Talking Points #3 (Carlson)

Gayness, Multicultural Education and Community
Dennis Carlson

Carlson argues that it is in the power of educators to teach students (and everyone for that matter) that individuality should be celebrated and not supressed. Everyone should learn about differences in society and learn to act with them and not against them.

"It is also a community with a less benign face, one that maintains a dominant culture through oppressive tactics used to keep Others 'in their places.'...refer to this as a community organized around the 'will to purify'..."
This quote originally stuck out to me because of the word choice. The word benign sticks out to me because I initially always relate it to cancer. So, when I was reading this sentence and came upon 'benign' my mind referred itself to cancer and I had to stop reading the sentence. It took me a few times to get threw the sentence without taking benign out of its current context but this sentence still stuck with me. So, I made a lose connection that the author could be referring to how "gayness" is the "benign" tumor on the body of society. Like...when its worded that way, for me, it really just makes me disgusted with how people think.
The other part of the quote (the fragment from the next sentence of the text) was what also popped into my mind when i read "benign." Again, I connected it to cancer but its like saying not matter how much radiation, chemo & other treatments we throw at this "stuff" it keeps coming back. Its like saying no matter how much we fight to have unequal rights remains for those who are gay, they still insist on being gay! I feel like that conversation takes place in a big room in Texas full of older, die hard conservative men, smoking cigars and talking about "the good old days."

"The commonsense perspective on language is that words refer to or stand for things, so that it does not really matter what you call these things. But words do not meraly stand in for 'things.' They emerge out of and take on meaning within particular discourses and practices."
First off, I thought it was great how he clarified his word usage before he really got deep into discussion. More so to the point, I feel like this quote is the epitome of our entire class. Just because there might be more than one word to describe a person does not mean you get to decide what they want to be called. This reminds me of that other article/poem we read in class, "For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend" as well as the video Dr. Bogad posted on her blog. Races often assign names to other races without knowing them. Its automatic judgement. And I really shouldn't limit that to races--everyone does it for their opposite. Whether thats skin color, gender, socio-economic class, culture, etc., So, like I said, I feel like this quote was almost written for our class. Every day we learn how to address individuals based on their prefernces as a person first, attributes second, not attributes first, person second.

"Straight women, because they have developed their own critique of patriarchy and because they can relate to marginalization, have generally been most supportive of the gay movement. The challenge is to engage straight men in a deconstructive analysis of how they understand 'being straight' in ways that involve treating women and gays as Others."
I really like this whole surronding section. I thought Carlson's analysis on why different genders "respond" to the gay atmosphere the way they do was interesting. I also think its interesting to think of how women are more supportive because they too had to earn (and still have to earn) their equality among men and therefore society. Its like the male gender is that one person who always tries to make you feel like you aren't worthy, like their problems are bigger than yours when in actuallity you are not only a better person but have actually overcome more obstacles in your life and have a better outloook than the person who has had evetything handed to them. Now, I'm not saying one gender/race/class/culture is better than any, I was just using an example. So, I will use another as well. Ok, so this also made me think of the show Exiled on MTV. Its the one where they "exile" the Super Sweet 16 girls off to poorer,more unfortunate countries to actually learn how to appreciate life. So I thought of that show because here you have citizens of a country who have to do anything they can to surive and have completely different customs then we do but they are still happy and are overjoyed just to be with their family. And then you have this bratty 18 year old girl who comes to your country in her Gucci outift and complains about a mterial object that the people she is living but have never even heard of. I know, its a stretch but its the villagers are the people who do not have equal rights (gays) and the girl who is exiled are the ones with the rights telling the villagers they cant have any rights (govt, society). I dont know...it just seems totally crazy to me.


I dont really know if I have any more feedback...I kind of just said everything I was feeling in my quotes. And I realized I said 'like' a lot and for that I apologize. I wasn't a big fan of Carlson's writing style but it wasn't too bad to get through it. The beginning felt like a lot of other articles we have read where it is addressing how the article will discuss how a groupf of people aren't getting treated equally. I thought it brought up some good points, mainly around the quotes I picked out but I'm sure there are a bunch of other ones that demonstate better or even clearer points. I guess to summarize this I would only be able to say what I have been thinking after every article we read. What is so difficult about treating everyone in the country equally? Im not saying make them un-individualistic by any means. Simply, appreciate everyone's differnces but don't turn around and use those differences against them, especially because its not a legit reason to. ( I don't think it is anyway)