tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/queer-theory-21255/articles
Queer theory – The Conversation
2023-07-16T09:57:36Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208113
2023-07-16T09:57:36Z
2023-07-16T09:57:36Z
Queer theory offers new views on daily life - even on infrastructure projects in Kenya
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536743/original/file-20230711-29-8ajdyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">We Are/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’ll confess I’ve raised quite a few eyebrows when I’ve told people about my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2062292">research</a> linking queer theory and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102459">infrastructure development</a>.</p>
<p>I understand the confusion. Queer theory is mainly associated with <a href="https://english.yale.edu/publications/fear-queer-planet-queer-politics-and-social-theory-ed#:%7E:text=In%20this%20diverse%20and%20balanced,the%20cultural%20politics%20of%20sexuality.">the study of</a> gender, sexuality and queer lives. Specifically, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160802695338">queer lived experiences</a> and how they are <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-feeling-of-kinship">culturally or politically perceived and mediated</a>. And how their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1058755">struggles for recognition</a> are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231166402">accommodated or undermined by societies</a> that LGBTIQ+ people live in. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/being-queer-in-africa-the-state-of-lgbtiq-rights-across-the-continent-205306">Being queer in Africa: the state of LGBTIQ+ rights across the continent</a>
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<p>In my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231173564">recent study</a>, I outline how queer theory could be further explored beyond its established areas of inquiry. As one example of this broader application of queer theory, I focus on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522">infrastructure studies</a> – scholarship that analyses how infrastructure (like ports, railways and communication networks) is essential for understanding people’s lives, practices and identities. This is one of my areas of expertise, as I have written extensively about <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12947">multiple contradictions</a> of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12601">infrastructure development</a>, its social <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12474">impacts</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02637758221125475">politics</a> in Kenya. </p>
<p>But in my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231173564">new study</a>, I show how my reading of queer theory highlights the complexities of people’s lives. This requires letting go of any neat conclusions about who people are and how they engage with the world. This is important because it highlights inherent tensions that exist in any attempt to make sense of the world, such as understanding different impacts and effects of infrastructure development.</p>
<h2>Abandoning preconceptions</h2>
<p>Since the early 1990s, as a specialised field of knowledge, queer theory has come to have <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Methods-and-Methodologies-Intersecting-Queer-Theories-and-Social/Nash-Browne/p/book/9781138245662">multiple and often competing meanings</a>. One of the central tensions has been the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132507085213">question of identity</a> – how a subject understands her place in a world that is not of her own making.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/no-future">One lasting critique</a> that radical queer theory has voiced is that the very idea of identity – as something concrete and knowable – is a myth that entrenches socially constituted differences and divisions. That is, as soon as a person describes themselves, or <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/07/13/the_problem_with_coming_out_the_flawed_cultural_expectations_of_gay_life_in_america/">“comes out”</a> as “queer”, they normalise identity as something that is fixed. But “queer” or “straight” are not stable, natural categories.</p>
<p>Instead, they are expressions of specific historical developments of a society. <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sexual-hegemony">One branch of radical queer thinking</a> highlights that sexuality – its <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-reification-of-desire">limitations and freedoms</a> – is a result of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/capitalisms-sexual-history-9780197545195?cc=us&lang=en&">specific power structures</a> that aim to <a href="https://www.akpress.org/calibanandthewitch.html">control different population groups</a>, subordinating them to the state, capital and civil society.</p>
<p>In this sense, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/politics-of-everybody-9781913441081/">radical queer theory</a> approaches identity as not something who we are but as something that happens to us. Identity, therefore, is never a simple thing, even if we think we know who we are. </p>
<p>I highlight this in my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231173564">study</a>, foregrounding queering as (un)knowing – knowing but not with absolute certainty.</p>
<p>This (un)knowability is a responsibility. Intellectually, it is a responsibility to acknowledge multiple tensions that constitute personal and social lives. Politically, this form of queer thinking is an invitation to engage with each other not in spite of, but because of, the impossibility of fully knowing each other. </p>
<p>This method of radical queerness has taught me to see my research subjects in a way that doesn’t jump to neat conclusions.</p>
<p>It allows me to think about and highlight how people’s lives that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12474">shaped, interrupted and transformed by infrastructure development</a> cannot be understood and narrated through one single story that attempts to explain the many different impacts and effects of infrastructure development.</p>
<h2>Conflicting dynamics</h2>
<p>My research focuses on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2062292">the construction of Lamu Port</a> as part of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12601">a regional transport corridor</a> supposed to connect Kenya with Ethiopia and South Sudan via <a href="https://www.lapsset.go.ke/">railways, highways and oil pipelines</a>. As stories in my research highlight, local fishermen dispossessed by the new port construction <a href="https://theconversation.com/kenyas-big-railway-project-makes-life-even-harder-for-the-poor-by-ignoring-their-reality-192789">struggle to make ends meet</a>.</p>
<p>In this sense, infrastructure can be, and has been, understood as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2062292">a form of structural and social violence</a> that vulnerable populations are exposed to. And this is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43497506">an important story to tell</a>. But this is not the only story.</p>
<p>The very same people, in spite of their struggles, at the same time experience these infrastructures as a possibility of a better tomorrow. They hope that they will bring positive transformations – jobs, travel opportunities, political and cultural changes – even if in the present it seems unlikely, or barely possible.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kenyas-lamu-port-was-meant-to-deliver-great-things-but-as-the-story-of-local-fishermen-shows-it-hasnt-189258">Kenya’s Lamu Port was meant to deliver great things. But, as the story of local fishermen shows, it hasn't</a>
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<p>These conflicting dynamics can’t be neatly explained through identity categories that we use to make sense of ourselves and each other. Focusing on “class”, “race” or “gender”, for instance, only tells a story up to a point. But the contradiction remains – infrastructure development is both a kind of violence and an uncertain possibility of a better future.</p>
<p>Neither of these accounts – of struggles and aspirations – is more accurate than the other. Both indicate how people make their lives in a world that cannot be contained within, nor explained through, one coherent narrative. In this sense, there is no conclusive way to reveal the truth of their experience, because different layers of a person’s life intermesh into contradictions that make sense at times but do not at others.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231173564">study</a>, I outline how radical queer thinking can help make sense of these contradictions, while reminding us to remain humble and accept the inherent limits of knowledge.</p>
<h2>Point of celebration</h2>
<p>These limits include this article. At the end of the day, it (as any other text) is just one attempt – itself inescapably flawed, limited by my experiences, stained by inherent <a href="https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/the-limits-of-language-1c9febe85350">imperfection of language and words</a> – to present something that cannot be rendered knowable in its entirety.</p>
<p>The point, nevertheless, is not to fear this (un)knowability. Of ourselves and others. Of things that we both want to know and are unable to know. The world and other people always withdraw from our attempts to understand them. It’s precisely the demand of knowing others on our own terms that perpetuates harm. </p>
<p>In this sense, there is a specific politics implied in the avowal of (un)knowability. It ought to be a reminder of our enduring responsibility to protect this (un)knowability – to let others be other. A point of celebration, a sort of pride if you will.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gediminas Lesutis receives funding from the Horizon 2020, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (Project ID: 101023118).</span></em></p>
Queer theory tells us that people’s identities are complex. If all research subjects are approached this way, we can understand their responses more fully.
Gediminas Lesutis, Marie Curie Fellow, University of Amsterdam
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206979
2023-06-13T16:15:57Z
2023-06-13T16:15:57Z
A science of sexuality is still possible — but not in the traditional sense
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531198/original/file-20230609-29-7wkphc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C16%2C3760%2C2499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rainbow flag is being waved during Pride Parade in Saskatoon, Sask., in June 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Heywood Yu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Human sexuality has long been a subject of fascination and curiosity in the scientific community. Researchers from different fields have sought to understand why we are attracted to certain people and how our sexual orientation develops.</p>
<p>From Sigmund Freud to Judith Butler, the road to a science of sexuality is a fascinating history of ambition and culture wars, error and scientific breakthrough.</p>
<p>My recent research continues the quest to make a science out of sexuality. Two <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv19cwdnt">opposing schools of thought currently divide</a> the field: psychoanalysis and queer theory. </p>
<p>Psychoanalysts believe desire follows specific laws and follows predictable patterns, while queer theorists argue that laws have exceptions and advocate for a more creative view of sexuality.</p>
<p>My research proposes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-022-00366-1">an information theory of desire</a> that
straddles the line these two groups by arguing we should consider the object of our desire as information.</p>
<p>Psychoanalysis can help us understand how this particular kind of information is stored, while queer theory can help us understand how this information is organized and re-organized internally. </p>
<h2>Birth of psychoanalysis</h2>
<p>Sigmund Freud, originally trained as a physician, believed in the scientific basis of sexuality. He was the first to regard sex as the subject of a serious discussion. Starting in 1902, <a href="https://www.freud.org.uk/2020/05/14/freud-at-home-the-wednesday-psychological-society/">colleagues gathered every Wednesday</a> in his apartment to discuss the psychoanalytic practice he established. </p>
<p>Debates about how to study sexuality soon divided Freud’s circle of colleagues. In 1911, Alfred Adler broke away and <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/Alderian-Psychotherapy-Intro-Sample.pdf">turned psychoanalysis into social and cultural studies</a>. Two years later, Carl Jung broke away and turned <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27505718">toward philosophical and existential questions</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white photo of a man with a white beard, round black glasses and a hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud at his home in London in June 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
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<p>At the time, Lou Andreas-Salomé, the first female psychoanalyst, did not believe <a href="https://archive.org/details/freudjournaloflo0000unse/page/130/mode/2up?q=honesty">either separation threatened the scientific status of psychoanalysis</a>:</p>
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<p>“The source of its vitality does not lie in any hazy mixture of science and sectarianism, but in having adopted as a fundamental principle that which is the highest principle of all scientific activity. I mean honesty.”</p>
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<p>Though Freud retained Andreas-Salomé’s loyalty until the end, he didn’t share her optimism about the uniting power of honesty and <a href="https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudloua00freu/page/18/mode/2up?view=theater&q=loathsome">thought divisions at the heart of his movement</a> would delegitimize it. </p>
<h2>North American psychology</h2>
<p>The quest to turn sexuality into a credible science survived Freud, especially in North America. Clinically trained psychologists in the post-Second World War era <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8688-1_41">borrowed Freudian theories and employed traditional scientific methods</a> to empirically test them. </p>
<p>Dismissing Freud’s exclusive interest in individual case studies, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000306515300100203">American</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376400900610">Canadian</a> psychologists aimed to understand populations more widely. However, this shift led to <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/socprob3&div=42&g_sent=1&casa_token=PyF5exLVo0cAAAAA:AJB84TRzpeslt3--Ri334K5VpX3FZCtPLrDboLHYfQmWGlPIjYamTZQ_0mrUKgx3VsAzm2fCIw&collection=journals">seeing homosexuals as a separate social group</a>, which ultimately gave rise to <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/medlgjr15&div=8&g_sent=1&casa_token=aOsBLK2-uLMAAAAA:q2Z3RRyS3GYeLaWsXniM5Fo86CI-07Qij9Av2NmCvqgE51HKGNG3TRMrk1RtPuz45VTNdI2wIg&collection=journals">homophobia</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2642357/?page=1">conversion therapy</a>.</p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, Freud’s daughter Anna <a href="https://lambdaliterary.org/2014/08/rebecca-coffey-on-sigmund-freuds-relationship-with-his-lesbian-daughter-anna-and-using-fiction-to-explore-the-truth/">promoted curing homosexuality</a> even though her father had <a href="https://pep-web.org/browse/document/ijp.032.0331a">denounced similar practices</a>. </p>
<p>In France, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan urged his colleagues to <a href="https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814743232.001.0001">return to Freud’s methods</a>. Consumer culture silenced similar voices in North America. </p>
<p>Psychotherapy lost its scientific motto — the pursuit of truth — and became a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/happier-9780190655648?cc=us&lang=en&">matter of pursuing happiness</a>. Keenly aware how the big screen dumbed down Freud’s psychology, Marilyn Monroe — a serious <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tagged/health/healthy-living/marilyn-monroe--bookworm%E2%80%94highlights-from-her-library-184157109.html">reader of psychoanalysis</a> — turned down starring in a movie about him out of respect.</p>
<h2>Sexuality nowadays</h2>
<p>By the time Canada <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-1969-amendment-and-the-de-criminalization-of-homosexuality">decriminalized homosexuality in 1969</a> — and the American Psychological Association <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/23/archives/the-issue-is-subtle-the-debate-still-on-the-apa-ruling-on.html">unclassified it as a mental disorder</a> four years later — sexuality studies had shied away from its psychological origins. </p>
<p>But biological explanations prevailed. Scientists wondered <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541437">whether homosexuality ran in the family</a> and hypothesized the existence of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v06n04_02">gay gene and its relationship to natural selection</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the politically correct turn away from <a href="https://theipi.org/all-events/#!event/2022/1/28/ebook-lecture-january-28th">“why gay?” to “how gay?”</a> in post–1970s clinical research, and the anti-psychological turn in feminism known as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/dispatchesfromthefreudwars.htm">the Freud Wars of the 1980s</a>, the prospect of a science of sexuality almost vanished until queer theorists made its case again in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Queer theory rejected <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/universitypress/subjects/sociology/social-theory/social-postmodernism-beyond-identity-politics">fixed collective identities</a> and re-emphasized <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354397073003">individual case studies</a> the same way Freud had. Instead, queer theorists viewed sexuality as <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-and-the-Subversion-of-Identity/Butler/p/book/9780415389556">something more dynamic</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A middle-aged individual in a black blazer and dress shirt smiles while holding a large hardcover book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Philosopher and gender studies theorist Judith Butler smiles after receiving the Theodor W. Adorno award in Frankfurt, Germany, in September 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Thomas Lohnes)</span></span>
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<p>Queer theorists like Judith Butler emphasized the <a href="https://archive.org/details/gendertrouble00judi/page/16/mode/2up?q=internal+external&view=theater">relationship between internal and external life</a>. They highlighted how drag artists <a href="https://archive.org/details/gendertrouble00judi/page/136/mode/2up?view=theater&q=drag">disrupt the way we assign gender</a> on a daily basis.</p>
<p>This disconnect between what we see and the meaning we give it is a chance for sexuality to break with habit and become unpredictable.</p>
<h2>The challenge of our current moment</h2>
<p>Nowadays, many regard sexuality as <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/8324299/2019-study-genetics-sexuality">too complicated</a> or <a href="https://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/Sex-and-Gender-Reconsidered.php">too subjective</a> to become a science. Freud’s theories are often dismissed as pseudoscience.</p>
<p>But this outlook is dangerous to the pursuit of science. According to Elizabeth Young–Bruehl, a queer psychoanalyst who practised in Toronto until her death in 2009, we have <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25670368">abandoned Freud’s depth psychology and his theory of the unconscious</a> and promoted instead superficial psychological theories.</p>
<p>Homophobia and caricatures of psychoanalysis originated with our relationship to science, not Freud’s. Though he was keen on establishing a science of sexuality, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2018.1480225">he regarded that science as historical</a> rather than experimental. </p>
<p><a href="https://biologos.org/common-questions/is-historical-science-reliable">Historical sciences</a> aim to reconstruct past events and favour the uniqueness of detail and individual cases. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23332257">Experimental sciences</a>, on the other hand, are concerned with the future and whether an event will repeat itself. </p>
<h2>Information theory of desire</h2>
<p>Why do individuals come out as gay or bisexual at a particular point in their lives, but not earlier? Why do some first same-sex experiences shape a queer identity while others do not?</p>
<p>An information theory of desire might offer insights into these questions. When queer people talk about the <a href="https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Coming-Out-to-Yourself-A-Guide-for-Self-Acceptance">defining moment when they came out to themselves</a>, it can be useful to think of self-acceptance as a kind of computing command — an input that demands a radical re-organization of someone’s information network or identity.</p>
<p>Life events become inputs, and sexual orientations and gender identities become information networks. Certain same-sex experiences may only result in partial changes to the information network, while others may lead to the complete re-configuring of someone’s identity.</p>
<p>What can we discover with a science of sexuality? Freud’s loyal friend Andreas-Salomé was right to regard honesty as the highest principle of any scientific activity. Without it, we would be dealing with incorrect inputs or information networks viewed upside down. </p>
<p>Pride Month is not just a celebration of sexuality — it’s also a celebration of science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rayyan Dabbous does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new theory of desire bridges the gap between psychoanalysis and queer theory on a quest to make a science out of sexuality.
