Quote: “The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair/ Little streams pass’d over their bodies” ( lines 12-13). 

Comment: This line from the poem “Song of Myself, XI” by Walt Whitman prompted me to think about many of the concepts we have discussed in class, especially within Ch. 7 of Parker on Queer Theory. For me, this brings up a question of the “naturalization of heterosexuality” or “compulsatory heterosexuality,” which refers to the assumptions when looking at a form of media or literature that heterosexuality is the norm or the expected view if there is no formal delineation that it may be another form. From this quote, I am sensing that many people may assume that this line, and the poem itself, is taken from the perspective of the woman looking out of her window at the men. Yet, that is an assumption of heterosexuality that hasn’t been explicitly defined, and if we analyze this poem with the concepts of queer theory in mind, it could be a display of a queer gaze or same-sex desire. 

Question: While not completely related to Parker or Queer Theory, while reading this poem, I noticed that even though the woman in this narrative is not our object of speculation, she is still trapped in what feminist theory would say is a 2D space, through her window and even described as hiding. In contrast, the young men who are the object of our speculation are somehow still able to have agency and movement and are unaware of how they are perceived. I wonder how this might play into the assumptions about masculinity and femininity in literature and even in gazing. Additionally, does it matter that we know how the author feels about a heterosexual or same-sex gaze?