homogenizing the homosexual

On a hot June night in 1969 the sexual discourses of theology, law and psychology encountered resistance so strong that millions of lives were changed. In a small gay bar in New York, the regulars, an eclectic mix of drag queens, transexuals, effeminate men and butch women, offered up the most visible resistance ever witnessed to the relentless exercising of public power on their private lives. The three-day street riot, began by Stonewall patrons, spilled onto …

…and its normalizing effect on homosexuality has provided gays a key to mainstream culture. In return they have been forced into renewed self surveillance and exposed to private intrusions. Gays have so thoroughly internalized their new identity that they believe they have wrested power from an oppressive heterosexual world and are nearing freedom. For Foucault, gays have simply been duped into a new relation of power that has normalized, catalogued, subjectified and desexualized their lives.