Arrested Pulse

Can a gay guy or a lesbian be straight? You bet, but they' re not queer. Can a straight woman or man be queer? Definitely, so long as they're not straight. Does this make sense? Probably not if you're a semantic purist. But if you use your imagination and adopt Alexander Doty's definition of queerness as "a quality related to any expression that can be marked as contra-, non-, or anti-straight," it all makes perfect sense.

So, then, what is "straight"? For Doty, straightness is not a heterosexual orientation. It is the mainstreaming of a certain type of heterosexual lifestyle as a template for everyone who is, well, "normal" in (American) culture. Straightness is the traditional nuclear family -- suburban, two-car garage, white picket fence -- that conservatives these days feel is threatened by those who lead alternative lifestyles. Anyone who leads an alternative lifestyle, according to Doty, is "queer."

Queerness isn't anything new in American culture. In fact, it's been a subtext to many a mainstream icon. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for instance, had a queer narrative in which the female protagonist, while dating a number of men, never showed much inclination to give up her independent lifestyle in order to marry one. Viewers of this show or of shows like Laverne and Shirley and The Golden Girls no doubt took pleasure in straight queerness: even "heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements, and basically heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moments."

Doty draws on Mimi White's study of women-centered sitcoms like The Golden Girls to construct a category of queerness. This show offers the premise of adult woman living together as an (albeit untraditional) family. Although the characters may be straight and have straight-mainstream lifestyles, "at the same time they validate woman's bonding as a form of social stability, a viable and attractive alternative to the traditional family, and even hint at the possibility of lesbian lifestyles." On a week-to-week basis the show privileges women's relations "over their inadequate, transient dealings with men."

A similarly queer reading can be done of Scott Ridley's Thelma and Louise, a film that creates "a space of sexual instability that already queerly positioned viewers can connect with in various ways." The same kind of space is invoked by the sitcom Laverne and Shirley in which "various threats to maintaining Lavern and Shirley as a couple are overcome."

Doty hopes his book's inclusive approach can open up -- reveal, actually -- queer spaces by moving away from the cliched categories of gay, straight, transsexual, et cetera. Probably due to his focus on mainstream pop culture, Doty rarely ventures from his WASPy subject matter. Non-White-Middle-Class queerness is touched on but basically left to the imagination of readers. He also doesn’t make much of the notion – implicit in his thesis -- that gay people who try to adopt a “straight” lifestyle (be married, mortgaged, mainstream) can be labeled straight.