Rayyan Dabbous, PhD student, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203718
2023-05-22T15:22:15Z
2023-05-22T15:22:15Z
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: how the game’s glitches gained a fandom of their own
<p>Last November, <a href="https://scarletviolet.pokemon.com/en-gb/">Pokémon Scarlet and Violet</a> were released for Nintendo Switch as the first so-called open-world <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/11/pokemon-scarlet-and-violet-deliver-a-fully-open-world-beset-by-technical-problems/">Pokémon games</a>. These are non-linear games in which players can freely explore the environment as they collect Pokémon characters.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/pokemon-scarlet-and-violet-review">Reviewers</a> and gamers alike have generally agreed that the games succeeded in introducing changes that were long overdue such as free roaming, a less linear adventure and a large amount of collectables. But they also criticised the games’ appalling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/nov/17/pokemon-scarletviolet-review-poor-performance-holds-an-exciting-game-back#:%7E:text=Much%20like%20Arceus%2C%20Scarlet%20and,constantly%20judders%20to%20a%20crawl.">visuals and technical failures</a>. These failures – known as “glitches” – are moments when the game fails to behave as intended. Instead of chomping on a sandwich, for example, a character might be seen munching thin air. </p>
<p>The original Pokémon games, Red and Blue (1996), had <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_glitches_(Generation_I)">their fair share</a> of glitches too. This included “<a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/the-mythos-and-meaning-behind-pokemons-most-famous-glitch/">MissingNo</a>”, an unofficial critter that could be found by deliberately using glitches. But times have changed since the first games. Pokémon is now a global behemoth and must meet fans’ high expectations for visual quality.</p>
<p>In some ways, Scarlet and Violet’s many issues have become a blessing in disguise, however. They have fuelled <a href="https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/11/random-pokemon-scarlet-and-violets-body-horror-glitches-are-going-viral">an unexpected glitch-chasing frenzy</a>. </p>
<p>This has contributed to the expansion of the franchise’s “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-headcanon-fanon#:%7E:text=Standard%2C%2022%20Feb.-,2018,spelled%20out%20in%20the%20text.">headcanon</a>”(something fans believe to be true about a franchise or character, despite a lack of evidence) and illustrated the creative potential of fan culture as players start to accept and even celebrate these glitches.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1595148193855320066"}"></div></p>
<p>Many Pokémon fans are aware of <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Sinistea_(Pok%C3%A9mon)">Sinistea</a>, for example, a ghost-type Pokémon from 2017 who is found lodging in a teacup. But in January, a few fans <a href="https://www.dexerto.com/pokemon/pokemon-scarlet-violet-glitch-spawns-wild-paldean-sinistea-2033495/">started to speculate</a> and joke about whether the ghost Pokémon had been given a new form. This followed a viral <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonScarletViolet/comments/10c23q9/paldean_form_sinistea/?utm_term=2197035873&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_source=embed&utm_name=&utm_content=header">Pokémon egg hatching video</a>, recorded from the game and published on Reddit, which showed a phantom coffee cup randomly floating in the air .</p>
<p>While this error was due to a non-player character failing to load, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonScarletViolet/comments/10c23q9/paldean_form_sinistea/">fans immediately started</a> to suggest names for the new creature, such as Caffiend, Coffantom and Sinisffee. <a href="https://www.dexerto.com/_ipx/w_640,q_75/https%3A%2F%2Feditors.dexerto.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F01%2F15%2Fpaldean-sinistea.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Feditors.dexerto.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F01%2F15%2Fpaldean-sinistea.jpg&w=640&q=75">Fan-made artworks</a> imitating the official games were produced and a new “fakemon” was born.</p>
<p>As this shows, glitches aren’t simply destructive malfunctions, but also a starting point for the creation of new fan narratives.</p>
<h2>Body horror in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet</h2>
<p>Darker glitches have emerged too. A video recorded from the game showed <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/832923954427294/">a child being attacked</a> by a Pokémon that had turned into a drill when they crossed the boundaries of the battlefield.</p>
<p>There was no gore, no screaming, but the contrast between the naïve, innocent tone of the Pokémon game’s universe and the violent narrative created by the recorded glitch made the video go viral.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1594523153145167875"}"></div></p>
<p>This example is only one among many manifestations of body horror that have occurred since the release of the Scarlet and Violet games. Players have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mbv4b7yLgE&ab_channel=BetaBrawler">shared playthroughs</a> showcasing avatars with spinning limbs, gigantic spaghetti-shaped bodies, or skeleton-like faces taking selfies.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Mbv4b7yLgE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A compilation of Pokémon glitches.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a queer game scholar I am fascinated by unorthodox and bizarre instances in gaming culture. I think that these glitches are pretty queer too.</p>
<p>Playing queerly means playing differently – whether it is to <a href="https://ourglasslake.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ruberg-No-Fun-QED.pdf">fail</a>, experience “<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ad660603596eec00ce71a3/t/58becd3de6f2e1086b36a265/1488899390367/The+Politics+of+Bad+Feeling.pdf">bad feelings</a>”, be <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9781003022268-5/flawless-defeat-margins-gaspard-pelurson?context=ubx&refId=65754cf3-b563-4f5f-bd2a-c5a38ce140ea">aroused</a> or simply stray from mainstream gaming. </p>
<p>Queerness and horror have always shared a special relationship. Horror movies are often <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/31/queer-horror-cinema-babadook-frankenstein">beloved by queer audiences</a>, who frequently <a href="https://theconversation.com/m3gan-review-an-animatronic-doll-is-out-to-destroy-the-nuclear-family-much-to-fans-delight-198045">identify with the characters depicted</a> and enjoy seeing narratives that were, and still are, missing from the mainstream film industry.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/23/body-horror-movies-get-out-life-alien-covenant">body horror</a> genre, with its obsession with “threatening” bodies, has resonated among the queer community. From <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJVXTKkjsxA">Freaks</a> (1932) to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5_w2W5G9OM">Titane</a> (2021), body horror has come a long way from stigmatising to celebrating queer bodies. </p>
<p>And it has now found one of its most unexpected platforms – a globally successful, family-friendly digital game franchise.</p>
<h2>‘Gotta [glitch] ’em all’</h2>
<p>Witnessing characters becoming hugely elongated while trying to ride their bike, losing the skin on their faces while attempting to take a selfie, or moving through hard surfaces without any explanation has become common in the world of Pokémon.</p>
<p>Videos of these glitches have sparked conversations that go beyond the game’s original material and established glitch sharing as a way for fans to hijack the franchise.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1642450005675098113"}"></div></p>
<p>Pokémon has been trying to be more inclusive and has increasingly showcased <a href="https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2021/06/28/lets-take-a-moment-to-appreciate-the-diversity-pokemon-introduced-in-later-generations/">body diversity</a> among its characters. There are <a href="https://twitter.com/KholdKhaos63/status/1593653335390822402">buff women</a>, androgynous <a href="https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20220809-14779/">gym leaders</a> and <a href="https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20221130-16978/">curvaceous dads</a>. </p>
<p>The body horror glitches, however, might have unwillingly pushed the boundaries a bit too far. Players are now not only collecting pocket monsters, but monstrous bodies too.</p>
<p>Their awkward presence has provided a queer twist to the traditional Pokémon journey to “<a href="https://genius.com/Pokemon-pokemon-theme-gotta-catch-em-all-lyrics">become the very best</a>”. It has encouraged players to enjoy the game’s visible failures and share the visual feats of their transgressive avatars, in the hope of becoming the glitchiest player of them all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gaspard Pelurson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The many visual errors in the latest Pokémon games have led to an unexpected glitch-chasing frenzy.
Gaspard Pelurson, Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192166
2022-10-19T19:05:33Z
2022-10-19T19:05:33Z
Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488902/original/file-20221010-58076-dvr2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C9%2C1250%2C995&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Judith Butler</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miquel Taverna/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, both for intellectuals and for queer communities. There are scholarly books, university courses, fan clubs, social media pages and comics dedicated to Butler’s thinking. </p>
<p>They (Butler’s preferred pronoun) did not single-handedly invent queer theory and today’s proliferation of gender identities, but their work is often credited with helping to make these developments possible.</p>
<p>In turn, political movements have often inspired Butler’s work. Butler served on the <a href="https://outrightinternational.org/insights">International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission</a>, spoke at the <a href="http://occupywallst.org/">Occupy Wall Street</a> protests, has defended <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/judith-butler-rashid-khalidi-and-over-150-other-scholars-condemn-censorship-intimidation-israel">Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions</a> campaigns, and famously <a href="https://mronline.org/2010/06/20/judith-butler-turns-down-civil-courage-award-from-berlin-pride-i-must-distance-myself-from-this-racist-complicity/">declined a Civil Courage Award</a> in Berlin because of racist comments made by the organisers.</p>
<p>This has at times led to controversy. Some right-wing movements and religious figures who are attached to conservative gender roles have seen Butler as a threat to society. This is ironic, given Butler’s work has always maintained a commitment to justice, equality and non-violence.</p>
<h2>Gender performativity</h2>
<p>The most influential concept in Butler’s work is “gender performativity”. This theory has been refined across Butler’s work over several decades, but it is addressed most directly in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-and-the-Subversion-of-Identity/Butler/p/book/9780415389556">Gender Trouble</a> (1990), <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Bodies-That-Matter-On-the-Discursive-Limits-of-Sex/Butler/p/book/9780415610155">Bodies That Matter</a> (1993) and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Undoing-Gender/Butler/p/book/9780415969239">Undoing Gender</a> (2004).</p>
<p>In these works, Butler sets out to challenge “essentialist” understandings of gender: in other words, assumptions that masculinity and femininity are naturally or biologically given, that masculinity should be performed by male bodies and femininity by female bodies, and that these bodies naturally desire their “opposite”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488903/original/file-20221010-59059-ekiemt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Living in gay and lesbian communities, Butler had seen how even in feminist circles, these assumptions often resulted in unliveable lives for those who did not follow gendered expectations.</p>
<p>Butler therefore set out to challenge the way descriptions of current ways of performing masculinity and femininity are usually also taken to be values about the right way to do gender. Butler uses the concept of gender “norms” to describe this confusion of what “is” with what “should be”, a confusion that prevents us seeing other possible ways of life as legitimate, or even imagining such possibilities at all.</p>
<p>Instead, Butler proposes that gender is not biological, but “performative”. The term “performativity” does not simply mean performance. We can think of it in terms of the linguist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/austin-jl/">J.L. Austin’s concept</a> of the “performative utterance”, which refers to a statement that brings about that which it states. The classic example is “I now pronounce you man and wife”. Spoken by a person socially approved to do so, these words create a married couple.</p>
<p>Butler argues that gender works in this way: when we name a child as “girl” or “boy”, we participate in creating them as that very thing. By speaking of people (or ourselves) as “man” or “woman”, we are in the process creating and defining those categories.</p>
<p>Some gender theory <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/">distinguishes between biological “sex” and social “gender”</a>, but Butler finds this counterproductive. For Butler, it makes no sense to talk about biological “sex” existing outside of its social meanings. If there is such a thing, we can’t encounter it, because we are born into a world that already has a particular understanding of gender, and that world then retrospectively tells us the meaning of our anatomy. We can’t know ourselves outside of those social meanings. In fact, much of Butler’s work reminds us we cannot fully know ourselves at all.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488904/original/file-20221010-59048-cedhj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>At this point, Butler is often accused of thinking gender is entirely caused by language and has nothing to do with bodies, or that we can simply decide what gender to be when we wake up in the morning. </p>
<p>But this is not what they mean. Butler argues that we reproduce gender not only through repeated ways of speaking, but also of doing. We dress in certain ways, do certain exercises at the gym, use particular body language, visit particular kinds of medical specialists, and so on. Through such repetitions, gender is reinforced, layer by layer, until it seems inescapable.</p>
<p>However, this work of creating and redefining gender is never finished – for gender norms to hold, they must be constantly repeated. This means in the longer term, gender norms are intrinsically open to change. We can never get them exactly “right”, and if we stop doing them, or do them differently, we participate in changing their meaning. This opens up possibilities for gender to change.</p>
<p>These are not easy ways to think, because they challenge some of our most familiar assumptions about what a person is, what gender is, and how language works. This is one reason why Butler’s writing has been notorious for being “difficult”. But the popularity of their work shows there are many people who feel their lives are not adequately described by “common sense” ways of thinking.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-it-mean-to-be-cisgender-103159">Explainer: what does it mean to be 'cisgender'?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Grievable life, vulnerability and non-violence</h2>
<p>Over the past 20 years, Butler’s writing has expanded beyond gender into other areas of political exclusion and oppression. An underlying theme across much of this more recent work is a concern about the ways some people are discounted as “human”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488922/original/file-20221010-82270-ms2dzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Butler summarises this through the concept of “grievable life”, which draws attention to the ways in which some lives are not publicly mourned, because they were never publicly acknowledged as being properly alive in the first place. For example, Butler points out that AIDS victims rarely receive obituaries in mainstream US newspapers, nor do prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, Black people killed by US police, or refugees and stateless people who die crossing borders.</p>
<p>These populations can be abandoned to unliveable, precarious lives and unnoticed deaths without any serious public accountability. In our contemporary globalised, neoliberal world, more and more people are living in such situations, without adequate social support, health care, sustainable environments or access to the public sphere. Butler calls this situation “precarity”.</p>
<p>Often this exclusion is justified through “frames of war”, which position certain groups of people as threats to “security”. To defend this security, it is tempting to violently impose precarity on others, as the US administration did after 9/11 in the “war on terror”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490495/original/file-20221018-18-q01g9x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>To counter such frames of war, Butler proposes an ethics of non-violence, based on the understanding that we become ourselves only in relation to others. This means that no life is fully secure, self-contained or independent. We cannot choose who shares the planet with us, and they can always hurt us. Ultimately, if we are to survive together, we must learn to acknowledge and live with mutual vulnerability, as challenging as that may be.</p>
<p>This may sound idealistic, but it is not an ethics that assumes people are “nice”. It starts from the proposition that they are not. Performing non-violence will always be ambivalent and difficult, especially in a violent world. But it is in our own interests to realise that our own capacity to live a “liveable life” depends on life-sustaining conditions that also allow others (human and non-human) to live.</p>
<p>Butler finds performative enactments of this approach in some collective protests, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and the 2013 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezi_Park_protests">Gezi Park protests</a> in Turkey, in which people from different backgrounds gathered to call for a more just and equitable world.</p>
<p>Butler reminds us that vulnerability is not all bad; it is what makes life possible. All bodies must be in some way open to the world and to others. They must be able to take in and give out: to eat, breathe, speak, be intimate. A body unable to do this could not be alive. Ultimately, Butler reminds us, often poetically, that to be fully ourselves, we need each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Szorenyi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Judith Butler’s work has been enormously influential and, at times, controversial, but it is grounded in a commitment to justice and equality.
