‘Queer Theory Now is an invaluable resource for newcomers to queer theory.

McCann and Monaghan define key terms with outstanding clarity. Centering
the work of theorists of colour and trans theorists, the authors uncover the
variegated histories that have converged on, and diverged from, queer theory.
Eminently teachable.’
– Jean-Thomas Tremblay, New Mexico State University, USA

‘This is a rigorous and pedagogically designed introduction to queer theory

that covers not only the field’s foundations but also more recent debates.
Moreover, the inclusion of case studies, definitions of key terms and film rec-
ommendations makes complex ideas accessible for students finding their way
in queer theory.’
– Sam McBean, Queen Mary University of London, UK

‘Part disciplinary history, part field assessment, part critical reference, Queer

Theory Now is perhaps most importantly a primer for the queer work ahead.
It will be a welcome queer pedagogy text in both undergraduate and graduate
classrooms.’
– Matt Brim, College of Staten Island, CUNY, USA

‘The last real primer for queer theory was Annemarie Jagose’s  Queer
Theory over 20 years ago.  Queer Theory Now fills that enormous gap, covering
key areas such as intersectionality, the global dimensions of queerness,
and the history of the field, while remaining attentive to the difficulties of
defining the complex and ever-evolving perspectives on sexuality and gender.’
– Ross G. Forman, University of Warwick, UK

‘The most concise yet comprehensive explanation of the past, present and
future of queer theory available today. This book traces queer theory’s sig-
nificant histories and locates its renewed relevance in contemporary times. It
makes queer theory’s evolution and complexities easy to access and is a must-
have for any university library.’
– Joanna McIntyre, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

‘Queer Theory Now is a thorough synthesis of thirty years of queer theory and
its precursors. It should be required reading in classrooms around the world.
An essential primer!’
– Don Romesburg, Sonoma State University, USA
‘An absolute must read! Queer Theory Now, carefully crafted by McCann
and Monaghan, is an incredibly timely, necessary and rich resource.
Undergraduates and post-graduate students interested in engaging with
h
­ istorical and contemporary debates in queer theories will find much to
­stimulate their thinking in this book.’
– Leanne Coll, Deakin University, Australia

‘McCann and Monaghan have written one of the most insightful overviews of
queer theory currently available. It is highly recommended for those ­seeking
an accessible guide to key ideas, issues, developments, and controversies in
this field. The writers deserve credit for their ample demonstration of queer
theory’s applicability to a range of disciplines, lives, and events.’
– Páraic Finnerty, University of Portsmouth, UK
QUEER THEORY
NOW
From Foundations
to Futures

Hannah McCann and

Whitney Monaghan
© Hannah McCann and Whitney Monaghan, under exclusive licence
to Springer Nature Limited 2020
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2020 by
RED GLOBE PRESS
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To Tim, tireless crusader for queer
Contents

List of Figures and Tables xi

Key Terms and Concepts xii
Key Debates and Queer Theory in Practice xiv
Recommended Films xvi
Acknowledgements xvii

1 Defining Queer Theory 1

Defining the Indefinable 1
Queer Theory Beyond Identity 4
Genealogies of Queer Theory 6
Postmodernism, Poststructuralism and Queer Theory 7
Queer Theory Against Normativity 11
Queer Theory Without Anti-Normativity 14
The Death of Queer Theory? 16
Roadmap for Queer Theory Now 18

2 From Pathology to Pride 22

Queer Theory and the History of Sexuality 22
History According to Foucault? 23
The repressive hypothesis 25
The discursive explosion 25
The “invention” of homosexuality 29
Racism in Western Sexology 33
Fighting for Homosexual Rights 36
The homophile movement 38
Gay Liberation 42
The Stonewall riots 44
The Sydney Mardi Gras 47
From liberation to pride 49
Conclusion: A History of Knowledge and Power 51

vii
viii Contents

3 Sexuality and Feminism 54

Queer Theory’s Feminist Foundations 54
Feminism(s)55
Queer Theory’s Gender Problem 56
Feminisms in Tension 57
Lesbians and feminism 63
The politics of difference 67
Intersectional Feminism 72
Anti-Pornography Feminism 75
Anti-pornography feminists and the new right 78
The “sex wars” 79
The Sexuality/Feminism Split 82
The Impact of the “Sex Wars” on Queer Theory 85
Queering the “Third Wave” 86
Conclusion: Queer Feminism Today 88

4 AIDS and Acting Up 91

AIDS and Queer Thinking 91
The Unfolding Crisis 94
AIDS Activism and the Emergence of “Queer” 99
Unleashing power: ACT UP 102
Bashing back: Queer Nation 107
Racism, whiteness and AIDS 111
Conclusion: Queer Thinking After AIDS 114

5 Outing the Closet 118

Queer Theory Articulates Itself 118
What’s So Queer About Judith Butler? 119
Butler’s approach to sex and gender 121
What is gender anyway? 123
Gender melancholy 125
Gender performativity 126
Subversion and drag 129
Responses, critiques and lasting influence 131
What’s So Queer About Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick? 136
Sedgwick’s Axioms 138
Sedgwick and “the closet” 142
Queer readings: paranoid and reparative strategies 145
 Contents ix

Responses, critiques and lasting influence 148

Conclusion: Queering Critical Inquiry 150

6 Theory Meets Identity 153

Queer Theory Versus Identity 153
The New Homonormativity 157
From homonormativity to homonationalism 161
Wounded Attachments 163
Connectivity and Transgender Identity 166
The rise of transgender studies 168
Phenomenology and the lived body 172
Transnormativity and the issue of representation 173
Non-binary identity 174
Conclusion: Where to Now for Postidentity Politics? 176

7 Negotiating Intersections 179

The Problem of Erasing Difference 179
Intersectionality or Deconstruction? 182
An Intersectional Approach to Queer Theory 183
New Avenues for Queer Theory 188
Queer(s) of colour theory, queering race 190
Queer theory’s geopolitical turn 192
Queer Indigenous studies 196
Queer Marxism 199
Queering affect, affect-ing queer theory 202
Queerness, disability and debility 207
Conclusion: Queer Intersections 209

8 Temporality and Queer Utopias 213

Queer Theory and Time: A Temporal Turn 213
Heteronormative Temporality 215
The Anti-Social Thesis 218
No Future and figure of the Child 219
Negative affect, the critical present and backward orientations 221
Critical Present-Ness 223
Cruel Optimism and the Impasse 224
Queer Childhoods 226
Looking Forward, Feeling Backward 227
x Contents

Affirmation, Optimism and Future Orientations 228

Utopias and the queer future 229
Queer happiness 230
An optimistic challenge to chrononormativity 233
Conclusion: Queer Time 236

References 239
Index  264
List of Figures and Tables

Figures
1.1 Several of the main areas of thinking and political action that have
influenced queer theory 7
2.1 The Kinsey Scale, where 0 = exclusively heterosexual and
6 = exclusively homosexual 37
5.1 The gender binary as determined by the heterosexual matrix,
adapted from William Leonard’s wedding cake model 122
8.1 The heteronormative timeline 216

Tables
2.1 The various doubts about the “repressive hypothesis” that Foucault
raises in The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 26
2.2 Foucault’s descriptions of the different ways that knowledge was
produced around sex and how it was managed 27
2.3 Comparison of homophile and Gay Liberation goals and strategies 43
3.1 Some strands of “second wave” feminism and views on sexual
oppression/freedom61
3.2 Earlier Black feminist and intersectional approaches to sexual
oppression/freedom73
3.3 Rubin’s sex hierarchy outlined in “Thinking Sex”  84
5.1 Sedgwick’s Axioms and some examples illustrating her claims 139
5.2 Sedgwick’s universalising vs. minoritising models 141

xi
Key Terms/Concepts
Dedicated explanatory boxes for italicized terms.

ACT UP103 Happiness Scripts 231

Affect Theory  202 Heteronormativity  11
Anti-Essentialism  102 The Heterosexual Matrix  121
Anti-Normativity  14 HIV and AIDS 92
Anti-Pornography Feminism  75 Homonationalism  161
Anti-Social Thesis  218 Homonormativity  157
Asexuality 38 Homophile Movement  38
Assemblage 176 Identity Politics 154
Assimilation  43 Indigenous Studies  196
Bio-power 29 Intersectional Feminism  72
Bisexuality  46 LGBTIQ 10
Black Feminism  60 Liberal Feminism  61
Camp 131 Marxism  199
Chronobiopolitics  233 Marxist Feminism  61
Chrononormativity  233 Necropolitics 100
Cisgender 167 Neoliberalism 155
The Closet  137 Non-Binary Identity  174
Cruel Optimism  224 Norms, Normalisation, Normative,
Cultural Capital 158 Normativity 12
Decolonise  200 Ontology 204
Diaspora 194 Orientation  221
Disability Studies  207 Paranoid Reading  145
Discourse 24 Pathologise 31
Disidentification 191 The Personal is Political 62
Drag  129 Phenomenology  172
The Erotic 76 Polymorphous Perversity 35
Gay Liberation  42 Postqueer  17
Gay Shame 115 Power 28
The Gender Binary 9 Pride  49
Gender Melancholy  125 Pro-Sex/Sex Radical Feminism 81
Gender Performativity  126 Psychoanalysis 68
Genealogy 6 Quare Theory  192
Geopolitical  192 Queer and Queering 3

xii
 Key Terms/Concepts xiii

Queer(s) of Colour Critique 180 Sexual Script Theory 42

Queer Failure 206 Silence = Death  104
The Queer International 110 Socialist Feminism  61
Queer Nation  107 Strategic Essentialism 156
Queer Reading  145 Subversion  129
Queer Time  223 Temporal Drag 236
Radical Feminism  61 Temporality 214
Reparative Reading  146 Transgender Nation  114
Repressive Hypothesis  25 Transgender Studies  168
Separatism  64 Transnormativity  173
The Sex/Gender Distinction 58 Utopia  229
Sexology  32 Western Feminist “Waves”  56
Sexual Citizenship 162 Whiteness 181
Key Debates/Queer Theory
in Practice
As appears in the order in the text.

The Hetero/Homo Binary 15 Paris is Burning132

Transnational Sexology? 32 How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay 140
The Problem of Bisexual Queer Methods 146
Exclusion46 Queer Eye for the Normative
Commercialization of Pride 48 Guy159
The Globalization of Pride 50 Homonormativity in Lebanon 160
Compulsory Heterosexuality 66 Colonial Legacies of
Wages for Housework 70 Homophobia163
Antifoundationalism vs. Trigger Warnings 165
Intersectionality74 Street Transvestite Action
Is All Sex Rape? 78 Revolutionaries (STAR) 169
Deep Throat80 Serano’s Whipping Girl170
Feminist Comics 86 The Problem of “Recognition” 171
The Sexual Politics of SlutWalk 87 Halberstam’s Female Masculinity 174
Trans Experiences of the Waria Identity in Indonesia 176
AIDS Crisis 95 Intersectionality Applied 182
AIDS and the Politics of Disgust 96 Intersectionality and
AIDS and Bisexual Stigma 97 Queer Politics 184
AIDS and the New Queer A Queer Critique of
Cinema Movement98 Intersectionality186
The Politics of Life and Death 105 Queering the Curriculum Part 1188
ACT UP and Needle Exchange 106 Heteronormativity and
From Queer Nation to Resource Access196
Queer Theory 108 Takatāpui in Aotearoa,
Queer Nation in Taiwan 109 New Zealand 197
The Whiteness of Queer Fa’afafine in Samoa 198
Theory112 Decolonizing the Curriculum 200
Transgender Nation 114 Affect According to Deleuze 203
Butler Outside the West 124 Depressed? It Might Be Political 205
Performativity as Bodily Disability and Coming Out 208
Practices128 Queering the Curriculum Part 2210

xiv
 Key Debates/Queer Theory in Practice xv

Just a Phase? 217 Queer Time and the Internet 224

Fake Orgasms as Resistance 220 Barebacking and Cruising as
Play School and the Figure of Queer Futurities230
“the Child”222 Queering Archives 234
Recommended Films

1. Defining Queer Theory But I’m a Cheerleader

The Celluloid Closet
Mulholland Drive
2. From Pathology to Pride The Rejected
Daughters of Bilitis Video Project
When We Rise
3. Sexuality and Feminism Born in Flames
Inside Deep Throat
Itty Bitty Titty Committee
4. AIDS and Acting Up Chocolate Babies
The Gift
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
5. Outing the Closet Orlando
Paris is Burning
6. Theory Meets Identity All About My Mother
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
7. Negotiating Intersections Margarita with a Straw
Futuro Beach
Moonlight
8. Temporality and Queer Utopias The Birds
Butterfly
Show Me Love

xvi
Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we are indebted to the activists and thinkers that have
come before us that have shaped “theories” of queer. We hope that this book
sheds some light on key genealogies, terms and applied uses of queer theory,
that trace multiple strands to bring in new and diverse perspectives to queer
theory debates.
Thank you to our editor, Lloyd Langman, for taking a chance on the need
for a new queer theory textbook, and for all of the helpful suggestions along
the way. Thanks also to Helen Keane for providing the necessary advice to
get this project started. Our gratitude is also to our students, who have both
delighted in and troubled queer theory, and who have shaped our approach to
this text more than anyone else.
Thank you also to those who read and provided comment on draft chap-
ters – Sarah Baker, Jay Daniel Thompson and Sophie Pascoe. Thank you to our
queer comrades for helping our intellectual development in queer theory and
the many and varied discussions, in particular Shane Tas, Amy Thomas, Lucy
Nicholas, Luara Karlson-Carp, Clare Southerton and Rosanne Kennedy. Thank
you also to Kalissa Alexeyeff, Cathy Ayres, Briony Lipton, Nida Mollison,
Nicola Menser Hearn, Kirsten Stevens and Janice Loreck for their endless
encouragement.
To Hayley Summers and Geraldine Fela – thank you for supporting us
through this process, and for enriching our queer lives.

xvii
1  Defining Queer Theory

KEY TERMS queer, queering, genealogy, the gender binary,

AND LGBTIQ, norms, normalisation, normative, normativity,
CONCEPTS heteronormativity, anti-normativity, postqueer

DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE

How can theory be “queer”? What is the difference between queer identity,
queer politics and queer theory? Is queer theory always related to sexuality in
some way? The aim of this book is to help make sense of these questions by
tracing queer theory across a range of historical contexts. As we find, though
queer identity, politics and theory can be understood to offer separate and
often conflicting approaches, a historical lens helps us understand how these
tensions have come to be. We find that we cannot understand what queer the-
ory “now” is, without looking backward, and at times, rethinking a few grand
narratives.
It is often said that queer theory is difficult to define, or that it is anti-
thetical to the spirit of the theory to tie it down to a single meaning. As we
will see throughout this book, queer is a “deliberately ambiguous term” that
is simultaneously a way of naming, describing, doing and being (Monaghan
2016, 7). This is where queer theory finds its radical potential as a term to
challenge, interrogate, destabilise and subvert, but it also means there is diffi-
culty in pinpointing queer theory’s meaning. As Annamarie Jagose notes, it is
“a concept that prominently insists on the radical unknowability of its future
formations,” that maintains a “strategically open-ended relational character”
(2009, 158). Or, as Donald Hall has argued, we must understand queer theory
in the plural: “there is no ‘queer theory’ in the singular, only many different
voices and sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent perspectives that can
be loosely called ‘queer theories’” (2003, 5). Queer theory is, it seems, mercu-
rial (Dilley 1999).
While this avoidance of definability may seem unhelpful, we can also see
that the persistently repeated idea of queer theory as “indefinable” works as

1
2 Queer Theory Now

its own form of definition. The insistence on indefinability hints at queer the-
ory as a lens that emphasises the slipperiness of meaning and the transgres-
sion of categories and boundaries. Although the idea of queer theory emerged
explicitly in academia in the 1990s, it has lasting relevance precisely because
of its ability to remain flexible and open to new directions and discussions.
Importantly, use of the term “queer” preceded its conjunction with
“theory”. Originally, “queer” was a term broadly used to refer to what was
odd, strange, abnormal or sick, and along these lines employed as a colloquial
slur for homosexuality (Halperin 2003). In the 1980s, queer was reclaimed
by the LGBTIQ community as an umbrella term to designate resistant and
non-normative sexuality, seemingly unburdened from the separatist strains
that had emerged around gay and lesbian identities (discussed in Chapter 4).
Maintaining a relation to its original meaning, reclaiming “queer” was about
being different, but unapologetically so. As Heather Love notes, “When queer
was adopted in the late 1980s it was chosen because it evoked a long history
of insult and abuse – you could hear the hurt in it” (2007, 2). As Judith Butler
has also argued, it is precisely queer’s links to “accusation, pathologization,
insult” that gives “queer” its discursive power when re-used and repeated as a
self-identifier (1993, 18).
As we discuss at length in Chapter  4, the widespread recuperation of the
term queer occurred in the 1980s alongside new forms of activism around
HIV and AIDS. Despite conservative rhetoric, the virus was not a result of
sexual “identity” but rather, was transmitted through sexual “practices”. Here,
the machinations of the virus itself, combined with the need for mass mobi-
lisation against unresponsive governments and the pharmaceutical industry,
led to a new kind of activism organised around coalitions rather than discrete
identities. “Queer” took on a new profound meaning, intended to account for
the coalitional thinking and organising in the LGBTIQ community at the time.
Even though the early use of the term queer in activism had a profound
impact on the shape of theory to come, it was not until the 1990s that “queer”
came to be explicitly connected to “theory”. The term “queer theory” was
coined by Teresa de Lauretis in 1990, at a conference of the same name held at
The University of California, Santa Cruz (see de Lauretis 1991). Describing the
language around “lesbian and gay” identity at the time, de Lauretis suggests:

the term “Queer Theory” was arrived at in the effort to avoid all of these
fine distinctions in our discursive protocols, not to adhere to any one of the
given terms, not to assume their ideological liabilities, but instead to both
transgress and transcend them – or at the very least problematize them.
(1991, v)
 Defining Queer Theory 3

As David Halperin argues, de Lauretis’ use of the term was “deliberately

disruptive”, to challenge what was taken for granted as “theory” in the acad-
emy, and to contest the boundaries of lesbian and gay studies (2003, 340).
Five years after de Lauretis coined the term queer theory, Lauren Berlant
and Michael Warner explored some of the usages and potentials of the term
“queer” in their essay “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us About X?” In this
essay, Berlant and Warner refuse to pin queer theory to a single meaning,
and argue that queer thinking “takes on varied shapes, risks, ambitions, and
ambivalences in various contexts” (1995, 344). While “queer theory is not a
theory of anything in particular”, Berlant and Warner argue that it constituted
from a range of academic and non-academic contexts and is animated by a
desire to create publics that understand differences of privilege and struggle
(1995, 344). They caution against solidifying this “queerness” into the label
queer theory as they suggest it “makes queer and nonqueer audiences forget
these differences and imagine a context (theory) in which queer has a stable
referential content and pragmatic force” (1995, 344). As this illustrates, from
its early use in theoretical terms, “queer” operated as a wish and a hope for a
different kind of thinking and engagement with questions of sexuality, gen-
der, identity, power and the politics of oppression.

Key term: Queer and queering

As Janet Jakobsen outlines, we can differentiate the uses of “queer” in
three ways (1998, 516–517):

• As a noun (example: “this is the queer space”).

• As an identity that resists traditional categories (example: “I identify
as queer”).
• As a verb (example: “let’s queer gender!”).

These ways of using “queer” are often in tension with one another.
Jakobsen suggests that the last option – queer as a kind of doing rather
than being – holds the most political potential because it focuses on
resistance (rather than description) and practice (rather than identity).
To undertake “queering” is to deploy queer as a verb, to challenge and
resist expectations or norms. For example, “queering femininity” might
mean thinking about how femininity can be more than an oppressive gen-
der ideal, and can be embodied in non-normative ways (McCann 2018).
4 Queer Theory Now

QUEER THEORY BEYOND IDENTITY

Queer theory questions the foundations of sexual identity (Britzman 1995,

153). The fundamental idea of queer theory as resistant to fixed categorisa-
tions has meant that the theory has and continues to be applied far beyond
questions of sexuality. In learning about queer theory for the first time, it
might initially feel off-putting to apply the term “queer” to issues beyond
sexuality, to try and see the “queer” in the “straight”, and/or to push beyond
the question identity itself (see Chapters 5 and 6). Queer theory now means
much more than a focus on “same-sex” desire, pushing beyond the concept of
identity itself. As Love identifies:

These days, queer is not only also about race, class, gender, ethnicity, and
nation, but is also about affect, citizenship, the death drive, diaspora,
digitality, disability, empire, friendship, globalization, the impersonal, indi-
rection, kinship, living underground, loss, marginality, melancholia, migra-
tion, neoliberalism, pedagogy, performativity, publicity, ­ self-shattering,
shame, shyness, sovereignty, subversion, temporality, and terrorism.
(2011, 182)

Yet as Love also warns us, celebrating the expansive possibilities of queer
theory comes with risks, not least of which is losing a sense of how discrete
identities can be a help rather than a hindrance in terms of political resist-
ance and working together (2011, 184). Love adds that while queer theory
helps us to grapple with the messiness of life – the contingencies of lived
experience – we may still feel attached to particular identity categories (see
Chapter 6).
The concept of intersectionality has been used by queer thinkers to
open queer theory to a multitude of new questions beyond sexuality. As
we discuss in Chapter  3, intersectionality was first theorised by Kimberlé
Crenshaw in 1989 but it has origins in much earlier writings of women of
colour including Pauli Murray in the mid-1960s and 1970s, and the Black
feminism of The Combahee River Collective in the later 1970s. Crenshaw
sought to move beyond understanding identity through a single axis such
as race or gender, and her theory of intersectionality functioned as a means
of understanding how women’s sexual oppression occurs at the intersec-
tion of different domains of oppression. While she originally focused on the
intersection of race and gender, the concept of intersectionality can be used
to better understand the interrelationality of various modes of identity dif-
ference such as race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, age, ability or
 Defining Queer Theory 5

other facets of identity. As such, it offers a substantial means of expanding

the purview of queer theory as it pushes beyond sexuality and the limits
of identity more broadly (we discuss and critique the concept at length in
Chapter 7).
Cathy Cohen was one of the first to take up this understanding of inter-
sectionality to challenge queer theory’s singular focus on sexuality. Her essay
“Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” (1997) argued that an intersec-
tional approach to queer theory could enable us to extend our thinking about
identity, power and oppression. Numerous queer theorists have taken this
up and applied an intersectional queer lens to their politics and analysis.
As  Martin F. Manalansan IV argues, what is now known as the queer(s) of
colour critique is premised upon on this understanding of the “co-constitutive
nature of social life and cultural categories” (2018, 1288).
Building on these perspectives, throughout this book we explore many
instances where an intersectional focus can provide us with a means of chal-
lenging queer theory’s seemingly singular focus on sexuality in order to think
more broadly about the “queer” and the social. In Chapter  7 we also explore
tensions between intersectionality and queer theory and consider the ambiva-
lence that some theorists have towards queer theory when it is divorced from
sexual identity. As Love remarks, “It’s just that it’s hard for me to imagine a
form of queerness that does not maintain its ties to a specific form of sexual
identity. Behind my work on affect, historiography, and the social, there is a
lesbian in bed crying” (2011, 180). We note this here because although queer
theory is often applied beyond questions of sexual categories, many of the
thinkers who have been and continue to be influential in this field are con-
cerned with sexuality.
There have also been some concerns raised about what has been lost in
queer theory’s move away from, or against, earlier ways of discussing iden-
tity. As Halperin argues, queer theory was readily and immediately absorbed
by the academy, supplanting previous engagements around sexuality. He
notes,

Despite its implicit (and false) portrayal of lesbian and gay studies as lib-
eral, assimilationist, and accommodating of the status quo, queer theory
has proven to be much more congenial to established institutions of the
liberal academy. (2003, 341)

We note this here to establish why and how the first chapters of this book
labour on exploring the historical background to queer theory, even as some
of the history that we outline may seem at first only opaquely related.
6 Queer Theory Now

GENEALOGIES OF QUEER THEORY

While we acknowledge queer theory’s academic genealogy, we also take an inter-

sectional lens towards histories of activism, key debates, events and cultural pro-
ductions that have contributed to queer theory as we understand it today. It is
important to acknowledge these connections when we sketch out these genealo-
gies of queer theory, keeping in mind as Altman (2018) notes, that queer theory’s
evolution has seen many activists become scholars and many scholars become
activists. By doing so we can be attuned to the multiple paths from which the
concept of “queer” has emerged, such as via Black feminist theory (Bliss 2015).
The first chapters of this book are dedicated specifically to thinking through
these connections via historicising sexuality (Chapter  2), feminist debates
around sex and sexuality (Chapter 3), and the role of the AIDS crisis and activism
(Chapter 4). Though each of these chapters offers a chronology that attempts to
set up a roadmap of ideas informing queer theory, this is not to suggest a lin-
ear progressive narrative of how the theory came to be. Rather, these chapters
function as genealogies of queer theory, to show that queer theory has ushered
in – and been ushered in by – a central guiding interest in troubling fixed notions.
Tracing the history of a theory that resists definition is no easy task, and
the genealogies that we offer here may provide new ways of thinking but
might also be limited in other ways. We can only hope that the ideas offered
here are taken as contingent, and that these histories may be re-thought and
re-written in future iterations of understanding queer theory now. As you
travel through the genealogies of queer theory, it is important to keep in mind
that queer theory emerged in reflection on/conversation with prior theories
of sexuality and gender, as well as histories of thinking around race, embodi-
ment, ability, affects and more. We could imagine this as a funnel through

Key term: Genealogy

Genealogy traditionally means “line of descent”, and/or tracing this
lineage. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, Michel
Foucault (see Chapter 2) suggested a new understanding of genealogy:
a method for investigating the history of ideas. Following Foucault, to
undertake a genealogical analysis means looking at how present ideas
have been shaped by the past, and working against narratives that
assume change or “progress” is inevitable.
 Defining Queer Theory 7

al
Le Po Po is exu
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Queer Theory

Figure 1.1  Several of the main areas of thinking and political action that have
­influenced queer theory

which several buckets of theory, activism and cultural texts are poured and
which all contribute to the multivalent and polymorphous queer theory that
we know today (Figure 1.1).

POSTMODERNISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND QUEER

THEORY
In addition to its development through the histories of activism, thinking and
debate that we sketch out in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, queer theory has also been
understood as emerging from a particular academic context. While we do not
wish to suggest this is the only way to understand queer theory, it is worth
considering this part of queer theory’s intellectual genealogy. Queer theory
first entered the academy during the so-called “postmodern turn”, a period
marked by an emphasis on language, deconstruction, difference, fragmenta-
tion, multiple truths, discourse and rethinking old grand narratives and ideas
8 Queer Theory Now

of how power is structured (Walton 2012, 186–187). Highlighting the rela-

tionship between queer theory and the postmodern turn, Britzman suggests:

Queer Theory occupies a difficult space between the signifier and the
­signified, where something queer happens to the signified – to history and
to bodies – and something queer happens to the signifier – to language and
to representation. (1995, 153)

In other words, queer theory, like postmodernism, “troubles” our ways of

­talking about and understanding things.
To make matters more confusing, however, “poststructuralism” is some-
times used synonymously with postmodernism, or is understood as a subset
of postmodern theory. As David Walton defines, poststructuralists “share a
very similar attitude [as postmodernists] towards identity as fundamentally
fragmentary, endlessly multiple and constantly deferred” (2012, 186–187).
Key thinkers around poststructuralism include Michel Foucault, Jacques
Lacan and Jacques Derrida (Miller 1998).
We might wonder then: is queer theory the same as postmodernism,
which is the same as poststructuralism? Some scholars have argued that
this is indeed the case. Others have argued that queer theory’s original ties
to questions of sexuality are the defining element that distinguishes it from
being simply another name for postmodernism (Green 2002). Regardless of
perspective, it is clear that there is significant overlap between these types of
thinking and theorising. Epitomising the blurring of lines between postmod-
ernism, poststructuralism, feminist theory and queer theory, Butler, in her
book Gender Trouble (discussed in Chapter  5), famously challenges the way
we think and talk about the gender binary of “male” versus “female” (2008).
Butler points out that many feminists at the time inadvertently reinforced
­sexuality as “naturally” heterosexual and thus understood gender as a funda-
mental binary. Butler questions both the signified (bodies as gendered) and
the signifier (the language of gender), to re-think what is taken for granted
as ­“natural”. Given Butler’s focus on politics, language and sexuality, her
approach has been described as postmodern feminism, poststructural-
ism and/or queer theory. It is also important to locate her writing within a
genealogy of lesbian feminism – within Gender Trouble, Butler challenges the
heterosexism of feminist theory and critiques lesbian feminist communities in
particular for upholding rigid categories of identity.
Blurring such as this may make it difficult to understand the boundaries of
queer theory with respect to postmodernism, poststructuralism and even some
strands of feminism. However, it is necessary to remember, as Cohen reminds
 Defining Queer Theory 9

us, the field that was “later … recategorized as queer theory” (1997, 439) actu-
ally emerged from postmodern theory in interaction with lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender activists, especially those from the margins of race, class and
gender. When we situate queer theory within a particular academic genealogy,
we must acknowledge that it has always also been inflected by histories of activ-
ism and resistance to oppressions. Because of this we do not simply equate queer
theory to postmodernism and poststructuralism even though it may share many
overlaps with these ways of theorising. Focusing on other genealogies (as we do
in Chapters 2, 3 and 4) provides us with insight into many other intellectual,
political and cultural threads from which queer theory has developed.
While some have claimed that “queer theory is an exercise in discourse
analysis” (Giffney 2018, 7), queer theory now has arguably shifted away from

Key concept: The gender binary

The gender binary is the idea that gender can be understood in terms
of the categories male versus female. Feminist theorists have long
critiqued this simplification, arguing that “sex” (biology), ought to
be understood as distinct from “gender” (cultural interpretations of
­biology). This is known as the “sex/gender distinction”. As Jane Pilcher
and Imelda Whelehan explain:

The purpose of affirming a sex/gender distinction was to argue that

the actual physical or mental effects of a biological difference had
been exaggerated to maintain a patriarchal system of power and to
create a consciousness among women that they were naturally better
suited to “domestic” and nurturant roles. (2017, 57)

Butler famously questioned the distinction in Gender Trouble, suggest-

ing that biology is always given cultural meaning and therefore “perhaps
[sex] was always already gender” (2008, 9).
Butler argues that sex operates within a “heterosexual matrix”
whereby male/female is to man/woman is to masculine/feminine is to
desires women/desires men. In other words, the gender binary does
not simply refer to male versus female, but an entire set of normative
expectations that also encompasses embodiment and desire. Much
­
of queer theory is not simply concerned with sexuality, but the entire
­gender system that underpins it.
10 Queer Theory Now

the earlier linguistic emphasis of poststructuralist writing. Indeed, as we out-

line in Chapter 5, Butler’s Gender Trouble has been critiqued extensively for its
focus on language to the detriment of bodies/materiality (though this was a
critique which she attempted to address in her subsequent book Bodies That
Matter). Indeed, calls to both postmodern and poststructuralist paradigms
appear to have waned, surpassed by other “turns” in theory such as affect
theory, new materialism and non-representational theory, which have re-
focused on the bodily and sensate, displacing the centrality of the linguistic
and cognitive. Despite these changes, queer theory persists, and continues to
be invoked in conversation and integration with other theoretical develop-
ments (see Chapter 7).

Key term: LGBTIQ

The acronym LGBTIQ refers to “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,
Intersex, Queer”, and is often used as an umbrella term to describe or
imagine a community of sexually and gender diverse persons. Others
use “queer” in the same way (that is, as an umbrella noun/identity).
Umbrella terms are necessarily and problematically homogenising. As
Gloria Anzaldúa describes, “Queer is used as a false unifying umbrella
which all ‘queers’ of all races, ethnicities and classes are shoved under.
At times we need this umbrella to solidify our ranks against outsid-
ers. But even when we seek shelter under it we must not forget that it
homogenizes, erases our differences” (2009, 164).
Before the acronym LGBTIQ was in common use, “gay” or “gay and
lesbian” were predominantly used as umbrella terms. Variants of the acro-
nym include the addition of questioning, allies, pansexual and a plus-sign
to indicate other identities not otherwise accounted for (LGBTQQIAAP+).
The term QUILTBAG has also been particularly popular in online commu-
nities (queer/questioning, undecided, intersex, lesbian, trans, bisexual,
asexual, and/or gay/genderqueer). Gender and sexual minorities (GSM)
and diverse sexualities and genders (DSG) are also sometimes used.
The term LGBTIQ has been critiqued for misrepresenting the cohe-
siveness of diverse gender and sexual groups as a “community”. For
example, it is often argued that the use of the term “LGBTIQ” distracts
from the disproportionate focus given to L and G (lesbians and gay men)
compared to BTIQ (bisexuals, transgender persons, intersex persons
and queer identifying people). As Altman suggests, the acronym also
 Defining Queer Theory 11

“conflates both biological and cultural understandings of sexuality and

gender” and flattens difference, distorting “the ways in which these are
understood in many non-western societies” (2018, 1252).
Keeping in mind these issues, we use the term LGBTIQ throughout
this book in the same way that some people might use queer, to avoid
confusion between identity and theory. We acknowledge the limitations
of the term to capture the diversity of sexual and gendered life (though
we might note that this is where queer theory can step in to help!).

QUEER THEORY AGAINST NORMATIVITY

For much of its history, queer theory has situated itself as challenging
­normativity – particularly heteronormativity – in society (Gamson and Moon
2004, 49). As Michael Warner most famously notes: “The task of queer social the-
ory … must be to confront the default heteronormativity of modern culture with
its worst nightmare, a queer planet” (1991, 16). Warner coined the term “heter-
onormativity” to describe the pervasive and largely invisible heterosexual norms
that underpin society. An example of heteronormativity in practice is the repre-
sentation of “ordinary” family units as comprising a “mother” and a “father”, and
where alternative family arrangements are either not represented, or are depicted
as a deviation from this norm.
As many have suggested, the concept of heteronormativity is influenced
by the earlier feminist theorisation of “compulsory heterosexuality” offered
by Adrienne Rich (1980). Contributing to debates in the arena of lesbian
feminism that we explore further in Chapter  3, Rich argues that society is
organised in such a way that lesbian identity is considered a deviation from
the “normal” baseline of heterosexuality. As Stevi Jackson suggests, Rich
offers an early conceptualisation of heteronormativity that reminds us that
it is not only homosexual-identifying persons who are marginalised by this
system, but that everyone is affected negatively by the regulation of sexuality
and gender (2006b, 105). Importantly, heteronormativity is not equivalent to
heterosexuality itself, as Jackson explains:

[H]eterosexuality, while depending on the exclusion or marginalization of

other sexualities for its legitimacy, is not precisely coterminous with het-
erosexual sexuality. Heteronormativity defines not only a normative sexual
practice but also a normal way of life. (2006b, 107)
12 Queer Theory Now

Engaging with this problematic of heteronormativity, queer theory has often

sought to illuminate queer identities and formations that would otherwise
be erased or invisible under heteronormative arrangements of the social.
Queer theory has also focused in part on making room for queerness to exist
through writing and queering the heteronormative through re-reading the
“straight” (see Chapter 5).
While the concept of heteronormativity has been productive for queer the-
ory, along these lines critique has also shifted to understanding the “homonor-
mative” elements of LGBTIQ culture (discussed in Chapter  6). The  concept
of homonormativity has origins in transgender activism. As  Stryker argues,
homonormativity was used in the 1990s to “articulate the double sense of
marginalization and displacement experienced within transgender politi-
cal and cultural activism” (2008, 145). Stryker notes that the term was first
used as a “back-formation from the ubiquitous heteronormative, suitable for
use where homosexual community norms marginalized other kinds of sex/
gender/sexuality difference” (2008, 147). In the early 2000s, the concept was
popularised by Lisa Duggan, who used it to describe a new trend towards
“mainstreaming” in LGBTIQ politics in the 1990s that sought to distance itself
from more “radical” left organising (2002). Duggan describes this new direc-
tion as a “highly visible and influential center-libertarian-conservative-classic
liberal formation in gay politics” (2002, 177). Today, homonormativity is
often used to describe a tendency in the LGBTIQ community to defend homo-
sexuality as no different from heterosexuality (Robinson 2016). An example
of this is the frequent catch cry of marriage equality campaigns, that “love is
love”. Queer theory involves challenging this drive towards mainstreaming,
or what is often referred to as “assimilation” (Seidman 2009, 19). As Deborah
Britzman suggests, “In its positivity, Queer Theory offers methods of imag-
ining difference on its own terms: as eros, as desire, as the grounds of politi-
cality” (1995, 154). In other words, queer theory has often strived towards
emphasising difference and the margins, rather than sameness.

Key concepts: Norms, normalisation, normative, normativity

Norms
A key aspect of queer theory is resisting dominant norms, so what
exactly is a “norm”? Norms generally refer to standards, rules or expec-
tations. Norms are associated with the “normal” and opposed from the
“abnormal”. Queer theory is particularly concerned with resisting norms
 Defining Queer Theory 13

around gender and sexuality, and questioning what is considered “nor-

mal” versus “abnormal” in these contexts.

Normalisation
In addition to resisting norms, queer theory seeks to interrogate pro-
cesses of normalisation. Normalisation is a term that was introduced
by Foucault to explain how norms function as a form of social control
within modern societies. As Stephen Valocchi argues, “The process of
normalisation … is done by the constitution of p­ ersons who r­ eiterate
norms in order to become knowing and knowable, recognized and
recognizable to others. In this way, the work of social control is
accomplished” (2016, 1). By analysing this process, queer theory is
thus concerned with the question of how norms are ­regulated and
connected to social power.

Normative
Queer theory is also interested in understanding and often r­ esisting
the normative. While the term normative is related to the idea
of norms, it is important to differentiate between the two terms.
Norm simply describes a dominant rule, standard or expectation,
but ­normative refers to the context surrounding how these things
are established, perpetuated and often morally endorsed. As Butler
describes:

the word is one I use often, mainly to describe the mundane vio-
lence performed by certain kinds of gender ideals. I usually use
‘normative’ in a way that is synonymous with ‘pertaining to the
norms that govern gender’. But the term ‘normative’ also pertains
to ethical justification, how it is established, and what concrete
consequences proceed therefrom. (2008, xxi)

Normativity
More broadly, queer theory is interested in critiquing, ­destabilising,
subverting and challenging normativity. The term normativity
refers to the system through which norms, normalisation and the
normative are naturalised and made to seem ideal. Many queer
thinkers focus their critiques on both heteronormativity and
homonormativity.
14 Queer Theory Now

QUEER THEORY WITHOUT ANTI-NORMATIVITY

In recent times, some queer theorists have questioned the reliance of queer
theory on “anti-normativity”, that is, always focusing on what is not norma-
tive as most resistant. As Jagose contends, “Queer theory’s antinormativ-
ity, we can say, is evident in its anti-assimilationist, anticommunitarian or
antisocial, anti-identitarian, antiseparatist, and antiteleological impulses”
­
(2015, 27). Jagose points out that despite the desire to escape a focus on dis-
crete sexual identities, much queer theory writing has tended to focus solely
on “subaltern sexual protagonists”, as she suggests, “certain sexual actors and
orientations, certain sexual practices and venues, have proved good to think
with” (2010, 519). The trouble with this approach, however, is that it has
tended to over-emphasise certain sexual practices and identities as the key
sites of radical transformative possibility, rather than seeing the rupturing
potential of sites assumed to be “straight”.
Jagose’s exemplar of a sexual practice that would not ordinarily be con-
sidered queer, is women faking orgasms (discussed further in Chapter  8).
She argues that this practice demonstrates a kind of queer resistance, and
though it might not be transformative it could be seen as, “an erotic invention
that emerges from a set of culturally specific circumstances as a widespread
sexual observance, a new disposition or way of managing one’s self in sexual
relations” (2010, 535). Jagose’s point is not that we should champion fake
orgasms per se, but rather, that we should extend our lens of queer theory
analysis beyond narrow definitions of the margins. Jack Halberstam has
raised similar concerns around who we do/do not attend to in queer theory.
As he suggests:

[L]et’s turn our attention to the heterosexual woman, who, after all, so
often has been forced to function as a model of conformity, a symbol of
subjugation and the whipping girl for anything that goes wrong with sexual
morality. (2012, 82)

Halberstam, like Jagose, suggests that there might be a way to engage with
questions of gender and sexuality that do not leave out ostensibly “straight”
characters from analysis.
One of the issues at stake in valorising anti-normativity in queer theory,
is that it risks queer theory becoming synonymous with the “anti-normative”.
In doing so, queer theory might lose its critical edge in deconstructing iden-
tities/boundaries. Indeed, anti-normativity as a centralising force might
involve drawing sharper boundaries, and lose the anti-identarian coalitional
 Defining Queer Theory 15

Queer theory in practice: The hetero/homo binary

Queer theorists have often questioned the binary terms within which
sexuality is often understood, that is, the distinction between the het-
erosexual and the homosexual. The category heterosexual rejects any
association with the homosexual, and vice versa. But as Diana Fuss
suggests:

Heterosexuality can never fully ignore the close psychical proximity

of its terrifying (homo)sexual other, any more than homosexuality
can entirely escape the equally insistent social pressures of (hetero)
sexual conformity. Each is haunted by the other. (1991, 3)

We frequently see this boundary-drawing in practice from the playground

to popular culture. For example, the catchphrase “no homo” is used to
reinforce the boundaries of heterosexuality against homosexuality.
Similarly, arguments in popular culture about which celebrities
should be allowed to represent gay or lesbian characters also often rein-
force the category of homosexuality against heterosexuality. While such
debates rightly reflect broader issues around the policing of sexuality in
mainstream media, they also rely on the idea that sexuality always needs
to be disclosed and is a fixed characteristic of a person – a position that
queer theory resists. As Calvin Thomas argues, “Queer theory ultimately
asks: who the f*** knows who or what one is in relation to the question
of whom or how or what or when or even if one f***s?” (2018, 23).

focus of queer’s earlier incarnations. As Cohen points out, “queer politics” has
sometimes failed to live up to its radical promises because of the blunt binary
­distinction often made between the “queer” and the “straight” (1997, 438).
Such divisions often fail to do justice to the intersections of marginalisation
such as those of race and class, where oppression or exclusion cannot simply
be understood along the lines of sexuality. Cohen also reminds us of the pos-
sibilities of queer, as she writes,

At the intersection of oppression and resistance lies the radical potential of

queerness to challenge and bring together all those deemed marginal and
all those committed to liberatory politics. (1997, 440)
16 Queer Theory Now

Similarly Robyn Wiegman warns against: “[T]he limitations of configuring any

dualistic account of the political as a transgressive ideal” (2015, 66). In other
words, we should be wary of prescribing anti-normativity as the source of the
political, because this does not account for what the content of these “norms”
might be (Wiegman 2015, 49). Further, Manalansan highlights that relations
between queerness and normativity are never static, arguing that we need to
understand:

[H]ow queerness and queers are awash in the flow of the everyday – where
norm and queer are not easily indexed or separable but are constantly col-
liding, clashing, intersecting and reconstituting. (2018, 1288)

Whether we take up Jagose or Halberstam’s suggestions to take the “norma-

tive” as a serious focus, or look to Cohen, Wiegman and Manalansan’s sug-
gestions that we cannot simply reject the “normative”, the point here is to
be careful how we deploy queer theory. While critiquing heteronormativity/
homonormativity might be a central focus of many queer theory approaches,
we should always be attentive to the dangers of prescribing anti-normativity
as the solution.

THE DEATH OF QUEER THEORY?

Around a decade after the establishment of queer theory within the academy,
theorists began to question its relevance and efficacy. Sharon Marcus suggests
that the term queer had been taken up too speedily and without critical aware-
ness of its limits. She writes:

[Q]ueer has been the victim of its own popularity, proliferating to the point
of uselessness as a neologism for the transgression of any norm (queer-
ing history, or queering the sonnet). Used in this sense, the term becomes
confusing, since it always connotes a homosexuality that may not be at
stake when the term is used so broadly. Queerness also refers to the mul-
tiple ways that sexual practice, sexual fantasy, and sexual identity fail to
line up consistently. That definition expresses an important insight about
the complexity of sexuality, but it also describes a state experienced by eve-
ryone. If everyone is queer, then no one is – and while this is exactly the
point queer theorists want to make, reducing the term’s pejorative sting
by universalizing the meaning of queer also depletes its explanatory power.
(2005, 196)
 Defining Queer Theory 17

Marcus is just one of many theorists who have argued that the term queer
may have an expiration date. As O’Rourke suggests, “there is a certain dis-
course which propagates the idea that queer theory … is always already dead,
buried, over, finished” (2011, 103). Hence, in 2002, Stephen Barber and David
Clarke noted that “it is not especially surprising to hear that the survival of
queer theory has been questioned or its possible ‘death’ bruited” (2002, 4).
A year later, in 2003, Halberstam reflected on the value of queer studies by
observing that “some say that queer theory is no longer in vogue; others char-
acterize it as fatigued or exhausted of energy and lacking in keen debates; still
others wax nostalgic for an earlier moment” (2003, 361). This sentiment is
emphasised by Janet Halley and Andrew Parker who, in 2011, reflect on how
they had heard “from some quarters that queer theory, if not already passé,
was rapidly approaching its expiration date” (2011, 1).
In 2009, David Ruffolo’s book Postqueer Politics was published. Ruffolo
argues that “Queer has reached a political peak” and critiques queer theory for
valorising a dualism between queer and heteronormativity (2009, 1). Ruffolo
imagines how we may use the work of philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze to
expand the remit of queer to enhance its relevance to contemporary political
questions. Rather than reject queer theory, Ruffolo links queer with concepts
such as “becoming” (in Deleuze’s terms) – postqueer ultimately seeks to
renew queer as a powerful and vibrant concept. Hence, even in an era of (so-
called) postqueer politics, queer theory has a future (O’Rourke 2011, 104).
As Michael O’Rourke suggests:

With each new book, conference, seminar series, each new masters pro-
gram, we hear (yet again) that Queer Theory is over. Some argue that the
unstoppable train of queer theory came to a halt in the late nineties having
been swallowed up by its own fashionability. It had become, contrary to its
own anti-assimilationist rhetoric, fashionable, very much included, rather
than being the outlaw, it wanted to be. But the books and articles still con-
tinue to appear, the conferences continue to be held. And, if it were true
that Queer Theory has been assimilated completely, become sedimented,
completely domesticated (or at least capable of being domesticated) then
it really would be over. Nobody would be reading any more for we would
already know what was to come. (2011, 104)

As we explore throughout this book, queer theory has certainly not reached
an expiration date. The pliant nature of queer theory has enabled it to main-
tain relevance by insisting on its own “radical unknowability” (Jagose 2009,
158) and it continues to be taken up, experimented with and pushed in new
18 Queer Theory Now

directions. We trace some of the ways in which queer theory has evolved,
outline its new shapes and gesture to places within and beyond the academy
where queer theory is thriving. In doing so, we seek to demonstrate the value
of queer theory now, and point to some of the ways that students, activists,
artists and scholars may continue the project of testing queer theory’s limits,
shaping it anew for themselves.

