Michael Warner, one of our most brilliant social critics, argues that gay marriage and other moves toward normalcy are bad not just for the gays but for everyone. In place of sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The Trouble with Normal argues passionately against same-sex marriage, but here's the twist: not because it denigrates the institution of marriage, but because it perpetuates the cultural shame attached to sex between consenting but unmarried adults. When gay men and lesbians try to claim that they're just like "normal folk," Michael Warner writes, they do a profound disservice to other queer folk who choose not to live in monogamous or matrimonial bliss and who believe that the solution to being stigmatized for your sexuality is not to pretend it doesn't exist. Same-sex marriage advocates, he continues, often seem to be willfully blind to the cultural ramifications of their position, viewing marriage as "an intensified and deindividuated form of coming out." They don't seem to realize that if society validates their relationships, other types of relationships will by necessity be invalidated. (He also makes a strong case for the fight against sexual shame's being more than a queer issue, citing 1998's presidential impeachment crisis: "[Bill] Clinton, certainly, was not the first to discover how hard it is in this culture to assert any dignity when you stand exposed as a sexual being.") Extending his analysis, Warner shows how the championing of married gays and lesbians as "normal" is part of the same cultural climate that leads to "quality of life" crackdowns against queercentric businesses--as is already underway in New York City--and a deliberate sabotage of safer-sex education that puts millions of Americans at continued risk of exposure to HIV. Warner's precise, straightforward argument is enlivened by numerous sharp zingers, as when he accuses Andrew Sullivan of "breath[ing] new and bitchy life into Jesuitical pieties" about sexual morality. The Trouble with Normal is a bold, provocative book that forces readers to reconsider what sexual liberation really means. --Ron Hogan
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Articulate and impassioned, Warner, a professor of English at Rutgers University, confronts what he views as the current trend toward sexual conservatism in gay and lesbian politics. Responding directly to books such as Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal and Gabriel Rotello's Sexual Ecology, as well as to advocates of legalizing gay and lesbian marriage and of closing down bathhouses and other sex venues, Warner claims that the gay movement has embraced an ethic of "sexual shame" and de-emphasized gay sexuality in an attempt to win mainstream approval. Instead of targeting gay sex, Warner argues, the gay movement should be "combating isolation, shame, and stigma." He places his theory in a broader social contextAmost emphatically in relation to the media coverage of Clinton's affair with Monica LewinskyAand details what he sees as the rise of "sexual McCarthyism" in U.S. culture. He also claims that this repression hurts safe-sex education efforts, weakens the gay and lesbian community and, although it is fueled by homophobia, ultimately infringes upon the rights of heterosexuals. While many of these same issues have been addressed in recent books, particularly Samuel R. Delany's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Warner is most effective when specifically countering what he considers to be the antisexual position of such gay spokespeople as Larry Kramer, Michelangelo Signorile and William Eskridge. However, his detailed response also positions his arguments as an intra-community fight and may limit his readership. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
52 of 57 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book speaks beyond academia without ever talking down to its audience, about things most of us still debate despite having fewer and fewer forums to do so -- about queer ethics, sex and intimacy, marriage rights, public sex. Though I already admired Warner's activist and intellectual work (and, full disclosure here, am an academic), I was moved by the passion and precision with which he argues. There's nothing "snipey," libertarian, or more-radical-than-thou about this book, other reviews notwithstanding; it's a book with a mind and a soul. Warner clearly respects the confusion many of us feel (especially the many who are outside of both academia and the "national" movements and who cannot find activist public spheres that make sense to them anymore), but will not let our confusion dissolve into easy acceptance of the "national" movement's sanctimonies about "our" lives. I imagine that some people will dismiss this book without reading it, as an argument for "radical promiscuity" coming from the privileged position of a white gay male academic. Please don't make that mistake. Warner quite rightly sees the marriage movement and the privatization of public space as the biggest threats to LGBTQ movements and everyday lives. But he also clearly cares about, and lushly imagines a future for, the most complicated forms of pleasure, belonging and caretaking that queer people have invented. Oddly enough -- I'd only say this on Amazon, and it's not what I think is crucial about the book -- it's a book I can imagine giving to my biological family members, not because it tells them I am normal after all, but because it actually might make my life intelligible to them.... Read more ›
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful
By tengreen
Format:Hardcover
As a straight woman and a strong advocate for gay marriage, this book did not at first appeal to me. What could I learn from a book by a gay man arguing against gay marriage? It turns out that I had a lot to learn. Although I still believe that anyone who wants to marry should have that right, after reading this book I no longer want to get married. This breaks down the descriminatory nature of marriage and the politics of sexual shame in such an interesting way. This should be required reading for everyone--gay, straight, single, married, whatever. It's not an argument that you hear very often, but it's a very important one! Read this book--it might upset you, but it will force you to examine ideas like homosexuality, marriage, and sex in new ways.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
