Epistemology Of The Closet: Film Analysis

The most significant argument drawn from Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet is the harmful effects a binary view of topics like sexuality and gender could have. The most concerning aspect of the subject of binary viewership is that it applies to more subjects than what was previously listed. Society has an incredibly long history of categorization and lessening people to one of few groups, which only sets up barriers for those who do not fit into them. This process may have worked sporadically throughout history when normalization was common, but in this day and age when it is valued to be an individual, more people are embracing the aspects of themselves that are not deemed “normal”. The harmful nature of having a predominantly binary view of society is …show more content…
Rather than thinking of binary viewership as only two options, it's better to regards it as a way of limiting oneself when there are more than two options of being that induce harmful categorization. In the documentary Forbidden Love, the director explores the lives of lesbians living in Canada during the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. Through conducting multiple in-depth interviews with specific women, the film gives audiences an inside look into their personal experiences. One theme that was present through many of their portrayal of lesbian life during that period was how they would categorize themselves. Lesbians at the time would place themselves in one of two categories - butch or femme. This binary view of being lesbian often had serious consequences. One of the women interviewed even described how, because the ratio of butch to femme was often 10 to 1, fights between butch women in competition for femme women was not uncommon. Because being lesbian was already taboo at that period, these women subjected themselves to yet another categorization by defining themselves as butch or femme when, in reality, they were all