Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex,Sexuality, and Gender*

Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.     

Anxious Embodiment,Disability, and Sexuality: A Response to Margrit Shildrick

This piece responds to Margrit Shildrick's “Dangerous Discourses,” which offers a theorization of embodiment useful to several fields of scholarship, including disability studies, gender theory, and queer theory. I argue that these fields must take sexuality seriously as a site for both bodily construction and bodily disruption and that the complexities of corporeal contact offer a way to map how discourses of (dis)ability, gender, and race delimit what we perceive as a human body. More expansively, I contend that perception is just as constructed as gender, with norms of embodiment shaping what we perceive as the boundary between disabled and nondisabled bodies. Shildrick's article then becomes a starting point to ask how we might perceive not just difference but differently, opening up new ways to think and live embodiment.     

The Dangerous Real: Queer Solo Performance in/as Active Disruption

Abstract

Like all radical community endeavours, queer performance in the United States has been shaped through resistance to restrictive ideologies. National insecurity over ‘indecent’ (read: queer) artistic expression in the US has been aimed at artists working in a variety of genres, and here I focus specifically on queer solo performance artists. This essay explores the dangerous realities that queer artists present to an imagined unified US national identity. I argue that queer solo performers operate as artistic activists, challenging homogenous fantasies about US culture through the queering of experience. Aesthetically disparate, their work is connected by common threads of vulnerability and precarity. The article asks how their work disrupts U.S. insecurities concerning intersections of sexuality, gender identity, race and religion.     

Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic‐political activism in Hong Kong,Taiwan and mainland China

The sociology of homosexuality lacks engagement with queer theory and postcolonialism and focuses primarily on the global metropoles, thus failing to provide a plausible account of non‐Western non‐normative sexual identities. This research adopts the author’s newly proposed transnational queer sociology to address these deficiencies. First, it critiques the Western model of sexual identity predominantly employed to elucidate non‐Western, non‐normative sexualities. It does so by examining not only the queer flows between West and non‐West but also those among and within non‐Western contexts to produce translocally shared and mutually referenced experiences. Second, the proposed approach combines sociology with queer theory by emphasizing the significant role of material, as well as discursive, analyses in shaping queer identities, desires and practices. This article employs the approach to examine young gay male identities, as revealed in 90 in‐depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong (n = 30), Taiwan (Taipei, n = 30) and mainland China (Shanghai, n = 30) between 2017 and 2019. More specifically, it highlights the interplay between the state and identity by investigating the intersection and intertwining effects of these young men’s sexual and cultural/national identities, revealing three different forms of civic‐political activism. The article both demonstrates the way in which sexuality and the state are mutually constituted and provides nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of contemporary homosexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. In applying a new sociological approach to understanding sexuality, this research joins the growing body of scholarship within sociology that is decentring the Western formation of universal knowledge.     

Questioning Gender and Sexuality Binaries

Abstract

Social work has largely adopted the oppression model in our research, practice, education, policy and advocacy work. These essentialist constructions rely on the binary categorizations of male/female and heterosexuality/homosexuality. Largely missing from the mainstream social work literature are the perspectives of postmodern/queer theorists, the latest sex research, and the experience of transgendered individuals. These perspectives offer critiques of gender and sexuality binaries as well as libratory goals for social justice. Tensions between the postmodern perspective and the social work liberal model are discussed, and suggestions for incorporating the ideas emanating from queer theorists, new sex research, and the lived experiences of the transgendered into all areas of social work are offered.     

Trans Men: Embodiments,Identities, and Sexualities

This article examines the experiences of 25 persons who were assigned female status at birth but do not wish to live as women and take on a masculine or queer gender identity. We employ the concept of “gendered embodiment” and introduce the concept of “sexualized embodiment” to highlight what is involved in this process. We ask how experiencing a masculine gender identity is reflexively tied to a trans man's sexuality and the ways in which these two embodiments are tightly, moderately, or loosely coupled. For example, a tight coupling appeared when trans men began to use testosterone and obtained surgery such as breast removal; a moderate coupling was found where gender validation was sought from a sexual partner (with this being related to sexual preference identities as well as the interpretation of vaginal penetration); the loosest coupling of the gender‐sexuality embodiments was linked to the liberality of the locale and whether “queer” identities could be easily adopted. In sum, our research demonstrates the link between gender and sexuality as a result of the body work trans men do and the historical and geographical situations in which they find themselves.     

Global Norms vs. Global Actors: International Politics,Muslim Identity,and Support for Shariʿa

Many scholars argue that local cultures are an impediment to the diffusion of “global” norms. Others point out that local populations domesticate global cultural elements by integrating them into preexisting cultures, generating hybridized systems. In the current study, I argue that local cultures are not necessarily impediments to cultural change and hybridization is only one aspect of cultural domestication. Instead, I find that individuals attribute global norms to local cultural objects as a means for disassociating putatively universal norms from the powerful actors that dominate international politics. I illustrate this process using the case of support for shari?a (sometimes called Islamic law) in majority‐Muslim countries. Results of multimethod analyses show that with the exception of attitudes about gender roles and sexuality, Muslims who support implementing shari?a do not systematically object to many so‐called global norms; in fact, they may express more enthusiasm about democracy, tolerance for people of other religions, optimism about scientific advances, and concern for environmental preservation than those who oppose implementing shari?a. Likewise, many Muslims assert their full participation in global society on terms not dictated by Western actors by repackaging ostensibly universal norms as components of the unambiguously local shari?a.     

