160 characters

11:31pm on December 12th, Lisa and Sarah are texting each other about their critical theory papers. All statements had to be under 160 characters. Lacan, Cixous, and Flannery O'Connor's Hulga make an appearance.
 
LB: Tomorrow's my birthday
SG: !!!Woot woot!:)
LB: Yeah except I'm verbally making love to a dead french guy and a chick with a wooden leg
SG: When this is done we will pretend that it is your birthday...it will be like a resurrection from your symbolic death!
LB: A birthday only has meaning because we projected meaning onto it. This is an ultimate exercise in me accepting literary theory into my life
SG: Look at you my little socially constructed female projection, growing up right before my very eyes and accepting your future within the symbolic

Wait, Lisa Simpson Is Gay?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “queer” is defined as, “Strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.” This definition functions as an opposition to normative views, all of them. Heterosexuality, acting as the regulatory regime, has conquered this word to have a perceived connotation of any sexuality that is strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, of questionable character, suspicious, or dubious. “Queer” is a blanket term for everyone who exists outside of the parameters of what it means to be heterosexual. However, in discussing queer theory, sexuality is not in the forefront of the definition of “queer.”

Queer theory creates a discourse that removes sexual identity as an essentializing aspect of existence. In titling this type of discourse “queer” theory instead of “gay and lesbian” theory, it removes the sexual identity aspect of discourse from the theory itself. Butler states in Imitation and Gender Insubordination, “identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures or as the rallying points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression,” bringing attention to the complications that come along with identifying as a sexual identity. Since Lacan says that sexual identity is an oxymoron because of the idea of “jouissance” as the moment of the real, removing sexual identity from this discourse is a way to examine how identity is performed.

Butler’s Imitation and Gender Insubordination discusses the issues of sexual identity, identity politics, and in particular, gender performance. On sexual identity, she comments on the complications of “coming out” as a lesbian. In identifying herself as this title, she is accepting the essentialized definition of “lesbian.” She asks an important question in this article: “Is the ‘subject’ who is ‘out’ free of its subjection finally in the clear?” The answer is no because one of the complications is that the essentialized definition of “lesbian” is in a heteronormative discourse. To identify as lesbian assumes a disempowered subject position. Butler, after analyzing and recognizing this as what it means to be lesbian, discusses gender performance. The only thing that stabilizes heterosexual discourse is gender performance. Men act as men “naturally” act and women do the same. This doing of gender is something that is hegemonically made into something that needs a normative. Butler, in identifying as a lesbian and commenting on its meaning in relation to queer theory, is creating a space in which sexual identity is not the primary factor in queer theory’s discourse after stating that sexual identity and normative ethics is based in a heterosexual, normative discourse. While this assertion is made, Butler must still participate in this type of discourse. Therefore, her identifying as a lesbian is complicated by her perspective on identity politics which complicates the definition of the very word she finds that she must identify as.

Butler’s catch-22 is shown in popular culture explicitly through a cartoon. (Perhaps because cartoons can more acceptably assume alternative or irregular characteristics and identities because they are explicit simulations of people.) Lisa Simpson is a queer, but not explicitly a lesbian, character. In her family unit, she is the “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric” one. She is an intellectual. She enjoys music, and is persistently questioning the motives and morality behind all the adults and children within her milieu. She is forever questioning (however whiningly) her complications with Bart’s assertions. In a clip attached, she is complicating Bart’s use of the word “gay.”

This is an example of why “queer” does not necessarily have to imply a sexual identity connection. Lisa dates Nelson in an episode and is explicitly shown as being mostly (or as much as cartoon characters can be) what it means to be heterosexual, however there is the slight implication that she is a lesbian because of her queer discourse. Butler, in discussing her sexual identity as something that cannot be explicitly achieved through language, is commenting on the discourse that Lisa Simpson is subject to through being made fun of by other characters for being queer. Lisa’s queerness is complicated because her sexual identity is not fixed, but in flux because it is not explicitly commented on since sexuality can never be fully explicit through language (or through a cartoon). Lisa Simpson can thus be queer without being a lesbian.                                                                             

Link to Lisa Simpson Clip