ROADMAP FOR QUEER THEORY NOW

In the following chapters you will notice that the discussion moves between
different periods of time, but each considers the implications for the pre-
sent (the “now”), as well as how the “now” might lead us to re-read the past.
Queering our memories of the past is a move that has been encouraged by
theorists such as Michael Hames-García (2011b). As Hames-García contends,
genealogies of queer theory have often occluded the role that whiteness
plays in the construction of these accounts. He also suggests, “[T]he most
prominent queer theorists have too often justified their scholarship and
­
argued for its originality based on claims that it could be better than other,
competing approaches” (2011b, 43). For us, Hames-García’s important cri-
tique of the way that queer theory is often done, leaves us questioning how
best to “do” the story of queer theory here. Following Hames-García’s critique,
we hope that our work offered attends to shifts in theory and rethinking
queer genealogies. Yet we also wish to give a grounding in queer theory that
does attend to the “typical” story of queer theory even as we problematise
this, and bring new insights, to offer a foundation for understanding some of
the oft-discussed queer theorists and their writings to help make sense of the
field to be undone. In taking this approach, the genealogies that we offer in
Queer Theory Now might help us to see how our narratives of the past inform
our present-day politics and theory.
In the first chapters, we offer groundwork for thinking about how queer
theory came to be, starting much earlier than the emergence of the term
“queer theory” itself. These chapters all consider the radical importance of
earlier social movements around sexuality, gender and race, in shaping queer
theory. In Chapter 2, we begin by tracing the influence of Foucault’s w ­ riting
on later queer theory to come, and the problems and limits of Foucault’s
genealogy. We also consider shifts in thinking about sexuality from the
­
­sexologists, to the homophile movement, Gay Liberation and later LGBTIQ
movements. In Chapter  3, we trace key ideas in queer theory in relation to
the history of feminist activism, considering in particular women’s liberation
 Defining Queer Theory 19

movements, lesbian organising, questions of race and difference, and debates

around sex and pleasure. Chapter  4 turns to the specific role that the AIDS
crisis played in shaping the use of the term “queer”, and in turn, queer theory
in the academy.
The chapters following this constitute the so-called “beginning” of the
explicit articulation of queer theory. In Chapter  5, we focus on the work of
Butler and Sedgwick specifically, who would both become central figures
in the field of queer theory, yet who offer different forms of queer critical
enquiry. Chapter 6 investigates the conundrum of identity politics and queer
theory that emerged in the 1990s, in more depth, looking at debates around
identity, attachments and lived experience. Here we give time to the role of
transgender studies in shaping queer theory. We consider the problems and
paradoxes of queer theory’s insistence on permanent openness, versus the
lived realities of sexual and gendered life.
In the final chapters, we look at how queer theory is (and has always been)
unfolding in a plurality of directions, and the orientations of queer theory to
come. Chapter 7 gives greater attention to the question of intersectional con-
siderations in influencing (yet sometimes being excluded from) queer theory
thinking. Here we look at both the importance of intersectional approaches
in queer theory, as well as the intersections in applications of queer theory as
it has emerged in different academic contexts. The final chapter, Chapter  8,
concerns the question of temporality and queer futures. Here we consider the
role of “hope” in queer theory thinking, and the tension between thinking
of the past, present and future in terms of queer theory orientations. Across
this book as a whole, we make a case for the enduring relevance and poten-
tial of queer theory. In each chapter we explore the intellectual and political
developments that queer theory has contributed to and, in the final chapter,
we gesture to the worth of queer theory for a new generation writing, fight-
ing, thinking and dreaming of queer futures. Each chapter provides a list of
further readings, questions and films that you might like to watch to think
through the ideas in greater depth.
This book hopes to offer a sense of the grounding of queer theory in
activism, and to illustrate the theoretical and practical uses of queer theory
historically, today and into the future. We hope to make some sense of queer
theory’s past, present and future, even as we maintain queer uncertainty, for
as Noreen Giffney describes: “queer discourses touch us, move us and leave
us unsettled, troubled, confused” (2018, 9). Despite the continuing relevance
of queer theory, we may also wish to heed critical readings of this theory
as too-readily absorbed into the existing systems of thought, rather than
always achieving the aspirational vision of its initial provocation. We hope
20 Queer Theory Now

that however “useful” queer theory might be for your theoretical toolkit, you
continue to question its relationship with the status quo. Indeed, we ought
to remain vigilant about what queer theory “does”, and for whom, even as we
might seek to re-shape the boundaries of what queer theory is now, and what
it might become.

Further reading
Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (eds.).
(1993). The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.
This collection draws together the critical texts in lesbian and gay stud-
ies that preceded the articulation of queer theory, including Rich’s essay
on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”.
Nikki Sullivan. (2003). A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York:
New York University Press.
Sullivan offers an overview of queer theory and its origins, including
discussions of “queer race” and transgender theory.
Meg-John Barker, and Julia Scheele. (2016). Queer: A Graphic History.
London: Icon Books.
This graphic reader from Barker and Scheele offers a basic introduction
to many key ideas in queer theory in an easy to engage with format.
Noreen Giffney, and Michael O’Rourke (eds.). (2018). The Ashgate
Research ­Companion to Queer Theory. New York: Routledge.
This diverse collection of reflections and analyses includes extensive
discussion of identity, discourse, normativity and relationality, by lead-
ing queer theorists.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
• How does queer “theory” compare to queer “politics” and “identity”? Do
these uses involve different ideas of what queer means, or do they share
common goals?
• Do you think it is most useful to think of “queer” as a “doing”? Why?
• What are some examples of how heteronormativity shapes everyday life?
 Defining Queer Theory 21

Recommended films
But I’m a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit 1999) is a comedy that follows the
plight of a young woman, Megan, who is sent by her conservative par-
ents to a gay conversion therapy camp. The film takes a satirical look at
the norms and expectations of sexuality and gender, and suggests that
there is a certain “queerness” to heteronormative logics.

The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman 1995) is a doc-
umentary film that charts the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender identity throughout the history of film. Directors Rob
Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman take us on a journey through the heter-
onormative and homophobic lenses through which queer life has often
been represented.

Mulholland Drive (David Lynch 2001). This surreal noir-thriller follows

the plight of a young woman in Hollywood following a car crash. The
film experiments with identity, sexuality, dreams and multiple “truths”
and realities, making it a postmodern classic that resonates with queer
theory.
2  From Pathology to Pride

KEY TERMS discourse, power, bio-power, repressive hypothesis,

AND pathologise, asexuality, polymorphous perversity,
CONCEPTS ­sexology, homophile movement, sexual script theory,
assimilation, Gay Liberation, bisexuality, pride

QUEER THEORY AND THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

Is queer theory always about sexuality? To answer this question, it is crucial

that we first ask: what is sexuality? In this chapter we focus on discussions
of the history of sexuality that have influenced queer theorists, includ-
ing the role of medicine and psychiatry in shaping the sexual subject. This
chapter considers how the pathologisation of homosexuality at once “legiti-
mised” discrimination but also provided a basis for a discourse of homo-
sexual rights and homosexual organisations (the homophile movement) to
emerge. The relationship and contrasts between the homophile and later Gay
Liberation movement illustrates the ideological basis of the “assimilation”
versus “transgression” debate still unfolding in discussion of queer theory and
politics today. Moving to a more contemporary context, we also consider the
globalised LGBTIQ pride movement, and the increasing debate around the
corporatisation of pride parades. This history has been traced by many schol-
ars and has often been refracted through popular culture, yet revisiting this
history suggests that neat narratives of “progress” ought to be questioned.
Importantly, as flagged in our introduction, adopting an intersectional lens
when examining queer history is crucial, which in this chapter means attend-
ing to the intersecting issues of race, class, ability and gender in discussing
sexuality. For example, as we explore, the pathologisation of homosexuality is
intimately connected to projects of colonialism, racialisation and the invention
of whiteness. Similarly, early gay and lesbian activism has strong connections
to the civil rights movement, a point sometimes overlooked in genealogies of
queer theory. These intersections need to be highlighted in order to counter
the whitewashing and erasure that is so prevalent in earlier accounts and that
continues to function in representations of these LGBTIQ histories.

22
 From Pathology to Pride 23

HISTORY ACCORDING TO FOUCAULT?

Foucault published many influential works throughout his life, though

it is his History of Sexuality: Volume 1, first published in French in 1976
(and translated into English 1978), that is perhaps most significant for
­understanding queer theory. Foucault influenced many later key queer
theorists such as Gayle Rubin, Butler and Sedgwick, though has often been
critiqued for some of his lack of attention to the specificity of gender, and
women’s issues ­specifically (Huffer 2010, 5). Foucault introduces many
key ideas within History of Sexuality: Volume 1, coining the term “repres-
sive hypothesis” and highlighting mechanisms of confession, and practices
of psychiatry and medicine that relate to the production of sexuality.
Through all of this, he foregrounds speech and language as key to the
­formation of sexuality.
However, while many genealogies of queer theory begin with Foucault,
there have also been attempts to reframe the history of sexuality that he
offers, specifically in terms of decolonial approaches. For example, Scott
Lauria Morgensen suggests modifying Foucault’s reading of history to specifi-
cally attend to the settler-colonial dynamics underpinning “modern sexuality”
(2011, 23). Following Indigenous feminist calls to decolonise theorisations
of gender and sexuality (explored in detail in Chapter  7), Morgensen (2011)
argues that queer theory must attend to the way that Indigenous populations
were marked as “queer” in relation to settler sexuality, and forcibly governed
by colonial “civilizing” logics on this basis. As Ann Stoler (1995) has also
argued, Foucault’s concepts can be productively adapted to better account for

Biography: Michel Foucault

Foucault was a poststructuralist philosopher, literary critic, historian,
social theorist and activist, born in Poitiers, France on 15 October 1926.
Foucault graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in 1952, and
taught in universities across Europe in the following decade. In 1969,
Foucault became a Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at
the Collège de France, and gave lectures across the world. Foucault was
also active in various leftist political protest movements – including
the student uprising in 1968 – up to his death in Paris on 25 June 1984
(Gutting 2005).
24 Queer Theory Now

colonial logics. Stoler argues that the history Foucault traces should be under-
stood in the context of a broader, imperial, racialised context and history, as
she suggests, “We are in the felicitous position to draw on Foucault’s insights
and go beyond them” (1995, 94).

Key concept: Discourse

The term “discourse” is used across multiple disciplines and means
different things in different contexts. In linguistics and some social
sciences, discourse often refers to structures that are larger than
­sentences, or, language in use (Cameron and Panovic 2014). However,
many in the social sciences and humanities draw upon Foucault’s defini-
tion, which understands discourse as a form of social practice. Foucault
describes discourse in the plural as, “practices that systematically form
the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1972). In other words,
­discourses are ways of talking that shape how we think about and under-
stand the world.
In History of Sexuality: Volume 1 Foucault argues that, “the society
that emerged in the nineteenth century … put into operation an entire
machinery for producing true discourses concerning [sex]” (1976, 69).
This scientific approach (which Foucault termed “scientia sexualis”) was
not about pleasure, but about the production of knowledge, the “truth”
of sex.
For example, when thinking about sexuality we could compare:

• medical discourse that might focus on questions of sexual

“dysfunction” and sexual “health”, using scientific data and statistics;
versus
• religious discourse that might focus on sexual practices that
are “morally” permissible versus those which are “sinful”, using
theological dictates.

Understanding that different discursive lenses shape what can be

“known” to be “true” is a key aspect of Foucauldian thinking. This
has shaped queer theory approaches to questioning discourses of
sexuality.
 From Pathology to Pride 25

The repressive hypothesis

Foucault begins History of Sexuality: Volume 1 by negating what he calls the
“repressive hypothesis”. Foucault draws attention to a widespread belief in
thinking about sexuality: that by the 1800s any prior openness had been sup-
planted by Victorian bourgeois attitudes towards sex, through which “sexual-
ity was carefully confined” or repressed (1978, 3). As Foucault outlines, there
is a commonly held belief that prior to the Victorian era, “a certain frankness”
around sexual behaviours permeated public life:

Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue
reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had
a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the course, the
obscene, and the indecent were quite lax … It was a time of direct gestures,
shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were
shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the
laughter of adults. (1978, 3)

However, “so the story goes”, following this period there was a grand silenc-
ing and repression of sexuality. Foucault explicitly challenges this story and
questions the implicit benefit of re-telling the history of sexuality along these
lines. As he suggests:

Why do we say, with so much passion and so much resentment against our
most recent past, against our present, and against ourselves that we are
repressed? By what spiral did we come to affirm that sex is negated? What
led us to show, ostentatiously, that sex is something we hide, to say it is
something we silence? (1978, 8–9)

Foucault puts assumptions about the history of sexual repression into con-
text to argue that sexuality was not truly “repressed” during the Victorian
era. He raises historical, theoretical and political doubts about the repressive
hypothesis (see Table 2.1).

The discursive explosion

Foucault challenges the myth of repression by suggesting that this so-called
period of silence was actually part of a “veritable discursive explosion” around
sex and sexuality (1978, 17). Some may identify policing of language and
26 Queer Theory Now

Table 2.1  The various doubts about the “repressive hypothesis” that Foucault
raises in The History of Sexuality: Volume 1

Historical accuracy Historico-theoretical Historico-political

Doubt raised Foucault Foucault questions Foucault
­questions the theoretical ­questions
whether popular assumptions made whether we are
assumptions about the more liberated
about the period ­relationship now than in the
of repression between knowledge past, and the
are historically and power in political motives
accurate. ­understanding the of making such
history of sexuality. claims.
Resulting questions What can Does power primar- What is the
be found in ily operate to repress ­benefit to
­revisiting archives sexuality? ­speakers in
from this era Can power have ­making the claim
of supposed other effects? that we are more
repression? liberated now
than in the past?

speech around sexuality that occurred throughout the period as evidence of

“repression”. However, Foucault suggests that if we look closely at the mecha-
nisms of regulation, and the scientific, psychiatric and medical discourses that
were in operation, we can actually see a “steady proliferation of discourses
concerned with sex” and indeed a “transforming of sex [itself] into discourse”
(1978, 20). Foucault traces an emerging confessional imperative, for example
via psychiatric practice, through which subjects were compelled to confess
to sexual acts that broke the law (such as sodomy), thus transforming their
desires “into discourse” by talking about sex and sexuality as much as possible
(1978, 21).
Drawing out links between discourse, knowledge and power, Foucault
argues that this was actually part of a bigger transformation in the organisa-
tion of power, through which human bodies, sex and sexuality had come to be
“managed, inserted into systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of
all, [and] made to function according to an optimum” (1978, 24). During the
industrial revolution bodily norms around ability, gender, race, sexuality and
sexual development had emerged. Deviations were described in detail through
both legal and medical texts and while some “irregularities” or “perversions”
 From Pathology to Pride 27

came to be thought of as illnesses and were treated as such, others bore the
brunt of legal sanctions (Davis 2006; D’Emilio 1998).
The establishment of these norms – and the classification of specific
deviations – was motivated by a set of basic concerns, as Foucault describes:
“to ensure population, to reproduce labor capacity, to perpetuate the form of
social relations” (1978, 37). In other words, the emergence of sexuality as a
discourse in the Victorian era was governed by the need to constitute norma-
tive (heterosexually reproductive) bodies that would be “economically useful
and politically conservative” (Foucault 1978, 37). Foucault claims that specifi-
cally the emergent discourse of sexuality hinged around four specific mecha-
nisms (Table 2.2).
Similarly to Foucault’s ideas around the development of sexuality, scholars
and historians have traced the emergence of the concept of whiteness and the
extension of the racialisation of non-white others. As Allen argues, whiteness
was invented to scientifically legitimise social control over labour through

Table 2.2  Foucault’s descriptions of the different ways that knowledge was
produced around sex and how it was managed

Mechanism What/How Subject produced

“Hysterization of women’s Sexualisation and medical “The hysterical woman”
bodies” management of women’s
bodies for reproductive
purposes.
“Pedagogization of children’s Panic around children’s “The masturbating child”
sex” sexual impulses and
implementation of various
mechanisms to control it.
“Socialization of procreative Focus on the economic “The Malthusian couple”
behaviour” necessity of the family
unit, hinged around the
reproductive heterosexual
couple.
“Psychiatrization of Distinction of sexual incli- “The perverse adult”
­perverse pleasure” nations such that normal
versus perverse pleasures
(such as heterosexual
drives versus homosexual
ones) could be determined
and treated.
28 Queer Theory Now

projects of colonialisation, enslavement and the genocide of Indigenous peo-

ples (Allen 1994a, 1994b; Almaguer 1994; Jacobson 1999; O’Brien 2010).
However, as Stoler (1995) suggests, though many have drawn out the links
between the discursive construction of sexuality and the construction of
racialised subjects under colonial rule, it is also possible to refigure Foucault’s
formulations via a deeper understanding of the imperial colonial context of
the Victorian era which he does not explicitly consider. Stoler raises several
key questions (1995, 6):

• Was the demand for the “truth of sex” a result of the confessional
imperative or were “truth” claims emerging more directly because of
imperial theorisations of race at the time?
• Should racialised subjects be specifically included in the subjects produced
and targeted by the emergent discourse of sexuality?
• Could any of the sexual subjects that Foucault describes even function
without a “racially erotic counterpoint”?

Stoler concludes that “In short-circuiting empire, Foucault’s history of

European sexuality misses key sites in the production of that discourse,
­discounts the practices that racialized bodies, and thus elides a field of knowl-
edge that provided the contrasts for what a ‘healthy, vigorous, bourgeois body’
was all about” (1995, 7).

Key concept: Power

In History of Sexuality: Volume 1 Foucault offers two distinct ways of
theorising power and suggests that there has been a contemporary shift
in how power is arranged, shifting from sovereign to disciplinary:

• Sovereign/juridical power: power in a hierarchy from above. That

is, the power of the law or state enforced by the king or judge. This
power is fundamentally repressive.
• Disciplinary power: power dispersed in a grid, from below. That
is, the power that filters through all social life and the disciplinary
regimes that are enforced by one another. This power crystallises
in institutions such as schools, clinics and so on, and the dynamics
of norms and surveillance of one another leads to “docile bodies”
(compliant bodies). This power is fundamentally productive.
 From Pathology to Pride 29

As Foucault describes: “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces

everything, but because it comes from everywhere. And ‘Power’, insofar
as it is permanent, repetitious, inert, and ­self-reproducing, is simply the
over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities … power is not an
institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are
endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical
situation in a particular society” (1978, 93).
In the final part of History of Sexuality: Volume 1 Foucault develops
his notion of power to include “bio-power” (1978, 140). He explains
this as a regime of power which involves the measurement, discipline
and management of bodies – a crucial element supporting the develop-
ment of capitalism. Many have since expanded Foucault’s discussion of
bio-power. For example, Stoler (1995) suggests adapting bio-­politics to
account for settler colonialism, to understand the way that Indigenous
populations were (and continue to be) governed by racist bodily logics.

The “invention” of homosexuality

It may seem strange to think of homosexuality as something that was
“invented”. However, many theorists following Foucault’s line of thought
suggest that with the emergence of a discourse of sexuality, sexual acts were
transformed into sexual identities. Most historians of sexuality highlight that
“same-sex” relationships have always existed in some form or other across all
cultures, but that the identity categories through which we understand sexu-
ality today (including heterosexuality) have not always existed. As Jonathan
Katz highlights, both “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” are historically
and culturally specific terms for categorising sexuality (2014, 12).
Recently, this popular reading of Foucault’s contribution to queer theory
being the invention of “identity” has been troubled. As Lynne Huffer suggests,
Foucault was primarily concerned with subject formation:

With the rise of positivism, that inner life has been frozen into the attrib-
utes of a character to be viewed under a microscope and dissected into the
elements that constitute a “case history”. This ethical alteration describes
not so much the constitution of the modern “identity” of identity ­politics –
again, Foucault does not use the word here – than it does a process of
rationalist, positivist objectification through the production of an ethico-
moral double. (2010, 72–73)
30 Queer Theory Now

This rendering of Foucault is important to keep in mind, to understand how

his notion of sexual subjectivation differs from contemporary renderings of
identity as discrete and personal self “truths”.
Focusing on European medical and juridical constructions of sexuality,
Foucault argues that homosexuality first emerged in 1870 when German psy-
chiatrist Karl Westphal (also known as Carl von Westphal) published an article
in which he argued that certain “contrary sexual sensations” (which we would
likely now understand as “homosexual”) were congenital rather than acquired
vices. For Foucault, this article marked the emergence of homosexuality as an
identity, as it was the moment in which homosexuality was characterised as “a
certain quality of sexual sensibility” rather than a type of sexual relation (1978,
43). Prior to this, the term “sodomy” had been used to refer to certain sexual
acts (especially anal intercourse) which were historically forbidden because
they were linked to sin – and notably not tied to an identity, meaning that
anyone could be accused of them. It was not until the nineteenth century that
homosexuality began to solidify as an identity. Rather than talking about acts
or behaviours, homosexuality became, particularly within medical discourse
and the law, “a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition
to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology” (Foucault 1978, 43).
Foucault highlights this transition, suggesting: “The sodomite had been a tem-
porary aberration, the homosexual was now a species” (1978, 43).
Historians have noted several key figures in this emergent scientific discourse
on sexuality. In most cases, their works began to appear in English language
medical journals in the 1880s and 1890s. In each case, “same-sex” desire, which
was once thought of in terms of sin and criminality, was re-classified in medi-
cal terms. Early European sexologists described same-sex desire as a disease,
a congenital defect or a form of perversity. For instance, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
published a series of brochures between 1864 and 1879, in which he described
“same-sex” desire as a mismatch between body and soul (Oosterhuis 1992, 13).
Ulrichs coined the terms “Urnings” and “Uranism” to describe patients whose
soul did not match their anatomy. Similarly, German sexologist and psychologist
Richard von Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886, in which he
described “same-sex” desire along with necrophilia, sadism, masochism, paedo-
philia (and others) as pathologies, or aberrations (Oosterhuis 1992, 13).
Around the same time, Westphal’s work on “contrary sexual feeling”, which
had been published several years earlier in 1870, and which Foucault identi-
fies as the dawn of homosexuality, began to appear in medical journals across
Europe. Though these early studies used different language to describe same-
sex desire, they suggested that medicine should be the key site for responding
 From Pathology to Pride 31

Key term: Pathologise

To “pathologise” means to designate or categorise something as
“abnormal”. In turn, this requires a designation of what is “normal”.
Historically, sexuality and gender have been pathologised, particularly
within medical, psychiatric and psychological discourses. For example,
up until 1973 homosexuality was understood as a mental disorder in the
American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM) (De Block and Adriaens 2013). It was only
removed following pressure from gay rights activists (Drescher 2015).
However, gender has continued to be included in various iterations
of the DSM, through classifications such as “Gender identity disor-
der” (GID) introduced in 1980 (more recently reclassified as “Gender
dysphoria”).
While pathologizing discourse is problematic, historically it has
also been productive for individuals and groups to reclaim that which
is marked out as “abnormal”. For example, in the novel The Well of
Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928) (which would come to circulate
as an infamous text exploring lesbian and/or transgender themes),
the main character uses the language of “inversion” to describe their
identity. As Lisa Walker suggests, “Hall’s depiction of her protagonist,
Stephen Gordon, owes its theory about sexual ‘inversion’ to nineteenth-
century sexologists, and it is largely this medical model that defined
the figure of the butch for the prefeminist lesbian community” (Walker
1993, 881). Sexual and gender categories have historically provided a
framework for self-identification with previously unidentified subject
positions, as well as legitimatisation for organisations advocating for
LGBTIQ rights.
However, as Stryker notes, designations such as GID have been
received in mixed ways by transgender communities: “Some people
resent having their sense of gender labelled as a sickness, while oth-
ers take great comfort from believing they have a condition that can
be cured with proper treatment” (2008, 13). This highlights the ten-
sion that pathologizing discourses poses: simultaneously offering a
point of collective identification for rights-based claims, and promot-
ing stigmatising and narrow classifications that gate-keep access to
resources.
32 Queer Theory Now

to deviant sexual behaviours, rather than response via legal or religious frame-
works (Somerville 2000, 18).
A key influential figure in this scholarship is British physician Havelock
Ellis, who published Studies in the Psychology of Sex throughout the late 1890s
and early 1900s. In Volume Two: Sexual Inversion, he explored “sexual inver-
sion”, which he conceived of in both congenital (permanent) and situational
(temporary) forms:

In the girl who is congenitally predisposed to homosexuality it will

­continue and develop; in the majority it will be forgotten as quickly as
­possible, not without shame, in the presence of the normal object of sexual
love. (1927, 122)

For Ellis, situational homosexuality was a “precocious play of natural instinct”,

a passing phase of “passionate friendships, of a more or less unconsciously sex-
ual character” that developed in the absence of opposite-sex partners (1927,
132). Though he did write about men, Ellis considered this type of relationship
far more prevalent for women and he argued that it was fostered within set-
tings where women were in constant association without the company of men.
Ellis considered situational homosexuality to be “found in all countries”, and
in an appendix on “the school-friendships of girls”, Ellis highlighted what he
saw as a remarkable similarity between schoolgirl romances in Italian, English
and American high schools. In each of these accounts, same-sex desire was
described as a “tenderness natural to this age and sex” (Ellis 1927, 250).