Anna Szorenyi, Lecturer in Gender Studies, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123660
2019-10-02T21:47:18Z
2019-10-02T21:47:18Z
My secret: Coming out as a gay elementary principal in an era of social conservatism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294218/original/file-20190925-51421-1vs0i9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">LGBTQ2+ teachers may face clashing expectations between their political and professional identities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The issue of sex education is in the media now as it was in spring 2018 when politicians promised to <a href="https://theconversation.com/doug-fords-reboot-of-sex-education-in-ontario-same-as-it-ever-was-122299">repeal contemporary sex-ed curriculum</a> “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4198420/doug-ford-sex-ed-curriculum/">based on ideology</a>” and parental lobby groups called for the end of so-called “<a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/07/12/opponents-of-sex-ed-curriculum-applaud-repeal.html">irresponsible” sex-ed curriculum</a>.</p>
<p>I was serving as an elementary school principal at the time and I received written requests from parents to exempt their child from health education classes in which sex education was covered. </p>
<p>As principals, we are obligated to provide the requested accommodations, provided they meet certain criteria. </p>
<p>But as <a href="https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/89714/3/MacKinnon_Kenneth_H_201806_EdD_thesis.pdf">someone who completed a doctorate in education about how
men and women legitimize and promote traditional masculine values or masculinity within the principal role</a> <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/61762">in elementary schools</a> — and as someone who researches educational leadership — I could not ignore the potential difficulties that these sex-ed exemption requests present, particularly for principals who identify with the LGBTQ+ community.</p>
<p>As principals we are expected to develop, maintain and enrich connections between the school and the wider community to support student development. This requires a form of leadership that is grounded in developing relationships. The question becomes: what potential impact might conflicting political viewpoints around the sex-ed curriculum have on these relationships and how are educators, children and families impacted as a result? </p>
<p>As I sat at my desk, in the far corner behind the pen caddy and telephone, visible only to me, lay a small framed picture of me and my husband. My secret: I am gay. I am now on leave, teaching educational leadership, scheduled to return to my school in January.</p>
<p>For the sake of all employees, school communities and children, our school systems need to find a space in which LGBTQ+ educators might re-imagine their professional and political identities. </p>
<h2>‘Out and proud’ versus professional</h2>
<p>Catherine Connell, an associate professor of sociology at Boston University, writes of the <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520278233/schools-out">clashing expectations LGBTQ+ teachers face between their political and professional identities</a>. For many of these teachers, this becomes a no-win situation in which they are unable to find ways of merging these identities. They fear professional recrimination should they decide to come out and disapproval from members of the LGBTQ+ movement if they choose to remain professionally closeted.</p>
<p>This same conflict exists for principals, who, among other things, are responsible for creating and maintaining a school environment which is inclusive of all. As a leader, I want to advocate for calls to action for <a href="https://www.principals.ca/en/opc-resources/resources/Documents/OPC_Fall16-web.pdf">justice and reconciliation</a> and <a href="https://www.principals.ca/en/opc-resources/resources/Documents/4271-OPC_Fall18-web.pdf">culturally responsive leadership that supports diversity, equity and inclusion</a>. </p>
<p>But I struggle with competing ideologies around what I feel is my duty to come out as a gay principal — and my desire to avoid any sort of conflict as a result.</p>
<p>Fortunately, we live in a time when the rights of persons who identify with the LGBTQ+ community are enshrined within the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html">Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a>. I have been fortunate not to have been discriminated against as an employee, or as a citizen of Canada because of my sexual identity. This is also influenced by the privileges I have as a white male.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294885/original/file-20190930-194884-p53it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pride Toronto 2019 parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2019 Pride Toronto <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/03/26/pride-toronto-festival-to-recognize-50th-anniversary-of-the-stonewall-riots.html">theme was “Freedom”</a> in remembrance of some of the first freedom fighters in the LGBTQ+ community. For me, Pride parades provide opportunities to celebrate our sexual diversities. They also act as a reminder to me of the responsibility I have as an educator and principal to champion these rights and become a role model.</p>
<h2>Rise of social conservatism</h2>
<p>Jim Farney, a professor in the department of politics and international studies at the University of Regina, traces the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2019.1589953">development and influence of social conservatism in Canadian political parties</a>. Farney describes the emergence of social conservatism in North America as a distinct subset of the conservative movement that opposes the rise of LGBTQ+ rights, among other issues.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294882/original/file-20190930-194852-1jj0k30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Ontario Tory leadership hopeful Tanya Granic Allen participates in a debate in Ottawa, Feb. 28, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my province of Ontario, we saw the rise of former Progressive Conservative candidate <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tanya-granic-allen-no-longer-an-ontario-pc-party-candidate-after-irresponsible-comments-doug-ford-says-1.4650360">Tanya Granic Allen</a>, a social conservative who, although was eventually removed from her candidacy <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tanya-granic-allen-under-fire-for-online-comments-against-gay-marriage-muslim-dress-1.4613483">after facing charges of homophobia and Islamophobia</a>, was initially welcomed by the party leadership. </p>
<p>As president of <a href="http://www.pafe.ca/">Parents as First Educators (PAFE)</a>, Granic Allen has supported an agenda aimed at discrediting the gains Canada has made in terms of gender equality and expression. </p>
<p>As the letters from parents requesting accommodation to be removed from sex education arrived on my desk, I noted that this was the very first time I had ever received such letters in this community, and I could not ignore the timing of their receipt. </p>
<p>They were carefully worded so as not to contradict the <a href="http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/ontario-human-rights-code">Ontario Human Rights Code</a>, and it was clear to me that these were form letters produced by organizations in favour of repealing the curriculum. </p>
<p>While parents of course have the right to make such requests, I could not help but to interpret these letters as a stance against a curriculum that supported and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4079957/wynne-defends-sex-ed-plan/">represented the lived realities of our LGBTQ+ community</a>.</p>
<h2>A way forward?</h2>
<p>One potential response to such letters could have been to invite parents into my office to discuss their concerns and address any questions they might have about the health curriculum. This is what I should have done. As a gay man, however, I felt uncomfortable with this. </p>
<p>What if parents visiting my office happened to see the photograph of me and my husband? How would I navigate this conversation as a gay man knowing how strongly I feel about gains made by LGBTQ+ social movements?</p>
<p>During this time, I remember feeling a distinct and terrible anxiety around being discovered, and, I began to think about the issues that might come about should these parents discover my sexual identity. </p>
<p>Catherine Connell comments on the history of teachers needing to uphold a “moral authority” with respect to the maintenance of childhood innocence, who must be shielded from any notion of sexuality. </p>
<p>This is a fallacy as this so-called professional stance forces LGBTQ+ educators to maintain and uphold a sexually neutral position, while their heterosexual colleagues display their family portraits in full view. </p>
<p>As a principal, I feel the pressure to maintain this neutrality and yet, there remains in me a strong urge to be out and proud in support of those children who might be questioning their sexual identity.</p>
<p>Nick Rumens, a professor in human resource management at the University of Portsmouth, writes of the need to “queer” our workplaces: that means he <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Business-Queering-Organization-Sexualities/Rumens/p/book/9781138814011">questions and formulates new ways that LGBTQ+ identities and sexualities are experienced and represented in the workplace</a> in response to ongoing struggles for queer existence in organizations.</p>
<p>As for myself, this article represents the beginning of my journey, as I merge my identities: I am a principal, who happens to be gay.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenneth MacKinnon is affiliated with the Liberal party.</span></em></p>
For the sake of all employees, school communities and children, our school systems need to find a space in which LGBTQ+ educators might re-imagine their professional and political identities.
Kenneth MacKinnon, Instructor in Educational Leadership, Western University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103702
2018-10-14T10:37:05Z
2018-10-14T10:37:05Z
Why same-sex marriage is not the ultimate tool for queer liberation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239678/original/file-20181008-72130-1vfl1q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There must be a queerer way to think about marriage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Felipe Trueba/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is same-sex marriage a valid option for gay and lesbian people? In my research I am among those who have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282773508_A_critical_engagement_Analysing_same-sex_marriage_discourses_in_To_Have_and_to_Hold_The_Making_of_Same-Sex_Marriage_in_South_Africa_2008_-_A_queer_perspective">vociferously argued</a> about the pitfalls of same-sex marriage. I, and others like me, voice our apprehensions in the original radical spirit of “queer”. We look at something that seems so right and interrogate it in a strange or odd way. </p>
<p>These voices are muted and their opinions struggle to emerge in popular discourses about same-sex marriage because they are incorrectly thrown into the homophobic pot.</p>
<p>It is vital to make room for “queer” ideas about same-sex marriage. “Queer” refers to anyone who is at odds with the norm and who resists the mostly white middle class stereotype of “the family”. </p>
<p>Among the papers I’ve written on this issue, <a href="https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=F5mELTgAAAAJ&hl=en#d=gs_md_cita-d&p=&u=%2Fcitations%3Fview_op%3Dview_citation%26hl%3Den%26user%3DF5mELTgAAAAJ%26citation_for_view%3DF5mELTgAAAAJ%3A_Qo2XoVZTnwC%26tzom%3D-120">one</a> is triggered by the fact that the legalisation of same-sex marriage in South Africa in 2006 was greeted as a euphoric victory for numerous gay and lesbian people and this victory was documented in the <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/fanele-73640/to-have-and-to-hold-detail">2008 book</a> <em>To Have and to Hold: The Making of Same-Sex Marriage in South Africa</em>. </p>
<p>The editors of the volume argue that the various stakeholders who supported same-sex marriage “adequately interrogated the role and function of marriage”. I put this claim to the test and conclude that, rather than opening a space for the “recognition of diverse sexualities and relationship forms”, the Civil Union Act is limited to those people who self-identify as gay or lesbian. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00020184.2019.1584484">new paper</a>, I argue that the literature on same-sex marriage in South Africa before and after the passing of the Civil Union Act 2006, while acknowledging queer critique, resolves such critique in favour of the “right” to marry. I also argue for the necessity for a queer anti-homophobic critique of same-sex marriage to broaden debates about recognition.</p>
<p>There is much to be learned from the many versions of “nonstandard” families in South Africa, where I live and conduct my research. These versions are not based in the myth of marriage and all that entails: the monogamy, the children, the picket fence and the respectability. A person needs only to look around exactly where they are and they will see how diversely people choose to live their lives. </p>
<p>And yet the idea that same-sex marriage is somehow a form of liberation is carried through in the vast majority of popular writing, including that <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?adapter=pg2&date=all&language=en&q=same+sex+marriage&sort=relevancy">by academics</a>. But there is actually a large amount of anti-homophobic academic and everyday writing from thinkers and activists that probes the numerous problems associated with same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>Perhaps the problem is that by questioning same-sex marriage you it could mean that you’re automatically a homophobe. However, the under-represented voices I’m referring to here are certainly not homophobic. Many are queer. </p>
<h2>Queer ideas</h2>
<p>One of the problems with same-sex marriage is that it is, by definition, very limited. It only refers to self-identified gay and lesbian people and this runs against the contemporary grain of society at large which is slowly coming to terms with the fact that identity could be flexible.</p>
<p>The other problem is that the many rewards of marriage are only available to married gay and lesbian married people. Why can’t all these delicious rewards be available to all people regardless of their marital status. </p>
<p>And finally, the fierce pro-same-sex marriage debates that are happening all over the world are so loud that they have drowned out centuries of critical <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4416225.pdf">feminist perspectives</a> and activism on marriage.</p>
<p>Marriage is the place where <a href="http://archive.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/beyond-capitalism/item/1002-marriage-will-never-set-us-free">the state regulates</a> the family, gender, race and patriarchy. How on earth did these truths get sidelined for a stamp of approval? Radical feminist Paula Ettelbrick <a href="https://www.nationalists.org/library/misc/marriage-path-to-liberation.html">asked</a> more than 20 years ago:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since when is marriage a path to liberation?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But for many, same-sex marriage is a path to liberation; it is claimed by pro same -sex marriage activists that this act has the potential to transform the institutions of both marriage and gender. </p>
<p>The reality, as social theorist Michael Warner has <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Trouble_with_Normal.html?id=nvPEDrScjmAC&redir_esc=y">argued</a>, is that married gay and lesbian people are just as likely to</p>
<blockquote>
<p>divorce, cheat, and abuse each other as anyone else. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, rather than being a path to liberation, same-sex marriage provides the perfect tool for the state to control and monitor who is and who is not respectable.</p>
<h2>“Marriage” beyond the state</h2>
<p>So what would a queer re-imagining of marriage look like? Nothing. That’s because the most powerful way to oppose marriage is simply to not get married. </p>
<p>Philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=UfCTAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=rework+and+revise+the+social+organisation+of+friendship,+sexual+contacts,+and+community+to+produce+non-state-centered+forms+of+support+and+alliance&source=bl&ots=BuI9OiodFe&sig=YalnCc8FVCDk6svw-4L7LBxJYV8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV-fLToPbdAhWBAcAKHeIfC50Q6AEwB3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=rework%20and%20revise%20the%20social%20organisation%20of%20friendship%2C%20sexual%20contacts%2C%20and%20community%20to%20produce%20non-state-centered%20forms%20of%20support%20and%20alliance&f=false">noted that</a> the task at hand should be to “rework and revise the social organisation of friendship, sexual contacts, and community to produce non-state-centered forms of support and alliance”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>TL McCormick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It is vital to make room for “queer” ideas about same-sex marriage.
TL McCormick, Lecturer of Applied Linguistics, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103159
2018-09-18T20:39:25Z
2018-09-18T20:39:25Z
Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236785/original/file-20180918-158228-1rq2212.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The term 'cisgender' entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a term and concept, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-difference-between-being-transgender-and-doing-drag-100521">transgender</a>” is now firmly embedded in common parlance and popular consciousness. In Australia in the last few weeks alone there have been major news stories about transgender footballer <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-10/transgender-footballer-hannah-mouncey-withdraws-from-aflw-draft/10221730">Hannah Mouncey</a>; Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments regarding <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/gender-whisperers-scott-morrison-criticised-for-hateful-tweet-about-trans-students">“gender whisperers”</a>; and the University of Western Australia cancelling a talk by an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-17/uwa-cancels-talk-by-controversial-academic-transgender-views/10132400">anti-transgender US academic</a>.</p>
<p>“Transgender” has an important linguistic counterpart that is not as common but is gaining prevalence. The term “cisgender” (pronounced “sis-gender”) refers to people whose gender identity and expression matches the biological sex they were assigned when they were born. For instance, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/26/moby-i-was-disappointed-to-be-heterosexual">musician Moby has said</a> he is a “run-of-the-mill, cisgender, heterosexual male”. </p>
<p>“Cisgender” was introduced so our language could be more fair and inclusive, and to make us more aware of everybody’s experiences of gender. However, the term has critics as well as fans.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-difference-between-being-transgender-and-doing-drag-100521">Explainer: the difference between being transgender and doing drag</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are the word’s origins?</h2>
<p>The prefix “trans-” comes from Latin, meaning “across from” or “on the other side of”. In contrast, the prefix “cis-” means “on this side of”. It is commonly used in chemistry and in relation to geographic features, such as in “cisalpine”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236822/original/file-20180918-158237-13c1hp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Cisgender” was coined in academic journal articles in the 1990s. It started to gain broader popularity from around 2007 when transgender theorist Julia Serano discussed it in her book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/605663.Whipping_Girl">Whipping Girl</a>. Over the next decade, activists, scholars and online forums helped to, literally, spread the word. </p>
<p>It is largely used by those who are sensitive to issues of gender and identity. Nevertheless, its general acceptance and endurance as a term and concept was acknowledged when it was added to the <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cisgender">Oxford English Dictionary in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>Cisgender relates specifically to gender rather than sexuality. A person can be cisgender (often abbreviated to just cis) and have any sort of sexuality. For example, two men may both be cisgender but one straight and one gay.</p>
<p>Because it is a personal identity category, it is difficult to know just from looking at someone whether they are cisgender.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236821/original/file-20180918-158222-qehccp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moby pictured in 2009: he recently described himself as a ‘run-of-the-mill, cisgender, heterosexual male’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Estela Silva/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why is it useful?</h2>
<p>This term is seen has having some important uses. One is that it helps us distinguish between sexual identity and gender identity. However, its most significant function is perhaps that naming something allows us to think about it more clearly.</p>
<p>Having a word for a “just usual” gender identity enables us to understand it is actually a specific gender identity in itself. The idea that people are cisgender therefore shows that, no matter who you are, the relationship between your body and your sense of self is particular.</p>
<p>Drawing attention to gender in this way can also highlight that some people are disadvantaged because of their gender identity. That is, this term can create awareness that people who are not cisgender often have a harder time in our society than those who are. For example, trans men and women report <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/education/face-facts/face-facts-lesbian-gay-bisexual-trans-and-intersex-people#fn11">higher levels of physical and verbal abuse</a> than cisgender people. </p>
<h2>Detractors</h2>
<p>Despite the inclusive potential of the word, it also has many detractors who warn about possible negative impacts. Some believe it sets up a <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/02/i-dont-feel-i-match-my-gender-so-what-does-it-mean-be-called-cis">harmful distinction</a> between transgender people and everybody else. In this sense, the term can be counter-intuitive and work against transgender becoming more accepted and normalised.</p>
<p>It can also falsely imply that only transgender people experience any form of mismatch between their body/sex and their gender identity. For example, lesbian, gay and bisexual people in particular may be deemed cisgender but experience conflict between their gender identity and how society expects them to express their gender.</p>
<p>Others have identified the term does not properly account for <a href="https://hidaviloria.com/caught-in-the-gender-binary-blind-spot-intersex-erasure-in-cisgender-rhetoric/">intersex people</a>. Because intersex people have atypical sex characteristics (for example genitals, hormones, reproductive glands and/or chromosomes), it is problematic to define their gender identity in relation to the sex they were born.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/surgery-to-make-intersex-children-normal-should-be-banned-76952">Surgery to make intersex children 'normal' should be banned</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>From these perspectives, cisgender is limiting and divisive because it indicates there are only two possible gender identities linked to only two sexes.</p>
<p>Finally, some people think “cisgender” will not be fully integrated into common language because of how unusual it is to spell and say. For this reason, clearer terms such as “non-trans” have been suggested instead.</p>
<p>As our understanding of gender continues to change, the words we have to describe our experiences of it will also evolve. Ideally these words will help us rectify inequalities between gender identities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna McIntyre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
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.
