Malinowitz

Getting Ready to Read

If a student were gay and went to a private school, especially a Catholic school, it would not be as hard to express one self, even to the teachers, at least thats what I think. Schools that find it immoral are thought to be religious schools, yet all religious schools are against is the actual act of being gay, not being gay in itself. I went to a Catholic school back home and there were several students that were "gay" and the teachers knew full well, but were they treated any differently? Of course not.

Summary

Malinowitz talks about how being gay can and will eventually affect an authors writing. Personal identity is always evident in writing and allowing these characteristics to come out will only help a persons writing for personal identity is so crucial for good writing. Malinowitz also looks at different pieces and authors who have come out and uses these works to better explain identity and the discourse community that comes along with being gay or lesbian.

Synthesis

Malinowitz is able to connect to several authors very easily, especially because so many talk about discourse communities and personal identity. Wardle talks about author identity which is a main topic in "Queer Texts, Queer Contexts." Looking at the more discourse community context, Glenn talks mainly about discourse communities and what makes up one. Finally, by looking at the text in more of an influential standpoint, Wysocki talks about the social influence, which is also discussed to an extent in Malinowitz's article.

AE2

One part of my identity that I am choosing to write about it my religion. I grew up Catholic and attended Catholic schools my whole life. My religion is very important to me and I have learned the language of the church through prayer and different studies that we had to do growing up in class. If I did not understand these languages it would be very hard to understand just what I believed in. I entered into this discourse community when I was baptized, so it is hard to say what it was like to not be in it, seeing as I was baptized by four months old.

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
It seems that is has become more acceptable or at least more common that people are gay now. Once I hit high school, out of the people that I graduated eighth grade with, two of them were gay. It seems that more people are coming out because society is not as harsh as they have been in the past.	“It’s not that students have suddenly and universally become emphatic and comfortable with lesbian and gay existence; but they do seem to regard the issue itself with much less suspicion or surprise than they used to.” (110)
I feel that this is a bit dated. I understand that there still is bullying over being gay and lesbian; however, when someone is actually beaten from being gay, it makes headlines because people care and because it does not happen every single day.	“And social visibility and political progress produce backlash; gay youth are ‘out’ in school have long faced verbal abuse and physical violence, raising their truancy and dropout rates (Tracey 1990; Comstock 1991), and anti lesbian and antigay violence continues to escalate.” (113)
I know that if my professor were to come out to me, I would look at her differently. I have nothing against gays, I am not a homophobic in anyway, but knowing something so personal about her does not seem very appropriate to me. It lacks professionalism.	“Yet I am also a lesbian teacher who, until four years ago, hesitated to come out to my students en masse and to many of my colleagues – except in protected parts of the ‘ivory closet’ (Escoffier 1990), such as woman’s studies programs.” (113)
I feel that it is important to get works out there for a certain group of people, this also starts looking at the gay community as more of a discourse community, a very broad one however.	“As various groups have resisted social marginalization and disenfranchisement, they have also argued for the importance of representation in academic texts, syllabi, policies, and programmatic agendas.” (114-115)
This is where the thought of discourse community is evident.	“For lesbians and gays, the, as for other groups (such as for example, deaf people or speakers of Black English), self definition as a social community or ‘culture’ has been instrumental in gaining to recognition and entitlements.” (115-116)
This term is fitting I feel. People that are gay are overly sensitive about terms. Being gay does not define someone yet they choose to let certain terms define who they are.	“The contempory term ‘queer,’ used mostly by younger activists and artists, conveys in popular jargon the basic idea of a broad category embracing a spectrum of those who deviate from the heterosexual norm.” (126)

My Thoughts

I found the article to be a long read. I understand that when you belong to a certain community (in the instance it's the gay community) than you tend to be a little more passionate about it. What I do not like is when someone is gay they act like this is the only thing that defines them because they make it known to everyone when they are ready to do so. In the reading, Malinowitz almost took on a defensive sort of tone a lot because so many times in the past gays have been targeted. I understand that the gay community has not always been treated right, but being gay is just a sexual preference to me. I do not constantly talk about being straight, and being straight does not need to influence my writing.