Queer theory in practice: Transnational sexology?

Histories of sexology have been produced in various contexts. For
example, Fang Fu Ruan’s work Sex in China: Studies in Sexology in
Chinese Culture (1991) outlines a very long history of sexological work
in the region. In China this history is bound up with philosophical and
religious convictions of different dynasties. Ruan claims that “The
world’s oldest sex handbooks are Chinese” (1991, 1). Similarly, Sanjay
Srivastava’s Passionate Modernity: Sexuality, Class and Consumption in
India (2007) considers the history of sexology in India, and the gender
and class dynamics bound up with the study of sex.
However, aside from simply tracking and tracing different ways of
thinking about sex in different contexts, Gargi Bhattacharyya (2002)
 From Pathology to Pride 33

suggests that the way we imagine sexuality (or “queerness” as the case
may be) can influence, and obscure, what is to be found. Bhattacharyya
points out that the hetero/homo divide used in Western accounts pre-
sumes that sexuality:

1. can be understood as an identity;

2. is used about a self-narrating individual;
3. is a specific historical concept in relation to sex acts. (2002, 42)

These assumptions mean that “sexuality” as it is often deployed in the

West, is distinctly Western.

RACISM IN WESTERN SEXOLOGY

It is important to note that these early ideas about sexuality stemmed from
previous studies of racial difference. In theorising inversion Ellis (a passionate
eugenicist) borrowed heavily from nineteenth-century racial “science”, which
used a methodology of comparative anatomy to categorise bodies according
to visual markers of difference. As Somerville highlights, Ellis “echoed earlier
anatomical catalogs of African women” (2000, 28). Consider, for instance, the
language that Ellis uses to describe the anatomy of the female “invert” in rela-
tion to a “normal” woman:

Sexual Organs – (a) Internal: Uterus and ovaries appear normal. (b)
External: Small clitoris, with this irregularity, that the lower folds of
the labia minora, instead of uniting one with the other and forming the
­frenum, are extended upward along the sides of the clitoris, while the
upper folds are poorly developed, furnishing the clitoris with a scant
hood. The labia majora depart from normal conformation in being fuller
in their posterior half than in their anterior part, so that when the
subject is in the supine position they sag, as it were, presenting a slight
resemblance to fleshy sacs, but in substance and structure they feel
­normal. (1927, 136)

While rarely mentioning race in explicit terms, scholars such as Ellis borrowed
methodologies and conclusions from the project of racial definition, and in
doing so, deeply entwined (racist and sexist) discourses of race and sexuality.
Hence, in Queering the Color Line (2000), Siobhan Somerville highlights that in
34 Queer Theory Now

the USA the classification of bodies as either “homosexual” or “heterosexual”

actually emerged at the same time as boundaries between “Black” and “white”
bodies were being aggressively constructed and policed (2000, 3). Kobena
Mercer and Isaac Julien similarly argue that racism has long underpinned all
Western constructions of sexuality:

The prevailing Western concept of sexuality ... already contains racism.

Historically, the European construction of sexuality coincides with the
epoch of imperialism and the two interconnect. (1988, 106)

Though the history of Western sexuality has often been relayed in deracialised
terms in Foucault’s work, and in the work of historians who trace similar ideas,
this is a history that cannot be disentangled from questions and histories of race.
While it is not possible to trace a linear cross-cultural transmission of ideas
around sexuality, some scholars have elucidated the proliferation of ideas of
sexuality transnationally. For instance, Tze-lan D. Sang’s The Emerging Lesbian:
Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (2003) and Fran Martin’s Backward
Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary
(2010), trace ideas around sexuality in modern Chinese culture, which have
often been through Japanese interpretations (Martin 2010; Sang 2003). What
is at stake in all of these accounts, as Foucault describes, is, “the very production
of sexuality” within and across cultures (1978, 105). Foucault proclaims that:

Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power

tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries grad-
ually to uncover. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct:
not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in
which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incite-
ment to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening
of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a
few major strategies of knowledge and power. (1978, 105–106)

This is significant for queer theory because Foucault asserts that sexual-
ity is not “natural”; it is part of a web of knowledge and power, a network of
discourse. It should also be noted that for Foucault, while power and knowl-
edge are discursively transmitted, produced and reinforced, discourse also
“undermines and exposes” power; it “renders it fragile and makes it possible
to thwart it” (Foucault 1978, 101). This is an important suggestion: that mul-
tiple and even contradictory discourses can circulate simultaneously.
Later psychoanalytic discourse moved away from physiological models to
consider sexuality as a function of psychological development, however, the
 From Pathology to Pride 35

physiological models proposed by Ellis and others persisted (in the USA at
least) because they “resonated with and reinforced prevailing American models
of racialized bodies” (Somerville 2000, 21). The most influential voice in this
new area of psychoanalysis was Sigmund Freud, who laid out a developmental
model of sexuality in Three Essays in 1905. Locating sexuality as drive, Freud
considered it to be culturally and historically specific, yet “saw homosexuality as
a developmental arrest, a fixation, or a sign of immaturity” (Drescher 2001, 52).
Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective became incredibly popular, though nota-
bly did not completely supersede earlier models. Sedgwick (2008) would later
describe these as “universalising” and “minoritising” models (see Chapter  5),
and highlight how they continue to coexist in our understandings of sexuality.

Key concept: Polymorphous perversity

Freud used the term “polymorphous-perverse disposition” to describe
the “perversions” in sexual desire that may be acquired during develop-
ment (Freud and Strachey 2000). Freud argued that such perversions
occurred as a result of fixations during the development of libidinal
drives, which should normally unfold in the following stages:

1. Oral (0–1): the mouth as a site of pleasure and exploration.

2. Anal (1–3): experimentation with bodily functions.
3. Phallic (3–6): awareness of genitalia.
4. Latency (6–12): development of conscience.
5. Genital (12+): emergence of sexual urges.

Freud argued that as children go through these stages they experience

bisexual desires, however, in order to develop mature gender identity
homosexual attachments had to be rejected. Freud’s ideas would later be
taken up and challenged by feminist and queer theorists such as Butler
(Chapter 5).
An important critique of Freud’s understanding of sexuality is also
offered by Steven Angelides’ A History of Bisexuality (2001). According
to Angelides, even though Freud understood dispositions as “polymor-
phous”, his theory of healthy sexual development also rendered bisexu-
ality impossible in adult life. Freud’s insistence on oppositional gender
as determining sexuality, and the notion that desire could only ever be
singularly directed (not simultaneous), positioned bisexuality as unob-
tainable in “the present tense” (2001, 70).
36 Queer Theory Now

FIGHTING FOR HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS

The emergence of medical, psychiatric and psychoanalytic research that

sought to categorise sexuality in the nineteenth century worked to patholo-
gise those who did not conform to the heterosexual norms of the era.
However, while this was the basis for social control of “perversity”, it also
made possible new discursive formations. As Foucault highlights, around the
same time “homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that
its legitimacy or ‘naturality’ be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary,
using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified” (1978, 101).
Despite the problematic and pathologised construction of sexuality offered
by sexologists like Ellis, the language used in these accounts would come to
be recuperated and utilised in activism around sexuality in the decades that
followed.
As homosexuality began to solidify as an identity, so too did homosexual
rights organisations emerge in Europe in the late 1800s. In 1869, writer and
human rights campaigner Karl Maria Benkert (later known as Karoly-Maria
Kertbeny) wrote an open letter in opposition to anti-sodomy legislation that
would criminalise sex between men (Steakley 1975). While this legislation
was introduced in 1871, Benkert’s letter sparked the beginnings of a move-
ment defending homosexuality. German neurologist Magnus Hirschfeld
similarly opposed this aspect of the penal code, and in 1897 he founded
the first homophile organisation: the Scientific Humanitarian Committee
(Lauritsen and Thorstad 1995). Building upon Karl Ulrich’s models of
sexuality (as a mismatch between body and soul), Hirschfeld understood
homosexuality as an abnormality of co-mingled femininity and masculin-
ity. With this understanding of homosexuality as congenital, he established
the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to persuade judicial bodies to abol-
ish the anti-sodomy legislation. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee
worked towards legislative reform by highlighting the suffering caused by
anti-sodomy legislation and emphasising the harmlessness of homosexu-
als. In 1903, Benedict Friedlander founded the Community of the Special,
an organisation that supported the Scientific Humanitarian Committee but
opposed Hirschfeld’s conservative position, describing it as “degrading and
a beggarly … pleading for sympathy” (Lauritsen and Thorstad 1995, 50).
Hirschfeld later founded the Institute for Sexual Science, which housed a
significant archive of materials on gay cultural history and which was burnt
down by the Nazis in 1933.
 From Pathology to Pride 37

Taking some of Hirschfeld’s ideas to England, sexologists Ellis and Edward

Carpenter established the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology in
1914. The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology also had connec-
tions with the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. However, this group had
an educational rather than legislative focus, arguing that “We do not think
the time has arrived in England for a similar demand to be made” (Lauritsen
and Thorstad 1995, 50). Through the British Society for the Study of Sex
Psychology, Ellis and Carpenter founded a library and made connections with
like-minded researchers in the USA.
Around the same time as Simone de Beauvoir was publishing The Second
Sex in France, in the USA, Dr Alfred Kinsey’s reports on Sexual Behavior in
the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953) were
released. Kinsey and his team collected data from 5,300 white men and 5,940
white women respectively, with the aim being to “discover what people do
sexually, what factors may account for their patterns of sexual behaviour, how
their sexual experiences have affected their lives, and what social significance
there may be in each type of behaviour” (Kinsey et  al. 1988, 3). The reports
detailed activities such as masturbation, pre-marital sex, homosexual sex,
orgasm and more. The first report also included a scale, which captured a
range of sexual behaviours beyond and in-between homosexual and heterosex-
ual (see Figure 2.1). Kinsey also noted a score of “X” that referred to no sexual
behaviour (Kinsey Institute 2018). Despite the many methodological concerns
raised about the work, Kinsey’s findings revealed a diversity of sexual desires
and proclivities to a wide audience.

Heterosexual Homosexual
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 2.1  The Kinsey Scale, where 0 = exclusively heterosexual

and 6 = exclusively homosexual
38 Queer Theory Now

Key term: Asexuality

Though Kinsey identified an “X” on his scale to reflect no sexual behav-
iour, it is only in recent decades that there has been growing awareness
and discussion of asexuality. Asexuality in its broadest sense refers
to identifying as someone who does not experience sexual desire
(Cerankowski and Milks 2010, 651). Karli June Cerankowski and
Megan Milks suggest that although some asexual identifying people
live ­otherwise “normative” lives, on a theoretical level asexuality can be
understood as queer as it goes against dominant expectations of sexual
desire. They write, “[W]e suggest that asexuality as a practice and a poli-
tics radically challenges the prevailing sex-normative culture” (2010, 661).
As Jacinthe Flore (2014) suggests (drawing on Foucault), asexuality
also has a history that can be tracked through sexology. Examining the
early emphasis on sexual “dysfunction”, and the assumption that sexual
activity is core to human identity, Flore writes, “historically, research
into human sexuality has turned existence into sexistence, embalmed in
the possibilities and threats of sexuality” (2014, 18, emphasis in origi-
nal). Flore suggests that rather than defining asexuality by what it is
not, asexuality might instead be thought of as a position resistant to a
normative sexualised subject positioning.

The homophile movement

Early homosexual rights groups and publications often used the term “homo-
phile” as a descriptor. This term was coined in the 1920s to refer to same-sex
attracted people and it meant “same love”. For a time, it was used interchange-
ably with “homosexual”, but fell out of popularity in the late 1960s. Groups
were often named in a covert manner to protect members from exposure,
and frequently sought opinions of psychological experts, often inviting them
to their meetings. In order to naturalise and justify homosexuality, “homo-
phile anthropology” also emerged in Western homophile groups as a way to
evidence homosexuality as both global and timeless, though often involved
positioning Western sexuality as more developed (Churchill 2008, 48).
In Europe, organising began in the early 1910s in the Netherlands with the
Dutch Scientific Humanitarian Committee, but many other European homo-
phile groups did not emerge until the late 1940s, after the Second World War.
In 1946, the Cultuur en Ontspannings Centrum (COC) formed in Amsterdam,
 From Pathology to Pride 39

whose publications included reflections on homophile activities across the world.

Historians have noted that COC, like many other homophile groups, regarded
emerging gay nightlife subcultures with apprehension, instead advocating for
respectability in more normative cultural terms (Churchill 2008). However, oth-
ers suggest that this relationship was mixed, with some crossover between the
commercial subcultural and homophile organising worlds (Rupp 2011).
The earliest record of a North American homophile organisation is the
Chicago Society of Human Rights, which was founded in 1924, and favoured
the approach taken by Ellis and Carpenter (Katz 1992). The Chicago Society
of Human Rights appealed to rationality, desired to uphold existing laws and
emphasised homosexuals as sympathetic figures. The organisation was estab-
lished to:

promote and to protect the interests of people who by reasons of mental

and psychic abnormalities are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of
happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence,
and to combat the public prejudices against them by dissemination of
facts according to modern science among intellectuals of mature age.
The  Society stands only for law and order; it is in harmony with any and
all general laws insofar as they protect the rights of others, and does in no
manner recommend any acts in violation of recent laws nor advocate any
matter inimical to the public welfare. (Katz 1992, 385)

In 1925, key members of the Society were arrested without warrants and with
little evidence – a powder puff was found in the secretary’s bedroom – and
this particular organisation was disbanded (Katz 1992, 391).
Other homophile groups emerged and continued, working towards increas-
ing tolerance of homosexuality through educational programmes and politi-
cal reform. Into the 1950s the movement was increasingly transnational, as
reflected in a key slogan, “We are everywhere!” (Churchill 2008, 32). In 1951,
the first International Congress for Sexual Equality was held in Amsterdam
(Rupp 2011). From this came the International Committee for Sexual Equality
(ICSE), connecting homophile groups across Europe and the USA. Annual con-
ferences attracted around 100 to 500 participants (Loftin 2012, 71). As Leila
Rupp argues, this network was built on a shared sense of homophile identity:

This identity, very much in sync with the ideas developing in national
homophile movements, built on the rejection of homosexuals as sinful,
criminal, or pathological, mobilizing experts in the fields of science, medi-
cine, religion, and law to support claims of normality. (2011, 1026)
40 Queer Theory Now

Furthermore, periodicals published by various homophile groups had wide

international reach, connecting individuals up, across and beyond the West.
As David Churchill (2008) suggests, despite the transnational nature of
organising, popular histories of homophile groups have skewed towards
the North American context, particularly focusing on The Mattachine
Society and Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Churchill suggests that we must
understand these groups within an international rather than purely local
framework, given the internationally connected outlook of much of the
organising.
In 1951, a small group of Los Angeles-based activists, including Harry
Hay and Chuck Rowland, founded the Mattachine Society. Several founding
members had been active within the Communist party and they advocated
for homosexual rights with a decisively Marxist tone. Early discussion papers
circulated by the Society emphasised homosexuals as a population unaware
of their status as “a social minority imprisoned within a dominant culture”
(D’Emilio 1998, 65). Through the 1950s, the Mattachine Society expanded,
forming cell groups in other parts of the USA, including New York, Chicago
and Washington. During this period, ties to other international homophile
groups began, and indeed the Cold War fears of the period also meant that
US-based groups looked to Western European allies for inspiration (Churchill
2008). This expansion occurred during the era of McCarthyism – during this
period both homosexuals and Communists were viewed as subversive threats
to US values. As a result, new members of the Mattachine Society increasingly
opposed the organisation’s association with the Communist party. In 1953,
the Society was restructured, which split the organisation into groups loosely
aligned with liberation and assimilation. The emerging homophile political
mode of the period 1950s to 1960s has been described as “integrationist”
(Esterberg 1994, 430) and “accommodationist rather than an oppositional”
(Churchill 2008, 33).
A key ongoing critique of the Mattachine Society was that it ignored issues
faced by women: it was an organisation founded by men, with a largely male
membership and it dominantly focused on the concerns of men (such as
police entrapment of gay men). While the Mattachine Society did not actively
and explicitly exclude women, as D’Emilio argues, “in numerous, often
unconscious ways, male homosexuals defined gayness in terms that negated
the experience of lesbians and conspired to keep them out” (1998, 92–93).
In response, in 1955, eight women including Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
established DOB in San Francisco, to counter the masculinist approach of
the Mattachine Society and to advocate for homosexual women. This group
 From Pathology to Pride 41

was originally founded as an alternative social space to the predominantly

­working-class lesbian bars of the era, and early on emphasised a politics of
respectability in order to destigmatise understandings of lesbian identity
(Gallo 2007). Into the 1960s, despite difficulties for lesbians within some
strands of feminism (discussed in Chapter  3), DOB became more closely
affiliated with women’s liberation organising and increasingly focused on “all”
women (Esterberg 1994, 437).
The cultural conditions of the era shaped the focus of, and created politi-
cal barriers for, homophile groups. As Churchill (2008) explains, the postwar
period of the 1950s heralded a rise in human rights discourse, as well as
civil rights organising and anti-colonial independence movements. Into the
1950s, this human rights discourse became more oriented towards articu-
lating the rights of citizens in nationalist terms, and homophile organising
aimed to distance homosexuality away from “perversion” towards notions of
liberal democracy (Churchill 2008, 34). In aiming for respectable citizenship,
many homophile groups distanced themselves from transgender individuals,
often in highly classed terms. Churchill reflects that “Anecdotally, we know
that the US-based homophile groups were middle class and that homophile
publications reflected middle-class values of respectability, social aspiration,
and normalcy” (2008, 46). Others have complicated the story of homophile
respectability: as Martin Meekr argues through a focus on Mattachine, the
“respectable public face” was merely a mask that obscured diverse activities
undertaken by the group (2001, 81).
In the US context, fear of persecution meant that both the Mattachine
Society and the DOB faced difficulty organising politically, with heavy govern-
ment crackdowns on homosexuals in the 1950s and 1960s (Seidman 2002).
During this period, it was considered deviant behaviour for women to dress in
masculine attire, so women were required to be wearing at least three pieces
of traditionally feminine clothing at all times. As historian Allan Bérubé also
highlights:

[Gays came] under heavy attack … When arrested in gay bar raids, most
people pleaded guilty, fretful of publicly exposing their homosexuality dur-
ing a trial … Legally barred from many forms of private and government
employment, from serving their country, from expressing their opinions in
newspapers and magazines, from gathering in bars and other public places
as homosexuals, and from leading sexual lives, gay men and women were
denied civil liberties … Such conditions led to stifled anger, fear, isolation
and helplessness. (2010, 181)
42 Queer Theory Now

Seidman writes that in the USA, in popular culture and psychiatric discourse
of this era, homosexuality “came to symbolize a threat to marriage, the
family, and civilization itself” and homosexuals were “imagined as preda-
tory, seductive, corrupting, promiscuous and … gender deviant” (2002, 27).
This issue was not confined to the USA. Indeed internationally, as Churchill
explains, “Cutting across ideological boundaries, restrictions on homosexual-
ity were part of modern state formation and the moral and physical regula-
tion of citizens throughout North America and Europe” (Churchill 2008, 36).
As sexuality was discursively constructed as sin, sickness and/or criminal, and
therefore linked to the personal realm, many saw sexuality as a personal prob-
lem rather than a political issue which sometimes limited activity and take-up
(Armstrong 2002).

Gay Liberation
Homosexual activist groups that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s departed
from the homophile focus on respectability (see Table 2.3). In the USA, the

Key concept: Sexual script theory

In 1973, John Gagnon and William Simon published Sexual Conduct: The
Social Sources of Human Sexuality, which outlines their concept of “sexual
script theory”, about the social scripts that inform sexual behaviour.
Gagnon and Simon were concerned with processes by which norms of
appropriate sexual behaviour arise and take shape. They suggest that
there are three scripts involved:

1. Sexual cultural scripts – scripts that determine what is socially

undesirable versus culturally valorised.
2. Interpersonal scripts – the personal adaptation of individuals to
cultural scripts.
3. Intrapsychic scripts – the internalised aspects of individual
sexuality that may not take narrative form. (Wiederman 2015, 7–8)

Gagnon and Simon’s work continues to be influential in studies of sexu-

ality and suggests the importance of attending to social contexts for
understanding sexual behaviour.
 From Pathology to Pride 43

Table 2.3  Comparison of homophile and Gay Liberation goals and strategies

Homophile Gay Liberation

Goals Assimilation, integration of Visibility, liberation, pride,
homosexuals into society, con- repeal anti-gay laws, advocate for
stitutional rights, respectability, ­anti-discrimination legislation,
tolerance, safety, end to police end to police violence, challenge
violence, building transnational the homo/hetero binary, challenge
homosexual ­communities. gender roles, critique the family,
build radical gay cultures, sexual/
gender revolution.
Strategies Lobbying, writing letters, Coming out, mass demonstra-
small coordinated public tions, pride marches, DIY
demonstrations (often in publications including pamphlets
“respectable” attire), DIY pub- and ­posters, working with the
lications i­ ncluding newsletters women’s ­movement/Black rights
and magazines, TV advertising, ­movements/trade unions.
providing legal and other advice
and support, lesbian homophile
groups affiliating with women’s
liberation.

Gay Liberation movement emerged as part of a “New Left”, taking a radical

approach to advocate for civil rights and democracy. The Black Power move-
ment, Women’s Liberation, and the Anti-War movement informed the
context for the emergence of liberationist discourses. Gay Liberation was
indebted to these movements, even borrowing their slogans – the famous
“Gay Power” rallying cry came directly from “Black Power”. Unlike the homo-
phile movements, which obscured their purpose with coded language, Gay
Liberation groups/organisations were named proudly and defiantly. This is
because, as Dennis Altman highlights, “gay liberation … is concerned with the
assertion and creation of a new sense of identity, one based on pride in being
gay” (1972, 109).
Popular imaginings of Gay Liberation in the USA often understand the
Stonewall riots of June  1969 as a crucial moment, if not turning point
(detailed below) (Stein 2019). However, it is worth noting that a shift from
conformity to confrontation was perceptible in gay rights activism in the
early 1960s. For instance, in 1963, the regional homophile group East Coast
Homophile Organizations (ECHO) was formed. Members discussed openly
44 Queer Theory Now

protesting legislation discriminating against homosexuals in the federal

workforce; in 1965, a satellite group of the Mattachine Society began an
annual fourth of July protest outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall (Stein
2019). Furthermore, in 1966, a small riot followed a police assault of a trans
person at a San Francisco eatery, Compton’s Cafeteria – the venue had been a
haunt for homeless youth and sexually and gender diverse people (Table 2.3)
(Stryker 2008).

