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Domesticating “the Queer” 1 
Privileging “the Straight”/Domesticating “the Queer”:Charting the Contours of Heteronormative Discourse in
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
 Abstract
One of the surprise hits of last year’s television season, Bravo’s
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
,garnered much popular and critical acclaim. The series celebrates the sophisticated tastes andmake-over prowess of a quintet of self-identified gay men: the Fab Five. From a queer theoryperspective, there is much to celebrate about
Queer Eye
’s openly gay stars and their easyfraternization with straight men. Still, there are reasons for critical concern. We interrogate theseries as an expression of the
strategic rhetoric of straightness
that hides and supports the veryheteronormative order it seems to challenge. We argue that, as such, the series functions as amediated
ritual of rebellion
in which gays are given temporary license to tame, touch, and teaseheterosexual men, violating norms governing appropriate male behavior. And yet, even whilethis popular culture text challenges heteronormative hegemony, ultimately, we contend,
Queer  Eye
strategically serves to domesticate queers and contain queer sexuality.
 
Domesticating “the Queer” 2
Privileging “the Straight”/Domesticating “the Queer”:Charting the Contours of Heteronormative Discourse in
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
 
During the past several decades, the field of communication and media queer studies hasdone much to chart the social construction of sexual desire, the creation of sexual communities,and the ways in which people are oppressed, marginalized, or symbolically annihilated because
their sexual orientations lie, as Erni (1998) puts it, “outside of foundationalist gender and sexualnorms” (p. 161) that are central to our society’s heterosexual order. Queer sexuality – and queercriticism – challenges that order by calling into question the heteronormative values that informit. As defined by Herman (2003), “Heteronormativity encompasses, at a basic level, the view thatheterosexuality is natural and normal for individuals and society” (p. 144). She goes on to notethat “heteronormativity does not just construct a norm, it also provides the perspective throughwhich we know and understand gender and sexuality in popular culture” (p. 144). It does so, inlarge part, in ways that are not always obvious. As Dyer (2002) argues:Heterosexuality as a social reality seems to be invisible to those who benefit from it. Inpart, this is because of the remorseless construction of heterosexuality as normal. If things are natural, they cannot really be questioned or scrutinized and so they fade fromview. Such naturalization often characterizes how we see, and don’t see, the powerful;how they see, and don’t see, themselves. (p. 119)The invisibility of heterosexual power and privilege to those who posses and benefit from such isstrikingly similar to the invisibility of the power and privilege associated with whiteness asexperienced from a “white” perspective. Indeed, what Dyer (1997) writes with respect towhiteness is equally applicable to heterosexuality, “as long as race is something only applied tonon-white people, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as ahuman norm” (p. 1). In much the same way, we suggest, as long as sexual orientation is a term
 
Domesticating “the Queer” 3applied primarily to those who are not deemed “straight,” then sexual “straightness” (i.e.,heterosexuality) will continue to serve as the norm against which other forms of human sexualityare defined, measured, and judged.In the field of communication and media studies, queer theorists have examined how theconventions of the mainstream’s heteronormative socio-sexual order tame and contain, if notoutright exclude, queers and queer sexuality (e.g., Battles & Hilton-Morrow, 2002; Brookey &Westerfelhaus, 2001, 2002; Cooper, 2002; Epstein & Steinberg, 1997; Fejes, 2000; Herman,2003; Russo, 1987). To date, however, there has been little critical scrutiny of the rhetoricalconstruction of heterosexuality itself – and the cultural apparati that support it – of the kind thathas explored whiteness as a socio-rhetorical construct. Indeed, heterosexuality has remained forthe most part a largely uninterrogated space. This speaks to the heteronormative power of whatwe term the
strategic rhetoric of straightness
.This rhetoric, which has rendered heterosexualityso normal and natural as to be almost invisible, permeates the mainstream’s cultural, legal,political, religious, scientific, and social understandings of human sexuality. Evidence of itsinfluence can be found in religious and political discourse, cultural institutions, socialarrangements, laws and legislation, and the offerings of popular culture. The power andpervasiveness of this rhetoric enable it to exert a great deal of influence in shaping how it is thatwe understand our own sexuality and that of others, and in determining what forms of sexualityare sanctioned and which are proscribed. This sanctioning greatly benefits those whose sexualityis embraced by the social mainstream and makes life very difficult for those whose proscribedsexuality is not.
1
In this study, we examine how the strategic rhetoric supporting the heterosexualmainstream simultaneously renders straight sex natural and accords it unquestioned socio-sexual
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