3. Procrastination. It would be difficult to overestimate the evil effect of this inherently irrational menace. Procrastination is the habitual manifestation of an underlying lack of fortitude, will, and 'The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.' I believe strongly that I can go heel to toe with any procrastinator out there. Of those I know personally, I'm right up there in terms of severity. Even worse, I suffer all the heinous side-effects that some souls somehow obviate: namely, guilt and stress. Anxiety is my best friend (because he stands by me always) and my worst enemy (because he stabs me in the back perpetually). If you're wondering what I do when I'm expressly not working:
4. Facebook and other masturbatory internet time-consumption. By MASTURBATORY, I do not mean GENITAL SELF-STIMULATION. Rather, I'm referring to "excessively self-indulgent or self-involved" (the free dictionary). Combine this with the characteristic of a woefully inadequate and inferior substitute, and you're getting close to my understanding of the term. I've been using it to describe my habit of engaging in all sorts of depressing internet sink-hole nonsensicality for years. Facebook is a paradigm for this kind of waste. Belonging to Facebook is useful, because of its enormous positive network externalities, but one can waste away to a human sliver in its void of superficial voyeurism. More generally, I think my brain overdoses on internet without much provocation, blasting focus and mental acuity to hell, inducing an over-stimulation seizure like Pokémon. (For my rap on Facebook from this blog, click)
5. Lateness. I detest late people and being late, yet I'm regularly that bunghole. This is intimately related to procrastination because, before failing to allot sufficient travel time, I fail to allot sufficient time to accomplish requisite pre-departure tasks (e.g., teeth-brushing, materials gathering, etc.); I do that because it's right before I have to go somewhere that my productivity peaks and I don't want to halt my progress. I usually end up scrambling, forgetting important items or occasions and then running, bike-sprinting, or driving madly to my destination. Of course, this isn't good for my blood pressure... "Hello anxiety, my old friend."
There are more, but this is a long post. Allow me to note that I am trying to eradicate/change these bad habits. I'll keep you posted on the results of my change campaign.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
"Society is afraid of alonedom..."
Friday, October 01, 2010
Sex neutrality in game theory
The following passage (abridged) is from the preface to my game theory text book (Martin J. Osborne's An Introduction to Game Theory (2004)). To view the whole preface, Osborne's sources, and other parts of his book and work, check out his website.
The English language lacks a third person singular pronoun widely interpreted to be sex neutral. In particular, many experiments have shown that "he" is not neutral...whereas people may say "when an airplane pilot is working, he needs to concentrate", they do not usually say "when a flight attendant is working, he needs to concentrate." To quote the American Heritage Dictionary, "Thus he...is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought." Like many writers, I regard as unacceptable the bias implicit in the use of "he"...Writers have become sensitive to this issue in the last fifty years, but the lack of a sex-neutral pronoun "has been felt since at least as far back as Middle English " (Webster's Dictionary of English Usage). A common solution has been to use "they"... [this] can create ambiguity... I choose a different solution: I use "she" exclusively. Obviously this usage, like that of "he", is not sex neutral, but it may help to counterbalance the widespread use of "he", and it seems unlikely to do any harm.Game theorists taking up the cause of linguistic sex neutrality? What is this world coming to?!
Wait, UChi has a humanist advisor?
I received this correspondence moments ago:
Welcome to the University of Chicago!
My name is Josh Oxley, and I am the Humanist Advisor for the University of Chicago. You're receiving this email because you, sometime in the past few months, either self-identified as secular/humanist/atheist/ect, or expressed interest in the Secular Student Alliance.
My job, as part of the Spiritual Life Office at Rockefeller Chapel, is to be a resource for secular students on campus. Often non-believing, freethinking students are ignored by universities. That's a mistake, and one I'm glad the University of Chicago isn't making. We freethinkers have questions of meaning, belonging, identity, and those other aspects of being human, and it's my role to help you in any of those conversations.
If you're wondering about any of these questions, looking for places to plug-in with like-minded people, or have other questions, feel free to send me an email and set up a meeting. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts throughout the year, and I hope to see you around campus.
Get involved, find balance, and enjoy!
Josh Oxley
Humanist Advisor, Spiritual Life Office
The University of Chicago
It's true, I have aligned myself with the Secular Student Alliance. And I do believe that I should be as proud, candid, and transparent about my (non)religious views as anybody. And yet, trepidation... Presumably, if you're here, reading, you know me, want to know me, or prefer candor to obfuscation. My agnostic atheistic non-religious humanistic doctrine ideology philosophy thing is no special revelation. My religious views come up in conversation with some frequency. I think it's important to represent (but never to impose, sermonize, proselytize (except in the regular way which is implicit in all forms of rhetorical communication)).
I digress: Josh Oxley. Humanist Advisor. Awesome! Not for the first time, and hopefully not for the last, I'm proud of my university. For the first time, I feel my perspective and loosely bound cabal is represented, welcomed, and validated. Apparently, this is the first time such a post has existed at this university, and UChi is the fourth university nationally to adopt such a program. We're not talking about a student organization. This is an officially sanctioned staff position. Granted, the Rockefeller Chapel (the Gothic awe-and-fear-inspiring masterwork) makes all other outfits seem amateur, but this is what I call progress: how splendidly legit.
It's nice to know that somebody out there is swinging for you and, it should be noted, all humanity. That is, these people are explicitly interested in aiding those who have "aspects of being human." Succor is available for all.
Of course, humanism is not the exclusive territory of secular ideology. Religious figures are often (or always?) at the forefront of humanist endeavors. Consider the Catholic church's anti-Pinochet ferment during the 1970s, or the progressive and humanistic Christian (principally Catholic, again) involvement in Argentina during the dirty wars and Operation Condor.
Even I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Christian humanist philosophers: theology teachers during middle and high school (Catholic school, y'all) who fostered my intellectual growth disproportionately and with great success. Little did Father Matt Guckin know that, while he idolized Aristotle, I was employing arch Sophistry on all of his papers. Or maybe he did know; perhaps he was proud - he taught it to me. (Thanks also to the Augustinian friars of Malvern and Paul Peterson, especially). Again, there's another side - I'll always lament that blighted year of Christian Morality - which has its own other side, and so on into a strange loop, but I'll not get into that.
For me too much religion was like too much ice-cream: brain-freeze and body-purge inducing.
I digress: It makes sense for there to be a force for secularism on this university campus, to fill breaches, to unite, to do what religious folk do for each other. This rectifies what has long seemed to me to be a dearth in social-secular movements and organization. Word up to my active Secular Student Alliance and Humanist Advisor. Stand strong, find balance, and represent.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Reflections: Chauncy's "Gay New York"
There is but one required class in the 1-year Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at UChicago. Namely, "Perspectives in Social Sciences Analysis." "Perspectives" intends to survey the nine different approaches - NOT disciplines - of the social sciences. These discipline-spanning perspectives have distinctive theoretical features, analogies, pioneers and lineages, and the like. They include historical narrative, rational choice, Marxism, structural functionalism, etc. By presenting this lay of the land, the program indoctrinates us with its particular, highly Chicagoan, meta-method and meta-perspective. More on this later.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
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