From Lesbian Nation to Transgender Liberation: A Bisexual Feminist Perspective

This paper begins by raising some questions about the relationship between transgenderism and bisexuality within queer politics and theory, centering on an interview with the curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives in Northampton, Massachusetts. The interview focuses on the changing body of the Archives from the New Alexandria Lesbian Archives to the Sexual Minorities Archives, in relation to the changing body of the curator, Bet Power, from lesbian to female-to-male nonoperative transsexual. These texts—interview, Archives, and body—are discussed from the perspective of a bisexual feminist interviewer and in the broader contexts of queer politics and theory. The aim is to highlight the interplay of gender, sexuality, and class in one particular context and through one interviewer’s eyes. What queer readings can be made of those “plays”? And how do those “plays” illuminate some of the issues and contradictions within queer politics and theory at present?     

Queers,Bodies and Postmodern Sexualities: A Note on Revisiting the “Sexual” in Symbolic Interactionism

This article reflects on the linkage between developments in symbolic interactionist theory over the past thirty years and the sociological study of the social construction of sexualities. After some personal reflections on the development of the theory, four main themes are highlighted: the links to postmodernism and queer theory; the paths to new research styles; some internal problems with the theory; and the need to reinstall the importance of the body. The article concludes that symbolic interactionism remains a major approach to the study of sexuality.     

Abstracts of sexuality articles by medical,nursing, and social work students: Preferences for journal and topic

Theories of gender transpositions are fundamentally flawed because they often fail to comprise biological, social, familial, and cultural variables which influence the development of sexual behavior and identities in humans. These theories are reminiscent of 19th century views of sexuality which relied on the notion of biological determinism. This approach has been considered reductionistic and has led to conclusions that variations of human sexual expression, such as homosexuality, are deviations from the heterosexual norm. That heterosexuality is considered to be the norm originates from the equation of sexuality to reproductive biology in biomedicine. While there is an impressive body of information on hormonal influence on sexual brain differentiation, prenatal life, and later sexual motor behavior in lower mammals, these findings have not been clearly replicated in primates or humans. Yet, there have been forceful extrapolations to the human from lower mammals (e.g., theories of gender transpositions). Upon critical analyses of hormonal theories of heterosexuality and transsexualism, there are no robust data to support the role of hormones in the development of these behaviors or identities among humans. While an understanding of the etiology of these phenomena, including heterosexuality, is intriguing, we need to be cautious in our zeal to find simplistic explanations and not to retreat to oversimplified notions.     

Smashing containers,queering the international through collaging

This article explores the potential of collage epistemology to cultivate queer intellectual curiosity about international relations. It argues that collaging and queering share many points of departure: in both, objects are taken from their conventional contexts and assembled into new relational constellations. The article draws from pedagogical work where collages were used in university teaching on the politics of gender and sexuality. A set of collages made by students are interpreted and brought into a dialogue with queer theorizing. The article suggests that collaging involves smashing a variety of containers that social sciences inquiry often operates with. It troubles not only established conceptions of sexuality and intimacy but also territoriality and theorizing. On this basis, the article concludes that collaging offers a fruitful modality of thought, analysis and expression for queer world-making projects.     

Absent in theory,invisible in practice: Queering HBSE for a more inclusive social work profession

A sound theoretical foundation is a necessary element of social work education that prepares students to confront the challenges of practice with critical knowledge of the human experience. Queer theory is a strength-based framework for understanding sexual and gender identities that fall outside of the current social norms, and offers a highly relevant and useful pathway for the education of social work practitioners. Despite its utility for enhancing understanding and acceptance of gender and sexual minority (SGM) people, it is underutilized in social work compared with other disciplines. Additionally, this study reports on the gender and sexual identities of social work students and their endorsement of help-seeking behaviors related to issues of gender and sexual nonconformity. These empirical-based perspectives undergird the tenets of queer theory and support its application in research endeavors aimed at better understanding the human experience. A theoretical and empirical-based argument is made for the queering of HBSE to strengthen both explicit and implicit curricula in social work education. This study expands on the limited usage of queer theory within social work and directly challenges the normative and binary nature of sexual and gender identity evident within the professional literature and implications for education and research are offered.     

Queering PR: Directions in theory and research for public relations scholarship

ABSTRACT

This article presents an historical overview of queer activism and inquiry, advocating for queer theorizing in public relations, and outlining future directions for theory building. It proposes making public relations theory queer (challenging the heterosexist foundations and presumptions that constitute theory in public relations) and queering public relations theory (challenging the discomfort in theorizing sexuality and gender identity). This article is intended to be provocative and to serve as a disruption to contemporary public relations theory; it is a cry for radical rethinking of how we come to identify, define, and understand the discipline.     

