by Deborah Lambert & Eric Langborgh

The Modern Language Association (MLA) and its thousands of members met in the nation's capital from December 27th through the 30th, to present papers on a wide range of supposedly literary topics. Founded in 1883 as an organization dedicated to strengthening the study and teaching of language and literature, the MLA's descent into political proselytizing over the past few decades has alarmed believers in the group's original mission.

Although Marxism, multiculturalism, and feminism continue to be staple causes at these events, they now appear to serve a minor role compared with the radical homosexual crusade. Discussion panels focusing on the world's great literature have also been de-emphasized in order to legitimize the otherwise marginal or extreme focus of the MLA's annual convention. Indeed, any visitors who attended their recent four-day event expecting to be uplifted by scholarly discussions of John Milton's Paradise Lost or the philosophical contradictions of free will and determinism in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were in for a rude awakening.

Convention panel topics ranged from "Historicizing Queer Subcultures" and "Turn of-the-Century Sexualities" to "Feeling Things: Race, Sex and the Politics of Objects," and "The Word, the Whip and the Rod: Language and the Body in Early Quaker Texts."

To begin the program entitled "Resisting Gender" arranged by the Gay and Lesbian Caucus for Modern Languages, an introducer welcomed the audience and announced that the business meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus would be held the following day, adding that this "meeting determines the program for the 2001 MLA, so that's another reason to go if you'd like to participate in the planning of those sessions."

"Resisting Gender" panelists included Selena Wahng, a Ph.D. candidate at New York University's School of Performance Studies, and also an adjunct professor at NYU. Her paper, "The Illogics of Masculine Identification in Christopher Lee's Transvideos," focused on the merits of a recent Lee video called "Trappings," featuring interviews of trans-masculine subjects, including six trans-men of color and four white subjects, "one identified as a gay man, two involved in homo-genderal couplings and the last identified as a boy-dyke."

During her discussion of the gender passages depicted in the video, Wahng provided an obligatory measure of scholarly credence by explaining that in order to expand beyond the two-dimensional, gender, linear scales, she had transposed the nuances of these "visual crossings" into mathematical paradigms. She said that "each gender articulation, from female to male to drag queen to male to...etc.," could be read as "provisional meaning consolidations" or new sites stemming from articulations of self-knowledge. She illustrated her points with numerous diagrams, showing how her progressive mapping of double cross-dressing events attempted to explain the lag time before and after an "articulation."

Wahng said she was impressed with the manner in which masculine homo-genderal couplings were presented in the video, saying that episodes in which both partners manifested same or similar gender identities or articulations, proved especially compelling. For example, she said that "one of the interviewees speaks of his unusual partnerships-involved with a boy-dyke girlfriend and also married to a gay man with whom he has had sexual relations. Another interviewee speaks of his emerging trans-fag identity, his attraction to another trans-fag within a gay male bar, and his desire to bed his first faggie." .

She said that one particularly memorable montage showed "one person's breast removal incisions, another anonymous crotch covered in denim, a pan of an F to M [female to male] in female drag-or cross-cross dressing or double cross dressing," and shots of garter belts worn by various individuals, including a dog.

Praising the video's "finely calibrated trans-masculine landscape made up of F to Ms [female to male transexxuals], trans-fags and trans-butches," Wahng noted that one of the film's more poignant moments focused on the adjustment of a young Latino, who had recently moved to the predominantly white city of Seattle where he didn't know many transgendered people of color.

At a session called "Queering the Body Politic: The Black Arts Movement" arranged by the Division of Gay Studies in Language and Literature, panelists focused on the excessive masculinization and homophobic views of the black power movement. One speaker, Lisa B. Thompson from the U. of California, Davis, spoke on the subject of "Baraka's Queer Revolution: 'The Baptism,' 'The Toilet,'and 'Experimental Death Unit #1.'" Concerned over the conspicuous absence of black lesbians in the black arts movement during the '60s and '70s, Thompson wondered: "If the black gay man is represented as a problem that undermines black manhood, then what are the black lesbians?"