Joanna McIntyre, Lecturer in Screen and Media Studies, University of the Sunshine Coast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/99876
2018-07-12T15:19:00Z
2018-07-12T15:19:00Z
The ‘macaroni’ scandal of 1772: ‘gay’ trial a century before Oscar Wilde
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227395/original/file-20180712-27018-53ddmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Macaroni, A real Character at the Late Masquerade.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Dawe, 1773 (via Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much derision was directed toward aesthetes in the late 19th century, who, led by Oscar Wilde, declared their devotion to beauty in all its forms. That moment in the history of men and their fashions is remembered today because of the fate of Wilde, imprisoned for what was then the crime of “gross indecency”. But this was not the first sensational trial of a high-profile homosexual. That had happened long before, such as in the notorious “macaroni” case of 1772. </p>
<p>Over the centuries, all manner of dandies have attempted to make their place in society. Wilde’s predecessor, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beau-Brummell-English-dandy">George Bryan “Beau” Brummell</a> became an arbiter of men’s fashion in Regency England despite his obscure social origins and lack of interest in women. Part of the secret of his success was his cultivation of a refined but understated style that avoided the kind of flashiness that could get a man condemned for “effeminate” flamboyance. </p>
<p>In the 1760s and 1770s, there was an explosion of public interest in <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/05/25/macaroni-the-highly-excessive-fashion-trend-of-the-18th-century/">the “macaronis”</a>, fashionable society gents who were given that name because, in the eyes of the penny press of the day, they committed such cardinal sins as rejecting good old English roast beef for dainty foods from continental Europe – such as pasta. Those finicky eaters, who also sported excessive French fashions in clothing, were in some ways the predecessors of Wildean aesthetes, but they have largely been forgotten today.</p>
<p>Wilde, by contrast, is remembered because of his talent and for the way he was treated by the British legal system. In the 1980s and 1990s, he became a kind of “gay icon” with a new relevance to a generation struggling with the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. His disgrace at the end of the 19th century was reinterpreted as a kind of queer martyrdom that presaged later struggles for lesbian and gay liberation.</p>
<h2>Queer theory</h2>
<p>Enthusiasm for Wilde on the part of lesbian and gay activists in the late 20th century was connected to the rise of a new form of cultural and literary analysis known as “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15299710903316513">queer theory</a>”. This development was heavily influenced by the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault on the ways in which textual discourse operates. The focus was no longer on identifying gay men or lesbians in past centuries but on identifying when and why those terms were used. </p>
<p>It was this thinking that led the prominent scholar of <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obituary-alan-sinfield-6rlgwlngp">Alan Sinfield</a>, a leading British queer theorist, to identity the Wilde trials of 1895 as a “queer moment” when dandyism became linked with same sex desire. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227376/original/file-20180712-27039-8ukd0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1051&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Print: ‘How d'ye like me’, Carington Bowles, London, 1772.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The stereotypical proto-homosexual man emerged as a being that was attracted to younger men, who was theatrical rather than understated, effeminate rather than manly, and artistic rather than sporting. But it was not true that Wilde became obvious as a homosexual during the course of his trial – for the simple reason that the term “homosexual” was not reported in the British media until the time of another scandal, that surrounding the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philipp-Furst-zu-Eulenburg">Prussian Prince of Eulenburg</a>, that unfolded between 1906 and 1909.</p>
<p>And the fact is that Wilde was far from the first allegedly effeminate “sodomite” or “bugger” – and here I use terms that were widely employed at the time – to be disgraced in court.</p>
<h2>The scandal of Captain Jones</h2>
<p>Hester Thrale (1741 - 1821) was a member of the literary circle surrounding the famous encyclopediast Dr Samuel Johnson. She <a href="http://www.thrale.com/thraliana_diary_mrs_hester_lynch_thrale">kept a fascinating diary</a> in which she noted a wide variety of sexual foibles and eccentricities in the society circles of her time. She had a striking ability to recognise homosexuals (both male and female). Thus, in the entry for March 29, 1794 she discussed “finger-twirlers” as being a “decent word for sodomite”. In one passage, recorded in late March or early April 1778, she recalled the time six years earlier when a certain Captain Jones had been convicted of crimes against nature, and sentenced to die: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was a Gentleman famous for his Invention in the Art of making Fireworks, and adapting Subjects fit to be represented in that Genre; & had already entertained the Town with two particular Devices which were exhibited at Marylebone Gardens & greatly admired: viz: the Forge of Vulcan in the Cave of Mount Etna, & the calling of Eurydice out of Hell – If he is pardoned says Stevens, He may shew off the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; it will have an admirable Effect.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jones was a man of fashion in society who had been convicted at the Old Bailey for sodomising a 13-year-old boy. The link that Thrale made between camp dandyism and same sex scandal was rife in the papers of the time. As one correspondent put it in a letter to the Public Ledger on August 5, 1772, Captain Jones was “too much engaged in every scene of idle Dissipation and wanton Extravagance”. He was referred to as this “MILITARY MACCARONI [original emphasis]”. And, the writer concluded, “therefore, ye Beaux, ye sweet-scented, simpering He-She things, deign to learn wisdom from the death of a Brother”.</p>
<p>Arguments were brought forward that the boy’s testimony was unreliable and Jones was granted a royal pardon on the condition that he left the country. Members of the public seethed with indignation at the thought of an establishment cover-up and a variety of men fled to the Continent. </p>
<p>The macaronis have, however, been remembered for their style rather than for imputed sexual notoriety. We remember the uncouth revolutionary soldier who was originally mocked by the British as a “Yankee Doodle” for having “Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it macaroni”. But we’ve forgotten how queerly peculiar such an act may have seemed in the wake of a trial that bears comparison with those <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo24550741.html">endured by Wilde a century later</a>. That Americans could appropriate the song as a patriotic air implies a degree of innocence or, perhaps, of convenient forgetting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Janes is affiliated with Keele University where he is Professor of Modern History </span></em></p>
The flamboyant 18th-century ‘Macaronis’ were so called because they were said to prefer continental pasta to good old British roast beef.
Dominic Janes, Professor of Modern History, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/93269
2018-04-08T20:26:54Z
2018-04-08T20:26:54Z
Homophobia: Old problem, new disguise in ‘Love, Simon’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213748/original/file-20180409-5581-15ucz07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'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? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(20th Century Fox)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are gays and lesbians generally accepted by North American society? The answer you are most likely to hear is, most decidedly, yes. Looking at the advances in civil rights, it would seem that the lives of gays and lesbians have much improved. </p>
<p>But the fact is homophobia hasn’t disappeared, it’s merely in stealth mode. Just because people don’t use the word “fag” in polite society doesn’t mean there has been a fundamental change in the human heart.</p>
<p>It is in media representations of gay men that the new “stealth homophobia” most clearly shows its face. Gay men are out and proud on some TV shows — the new incarnation of <em>Queer Eye</em> for instance. But <em>Queer Eye</em> still offers effeminate gay men who make us laugh when they recommend skin products or dress hair. </p>
<p>This year’s Oscar winner for best movie, <em>The Shape of Water</em>, portrayed a sympathetic older gay friend (played by Richard Jenkins) who is gentle, effeminate, and of course, sad — an archetype that has dominated American cinema since <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2014/06/20/why_rebel_without_a_cause_was_a_milestone_for_gay_rights.html">Sal Mineo’s Plato</a> in <em>Rebel Without a Cause</em>. </p>
<p>Recently, I saw the gay rom-com film, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/31/gay-cinema-homosexuality-coming-out-hollywood-gilbey-sexuality"><em>Love, Simon</em></a> in downtown Toronto. The theatre was filled with college-aged students who mostly seemed to sympathize with the leading character — a gay, closeted, high school student. </p>
<p>Simon (played by Nick Robinson) courts our tolerance by accentuating his normalcy, not his difference. His tagline — which he repeats again and again — is: “I’m just like you.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213751/original/file-20180409-5584-c82se4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Love, Simon’ is considered to be the first mainstream teen romantic comedy with a gay lead character (played by Nick Robinson, second from left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(20th Century Fox)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That <em>Love, Simon</em> is being hailed as a breakthrough gay film is incredibly ironic. <em>The Guardian</em> recently reported that “mainstream cinema has begun to treat gay love stories like any other romance.” </p>
<p>The problem is that in films like <em>Love, Simon</em> the leading character is only deemed sympathetic when he is squeaky clean — as opposed to being complicated, real, quirky, flawed or sexual. No <em>Fifty Shades</em> here!</p>
<p>There is no nudity, no sex and very little physical proximity between the gay characters in what purports to be a gay romance. In the end, Simon finds his true love and the two boys kiss chastely on a ferris wheel. The young audience greeted this with simultaneous cheers and moans.</p>
<p>What is most telling about <em>Love, Simon</em> is a relatively minor but significant character: an effeminate student of colour, Ethan, (played by Clark Moore). Unlike Simon, he is most decidedly not like everyone else. And when he comes out, he is ridiculed by other students. He is laughed at by them — and us.</p>
<p><em>Love, Simon</em> makes it clear why homophobia is not about to disappear any day soon.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213646/original/file-20180406-5597-191xyzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ethan (played by Roy Moore) is an effeminate character in ‘Love, Simon.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(20th Century Fox)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The fear of effeminacy</h2>
<p>This fear of effeminacy in males is a deep cultural anxiety. Of course all gay men are not effeminate, but in Western culture, male on male desire is inevitably associated with effeminacy because sex between men involves one man submitting himself to another. </p>
<p>Guy Hocquenghem, one of the first queer theorists, wrote about this in his 1972 book, <em><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/homosexual-desire">Homosexual Desire</a></em>. In the book, he quotes psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, from 1915: “A man who in intercourse with men feels himself to be a woman…and this not only in genital intercourse, but in all relations of life.” </p>
<p>Why is it so horrifying that a man might act or feel like a woman? </p>
<p>Historian Linda Dowling traces this distrust of effeminate men through Greek and Roman times until its full flowering during the 19th century. She explains that effeminate men <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43500">were considered idle and irresponsible in the public sphere, thus signalling decadence and danger</a> for society’s institutions. </p>
<p>The effeminatus was deemed socially irresponsible because he was suspected not to carry out his procreative and martial responsibilities. She wrote: “the issue of sterility…had always been central to the symbolism of effeminacy and effeminatus,” and also the effeminatus is judged “incapable of discharging the martial obligation to the polis.” </p>
<h2>But we’ve arrived</h2>
<p>To be sure, we have made civil rights advances in gay rights since those days, and rapidly since 1969.</p>
<p>In 1969, Pierre Trudeau, then Canada’s minister of justice, famously stated: “<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/omnibus-bill-theres-no-place-for-the-state-in-the-bedrooms-of-the-nation">There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation</a>”. The same year, Canada introduced the Criminal Law Amendment Act legalizing same sex acts between consenting adults in private. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213626/original/file-20180406-5593-vyv23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We’ve come far since the 1981 bath house raids which police officially apologized for in 2016. In this file photo, a member of the gay community wearing a swastika and a sign stating ‘Fascism is alive and well and breeding in Toronto’ walks past a police officer as he leaves a police commission hearing, Toronto, Ont., Feb. 12, 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/UPC/Harvey</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four years later in 1973 the first Gay Pride events began to pop up across Canada. The City of Toronto officially recognized Pride Day in Toronto around 1981 — the same time that the police Bath House Raids in Toronto galvanized support for the gay and lesbian community. Same sex marriage was legalized in Canada by the <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-31.5/page-1.html">Civil Marriage Act in 2005.</a></p>
<p>The advances are not only in civil rights. During the 1980s <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/hrc-issue-brief-hiv-aids-and-the-lgbt-community">HIV and AIDs was a public health crisis for the gay community</a>. Gay men blamed homophobic lawmakers for their lack of support for research and treatment. </p>
<p>But by the mid-1990s American immunologist Dr. David Ho introduced triple therapy retrovirals — commonly known as the “AIDS cocktail” — which effectively transformed AIDs/HIV from a killer syndrome into a chronic illness. Today the <a href="https://www.dailyxtra.com/ontario-will-subsidize-hiv-prevention-drugs-and-sooner-than-you-think-79434">Ontario government subsidizes the cost of pre-exposure prophylactic drug PrEP</a>, which when taken properly, is confirmed as being 99 per cent effective in preventing infection from HIV.</p>
<p>And finally, images of gay and lesbian couples are everywhere these days — or at least it seems that way. TD Bank has featured loving gay and lesbian couples in its advertising campaigns — along with Tide, Red Rose Tea and McDonald’s. Everyone just loves Ru Paul’s <em>Drag Race</em>. A gay movie, <em>Call Me By Your Name</em>, recently took home an Oscar this year, following the tradition set by <em>Moonlight</em> last year.</p>
<p>Wow, I guess we’ve arrived, haven’t we?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213620/original/file-20180406-5569-xnr4kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moonlight received best Oscar last year and an award for the best on-screen kiss between actors Ashton Sanders and Jharrel Jerome at the MTV Movie Awards, beating out fellow nominees Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (La La Land).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(MTV Movie Awards)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Stealth homophobia</h2>
<p>Despite this progress and the legalization of gay marriage in many countries, toleration of diverse sexualities is pretty much confined to large western cities. One need only step gingerly out of the politically correct downtown Toronto bubble <a href="https://theconversation.com/ensuring-equity-for-lgbtq-canadians-on-the-road-92246">to feel the chill</a>.</p>
<p>Within the province of Ontario, Doug Ford — who some think may be the next premier of Ontario — opposes the new sex education curriculum due in part to the inclusion of gender identity. </p>
<p>That’s just in Ontario; try being openly gay or lesbian in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/10/jamaica-first-gay-pride-celebration-symbol-change">Jamaica</a>, Russia, Uganda, Lithuania or Zanzibar. It may be just a matter of keeping your identity quiet in places like these. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-islamic-state-anti-gay-violence-20160613-snap-story.html">But in Syria, your punishment might entail being blindfolded and thrown from a tall building.</a></p>
<p>And though in North America AIDS has become a manageable illness, <a href="http://www.aidsactionnow.org/">Toronto’s AIDS ACTION NOW reminds us</a> that “in Canada, individuals are being charged and prosecuted for not disclosing their HIV status, irrespective of the possibility of transmission or whether transmission occurs…. Canada (Ontario in particular) is a world leader in unjustly criminalizing people with HIV.” </p>
<p>AIDS ACTION NOW quotes federal Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould: “[T]he over-criminalization of HIV nondisclosure discourages many individuals from being tested and seeking treatment, and further stigmatizes those living with HIV or AIDS.” Homophobia still deeply affects people living with HIV.</p>
<p>You might say that fear of the “effeminatus” are antique. But as critical theorist <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3631697.html">David Halperin reminds us</a>, inside the modern association of homosexuality with femininity we can see “the force with which earlier pre-homosexual sexual categories continue to exert their authority.” </p>
<p>Homophobia has been around for a long time. And sadly, such deep seated cultural prejudices are not easily challenged by reason.</p>
<p>One might ask, will media producers ever get it? What depictions of gay men are suitable or “correct”? It’s important to remember that art and entertainment are merely barometers of culture; they can only offer us a clue to the zeitgeist. </p>
<p>Making “rules” or “quotas” for representation will change nothing. It is only when our society values men who are gentle, effeminate and passive over men who are strong, masculine and aggressive that there will be a sea change.</p>
<p>I, for one, will not be holding my breath.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E0cbWdlQg_8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Love, Simon’ trailer (20th Century Fox)</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sky Gilbert receives funding from Ontario Arts Council</span></em></p>
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.