The Stonewall riots

The Stonewall Inn was one of only a few gay bars in New York City that
permitted dancing; it had a diverse LGBTIQ patronage and was described
by activist and author Vito Russo as a space for “people who were too
young, too poor or just too much to get in anywhere else” (quoted in
Carter 2004, 74). Police regularly raided the venue, and in the early hours
of 28  June  1969 (with a warrant regarding illegal alcohol sales), five to six
officers arrested various workers and patrons and demanded that the crowd
of 200 leave the venue. On  this occasion, the community fought back, and
a riot broke out with the local LGBTIQ community battling police in the
streets. The details of what happened that night are contested, but as Marc
Stein outlines:

According to some accounts, a lesbian was the first to fight back; multiple
accounts emphasize the distinctively aggressive defiance of trans people
and street youth. Soon the crowd, which included straight allies, was shout-
ing at the police and throwing coins at the building … over the next several
hours, thousands of people rioted in the streets with campy courage and
fierce fury. (2019, 5)

Though contested, many mainstream representations of Stonewall have

whitewashed the events that followed, despite these historical accounts of
people of colour and gender diverse folks as central to the uprising. Accounts
suggests that Marsha P. Johnson, Jackie Hormona, Zazu Nova and Sylvia
Rivera were at the front line. Johnson and Rivera would go on to become
key activists for trans liberation in the USA, which we discuss further in
Chapter 6. Rivera later recalled her animosity towards police on the night of
the first riot: “You’ve been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now
it’s our turn! ... It was one of the greatest moments in my life” (quoted in
 From Pathology to Pride 45

Deitcher 1995, 67). There was only one photograph taken on the night of the
first riot, which showed a group of homeless, largely white youth fighting with
police. It appeared on the front page of The New York Daily News on Sunday,
29 June 1969.
Thousands of rioters came back the following night, and the night after
that. Meetings were called and activists began distributing leaflets that
read: “Do You Think Homosexuals are Revolting? You Bet Your Sweet Ass
We Are” (Teal 1971). The Mattachine Society – still operating at the time –
called for peace within the gay community. They posted a sign on the front
of the bar that read: “We homosexuals plead with our people to please
help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village”
(Duberman 2013, 99). David Carter’s Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the
Revolution (2004), includes an interview with Michael Fader, who was at
the riots:

We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It
wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of
like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular
night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstra-
tion. (Carter 2004, 160)

However, there are competing theories of why Stonewall happened when it

did. As Stein (2019) argues, there are multiple explanatory frameworks gener-
ally offered, all of which suggest Stonewall was just one part of a larger frame-
work of political resistance where the riots:

• were the climax of/built on earlier homophile organising and resistance;

• were influenced by earlier resistance specifically around bars and police
violence;
• emerged within the context of a diversity of social movements active
at the time, including the anti-war movement, civil rights and women’s
liberation;
• happened within a broader context of pessimism and a violent downturn
following some earlier gains for homosexual rights.

A year later, on 28 June 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in New
York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Within two years there were
gay rights groups in every major city in the USA, as well as Canada, Western
Europe and Australia.
46 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: The problem of bisexual exclusion

The “B” of LGBTIQ is often silent in histories of sexuality, with greater
focus on gay and lesbian, and, more recently, trans identity. Self-
identified bisexual activists have been a central part of LGBTIQ political
history, active though rarely acknowledged, in key events such as the
Sydney Mardi Gras. As  Angelides argues, “the category of bisexuality
seems to have been spared the rigors of [the] ‘never-ending demand for
truth’” (2001, 2). Despite queer theory’s interest in deconstructing bina-
ries, bisexuality has not always been well recognised or theorised. Today,
the use of bisexuality even sometimes faces scrutiny for seemingly re-
instating the gender binary through the prefix “bi”, in comparison to
terms such as “pansexuality”.
Ellis recognised a unique bisexual orientation that involved attrac-
tion to both men and women. Furthermore, as noted above, the Kinsey
Scale clearly demarcated a huge range of sexual behaviours that could
not be classified as purely heterosexual or homosexual. However, much
of the theory that has informed queer theory has derided, ignored
or bracketed discussion of bisexuality. Though Freud pointed to an
originary bisexual potential in all persons, he saw homosexuality as a
problematic form of sexual development. Further, as Angelides argues,
though some Gay Liberationists imagined bisexuality as a utopian goal
of sexual liberation, it was something marked as a future possibility,
rather than something that might be realised in the present.
Despite these early discussions, and some suggestions that bisexual
identified persons might make up more than half of LGBTIQ commu-
nities, in general “B” in LGBTIQ has been historically forgotten, erased
or excluded, in favour of centring on the homo/hetero binary in activ-
ism. For example, in 1996, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
(as it was known then), following an increase in homophobic street
violence, initiated membership rules that made it difficult for people
to join unless they explicitly identified as gay, lesbian or transgender
(McLean 2008). Applicants identifying as bisexual were made to
include further justification for their membership, effectively exclud-
ing bisexual members. These membership rules were not changed until
the early 2000s.
 From Pathology to Pride 47

Angelides suggests that both gay and straight discourses mark

bisexuality as impossible in order to maintain the firm boundaries of
gender (man/woman) and sexuality (hetero/homo) upon which they
rely. This has led some to suggest that a “bisexual theory” approach may
be needed to queer queer theory (Erickson-Schroth and Mitchell 2009,
298). Here imagining bisexuality’s radical queer potential is central; as
Marjorie Garber writes, “The more borders to patrol, the more border
crossings” (2000, 22).

The Sydney Mardi Gras

Australia has been a key locus of gay and lesbian liberationist politics in the
Western world, with the key touchpoint being the Sydney Gay and Lesbian
Mardi Gras, an event best described as part memorial, part protest and part
celebration, which first started in 1978. Prior to this, Campaign Against Moral
Persecution (CAMP) was Australia’s first national homosexual rights lobby
group, established in 1970 at a time when LGBTIQ people had few rights in
Australia. At this time, homosexuality was criminalised in all states and ter-
ritories, and discrimination and persecution were rampant. Homosexuality
would eventually be decriminalised, but not until much later (Tasmania was
the last state to decriminalise sex between men in 1997). In April  1978,
Sydney-based activists Anne Talvé and Ken Davis received a letter from the
San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Committee. It was sent to political groups
around the world and it called upon them to organise events in the last week
of June to mark the ninth anniversary of Stonewall (Carbery 1995). This
sparked the emergence of a radical liberation organisation called the Gay
Solidarity Group (GSG), which organised the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi
Gras. The group aimed to use celebration to “arouse interest in gay political
activism … [and] mobilise protest action against” a forthcoming visit from
Mary Whitehouse, a well-known British “morals” campaigner (Carbery
1995, 7).
The idea for a celebration rather than a traditional march was suggested by
Ron Austin, a member of the New South Wales branch of CAMP in Australia.
The idea was to create an event that “would be a celebration of gay and les-
bian pride and freedom, a real celebration; something that would link up
the politics of gay freedom in Oxford Street in a commercial sense” (Carbery
48 Queer Theory Now

1995, 10). So, on Saturday, 24  June  1978, the city celebrated International
Gay Solidarity Day with a march, followed by a public meeting and a celebra-
tory parade at 10pm. The parade ended in a riot and 53 people were arrested.
Protesters clashed with police in the days and months that followed, and dem-
onstrations were organised in other parts of the country to drop the charges.
Gay activist Larry Galbraith suggests, “The events of the first International
Gay Solidarity Day had sparked off a fight for basic civil rights which no one
had foreseen. But the battle for the right to march had been won. It was to
be used with even greater effect in the years that followed” (cited in Carbery
1995, 17). The first Mardi Gras had effects far beyond the initial riot. As a
result of Mardi Gras and the subsequent related protests, anti-protest laws in
NSW were repealed. The gay community won the right to march for everyone
(Ross 2013).
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras began as a small political protest
in 1978 and quickly became linked to the emerging pride movement, which
sought to celebrate LGBTIQ identity around the world. By the 1990s, the Gay
and Lesbian Mardi Gras had transformed into a glitzy televised cultural event
with international significance. More recent iterations of Mardi Gras may
appear to be all about colourful floats and glitter, though the event remains
important for both participants and organisers, functioning as a form of

Queer theory in practice: Commercialisation of pride

With the proliferation and institutionalisation of pride marches around
the world, so too have these spaces become increasingly commercial-
ised. Big businesses often sponsor pride events and take centre stage in
marches to promote their brands to an LGBTIQ market. The lucrative
commercial value of LGBTIQ marketing is sometimes referred to as “the
pink dollar”.
Because of this dynamic, pride marches are frequently disrupted by
LGBTIQ groups who seek to protest the capitalist recuperation of this
LGBTIQ space. As Sandra Jeppesen explains: “Anti-capitalist queer
organizing assumes a critical relation to the new power hierarchies that
have been established within queer culture, to unlink queer culture from
consumerism, offering critiques of gay villages steeped in commerce, the
‘pink dollar’, the gay niche market, and corporate sponsorship of Pride
marches” (2010, 470).
 From Pathology to Pride 49

entertainment but also as a memorial to Gay Liberation “affirming the rights

of homosexuals to take their place in society openly and without apology”
(Carbery 1995, 5).

From liberation to pride

Across the liberation movement, gay activists and organisations were united
by their focus on pride and liberation. This movement viewed the public
declaration of identity (or “coming out”) as a meaningful political act. For
activists in the movement, coming out was not just about publicly declaring
your identity but rather a battle cry for LGBTIQ people to join the fight for
equality, not just by coming “out of the closet”, but out of the bars and onto
the streets.
While the act of coming out politicised identity, the movement’s focus
on pride and liberation sought to reject associations between homosexual-
ity, shame, repression and persecution. Each of these concerns responded
in particular ways to earlier discourses and understandings of sexuality.
Responding to (and ultimately rejecting) earlier movements, Gay Liberation
suggested that sexuality was something to be affirmed. At the time, this
affirmation was thought to be the best way to break free from traditional
understandings of sex, gender and sexuality and, most importantly, to
achieve political and sexual freedom. These concerns are reflected in activ-
ists’ publications from the early 1970s and later interviews with key figures,
along with most popular culture texts that represent their efforts. However,
as we have mentioned, the historical accuracy of these representations must
always be interrogated, as they have tended to simplify the key events and
have consistently failed to represent the diversity of protesters involved in
the movement.
Ideas from Gay Liberation are echoed in the modern pride movement,
which celebrates LGBTIQ identity in parades, festivals and marches around
the world. The first pride marches occurred in the USA in 1970 to commemo-
rate the Stonewall riots. While LGBTIQ pride events occur globally, we must
stress that participation in the pride movement is not a sign of a nation’s
“progressive” politics. In part this relates to the fact that the understandings
of sex, gender and sexuality from which the pride movement has emerged are
largely Western constructs.
50 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: The globalisation of pride

Significant LGBTIQ pride events outside of North America and
Australia have been organised in the following places:

Asia
The first pride-related event to be organised in Asia was the 1994
Manila Pride March in the Philippines. LGBTIQ pride events are now
regularly held across Asia. For instance, India’s Kolkata Rainbow Pride
Walk was first held in 1999 and is the longest running LGBTIQ event
in South Asia. Parades and marches have been held in Indian cities
including Delhi, Bangalore, Pondicherry and Mumbai. However, India
has a complex relation to LGBTIQ rights, having decriminalised homo-
sexuality in 2009 and then later re-criminalised it in 2013. Japan also
has hosted pride events annually since the mid-1990s with parades and
festivals occurring in cities including Tokyo (Tokyo Rainbow Festival),
Osaka (Kansai Rainbow Parade) and Sapporo (Sapporo Rainbow
March) among others. South Korea has hosted the Korea Queer
Culture Festival annually since 2000. This event includes LGBTIQ
pride-related activities and a film festival. In the mid-2000s, Shanghai
Pride was Mainland China’s first pride event in 2009, while earlier
events had been organised in Taiwan in 2003 and Hong Kong in 2005.
Vietnam’s LGBT Viet Pride has also been held annually since 2012.

Africa
South Africa hosts many LGBTIQ events with Johannesburg Pride
the first of these in 1990. Annual pride parades have been held in
Cape Town since 1993, and the country also hosts a Mr Gay South
Africa pageant as well as a Johannesburg pride parade. Activists at
the original pride parade in Johannesburg noted the relationship
between their activism around sexuality, and the fight against apart-
heid. In recent years, LGBTIQ pride events have been organised in
Mauritius and Tunisia, the latter of which recognises International
Day Against Homophobia each year.

Europe
LGBTIQ groups in Europe have been organising events since the
mid-1970s. Europe also hosts Europride, a major festival hosted by
 From Pathology to Pride 51

a different European city every year. In addition to this, LGBTIQ

festivals and parades are organised annually in many major cities
across Western Europe. Events include England’s Pride in London,
which originated in protests in the 1970s, Finland’s Helsinki Pride
(held annually since 1975), France’s Marche des Fiertés LGBT (held
annually since 1981) and Germany’s two major pride events, Berlin
Pride and Cologne Pride (both started in 1979). In Eastern Europe,
LGBTIQ pride events have been met with protests and violence. For
instance, Moscow held pride events from 2006 to 2010 that were met
with increasing hostility from anti-LGBTIQ groups. In  2012, Russia
placed a 100-year ban on gay pride-related activities.

South America
Brazil’s São Paulo Gay Pride Parade is South America’s best-known
LGBTIQ event and is often reported to be the biggest LGBTIQ pride
parade in the world. Smaller events are held annually in Brazilian
cities and townships. Argentina also hosts the popular Buenos Aires
Gay Pride Parade.

CONCLUSION: A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

Considering the history of sexuality sketched in this chapter, we can see that
knowledge, power and sexuality are inextricably linked. The construction of
knowledge around sexuality has worked to legitimise violence and discrimina-
tion against the LGBTIQ community, but has also influenced the articulation
of identities available and the foundation for organising collectively to fight
back. Foucault referred to this double-edged sword as “reverse discourse”:
where articulation of and demands on behalf of identities are made possible
via the very language used to subjugate those identities (1978, 101). The key
resistance movements traced throughout this book have attempted to shift
terms around gender and sexuality with varying degrees of success.
While retrospectively considering the knowledge, understanding and
political strategies presented by each of the periods we have discussed, it is
tempting to attempt to offer a clear narrative of political progress. However,
looking closely at these shifts in discourse about sexuality it becomes clear
that any such narratives would not only be false, but insufficiently “global”.
Furthermore, the Gay Liberation movement in the West that many saw as a
52 Queer Theory Now

step towards radical iterations of gender and sexuality, has been critiqued as
“usurpation by white, middle-class, gay men, and … their sexist and misogy-
nist agendas” (Sullivan 2003). Here we must note that for marginal groups,
the terms of political debate are often set by those with the most power.

Further reading
Marc Stein. (2019). The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. New
York: New York University Press.
Stein provides a detailed documentary account of the Stonewall riots
and their influence on later politics, including much reflection on the
competing versions of Stonewall history.
John D’Emilio. (1998). Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of
a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970. 2nd ed., Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press.
D’Emilio’s work continues to be the most comprehensive account of the
homophile movement in the USA.
Graham Willett. (2000). Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian
Activism in Australia. Melbourne: Allen & Unwin.
This in-depth look at gay and lesbian activism in Australia will prove
useful for those looking to see how ideas from Gay Liberation travelled
“down under”.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• What were Foucault’s key problems with the way that Victorian sexuality
had been imagined?
• Why is it important to complicate the history of sexuality offered by
Foucault? What does Foucault miss?
• Did Gay Liberation differ from the earlier homophile movement?
• Have pride parades today left their political origins behind?
 From Pathology to Pride 53

Recommended films
The Rejected (John W. Reavis 1961). This film was the first documen-
tary on homosexuality that was broadcast on US television. It consists
of short segments of experts explaining homosexuality (with a focus
on men) from different perspectives. It provides a key insight into how
homosexuality was represented and understood at the time.

Daughters of Bilitis Video Project (1987). This is an online archive

of interviews with members of Daughters of Bilitis, focusing on
the ­formation and impact of the organisation. Digitised by Lesbian
Herstory Archives: http://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/exhibits/
show/daughters-of-bilitis-video-pro

When We Rise (Dustin Lance Black 2017). A television mini-series that

traces the lives of three key activists from the Gay Liberation move-
ment. It provides fictional depictions of key historical events during the
time.
3  Sexuality and Feminism

KEY TERMS Western feminist “waves”, the sex/gender distinction,

AND liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism,
CONCEPTS Marxist feminism, the personal is political, separatism,
psychoanalysis, intersectional feminism, Black feminism,
the erotic, anti-pornography feminism, pro-sex/sex radical
feminism

QUEER THEORY’S FEMINIST FOUNDATIONS

What is the relationship between feminist and queer perspectives, and how
did feminist ideas shape the queer thinking to come? How do these theoreti-
cal fields differ in their accounts of gender and sexuality, and in what ways
do their agendas intersect? In this chapter, we explore the complex relations
between feminism and queer theory. You might assume that you cannot adopt
a queer theory position without feminism, and vice versa. As Mimi Marinucci
argues,

Precisely what it is that constitutes the subject matter of feminism varies

from one form of feminism to the next. Despite this diversity, however,
almost every form of feminism addresses at least gender and sex, and
sometimes sexuality as well. There is thus an implicit connection between
queer theory and feminist theory. (2010, 105)

Similarly, Lynne Huffer points to the inextricability of the fields by allud-

ing to “queer theory’s feminist birth” (2010, 45). However, while some
readers may be attached to “queer” and “feminist” as intimately bound
together, these theoretical strands have not always gelled so easily. As Janet
McLaughlin, Mark E. Casey and Diane Richardson note, a lot of scholarly
writing asserts “feminist and queer writers think differently about how to
engage with issues around gender and sexuality” (2006, 2). They suggest
the concepts of queer and feminism have even been viewed as “theoretically

54
 Sexuality and Feminism 55

incompatible” based on their modes of reference, priorities and political

agendas. From this perspective, queer attention to issues of discursive con-
struction, local activity and cultural representation can clash with feminist
attention to structural analysis, global struggle and issues of materiality.
Indeed, as Pilcher and Whelehan argue, “Radical feminists are among those
most sceptical of queer theory” (2017, 128). This chapter offers a way to
think through the historical tensions between queer theory and different
forms of feminism – what Jagose describes as “Thinking of feminist theory
and queer theory as braided together in ongoing relations” (2009, 164).
We attempt to unknot some of this braid in this chapter as we address key
sites of feminist theorising and their queer intersections. In the latter part
of the chapter we attend to synergies between feminism and queer theory
today that draw upon a broader global context (explored in more detail in
Chapter 7).

FEMINISM(S)

Though many feminist analyses share concerns around gender and (fre-
quently) what is called “the woman question”, feminism has always been in
tension. Because of this, we ought not to speak of feminism, but rather, femi-
nisms. Unpacking these various feminisms helps us to understand the inter-
dependence of feminist and queer thought, beyond those strands that have
focused on sexuality specifically (such as lesbian feminism) to feminism more
broadly. Identifying the specifics of different feminisms is not always easy,
particularly in terms of drawing out the implications of these ideas for queer
theory.
We can begin to tease out the braid of feminist theory and queer
theory by focusing on feminist approaches to gender, sex and sexuality
that played a role in shaping queer thinking – whether directly or indi-
rectly – and acknowledging that the feminisms rejected by queer theorists
also shaped the field. It is crucial to recognise that many of the ideas
that would later come to be interrogated by key queer theorists such as
Sedgwick and Butler – who we discuss in detail in Chapter  5 – had their
origins in the work of earlier Western feminist thinkers, particularly cen-
tred on a US context.
56 Queer Theory Now

Key concept: Western feminist “waves”

The waves metaphor that is often used to describe eras of Western femi-
nism first emerged in the 1960s. Activist Marsha Lear came up with the
term “second wave feminism” as a rhetorical way to connect to earlier
fights for women’s rights marked by the suffrage movement (Kinser
2004, 129). Thus, it was also during this period that the definition of
“first wave feminism” emerged. It is also essential to keep in mind that
the idea of feminist “waves” often presents feminist history through a
distinctly Western lens. While this wave metaphor can be useful to tell
the story of feminisms past, the tensions and diversity of perspectives
from different eras and locations must also be taken into account.
The different waves of Western feminism often discussed today are
popularly summarised in broad terms as being concerned with:

• Second wave: women’s liberation from the domestic sphere, equality

in all aspects of life.
• Third wave: the politics of difference, with a focus on women’s
individual agency.
• Fourth/fifth/new waves: interconnectedness via the Internet,
alternative forms of activism, highlighting diverse identifications.

However, as Linda Nicholson suggests, reliance on the idea of feminist

“waves” can produce a sense of feminist history as a straightforward
progress narrative (2016, 44). Clare Hemmings (2011) also asserts that
progress narratives are damaging because they tend to flatten difference
within each “wave”. Hemmings shows how popular histories of feminist
organising tend to separate Black lesbians from lesbian feminism and
posit lesbian activism as inattentive to racial exclusion in a way that
encourages contemporary readers to ignore the materialities of the past.

QUEER THEORY’S GENDER PROBLEM

A considerable number of feminist theorists posed lesbian feminist critiques
of queer theory throughout the 1990s. While not the first to assert a divide
between queer feminist thinking, Suzanna Danuta Walters’ essay “From Here
to Queer”, published in 1996, is exemplary of this. Walters argues that queer
theory often “erases lesbian specificity and the enormous difference that
 Sexuality and Feminism 57

gender makes, evacuates the importance of feminism, and rewrites the history
of lesbian feminism and feminism generally” (1996, 843). Walters suggests
that queer theory positions itself as beyond gender, yet “man” remains a uni-
versal referent and “homosexual” is often understood purely in terms of gay
men. As  such, while queer theory may claim to denaturalise identity catego-
ries, it also risks ignoring the specificities of women’s experiences (1996, 845).
That queer theory in the early 1990s began to be articulated as an area of
thought distinct from feminism only furthered this problem. Taking the cen-
tral text produced in 1993, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, as her basis,
Butler suggests:

[T]he very formulation of lesbian and gay studies depends upon the evacu-
ation of a sexual discourse from feminism. And what passes as a benign,
even respectful, analogy with feminism is the means by which the fields
are separated, where that separation requires the desexualization of the
feminist project and the appropriation of sexuality as the “proper” object of
lesbian/gay studies. (1994, 6)

Butler warns against differentiating these areas of inquiry, and strongly sug-
gests that feminism has been mischaracterised without acknowledging the mul-
tiplicity of feminisms past that have engaged with questions of sexuality, race
and class in complex ways. Furthermore, queer theory has synergies with femi-
nisms past, relying on concepts that distinctly echo theoretical contributions
from feminism that are not always recognised as such. As Linda Garber argues:

Queer gender-fuck echoes lesbian-feminist androgyny. Post-structuralist

“phallogocentrism” reframes an earlier feminism’s “patriarchy”. Queers’
disruption of “heteronormativity” extends lesbian feminists’ political
choice of lesbianism. (2006, 79)

To further understand the role of feminist debates in shaping queer theory,

we must turn to the different strands of feminism that emerged in the West
during the so-called second wave.

FEMINISMS IN TENSION

First and foremost, the mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement – which

had its political basis in the long struggle against segregation and system-
atic marginalisation in the USA – was central to influencing a generation of
58 Queer Theory Now

feminist activists in the West. This, along with protests against the Vietnam
War, student organising and workers’ strikes during the 1960s, brought a
feeling that collective resistance was possible. A mass movement that became
known as the “New Left” emerged from this wave of activism (Siegel 2007,
26). Understanding this historical basis is important for unpacking the shared
history of various feminisms, but also the political differences that would
take on significance in later debates around feminism’s relationship to queer
theory.
Within the context of this new period of activism, debates arose around the
lack of specific focus on women’s issues in some activist groups. As Deborah
Siegel (2007) outlines, a split emerged in the late 1960s between those
New Left women who wanted to remain within the broader movement who
believed capitalism was the central target (the “politicos”) and those who
wanted to leave and organise separately against sexism (the “feminists”, also
known as early radical feminists). As Alison Jaggar (1983) describes, while
earlier activism around women’s rights (the so-called first wave) was based
around issues of rights and equality, a new feminist language of oppression
and liberation arose during the 1960s.