A Critique of Queer Phenomenology: Gender and the Sexual

This article critiques Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology in light of psychoanalytic theory of sexuality. I argue that there is a conspicuous absence of the unconscious, sexuality, and fantasy in Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. I turn to the work of Jean Laplanche both to address this absence and to argue for a theory of the formation of sexuality and gender that is not exhausted by the phenomenal world.     

User‐generated online queer media and the politics of queer visibility

In this article, we review sociological research on the politics of queer self‐presentation and visibility in user‐generated online media, such as personal homepages, blogs, YouTube vlogs, and queer‐specific social networking sites. Using an intersectional lens to attend to multiple axes of identity, the review offers a deeper understanding of how online queer media impact self‐presentation and visibility, while also privileging certain racial, sexual, and gender identities and practices over others. Online platforms can serve as spaces of resistance wherein queer people not only make themselves visible but also redefine dominant conceptions of identity, as well as the boundaries between public and private life. However, our review also finds that online spaces of queer self‐presentation often become another space for the reinforcement of dominant norms pertaining to various axes of one's identity. Given that the advent of user‐generated media and the Internet has facilitated the mobilization of queer people worldwide, an understanding of queer self‐presentation in online media demonstrates how new iterations of sex, gender, and sexuality are constructed in a technological era by queer‐identified people themselves, and how people can both resist and reify dominant social hierarchies across boundaries of space and time.     

Between butch/femme: On the performance of race,gender, and sexuality in a YouTube web series

Drawing on a legacy of Black television and film production, Black web series remediate earlier media forms in order to usher in a twenty-first-century revival of indie Black cultural production. Specifically, video sharing and social media platforms operate as a sphere in which content creators and users are afforded unique opportunities to engage with video content and each other on a variety of levels. Focusing on the YouTube media sphere, one can also observe the myriad ways in which the performance of race, gender, and sexuality influences the types of discourse that circulate within these sites. In watching and analyzing Black queer web series on YouTube, I examine how the performance of gender and sexuality by Black queer women within and outside of web series are policed and protected by both community insiders and outsiders. Utilizing an ethnographic framework, which includes a critical discourse analysis of the YouTube comments for the series Between Women, as well as a textual analysis of series content, this project draws conclusions about the role that the politics of pleasure, performance, and the public sphere play in the recognition and/or refusal of queer sexuality within Black communities.     

The Shape of Queer

ABSTRACT

The rise of queer theory and activism have posed problems of identity and of goals. Queer theory has problemaiized identity, including queer identity: who or what is queer? Queer activism, on the other hand, has been fraught with those challenging sexual boundaries and those for whom “queer” is just the new name for gays and lesbians. Many of these latter activists reject earlier politics, and are in danger of returning to interest-group liberalism as a result. This paper sketches these problems and argues that wholesale rejection of lesbian-feminism and gay liberation is a mistake. The broader vision of these movements offers the possibility of articulation with other movements for change, and this possibility must be renewed and rethought.     

Rhythms of consumption

The emergence of queer theory has posed an incipient and significant challenge to the essentialism which has typically characterized theories of sexuality. In an attempt to eschew the totalizing effects of the categories ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, queer theorists advocate a subjectivity which celebrates sexual difference without concern for achieved or ascribed characteristics. It is this remarkable capacity for inclusivity, attributed most immediately to the gender and race neutrality of ‘queer’, which is of particular interest here. More specifically, this article examines queer subjectivity's relation to a liberal humanist discourse whose purported universality requires the production of abstract, sovereign subjects without concern for their social location. The article in turn examines how the liberal premises which underlie queer subjectivity actually facilitate the reappropriation of ‘queer’ while undermining similar attempts to resignify racial epithets. Far from being a neutral subject position which ensures the liberty and autonomy of its inhabitants, the racial epithet here reinscribes the difference which the ‘queer’ subject and its liberal humanist prototype are perpetually trying to mask. I contend that it is this discrepancy in the capacity to mask difference – via a proximity to or distance from the liberal subject – which permits the reappropriation of ‘queer’ while racial epithets continue to remain taboo in the cultural mainstream.     

Conditional Families and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender,Sexuality, Family Instability,and Rejection

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle‐class families. In this 18‐month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.     

Queer visual pleasures and the policing of male sexuality in responses to images of David Beckham

Since he stepped out in a sarong in 1998, David Beckham's sexuality and gendered image has been a popular topic of discussion in the media. He has also attracted academic attention for the expanded range of masculinities he seems to represent. Some academic studies of Beckham have employed ‘queer theory’ to analyse the destabilising of gender that his public presentations seem to embody but little attention has been paid to the specifically visual dynamics of images of Beckham. In this essay, I take Sam Taylor-Wood's David (2004) as a starting point to suggest the types of visual pleasure that images of Beckham might be seen to offer to both male and female audiences. For the remainder of the essay I focus on an Armani male underwear advertisement from the 2007–2008 campaign. Informed by discourse analysis and queer theory, I identify a set of ‘queer’ responses to the advertisement, suggesting they represent the ‘policing’ of male sexuality, which often accompanies potential signifiers of homoeroticism. I conclude by considering how and why Beckham has retained his status as a heteronormative masculine icon despite his continued appearance in homoerotic images.