Sky Gilbert, Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph, University of Guelph
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90455
2018-02-28T03:42:25Z
2018-02-28T03:42:25Z
The Second Woman: a 24-hour lesson in the gendered performance of intimacy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207974/original/file-20180227-140178-1x0sv2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nat Randall on stage and screen in The Second Woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Second Woman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea that <a href="http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=1193">femininity is a social performance</a>, while masculinity simply sets the co-ordinates for the social, explains why so many classic melodramas turn on the figure of the actress, such as Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042192/">All About Eve</a> (1950), Douglas Sirk’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052918/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Imitation of Life</a> (1959), Ingmar Bergman’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060827/">Persona</a> (1966) or John Cassavetes’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079672/">Opening Night</a> (1977).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeW2PTnrGro">Inspired by the latter</a>, Nat Randall and Anna Breckon have co-created <a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/the-second-woman">The Second Woman</a>, which will be presented for the fourth time this month at the Perth Festival. Originally developed for Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival in 2016, it was subsequently performed at both Dark Mofo! in Tasmania and Liveworks in Sydney in 2017.</p>
<p>It is testimony to The Second Woman’s near perfection as performance that there can be no possibility of a plot spoiler. After all, its high-concept premise is broadly touted in the promotional materials. It is therefore no secret to anyone turning up that Randall will repeatedly star in <a href="http://performancespace.com.au/events/liveworks-2017-the-second-woman/">the same scene adapted from Opening Night</a> opposite <a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/the-second-woman">a hundred publically solicited men</a> across <a href="https://www.salarts.org.au/event/the-second-woman-dark-mofo-2017/">a 24-hour endurance performance</a> that will be simultaneously <a href="https://2015.acmi.net.au/live-events/past-live-events/2016/the-second-woman/">remediated on a big screen via a live feed from multiple cameras</a>.</p>
<p>In superficial ways, the concept is simple. A woman in a room is joined by a man. There is something unfinished between them that needs talking out. They have a drink and share the takeaway noodles he has brought. She puts on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjcjqBDu_k">some music</a>. They dance, then break away from each other. The man leaves. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It is the repetition that rivets. </p>
<p>Across the course of 24 hours, this scene of repair and estrangement plays out a hundred times with a hundred different men. Played by Randall in a cinematically iconic red dress and blonde wig that pays homage to <a href="https://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/blog_post/primary_image/interviews/true-to-life-an-interview-with-gena-rowlands/primary_Gena-Rowlands-GR-2016.jpg">Gena Rowland’s Opening Night character</a>, the woman remains the same but becomes progressively more exhausted as the men keep coming at her with their conflicting demands and brute physicality.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207975/original/file-20180227-140200-7cf8pn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Randall dances with one of the hundred men.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Second Woman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The men are acting too, of course, having been recruited by an open call and the promise of a modest payment that becomes part of the staged scene, the gesture with which they are dismissed from the set. Throughout, the pared-back script and stage direction puts both figures tightly, at times awkwardly, through their paces but also leaves just enough room for improvisation so that each man can imprint his persona on the scene. </p>
<p>The effect is fascinating. Man after man is caught out performing a version of masculinity that folds under pressure and reveals something unintended but not, it turns out, wholly unexpected; something brought to light by the experimental conditions of the live scene and its relentless unfolding in real time.</p>
<p>Unlike Randall, the audience is free to come and go during the performance, which we saw at Carriageworks in Sydney. Having arrived for the Friday 6pm opening with the intention of peeling away after an hour or two, we found ourselves caught in a compulsive cycle of wanting to see one more and then one more enactment of the scene, whose increasing familiarity made the minute differences between individual performances twang with significance. </p>
<p>We are not endurance types ourselves, requiring a minimum eight-hour sleep for steady daytime functioning, so shortly after 10pm we left promising to return as soon as we woke, a plan that was literally put into play when one of us stirred at 3am and misread the time as 6am. By the time the error was discovered, we were already up and dressed, committed to returning.</p>
<h2>Stepping on stage as a man</h2>
<p>Although the requisite hundred men had been signed up for the performance, it seems reliable men can be hard to find at 3:30am. And so it was that Breckon came out and asked if we would be prepared to stand in for two of the missing men. Yes and no, we said without conferring, still swaddled in a dreamlike state. Thus, in an instant, we became two women queerly separated by the social performance of masculinity. </p>
<p>For an audience member, the gauze screens that demarcate the illuminated red box of the set bring to mind the set of a David Lynch film, perhaps <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/">Blue Velvet</a> (1986) or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/">Mulholland Dr.</a> (2001), another melodrama about actresses that fails to observe coherently the rules of continuity. </p>
<p>But, as one of us found, from the unexpected perspective of an erstwhile man who has walked the lonely corridor from the stage manager’s silent countdown to the single door that opens into the world of The Second Woman, the gauze intensifies the performance encounter by muffling the presence of the audience. It also filters out the all-female crew roaming the perimeter of the room like cyborgs - half-woman, half-camera - under the direction of EO Gill. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207969/original/file-20180227-120129-rzyt2l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Annamarie Jagose stands in for one of the absentee men in The Second Woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lee Wallace</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Second Woman is <a href="https://twitter.com/arjagose/status/921464011866042368">a very different experience</a> when you move beyond the relative safety of being in the audience. You approach Randall, who is standing looking out the window, whisper your actual name to reset the action, kiss the back of her neck and trickily clasp her left hand with your right. And all that before you deliver your first line: “I’m sorry I was so crude to you. You shocked me.” </p>
<p>“Crude” was an unfamiliar word to deliver in that context and there was another challenge ahead in the run-on line: “You are capable and you are pretty and you are wonderful and you are talented and you are great and outstanding and…” </p>
<p>While wanting to be faithful to the script, even in a scene that had the whiff of infidelity, the feminist that persisted inside the assigned male role couldn’t help but substitute “beautiful” for “pretty” as the cameras rolled. </p>
<p>Although resisting preset scripts is familiar work to many women, whatever their orientation, it can still come as a surprise to many men, including most of those clustered backstage nervously going through their lines as if what they said, or how they said it, could determine the course of onstage events. </p>
<p>It does not seem to cross their mind that Randall and Breckon’s genius ensures that the space inside the box belongs to the half-cut blonde tottering around on heels that make her ankles swell to the point where she can no longer kick her shoes off as she did in the first 12 hours of the performance. </p>
<p>“It didn’t go like I expected,” said one man returning backstage after exiting the red room, cash in hand, “Acting is really hard.” </p>
<p>It is also really hard, it turns out, to be left in the audience to watch your female partner, ostensibly a man but in no way different to the woman you were just sleeping with, break up with another translucently beautiful woman in a staged mise-en-scene that is amplified by fractionally delayed screen projection and whatever else your subconscious brings to the scene.</p>
<p>Once the dancing starts and the wild crosscut editing takes off in rhythm with the music, the levels of agitation rise until Randall’s woman collapses <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57556/poem-lana-turner-has-collapsed">like Frank O'Hara’s Lana Turner</a>, quietly resetting the scene for whatever resolution this man can wring from the alternate lines she has been given: “I loved you./ I never loved you.” </p>
<p>Fifty bucks is all we get to show for the late-night lesson in gender and melodrama administered by Breckon and Randall: the rest is lost to the ephemeral nature of performance. So, before you answer the call to participate, know this: yes, this endurance piece is about heterosexual scenarios that seem ingrained but it is also about queer patterns of displacement and deferral.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZ5Umr_NsjA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Recycling the title of the play within Opening Night, The Second Woman subtly captures the <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1688.html">“particular quality of twiceness”</a> that performance studies founder Richard Schnechner attributes to performance. As some theorists — and many queers — know, in this tangled system of social enactment and psychic projection, gender is also “<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1688.html">twice-behaved behaviour</a>,” for men as for women.</p>
<p>At this historical point in time when Australian <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-13/why-the-first-ssm-wedding-will-happen-in-under-a-month/9256610">gays and lesbians are newly transacting marriage vows</a>— the textbook example of <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum54/Austin_on_speech_acts.htm">a performative utterance</a>— The Second Woman reminds us that the public/private performance of intimacy undoes us all. </p>
<p><em>The Second Woman is at <a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/event/the-second-woman">Perth Festival </a>from March 3-4.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annamarie Jagose is the associate supervisor of Anna Breckon, a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Sydney.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee Wallace was an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship holder from 2012-16 for a project entitled "Reconceiving the Queer Public Sphere: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Same-Sex Couple Domesticity."</span></em></p>
In The Second Woman, actor Nat Randall replays the same scene, across 24 hours, with 100 different men. Leaving the audience to join her on stage is a thought-provoking experience.
Annamarie Jagose, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney
Lee Wallace, Associate Professor, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86465
2017-11-09T19:20:35Z
2017-11-09T19:20:35Z
Friday essay: Mapplethorpe and me
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193870/original/file-20171109-14193-18v4h5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=954%2C15%2C1586%2C1674&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Exhibition installation view of Robert Mapplethorpe: the perfect medium at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 27 Oct 2017 – 18 Feb 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">All artworks © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. Photo: AGNSW, Christopher Snee</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of this summer’s blockbuster exhibitions has just opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales — Robert Mapplethorpe: the perfect medium. There is no shortage of ways to feel old, but for someone like me, who came to queer adulthood in Australasia on a wave of North American queer theory, seeing Mapplethorpe claimed as “<a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/robert-mapplethorpe/">one of the most renowned photographers of the 20th century</a>” turns out to be one of them. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193872/original/file-20171109-14202-9earm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe.
‘Kathy Acker'1983
gelatin silver photograph
50.3 x 40.2 cm
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mapplethorpe came to prominence alongside some of the other queer artists he captures in striking portraits in this exhibition, such as Kathy Acker, David Hockney and, of course, Patti Smith. But viewing these, I’m reminded that I came of age in New Zealand and Australia in the late 1980s/early ‘90s, when queerness was mostly routed through an import-culture kind of energy scavenging that resulted in Antipodean mash-ups more ephemeral than archived.</p>
<p>Consider two such moments, not perfect but representative enough. February 1995: the MCA showed the first Australian retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work, curated by the Guggenheim Museum and titled simply Mapplethorpe. As part of the MCA’s Mardi Gras programming, I was flown from Melbourne to Sydney. I had not been to the Guggenheim, nor yet America. To fully disclose, I had not even previously been to Sydney. It would not be too much a novelistic fancification to say I had not yet been anywhere. </p>
<p>But there I was, lofted on a Saturday afternoon podium with the giant meringue of the Sydney Opera House anchoring my view and the yellow and green harbour ferries plying the middle distance, alongside no less than the literary hero of my adolescence, Edmund White; the very of-the-moment queer theorist, Douglas Crimp; and I think perhaps the Australian novelist, performance artist and my still sometimes urban companion, Fiona McGregor, although I would not bet large on the accuracy of the latter’s having been there. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193873/original/file-20171109-14159-cw1xr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe ‘Self-portrait’ 1975 gelatin silver photograph 50.3 x 40.5 cm.
Jointly acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The J Paul Getty Trust. Partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by The J Paul Getty Trust and The David Geffen Foundation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of the exhibition, I disgracefully remember almost nothing. Perhaps there is no shame in that since John McDonald, then and now the Sydney Morning Herald’s art critic, taking familiar refuge in the pose of the sophisticate enlived only by his own ennui, wrote the whole Mapplethorpe thing off as “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/robert-mapplethorpe-exhibition-art-gallery-of-nsw-to-show-controversial-us-artist-20150402-1mdz7t.html">a monumental yawn</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193875/original/file-20171109-14221-1a0ue4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe ‘Thomas’ 1987.
gelatin silver photograph 60.3 x 50.5 cm
Jointly acquired by and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The J Paul Getty Trust. Partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by The J Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>August 1995: my colleague, Chris Berry, and I were finalising production for “Australia Queer,” a special issue of the Australian literary journal, Meanjin, that we were co-editing. Infant academics both of us, having recently cut our teeth on largely North American queer theory, we were determined to serve up some solids from down under. More than 20 years later, that table of contents is still an impressive roll call: Pam Brown, Barbara Creed, Gary Dowsett, David Herkt, Kate Lilley, Fiona McGregor (again), Dorothy Porter, Christos Tsiolkas, Peter Wells, Audrey Yue, William Yang. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193879/original/file-20171109-14182-15zutt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe ‘Poppy’ 1988.
dye transfer photograph 60.6 x 50.6 cm
Jointly acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The J Paul Getty Trust. Partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by The J Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wanting the perfect cover on which our book could be judged, we considered our search over when we recollected Juan Davila’s apocalyptically soft-core rendering of Burke and Wills’ last campsite, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/abakx/5874294422">Arse End of the World</a>, exhibited the previous year at the National Gallery of Victoria. </p>
<p>Repurposing <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/keatings-rear-view-of-the-lucky-country-causes-storm-careless-remarks-have-damaged-the-pms-1425378.html">a phrase</a> that then-Prime Minister Paul Keating would neither confirm nor deny using as a descriptor of Australia, Davila’s work proved a bridge too far for our patient editor, Christina Thompson, whom we quaveringly watched hold the small transparency up to the light in her Carlton offices. </p>
<p>“Coo-ee Camp Tea. I love it,” she murmured. “And a kangaroo.” We held our breath, having exhausted our collective reservoir of queer daring. “Oh,” she said sadly, her eye suckered to the detail of an obliging kangaroo rimming Burke: “I don’t think the board would like that.”</p>
<p>November, 2017: having been viewed so many times, either in their full auratic presence or in reproduction, the distinctive visual style of Mapplethorpe’s beautiful, oversized, mostly black-and-white, square-format images seems now more classical than shocking, an effect only amplified by the curatorial clumping of the photographs into bland thematic taxonomies: Early Work, Friends and Fame, Life/Style, Eroticism, Flowers, Still Life and, cloistered in its own room behind a sanitizing advisory notice, XYZ: “This section of the exhibition contains sexually explicit material in the form of original artworks.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193881/original/file-20171109-14205-1ndo5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe ‘Joe, NYC’ 1978.
gelatin silver photograph 19.5 x 19.4 cm
Jointly acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The J Paul Getty Trust. Partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by The J Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not to say that Mapplethorpe’s pictures, as he preferred to call them, have lost their historic charge. It might be better to say, from the vantage point of Australia 2017, that they discharge their histories, like the softly crumping detonations of underwater blasting. Standing before the portrait of Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter (1979), two impassive leather-clad men bound together by chains in a chichi domestic interior, is to be reminded of a time when such images could radically unsettle the national consciousness, however strictly funding boards adhered to the rules of art photography.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193878/original/file-20171109-14193-1skwumb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe.
‘Larry and Bobby kissing’ 1979
gelatin silver photograph
50.48 × 40.16 cm
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and to The J Paul Getty Trust</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1988, the year before Mapplethorpe’s death, two major retrospectives of his work opened in America, sparking an episode in the culture wars that reverberated around the world: Robert Mapplethorpe at New York’s Whitney Museum and, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, a travelling exhibition with a title that almost rhymes with the one under current consideration, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. </p>
<p>Of course, times have changed, but it would have been easier to feel evolutionarily advanced if The Perfect Medium didn’t land in Sydney in the very week that Australia was entering the slow death throes of its marriage-equality plebiscite, a yes/no anti-conversation in which homosexuality was asked to resume its craven Please Like Me position of decades past.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193876/original/file-20171109-14167-1rzjuce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Mapplethorpe.
‘Two men dancing’ 1984
gelatin silver photograph
50.4 x 40.5 cm
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m reminded of <a href="http://as.nyu.edu/faculty/kenneth-e-silver.html">Kenneth Silver’s</a> argument that Mapplethorpe’s couple portraits —like Hockney’s — are challenging because they record not the pathology of homosexuality but its ardent domestication, thereby infringing both social orthodoxies and those of high modernism. May all gay marriages be this blatant in their refusal to sublimate sex for social reward.</p>
<p>For those who think they already have the measure of Mapplethorpe’s work or, like McDonald, want to showcase their indifference to it, then I recommend this exhibition, if only as an opportunity to see the little-known digitally remastered Lady (1984). </p>
<p>In this video, bodybuilder Lisa Lyon emerges chastely veiled and carrying flowers; strikes oiled nude poses in the foyer of a Gothic-styled pile; and reappears in black cami-knickers at the top of a staircase. She appears again nude, then again at the top of the stairs as a punky type, scowling and smoking; nude again, then again at the top of the stairs, this time like a Bonnie Tyler “Bright Eyes” songstress with windblown mane.</p>
<p>Lyon finishes her cross-cutting performance as a white-hooded penitent but the visual restraint required by closure isn’t sufficient to wipe out the high-80s rhapsody that precedes it. Lady is a great reminder that, although we might now be at home with Mapplethorpe’s symmetrical, framed sexual explicitness and aesthetic racialisations, he can still reveal the subconscious of an era we think we have outgrown.</p>
<p>Get ready for a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo">total eclipse</a> of the phallus.</p>
<p><em>Robert Mapplethorpe: the perfect medium is at AGNSW until 4 Mar 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annamarie Jagose does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
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.
