Putnam and Scholarly Responsibility

One of the most important and well known moves in academic writing is defining the focus of your argument as unique to your stance. This outlines the scope of your argument, and while it can be utilized in a multitude of ways, it most likely it resembles the template “For the purposes of this argument, X is ….” This simple yet effective mood can be done in scientific research, moderated debate, and most often in academic writing. Amanda Putnam executes this move quite well in her piece when she defines what “queer” will mean for the purposes of her argument. But this technique becomes quite ineffective and flawed, when she develops ideas that are meant to parallel the ideas of queer and transgenderism, and out of lack of thought or ease of effort, just doesn’t.

Putnam does not only argue that Disney villains who she defines as queer in appearance or manner are demonizing transgenderism. She goes on to argue that the heroes and heroines of those same films are perpetuating stereotypical heterosexual relationships. I instantly found flaw in her argument. If she is going to defines queerness as anything weird or out of the ordinary and use it as evidence of transgenderism, a term that defines gender, she most also define homosexuality or heterosexuality in relationship to her argument, terms that define sexual orientation.

Because Putnam describes heterosexuality and transgenderism as being paralleled for children in Disney films, and does not distinguish that one is meant to represent a gender identification and the other is used to represent sexuality I immediately wanted to disregard her argument. I believe some of her points were great as standalone ideas and thoughts. Yes, Disney princesses fill the popular standard for feminine roles, but this I believe would define their gender identity as “cis” or relating to and claiming the gender that they are born, and does not automatically designate them as heterosexual. Are Disney princesses and princes also a picture of heteronormative pop culture of course? But because she never defines any of these simple terms, she seems to easily misrepresent the LGBTQ community. It is similar to when she called Scuttle a crane, only this time it is vital to her credibility.

Has Putnam claimed to be an activist on LGBTQ rights and representation? Of course not. But by writing an academic piece, and taking part in the academic conversation, she has assumed to some extent a role of authority on the topic. That’s what academic writing is essentially. We develop an argument but studying text or “They Say” and then we present it to readers who are under the assumption that since we cited all of these scholarly sources and had an article reviewed by our peers, we know what we’re talking about, to some extent.

However, as a reader I do not know if Putnam is aware of the idea that gender is separate from reality, an idea that is integral to the LGBTQ community. An if she is going to write a paper under the umbrella topic “queer” as defined by her, I hope to assume she is familiar with some ideas of the LGBTQ community.