Heteronormativity as a Rhetorical Tool to Reclaim Public Spaces and Engage in Community Building: A Study of The Ladder and Mattachine Review, Milton Gomez, 2023.
Abstract
This project is the result of extensive research at the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid- America (GLAMA) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I engaged in a rhetorical analysis of The Ladder and Mattachine Review. These two publications were created and edited by two of the most prominent Homophile organizations in the 50s and 60s in the United States—Daughter of Bilitis and Mattachine Society. My argument deals with the ambivalences of the historical times in which these periodicals were produced and distributed. On one hand, while these organizations attempted to make queer people visible, they also used heteronormativity as a rhetorical tool in order to normalize their publications and sound more acceptable. This normalization of voices entailed the erasure of queer identities that didn’t comply with the “sense of normalcy” demanded by public hetero spaces. On the other hand, editors of these publications were strategic in creating sections within the periodicals called “Reader’s Responses” through which they controlled interactions among subscribers while promoting community building. These sections allowed queer people to connect, network, and become visible within a framework of hetero-acceptance and normalcy. These sections were also used to incorporate recent research in the fields of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Law in order to de-pathologize and challenge regulations that made queerness illegal. Throughout my project, I urge the reader to think about the pervasiveness of heteronormativity while giving value and acknowledging the limitations of the work of Daughters of Bilitis and Mattachine Society. The work of these Homophile organizations was quintessential and paved the ground for future queer activism in the US. However, it is worth noting that hetero norms were always present and shaped the ways in which queer people attained respectability and recognition.
Published in: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, volume 6, no. 1, Summer 2023.
Project creator: Milton Gomez.