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Queer Frameworks and Queer Tendencies: Towards an Understanding of

Postmodern Transformations of Sexuality

Article  in  Sociological Research Online · December 2000

DOI: 10.5153/sro.528 · Source: RePEc

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Copyright Sociological Research Online, 2000

Sasha Roseneil (2000) 'Queer Frameworks and Queer Tendencies: Towards an

Understanding of Postmodern Transformations of Sexuality'
Sociological Research Online, vol. 5, no. 3, <[Link]
/5/3/[Link]>
To cite articles published in Sociological Research Online, please reference the above information and include paragraph numbers if necessary

Received: 19/9/2000 Accepted: 8/12/2000 Published: 31/11/2000

Abstract

This article aims to extend the theorization of postmodernity to consider social changes in
the realm of sexuality. It offers a discussion of recent developments in queer theory, which,
it is argued, can contribute significant new theoretical frameworks for the analysis of
sexuality. It then traces some of the shifts in the organization of sexuality in the second half
of the twentieth century, the emergence of modern sexual identities, and the changing
relationships between `the homosexual' and `the heterosexual', as categories, identities and
ways of life. The article then outlines what are conceptualized as the `queer tendencies' of
postmodernity, which it is suggested characterize the contemporary re-organization of
relations of sexuality. These queer tendencies are: queer auto-critique, the decentring of
heterorelations, the emergence of hetero-reflexivity, and the cultural valorizing of the queer.

Keywords:
Culture Identity; Heterosexuality; Homosexuality; Postmodernity; Queer Theory; Sexuality;
Social Change

`an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture must be, not merely
incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not
incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition' (Sedgwick, 1991:1)

Introduction

1.1
At the turn of the twenty-first century we are living through a period of intense and profound
social change, characterized by many European social theorists as a shift from modernity to
postmodernity.[1] In developing analyses of processes of postmodernization, sociologists
have focused on changes in the realms of social life which the discipline has traditionally
held to be significant - work and production, nation, politics and the state - and, in the
context of the growing influence of feminist sociology, they have also devoted considerable
interest to changes in gender and family relations, and the sphere of intimacy.[2] Also central

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to theorizations of recent social change is a new emphasis the sphere of the cultural, as
sociologists identify the increasing importance of the cultural and symbolic, and the
aestheticization of everyday life.[3] The aim of this article is to contribute to sociological
understandings of the social changes of postmodernity by focusing on an area - the realm of
sexuality - which has, thus far, largely escaped analysis in terms of processes of
postmodernization.[4] The paper draws on the sociological and historical literature on
sexuality which has been developed in the past thirty years, bringing this work into dialogue
with more recent contributions from queer theory. It proceeds from the position that an
exploration of transformations of sexuality must be central to any theorization of
postmodernity. It sets forth an argument about the importance of relations of sexuality in
understandings of social change, about how we might seek to analyze these, and puts
forward some suggestions about the direction and nature of some of the transformations in
the realm of sexuality which are underway in the contemporary world, which might serve as
the basis for future research.

1.2
My focus is on `sexuality' - the organization of erotic relations - but the sexual social fabric
cannot be understood outside wider analyses of social relations, particularly the organization
of `cathexis`, or intimacy - emotionally charged affective relations which are not necessarily
sexual - and, of course, gender relations.[5] I will not attempt a definition which
circumscribes the `proper domain' of sexuality, because what is important about relations of
sexuality is that they permeate, sometimes indeed saturate, the entire social formation.[6]
Whilst some of what I will be talking about can be considered under the rubric of change
within the sphere, and in cultural meanings, of `family', my frame of reference cross-cuts the
public/private divide, and is concerned also with shifts in non-familial and public forms of
sociality.

1.3
The paper is divided into two main sections. In the first I offer a discussion of recent
developments in queer theory which I argue can contribute in significant ways to
sociological thinking about sexuality, providing us with new theoretical frameworks. The
second part of the paper then traces some of the shifts in the organization of sexuality in the
second half of the twentieth century, discussing the emergence of modern sexual identities,
and shifts in the relationship between `the homosexual' and `the heterosexual', as categories,
identities and ways of life. I then go on to outline what I conceptualize as the `queer
tendencies' which I suggest characterize the postmodern re-organization of relations of
sexuality.[7] Here my focus is very particularly on the sexual culture of contemporary
Britain.

