II. Social Media Activism in the Obama Era
1. Structural Violence
1.1 Fighting Heteronormativity – Cultural Violence: The Foundation of
Violence: The Foundation of Structural and Direct Violence
The term “heteronormativity” was first introduced by Michael Warner in his publication Fear of a Queer Planet in 1991. The term is describing Judith Butler’s idea of the “heterosexual matrix” which Butler has defined a year earlier, in 1990. The basic concept is the general perception of a binary which only acknowledges a direct connection between sex and gender. The concept of sex ascribes people a female or male attribute when they are born. Gender, however, defines how people eventually behave and present themselves in their daily interactions. The
“heterosexual matrix” determines that if a person is born male, the general expectation is that the person will have a masculine appearance and also desire accordingly, meaning that he will desire women. The scenario is equally adaptable for people born with a female sex who are accordingly expected to desire the opposite sex as well. The desire for the same sex is not valid within the “heterosexual matrix”. Butler explains: “Certain kinds of ‘identities’ cannot ‘exist’ – that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender.”67
The “heterosexualization of desire” has become the rule.68 The rejection of homosexuality has been practiced for several decades and long before Judith Butler created the term of the “heterosexual matrix”. The rejection of homosexuality and the privileging of heterosexual people have also been described as sexual othering by Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack:
“Here homosexual couples represent the abnormal, the other, and the non-ideal.”69 Heteronormativity has thus been established in society’s culture, has become the manifestation of cultural violence par excellence and is therefore the most distinctive breeding ground of structural violence.
67 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, (New York: Routledge, 1990), 24.
68 Ibid.
69 Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack, Critical Media Studies – An Introduction, (Malden:
Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 199.
42 Fighting the stigmatization as homosexual and abnormal requires the deconstruction of the concept of heteronormativity.
The possibility of subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble, not through the strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity.70
Judith Butler’s intention is the performance of gender trouble according to the concept that someone is born with a specific body, and therefore able to create an identity and develop desires that are not predefined. Neither the sex someone is born with nor gender should be compulsory. Instead, gender is generated by repeatedly acting in a specific way and should not be depended on a common expectation, an alleged natural precondition or social norm. The aspiration is that homosexuality should never again be dominated by a superior heterosexuality.
Consequently, structural violence against LGBTQ*s can only be eliminated if heteronormativity is contested and subverted. The concept of heteronormativity or the heterosexual matrix is being used to justify and legitimize direct and structural violence against LGBTQ*s. Cultural violence is the foundation so that direct or structural violence looks and even feels right. The concept of heterosexuality complies with these criteria.
Destroying the concept would result in the subversion of the justification of direct and structural violence.
Gay rights activists apply multiple forms of subverting heteronormativity. Gay Prides worldwide serve the purpose of deconstructing this concept. The political demonstrations create visibility and represent the implementation and application of Judith Butler’s gender
70 Butler, Gender Trouble, 46.
43 trouble. Gay men and women in drag subvert the common expectations of a person’s gendered behavior and appearance:
I would suggest […] that drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity.
[…] In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – as well as its contingency. […] In the place of the law of heterosexual coherence, we see sex and gender denaturalized by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity.71
Drag, gay pride celebrations and political demonstrations are conductive to the deconstruction of the heterosexual matrix, the heteronormativity.
However, gay prides and political demonstrations’ outreach – even though organized on regular basis – usually remains restricted to an isolated group that already internalizes political activism. Therefore, the LGBTQ*’s movement via social media has a higher potential to reach out to people less political who represent a group of new political activists; an activist that can act from home; that does not have to demonstrate on the streets. This new generation of activism is not tied to a specific location – it can be exercised from anywhere and at any time. It can be easily organized and its content is distributed faster than ever before. It reaches more people and is hardly limited to a geographical realm. It also has the potential to reach all those diverse groups of LGBTQ*s and include the community’s diversity – even though this capability has not been utilized adequately so far. This new activism can stir visibility and a public debate on a daily basis. It can target the heterosexual matrix but also socio-political developments of our times.
71 Butler, Gender Trouble, 186-188.
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