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Articles on Queer theory

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The term ‘cisgender’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015. Shutterstock.com

Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?

The prefix ‘cis’, meaning ‘on this side of’ is commonly used in chemistry and geography. More recently, it has become a way of referring to a person’s gender identity.
‘Love, Simon’ tells the story of a gay teenager who is ‘just like you’ - a mainstream comedy first - but what happens when they are not just like you? (20th Century Fox)

Homophobia: Old problem, new disguise in ‘Love, Simon’

Given the progress gay rights have made over the last 40 years, we might believe we live in queer friendly North America and that homophobia is dead. But it’s not. It is just in disguise.
Exhibition installation view of Robert Mapplethorpe: the perfect medium at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 27 Oct 2017 – 18 Feb 2018. All artworks © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. Photo: AGNSW, Christopher Snee

Friday essay: Mapplethorpe and me

The distinctive visual style of Robert Mapplethorpe’s beautiful, oversized images seems now more classical than shocking. But he can still reveal the subconscious of an era we think we have outgrown.
More young people are turning online for peer support networks. shutterstock

There’s something queer about Tumblr

Tumblr might the weird cousin of the other social media platforms, but it also makes a safe space for queer kids to hang out and understand their sexuality.
Writer Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris, 1920s. Wikipedia Commons

Djuna Barnes: the ‘lesbian’ writer who rejected lesbianism

Unlike earlier lesbian and gay movements whose politics depended on visible identities, queer theory grew out of a critique of this – and perhaps that’s where Djuna Barnes sits.
Sexuality presents us with personal and private concerns that are also very political. Shutterstock

Of love letters and other gestures of romantic love

Perhaps we can think of the love letter and other gestures of romantic love as forms or techniques that mediate the violence of time, dispossession and exclusion.
Queer in more ways than one…The Lobster marries the romantic and political. The Lobster

Is a story about heterosexual coupling the queerest film of the past year?

The narrative of monogamous coupledom exerts much force in our imaginative and social worlds - even queer films are dominated by love plots. But The Lobster, a savagely funny film about heterosexual love, is a welcome exception.
The gender binary does not adequately describe the experience of people who identify as genderqueer. Black Hill Design/www.shutterstock.com

Explainer: what is genderqueer?

Germaine Greer’s comments that “post-operative transgender men are not women” have provoked outcry from transgender activists. So let’s have a meaningful discussion about gender, sex and the complex relationship between the two.

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