Annamarie Jagose, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80407
2017-07-03T13:17:39Z
2017-07-03T13:17:39Z
Gayle Newland and the problem of equating ignorance with non-consent
<p>Having served 11 months of an eight-year prison sentence for sexual offences, Gayle Newland was <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/gayle-newland-guilty-verdict-retrial-13258056">found guilty</a> in a second trial at Manchester Crown Court of three counts of assault by penetration after having sex with a partner who believed her to be a man. </p>
<p>Her original conviction was set aside by the Court of Appeal because they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex">found it “unsafe”</a> due to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-37632913">the trial judge’s summing up</a>. Her conviction is the latest in a spate of recent prosecutions brought against young LGBTQ people for gender identity fraud: <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/agony-of-teen-victims-of-gemma-barker-752654">Gemma Barker</a> in 2012; <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9946687/18-year-old-woman-masqueraded-as-boy-to-get-girl-into-bed.html">Justine McNally</a> in 2013; <a href="http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/man-%E2%80%98guilty%E2%80%99-fraud-not-telling-girlfriend-he-was-trans070313/">Chris Wilson</a> in 2013; Gayle Newland in 2015; <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/15/woman-who-used-fake-penis-to-have-sex-with-a-woman-avoids-jail">Kyran Lee (Mason)</a>, in 2015; and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/woman-posed-as-man-to-have-sex-teenage-girls-jennifer-staines-bristol-a6948491.html">Jason Staines</a> in 2016. All of these resulted in conviction, sex offender registration and, typically, a custodial sentence.</p>
<p>In my view, prosecutions of this kind should not be started. </p>
<p>My reasons include that it is an overreach of criminal law (the criminalisation of non-coercive, desire-led intimacy is a step too far), and concern over legal inconsistency – contrast the prosecution of gender non-conforming people for sexual fraud with the fact that deceptions as to wealth, social status, drug use, criminal convictions, religious belief and/or ethnic status produce no legal consequences in the UK. Then there is discrimination: “gender history” is not only singled out for special legal attention, but it is the gender histories of young LGBTQ people, rather than people in general that appears to exhaust state interest in historical facts about gender.</p>
<p>And in the case of trans defendants, concern over the ease with which non-consent has been established despite the lack of a gap between a complainant’s belief about a lover’s gender identity and their actual gender identity.</p>
<h2>The ‘privilege of unknowing’</h2>
<p>I want to focus on Newland because the case allows for a more nuanced discussion of how we might think about consent in such cases. It might be thought that consent was clearly lacking in this deception case because of an obvious deficit between the complainant’s belief and the defendant’s actual gender identity. That is, the complainant believed the defendant to be a man, and she is not. However, and while two juries found the complainant to be ignorant of Newland’s gender identity, we should not necessarily equate “ignorance” with non-consent. </p>
<p>Specifically, I want to raise the possibility that complainant truth might, at least in part, be founded on what queer scholar, Eve Sedgwick, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/tendencies">described as</a> the “privilege of unknowing”. This phrase serves to problematise a clear distinction between ignorance and knowledge. Sedgwick is referring to a cultural and psychological process whereby privileged onlookers learn not to see, or otherwise sense, queer difference. In other words, complainant truth might not easily be disentangled from forms of “learned unknowing” that operate within a hetero and cisnormative society (one which privileges the majority of people who conform to their birth gender and to normative gender expectations). </p>
<p>Think of the scene in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104036/">Crying Game</a> where the main protagonist Fergus visits a queer bar, the Metro. As the camera pans the room, it is obvious that practically everybody in the bar is LGBTQ. Yet, Fergus fails to see what is plainly in view. He is not looking for it, not expecting it, for him it is simply not there. And, of course, privileged unknowingness can affect all the senses. In the context of sexual intimacy (the enmeshing of bodies), the difference between ignorance and knowledge might be thought of as one between imagining a lover’s body and an experience of it. That is, we might think of ignorance as disavowal, a repudiation of the senses. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bAZNeV-xYjc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fergus watches Dil in the Crying Game.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Newland case, the complainant admitted having sex with Newland on at least ten occasions and spending more than 100 hours in her company, sometimes at the complainant’s apartment, sometimes at a local hotel. Her ignorance regarding Newland’s gender identity was apparently due to a blindfold worn on all occasions at Newland’s request (Newland, who identifies as lesbian, disputed both of these claims). The complainant’s other senses, apparently, also deserted her. Thus her sense of touch proved insensitive to the contours and smooth surface of Newland’s body, and to the prosthetic penis which Newland used, while her sense of hearing proved impervious to Newland’s voice which falls within the female range. </p>
<p>Yet, if we do not see our lover’s face, do we not sense them in other ways? Do we not breath them in, feel their touch, become acquainted with their smell, experience the contours of their body, feel their breath upon our skin, the timbre of their voice? And are we not undone in such moments, irrespective of the evidence before us? Is it right in such circumstances to conclude that consent is absent? If we are to take seriously feminist notions of agency, how can we claim not to have consented to lesbian sex when the presence of a female lover has taken the form of sensory overload? </p>
<p>And if our bodies yield in such encounters (perhaps we are even transported), is it right to disown our desires because we are retrospectively disappointed? Is it appropriate to refuse to acknowledge embodied experiences, apparently at odds with our desires, and the pleasures we derive from them, to refuse to acknowledge information that arrives through our senses, calling us to respond, and to which we do respond? </p>
<p>These are admittedly, difficult and discomforting questions. No doubt, there will be those who prefer not to ask them. Yet, difficult though such conversations may be, they are perhaps where ethics begins, that is, the forging of an ethical relation between <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/cisgenders-linguistic-uphill-battle/380342/">cisgender</a> people and the trans and/or queer lovers to whom they are attracted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Sharpe is a human rights barrister at Garden Court Chambers, London. Her book, Sexual Intimacy and Gender identity ‘Fraud’: Reframing the Legal & Ethical Debate will be published by Routledge in January 2018</span></em></p>
The ‘privilege of unknowing’ allows onlookers to learn not to see, or otherwise sense, queer difference.
Alex Sharpe, Professor of Law, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73520
2017-05-29T04:52:17Z
2017-05-29T04:52:17Z
There’s something queer about Tumblr
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167663/original/file-20170503-4104-jp4d4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More young people are turning online for peer support networks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.tumblr.com">Tumblr</a> is a site that can leave many adults confused. But for more than <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/about">330 million users</a> worldwide it is a visual medium for self-expression where anything from politics to <a href="https://thedailyfandom.com/tumblr-and-fandom-a-match-made-in-heaven/">fan groups</a> goes. </p>
<p>What makes Tumblr special is the mix of content you will find there. Think of it as the long-form, image-centric version of Twitter – but more personal. A blog can feature sentences that describe a user’s day, and this could be scattered among photo sets of refugees being rescued at sea, cat gifs, pornography, or complex paragraphs that analyse Donald Trump’s presidency. Above all, Tumblr characterises itself as a space of creative freedom. </p>
<p>Like most other social media platforms, it is also ripe with peer networking, community building, and opportunities to explore gender and sexual identities. And despite the panic that often surrounds the perceived effects of social media on young people – such as fears about <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10881596/Young-people-give-up-privacy-on-Google-and-Facebook-because-they-havent-read-1984.html">Facebook and privacy</a>, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2970594/Snapchat-cracks-sexting-teens-telling-clothes-issues-safety-guide-concerned-parents.html">Snapchat and sexting</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/i-narcissist-vanity-social-media-and-the-human-condition">Instagram and narcissism</a> – Tumblr is often left out of the debate.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s because it mostly appeals to a niche audience, and can be seen as the “weird” cousin of these major platforms. This makes it a perfect venue for queer and questioning youth to hang out.</p>
<h2>It’s a queer world</h2>
<p>In 2016, we organised a research project called <a href="https://scrollingbeyondbinaries.com/about/">Scrolling Beyond Binaries</a> to explore the ways young people of diverse genders and sexualities use social media. We looked particularly at how young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual (LGBTIQA+) people use the network. To do so, we surveyed over 1,300 people aged 16-35 who identified in these ways. </p>
<p>Compared to <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/">broader</a> <a href="https://www.sensis.com.au/asset/PDFdirectory/Sensis_Social_Media_Report_2016.PDF">surveys</a> of young people’s social media use, we found young LGBTIQA+ people are using Tumblr much more frequently. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159966/original/image-20170308-24226-kvbbtg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queer and gender diverse youth in Australia are using Tumblr more than their straight and cisgender peers.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are some issues in comparing these studies – the number of people surveyed, where they lived, and their ages – but that 64% of our respondents used Tumblr is noteworthy. </p>
<p>So why are this many young queer and gender diverse Australians using Tumblr? For many, it offers an <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476413505002">intricate network</a> that supports safe explorations of identity and a sense of self.</p>
<p>For instance, writer and Tumblr user <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/tumblr-was-my-saviour-it-made-me-see-i-wasnt-monstrous-and-unloveable">Jonno Revanche</a> said it provides social connections that are otherwise unavailable due to geographic isolation and social anxiety. Others have used Tumblr to foster mental health support, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/19/tumblr-mental-health-information-community-disorders-healthcare">Mea Pearson</a>, who took to the platform to chronicle her experience with borderline personality disorder.</p>
<p>While care must be taken when associating mental health with queer identity, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/30513356/Social_Media_Bodies_Revealing_the_Entanglement_of_Sexual_Well-being_Mental_Health_and_Social_Media_in_Education">these matters often intersect</a>. Evidently, many young people’s everyday dealings with key social institutions like family, work and school can be uncomfortable or even traumatic.</p>
<h2>The view from Tumblr</h2>
<p>Many of our respondents said that Tumblr was crucial to nurturing their individual identity. One person said it helped them identify as <a href="http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Agender">agender</a> (loosely defined as without gender).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I actually learnt about agender and all the other genders from Tumblr. (20, agender, bisexual, rural)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One participant described how Tumblr assisted them in coming to terms with their <a href="https://minus18.org.au/index.php/resources/sexuality-info/item/647-bisexual-vs-pansexual">pansexuality</a> (attraction to all genders), and finding a space where this was more accepted and not reduced to bisexuality:<br>
</p><p></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came out as Pan on Tumblr a few years ago, when being Pan was seen as just a fancy way of saying Bi. I felt very alone for a long time, but found other Pan people to talk to. (22, non-binary, pansexual, urban)</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p><p></p>
<p>Other participants attributed Tumblr to broadening their overall understanding of identity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had no idea that lgbt+ people existed (my parents are quite homophobic and very strict, so you could say I was very sheltered), and by using Tumblr I was able to fully immerse myself within its very lgbt+ culture. It also brought up words … I had never heard before, and through this I was able to “find myself” within a safe environment. (17, female, lesbian, urban)</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p><p></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would’ve never realised my real gender or sexual orientation without tumblr. (25, trans masculine, asexual, regional)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For many Tumblr users, the platform is a supportive place. Engaging with online peer networks can be easier, and less risky, than talking to close friends. Young people reported making friends on Tumblr too, and most of them felt safe in doing so, citing the ability to block and unfollow others if needed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve made a lot of friends through there, and Tumblr helped me working out my own sexuality when I was younger. Because when I was younger I didn’t know anything, I thought there was just gay and lesbian and when I didn’t fit into any of those categories I was like “what the hell do I do now.” It was honestly, like going on Tumblr and [finding] there’s this thing where you can like more then one, I was like “woah, that’s amazing.” (19, trans male, queer, urban)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Disconnecting from Tumblr</h2>
<p>At the same time, these digital spaces come with their own challenges. Although Tumblr is often used daily, it also seems to have a limited lifespan – which is unsurprising, given the intensity of interaction and content that many users report. Some respondents discussed their need to disconnect from the site to avoid drama, to free up time, or to spend more time in other social media spaces.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I stopped [using Tumblr] because I often used it to talk about my problems and it got to be really upsetting to have such a negative space. I feel like it just fed my mental health issues. (18, non-binary, bisexual, rural)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this sense, Tumblr can be productive for a time but it can also become overwhelming. Users manage this by moving between platforms and taking breaks.</p>
<h2>Safe spaces</h2>
<p>At a time when young queer and gender diverse people are in the spotlight, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-safe-schools-coalition-55018">support programs coming under fire</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trump-administration-rolls-back-protections-for-transgender-students/2017/02/22/550a83b4-f913-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?utm_term=.309c6b1d77e9">human rights being trampled upon</a> in political crossfires, they continue to find and build their own safe spaces. </p>
<p>LGBTIQA+ young people should feel safe and empowered in everyday physical spaces, and many do – often with support from a wider community of peers who share similar experiences.</p>
<p>But until the world becomes more friendly for queer and gender diverse people, we expect they’ll continue to find safety, community, identity, and friendship on Tumblr.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brady Robards is a member of The Australian Sociological Association (tasa.org.au).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Byron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
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.
Paul Byron, Associate Lecturer, Macquarie University
Brady Robards, Lecturer in Sociology, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78310
2017-05-26T14:48:02Z
2017-05-26T14:48:02Z
Djuna Barnes: the ‘lesbian’ writer who rejected lesbianism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170868/original/file-20170524-31339-1tbwfx7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C107%2C399%2C277&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Writer Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris, 1920s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&title=Special:Search&redirs=0&search=Djuna+Barnes&fulltext=Search&fulltext=Advanced+search&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns14=1&advanced=1&searchToken=1xlkda5js9pvi8tbp2zfer3ny#/media/File:Solita_Solano_und_Djuna_Barnes_in_Paris.jpg">Wikipedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I’m not a lesbian, I just loved Thelma.” What did the modernist author Djuna Barnes mean by this? And why has this quote – in which the elderly Barnes managed to sound both closeted and confessional – become one of her best-known statements? </p>
<p>Barnes’s refusal to turn her love for the silverpoint artist Thelma Wood into a signifier of her identity has sometimes frustrated readers who seek to celebrate her as a major lesbian voice in 20th-century literature, while others have seized upon her statement to undermine attempts to “claim” Barnes as a lesbian writer.</p>
<p>Barnes had affairs with various women and men throughout her life, though the relationship with Wood seems to have affected her most profoundly. She referred <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Improper_Modernism.html?id=TDrTX0eRDmUC">to herself as</a> “the most famous unknown of the century” (another Barnes paradox), bemoaning the fact that most people knew the gossip but not the writing. </p>
<p>And the writing certainly poses certain challenges. Rich, intricate and darkly camp, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview32">her modernist masterpiece Nightwood</a> (1936) demands (and rewards) our patience: “I have a narrative,” says Dr Matthew O’Connor, Nightwood’s cross-dressing, unlicensed gynaecologist, “but you will be hard pressed to find it.” Set in the bars, salons and empty churches of the Parisian demi-monde, Nightwood narrates the failed love affair between the American Nora Flood and the silent, androgynous Robin Vote, a story often interpreted as a fictional rendering of Barnes’s relationship with Wood.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170867/original/file-20170524-31324-18lzp6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barnes the bohemian expat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djuna_Barnes#/media/File:Djunabarnes.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most negatively, we might read the “I’m not a lesbian” part of Barnes’s statement in the context of some of the overtly anti-feminist and homophobic statements <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/books/l-djuna-and-the-scholars-018988.html">she made in later life</a>. The Djuna Barnes of legend is the glamorous figure cutting a dash in cape and cloche among the bohemian expatriates of 1920s Paris. The elderly Barnes, transplanted from this liberal Left Bank to the Cold War US, is harder to like. She complained about a feminist bookstore using “Djuna” in its name <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/books/l-djuna-and-the-scholars-018988.html">and reputedly expressed</a> her disdain for women and lesbian writers to the doting male fans whose company she preferred.</p>
<p>Barnes’s resistance to the category of “lesbian” and even “woman” writer might be interpreted as a conscious strategy to align herself with the axis of modernist high culture she associated with James Joyce and, above all, her longtime correspondent and editor, T.S. Eliot. Such a positioning required that she downplay any autobiographical elements of her writing and assert the universal (read: heterosexual, non-feminine) perspective of her work, as Eliot in fact did in his cagey <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23739272">Preface to Nightwood</a>.</p>
<p>Barnes’s biographer Philip Herring was working under the same premise when he posited <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Djuna.html?id=MVqwAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">his book</a> as an attempt to end the “victim celebrations” of “a few <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/books/l-djuna-and-the-scholars-018970.html">ideological cosmetologists</a>” and to let Barnes “belong to all readers”. Like the other male critics who wished to “rescue” Barnes from the feminists and lesbians, Herring draws on comments of the “I just loved Thelma” variety for ammunition. </p>
<p>The implication that privileging some of Barnes’s later, more conservative comments over the rich depictions of queerness one finds in her works is not in itself an act of “ideological cosmetology” is pretty staggering. Those critics who wish to render invisible Barnes’ status as a woman who slept with women claim Barnes as one of their own – just as much as lesbian and feminist readers do.</p>
<h2>Queer politics</h2>
<p>However, there might be another interpretation of Barnes’s wish to emphasise her particular love for Wood over her identification with the label “lesbian”, one that chimes with the queerness of her fictional works. Identity categories provide a ground for political agency: they allow us to demand rights and recognition and they help us to find each other, to form alliances and communities. But they can also be used to contain and police us. Unlike earlier lesbian and gay movements, whose politics depended on the idea of visible identities, queer theory grew out of a critique of identity politics. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170866/original/file-20170524-31324-lr0sra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover illustration, The Trend magazine, by Djuna Barnes, issue of October 1914.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djuna_Barnes#/media/File:Cover_illustration_The_Trend_by_Djuna_Barnes_October_1914.jpg">Wikipedia/General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Broadly speaking, while lesbian and gay historians have sought to locate forms of homosexuality in the past, to recover lost and usable histories, queer critics have tended to emphasise queerness’s more radical disruption of systems of representation, often understanding “sexual identity” as a contradiction in terms. “[Q]ueerness can never define an identity,” <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/no-future">writes queer theorist Lee Edelman</a>, “it can only ever disturb one”.</p>
<p>In her queer fiction, Barnes invites and thwarts her readers’ impulse to “identify” in both senses of the term. She playfully encourages her readers’ desires to find the queer in the text (perhaps to find themselves) yet refuses to represent any singular lesbian or gay identity. On a couple of occasions, she even pre-empts the late 20th-century habit of lesbian list-making or celebratory historical “outing” to which she would herself become subject. Yet her lists of historical women are designed to confuse, combining queerer names with those about whom no speculations have been made. Barnes piques, then frustrates, our desire to know.</p>
<p>This logic dominates her 1928 <em>roman à clef</em>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_Almanack">Ladies Almanack</a>, which is less well-known than Nightwood but offers a decidedly more joyful vision of queer sex. Barnes’s bawdy, illustrated Almanack is inspired by the lesbian literary circle surrounding the Left Bank expatriate Natalie Clifford Barney, and chronicles the sexual adventures of the heroic Dame Evangeline Musset. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170862/original/file-20170524-31322-5qgupn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of 1972 facsimile edition of Ladies Almanack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_Almanack#/media/File:Djuna_Barnes_-_Ladies_Almanack_cover.jpg">Wikipedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one sense, the Almanack invites us to read it as a work by, for, and about the lesbian woman – it’s almost like an early queer ’zine – and Barnes even hawked hand-coloured copies among her Left Bank community. Yet it ultimately refuses to define “the Lesbian”, because to do so would be to pursue the aims of the Almanack’s chief object of parody: the late 19th-century sexology that defined and medicalised homosexual desire. Barnes uses the astrological motifs of the Almanack to satirise the attempt to “diagnose” lesbianism as simply a form of quackery. </p>
<p>The ladies of Barnes’s Almanack enjoy plenty of queer sex, for sure, but they resist our classification as any particular identity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They swing between two Conditions like a Bell’s Clapper, that can never be said to be anywhere, neither in the centre, nor to the Side, for that which is always moving, is in no settled State long enough to be either damned or transfigured. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/154361027" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Barnes’s fictional works deal with both the pleasures and problems of belonging to any group. And although her autobiographical pronouncements, which are sometimes disingenuous, often tongue-in-cheek, are no substitute for reading her work, even they end up speaking to the complex questioning of identity we find in her books. “I’m not a lesbian, I just loved Thelma” contains a tension that we might want to resolve, but in trying to resolve it we might end up missing the point.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Taylor received funding from the AHRC for her doctoral research on Djuna Barnes. </span></em></p>
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.