Queer Theory

2.1
It was against the backdrop of AIDS and the American New Right's virulently
anti-homosexual politics of the 1980s, and from within increasingly large, diverse and
conflicted lesbian and gay communities, that a new strand of thinking about sexuality
emerged within the humanities in the 1990s: queer theory.[8] Drawing on poststructuralism,
particularly Foucault and Derrida, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this rather amorphous body
of work shares a critique of the minoritizing epistemology which has underpinned both most

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academic thinking about homosexuality and the dominant politics within gay
communities.[9] This minoritizing view sees `homo/heterosexual definition ... as an issue of
active importance primarily for a small, distinct, relatively fixed homosexual minority',
rather than `seeing it ... as an issue of continuing determining importance in the lives of
people across the spectrum of sexualities' (Sedgwick, 1999:1). Queer theory identifies the
homo/heterosexual binary, and its related opposition, `inside/ outside' (Fuss, 1991), as a
central organizing principle of modern society and culture, and takes this binary as its key
problematic and political target.[10] In common with other poststructuralist understandings
of the exclusionary and regulatory nature of binary identity categories, queer theory rejects
the idea of a unified homosexual identity, and sees the construction of sexual identities
around the hierarchically structured binary opposition of homo/heterosexual as inherently
unstable. The fracturing and tensions within the category of homosexuality and the fluidities
and non-fixity of various homosexualities are thus foregrounded. Differences between
lesbians and gay men, to which lesbian feminism had long been pointing, and between the
multifarious, and multiple, identifications of those within the `queer community' - lipstick
lesbians, s/m-ers, muscle marys, opera queens, bisexuals, transsexuals, the transgendered,
those who identify as black, Asian, Irish, Jewish ... - become theoretically important.
Equally, heterosexuality is also problematized and is rendered as much less monolithic and
unassailable than earlier theory (feminist and sociological) has tended to regard it, and its
construction and maintenance through acts of exclusion vis-a-vis homosexuality are placed
on the agenda to be studied.[11]

Queering our Frameworks

2.2
Initially queer theory developed within the humanities largely without reference to the thirty
years of research and theorizing about sexuality that has taken place within sociology,
despite the clear (and unacknowledged) parallels between the two fields' social
constructionist understandings of sexuality.[12] This has led to some unfounded assumptions
of novelty, an overly textual orientation, an underdeveloped concept of the social, and a lack
of engagement with `real' material, everyday life and social practices and processes in queer
theory, of which social scientists might rightly be critical.[13] However, I would suggest that
there is much that is exciting and important in queer theory. Its interrogation of sexual
identity categories, and its enactment of a shift in focus from the margins, on the
homosexual, to a focus on the constitution of the homo/heterosexual binary represent
important developments in the theorization of sexuality. Moreover, its foundational claim, as
expressed by Sedgwick and quoted at the beginning of the paper, that an understanding of
sexuality, and in particular, of the homo/heterosexual binary, must be central to any analysis
of modern western culture, has significant implications for social and cultural theory in
general.

2.3
Along with a number of other social scientists, working within a range of disciplines -
sociology, geography, socio- legal studies, international relations - I would like to advocate
the `queering' of our analytical frameworks.[14] A queer sociological perspective would
bring queer theory's interrogation of identity categories into dialogue with a sociological
concern to theorize and historicize social change in the realm of sexuality. It would see
relations of sexuality and cathexis as central dynamic forces within society, focusing

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attention on the homo/heterosexual binary and on heteronormativity - on studying the

`centre', the `inside', as well as the margins, and the `outside' (Stein and Plummer, 1996). We
can learn from the importance queer theory places on culture, placing it within a
sociological analysis which recognizes that the postmodern world is characterized by
`economies of signs' (Lash and Urry, 1994), by the ever increasing aestheticization of
everyday life.[15] But we would combine queer theory's attention to the realm of the cultural
with a more sociological analysis of social practices, processes and lived experience. Thus
far queer theorists have, true to their poststructuralist roots, tended to favour analyses of
structural and discursive regulation over attention to the resistance and creative agency of
human actors in the realm of sexuality.[16] Their work has been concerned with analyzing
the cultural processes by which the homo/heterosexual binary is upheld, with how
heterosexuality is continuously re-naturalized and re-prioritized, and with how
heteronormativity operates as a mode of regulation of identities and cultural and social
possibilities.[17] It has also tended to direct its gaze backwards in time, failing to remark
upon and engage with contemporary social change.[18] It has not begun to explore how the
homo/heterosexual binary and its hierarchical power relations might be undergoing
challenge and transformation in the contemporary world. In contrast, a queer sociology, I
would suggest, should seek to transcend the limitations of a poststructuralist ontology,
reaching for a compromise between poststructuralism and humanism which enables the
theorization of human agency within historical, social and cultural contexts.[19] It would
have a keen eye for tendencies towards social change, for shifts, movement and
destabilization in established relations of sexuality and cathexis.

2.4
So, in advocating the queering of our analytical framework, I am suggesting much more
than just `adding in' the study of lesbians and gay men. Doing this - making sure that we
consider how to research across sexual differences - is just the starting point; we must take
seriously non- normative sexualities, and must allow lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and all
those whose lives transgress heteronormative assumptions a place in our analyses. There is a
tendency amongst liberal-minded social scientists, in the wake of the challenges of the new
social movements, to speak of the importance of attention to `difference', and in recent years
sexuality has been added to the list of differences which it is considered necessary to
include, alongside gender, race/ ethnicity, and, sometimes, disability. The problem with this
is that `differences' are different from each other, and sexual differences have their own
specific difficulties of definition and identification. Sexual difference is not always visible,
indeed, as Sedgwick (1991) points out, there is an `epistemology of the closet', based on
secrecy and outings, in twentieth century culture, which constitutes a particular form of
domination, unlike others. This means that the act of speaking of sexual differences is vital,
but we must be aware that pinning them down and delineating membership of sexual
categories is impossible; sexuality is ambiguous, identifications are fluctuating, strategically
performed, yet sometimes also ascribed.