Although Thompson's research uncovered some attempts at literary regeneration of black gays and lesbians, she said that in order to battle against oppression and maintain a black nation, most women were encouraged to focus their energies on reproduction rather than engaging in sexual activity that had no reproductive benefits to the community. In the black arts movement, the cultural arm of the black power movement, most black women were regarded as "poster pinups," while authentic blackness was envisioned as male and heterosexual. Any feminist-lesbian coalition building was viewed as "dangerous to the sanctity of the community" and subject to control by "lesbian baiting."

Thompson said she reluctantly concluded that the exclusion of black gays and lesbians was "built into the history of the discourse itself...an exclusion that is profound for the black lesbians in the black arts movement."

William Spurlin from the University of Cardiff, delivered a paper called "Nationalisms and the Politics of Race and Sexuality: James Baldwin and the United States Black Power Movement and Emerging Queer Identities in Southern Africa." Spurlin explained that while his research on black and queer identity during the Cold War period of the '50s and '60s revealed a great deal of homophobic rhetoric, this was countered during the '70s by the cultural contributions of the new black power movement, particularly by novelist James Baldwin, whose writings were characterized by a "queer edge," along with a "critique of white-dominant cultures, hetero-normativity and reductive assumptions of black difference." Spurlin cited Baldwin's rejection of the culture of black masculinity as a turning point in the understanding of homophobia and promoting mainstream acceptance of the gay lifestyle.

Other subjects under discussion at the MLA convention included seeming attempts to legitimize pedophilia. In a session titled "Queering the Family," Professor Tim James Dean from the University of Illinois, Urbana, discussed the recent phenomenon of "inter-generational" sexual fantasy in his paper, "Daddy's Boys." Though not "necessarily" aligned with the goals of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), "Daddy-boy relationships may represent an emerging form of family organization-the queering of the immediate family," proposed Dean. Dean suggested that the Internet, where advertisements for these relationships apparently abound, has played a huge role in the explosion of this genre of sexual interest. "Inter-generational seduction is normal," Dean suggested. "The child in front of him ('daddy') resembles the child within him," and hypothesized that this might explain why "some people find the fantasy of inter-generational sex exciting."

The professor explained that the participants in this sexual "role-playing" fantasy may both possess masculine characteristics, contrary to the situation in lesbian butch-femme relationships. Unlike pederasty, he said, the "daddy" may actually be "penetrated" by the "boy." For example, one man might instruct the other to "'suck daddy's cock.'"

Another prominent theme at the recent MLA convention was gay marriage. Penn State University's Vincent A. Lankewish focused on poetry on that topic in his paper, "Tardy Epithalamia: Queer Love, the Family, and the Poetry of Marriage."

Lankewish focused on two gay epithalamia, or poems in celebration of marriage. "American Wedding" by an anonymous poet left little to the imagination. "I place my ring on your cock, where it belongs," read the poem. "A Tardy Epithalamium for E. and N." by Ralph Pomeroy unabashedly praised gay couple E. and N.'s "marriage" who, according to the piece, "are proof that it can happen, and that it should."

The natural outcome suggested by these unions is children. "Papadada: Reinventing the Paternal" was the paper delivered jointly by gay couple John Watkins and Andrew Elfenbein, both professors at the University of Minnesota. Their talk centered on their adoption of a Russian boy and news coverage of their "family." To understand the history of Grove City College is to know the path to return the liberal arts curriculum to academic excellence for the 21st Century.

"Since the mid-nineties, Russian adoptions have provided one of the most common means for gay men to fill families," explained Watkins, "and in the process transform the American understanding of what family means." Watkins noted that they adopted "Joseph Dimetre Elfenbein-Watkins" because "it just felt normal to have kids around." Both "parents" failed to criticize pedophilia or "daddy-boy" relationships, despite being on the same panel with Dean.

Elfenbein and Watkins resented the notion that a "mother-figure" should be present in the child's upbringing, insisting instead on the need to expose him to a "socially diverse upbringing." Instead of adoption agencies making inquiries into what single or gay men who adopt will do to ensure motherly influence, the two professors offered their own questionnaire: "You are an upper-class, professional person. What do you plan to do to make sure Dimetre gets to know members of the working class?" proposed Elfenbein. "You are white. What do you plan to do to make sure that he will be brought around people of color?"

For four days nearly 10,000 conference-goers, mostly university professors, converged on a dozen DC-area hotels to hear these and other similarly themed presentations. More than 2,000 papers were presented in total. Next year's event takes place in New Orleans.