Key concept: The sex/gender distinction

As noted in Chapter  1, the sex/gender distinction is central to many
feminist theories of gender. It was first explicitly theorised in 1972, by
sociologist Ann Oakley in her book Sex, Gender and Society. The idea also
arguably has its origins in the work of French philosopher Simone de
Beauvoir, who claimed, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
(1953, 295). De Beauvoir argued that one’s biology or “sex” ought not
be the determining factor of one’s life. Originally published in 1949, de
Beauvoir’s text The Second Sex was translated into English in 1953, and
became widely read, influencing the generation of feminists to come.
Many feminist thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s would come to take
up the distinction between “sex” and “gender” offered by de Beauvoir,
though there have since been many critiques of the sex/gender dis-
tinction. De Beauvoir’s key idea of “becoming” (that one “becomes”
a woman through social processes) was also echoed in the 1990s by
Butler, via the concept of gender performativity. Yet, as we explore in
more detail in Chapter 5, Butler also questioned whether a split between
gender and sex is possible, or whether sex is always already gendered.
 Sexuality and Feminism 59

Alongside the radical strands of feminism that started at this time, a liberal
women’s rights agenda had emerged. Betty Friedan, from the USA, was a
key figure in this strand of the women’s movement, which was focused on
legislative reforms and equal rights rather than revolutionary left activism.
A journalist by training, Friedan’s germinal book The Feminine Mystique was
published in 1963, and detailed “the problem that has no name”: the dissat-
isfaction many women felt in being condemned to marriage and the domestic
sphere (1963, 15). Friedan was particularly scathing of Freud’s accounts of
women’s dissatisfaction as based in psychosexual dynamics such as “penis
envy”. For Friedan, sex was a distraction from the root cause of women’s
dissatisfaction: inequality. As she argued, “The kind of sexual orgasm which
Kinsey found in statistical plenitude in the recent generations of American
women does not seem to make this problem go away” (1963, 29).
In contrast to Friedan, several key feminists articulated the case for a revo-
lutionary feminist politics that specifically placed sexuality at the centre of
their theory. For example, the SCUM Manifesto was written by Valerie Solanas
in 1967, which allegedly stood for “Society for Cutting Up Men”. Solanas’ infa-
mous piece opens,

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society
being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible,
thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the
money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
(2004, 35)

Solanas’ (perhaps satirical) text would later influence lesbian separatism, and
unlike Friedan focused directly on questions of reproduction and the control
of women’s bodies. Shulamith Firestone’s 1970 The Dialectic of Sex drew from
Marxist and Freudian theory to argue that the basis of women’s oppression
was founded in reproductive dynamics. Kate Millett’s 1970 Sexual Politics also
looked at the power structures involved in sexual dynamics that entrench
women’s oppression (Millett 2016). Similarly Germaine Greer’s The Female
Eunuch, also published in 1970, argued that women had become “castrated”
by a sexual culture which did not see women as anything more than sexual
objects. Greer writes:

What happens is that the female is considered as a sexual object for the use
and appreciation of other sexual beings, men. Her sexuality is both denied
and misrepresented by being identified as passivity. The vagina is oblit-
erated from the imagery of femininity in the same way that the signs of
60 Queer Theory Now

independence and vigour in the rest of her body are suppressed. The char-
acteristics that are praised and rewarded are that of the castrate. (1970, 15)

Critiquing the methods and manner of activists like Friedan, Greer’s work
aimed to present the case for overthrowing the system rather than arguing for
assimilation into it.
While there was broad agreement within the women’s movement of the
1960s that women were oppressed, the question remained: by whom? Alison
Jaggar has helpfully delineated four key strands of feminism often identifi-
able in the history of feminist thought: liberal, socialist, Marxist and radical
(1983). While the first two branches were concerned with state-based reform
efforts, the latter were focused on radical social transformation, namely
revolution (see Table  3.1). Within radical feminism in particular “patriarchy
theory” emerged, that is, the idea that the fabric of society was underpinned
by “systematic male dominance of women” (Hines 2015). Borrowing from
Marxist conceptions of class struggle, patriarchy theory understands women
as a class (a “sisterhood”) dominated by men who occupy a more privileged
position in a gender hierarchy. As Ti-Grace Atkinson claims in her 1969 dis-
cussion of radical feminist theory, “Women were the first political class and
the beginning of the class system” (Atkinson 2000). In contrast, as Jaggar
describes, Marxists argued that “women are oppressed primarily because their
oppression benefits capital” (1983, 70).
Table 3.1 builds upon Jaggar’s work by identifying two additional strands of
feminism of the second wave era, both of which centred on race. Articulating
Black civil rights-based feminism in 1960s, Pauli Murray used the expression
“Jane Crow” – a term that gestured to the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial
segregation in the USA – to refer to the way that racism and sexism com-
bined to oppress Black women. She famously wrote that Black women “have
been doubly victimized by the twin immoralities of Jim Crow and Jane Crow”
(1970, 87), and argued for legal reform to end discrimination based on both
race and gender. Taking a more specifically revolutionary focus, Black femi-
nism led by the Combahee River Collective sought to challenge and overthrow
the simultaneous oppressions faced by women of colour. As Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor notes, the Combahee River Collective understood that “experiences of
oppression, humiliations, and the indignities created by poverty, racism, and
sexism opened Black women up to the possibility of radical and revolutionary
politics” (2017, 9). Both of these feminisms would later inform the concept of
intersectionality (a term that understands how dimensions of oppression are
intimately interconnected) and be taken up within queer(s) of colour theory,
which interrogates questions of sexuality and gender in relation to ethnicity,
race, racialisation and nation (discussed in Chapter 7).
 Sexuality and Feminism 61

Table 3.1  Some strands of “second wave” feminism and views on sexual
oppression/freedom

REFORM FOCUS REVOLUTION FOCUS

GENDER- Liberal feminism Radical feminism
CENTRED Sexual freedom has wrongly Women’s sexual desires are
been seen as the source of oppressed by men: women
women’s dissatisfaction in the are seen as passive to men’s
domestic sphere, and is largely a active sexuality, and women’s
distraction from other women’s pleasure and sexual interest
issues. Reforms of women’s is secondary. A gender revolu-
access to work, pay, childcare tion led by “the sisterhood”
and general life choices is to overthrow the patriarchy is
needed to achieve women’s required.
equality.
CLASS-CENTRED Socialist feminism Marxist feminism
Women lack sexual freedom Reproduction is key to
due to social and economic women’s sexual oppression –
­oppression, particularly their capitalism requires that men
relegation to the domestic are producers/labourers (the
sphere and unrecognised working class), and women
emotional work in this domain. are reproducers (of the future
Wide-scale social reform is working class). Economic
needed to create a better world revolution is required to
for all. achieve true equality.
RACE-CENTRED Black feminism (civil Black feminism
rights-based) (revolutionary)
Gender and racial-based It is essential to focus on
­oppressions combine to limit the politics of identity when
Black women’s freedoms. attempting to understand
Racism and sexism must be the workings of oppression.
addressed in tandem via civil To guarantee liberation and
rights reform in order to end equality, the revolution must
discrimination. be anti-racist, anti-capitalist,
ant-imperialist and feminist.

Though delineating only six strands of feminism simplifies the different

feminist approaches of the time (which were not necessarily so neatly “dis-
tinct”), it is nonetheless helpful for understanding the political ideas and aims
that shaped various feminist responses to questions around sex and sexuality.
The contribution of all feminisms of this period was to question the natural-
ness of the difference between men and women, which would later inform
62 Queer Theory Now

the feminist critique of heterosexuality and, in turn, queer theory (Jackson

2006a, 46). However, with radical feminism founded on the notion that
women are oppressed by men as a class and that gender should be abolished,
this laid the foundation for inevitable rifts with later queer perspectives that
would argue for a greater focus on questions of sexuality and the deconstruc-
tion and proliferation (rather than obliteration) of gender categories.

Key concept: The personal is political

During the 1970s the idea that “The personal is political” became an
important slogan. This was particularly taken up by radical feminists
to highlight the “personal” ways in which men’s systemic domination
of women played out. The slogan was coined following Carol Hanisch’s
1969 essay of the same name, created for a women’s liberation publica-
tion edited by radical feminists. As Siegel suggests,

“The Personal Is Political” meant that –  suddenly! –  sex, family life,

household chores, and, indeed, everyday interactions between men
and women were not simply private matters of individual choice but
involved the exercise of institutional power. It meant that a refusal to
fetch your male boss coffee might be part of a collective movement
based on the human right to fulfillment. (2007, 32)

Along these lines, a key tactic employed at this time was consciousness
raising. Consciousness raising involved women getting together to dis-
cuss their everyday lives, promoting a sense of solidarity of experience.
While the intention of “the personal is political” was to draw atten-
tion to the connection between the structural and the individual, this
distinction was sometimes collapsed. As Koedt suggests, some lesbian
groups claimed to be the “vanguard” of women’s liberation and that
such a claim involved “a confusion of a personal with a political solu-
tion” (1973, 250).
While queer theorists continue to be informed by the idea of “the
personal is political”, we may wish to take stock of Koedt’s critique of
lesbian feminism: to what extent do queer accounts sometimes collapse
the personal and the political such that “queerness” is understood as a
politically “superior” position? And to what extent would such a claim
work against the aspirations of queer theory to deconstruct hierarchies?
 Sexuality and Feminism 63

Lesbians and feminism

Fragmentation also occurred around the question of lesbians within the wom-
en’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s. As Anne Koedt describes, the growing
awareness of lesbian sexuality was made possible by crossovers between the Gay
Liberation and women’s movements of the time: many feminists had a “height-
ened consciousness about lesbianism” (Koedt 1973). However, liberal feminists
like Friedan argued that the association between homosexuality and deviancy
meant that focusing on lesbian issues was not only a distraction; it was also dan-
gerous for the women’s movement (Calhoun 1994). Friedan referred to those
fighting for lesbian issues to be canvassed as a “lavender menace”.
In response to the derision of lesbians within the movement, on 1 May 1970
at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York, a group of women
sporting “Lavender Menace” t-shirts interrupted conference proceedings to
protest the exclusion of lesbian issues from discussions. They distributed a
manifesto titled The Woman Identified Woman, and identified themselves as the
“Radicalesbians” (Radicalesbians 1970). In this manifesto the group suggested
that lesbian sexuality ought not be seen merely as an “alternative” to sex with
men, and indeed that lesbianism was about a deeper relationality and way of
being in the world, beyond questions of sexuality. They write: “Until women
see in each other the possibility of a primal commitment which includes sexual
love, they will be denying themselves the love and value they readily accord to
men, thus affirming their second-class status” (Radicalesbians 1970).
This articulation marked the beginning of a new strand of feminist organis-
ing that understood the domination of women by men as an ideology that had
been internalised by women and that needed to be rectified (Gill 2008, 45).
One of the phrases that became popular at this time, “feminism is the theory;
lesbianism is the practice”, is attributed to Ti-Grace Atkinson (Koedt 1973).
Within this form of lesbian feminism, given the radical emphasis on critiquing
gender roles, any so-called role-playing (such as butch and femme) or role-
maintenance within homosexual relationships was seen by radical feminists
as deeply problematic. Such critical views on butch/femme embodiment would
later be critiqued by queer theorists such as Butler (1991).
As we have loosely sketched out here, the emergence of lesbian feminism
was in many ways linked to the marginalisation of lesbian women within
the women’s movement. However, it was also, equally, a disavowal of earlier
homophile and Gay Liberationist thought and action (detailed in Chapter 2),
both of which were sometimes perceived to marginalise women’s experi-
ence. For example, some lesbian separatists critiqued the sexism of the Gay
Liberation movement and called for gay men to take action: “the discussion
64 Queer Theory Now

of homosexuality and feminism is the opportunity … to confront your role

as men in a patriarchal society and recognize the ways in which your sexism
oppresses us, as lesbians” (Bebbington and Lyons 1975, 27). Lesbian feminism
developed out of the desire to focus on issues directly pertaining to lesbian
women. Some women felt that the Gay Liberation movement spoke largely for
issues that related to men, and that liberationist writing, and action, had no
interest in challenging the patriarchal power structures that oppressed them;
however, the inevitability of this gendered “split” has been sometimes over-
stated (Fela and McCann 2017).
In the year following their emergence, the Radicalesbians split and various
new groups formed with different ideas regarding how best to address the
social and psychological dynamics of women’s sexual oppression. One such
group that formed, The Furies, advocated specifically for lesbian s­ eparatism
organised around communal living (Kulpa  2009). As Jeanne Cordova distin-
guishes, in the 1970s separatism took on different forms – at times it was
simply an organising principle, but at other times it was a political direc-
tion that argued for a completely separate world order (2000, 358). When
Jill Johnson published The Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution in 1974,
she strongly argued for lesbian separatism as a political tactic. While not all
separatism was about lesbianism, and not all lesbians were separatist, much
separatist organising was focused on questions of lesbianism as a key politi-
cal strategy (Krieger 1996, 203). Diane Richardson argues that we might see
­synergies between the category of “political lesbian” with “queer” given that
neither rely on explicit identification as lesbian/gay (2006, 32). In other
words, both political lesbian and queer might be understood as political orien-
tations that aim to challenge norms of sexuality and gender.
Yet, unlike queer theory, the politics of separatism sometimes led to rein-
forcing borders of gender and sexuality, and a reiteration of essentialist bio-
logical ideas. Bisexuality, for one, was treated as illegitimate. As Sharon Dale
Stone highlights, many lesbian feminists rejected bisexuality, considering it a
dilution of the lesbian feminist movement and a threat to the vision of a les-
bian nation (1996, 108). Some lesbian feminist groups thought that bisexual
women enjoyed the pleasures of lesbian culture but were unwilling to give up
their heterosexual privilege. As Shane Phelan notes, one anti-bi idea that cir-
culated was that “By sleeping with women, lesbians express their commitment
to a world that values women” while sleeping with men revealed women to be
“torn, half-hearted victims not entirely to be trusted” (1989, 49). In the face of
this biphobic rhetoric, bisexual women played a significant role in the develop-
ment of the different strands of feminism (and developed strands of critique
especially focused on bisexual issues) and bisexual activists refused to be
delegitimised and erased. Bisexual women began to organise politically in the
 Sexuality and Feminism 65

1980s through the formation of groups such as the Boston Bisexual Women’s
Network in 1983, the Chicago Action Bi-Women in 1983 and the  Seattle
Bisexual Women’s Network in 1986 in the USA, all of which were  built on
the principles of feminism. These bisexual feminist organisations engaged
in activism, published newsletters and provided support to  bisexual women
(see Beemyn 2004, 144). Beth Elliot argued, in 1992, that  “Many [bisexual
women] came of age and/or came out in time to help  create the ‘women’s
community’ groundswell of the 1970s” (235). As such, she  argued that: “We
cherish our place in the women’s community, a community many of us have
worked strenuously to build, and we care passionately about maintaining our
connection with it” (1992, 233–234) and  “[T]oo many bisexual feminists do
too much for the lesbian community to be regarded as separate from that com-
munity” (1992, 251). Later bisexual theorists would critique biphobic rhetoric
and monosexism, engaging in  debates about bisexuality that would enable
the dominant binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality to be questioned
(Erikson-Schroth and Mitchell 2009).
In addition, anti-trans viewpoints were expressed by radical feminists such
as Greer (1970), Janice Raymond (1980) and, later, Sheila Jeffreys (1997).
The 1970s had seen the emergence of women’s music festivals and women’s
conferences, and it was in these arenas that transphobia was used to shore
up boundaries of women-only space. For example, at the West Coast Lesbian
Conference held in 1973, Elliot, one of the organisers and a transgender
woman, was driven out after being attacked by several women in attendance
(Cordova 2000; Heaney 2016). Transgender theorist and historian Susan
Stryker suggests the event that sparked this was an accusation of sexual har-
assment, which she sees as part of an emerging discourse viewing transgender
women as violators that represented an “unwanted penetration” into women’s
spaces (Stryker 2017). While there was resistance to this discourse (Heaney
2016), most histories of this event focus on the much publicized keynote
speaker at the conference, Robin Morgan, who used her platform to publicly
criticize Elliot and other transgender women, condemning them as men
who “deliberately re-emphasize gender roles, and who parody female oppres-
sion and suffering” (Stryker 2017). However, while echoing separatist ideas,
Morgan also spoke against lesbian separatism, claiming that it falsely divided
women from one another (Samek 2016). She suggested that sexual orienta-
tion was irrelevant to the overall revolution required. Such views collapsed
understandings of lesbian oppression (related to sexuality and gender) into
sexism (related to gender alone) (Calhoun 1994).
As such, despite separatist politics emerging, lesbian issues remained mar-
ginal in feminist theory and organising. Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” first published in 1980 became a key
66 Queer Theory Now

text, which aimed to “bridge over the gap between lesbian and feminist” (1993,
227 emphasis in original). Rich pointed out that many feminist thinkers failed
entirely to address the question of sexuality, and operated with the presump-
tion that heterosexuality was the natural preference for women. Rich’s essay
also proposes an extension of definitions of lesbianism, to include not simply
sexual desire in a narrowly defined sense, but rather, a continuum of “woman-
identified experience” involving various forms of intimacy and ways of organ-
ising social relations. For Rich, to simply identify as a lesbian is not enough;
rather, one must take up a consciously lesbian feminist position.

Queer theory in practice: Compulsory heterosexuality

Rich originally wrote about compulsory heterosexuality to address the
implicit bias towards/assumption of heterosexuality in feminist writ-
ing. Rich suggests that resistance to compulsory heterosexuality can be a
central feminist tactic against the domination of men over women. She
writes, “Heterosexuality has been both forcibly and subliminally imposed
on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of
physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and
extreme poverty” (1993, 241). In her original writing, Rich was largely
sceptical of the possibilities for queer coalition and was predominantly
focused on compulsory heterosexuality as it related to women’s experience.
However, extending from Rich, queer theory encourages us to think
about the ways that compulsory heterosexuality is imposed upon people
of all genders in very subtle ways in daily life. Here are just a few examples:

-- It is considered “normal” for children to talk about having or wanting

boyfriends/girlfriends but only if heterosexual. Same-sex relationships
in childhood are always understood in terms of friendship.
-- Homosexuality and other queer sexualities require disclosure
and “coming out”, yet no one is expected to declare that they are
heterosexual.
-- Sex education in schools is often focused on reproduction and
presumes a man–woman pairing.
-- Many organisations presume that people are in opposite-sex
relationships unless otherwise disclosed. For example, if you are
a woman making a booking for you and your “partner” the other
person is likely to respond, “what is his name?”
 Sexuality and Feminism 67

In the same year, French feminist Monique Wittig published an equally influ-
ential essay, “The Straight Mind” (1980). Similarly to Rich, Wittig discusses
the compulsory nature of heterosexuality, and argues that this is uncon-
sciously absorbed and reproduced by individuals. Yet, unlike Rich, Wittig
specifically points to the binary gender system as the foundation of het-
erosexuality. She suggests that sexual difference is a political construct, and
writes: “If we, as lesbians and gay men, continue to speak of ourselves and to
conceive of ourselves as women and as men, we are instrumental in maintain-
ing heterosexuality” (1980, 108). She argues that the language of gender must
be challenged, as the symbolic basis of the heterosexual imaginary that per-
vades society. It is on this basis that Wittig claims “Lesbians are not women”
(1980, 110). Both Rich and Wittig’s ideas were highly influential on later
queer theorisations of gender, particularly Butler’s Gender Trouble as discussed
in Chapter 5. As Jagose suggests, lesbian feminism was central to later queer
theories given its focus on gender, sexuality and compulsory heterosexuality
(1996, 57).

The politics of difference

Simultaneously to questions about the place of sexuality in the women’s
movement, other questions about identity were being raised. This move
towards challenging the monolithic “woman” subject as it was constructed in
some feminist thought would also be taken up by later queer theorists who
focused on deconstruction of identity categories as central to the queer political
project.
In particular many women of colour began to raise critiques around the
whiteness of the women’s movement, and the racism inherent within some
feminist organising. In the late 1970s a group of Black lesbian feminists
called the Combahee River Collective emerged in Boston in the USA, offer-
ing a critique of mainstream feminism. As Barbara Smith notes in an inter-
view in 2017, the Combahee River Collective emerged in response to the
failure of the feminist movement to deal with issues of race, the racism of
the anti-war movement and the sexism of the Black liberation movement.
The group also formed as a radical alternative to the National Black Feminist
Organization (NBFO), which they saw as “politically insufficient” (Taylor
2017, 4). The Combahee River Collective aligned, at times, with some parts
of the Gay Liberation movement, who they saw as “understanding that the
‘-isms’ connected with each other” (Taylor 2017, 45) and with groups of
68 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Psychoanalysis

As discussed in Chapter 2, psychoanalytic engagements with questions
of sexuality had an important impact in thinking around sexuality into
the twentieth century. Jacques Lacan’s re-reading of Freud’s psychoana-
lytic theory in the 1960s was particularly influential on much feminist
thought that would in turn influence queer theory.
Elizabeth Grosz (1989, 25) sums up the contributions of Lacan for
feminist thought as such:

-- An idea of the subject as constructed.

-- Emphasis on sexuality as central to identity.
-- A philosophical (not simply clinical) approach to psychoanalysis.
-- A linguistic approach to psychoanalysis.
-- Identification of the patriarchal dictates of language and the
symbolic.

Grosz suggests that it was through Lacan’s interventions that Freud

became a source of interest in academic feminism at the time. For
­example, in “The Straight Mind” Wittig critiques Lacan’s assumptions
about sexuality and “the Unconscious”, arguing that the discourse of
heterosexuality in society prevents disclosure of anything other than
misery about sexuality to the analyst (1980, 104–105).
Though many feminists challenged aspects of Lacan’s work, his lin-
guistic emphasis and focus on the construction of the sexual subject had
an impact not only on feminist thought, but on queer theorists such as
Butler, which we discuss in further detail in Chapter 5.

socialist feminists who had focused their attention to race and class critique.
As Smith recalls,

It’s not like it was all smooth sailing, because we were organizing across
identities. We were doing that intersectional organizing. But of all the femi-
nists … socialist feminists were best aligned with the work of Combahee.
Because they had a race and class analysis that was actually a solid race and
class analysis as opposed to, “Oh, I really don’t care if people are different.”
(Taylor 2017, 50)
 Sexuality and Feminism 69

In 1977 the Combahee River Collective released a statement of their views as

a group of black lesbian women, suggesting that their struggle was both with
and against black men. In particular, they argued that the separatist elements
emerging within the women’s movement failed to address how considerations
of race trouble clear notions of solidarity. As Taylor notes, the group understood
that “Black men and women may experience racism differently in the world,
but they had common interests in overcoming it – interests that could not be
realized in struggles separated along the lines of gender” (2017, 7). With this
in mind, the Combahee River Collective coined the term “identity politics” to
refer to the understanding that identity was key to the experience of oppres-
sion, and thus identity had a significant role in shaping the political outlook and
revolutionary politics of oppressed people. While the Combahee River Collective
were not the first to understand that Black women experienced multiple or
compounded oppressions, they argued that oppression was “interlocking” – an
important precursor to later theories of intersectionality. Explaining this, the
Combahee River Collective explicitly addressed questions of sexuality, stating:

The most general statement of our politics at the present time would
be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual,
­heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the devel-
opment of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the
major systems of oppression are interlocking. (1977)

For the Combahee River Collective, understanding these “interlocking”

oppressions was the key to the possibility of radical and revolutionary politics.
As Smith recalls, one of the most important aspects of the Combahee River
Collective’s Black feminism was that it understood class oppression as being
central to the experiences of Black women. Smith notes how this shaped
the group’s critique: “One would expect Black feminism to be antiracist and
opposed to sexism. Anticapitalism is what gives it the sharpness, the edge, the
thoroughness, the revolutionary potential” (Taylor 2017, 69).
Though some prominent white feminists attempted to address the ques-
tion of race, many failed to offer a sustained engagement, merely drawing
parallels between the civil rights movement and women’s struggles rather
than meaningfully acknowledging those residing in the intersections of these
battles. For instance, feminists such as Firestone addressed race, but collapsed
it under the theory of patriarchy. As she suggests,

Like sexism in the individual psyche, we can fully understand racism only
in terms of the power hierarchies of the family … as in the development of
70 Queer Theory Now

sexual classes, the physiological distinction of race became important cul-

turally only due to the unequal distribution of power. Thus, racism is sexism
extended. (Firestone 1970, 108)

Accounts such as this flattened the experience of racism, even as they

attempted to address them. Other feminist accounts failed to consider the
question of race altogether. As we discuss at length in Chapter 7, some queer
theorists have also failed to address race, placing it to one side in favour of a
focus on sexuality.

