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assignment #5

According to “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” Gayle Rubin contends that strict thought that people have about sex restrict the advancement of ideas and stereotypes on sex. Gayle Rubin showed us how United States and Western culture used laws to control people’s thoughts about sexuality. These assumptions on sexuality that made by laws looks like true opinions on sex so that people rarely make objections to these assumptions. As a result, these assumptions restricted people from developing their ideas of sex, and political discussion on sexuality.
In 1950s, United States made a major change in the group of sexuality from prostitution or masturbation to ‘homosexual menace’ and ‘sex offender’. The period was before and after WWII so that the sex offender became public fears. The term ‘sex offender’ sometimes stood for rapist, sometimes to ‘child molesters’, and lastly it functioned as a code for homosexuals. These change even affected in politics. From the last 6 years, United States and Canada went through huge sexual repression in political senses. For example, in 1977, news media unexpectedly reported on gay bars, arrests for prostitution, and investigation on productions and distribution of porno so that the police activity against gay community became severe.
I think people started to have stereotypes on LGBT from the past so that it became serious problems nowadays. For example, I was born in South Korea and lived there for 15 years, and thorough out 15 years, I didn’t even know the presence of LGBT until I read the comics about it. There were no educations about LGBT 5 years ago. Therefore, people treated people who are LGBT as ‘abnormal’ being so that there were mistreatments on them and even led some of them to death.

Abelove, Henry, Michèle Aina. Barale, and David M. Halperin. The Lesbian and gay studies reader. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.