Julie Taylor, Senior Lecturer in American Studies/Literature, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75438
2017-04-07T14:14:02Z
2017-04-07T14:14:02Z
Painting in circles and loving in triangles: the Bloomsbury Group’s queer ways of seeing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164471/original/image-20170407-29396-2hail7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Duncan Grant © Tate</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Dearest, at this moment I would give my soul to the Devil if I could kiss you and be kissed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the summer of 1908, the Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant wrote anguished letters to his sometime lover and lifelong friend, the economist John Maynard Keynes. In the infancy of their romance, the pair had been forced to spend time apart while Grant holidayed with family friends, a period of separation which served only to deepen their emotional closeness. Absence, after all, makes the heart grow fonder. </p>
<p>Grant’s letters expose a longing for the comfort of commonality, the security we find in shared experiences. He needed the company of someone who understood what it meant to be a gay man living in Britain before decriminalisation in 1967. “How much I want to scream sometimes here for want of being able to say something I mean,” one letter reads: “It’s not only that one’s a sodomite that one has to hide but one’s whole philosophy of life; one’s feelings for inanimate things I feel would shock some people.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163902/original/image-20170404-5702-cqu8xx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan Grant,
Bathing, 1911
.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These letters are revealing of the ways Grant linked his sense of alienation, at the hands of his sexuality, to a broader sense of difference relating to the way he perceived the world around him. He understood his queerness as a central organising structure of his vision and his personhood; his “whole philosophy of life”. By making an explicit connection between his sexual alterity and his way of seeing, he leads us to consider: in what ways do our sexual pleasures and fantasies inform the way we see the world?</p>
<h2>Queer British Art</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163897/original/image-20170404-5736-179bmi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Angus McBean, Quentin Crisp, 1941, National Portrait Gallery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Estate of Angus McBean / National Portrait Gallery, London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This question, and the broader connections between art and diverse gender and sexual identities, takes centre stage in Tate Britain’s <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/queer-british-art-1861-1967">Queer British Art</a> exhibition. The landmark show explores how artworks and objects can evoke the contradictory and overlapping experiences of queer intimacy and desire. It begins in 1861, when the death penalty for sodomy was abolished, and moves through the century to the partial decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967. </p>
<p>Some of the artists and subjects in the show were directly affected by legal persecution, including Oscar Wilde, Simeon Solomon, <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/11/09/well-of-loneliness-trial-of-radclyffe-hall-virginia-woolf/">Radclyffe Hall</a> and Angus McBean. At the same time, other artists encoded their sexuality and found innovative, playful and beguiling ways to express their queer identities and desires. In any case, the exhibition is revealing of how queerness resides at the heart of British art history, as well as some of its more obscure margins.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163899/original/image-20170404-5736-10za2sy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simeon Solomon,
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,
1864.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Bloomsbury Group sit relatively comfortably within the canon of 20th-century British art and culture. The closely-knit network of artists and intellectuals was bound together by political ideals and personal affections, as well as aesthetic tastes, and together they stood firmly at the forefront of the British avant-garde until the outbreak of World War II. </p>
<p>Largely comprised of queer women and men, including the writers Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and E M Forster, along with the artist Dora Carrington, the Bloomsbury Group was committed to the redefinition of personal relationships as they were understood and represented in pre-war England. They regarded the conventions of the previous generation with critical suspicion. Each associate of Bloomsbury sought liberation in sexual, social and artistic terms.</p>
<h2>Loving in triangles</h2>
<p>As Dorothy Parker’s famous remark goes, the Bloomsbury Group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”. Though she pursued relationships with women, Carrington loved and was loved by Strachey, who was almost exclusively attracted to men. Meanwhile, a select few of Duncan Grant’s male lovers made visits to Charleston in Sussex, where Grant lived in a domestic partnership with Vanessa Bell and her children.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164470/original/image-20170407-29386-119x8o9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan Grant, Erotic Embrace, c. 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These unconventional lives and arrangements are immortalised in their artwork. Carrington’s Lytton Strachey (1916), for instance, captures the life Carrington and Strachey created at Tidmarsh Mill House, and latterly Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, where they lived with Carrington’s husband and Strachey’s object of desire, Ralph Partridge. Writing in 1921, Carrington addressed Strachey: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You never knew, or never will know the very big and devastating love I had for you. How I adored every hair, every curl on your beard. How I devoured you whilst you read to me at night. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her encyclopaedic knowledge of his face, mapped out in the minutest detail, is betrayed in this extraordinarily attentive portrait, an intimate testimony to the love of her life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164469/original/image-20170407-29396-1hpnxmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey, 1916.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Tate’s show, which my research has informed, rightfully positions Bloomsbury at the centre of Britain’s queer history. The political, sexual and artistic frustrations motivating the artists of Bloomsbury to create still exist today, albeit in mutated forms. </p>
<p>From Virginia Woolf’s genre-defying Orlando to Duncan Grant’s private erotica, the objects Bloomsbury left behind speak on behalf of those whose voices have been silenced in the mainstream. Their queer art provides tender pockets of shelter in a still-hostile world, and their work ceaselessly reverberates with the force of resistance.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/queer-british-art-1861-1967">Queer British Art</a> is at London’s Tate Britain from April 5 to October 1 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Jones receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council and works for Tate Britain. </span></em></p>
In what ways do our sexual pleasures and fantasies inform the way we see the world?
Eleanor Jones, PhD Candidate, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/72908
2017-02-14T13:34:23Z
2017-02-14T13:34:23Z
Of love letters and other gestures of romantic love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156777/original/image-20170214-25972-1lipoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sexuality presents us with personal and private concerns that are also very political.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I remember the first time that I wrote a love letter. I was nine years old and it said something along these lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Parham,</p>
<p>I like you very much because you are clever.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sadly, our affections were not mutually shared. Parham reported me to his father, who worked at the same company as mine. Instead of a reply, I got a sit-down with my dad who explained that I should probably spend my time paying closer attention to my schoolwork.</p>
<p>Despite this disappointment, I continue to carry an attachment to the love letter. </p>
<p>The form of the love letter is a useful way for us to think about <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/220256?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">romantic love</a> in <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=Qm4G9TD9VGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=love+in+africa&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Africa</a>. Histories of <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=7n2-fYwvtKIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=africa%27s+hidden+histories&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipl_yR7IfSAhWnDMAKHd5_CVsQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=africa's%20hidden%20histories&f=false">letter writing</a> reveal the ways that dense debates about the individual and collective, or tradition and modernity, have been mediated through both the form and content of the letter.</p>
<h2>Romantic love critiqued</h2>
<p>With friends, it’s easy to laugh about the ridiculous pink and red consumables that flood shopping aisles as soon as the December holidays end. It’s not surprising that we come to experience and understand romantic love quite cynically as a <a href="http://tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560046.2015.1039204">consumer rite</a>, or practice. </p>
<p>Sara Ahmed explores some of these ideas in her 2010 book, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-promise-of-happiness">The Promise of Happiness</a>. She explains how the so-called “good life” that we are encouraged to aspire to is actually a package of conservative and exclusionary family forms and intimacies. These get packaged as happiness in a neoliberal “trick” that has us convinced that as individuals, through our choices and actions, we can do the work that it takes to be <a href="http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA175632731&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=fulltext&issn=09502378&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1&isAnonymousEntry=true">happy</a>. </p>
<p>Romantic love is also the site or scene for various relations of <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MrsADxhON-wC&oi=fnd&pg=PR13&dq=romantic+love,+patriarchy&ots=foklb1dkws&sig=EukmVnXzLIFFs2JPmDTtH5-RGtE">power and violence</a>. </p>
<p>Sexuality generally presents us with personal and private concerns that are also very political. When Stella Nyanzi <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xSqIrrswbG0C&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=stella+nyanzi+african+sexualities&ots=RYKwUvoCXo&sig=CH1LeXlO9soYbV-ud0bzymDsibc#v=onepage&q=stella%20nyanzi%20african%20sexualities&f=false">writes</a> of the [govern]mentality of African sexualities, she highlights that African sexualities inherit the baggage or assumption of the need to be controlled, improved, modernised, civilised or tamed. Established ideas of “good” and “bad” sex inform our ideas about romantic love – and who we might imagine to experience “true love” at all.</p>
<p>The love letter expresses a challenge to some of these assumptions about romantic love in Africa. The letter, like other romantic literary genres, offers an intellectual and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263276407085156">affective</a> site that demands a more slippery reading.</p>
<h2>Of optimism and uprising</h2>
<p>Lynda Gichanda Spencer <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/86251">writes</a> about chick lit in a way that’s instructive. For many observers, the genre is cheap sentiment, selling the same story over and over again. These stories are also charged with being escapist – so women (considered the primary consumers of the genre) are accused of silliness and a lack of focus on more important matters like patriarchy (or their schoolwork). Yet Spencer demonstrates the ways that women writers of chick lit in South Africa and Uganda specifically retain a realist form. </p>
<p>This realist tone is something we might call “sex without optimism,” in the sense that instead of “happily ever after”, the story often ends with disappointment. This offers an “uprising” potential. In a fairy tale, the action comes to a close once the couple mutually recognises each other. This formula has often, although not always, been followed in chick lit. In the African chick lit analysed by Spencer, the threat of infidelity or poverty or both structure the ways that the action is organised. The resolution will instead often involve groups of women supporting each other, or seeking solutions to personal and structural problems.</p>
<p>The term “<a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sex-or-the-unbearable">sex without optimism</a>”, I borrow from Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman who use the phrase to open their discussion of sex as a negative relation that opens one up to not only rejection but also vulnerability. All relations with an other are shaped by encounters with power and powerlessness and in that sense, imply a form of risk. Berlant and Edelman draw their insights from this assumption, and suggest that sex presents with a range of unbearable contradictions. Even when love succeeds, these contradictions still remain. </p>
<p>I will offer an example.</p>
<p>In December of 2016, Kagure Mugo published a <a href="https://thisisafrica.me/lifestyle/anele-seipati-get-married-photo-essay/">photo essay</a> of the wedding of Anele Mkuzo and Seipati Magape which was widely shared in my circles on Facebook. I have spent a lot of time thinking about weddings for my <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/15814">doctoral research</a> and forthcoming book. Observing so many versions of the same might make a person rather cynical. Yet, I still cry at weddings. When I saw Anele and Seipati’s pictures, again I was overwhelmed by the same feelings.</p>
<p>This is because marriage is a civil right not openly granted to same-sex couples in the world. Weddings of <a href="https://www.socialworkhelper.com/2013/07/25/alphabet-soup-the-story-of-lgbtqia/">LGBTQIA</a> people in South Africa help us to understand the expression of romantic love as an <a href="https://www.academia.edu/30095737/Postmillennial_Love">expression of freedom</a> – and not just as an act of buying into the “good life”. </p>
<p>Further, in a highly unequal society, the ability to marry at all is something that people achieve only by manoeuvring against many odds.</p>
<h2>In conclusion</h2>
<p>Our accounts of relations of structural violence are often incomplete when we carve out the affective or emotional dimensions. This is why I remain attached to the love letter and other forms of unbearable risk. In part, because they are a resistance to the problematic ways that we continue to encounter images of African sexualities. </p>
<p>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; as well as the scene, form and technique of survival, wishing, longing, becoming and failing all at once. </p>
<p>Here’s one: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beloved,</p>
<p>You make me dream only</p>
<p>of nipples and</p>
<p>fingers and wet.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danai Mupotsa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
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.
Danai Mupotsa, Lecturer in African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/58779
2016-05-10T20:19:28Z
2016-05-10T20:19:28Z
Is a story about heterosexual coupling the queerest film of the past year?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121029/original/image-20160503-19834-yghw2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Queer in more ways than one...The Lobster marries the romantic and political.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Lobster</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mainstream screen stories like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388795/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Brokeback Mountain</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842926/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Kids Are All Right</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402927/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Carol</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502262/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Transparent</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2581458/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Looking</a> have brought GLBTI lives into the multiplex and loungeroom. Sexually dissident characters seem no longer trapped in what film historian Vito Russo in 1981 memorably called the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/374224.The_Celluloid_Closet">celluloid closet</a>.</p>
<p>But what stories are these films telling? What are they celebrating or critiquing, and is representing non-straight or non-binary characters the only point that matters?</p>
<p>When the British Film Institute released a list of the <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/30-best-lgbt-films-all-time">30 Best LGBT Films of All Time</a> earlier this year, it was dominated by love plots. So too, queer film festivals are often crowded with narratives about romance, thwarted or otherwise.</p>
<p>From one point of view, though, the flowering of these seemingly dissident love stories represents a conservative step. Drawing on traditions of queer theory, some critics wonder what the <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/01/21/looking_hbo_s_gay_show_is_boring_and_bad_for_gays_straights.html">political consequences</a> of <a href="http://has.sagepub.com/content/36/2/178.extract">centralising the love story</a> might be. Others suggest that recent queer cinema has a disturbing tendency to create a <a href="https://theconversation.com/chemsex-why-is-gay-sex-causing-straight-panic-56541">moralising panic about sexual practices</a> that transgress the model of monogamous coupledom. </p>
<p>Queer theory took shape in the early 1990s, asking searching questions about the relationship between desire, identity and politics. Thinkers like <a href="http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm">Judith Butler</a> argued that our identities aren’t set, but created; they’re an <em>effect of</em> social and power relations, rather than the ground upon which those relations unfold. Identity might be something you do, rather than who you are.</p>
<p>This also means identity categories are historically dynamic and malleable; they change over time – both in a broader cultural sense and in our own experiences. </p>
<p>The contest over “marriage equality” demonstrates the distinction between striving for recognition, and disrupting the terms under which that recognition is offered. Activists like <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-203/feature-rodney-croome/">Rodney Croome</a> argue that gays and lesbians are excluded from full cultural citizenship because they’re denied the capacity to marry. For Croome and many others, specific sexual minorities deserve to have their love recognised. </p>
<p>Queer theorists like <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-gay-marriage-19196">Annamarie Jagose</a>, though, worry that these campaigns for recognition once-again normalise monogamous coupledom as the natural destination and desire for all. They suggest these campaigns tend to marginalise dissident desires. In so doing, they make life for those whose sexual and intimate lives fall outside the boundaries of the respectable couple more difficult.</p>
<p>I was a little surprised, then, to find myself recognising a distinctly queer sensibility in a recent film about the perils and pitfalls of heterosexual coupling – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lobster</a> (2015). Hailed by many critics as a dystopian love story steeped in the loneliness of modern life, to a queer reader, this film looks more like a savage critique of romantic love itself.</p>
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<p>Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster imagines a near future in which single people are removed from The City, and admitted to The Hotel. Once admitted, if they don’t find a romantic partner within 45 days they will be transformed into an animal of their choosing. </p>
<p>David (Colin Farrell in an endearing performance as a short-sighted man with an adorable paunch) selects a lobster. He spends the next third of the film engaging in summer camp-like activities that mix match-making with ideological education. These single men and women, it would seem, must have forgotten the benefits of coupled life. </p>
<p>No character except David has a name, everybody else is known for a singular characteristic; The Short-Sighted Woman, The Limping Man, The Nosebleed Woman … Part of the film’s humour is produced by the sense that these individuals are being reduced to a singular characteristic, much like a menu of romantic possibilities. They simply must find their match. </p>
<p>After a strange narrative turn, David escapes to The Forest where a band of singles carve out a life of resistant survival. They reject the laws of The City and proclaim their capacity to exist as fully human outside the structure of the couple. In this environment, in fact, coupling is forbidden. Once a week the rebels get together for a boogie, but they only listen to electronic music, “because you have to dance alone.” It is, of course, in the forest where David meets his romantic match – a similarly short-sighted woman.</p>
<p>Expressed like this, The Lobster doesn’t sound tremendously funny, and yet it conforms to the usual plot of a romantic comedy. In this case, though, we are encouraged to be a little suspicious about the rules of this narrative game. What are the costs of living happily ever after, and what kind of lives do these ideals make impossible?</p>
<p>The Lobster is thus a profoundly discomforting film – and I suspect this is also why many film critics have struggled to write coherently about it. It is both utterly comical and completely confronting. One critic tellingly called the film “<a href="http://www.empireonline.com/movies/lobster/review/">hideously funny</a>.”</p>
<p>Perhaps this is no laughing matter. The narrative destination of coupledom exerts tremendous force in our imaginative and social worlds. </p>
<p>The Lobster takes this one step further. Characters treat friendships as stepping-stones as they move towards their romantic destination, and this means they can be shucked off with little consequence. The sovereignty of the couple completely orders their relational and political world.</p>
<p>Whilst our human rights might not be dependant on the achievement of romantic encouplement, the UN declaration of human rights does privilege the reproductive couple as an entitlement of political humanity. This historically contingent form of kinship is granted special status. So too, we don’t have to look very hard to realise that a whole raft of political and cultural privileges accrue around marriage and marriage-like relationships.</p>
<p>Indeed, as critic Guy Lodge <a href="http://variety.com/2015/film/festivals/the-lobster-review-colin-farrell-rachel-weisz-1201496633/">noted in Variety</a>, the “laws of [this] mundane dystopia…don’t look severely different from the world we live in now.” The resonances with our own world should be clear: this is simply a dystopian amplification of the cultural ideals we face every day.</p>
<p>Queer theorists ask thorny questions about how historically specific ideals and norms become entangled with, and perhaps even determine, our emotional lives. Romantic love, from this perspective, is a profoundly political feeling. The end of The Lobster is similarly unsettling; it is not clear whether we should be troubled or excited by romantic success and its associated costs.</p>
<p>It isn’t clear what alternative forms of kinship might take shape if we loosened the grip of the romantic couple on our interior and cultural lives – but queer films like The Lobster ask questions that encourage us to step into this unsteady and dangerous world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Boucher receives funding from The Australian Research Council</span></em></p>
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.
