NOTES | THE TROUBLE WITH NORMAL

SEX, POLITICS, AND THE ETHICS OF QUEER LIFE | MICHAEL WARNER

. . . they will find it hard to distinguish their shame from its politics, their personal failings from the power of alien norms. 
p. 3

For most people, at least, the ethical response to sexual shame seems to be: more shame. 
p. 3

What looks like crime might be harmless difference. What looks like immorality might be a rival morality. What looks like pathology might be a rival form of health, tolerance of stress. 
p. 5

So sexual autonomy requires more than freedom of choice, tolerance, and the liberalization of sex laws. It requires access to pleasures and possibilities, since people commonly do not know their desires until they find them. 
p. 7

Women and gay people have been especially vulnerable to the shaming effects of isolation. Almost all children grow up in families that think of themselves and all their members as heterosexual, and for some children this produces a profound and nameless estrangement, a sense of inner secrets and hidden shame. 
p. 8