Customer Reviews

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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. In the way it bridges a clarion call to activism and an intelligent dissection of the status quo, The Trouble with Normal does work that no trade book coming from the queer left has managed to do so far.

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.

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.

I've seen this book on a number of syllabi for queer theory and gay and lesbian studies, and I have been disappointed. It's a fine book for reading about the musings of Michael Warner on a number of issues, but it isn't rigorous or entirely compelling. The book begins by providing a number of controversial suppositions, describes their implications, but says little about why we might simply believe that it is nearly inevitable that, for example, we should desire to control others' sex lives or lose control of our own at some point. Warner relies more on assertion and generalization than scholarship, research, or logical argument.
It is a presumption rather than a demonstrated point of The Trouble with Normal that the book is saying something worthwhile. Ironically, if this review isn't helpful it's because it repeats the same move. I shared a few of The Trouble with Normal's perspectives myself, but in that did not feel as though I had really gained a greater knowledge of the field of sex-positive criticism when I had finished. The book is an interesting exploration of a number of topics, but not so much an academic exploration.

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.

I heard Michael Warner on local radio here in Boston and came to this website to read an excerpt from his book. His writing blew me away! Gay and Lesbian politics, much less Queer, hasn't had a really smart, innovative essayist in years. Warner points out the errors of what passes as common sense these days in the gay and lesbian movement, which has become increasingly stale and warped by phony Washington politics. He produces one original idea after another, and if they go over many people's heads, it's not for lack of good writing--his writing is conversational and clear--it's because people have stopped imagining progressive sexual politics. He turns sexual ethics, the marriage debate, the pornography debate, and HIV education on their heads and shakes them down to form brilliant insights. Not everything he says is practical, but that's the nature of vision--it ROCKS! I think this will still be taught in college 50 years from now--as a CLASSIC. It was well worth forking over sixteen dollars for, and I only hope he writes more.

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.

Warner points out that, instead, the focus ought to be on separating certain legal benefits and perks that are now only available to those in a legal marriage from one's marital status. Such marriage-linked benefits not only discriminate against gays and lesbians, but also heterosexuals in nontraditional relationships, and singles of all categories. I found quite a bit in this book that was relevant and useful to me as a nonmonogamous heterosexual. Highly recommended.

I heard Michael Warner on local radio here in Boston and came to this website to read an excerpt from his book. His writing blew me away! Gay and Lesbian politics, much less Queer, hasn't had a really smart, innovative essayist in years. Warner points out the errors of what passes as common sense these days in the gay and lesbian movement, which has become increasingly stale and warped by phony Washington politics. He produces one original idea after another, and if they go over many people's heads, it's not for lack of good writing--his writing is conversational and clear--it's because people have stopped imagining progressive sexual politics. He turns sexual ethics, the marriage debate, the pornography debate, and HIV education on their heads and shakes them down to form brilliant insights. Not everything he says is practical, but that's the nature of vision--it ROCKS! I think this will still be taught in college 50 years from now--as a CLASSIC. It was well worth forking over the money for the hardcover, and I only hope he writes more.

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 movement represented best by such petty reactionaries as Andrew Sullivan, Michelangelo Signorile, and Larry Kramer. It certainly makes you think more about how sexually liberated we in our 'enlightened' age truly are.

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 same-sex marriage (see also Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Benjamin Shepard) is a useful lens to explore the millions of dollars and volunteer hours going almost exclusively to same-sex marriage advocacy -- at the expense of issues that arguably have a larger impact on the day-to-day lives of most queer and trans folks, from health care to housing to gentrification.

This latter trend, which pits rich white gays and lesbians -- toward whom the advocacy organizations like the Human Rights Campaign are oriented -- against their less-wealthy queer and trans sisters and brothers, assumes all the more currency when reading "gay assimilationist" author-activists like Michael Signorile, Dan Savage and Larry Kramer who, regardless of their counter-cultural "shock" approaches are nonetheless reinforcing ideas of middle-class normalcy as the long-awaited future for queers. Warner differs, and offers a radical notion of sexual autonomy and sexual ethics in their stead. Though Warner seems somewhat unaware of the liberation theories advanced before him by radical feminists like Judith Butler and John Stoltenberg, trans theorists like Riki Wilchins and race theorists/historians like Robin D.G. Kelley, his critique of and within the queer community is well-deserved.