Gone Shopping: The Commercialization of Same-Sex Desire

Marketplace phenomena, such as gay window advertising, reflect the extent to which the commercialization of same-sex desire permits marginalized or stigmatized forms of sexual behavior literally to sell their way into consumer culture. This reverse accommodation, economically managed, effectively undercuts any political gain that might arguably accrue around such increasing visibility. To the contrary, this essay argues that economic display reactivates an ancient and virulent form of prejudice, an interlacing of sexual difference, economics and social scapegoating that has a very long history. Market politics, then, dangerously reconstitutes the pre-Stonewall closet. Finally, the containment made possible by economic enthrallment is as terminal as the more traditional stigmatizing usually associated with the agencies of religion, law, and medicine. Shopping queer is only another way of redeploying very old weapons, only this time, employing them against ourselves.     

The Strains and Gains of Caregiving: An Examination of the Effects of Providing Personal Care to a Parent on a Range of Indicators of Psychological Well-Being

This study explores the effect of providing regular help with personal care to a resident or non-resident parent or parent-in-law on different aspects of psychological well-being. We use cross-sectional data from the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation (LOGG) study (N ~ 15,000, age 18–79) and two-wave panel data from the Norwegian study on Life course, Ageing and Generation (NorLAG) (N ~ 3,000, age 40–79). We separate outcomes into cognitive well-being (life satisfaction, partnership satisfaction, self-esteem), affective well-being (happiness, positive and negative affect, depression, loneliness) and sense of mastery. Caregiver status is largely unrelated to these aspects of well-being, both in cross-section and longitudinally. One notable exception is that caring for a resident (but not a non-resident) parent relates to lower affective well-being among women, also longitudinally. This effect is more marked among unpartnered and lower educated women. In addition, caring for a non-resident parent is associated with a positive change in sense of mastery among women. The results reviewed and presented indicate that caregiving has less detrimental effects in the Nordic countries than in other countries, highlighting the role of social policies and care systems in shaping the impact of caregiving on well-being.     

Jesus and Matthew: Monsters, Si[g]ns, and Wonders

In the American New Right's outraged war against all things anti-family, -nation, and -civilization, the authority of Jesus, crucified yet triumphant, is held out as potent augury against all forces of evil. For many evangelical Christian groups, one archenemy in particular exemplifies the forces of Satan and civil distress. The resulting scene of Manichean conflict can only be called Gothic Verite: The suffering, broken body of Jesus, whose blood is piously read as atonement, rebukes the demonized and monstrous homosexual, whose blood, Gothically read, contains the taint of private immorality, public domestic threat, and world-ending civic collapse. This powerful clash of images, cosmic worldviews and mundane politics can be observed at the funeral of Matthew Shepard—beaten to death, most observers conclude, because his assailants thought he was gay. In the tense confrontation of Christians and homosexuals at his funeral, one sees a historic tension within the heart of Christianity threatening, at whatever cost, to reconcile. That is, at issue is the recognition, however dim, that the angel and the demon, the prayerful and depraved, mirror each other more than they differ.     

Gender-Deviancy and Crime: An American Fantasy

The political usefulness of such terms as domesticity has changed since the 1950s. Nonetheless, some elements have remained stable over the decades. Of particular interest is the continued use of fear in public representations to create and to stabilize the domestic space. This essay considers several crime narratives of domestic intrusion, written at successive points in this period, and concludes with the Andrew Cunanan coverage, examining how different narratives of criminal intimacy exploit similar codes of failed gender. The essay argues that the crisis announced by the serial killer is less about killing than about the perceived disarray of cultural intimacies and the collapse of the public/private binary that these govern.