"Remembering Well": Sexual Practice as a Practice of Remembering (Kate Bride)

First, let me just say that I am feeling somewhat uneasy writing about an article that was written for the one of who marking this assignment. I know it's part of the course and it's also part of academia to review your "peers'" but I just thought I would get that off my chest before I go into the article. I also struggled with some of the ideas presented in the article -- mostly because of queer studies ideas and theory as I am not very familiar with them.


At first, I was not sure how the idea of public gay sex could be understood as a practice of remembering those who have died from AIDS. I fell into the all too easy and "normative" assumption that it would be disrespectful to engage in sexual activity at a site of rememberance. As I went further into the article, reading about "appropriate displays of rememberance" and curing "innapropriate behavior", I began to think about how our behaviors are overly dictated by what is deemed "normal". This is not a new insight but it was good to revisit the idea. When I read "normative notions of private and public behaviors", I asked myself the following questions: What are considered normal private and public behaviors and, with the issue of public gay sex, would it be considered as deviant is it was public heterosexual sex? Is it deemed innapropriate behavior because it is in public - do we feel as threatened by the behaviors when they are out of sight?


I found interesting that "the CAP initiative- to "clean up" innapropriate behaviors, to force out 'undesirable'- is just one of the ways that discourses about public space not only regulate particular behavior but also, work to 'erase differences and to limit the forms of expression we have available to us'."(Bride, 52) We too often stay embedded in sameness or try to conform to be the same. Many of 'us' are afraid of being different, often by fear of not being socially accepted. We are often measuring ourselves "in relation to" something. We find ourselves judging those deemed out of the norm, especially those who are strangers to us - it has been made easy to do so, "normal" even. When I lived in my hometown and even in the first few years in a large city, I found myself worrying about being different, about not fitting in and judging those who acted against what was deemed normal. I probably still do it from time to time but I have come to embrace difference moreso than being like everyone else.