Leigh Boucher, Lecturer - Modern History, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49273
2015-11-24T10:13:31Z
2015-11-24T10:13:31Z
Despite recent victories, plights of many LGBT people remain ignored
<p>To be sure, monumental gains have been made for LGBT rights over the past decade: national marriage rights, widespread media representations and the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military. </p>
<p>Yet often glossed over in the coverage of political victories and pop culture accounts, like the recent film Stonewall, are those among the LGBT community who have yet to reap the rewards, who remain marginalized, exploited and victimized.</p>
<p>For example, just last week, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/11/21/homicides-transgender-women-reach-alarming-high/eqcaYEXzzCg3EPb2DhYutM/story.html?utm_source=Mic+Check&utm_campaign=acb9d1c66b-Monday_Nov_2311_22_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_51f2320b33-acb9d1c66b-285470697">reported</a> that homicides of transgender or gender-nonconforming people are happening at a startling rate. This year, the number has already reached 22 (compared to 12 in 2014 and 13 in 2013).</p>
<p>It’s a topic I explore in my recent book <a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Violence-against-Queer-People,5629.aspx">Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination</a>, which, while acknowledging certain political triumphs, argues that the main beneficiaries of these victories seem to be a certain type of LGBT person: white, gay, middle-class men.</p>
<h2>Still suffering</h2>
<p>During my research, I interviewed scores of those who still feel threatened – and marginalized – by their sexual identity. </p>
<p>For example, after running away from home, Jayvyn, a 33-year-old black gay man, experienced violence in a group home for several years. There, several of his male housemates referred to him as “the faggot” and would crush up glass, sprinkling it in his bed while he was sleeping. Jayvyn would awaken with shards of glass stuck to his skin. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Lela, a 48-year-old black transgender woman, experienced similar violence in a homeless shelter, where she was the only transgender woman living with men. Homeless shelters often segregate residents based on birth sex rather than gender identity, which can expose transgender people to tremendous amounts of violence. Some of the men Lela lived with in the homeless shelter would hold her down while others hit her with hard objects, including socks filled with rocks or marbles.</p>
<h2>Who’s left out?</h2>
<p>If you saw the (<a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/stonewall_2015/">widely panned</a>) 2015 film Stonewall, you might think that the gay rights movement reflected the struggle of closeted, white, masculine men. This whitewashes the events of not just the Stonewall Riots, but also the larger history of LGBT activism. Many of the participants in 1969’s Stonewall Riots were actually transgender women – known as “drag queens” at the time – in addition to people of color, butch lesbians and feminine gay men. </p>
<p>Rather than paying homage to accounts of the riots, the main character of the film ended up being a white, conventionally attractive, gay man.</p>
<p>But the Stonewall film is merely part of a long history in which marginalized LGBT people have been sidelined. It doesn’t exclude only women and LGBT people of color, but also homeless, transgender and HIV-positive LGBT people. </p>
<p>On the other hand, white and financially well-off gay men have routinely been catered to. The gay rights movement has presented this group as the face of the movement. Most well-known LGBT activists and spokespeople – Dan Savage, Ellen DeGeneres and Dustin Lance Black, to name a few – have been white. And marriage has been their call to arms; LGBT organizations have insisted that this emphasis moves the struggle for LGBT rights forward. </p>
<p>The problem with this approach is that it benefits a relatively small group of LGBT people – the most privileged. For example, many white and financially well-off gay men benefit from gay marriage becoming the law of the land because of the numerous <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304652804579571931962914924?alg=y">financial rewards of marriage</a>. Yet for LGBT people like Jayvyn and Lela, legalizing gay marriage doesn’t make much of a difference in their day-to-day lives; it does little to address the threat of violence, nor does it release them from the grip of poverty. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w17450">And because of discrimination in the job market</a>, women, transgender people and black and Latino LGBT people are less likely to be wealthy in the first place, and therefore less likely to benefit from these approaches. Meanwhile, issues such as homelessness or police violence have been left off the mainstream gay rights agenda. </p>
<h2>A movement with misplaced priorities</h2>
<p>When it comes to any political cause, <a href="http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic451464.files/Gilens%20-%20Affluence%20%20Influence%20Introduction.pdf">money plays an important role in whose voice is heard</a>. </p>
<p>The problem, however, exists beyond access to financial resources. It has to do with the way issues have been prioritized: those important to privileged LGBT people have been defined as “gay rights” issues; meanwhile, issues affecting marginalized LGBT people have been viewed as concerns that are “not gay rights issues.” This dynamic has occurred in large part because the LGBT rights movement has not been strongly linked with activist movements fighting against racism, sexism and social class inequality – which all affect LGBT people. </p>
<p>There’s significant evidence that transgender people – especially minority trans women – experience higher rates of violence than lesbians and gay men. For example, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs <a href="http://www.advocate.com/hate-crimes/2014/05/29/report-more-2000-incidents-anti-lgbt-violence-2013">found</a> that 72% of all anti-LGBT homicide victims in 2013 were transgender women. And of the 22 transgender people murdered this year, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/homicides-transgender-women-us-reach-alarming-high-35346236">86% were black or Latina transgender women</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these higher rates of violence among transgender people, attention has traditionally fixated on homophobic violence. In hoping to sell the seriousness of homophobic violence to mainstream society, the experiences of white and middle-class gay men such as Matthew Shepard and Tyler Clementi have been prioritized. </p>
<p>The emphasis on the plight of white, male gays comes at a cost: the predominant values of mainstream society – whiteness, the middle-class, maleness – remain idealized and unchallenged. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, other LGBT people – the most marginalized members of our communities – have been left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Doug Meyer receives funding from The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. </span></em></p>
A new book documents how the gay rights movement has catered to a certain type of LGBT person: white, gay, male and middle-class.
Doug Meyer, Lecturer of Women, Gender & Sexuality, University of Virginia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48596
2015-10-26T01:41:28Z
2015-10-26T01:41:28Z
Explainer: what is genderqueer?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97332/original/image-20151006-29248-1hy8yvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The gender binary does not adequately describe the experience of people who identify as genderqueer.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Hill Design/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Germaine Greer – feminist, academic and no stranger to controversy – has angered transgender activists and found herself the subject of an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/25/germaine-greer-prejudice-trans-people">online petition</a> following comments she made during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B8Q6D4a6TM">BBC interview</a> last week that “post-operative transgender men are not women”.</p>
<p>The petition’s aim is to prevent Greer from presenting a lecture at Cardiff University next month. Students at the university, most vocally women’s officer Rachael Melhuish, have accused Greer of demonstrating “misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether”.</p>
<p>Greer has defended her <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-25/germaine-greer-defends-views-on-transgender-issues/6883132">opinion</a>, claiming she’s “not about to walk on eggshells” with her views, but her comments do open up space for a meaningful discussion on gender, sex and the complex relationship between the two.</p>
<h2>There are boys and there are girls, right?</h2>
<p>We are taught that there are boys and there are girls. Later, if we’re lucky, we are taught that sometimes “boys” become girls and “girls” become boys.</p>
<p>But is it always one or the other? Genderqueer people, among others, say “no”.</p>
<p>People who describe themselves as genderqueer often feel that the gender binary (boy OR girl, woman OR man) is too limiting to describe their experience of gender.</p>
<p>From infancy, we are told that everyone should fit into a box associated with either “man” or “woman”. One of the first things we do when meeting someone new, or simply passing someone on the street, is to make a choice as to which box they fit into.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97334/original/image-20151006-29251-1912jzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The construction of the gender binary begins at birth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mad Dog/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>Yet the social division of gender can be alienating for those who do not identify with this binary, according to <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15313200903124028">Susan Saltzburg and Tamara S. Davis</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In reducing the human experience to a simplistic interpretation of gender identity, we reify the notion of discrete and mutually exclusive categories of gender, marginalising those who cross over the borders of gender specification.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some feminists have argued for a <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/#SexDis">distinction between sex and gender</a>, where sex is the biological framework of male and female, gender is the social construction and experience of masculinity and femininity.</p>
<p>Other feminists, including <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415610155">Judith Butler</a>, have gone further, challenging our belief in the “natural” biological binary of sex and pointing out that not all babies are born <a href="https://oii.org.au/">female or male</a>.</p>
<p>These scholars have shown that our social ideas about gender also shape the way we understand the body itself. The understanding that gender is neither intrinsic nor a binary is where the idea of genderqueer begins.</p>
<h2>Beyond the gender binary</h2>
<p>For many people, the concept of genderqueer remains something of an enigma. This is, in part, because “genderqueer” means different things to different people.</p>
<p>Some genderqueer people think of themselves as living between the binary genders; some as living outside the binary genders; and others reject the idea of binary gender altogether, seeing it as something to be challenged, stretched or played with.</p>
<p>Genderqueer can enable individuals to flexibly explore their gender over time, experimenting and changing as they go, but it can also describe a steady sense of sitting somewhere in between the traditional binary boxes.</p>
<p>Other terms – <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/06/17/ruby-rose-gender-fluid-video-interview_n_7603186.html?ir=Australia">genderfluid</a>, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2153402/tyler-ford-agender-queer-diary/">agender</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/07/my-life-without-gender-strangers-are-desperate-to-know-what-genitalia-i-have">genderless</a> – describe similar perspectives, while “<a href="https://theconversation.com/trans-transgender-cisgender-we-are-what-we-name-ourselves-29788">cisgender</a>” describes the experience of identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth (being assigned female at birth and identifying as a woman, for example).</p>
<p>There is no one way of being – or looking – genderqueer.</p>
<p>While some genderqueer people blur the boundaries between masculinity and femininity in their appearance, it is important to note that not all genderqueer people look androgynous.</p>
<p>Since you won’t be able to pick a genderqueer person simply by looking at them, the only way to ever really know how someone feels about their gender is to listen carefully and follow their lead.</p>
<h2>What about transgender?</h2>
<p>There has been a lot of <a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-way-we-look-at-trans-women-on-tv-28761">recent discussion</a> about the term “transgender”, particularly around former Olympian <a href="http://theconversation.com/how-conservatives-and-liberals-watch-i-am-cait-44877">Caitlyn Jenner</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2372162/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Orange is the New Black</a> (2013-present) star <a href="http://theconversation.com/orange-is-the-new-black-is-fast-becoming-a-feminist-classic-40353">Laverne Cox</a>.</p>
<p>So let’s sketch out the relationship between “genderqueer” and “transgender”.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender-38633">Transgender</a> traditionally refers to people who are strongly attached to whichever binary gender (boy OR girl, woman OR man) is “opposite” to their biological sex. Someone assigned “male” at birth but who identifies as a woman is often described as a “transgender woman”, while someone assigned “female” at birth but identities as a man is often described as a “transgender man”.</p>
<p>(One of the critiques of Germaine Greer’s recent comments has been that Greer confuses this language when she insists on calling transgender women “post-operative transgender men”, thus mis-gendering an already marginalised group of people.)</p>
<p>Most of the transgender characters we see on television are portrayed as having an attachment to the gender binary, but not all transgender people feel this way. While some trans people have a sense of being in the “wrong body”, others have a much more fluid sense of gender. Some people may identify as genderqueer as well as trans or transgender.</p>
<p>Some transgender and genderqueer people may want to access hormones and/ or surgeries in order to re-shape their bodies. Others may not desire any particular physical changes at all.</p>
<p>Genderqueer is a lesser-known concept than transgender and, as a result, genderqueer people who do want to make a shift in the way they are medically, legally or socially recognised may face extra barriers to having their identity legitimated.</p>
<p>There is much scholarship devoted to transgender experiences, including the Transgender Studies Reader (<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/329793.The_Transgender_Studies_Reader">2006</a>, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15858519-the-transgender-studies-reader-2">2013</a>). There is much less academic attention to genderqueer identities and experiences. One book that attempts to address this gap is <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/357381.GenderQueer">GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary</a> (2002), edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Anne Wilchins.</p>
<h2>Institutional and linguistic barriers</h2>
<p>Much is said about the changes people make to their own bodies, but far less about the many small changes we could make as a society that would make a difference in the lives of genderqueer people.</p>
<p>Aspects of daily life which many people take for granted, like walking into the “right” public restroom or ticking “M” or “F” on a form, become complex (if not impossible) when you don’t fit the either/ or model.</p>
<p>Many schools, workplaces and other organisations are beginning to offer <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/12/26/gender_neutral_bathrooms_all_bathrooms_should_be_open_to_all_users.html">gender neutral bathrooms</a>. On some official documents, “other” gender boxes and gender neutral title options like “Mx” (alongside Ms and Mr) are starting to be provided.</p>
<p>These changes are crucial to removing some of the institutional barriers genderqueer and other non-binary people face. There are also some things individuals can do to ensure they are supporting genderqueer people.</p>
<p>Changing one’s name can be an important step in signalling gender identity to the world. If your name is “Jessica”, people tend to assume you’re a woman; if it is “Ben” they’ll assume you’re a man. While not all genderqueer people feel the need to change their names, some prefer a gender-neutral name.</p>
<p>Respecting those name changes is a crucial part of respecting an individual’s expression of gender. Similarly, while some genderqueer people might be comfortable with gendered pronouns like “him/ his” or “her/ hers”, others will prefer the gender neutral “they/ theirs” or “zie/ zir”.</p>
<p>While this language shift has horrified some <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/04/01/we_need_to_upgrade_our_pronouns/">grammar geeks</a>, the use of the traditionally plural “they” to refer to a singular subject has recently been recognised by the <a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they">Oxford Dictionaries</a>.</p>
<p>Using “they” to describe an individual might be tricky the first few times you do it. But it is ultimately a small adjustment to make in order to demonstrate your respect for a person’s sense of self.</p>
<p>It can be confronting to understand and remember the complexity of these new terms. This does not mean it is not a worthwhile endeavour.</p>
<p>After all, the challenge of adjusting to a new word pales in comparison to the considerable social <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-harrison/national-transgender-discrimination-survey_b_1516566.html?ir=Australia">difficulties</a> unfortunately still associated with coming out as trans or genderqueer.</p>
<h2>Time to abandon the boxes</h2>
<p>We can take these lessons one step further. A strict gender binary is not only embedded in our language and our paperwork – it often shapes the way we see the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97365/original/image-20151006-29229-nspjr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Congratulations, it’s a baby.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">tisskananat/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since we now know not everyone fits into the boxes of “man” or “woman”, perhaps it is time to start challenging the instinct to automatically label. Next time you are walking down the street, try to let the people you pass exist in your mind without a gender.</p>
<p>For many of us this is incredibly hard to do. But, with some practice, we might all make a little more space for the next person we meet who is not either/ or.</p>
<p>While Greer’s desire to “not walk on eggshells” may fulfil her right to free speech, denying an individual’s articulated gender identity can contribute to prejudice, fear and violence towards people who sit outside of the gender binary.</p>
<p>This violence can exist in myriad ways and effect a variety of individuals such as transgender, agender and genderqueer people. Rather than trying to decide who is “really” a woman, aren’t we better off spending our time talking about, and respecting, the complexity of people’s gender experiences?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
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.
Jessica Kean, Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Rillark Bolton, PhD student, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.