Section 2: Changing Relations of Sexuality

The Modern Regime

3.1
It is now widely accepted by historians of sexuality that the idea of the existence of

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`the homosexual' as a category of person distinct from `the heterosexual' was born in
the second half of the nineteenth century.[20] By the start of the twentieth century
there was in widespread circulation in a proliferation of medical, legal, literary and
psychological discourses for which the homo/heterosexual binary was axiomatic. So it
was that there came into existence `a world-mapping by which every person, just as
he or she was necessarily assignable to a male or female gender, was now considered
necessarily assignable as well to a homo- or a hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity
that was full of implications, however confusing, for even the ostensibly least sexual
aspects of personal existence' (Sedgwick, 1991:2). In this `world-mapping' marital
heterosexuality occupied the centre, constructed as normal, natural and desirable, with
homosexuality as the marginal, perverse, unnatural other, subject to a range of
different legal, medical and social sanctions and forms of regulation.

3.2
From the 1910s onwards sexologists began to develop an ideal of the married
heterosexual couple bound together by sexual intimacy rather than just economic and
social necessity.[21] This model of hetero-relationality came to replace the nineteenth
century `separate spheres' ideology which had underpinned the Victorian family and
which had allowed, and even encouraged, strong, sometimes passionate,
homo-relational ties of love and friendship.[22] Particular emphasis was placed on
persuading women of the importance of fulfilling their emotional and sexual desires
through their marital relationship.[23] By the 1950s the idea of `the primarily sexual
nature of conjugality' (Weeks, 1985:27) was firmly established in Britain, and the
confluence of sexuality and cathexis within the marital heterosexual relationship
became established, supported by a panoply of cultural forms ranging from
Hollywood cinema to women's magazines, as well as by social, legal and political
institutions and their policies. Not least amongst these, of course, was the post-war
welfare state, which assumed as its subject the married, heterosexual man and his
family.

3.3
Under the conditions of the post- war sexual and cathectic regime of hegemonic
marital heterosexuality, non-normative relations of sexuality and cathexis were lived
at the margins. Seidman (1996) and Adam (1995) suggest that although the 1950s are
widely perceived to have been conservative, the seeds of the sexual rebellions of the
1960s were sown by the geographical mobility, prosperity and social liberalization
which followed the war, and they point to the emergence of homophile organizations,
which began, very tentatively, to claim a public voice for homosexuals, and the
cultural interventions of rock music and the beatniks, which offered a challenge to
dominant sexual mores. And in Britain 1957 saw the publication of the Wolfenden
Report advocating homosexual law reform some 10 years before the passing of the
Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized sex between men over 21 in private.
Whilst the `sexual revolution' of the 1960s is easily and often overstated, the
emergence of the women's liberation movement, lesbian feminism, and gay liberation
politics from the New Left, and the growth of visible subcultures of lesbians and gay
men in the metropolises began to expand the public space of the non-heterosexual
margins.[24] The Stonewall riot of 1969, when `drag queens, dykes, street people and
bar boys' responded to a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar `first with jeers
and high camp, and then with a hail of coins, paving stones, and parking meters'

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(Adam, 1995:81) was an epiphanic moment; it marked the beginnings of gay

liberation, which had as its aim `to free the homosexual in everyone', to overthrow
compulsory heterosexuality and thus eventually, the boundaries between the
homosexual and the heterosexual (Adam, 1995:84). The radical demands of gay
liberation (which were to be echoed in the queer politics of the 1990s) faded by the
mid 1970s, giving way to a more assimilationist politics demanding equal rights and
protection for lesbians and gay men as a minority group, and the 1970s and 80s saw
the growth of self-confident lesbian and gay communities with their own institutions
and traditions. The AIDS epidemic, which decimated the population of gay men in the
global gay cities, called forth new forms of political activism and self-help welfare
organization, and ultimately, at a collective level, strengthened the ties of
communality and sociality amongst those who survived.

3.4
One of the traditions of lesbian and gay life that took off in the 1970s, post Stonewall,
was the `coming out story'. Plummer's (1995) discussion of the telling of sexual
stories identifies the coming out story as an archetypal modernist tale, featuring a
linear progression from a period of suffering to the crucial moment of self-discovery,
and ending with a satisfactory resolution in the form of the achievement of a secure
identity as lesbian or gay amidst a supportive community. But whilst the notion of
`coming out' is firmly rooted in the `epistemology of the closet' and the modern
homo/heterosexual binary, the situation in the late twentieth century in which many
tens of thousands of people have `come out'(including an ever increasing number of
public figures), and have made their sexual and cathectic relationships with members
of their own sex highly visible, has actually served to create the context for the
postmodernization of the regime of sexuality and cathexis.[25] As Seidman, Meeks
and Traschen (1999) argue, for many lesbians and gay men today homosexuality has
been so normalized that they are effectively `beyond the closet'.