With the sophistication of a leading political theorist and public philosopher, with clarity and wit, Michael Warner explains why those who care about public policy and morality should take as their point of departure the dignity of those at the bottom of the scale of respectability: "queers, sluts, prostitutes, trannies, club crawlers, and other lowlifes". It begins with a brilliant analysis of the ethical tradition queer culture has built up over the last fifty years, one that has been dismissed by mainstream moralists. He shows that civilization's role isn't just to preserve "natural" sexuality, but to create new types of sexuality through innovations like the pill, condoms, dildos, video, Viagra, hormones, vibrators, and others we can't predict. Little can be shown to be transhistorical about sex, he says, except men raping women. The goal of policy makers should be sexual autonomy for everyone, not just protection under the law for married couples, "good gays", and children. On the gay marriage debate, Warner separates the legal benefits of marriage from its mythology and shows how those benefits can be distributed among unmarried couples and single people, both gay and straight, without the discriminatory effects of marriage under the law. He goes on to show why public sexual culture, from pornography to bathhouses, is something to value, something whose accessibility is worth fighting for. Finally he shows how sexual shame grips U.S. heath policy, reducing it to little more than an abstinence program, where safer sex education lags far behind other developed countries. This is a life-changing book, I can't recommend it strongly enough if you care at all about progressive sexual politics.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By HDBooks
Format:Paperback
I picked up this book because I was interested in what an argument for "anti-assimilationist" queer politics looked like. I found the book to be a useful framework for thinking about all people in non-normative relationships, and the problematic, Puritanical way sex is treated in American politics. His language is not overly academic, and his points are well-supported, with suggestions for further reading.
It is interesting how this book was clearly written during the Clinton administration, and I wonder if the us-vs-them politics we saw under George W. Bush would have shaped his argument differently. From what I understand, some of what Warner is arguing for in later chapters -- namely, a more condom-visible public health campaign in New York City -- has happened. But much of what he says about heteronormative, sex-panicked American society is true, and worth a read.
It is interesting how this book was clearly written during the Clinton administration, and I wonder if the us-vs-them politics we saw under George W. Bush would have shaped his argument differently. From what I understand, some of what Warner is arguing for in later chapters -- namely, a more condom-visible public health campaign in New York City -- has happened. But much of what he says about heteronormative, sex-panicked American society is true, and worth a read.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still very relevant almost 15 years later
I read this book back in 2000 and have often recalled its argument as an important corrective to LGBT activism that focuses solely on marriage equality. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. Draper
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but . . .
The evidence Warner provided to back up his opinions was excellent and what kept me reading. Beyond that, however, some of his opinions are really "out there. Read more
Published on August 31, 2009 by K. Kriesel
2.0 out of 5 stars
over rated
I've seen this book on a number of syllabi for queer theory and gay and lesbian studies, and I have been disappointed. Read more
Published on May 12, 2009 by J. Buddingh
2.0 out of 5 stars
a book of rants against gay marriage
*The Trouble with Normal* is Warner's stance against gay marriage. Actually, it's more than that. Warner addresses normalcy and this is where he actually had interesting yet... Read more
Published on August 13, 2008 by LARRY
4.0 out of 5 stars
Same-sex marriage != queer liberation
A comprehensive and incisive excoriation of same-sex marriage as a movement for "gay liberation." Warner's investigations of the interactions between gay shame and a push for... Read more
Published on March 12, 2008 by Ivan Boothe
5.0 out of 5 stars
wow
This book is for any gay rights activist who finds themselves wondering "why I am so ambivalent about gay marriage? Read more
Published on July 15, 2007 by B. Windle
4.0 out of 5 stars
a little over the top
i bought this for a queer theory class and read it and found it interesting. i don't think i would have picked it up just to read, though. Read more
Published on January 9, 2007 by S. Destfino
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great and powerful demolition of the puritanical elements of the gay...
Warner presents a highly valuable and enjoyable polemic against the increasingly LGBTQ movement or what would be better termed the growing "embourgeoisment" of the queer liberation... Read more
Published on September 14, 2006 by socialecologist85
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different perspective
In this excellent book, Michael Warner explains how gay and lesbian activists are pursuing the wrong goal by advocating and working for the right to be legally married. Read more
Published on July 13, 2004 by TSmith
4.0 out of 5 stars
rethink your politics
This is a book that could serve as a wake-up call. ... . Warner grounds his arguments in contemporary politics and offers an intervention worth reading. Read more
Published on December 18, 2002 by "farm__grrl"
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