Week 4, Day 2

 The lines between female and male are often blurred in both the physical and emotional sense. Even within those two categories, the subcategories may vary depending on who is providing the answer. The idea of sexuality/gender and making sense of them were central in this week’s readings. 

To this extent, “Islamicate Sexualities Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire” by Kathryn Babayan and Afrsaneh Najmabadi casted further light to this idea. The introduction functions on “the possibilities of ‘or what’” (275). By not providing a definite description, a person leaves much to the listener to assume. This concept reminded me of an earlier paper I wrote over The Great Gatsby and the sexuality of Nick, the main protagonist. 

Within this paper, I honed in on the ambiguity of Nick’s character: Could he be bisexuality? The book itself never provides a definite answer but instead, many scenes leave the reader to interpret more homosexuality. Najmabadi mentions that “sexual subjectivities cannot be named homosexual or heterosexual” which paralled the idea of a queer Nick. And even beyond that singular character, it seems to be a difficult task for any one author to make a completely seemingly straight or gay individual. And thus, it gives root to this idea that in order to define these sexualties, people/authors rely on gendered stereotypes. 

Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, provided an excellent example of such with another character, Tom. He represented the epitome of masculinity… To be more specific, the epitome of toxic masculinity. Tom projected this clear image of a stereotypical white rich man of the 20’s (arguably all of the 20th century before and onward) with an intense sexual prominence. Even with a few scenes alluring to his homosexuality, Fitzgerald captured this image perfectly. Within my paper, I quoted a few key things: “The sexual prominence of the wealthy male, Tom, has a body ‘capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body” with a voice of “paternal contempt in it, even towards people he liked” create a distinction between the defined masculine upper-class class and everyone else (Fitzgerald 7). In retrospect, I find it interesting that certain trains that were pointed out automatically gave this defined muscle role: enormous leverage. However, I find this new idea key to exemplifying Najmabadi’s question of “How do we study these genders and sexualities within a field dominated by categorizations of types and acts?” 

Focus on that latter part, “categorizations of types and acts,” and think about how certain sexual mentionings might bring up certain images. Regardless if one means to or not, society has preconditioned and instilled certain “types and acts” with these clear gendered relations. For instance, a women x women relation can seem to be known for just “scissoring” when these intimate acts can go further beyond that. Or beyond the idea of gender, the concepts of age which are also touched on by Najmabadi. Circling back to The Great Gatsby, Gatsby himself seemed like this timeless figure who was stuck in the idea of Daisy, his first love. So much so, that he did not allow himself to ever leave that moment nor move on and grow older. This idea of being stuck as a child or teen-in-love, innocent from later heartbreak or lessons of growing up counteract the “grown-up” version of love and romance. How is romance, love, or attraction defined throughout age? And how does that play into sexualtiy or gender? 

Both of these questions began to form in my mind as I thought more about it. How much weight are we bound to give different things? And even beyond that, how much does the surrounding society play into this answer? Way back when, it was considered appropriate for a young girl to marry an older man (note the distinction between girl/boy and men/women) and maybe even now, to some, it might still be considered okay. To put a pen in that note though, I would like to recognize my side-comment about girl/boy and men/women. 

With Gatsby, readers saw a young boy’s overly optimistic perception of love. He waits for the girl across the bay, holding parties in hopes that she might come one day. The love (edging on obsession) appears more innocent if one solely looks at that. However, upon further inspection, one might find it strange that this (not absolute) 30 year old man is still in love with this girl from the past (who is now married with a child). What type of lover might he be categorized by? When does the innocent boy turn into the man? When does the sweet daughter turn into a woman? Some recognize this coming of age through intimate acts of sexuality, others by bodily experiences of puberty. One of my biggest insights from Najmabadi was that many labels and categories exist. Many of such could be juxtaposed with one another and one person might contain a multitude of labels.