The Postmodernization of Sexuality, or Queer Tendencies

3.5
Offering support to my contention about the significance of sexuality to
understandings of social change, there is now a body of literature theorizing the
changes which characterize the contemporary social condition which, unlike classic
sociological narratives of the development of modernity, gives a certain prominence
to questions of sexuality. This work suggests that there is underway a shift in relations
of cathexis. Giddens's (1992) argument about the `transformation of intimacy' and
Beck and Beck-Gernscheim's (1995) and Beck-Gernscheim's (1999) work on the
changing meanings and practices of love and family relationships posit the idea that in
the contemporary world processes of individualization and de-traditionalization and
increased self-reflexivity are opening up new possibilities and expectations in
heterosexual relationships.[26] With a (rather cursory) nod in the direction of feminist
scholarship and activism, their work recognizes the significance of the shifts in gender
relations consequent particularly on the changed consciousness and identities which
women have developed in the wake of the women's liberation movement.

3.6
Giddens (1992:2) considers the transformation of intimacy which he sees as currently

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in train to be of `great, and generalizable, importance' . He charts the changes in the

nature of marriage which are constituted by the emergence of the `pure relationship', a
relationship of sexual and emotional equality between men and women, and links this
with the development of `plastic sexuality', which is freed from `the needs of
reproduction' (Giddens, 1991:2). He identifies lesbians and gay men as `pioneers' in
the pure relationship and plastic sexuality, and hence at the forefront of processes of
individualization and de-traditionalization.[27]

3.7
Whilst there are undoubtedly criticisms to be made of this body of work (e.g.
Jamieson, 1998), this literature offers important insights into, or at least raises
questions about, contemporary social change. But I now wish to extend this analysis
to consider the constitution of the sexual more generally. Giddens's idea that lesbians
and gay men are forging new paths for heterosexuals as well as for themselves is
developed by Weeks, Donovan and Heaphy (1999:85) who suggest that `one of the
most remarkable features of domestic change over recent years is ... the emergence of
common patterns in both homosexual and heterosexual ways of life as a result of
these long-term shifts in relationship patterns' .[28] In other words, changes in the
organization of intimacy are impacting upon the wider organization of sexuality.

3.8
It is my argument that we are currently witnessing a significant destabilization of the
hetero/homosexual binary. The hierarchical relationship between the two sides of the
binary, and its mapping onto an inside/ out opposition is undergoing intense
challenge, and the normativity and naturalness of both heterosexuality and
heterorelationality have come into question.[29] In addition to the yearning for a `pure
relationship' which is increasingly shared by those on either side of the
homo/heterosexual binary, there are, I would suggest, a number of `queer tendencies'
at work, and play, in the postmodern world. I choose to speak of `tendencies' to
suggest the still provisional nature of these social changes, and with the existence of
countervailing tendencies (see Conclusion) in mind.[30]

Queer Auto-critique

3.9
The first of these `queer tendencies' is that underway within lesbian and gay
communities themselves: the tendency to auto-critique at both the individual and
collective level which is producing a fracturing of the modern homosexual identity.
`Queer theory' may be an elite academic practice, but queer theorizing, and the
questioning of the regulatory aspects of lesbian and gay identity and community, is an
everyday activity for many within contemporary lesbian and gay communities. Recent
years have seen an upsurge of discussion within public forums of communities about
a range of issues which challenge the assumed coherence and constituency of lesbian
and gay communities and fixity of sexual practice; for instance, lesbians having sex
with men, and gay men having sex with women are openly discussed, and bisexuality
and transgender are on the agenda. It is the era of `post-gay' (Sinfield, 1996), or
`anti-gay' (Simpson, 1996), of queer, postmodern stories `in the making, which shun
unities and uniformities; reject naturalism and determinacies; seek out immanences

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and ironies; and ultimately find pastiche, complexities and shifting perspectives'
(Plummer, 1995:133).[31]

The Decentring of Heterorelations

3.10
Much has been written in recent years about the meaning of the dramatic rise in
divorce rates over the past 30 years[32], about the increase in the number of births
outside marriage[33] (and to a lesser extent outside any lasting heterosexual
relationship - births to mothers who are `single by choice'), about the rise in the
proportion of children being brought up by a lone parent[34], about the growing
proportion of households that are composed of one person[35], and the climbing
proportion of women who are not having children. However, this commentary has
tended to focus on the meaning of these changes in terms of gender relations and the
family; it has not addressed their implications with respect to the established
organization of sexuality. This is surprising because it seems to me that these changes
speak of a significant decentring of heterorelations, as the heterosexual couple, and
particularly the married, co-resident heterosexual couple with children, no longer
occupies the centre-ground of British society, and cannot be taken for granted as the
basic unit in society. Processes of individualization and detraditionalization are
releasing individuals from traditional heterosexual scripts and from the patterns of
heterorelationality which accompany them. By 1995-6 only 23% of all households in
the UK comprised a married couple with dependent children (Social Trends, 1997).

