å Sunday, April 16th, 2017

Ferguson relates property to the description of the heteronormative patriarchal family that anyone alive in America can identify with as the social standard, one that you are expected to assimilate to or a the very least you are trying to achieve. The family or tribe has a presumed division of labor, working husband, wifely housework, and children providing gender specific maintenance such as lawn mowing or sibling child care.

Capital is illustrated as the person as a commodity, primarily as an unskilled wage slave. The hierarchy of capital is skilled workers, unskilled workers, women and then children, with success measured as finding a way to profit using the least skill at the lowest price point. Capital also behaves differently in relation to involvement from the state, if the state is involved then capital will appease the state by perpetuating heteronormative roles. However, capital only has interest in profit so when the state is not a factor race and gender have no influence over cheap labor for profit.

The relationship between property and capital becomes most interesting when Ferguson adds prostitution, in part due to the dehumanizing effect and literal collaboration of property and capital, but also because it is entirely queered by the disassociation from gender and race. Prostitution is an obvious branch of capital because the value of it is outside of the heteronormative boundaries and threatens the nature of the boundaries. This disruption is especially threatening because it provides a mobility for a class of people that are not deemed worthy of mobility, a side note that could provide insight to why Western society protects the john and not the prostitute.

When “queer of color” is considered as part of the analysis the representation of disempowerment becomes clear and Marx’s critiques of capital and property relations as universal ideals evolves into an emblem of the separation of order and refinement from poverty and degradation. The racialization of heteronormative capitalism has normalized this as universal and desirable. Queer of color analysis also attempts to explain the emergence of drag queen prostitutes and their place in the working class struggle as surplus laborers. Additionally, queer of color becomes most important in historical terms when color and/or queer sociologists were excluded from contributing their work, acknowledging this work separately is necessary to highlight the previously exclusionary practices of an imperfect discipline.