Queer theory in practice: Wages for Housework

Wages for Housework was a radical feminist movement that began in
Italy in 1972 and grew momentum on a global scale through the 1970s.
Taking a Marxist feminist approach to advocate for women’s rights
and critique gendered divisions of labor, the Wages for Housework
movement sought to subvert capitalist systems of power that saw
many women exploited via unwaged labor in domestic and reproduc-
tive spheres. Rather than simply seeking to reward household workers
with a wage, the movement sought to destroy the household as a unit
of social reproduction within the capitalist system. On this note, one
of the founders of the movement, Silvia Federici, also argued that “het-
erosexuality is a form of socially necessary labor inclusive of sex, care
work, and emotional management” (Capper and Austin 2018, 445),
and viewed lesbian identity as “a historically specific strategy of work
refusal” (Capper and Austin 2018, 445). In her 1975 speech “Capitalism
and the Struggle against Sexual Work”, Federici argued, “coming out is
like going on strike” (2017, 144).
Beth Capper and Arlen Austin highlight that in the mid-1970s, two
key groups emerged from the Wages for Housework movement seek-
ing to address Black and lesbian struggles over reproduction. The Black
Women for Wages for Housework (BWfWfH) and Wages Due Lesbians
(WDL) were groups that “centered those reproductive workers often
rendered disposable or superfluous to white heteronormative reproduc-
tive imaginaries” (Capper and Austin 2018, 449). Both groups saw:

heteronormativity, as a modality of a work-discipline, especially

targeted women of color (and) lesbians who were refused by, or who
 Sexuality and Feminism 71

refused, the regulatory ideals of (white) femininity associated with

the housewife, and who faced criminalization, sexual violence, forced
sterilization, welfare austerity, and the loss of child custody for their
transgressions. (Capper and Austin 2018, 448)

As such, Capper and Austin suggest that their politics resonate with the
contemporary queer(s) of colour critique. These groups also represent
an important touchpoint in feminist, Black, gay and lesbian, and queer
political genealogies.

As bell hooks also suggests, many feminists in the mainstream women’s

movement of the USA did not attend to questions of race. hooks suggests that
Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, for example, did not consider the racial dynamics
of domesticity, or work: “[Friedan] did not discuss who would be called in to
take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself
were freed from their house labour and given equal access with white men to
the professions” (1984, 2). While hooks felt emboldened through her involve-
ment with women’s liberation, by way of consciousness raising she also came
to feel her marginalisation in the movement. Similarly, in her experience with
civil rights groups, she felt that she was being asked to place her concern for
women’s liberation to one side (hooks 2015, x).
Others reflected similar sentiments, often rallying under the banner of
“Third World Women”, for example as Cherríe Moraga contends, one of the
key questions was “what are the particular conditions of oppression suffered
by women of colour?” (1983, 2). Similarly, Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La
Frontera reflected on Chicana lesbian identity, and the idea of a border iden-
tity and consciousness that emerges between places and sites, that expresses
itself at the level of the body and experience (1987). For Anzaldúa the “mes-
tiza” who exists in the borderlands occupies not only a place of betweenness,
but that very locationality offers a bridge: “She has the choice to be a bridge, a
drawbridge, a sandbar, or an island in terms of how she relates to and defines
herself in the world” (Anzaldúa 2013).
These critiques of white feminism reveal the plurality of feminist perspec-
tives of the “second wave” that did not simply operate around a singular “gen-
der” framework. This illustrates Butler’s argument that the distinction made
in the 1990s between queer theory and feminist theory relied on the false
premise that feminism up to that point had only been concerned with ques-
tions of gender. Importantly the critiques offered by many women of colour
72 Queer Theory Now

were made within various feminisms – so (e.g.) even though many prominent
lesbian feminist figures were white, women of colour were also an integral
part of these movements (Garber 2006, 83).

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM

Building upon foundations laid by Black feminism, in 1989 legal feminist

scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” as a means
of exposing the specifics of the marginalisation of Black women in the USA
in legal terms (see Table  3.2 for a comparison with earlier Black feminism).
Though Crenshaw was writing from a legal perspective, her theory provided
a term for an issue many previous feminists had identified, and was subse-
quently taken up far beyond the legal sphere. In her original paper introduc-
ing the term, Crenshaw examines a specific discrimination case, where Black
women could not appeal to either sex discrimination law (because some white
women were not discriminated against) nor race discrimination law (because
some Black men were not discriminated against).
Crenshaw described anti-discrimination law, feminist theory and anti-
racist policy discourse as “single-axis frameworks” that tended to high-
light only the experiences of relatively privileged members of a particular
grouping. She argued that the discrimination faced by Black women at the
specific intersection of sex and race was not adequately captured under the
law. Crenshaw describes intersectionality as a way to account for multiple
oppressions:

Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direc-

tion, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection,
it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions, and
sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black women is harmed because
she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or
race discrimination. (1989, 149)

In this sense, Crenshaw’s analysis was not intended to provide a sense of

oppression as merely layered via a single axis, but rather, to see this as mul-
tiplicative and occurring at the intersections of multiple axes of oppression.
Crenshaw located this marginalisation in anti-discrimination law but she also
saw it reflected in feminist theory and anti-racist politics, arguing that both
had “the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of
experience and analysis” (1989, 139).
 Sexuality and Feminism 73

Table 3.2  Earlier Black feminist and intersectional approaches to sexual

oppression/freedom

Earlier Black feminism Intersectional feminism

MULTIPLE-AXIS- Women’s sexual oppression Women’s sexual oppression
CENTRED is one facet of a larger system occurs at the intersections
of interlocking oppressions. of domains of oppression.
Occupying certain sexual Occupying certain sexual
and racial identity positions and racial identity positions
entails unique struggles entails unique issues of dis-
(“racial-­sexual oppression”). crimination and injustice. The
An economic revolution that is law can be adapted to better
also feminist and anti-racist is address the intersections.
required.

Though Crenshaw’s 1989 essay focuses on race and gender, it exposes how
viewing subjectivity through a single axis may erase and distort the experi-
ence of those who encounter marginalisation through any relation of race,
gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, age, ability or other facets of identity.
What Crenshaw’s early work highlights is that this “single-axis framework”
is reflected not only in the hegemonic power structures, but also in the
­discourses that critique those structures, which undermines their capacity for
resistance. Explaining this in relation to feminist theory she writes:

Because ideological and descriptive definitions of patriarchy are usually

premised upon white female experiences, feminists and others informed by
feminist literature may make the mistake of assuming that since the role of
Black women in the family and in other Black institutions does not always
resemble the familiar manifestations of patriarchy in the white community,
Black women are somehow exempt from patriarchal norms. (1989, 156)

Rather than simply incorporating marginalised groups into established ana-

lytical structures, Crenshaw called upon both feminist theory and anti-racist
policy discourse to rethink their critical frameworks with intersectionality in
mind. With specific focus on the experiences of Black women, she argues:

[T]he intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and

­sexism, [so] any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account
cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women
are subordinated. (1989, 140)
74 Queer Theory Now

This argument is echoed in the common contemporary feminist axiom, “If

your feminism isn’t intersectional, then who’s it even for?” Intersectionality
has gained popularity in recent years, having recently become something of a
buzzword in feminist spaces. However, before entering mainstream feminist
discourse, it was taken up in queer critiques (see Moraga 1996; Ng 1997).
We  trace the specific ways that intersectionality has been taken up within
queer theory in more detail in Chapter 7.

Key debate: Anti-foundationalism vs. intersectionality

In Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist Ethics of Sex (2013), Lynne
Huffer looks back at feminist history to highlight the shared ­genealogies
of queer and feminist theory. Huffer focuses on the work of theo-
rists Luce Irigaray, Leo Bersani and Foucault, all of whom contribute
in important ways to the development of queer and/or feminist
theory, and all of whom share a philosophical commitment to anti-­
foundationalism, which is focused on questioning and undoing sexual
subjectivity. Huffer suggests that anti-foundationalism was central to
feminist theorising in the 1970s but was supplanted by the concept of
intersectionality, which cemented a paradigm shift. This shift saw the
feminist focus on theorizing “difference” move from the question of sex-
ual difference to a more sociological meaning, grounded in a knowable
subject. Intersectionality, for Huffer, made “an empirically grounded
theoretical claim about legible positions on a social grid that made iden-
tities more complex than previously conceived” (2013, 14).
According to Huffer, how we see queer theory in relation to femi-
nism is dependent on how we see queer theory in relation to the rift
between intersectionality and anti-foundationalism. On the one hand,
if we understand the emergence of queer theory as part of the paradigm
shift towards intersectionality we would understand queer sexuality as
attached to a subject with an identity. However, if we were to see queer
theory through anti-foundationalism, we would find “neither selves not
intersections, just an abyssal ungrounding that not only troubles iden-
tity but also undoes subjectivity itself” (Huffer 2013, 16). What Huffer
means by this is, if we see queer theory as primarily anti-foundational-
ist, then it shares very little with feminism. To combat this she suggests
we could revisit feminist genealogies in order to locate particular lines of
thinking that unite queer and feminist theory.
 Sexuality and Feminism 75

ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY FEMINISM

While feminisms shifted in various directions during the 1970s, the politics
and representation of sexuality in the public sphere had also been chang-
ing. As discussed in Chapter  2, revolutionary gay and lesbian politics was
unfolding. Simultaneously to this, as Brain McNair argues, the “sexual revolu-
tion” of the time was embraced by many on the left, and seen as intimately
bound up with the countercultural forces emerging in the 1960s (1996,
12). However, many feminists began to grow sceptical of the promises that
could be delivered to women in the context of sexual liberation, which they
saw as largely dominated by men’s sexual interests. Radical feminists came
to argue that sexual liberation under patriarchy was far from liberating for
women. Feminists such as Susan Brownmiller (1975) turned their attention
to questions of men’s sexual domination of women through rape, with her
book Against Our Will arguing that men hold a fundamental ability to rape
women which in turn influences gender power dynamics. Furthermore, with
the intensification of sex in the public sphere occurring with the “golden age”
of pornography in the 1970s, pornography became a key target of radical
feminist concern. In 1976 the group Women Against Violence in Pornography
formed in San Francisco, and similar groups emerged across the West in sub-
sequent years.
Radical feminist sentiment against pornography grew through the 1970s.
Morgan most famously suggested, “Pornography is the theory, and rape is
the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is
the metaphor for man’s forcing himself on whole nations, on nonhuman
creatures, and on the planet itself” (Morgan 1978). Following from Morgan
into the 1980s, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon emerged as key
anti-pornography advocates in the USA. Dworkin was a prominent activist
and speaker, citing Firestone, Millett and Morgan as key influences on the
development of her feminist thought (Dworkin 1997). MacKinnon was a law
graduate from Yale, and, like the radical feminists, much of her early work
focuses on using Marxist class theory as an analogy for the domination of
women (MacKinnon 1982). MacKinnon was also anti-abortion, as she sug-
gested that the need for abortion was a symptom of the male culture of sexual
liberation that oppressed women. As she writes, “The availability of abortion
removed the one remaining legitimized reason women have had for refusing
sex besides the headache”, citing Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s support of
abortion as reason enough for scepticism (1987, 99).
Dworkin and MacKinnon met in the 1970s, and in 1983 taught a course
together critiquing pornography. Following this, the Minneapolis council
76 Queer Theory Now

Key concept: The erotic

As Audre Lorde argued in her 1978 essay “The Uses of the Erotic: The
Erotic as Power”, being critical of pornography did not have to mean
dismissing sex and intimacy altogether. Rather, “the erotic” could be
distinguished from the pornographic, and indeed could be harnessed as
a creative force.
According to Lorde, while the pornographic is a male model of
sexuality all about surface and sensation and the alienation of sex
­
under patriarchal capitalism, the erotic is a source of power involving
­connection, joy, bodies and feeling. As she writes,

When I speak of the erotic … I speak of it as an assertion of the

lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the
­
knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our lan-
guage, our ­history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.
(1993, 341)

Lorde’s essay was intended as an intervention into feminist debates

about pornography at the time which often did not consider the pos-
sibility of the erotic. Lorde identified as a Black lesbian feminist, and
claimed the erotic has potential to challenge “a racist, patriarchal, and
anti-erotic society” (343). Given Lorde’s focus on desire rather than
sexual identity per se, her essay on the erotic became a key text for queer
theorists in the 1990s.

asked them to draft an ordinance in relation to pornography. Together they

drew up The Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance. They designed the legisla-
tion such that pornography was seen as a special case of sex discrimination,
where individuals could sue the makers, sellers, distributors or exhibitors
of pornography if they felt that they were harmed by pornographic imagery
(Dworkin 1997). As Dworkin describes:

It holds pornographers accountable for what they do: they traffic in women
(contravening the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women); they sexualize inequality in a way that materially
 Sexuality and Feminism 77

promotes rape, battery, maiming, and bondage; they make a product that
they know dehumanizes, degrades, and exploits women; they hurt women
to make the pornography and then consumers use the pornography in
assaults both verbal and physical. (1997, 71)

Dworkin and MacKinnon’s targeting of pornography cannot be understated as

key to the debates about sex, sexuality and pornography that are still unfold-
ing today – and, most importantly, the version of feminism that many queer
theorists rejected/sought to distinguish themselves from in the 1990s (to
today).
Dworkin and MacKinnon frequently called attention to the “realness” of
pornography, strongly dismissing the defence that it is just “fantasy”. For
Dworkin and MacKinnon pornography is not merely a representation of harm
that might inspire men to harm women; pornographic materials are inher-
ently harmful – Dworkin suggests that when we watch a woman being tied
up, she is really being tied up. MacKinnon similarly writes, “Pornography is
masturbation material. It is used as sex. It therefore is sex”, and further “With
pornography, men masturbate to women being exposed, humiliated, violated,
degraded, mutilated, dismembered, bound, gagged, tortured, and killed. In the
visual materials, they experience this being done by watching it being done”
(1993, 17 emphasis in original).
Dworkin’s partner John Stoltenberg also wrote against pornography.
In  his seminal text Refusing to Be Man: Essays on Sex and Justice, he argues
that pornography fundamentally reflects male domination. Stoltenberg sug-
gests, “Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth
about men” (1990, 121). Both Stoltenberg and Dworkin also wrote about gay
male sexual cultures. Fred Fejes suggests that they saw gay male identity as “a
variation in an overall phallic based heterosexual masculine identity” (2002,
96). For Stoltenberg and Dworkin, gay male pornography, S/M practices and
leather subcultures were exaggerated hypermasculine expressions of violence
and domination. Dworkin saw the sexual act of penetration as an articulation
of power, writing that “Fucking requires that the male act on one who has less
power and this valuation is so deep, so completely implicit in the act, that the
one who is fucked is stigmatized as feminine during the act even when not
anatomically male” (1981, 23). More broadly, Stoltenberg also argued that
masculinity is socially constructed (neither a “role” nor a “sex”), and that
“manhood” needs to be actively rejected (1990, 185). Stoltenberg’s work also
tracks the demise of the ordinance which came to a head in the Supreme Court
in 1986.
78 Queer Theory Now

Key debate: Is all sex rape?

Dworkin’s analysis extended beyond pornography to critiquing the
dynamics of heterosexual sex more generally. In her book Intercourse,
originally published in 1987, she suggests,

[M]en possess women when men fuck women because both expe-
rience the man being male. This is the stunning logic of male
supremacy. In this view, which is the predominant one, maleness is
aggressive and violent; and so fucking, in which both the man and the
woman experience maleness, essentially demands the disappearance
of the woman as an individual; thus, in being fucked, she is possessed:
ceases to exist as a discrete individual: is taken over. (2007, 80)

For Dworkin, women are possessed in sex because the act of penetra-
tion involves an assertion of men possessing women. Men cannot be
possessed in the same way – despite their literal envelopment during
penetration. The only cultural space where men can be understood as
possessed by women in sex is via the trope of the “evil” woman.
In other words, the ability for women to have sexual power remains
in the space of mythology only. This popular discourse supports the idea
that it is a man’s right to possess a woman through intercourse; for the
woman in control is to be feared. The idea of the dangers of women too
uncontrollable in their display of sexuality publicly is also used to jus-
tify the way in which sex must remain private. That is to say, Dworkin
argued that sex is largely about social control.
Because of Dworkin’s radical extension of her anti-pornography
sentiment to heterosexual sex practices generally, she has frequently
been read as conflating all sex with rape. Dworkin herself rejected these
claims, suggesting that her critique was merely of the dominant view of
sex and women as subordinate/possessed.

Anti-pornography feminists and the new right

Though the ordinance was ultimately unsuccessful, many feminists have
since argued that the contentions of Dworkin and MacKinnon had other
­far-reaching effects. The approach of the anti-pornography feminists impacted
debates about how feminism should define itself relative to sex and sexuality,
 Sexuality and Feminism 79

and in turn has impacted queer theorists’ sometimes reluctant identification

with feminism. An important issue for queer theorists has been how Dworkin
and MacKinnon’s legislation sat comfortably with the socially conservative
right, with this unlikely coalition making it more difficult for sexual minorities.
To contextualise, when this collation emerged, from the late 1970s to the
1980s, there was a conservative backlash to the new era of sexual liberation
that expressed itself particularly in the political sphere – known as the “New
Right”. As the pornography industry grew, during the 1970s laws started to
appear around child pornography, and, as Rubin suggests, a child pornography
“panic” swept the USA (1984, 272). In 1977 a political coalition called “Save
Our Children” formed in Florida, which connected homosexuality to child
abuse. They sought to overturn the law in Dade County that made it illegal
to discriminate on basis of sexual orientation (Fetner 2001). Their success
heralded a wave of Christian right-wing family-values and anti-gay activism
across the USA. Former pageant queen and pop star Anita Bryant was at the
centre of much of this conservative campaign, and was outspoken against
homosexuality, pornography, abortion and sex education.
Rubin suggests that we understand the rise of this New Right also in terms
of the wider political context of the Cold War. She writes, “[I]t is precisely at
times such as these, when we live with the possibility of unthinkable destruc-
tion, that people are likely to become dangerously crazy about sexuality”
(1984, 267). The late 1970s saw a move to social conservatism and a new
version of economic liberalism across the West, involving the roll-out of
neoliberal and socially conservative policies. Given this context, a confluence
between ­anti-pornography aims and the directives of the New Right emerged.

The “sex wars”

As Lisa Duggan, Nan Hunter and Carole Vance argue, the view of many of the
anti-pornography feminists elided the possibilities for pleasure, female agency
or the ability to consent. They argue,

Pornography carries many messages other than woman-hating; it advocates

sexual adventure, sex outside marriage, sex for no reason other than pleasure,
casual sex, anonymous sex, group sex, voyeuristic sex, illegal sex, public sex.
Some of these ideas appeal to women reading or seeing pornography, who
may interpret some images as legitimating their own sense of sexual urgency
or desire to be sexually aggressive. Women’s experience of pornography is not
as universally victimizing as the ordinance would have it. (1995, 56–57)
80 Queer Theory Now

Key debate: Deep Throat

One example of the shared approach of the right and anti-­
pornography feminists was around the pornographic film that
had wide cinema release in 1972, Deep Throat. As Nicola Simpson
describes, “Deep Throat made money and ushered in the era of ‘porn
chic’, when suddenly it was fashionable to stand in line at X-rated
theatres … and compare reviews of hard core films at dinner parties”
(2004, 664). The new political right that was also emerging at the time
decided to target Deep Throat given its popularity – arguing against
the film’s distribution, confiscating reels from cinemas and attempting
to prevent screenings.
The debate around Deep Throat became one of censorship, and
­leading female star Linda Lovelace was at first vocal in defending the
film. However, in 1980 Lovelace released an autobiography called
Ordeal, detailing her exploitation at the hands of her partner during
filming. She became involved in the anti-pornography feminist move-
ment, who were vocal supporters of Lovelace. MacKinnon (1982)
frequently cites Lovelace in order to demonstrate how pornography
operates to make women into objects. Dworkin (1985) similarly uses
Lovelace’s story and Deep Throat as an example of the abuse inherent to
pornography.

These competing views around pornography would come to be the key

locus of the emerging (so-called) “sex wars”. As Lyn Comella explains, the
“sex wars” generally refers to a period during the 1980s that involved “an
ideological turf war over who would define feminism’s relationship to sexu-
ality” (2008, 205). The “sex wars” revealed important differences between
feminists on questions of power in terms of theorising domination and
agency. While a­ nti-pornography feminists saw sexual culture in terms of
its fraught relation to masculine patriarchal domination, the pro-sex femi-
nists that emerged in response saw personal expressions of sexuality as a
key site of empowerment and catharsis. In many ways, the pro-sex feminists
aligned with earlier discourses of Gay Liberation (discussed in Chapter 2) in
terms of understanding that freedom of sexual expression was integral to
liberation.
 Sexuality and Feminism 81

Key concept: Pro-sex/sex radical feminism

In response to the anti-pornography feminists, a new group of feminists
formed who called themselves the “pro-sex” feminists or “sex radical
feminists”. The antics of the anti-pornography feminists led to a greater
mobilisation of feminists around the issue of S/M. Khan writes, “One
consequence of this discursive proliferation was the growth of a resist-
ance discourse, one that appropriated much of the language of the anti-
sadomasochists but reversed its normative agenda” (2014, 92).
One key proponent of S/M feminism was Patrick Califia. While
Califia agreed with the anti-pornography feminists that there exists
an “erotic tyranny”, he argued that sadomasochism must be untangled
from this. Originally published in 1981, Califia suggests,

S/M eroticism focuses on whatever feelings or actions are forbid-

den, and searches for a way to obtain pleasure from the forbidden.
It is the quintessence of non-reproductive sex. Those feminists who
accuse sadomasochists of mocking the oppressed by playing with
dominance and submission forget that we are oppressed. We suffer
police harassment, violence in the street, discrimination in housing
and in employment. We are not treated the way our system treats its
collaborators and supporters. (1996, 234 emphasis in original)

Califia’s argument doesn’t shy away from the feminist contention that
the personal is political, but rather suggests that the personal is a site
through which to work through the oppression of the political – it is a
cathartic space, and a site from which to take back power. Califia argued
that the anti-pornography feminists were encouraging vilification of
minorities. Califia went on to be an important voice within transgender
studies, as noted in Chapter 6.