3.11
Postmodern living arrangements are diverse, fluid and unresolved, constantly chosen
and re-chosen, and heterorelations are no longer as hegemonic as once they were. It
could be said that we are experiencing the `queering of the family' (Stacey, 1996), as
meanings of family undergo radical challenge, and more and more kinship groups
have to come to terms with the diverse sexual practices and living arrangements
chosen by their own family members. At the start of the twenty first century there can
be few families which do not include at least some members who diverge from
traditional heterorelational practices, whether as divorcees, unmarried mothers,
lesbians, gay men or bisexuals.

3.12
This social decentring of heterorelations finds its expression and reflection in popular
culture. Consider, for example, the television programmes, particularly the dramas
and sitcoms, which have achieved particular popularity recently in Britain (and many
also in the United States and Australia): `Friends', `This Life', `Absolutely Fabulous',
`Ellen', `Frasier', `Grace Under Fire', `Seinfeld', `Men Behaving Badly'. All of these
television programmes are fundamentally post-heterorelational in their thematic
concerns and narrative drive. Unlike the generation of situation comedies that
preceded them, which were almost exclusively focused on co-resident, heterosexual
families, these programmes are concerned with the embeddness of friends in daily
life. They offer images of the warmth and affection provided by networks of friends in
an age of insecure and/ or transitory sexual relationships; friends, in the words of the
theme song to the show, "are there for you", in the bustling big city life of the

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postmodern world, in which individuals have to carve out lives for themselves.[36]

3.13
And in popular music, the enormous success of The Spice Girls can be read as an
example of the cultural decentring of heterorelations amongst a teen and pre-teenage
female audience which, from the 1950s onwards, has directed the emotional and
erotic energy of its fandom towards male popstars and boy bands. The Spice Girls
have not just offered their fans a range of models of contemporary femininity with
which to identify, which includes one - Sporty - which clearly draws on lesbian street
style, but also, more radically and uniquely they have captured a generation of girls'
passion outside the framework of heterorelationality and heterosexuality. The question
`who is your favourite Spice Girl?', is as much about which Spice Girl is desired, as
about which one is identified with. Moreover, The Spice Girls' `philosophy' of
`girlpower' is a reworking of basic feminist principles about the importance of female
friendship, seeking to inspire girls to respect and value themselves and their
girlfriends, mothers, and sisters, and challenging the cultural prioritization of
masculinity and male needs and desires. It is certainly no accident that each concert in
the 1998 Spice World Tour included in it a cover of Annie Lennox's `Sisters are Doing
it For Themselves' and ended with a rendition of the gay anthem first popularized by
Sister Sledge, `We are Family'.

The Emergence of Hetero-reflexivity

3.14
Another facet of the destabilization of the homo/heterosexual binary is that
heterosexuality is increasingly a conscious state which has to be produced,
self-monitored and thought about in relation to its other, in a way that was not
necessary when heteronormativity was more secure and lesbian and gay alternatives
were less visible and self-confident.[37] It used to be that it was homosexuality that
had to be produced and thought-out, with heterosexuality the unreflexive inside that
did not have to consider its position. But in recent years, from `backlash' anxieties
about political correctness and the `threatened' position of the white, heterosexual
male and his normal family, as exemplified in Section 28 of the Local Government
Act, to the ever growing number of personal ads placed in newspapers by
heterosexuals forced to name themselves as such, heterosexuality has become
de-naturalized and reflexive.[38] Even women's magazines, once the arch-promoters of
a naturalized, normative heterosexuality, are now encouraging their readers to engage
in the reflexive consideration of their sexual desires by means of the self-administered
questionnaire, which at the end, when scores are added up, refuses to locate readers in
clearly demarcated sexual identity categories, but rather valorizes self-awareness and
sexual openness.[39]

The Cultural Valorizing of the Queer

3.15
If, as exhorted by queer theory, we take seriously the realm of culture in our attempts
to understand shifts in relations of sexuality, contemporary developments in popular
culture become significant indicators of the zeitgeist. It would be sociologically naive

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to assume that changes in popular culture necessarily give rise to or reflect

transformations in people's everyday beliefs and practices, or to assume that people
always behave in consistent ways (so that liking Ellen or Julian Clary also constitutes
a rejection of homophobia); but I would like to propose that the ideas and images of
the sexual which permeate our everyday world through popular culture are of
considerable importance in framing the cultural imaginaries within which people lead
their lives and construct their identities and relationships. It is my suggestion that
there is underway, particularly in Britain, a queering of popular culture, a valorizing
of the sexually ambiguous, and of that which transgresses rigid boundaries of gender.
Whilst sexual and gender ambiguity are not new in popular culture, having moved out
of the exclusive province of a culturally elite avant-garde in the 1970s with David
Bowie, Patti Smith, Marc Bolan, and in the early 1980s, Boy George and the `new
romantics', the 1990s' desire to confuse and transgress the homo/heterosexual binary
is of a different order. Whereas the gender- benders of the 1970s and early 1980s had
something of a freak-show about them, and were a safe distance from their fans,
whose normality was perhaps reconstituted in contrast with the stars' allowable
excesses, the cultural valorizing of the queer at the end of the 1990s is far more
participatory and closer to everyday life. This can be seen in three areas of popular
culture: dance culture, fashion magazines and television.

