Binaries permeate our everyday; the American society is built on, and relies on, these binaries to establish a certain status quo about the correct way to be, live, and perceive others and ourselves. The binaries explored in this project were: male/female, straight/gay, white/POC, and rich/poor. These dichotomies indicate one side as being favored, the “correct” body, and the other being disadvantaged or oppressed, the body in need of control or “fixing.” Even though our society depends so much on the infallibility and truth of these binaries, sometimes individuals can’t be neatly placed into one category or the other. As such, these individuals are often forced into one category or the other in order to understand and have power over them. This coercion is done through the erasure of their bodies, making them more docile and malleable so that dominance is obtained over them, the binary reinstated. This project’s goal was to explore the middle of the binary and those who live in-between—how they are represented in media and pop culture, how they are discussed in medical and legal realms, how their bodies are hidden or morphed to neatly fit into an established category, and what the results of this exploration tell us about current hegemonic notions that permeate American society. The main conclusion that I drew while analyzing and sifting through discourse examples was that most individuals who live between the binary are equally as oppressed, silenced, and hidden as the “lesser” side of the binary, and often to a greater extent. Likewise, the push towards “either/or, neither/both” is inevitably linked with those who live between the binary—but this push often came from both sides, not just the dominant figure in the binary. For example, both gay and straight people made claims that bisexuality was invalid and urged those individuals to “pick a side.” In this way, power was created and enacted from both above and below, and served to push the non-binary abiding individuals into their correct place by deconstructing and reshaping their bodies.
Author's Note Regarding the Creation of this Project:
Because I chose four different binaries to discuss, there were a variety of examples to choose from, but only two or three to analyze. I pulled from a variety of sources, ranging from esteemed news sources, YouTube videos, medical articles, law reviews, and screencaps from TV shows to name a few. These different sources added to the project’s breadth and showed the pervasiveness of binaries in American society, while the different course readings contributed to the project’s depth. Again, because of the large range of topics explored, finding course readings that related to most of the examples was not extremely difficult—though this itself became a challenge. Because many of the readings covered the ideas I was addressing, I had to make creative connections for some of the examples and not rely on what was easily set out for me (in particular, not using all three examples for the male/female binary from the Fausto-Sterling reading). However, doing this brought a new perspective to the project and allowed for further examination of the topics—a depth that might have been inhibited had I not scoured for unique course readings.
Author's Note Regarding the Creation of this Project:
Because I chose four different binaries to discuss, there were a variety of examples to choose from, but only two or three to analyze. I pulled from a variety of sources, ranging from esteemed news sources, YouTube videos, medical articles, law reviews, and screencaps from TV shows to name a few. These different sources added to the project’s breadth and showed the pervasiveness of binaries in American society, while the different course readings contributed to the project’s depth. Again, because of the large range of topics explored, finding course readings that related to most of the examples was not extremely difficult—though this itself became a challenge. Because many of the readings covered the ideas I was addressing, I had to make creative connections for some of the examples and not rely on what was easily set out for me (in particular, not using all three examples for the male/female binary from the Fausto-Sterling reading). However, doing this brought a new perspective to the project and allowed for further examination of the topics—a depth that might have been inhibited had I not scoured for unique course readings.