Here is a brief intellectual history of progressive thinking in the US:
And why not? After all, the turn to the body and gender and desire (not to mention race and ethnicity) seemed to have happened just as the rich were getting richer, global capital was consolidating its hold on our representatives in DC, and Wall St. was screwing us all. When we woke up out of our Foucault-induced stupor long enough to notice the material world, many of us left the body behind as we honed in on the incredibly unequal distribution of wealth.
But feminist, postmodern, and queer theories are far from useless when figuring out how most of us have gotten poorer in the past 30 years despite working longer and longer hours. It turns out that the body still matters. In other words, the collapse of the economy has as much to do with sex as it does profit, debt and interest.
The way that the GOP and corporate America have managed to make our government represent the interests of the super rich is quite simple: they have motivated “average Americans” to vote against their material interest and they have done that by paying them the wages of straightness. The wages of straightness, like the wages of whiteness, are not actual money, but a series of federally supported and culturally endorsed rights and privileges, a sort of heterosexual high five, paid to all straight Americans in the form of extra rights, extra benefits, and a whole lot of cultural approval.
These wages are paid not just through marriage, inheritance rights, Social Security, and insurance, but in love songs and RomComs and high school proms. And our entire political system depends on the wages of straightness to get candidates elected who then implement policies that only ever help the rich while appeasing those who voted for them with wages of straightness rhetoric.
Just take a look at this past weekend’s American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in New Orleans. The ALEC conference brings together hundreds of conservative lawmakers and their corporate sponsors, including BP and Walmart. At the conference, the anti-gay Family Research Council gave every participant pamphlets explaining the myths of homosexuality (e.g. It is a myth that homosexuality cannot be changed. A homosexual orientation can be changed to a heterosexual one. Thus there is no need for gay marriage because gay people could, if they wanted to, just marry someone of the opposite gender).
At the same time that corporate and right-wing America were gathering to come up with strategies for model laws to pass in states and Congress, Michele Bachmann was attending a church with an anti-gay sermon. According to news reports, the pastor of the church, Jeff Mullen, used his sermon to tell his congregation that homosexuality is “immoral and unnatural” and that homosexuals, with the help of God, can be converted to heterosexuality.
The point isn’t that Bachmann and the Family Research Council are homophobic, but rather that conservative politicians can bring this country to financial ruin by insisting that there be no increase in taxation on the rich because conservative Americans are willing to be paid in the wages of straightness rather than real material wages.
In the material world of politics and the economy, sex matters and sex panics matter even more. By using panic over gay marriage and gay sex, conservative politicians can mobilize people to vote against the very real material conditions of their lives. There are and have always been very real and material effects of sexual panics. During the McCarthy years, more people were fired from their jobs for being gay than for being Commies. During the past few decades, more people voted for GOP politicians because of the body than because of their bank account.
At this point in time, it would seem that the real world would squeeze people so tight that they could no longer be motivated by anything other than dollars and cents. But alas, humans are symbolic and irrational beings who look nothing like that fantastically rational creation, homo economicus. And as conservative politicians make the material conditions of most Americans worse, many Americans flock to them in the hopes that the wages of straightness will feed their families.
It’s the economy, stupid. We must pay attention to the body. It’s the economy, stupid.In other words, a very traditional Marxian analysis gave way to far more postmodern, feminist, and queer analyses in the 1980s and 90s only to return to a far more traditional Marxian analysis.
And why not? After all, the turn to the body and gender and desire (not to mention race and ethnicity) seemed to have happened just as the rich were getting richer, global capital was consolidating its hold on our representatives in DC, and Wall St. was screwing us all. When we woke up out of our Foucault-induced stupor long enough to notice the material world, many of us left the body behind as we honed in on the incredibly unequal distribution of wealth.
But feminist, postmodern, and queer theories are far from useless when figuring out how most of us have gotten poorer in the past 30 years despite working longer and longer hours. It turns out that the body still matters. In other words, the collapse of the economy has as much to do with sex as it does profit, debt and interest.
The way that the GOP and corporate America have managed to make our government represent the interests of the super rich is quite simple: they have motivated “average Americans” to vote against their material interest and they have done that by paying them the wages of straightness. The wages of straightness, like the wages of whiteness, are not actual money, but a series of federally supported and culturally endorsed rights and privileges, a sort of heterosexual high five, paid to all straight Americans in the form of extra rights, extra benefits, and a whole lot of cultural approval.
These wages are paid not just through marriage, inheritance rights, Social Security, and insurance, but in love songs and RomComs and high school proms. And our entire political system depends on the wages of straightness to get candidates elected who then implement policies that only ever help the rich while appeasing those who voted for them with wages of straightness rhetoric.
Just take a look at this past weekend’s American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in New Orleans. The ALEC conference brings together hundreds of conservative lawmakers and their corporate sponsors, including BP and Walmart. At the conference, the anti-gay Family Research Council gave every participant pamphlets explaining the myths of homosexuality (e.g. It is a myth that homosexuality cannot be changed. A homosexual orientation can be changed to a heterosexual one. Thus there is no need for gay marriage because gay people could, if they wanted to, just marry someone of the opposite gender).
At the same time that corporate and right-wing America were gathering to come up with strategies for model laws to pass in states and Congress, Michele Bachmann was attending a church with an anti-gay sermon. According to news reports, the pastor of the church, Jeff Mullen, used his sermon to tell his congregation that homosexuality is “immoral and unnatural” and that homosexuals, with the help of God, can be converted to heterosexuality.
The point isn’t that Bachmann and the Family Research Council are homophobic, but rather that conservative politicians can bring this country to financial ruin by insisting that there be no increase in taxation on the rich because conservative Americans are willing to be paid in the wages of straightness rather than real material wages.
In the material world of politics and the economy, sex matters and sex panics matter even more. By using panic over gay marriage and gay sex, conservative politicians can mobilize people to vote against the very real material conditions of their lives. There are and have always been very real and material effects of sexual panics. During the McCarthy years, more people were fired from their jobs for being gay than for being Commies. During the past few decades, more people voted for GOP politicians because of the body than because of their bank account.
At this point in time, it would seem that the real world would squeeze people so tight that they could no longer be motivated by anything other than dollars and cents. But alas, humans are symbolic and irrational beings who look nothing like that fantastically rational creation, homo economicus. And as conservative politicians make the material conditions of most Americans worse, many Americans flock to them in the hopes that the wages of straightness will feed their families.
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