3.16
Dance culture is one of the most significant cultural movements of recent years. As it
moved from underground raves into the mainstream, clubbing has become a leisure
pursuit for millions of young people, and the fashions, imagery and ideals of dance
culture have become the fashions, imagery and ideals of a generation (as the category
of "youth" expands both upwards and downwards this is large generation). Dance
culture has its roots in the house music born in black gay clubs in New York, Chicago
and Detroit, in which boundaries of sexuality developed a fluidity, and to which men
and women of a range of sexual and gender identifications were welcomed. Travelling
across the Atlantic, via Ibiza, in tandem with the drug Ecstasy, house music spawned
a new era of nightclubbing in Britain in the 1990s. Pharmacologically energized and
"loved up", what mattered in the early house music clubs was the warmth and
intensity of the sociality between those in the club.[40] In Britain, as in the US, the
clubs where new dance music is tested and hits break, the clubs which lead fashion in
music, clothing and attitude, have in recent years been queer clubs: not exclusively
gay, but emerging from a gay/lesbian community and identity, usually established and
run by gay or lesbian promoters, and destabilizing sexual identity categories by
welcoming anyone with a queer enough attitude.[41] It is not sexual identity or sexual
practice that matters in gaining admission to the coolest clubs, but rather a way of
thinking and an attitude of openness and fluidity: those seeking admission to Vague in
Leeds, for instance, being required by the transsexual "door whore" to kiss anyone she
demanded. The ideals of celebrating diversity and granting respect are often spelt out
on club flyers, on posters, banners inside the club, and by bouncers on the door.
`Queer' has become, in British popular culture, an attitude and a stance which rocks
the homo/heterosexual binary, and is one to which a generation aspires.[42]

3.17
Further evidence of the aspirational status of the queer is to be found in advertising in
a range of media, and in editorial imagery in fashion magazines. Over the past decade

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there has been an upsurge in the presentation of queer imagery in the mainstream
media, in which sexual and gender ambiguity is foregrounded through the use of
non-conventionally heterosexual models and through playful cross-dressing, and
homo-erotic desire is regularly explicitly represented or more subtly implied.[43] A
large number of companies which clearly wish to be perceived as at the cutting edge
of fashion have run advertising campaigns in magazines, on television and free
postcards, which are decidedly queer - promoting the fashion houses Calvin Klein,
Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier and Versace, alcoholic drinks such as Black Bush
Whiskey and Kronenberg 1664, toiletries (Impulse deodorant), electronic goods and
services (On Digital, BT Cellnet, Siemens mobile telephones, mail2web email),
airlines (Aer Lingus), furniture (Habitat) and cars (Rover 200) through adverts which
play with same-sex sexual possibilities and challenging the heteronormative gaze and
its expectations. Some of the images and messages in these advertisements are more
open to a range of possible readings than others, but in most the attribution of a
positive value to non-heterosexual bodies, desires and lifestyles is clearly presented to
the viewer. In the context of much greater public discussion of lesbian and gay
experiences, and the appearance of lesbian and gay characters in soap operas, and
dramas in British television, the present moment is one at which readings which
recognize the non-heteronormativity of the images in these campaigns are more
available than ever before.

3.18
Finally, television has also in recent years brought a queer sensibility into millions of
living rooms. In sharp contrast to the tradition of laughing at homosexual men's
gender performances in classic British comedies such as `Are You Being Served?',
and `Carry On' films, I would identify `All Rise for Julian Clary' as marking a
significant moment in the sexual history of British televisual culture. Broadcast at
prime time on Saturday night on BBC1, "All Rise" enacts a queer reversal of
traditional anti-gay humour, and directs attention to the humour inherent in the
heterosexuality and traditional renditions of masculinity of the audience. Julian Clary,
a highly politicized, `out' gay man, makes constant, extremely sexually explicit,
reference to his own homosexuality, but the show revolves equally around laughing
at, and pointing out the absurdity of normal heterosexual masculinity, particularly that
of the police and the military. Clary plays the role of judge and adjudicates according
to his own set of queer, camp values on a range of matters brought to him by the
audience. Thus the privileging of heteronormative behaviour is reversed and the queer
valorized.

3.19
A pessimistic critique of the tendencies which I identify as the cultural valorizing of
the queer would see them as evidence of the extension of commodity culture into
previously uncommodified subcultures, and of the ability of capitalism to colonize
and utilize lesbian and gay identities in its relentless search for profit, exploiting their
otherness whilst maintaining mainstream heterosexual positionality.[44] Whilst there is
some undoubtedly some purchase in this analysis, it is my opinion that such an
argument neglects the recontextualizations that are possible within commodity
culture, and fails to see how capital might be running to catch up with transformations
which are already underway in the ways in which sexuality is lived and imagined. It is
surely interesting that at this historical moment queer has become trendy, not just in

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relatively closed metropolitan networks, but in mainstream popular culture, and in the
context of a history of the minoritizing of the non-heterosexual, and of the cultural
shame associated with homosexuality, this represents a shift of considerable
sociological interest and further attention.

