Doing Ordinariness

Abstract

David Halperin (2012) says we learn ‘how to be gay’ as a cultural practice. Stories too, Plummer (1995: 21) says, are things we do. Stories of the body as essentially sexual, for instance, remake the body by enacting a state of being. Feeling is sutured as a kind of ‘deep acting’ in stories of desire (Hochschild, 1983). The performative dimension of stories extends to the way identity is done, in what people bring to their interactions with others. In her study of lesbian identity, for instance, Ponse (1978) shows how practices of gender shape lesbian identity. Butch and femme practices re-inscribed oppositional gender roles in lesbian relationships. From camp to the hyper-masculinity of gay clones, gay male identity has also been marked by gender practices (Sontag, 1961; Levine, 1998). This chapter focuses on practices that normalize lesbian and gay identities. It looks at how desiring normality informs the way lesbian and gay youth do identity, and how through practices they negotiate boundaries between self and other, sameness and difference. To be recognized as ordinary by others requires proof of one’s ordinariness, as a condition on which a person can be perceived as ‘ordinary’, and respected by others as such (Richardson and Monro, 2012: 80). In order to be recognized in a certain way requires specific practices, as a condition of identity (McLaughlin et al., 2011).