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MENSA Conferees Get Smart About 'Queer
Theory'
by John Zeh
CINCINNATI- An openly gay speaker at the annual gathering of MENSA here July 3 cautioned that scholars teaching in the boom of "queer theory" college courses should not seek separate departments for such gay and lesbian studies at their schools.
Jack Turner, a professor of English literature at Humbolt State University in Arcata, CA, said he prefers "integrated" courses about gay-related topics. Departmentalizing such curricula could lead to "ghettoization," an unfortunate isolation of ideas and issues crucial to study of sexual desires and how culture defines them, he said.
"When the money runs out, a gay department would be the first to go," Turner, a professor with 32 years tenure, warned.
MENSA, a non-profit group open to people who score above the 98th percentile on an approved intelligence test, has gay chapters in 19 states and the District of Columbia,
Turner defined queer theory (QT) as "the idea that sexuality is defined by time, place, and culture" rather than being innate. QT is, in a sense, a prism via which scholars view literary works and activist debate ideas about rigid sexual definitions and their ramifications, such as homophobia, legislative crackdowns, and internalized anxiety.
QT's beginnings are traced to the writings of French historian Michel Foucault, whose followers see no strict delineation between male and female and say that sexuality runs a continuum on which some people prefer sex partners of the opposite gender while others seek both sexes.
"The so-called gay or homosexual identity is of very recent origin," Turner said. "Psychologists and medical people defined homosexuality in the late 1800's as a clinical term, an abnormality, at first." He credited Magnus Hirshfeld and others in Germany for starting the first homosexual rights movement at the turn of the century. "They were on their way to achieving an acceptance as we have now in many places in the U.S.," he said, "but Nazi-ism queered that, so to speak."
He congratulated people in the modern American gay movement for becoming "much more open, fluid, and inclusive, including women, for example," and for accepting the diversity of bonds "between younger boys and men, and among whites with Asians and blacks than in other societies studied in the past."
That is the true meaning of independence, he said as the Queen City celebrated July Fourth. "Really what our country is all about is self-realization, becoming accepted as who we are."
Gay and QT studies will proliferate if handled carefully, he added, because "this is of interest to everybody. It's about gender, sexuality, families - who we are and how we operate.
Turner's "lecture-discussion" during MENSA's meeting of about 1230 delegates at the historic Omni Netherland Hotel on Fountain Square downtown was an example of his philosophy in action. "Instead of segregating our courses into gay, lesbian, or queer theory 'departments,' they should be integrated into disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, and literature," he said. "Then each classical discipline can utilize journals and conferences to explore individual points of view."
Turner is a member of MENSA's 25-year-old "gay and lesbian SIG," (special interest group), one of the oldest caucuses in MENSA. "It was hard at first for MENSA to swallow," said SIG co-founder Waugh Smith of West Hollywood, CA. After two years of appeals, "they were compelled by their belief in being rational. We kept pushing till we got it."
MENSA g/l SIG publishes "LeGambit" in print, posts a Web page at http://members.aol.com/mensagsig, and gets e-mail via atbrucedaltx@worldnet.att.net.
The SIG's meeting and hospitality suite attracted about 45 people. Turner and Smith also put out MENSA's message on WAIF FM's 20-year-old "Alternating Currents."
Years ago national MENSA leaders decided against locating the group's national headquarters in Colorado after passage of its anti-gay Amendment Two, but took no action here about this town's similar Issue 3, now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"MENSA is not particularly political," explaind Turner. "There are all diferent poliical persuausions. But all views are welcome and we feel very strongly that just by our (gay) presence, there's a raising of awareness."