Conclusion

4.1
In this article I have suggested that understandings of the social changes of
postmodernity are incomplete without attention to transformations in the realm of
sexuality, and that queer theory and sociological work on sexuality have not yet
acknowledged the significance of these social and cultural changes. The queer
tendencies that I have identified are posing, I have argued, a significant cultural
challenge to heteronormativity, questioning the normativity and naturalness of
heterosexuality, re-configuring the hierarchical inside/outside relationship between
homosexuality and heterosexuality, and destabilizing the binary opposition between
the two categories. Whilst these queer tendencies are undoubtedly impacting upon the
general population unevenly - they are largely urban phenomena, and they particularly
affect a younger generation that has the sub-cultural capital to partake of them[45] - I
am not just talking of a queer avant-garde. Reflexive heterosexual identities are
becoming increasingly widespread, and heterorelations can be seen as having a
slightly less sure hold on the general population in an era of postmodern relations of
cathexis.

4.2
It might be thought that the argument of this article grants too great a significance to
the transitory, ephemeral world of popular culture, and that its overall tone is overly
optimistic. I would readily acknowledge that there are, of course, countervailing
tendencies, in the form of various expressions of sexual and gender fundamentalism,
which are particularly strong in the United States,[46] but which have also recently
been seen in the United Kingdom in public debates about the repeal of Section 28.[47]
Homophobia continues to exist, particularly in schools, and violence against lesbians
and gay men remains a serious problem.[48] Moreover, lesbians and gay men do not
appear ready to collectively cede their hard-won sexual identities, and many are firm
believers in their difference (variously conceived as cultural, biological, psychological
and/ or genetic) from heterosexuals.[49] But it is not my argument that we have moved
into a post-lesbian and gay era, and nor am I positing a straightforward narrative of
sexual liberation, revolution or the demise of homophobia. Rather I have sought to
highlight certain queer tendencies - movements towards the postmodernization of
relations of sexuality - and to suggest a research agenda which might be of interest to
sociologists in the future.

Notes
1I use the designation `postmodernity' to refer to the contemporary social formation,
fully cognisant of the debate between those who prefer to speak of `late modernity'
(e.g. Giddens, 1991, 1992, 1995; Plummer, 1995) and those who prefer the term

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`postmodernity' (e.g. Bauman, 1992; Lash and Urry, 1994).

2See Roseneil (1995) for an assessment of the state of feminist sociology, and, on
changes in families and intimate life, see for example: Giddens (1992), Beck and
Beck-Gernsheim (1995), Irwin (1999), Jamieson (1998), Seymour and Bagguley
(1999), Silva and Smart (1999), Smart and Neale (1999) and Stacey (1996).

3Jameson (1984), Crook et al (1992), Lash and Urry (1994).

4A notable exception who has explicitly written of "postmodern sexualities" and "the
postmodernization of sexuality" is Simon (1996). Plummer (1995) is concerned with
shifts in the form of "sexual stories", but conceptualizes contemporary sexual stories
as "late modernist" rather than "postmodern".

5In referring to the wide-range of close personal affective bonds between individuals,
I prefer the term "cathexis" to the more widely used "intimacy", which I feel is better
reserved for speaking of a very particular type of emotional relationship, one of
mutual disclosure in which people participate as equal.

6There is a parallel here with the feminist insight that categories of gender, and
gendered oppressions, extend beyond that which appears explicitly gendered.

7My gaze here rests primarily on the UK, and the examples I use to illustrate my
argument are British. Similar `queer tendencies' are undoubtedly to be seen in other
western, postmodernizing countries, but a discussion of these is beyond the scope of
this paper.

8Textswhich have come to assume foundational status within queer theory include:
Sedgwick (1991), Butler (1991), de Lauretis (1991), Fuss (1991) and Warner (1991).
What was going on in 1991????

9For
a clear discussion of the influences of poststructuralism on queer theory see
Namaste (1996).

10Fuss (1991) draws on psychoanalytic understandings of processes of alienation,

splitting and identification, which produce a self and an other, an interiority and an
exteriority.

11See particularly Butler (1991).

12This point is made by Seidman (1996), Stein and Plummer (1996) and Jackson
(1999).

13These criticisms are made by, inter alia, Warner (1993), Seidman (1996) and Stein
and Plummer (1996).

14On queering sociology, see contributors to Seidman (1996), geography, Ingram et al

(1997), socio-legal studies, Stychin (1995) and international relations, Weber (1999).

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15On processes of `culturalization' and the aestheticization of everyday life see Lash
(1994) and Crook et al (1990).

16For instance, in developing an argument for a queer sociology, Namaste

wholeheartedly embraces poststructuralism, but fails to consider the problems which
sociologists might encounter in the abandonment of all vestiges of a humanist
ontology. I have argued elsewhere (Roseneil, 1995) for the importance of
transcending the humanist/ poststructuralist binary. See also Barrett (1991).

17See contributions to Seidman (1996).

18A recent article by Seidman et al (1999) is an exception to this.

19Structurationtheory still, in my mind, offers the best solution to the

agency/structure conundrum. (See Giddens, 1984).

20The terms appear to have been coined by Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1868, though
there were not used in print until 1869 (homosexuality) and 1880 (heterosexuality),
according to Katz (1996). See also McIntosh (1968), Plummer (1981), Weeks (1977,
1981, 1985), Katz (1983, 1995), Foucault (1981).

21For histories of marriage see Stone (1979, 1993) and Gillis (1985), and on marriage
in the immediate post-war period, see Finch and Summerfield (1991) and Morgan
(1991).

22See Smith Rosenberg (1975), Weeks (1985), Fadermann (1981) and Jeffreys (1985).

23See Jeffreys (1985).

24On the rise of the lesbian and gay movement see Adam (1995) and d'Emilio (1983).

25A trickle of voluntary `outings' amongst public figures, which began in Britain with
Michael Cashman and Ian McKellan at the end of the 1980s in response to the passing
of Section 28, had become something of a deluge by the end of the 1990s, as kd lang,
Ellen de Generes, Chris Smith, Angela Eagle, and even Michael Portillo declared
their homosexuality to a decreasingly surprised public.

26The research of Finch (1989) and Finch and Mason (1993) on family obligations
suggests that family ties are now understood less in terms of obligations constituted
by fixed ties of blood, and more in terms of negotiated commitments, which are less
clearly differentiated from other relationships.

27Inthis acknowledgement of non-heterosexual identities and practices Giddens's

work differs from that of Beck and Beck-Gernscheim whose discussion fails to
acknowledge its exclusive concern with heterosexuality.

28Bech (1997, 1999) makes a similar argument.

29Watney (1988) and Fuss (1991) made early suggestions that such a process was

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underway..

30For this notion I owe a particular debt to Sedgwick (1994).

31Plummer is more sceptical than I am about the existence of such stories. Other
examples of queer auto-critique: Bristow and Wilson (1993), Hemmings (1993), Stein
(1993), Doan (1994), Bi-Academic Intervention (1997), Munt (1997), Prosser (1998),
and Halberstam (1998).

32UK statistics: between 1971 and 1994 the number of divorces doubled; 37% of
recent marriages are predicted to end in divorce (OPCS Marriage and Divorce
Statistics, 1991).

33By 1992 31% of live births in the UK were outside marriage (Population Trends,
1993).

34In 1991 lone parent families were almost 20% of all families with dependent
children (GHS, 1991).

35In 1961 this was 4%,by 1995-6 it was 13%.

36For a discussion of the importance of friendship in contemporary social relations

see Roseneil (2000).

37Iam hereby disagreeing with Smart who argues that `the immense verbosity around
heterosexual acts has not produced the heterosexual' (Smart, 1996:228).

38See Stacey (1991) for a discussion of the relationship between Section 28 and
feminist/ lesbian theories of sexuality, and Wise (2000) and Waites (2000) on recent
debates about repeal of the Section.

39For instance, Company, July 1996.

40On the role of Ecstasy in breaking down social barriers within contemporary dance
culture see Wright (1999) and Collin (1997).

41In London, the highly fashionable DTPM (more recently ADTPM) and Fiction
identify themselves as "polysexual". Outside London Flesh in Manchester and Vague
in Leeds pioneered queer clubbing in the early to mid 1990s.

42My argument here parallels Back's (1996) argument about the emergence of a new
hybrid ethnicity characterized by high degrees of egalitarianism and anti-racism
amongst young people through popular culture's mixing of black and white cultural
codes and styles.

43See Lewis (1997) on lesbian imagery in women's magazines and Simpson (1996) on
men's magazines. Also Clark's (1993) discussion of lesbians and advertising.

44For positions which interpret the cultural valorizing of the queer differently, see

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Hennessy (1995, 2000), Jackson (1999) and Chasin (2000).

45The notion of `sub-cultural capital' is coined by Thornton (1995) in her discussion

of club cultures.

46See Witt and McCorkle (1997) and National Lesbian and Gay Task Force website
for further information about recent anti-gay developments in the United States:
<[Link]

47On recent debates about Section 28 see Wise (2000) and Waites (2000), and the
Stonewall website ([Link] It should be noted that public
opinion on Section 28 seems to favour repeal (NOP poll commissioned for Channel 4,
December 1999) [Link]
UserType=1

48On homophobic bullying in schools, see Douglas et al (1998) and Duncan (1999),
Mason and Palmer (1996) on queer bashing, and Snape et al (1995) on discrimination
against lesbians and gay men in the UK.

49See for example Rahman and Jackson (1997) on the persistence of essentialism
within lesbian and gay claims for rights.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the "Law, Sexuality and Gender"
conference at Keele University in June 1998 and at the "Sex Outlaw" conference in
Helsinki in October 1998, and at seminars at the Universities of Edinburgh and
Sussex, Lancaster University, the University of South Australia, Flinders University,
and LaTrobe University. Time for its further development was funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council, as part of the first year of the ESRC Research
Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare at the University of Leeds.

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