The key peak of the sex wars, and the anti-pornography sentiments that were
circulating, occurred in 1982 at the conference Towards a Politics of Sexuality
held at Barnard College in New York City. The year prior, in 1981, the organis-
ing committee of the conference created a pamphlet, “Diary of a Conference
on Sexuality”, which outlined some of the things they wished to explore
through the conference. Not taking a straightforwardly anti-pornography
82 Queer Theory Now

radical feminist line, questions canvassed in the pamphlet included (but were
not limited to):

1. How do women get sexual pleasure in patriarchy given that if women

venture out of the restrictive limits of the patriarchy they are punished?
2. What is the relationship between the political, economic, and social
structures of one’s sexuality?
3. Does the identity of “femininity” cut across one’s choice of object, sexual
preference, and specific behaviour? (Alderfer et al. 1981)

Days before the conference was due to begin, pressure from feminist
­anti-pornography groups, who felt they had been left out of the event, pres-
sured the Barnard administration to confiscate 1,500 copies of the diary that
had been published for the event. At the conference itself, anti-pornography
feminist protestors handed out leaflets, as Comella reflects,

“Represented at this conference,” the leaflet read, “are organizations that

support and produce pornography, support sex roles and sadomasochism,
and have joined the straight and gay pedophile organizations in lobby-
ing for an end to laws that protect children from sexual abuse by adults”.
(2008, 204)

The anti-pornography feminists, sporting t-shirts that read “for a feminist

sexuality” and “Against S/M”, also targeted groups in their materials that
organised around issues of lesbian sadomasochism (S/M) and bondage,
abortion rights and butch/femme lesbian identity. Echoing earlier feminist
arguments around the problems of role-playing, their central contention
was that S/M promotes problematic power dynamics, and that butch/femme
lesbianism recreates power dynamics of heterosexuality, mimicking hetero-
sexual gender relations. As Ummni Khan reflects, the lesbians who defended
­sadomasochism were seen by the anti-pornography feminists as “injecting
patriarchal ideas behind feminist lines” (2014, 91).

THE SEXUALITY/FEMINISM SPLIT

Following these events, in 1984 Rubin articulated the key schisms between
feminism and sexuality in her essay “Thinking Sex”. “Thinking Sex”
expresses deep concern about the sex wars and the potential outcomes for
 Sexuality and Feminism 83

“sexual deviants”. As Rubin writes, “Most people mistake their sexual prefer-
ences for a universal system that will or should work for everyone” (1984,
283). Despite suggesting that the lines around sexual moralism ought to
shift, Rubin was nonetheless – like many feminists – very concerned with
issues around pleasure and consent. Rubin’s argument therefore ought not to
be understood as “anything goes”, but rather be seen as founded around con-
cern for the marginalisation of sexual minorities. Rubin’s highly influential
essay suggests that engagements with questions of sexuality ought to break
from feminist perspectives, even as she wrote the piece with a feminist audi-
ence in mind.
Rubin had herself been a feminist activist during the 1960s. However, an
encounter with a lesbian from the Gay Liberation Front in 1971 introduced
her to new ideas around sexuality. She reflects, “The language enabled me to
reinterpret my own experience and emotional history” (2011, 15). From this
point Rubin found herself focusing on lesbian archives. However, over time
she became increasingly concerned with “moral panics” around sexuality,
following work by Jeffrey Weeks in 1981 (see Weeks 1989), with feminist
campaigns colluding with the right. “Thinking Sex” describes in detail the
convergence between some feminists in the 1980s and right-wing evangelical
Christians in the USA around the issue of pornography, and in this way evi-
dences a sticking point between feminism’s focus on gender sometimes to the
detriment of questions of sexuality.
As part of this discussion, Rubin argues that in society particular sexual
arrangements and acts operate within a “sex hierarchy”, where some are val-
ued (“the charmed inner circle”) and others remain abject (“the outer limits”)
(1984, 281) (see Table  3.3). For example, Rubin includes “married”, “hetero-
sexual”, “monogamous” and “no pornography” in the inner circles, and con-
trasts these with “in sin”, “homosexual”, “promiscuous” and “pornography” in
the outer circle.
Though some of the arrangements on Rubin’s chart may have shifted
today, the general point remains that some acts and practices are seen
as more acceptable, while others remain (at best) questionable within
the mainstream. Rubin suggests that this operates as a “system of erotic
stigma”, and highlights how particular feminist critiques of sex have inad-
vertently perpetuated this hierarchy (1984, 280). Here, Rubin lays the
groundwork for attending to questions of sexuality outside of anti-pornog-
raphy feminism, and, in turn, a theoretical jumping-off point for later queer
theorists such as Butler. As Jagose notes (disagreeing with the contention):
“the controversial analytic separation of gender and sexuality … has been
84 Queer Theory Now

Table 3.3  Rubin’s sex hierarchy outlined in “Thinking Sex”

Culturally acceptable/valued sex Culturally unacceptable/abject sex practices (“the

practices (“the charmed inner circle”) outer limits”)
Heterosexual Homosexual
Married In sin
Monogamous Promiscuous
Procreative Non-procreative
Free For money
Coupled Alone or in groups
In a relationship Casual
Same generation Cross-generational
At home In the park
No pornography Pornography
Bodies only With manufactured objects
Vanilla S/M

prominently theorized as key to distinguishing between feminist and queer

theoretical projects” (2009, 164).
Rubin also argues that feminist critiques of S/M at the time echoed puri-
tanical responses to sexuality that has seen homosexuality vilified over a long
period of history. Rubin suggests that this feminist reaction was in part a
response to sexual liberation of the 1960s and 1970s, and that simultaneously
a group of “sexual radicals” was beginning to band together away from femi-
nist critique. Rubin writes,

In one sense, what is now occurring is the emergence of a new sexual

­movement, aware of new issues and seeking a new theoretical base. The sex
wars out on the streets have been partly responsible for provoking a new
intellectual focus on sexuality. (1984, 310)

In other words, the feminist anti-pornography reaction also helped provoke a

new form of scholarship on questions of sex, which in turn would influence
queer theorising.
 Sexuality and Feminism 85

THE IMPACT OF THE “SEX WARS” ON QUEER THEORY

It was not until the “sex wars” of the 1980s that the tension between
feminists and sexual politics came to a head, where theorists such as Rubin
argued that feminist rubrics for understanding sexuality needed to be placed
to one side. For Rubin, while the anti-pornography feminists and New Right
alike were worried about the state of the world driving people to perver-
sion, she argues that what happened during the 1970s and early 1980s was
a tightening of norms such that people were forced to be normal – where
sexual minorities were created and pushed to the limits of society. Along
these lines, Hunter (2006) suggests that the difficult debates around sexual-
ity involved in the “sex wars” meant that feminists were somewhat absent
from important movements around sexuality into the 1980s and 1990s. She
writes,

[T]here was virtually no feminist commentary, for example, on the char-

acterization of AIDS as a divine punishment for sex. Nor did feminists
draw the obvious analogy between the early birth control movement and
safe-sex campaigns … the bitterness of the internal conflict about pornog-
raphy disabled most feminists from intervening forcefully in these debates.
(2006, 16)

From this perspective, the “sex wars” debate drove a wedge between feminists
on the question of sexuality, where those in the anti-pornography camp were
unwilling to engage with gay rights campaigns, and those on the sex radical
side largely found themselves turning to engage in discussions around sexual-
ity studies, and, eventually, queer theory.
Elisa Glick suggests that one key questions of the “sex wars” debate (“Is
S/M feminist?”) would even later be reframed through queer theory to ask,
“Is S/M subversive or genderfuck?” (2000, 21). While these two questions
differ in terms of their mode of address (collective vs. individual) and stake
(politics of feminism vs. resistance to heteronorms), both questions seek
to understand “what kind of sex counts as progressive” (Glick 2000, 21).
Tracing key points in debates such as these it is important to keep in mind,
as Walters suggests, “Like sex itself, feminism is messy. And perhaps one les-
son of those debates is that we would do well to revel in that messiness rather
than to divide ourselves into neat and tidy categories of pro-sex and anti-sex
­feminists” (2016, 2).
86 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Feminist comics

Paying attention to more ephemeral pieces of women’s writing such
as comics and zines can help us to see further points of connection
between queer and feminist genealogies. Margaret A. Galvan (2016)
suggests that we can look at image-text media produced by writers in
the 1970s and 1980s to see how some feminist comics artists “urge[d]
their affiliated social movements to be more inclusive through their
visual representations of queer bodies” (Galvan 2016, 2).
Writing about comics and the “sex wars”, Galvan argues that “female
comics artists foregrounded sexuality alongside the activist concerns
of both feminism and gay rights in the late 1970s, forecasting further
engagement with this topic in the 1980s” (Galvan 2016, 24). Comics
such as Tits & Clits and Wimmen’s Comix, both of which began in 1972
and ran into the late 1980s and early 1990s, represented an array
of marginalised identities, considered feminism and sexuality to be
intimately linked and were significant “shapers of rhetoric and ideas”
(Galvan 2016, 26).
Feminist writers would later take up issues that were first engaged
with in these comics such as S/M, pornography, and lesbian identity. In
this way, the comics were “forerunners of theory” as they functioned to
generate and sustain feminist discourse, and in many cases went beyond
mainstream feminist thinking by presenting a “capacious vision for fem-
inism that need not result in complete separatism and that can embrace
and support other disenfranchised identities” (Galvan 2016, 79).

QUEERING THE “THIRD WAVE”

As the terminology of queer theory emerged, postmodern and poststruc-

tural theories had also taken hold in the academy, and many feminists and
queer theorists alike were turning to methods of subversion and decon-
struction in their writing about gender. Along with Butler and Sedgwick,
feminist thinkers such as Diana Fuss (1995), Denise Riley (1988; 2000)
and Elspeth Probyn (1993; 1996) offered complex engagements with ques-
tions of subjectivity, desire and identification. Simultaneously the so-called
third wave of feminism was born. This period involved a greater turn away
from the liberation politics of feminism past, to a greater focus on cultural
representation.
 Sexuality and Feminism 87

The new emphasis on representation saw the rise of the feminist music
scene (such as the riot grrrl movement in punk music), zine culture and
feminist interventions in the art world (such as Guerrilla Girls). As Pilcher
and Whelehan suggest, feminists of the third wave believed “that popular
culture can be the site of activism, and that media such as music can be used
to communicate political messages” (2017, 168). Furthermore, third-wavers
explicitly identified as such and sought to respond to the perceived limitations
of the “second wave”. As Clare Snyder suggests, the third wave can be under-
stood as:

• responding to critiques of the “woman” category and taking on

intersectional feminist perspectives;
• adopting postmodern techniques and understanding “truth” as multiple;
• rejecting grand narratives of feminism, particularly those ideas around sex
and sexuality that emerged during the sex wars. (2008, 175)

All of these aspects of so-called third wave feminism can be understood to

overlap with the interests of queer theorists, as outlined throughout this
book. For many third-wavers queer identifications and affiliations were seen
as central to their feminist activism (Gillis and Munford 2004, 169).

Queer theory in practice: The sexual politics of SlutWalk

The transnational “SlutWalk” phenomenon can be understood as
adopting a feminist pro-sex position while simultaneously offering a
critique of women’s sexual oppression, engaging with questions of sex
and sexiness that neither fully reject nor wholly endorse mainstream
models of sexuality. Whether SlutWalk represents “third wave” politics
is debated.
SlutWalk has its origins in Toronto, Canada, when in 2011 a police
officer suggested that women should prevent assault by not “dressing
like sluts” (Friedman et  al. 2015, 2). In response, protests occurred all
over the world, attempting to reclaim the word “slut” and combat the
notion that women should have to change the way they dress or express
their sexuality in order to prevent assault. The  movement has faced
some feminist critique, particularly around what is used to signify “slut”
and the different experiences of raunch for different women across
intersections of race and gender (Friedman et al. 2015, 5).
88 Queer Theory Now

There have been many significant developments in feminist theorising rel-

evant to queer theory since the 1990s, much of which is discussed through-
out the remainder of this book. However, specifically during the “third wave”
period, two key developments with important synergies for queer theory are
transnational feminist and transfeminist approaches. Both of these develop-
ments are directly related to the rise of postmodern thinking around critiques
of the “subject” in Western thought.
Transnational feminism is specifically concerned with challenging the
Western-centrism of feminist activism and theory, a concern that has also
influenced queer theory approaches to sexuality. As Inderpal Grewal and
Caren Kaplan explain, many women outside of a US context have rejected the
terminology of “feminism” as a distinctly Western construct, and instead have
placed other modes of collectivism around issues of ethnicity, religion and
so on at the forefront of their struggle (1994, 17). However, as Garber also
points out, when considering the intersection of gender and sexuality in a
transnational context, some queer women’s histories have been overlooked or
erased in favour of focusing on men (2006, 89).
Different from transnational feminism, but sometimes adopting a transna-
tional approach, is transfeminism, a branch of feminist thought that centres
the experiences of trans people in feminist theory and activism. As Emi Koyama
defines, “[Transfeminism] is not merely about merging trans politics with
feminism, but it is a critique of the second wave feminism from third wave per-
spectives” (2003, 244). While some “second wave” feminists argued for the abol-
ishment of the gender system, some also laid claim to a biologically based sex as
co-dependent with gender (Hines 2014, 84). Transfeminism arose in the 1990s
as a way to respond to these critiques, often drawing on queer theory ideas from
theorists such as Butler who offered a challenge to the “naturalness” of “sex”
underlying the “sex/gender distinction”. In Chapter 6 we discuss the history of
transgender studies and its connections with queer theory in more detail.

CONCLUSION: QUEER FEMINISM TODAY

Despite new feminisms emerging, debate continues about the state of

­feminism, who is included or excluded, and what the relationship between
feminist and queer theories is. Perhaps the relationship is best encapsulated
by Elizabeth Weed’s description that feminism and queer theory are part of
“the same family tree of knowledge and politics” (Weed 1997, vii).
Yet, while much feminism today considers questions of sexuality and queer
identity, these approaches do not necessarily draw on queer theory. Theorists
 Sexuality and Feminism 89

such as Sara Ahmed and Jack Halberstam demonstrate ways to explicitly use
feminist and queer theories together, under the rubric of what we might call
“queer feminism”. For example, while Ahmed discusses the idea of being a
“feminist killjoy” at length, she defines the killjoy in terms of being affectively
out of step with dominant paradigms – in other words, the feminist killjoy is
a figure who “queers” the rules about how one ought to feel (Ahmed 2010).
Similarly, Halberstam considers how to develop a queer form of feminism,
­taking Lady Gaga as his starting point. He suggests possibilities for “feminism
to go gaga” or, in other words, ways we might “queer” feminism through chal-
lenging compulsory heterosexuality and the gender binary (2012a, xiv).
The history of feminism sketched out in this chapter helps us to under-
stand some foundational ideas of gender and sexuality underpinning queer
theory. In thinking about what a queer feminist approach might look like
today, like Ahmed and Halberstam we might think about ways to make our
feminism queerer and our queer theory more feminist.

Further reading
Elizabeth Weed, and Naomi Schor (eds.). (1997). Feminism Meets Queer
Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
This collection includes important essays on feminism “meeting” queer
theory, including pieces from Butler, Braidotti and Rubin.
Annamarie Jagose. (2009). “Feminism’s Queer Theory.” Feminism &
­Psychology, 19(2): 157–174.
This paper unpacks the key connections and tensions between feminism
and queer theory.
Diane Richardson, Janice McLaughlin, and Mark E. Casey (eds.). (2006).
Intersections Between Feminist and Queer Theory. New York: Palgrave.
This collection offers a range of important reflections on the nexus of
feminist and queer theories, including pieces from Garber, Jackson and
Halberstam.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (ed.). (2017). How We Get Free: Black Feminism
and The Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
The 40th-anniversary reprint of the Combahee River Collective
­statement contains interviews with collective members with key obser-
vations about queerness, intersectionality and feminist theory.
90 Queer Theory Now

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• How do you think the earlier feminist movement helped shape ideas
around sexuality today?
• How did feminist tensions around questions of sexuality play out during
the so-called “sex wars”?
• Does sexuality need to be theorised independently from feminism?

Recommended films
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden 1983) is a fictional documentary-style
film exploring issues of sexism, sexuality, race and revolution. Born in
Flames centres women of colour in an imagined post-social revolution
future. It illustrates possible approaches to a revolutionary context that
has failed to address intersecting oppressions.

Inside Deep Throat (Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato 2005).

This documentary looks at the controversy surrounding the 1972
­pornographic film Deep Throat. The documentary includes footage and
interviews with various key persons including many feminists involved
in the debate around the film and the tensions around the influence of
sexual liberation in culture more broadly.

Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Jamie Babbit 2007) is an i­ndependent

comedy focused on the activism of a “third wave” lesbian feminist
­
group. The film dramatises some “third wave” feminist concerns and the
connections between queer and feminist identities.
4  AIDS and Acting Up

KEY TERMS HIV and AIDS, necropolitics, anti-essentialism, ACT UP,

AND Silence = Death, Queer Nation, the Queer International,
CONCEPTS Transgender Nation, gay shame

AIDS AND QUEER THINKING

What role did AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) activism in

the 1980s and 1990s play in shaping ideas in queer theory? How did some
of the fraught politics of the time impact on ideas that would become central
to queer perspectives? Why and how did the term “queer” emerge with AIDS
activists in the first place? While our first two chapters considered the role of
early social movements around sexuality and gender in laying the foundations
for queer theory, this chapter looks to a more specific event that continues
to shape queer theory discussions. Here, the history of the AIDS crisis can
be understood as playing a seminal role in shaping queer theorising, both in
terms of the activism that emerged around the issue and the way that AIDS
and its impact crystallised conceptualisations of life, death, reproduction and
futurity for the LGBTIQ community and discussions of sexuality and gender
in the academy.
This chapter explores the mechanisms by which AIDS came to influence
and act as an “impetus” for queer theory discussions (Mykhalovskiy and
Rosengarten 2009, 187). Many queer theorists have noted the impact of AIDS
on shifting notions of identity, power and knowledge (e.g., see Jagose 1996,
93–96; Barker and Scheele 2016, 53), and here we seek to expand upon the
role of AIDS discourse in shaping queer theory. The advent of AIDS shaped
queer thinking and community formations in ways that are still having rami-
fications, even as we appear to discuss and recognise this time in LGBTIQ his-
tory less and less. The extreme homophobia of early AIDS policy, particularly
the lack of government response in the USA, is oft forgotten (Gould 2009b,
229). As historian Graham Willett argues, HIV and AIDS cannot be under-
stood merely as a health-related issue, but rather, have historically been

91
92 Queer Theory Now

Key terms: HIV and AIDS

In this chapter, we predominantly refer to “AIDS”, rather than “HIV
and AIDS”. The latter is used to distinguish between AIDS from Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), a distinction used frequently in pub-
lic health discourse today. Today it is understood that HIV can lead to
AIDS, and specifying this is particularly important given that we are
now in a treatment era in which the diagnosis of HIV rarely leads to
AIDS if there is sufficient access to medication. However, as this chapter
explores, the discursive construction of the “AIDS epidemic” in social
imagination influenced activism –­ and most importantly, queer theory.
As such, we refer to “AIDS” here as the cultural object that has taken on
a life of its own under this all-encompassing signifier.

intimately bound up with the political – in terms of mainstream political

(policy) responses – and social activism (2000, 166).
Furthermore, the politics of AIDS have been intimately bound up with
sexuality and identity. The peak period of AIDS activism in the 1980s saw
the emergence of a renewed sexual politics, and a general focus on sex and
sexuality not least because AIDS was perniciously seen as a homosexual dis-
ease. As early theoretical reflections on AIDS argued, “AIDS does not exist
apart from the practices that conceptualize it, represent it, and respond to it”
(Crimp 1987, 3). In this sense, though AIDS is not specific to the gay commu-
nity, its early association with gay men, and the ensuing discourse conflating
AIDS with male homosexuality, constructed it as a disease that was a special
issue for the gay community to grapple with. As Paula Treichler has argued,
“The AIDS epidemic is cultural and linguistic as well as biological and biomedi-
cal” (1999, 1).
Indeed, when AIDS was first beginning to be recognised by public health
scientists in the early 1980s, it was colloquially dubbed “Wrath of God
Syndrome” (WOGS) and officially “Gay-Related Immune Disorder” (GRID)
(Fela 2018, 87). It was only later that AIDS would be defined and understood
as something other than a “gay plague”. Willett describes how in an Australian
context, even after only one death, the press called for various measures
such as banning gay people from travelling between the USA and Australia,
from being teachers, being on public transport and more (2000, 169). While
the 1960s and 1970s had enjoyed the increasing visibility of gay people in
the public sphere, the politics around AIDS were deeply homophobic, with
 AIDS and Acting Up 93

discourse around AIDS effectively calling for the radical erasure of gay people
from public life. As Joshua Gamson argued at the time, “AIDS activists find
themselves simultaneously attempting to dispel the notion that AIDS is a gay
disease (which it is not) while, through their activity and leadership, treat-
ing AIDS as a gay problem (which, among other things, it is)” (1989, 356).
However, in turn, as homophobia spread in mainstream discourse and policy
response to AIDS, this period became a time of re-invigorated activism around
sexuality (Jagose 1996, 94).
Looking at how the crisis unfolded and what impact it had on the LGBTIQ
community worldwide is difficult, not least because different policy responses
emerged in different contexts. For example, Australia had a relatively well
coordinated response to AIDS, where the gay community was highly active on
the issue early on, and the Federal government had reasonably responsive pol-
icy (notwithstanding its homophobic discourse). In contrast, in the USA, then
President Ronald Reagan failed to even refer to the term “AIDS” until several
years into the crisis, with thousands of lives already lost. Reagan’s assistant
at the time, Gary Bauer, argued that the lack of action on the issue was due
to the fact that AIDS was not yet a mainstream disease – that is, it had not
yet crossed over to a general population beyond gay men and intravenous drug
users (Grover 1987, 23).
Despite different policies in various contexts, many activist responses to
AIDS were a shared endeavour, with strategies and conceptualisations around
activist resistance circulating beyond the boundaries of individual countries.
These shared ideas and experiences are directly relevant to our understanding
of queer theory. As has been noted previously, there is an explicit connection
between the specific terminology of “queer” as an umbrella term for LGBTIQ
sexuality and the AIDS crisis, given the use of the term by many AIDS activ-
ists, including Queer Nation (Sullivan 2003, 37), discussed in further detail in
this chapter. More broadly, it has been noted that defining sexual identity in
terms of “queer” emerged within a context of poststructuralist theory which
was focused on the deconstruction of linguistic identifiers (Jagose 1996, 93).
In this context, “queer” offered a conceptual identification that was anti-
essentialist and politically efficacious for responding to a virus (HIV) that
spread based on bodily practices rather than identity (as the mainstream media
at the time would have one believe).
In this sense the emergence of the language of “queer” simultaneously to
the AIDS crisis, and the utility of this term for AIDS organising, ought not
be understood as merely coincidental. Rather, the newly developing period
of poststructural thought, the term “queer” and the unfolding event of AIDS
emerged in confluence (Jagose 1996, 94). AIDS necessitated sex to be talked
94 Queer Theory Now

about explicitly, and articulated to a mainstream audience to overcome any

negative and stigmatising discourse that may have fatal consequences (Berlant
and Warner 1995, 345). Yet as Leo Bersani also crucially points out, AIDS
also shifted public feelings around homosexuality from “fear” to “compelling
terror” (1996, 19). As we explore at the end of this chapter, though there
was mass LGBTIQ community mobilisation and powerful resistance to state
homophobia, this period contributed significantly to the sense of “gay shame”
experienced within the community, an affect arising from “the stigma of gay
sexual difference” (Gould 2009b, 223). The sexual acts associated with male
homosexuality came to be imagined as marked by death in profound ways that
would impact upon queer theory discussions for decades to come.

THE UNFOLDING CRISIS

Though the crisis extended across the world in different ways, it is gener-
ally the USA that takes centre place in discussions of AIDS. It is important
to note that AIDS was first identified in the USA in 1981, and therefore the
USA was the medical and discursive origin of AIDS from which it came to be
socially constituted. At the time, doctors across the USA noted that gay men
were presenting with similar and unusual symptoms, such as pneumonia and
Kaposi’s sarcoma, indicating compromised immune systems (Grover 1987,
18). Hundreds of gay men were suddenly becoming ill, with the virus seem-
ingly affecting gay men in particular, fuelling beliefs about the immorality of
gay male sex (Gould 2009b, 231). From this the term GRID was first used, fol-
lowed by AIDS in the following year, classifying the problem as a syndrome,
caused by HIV. Though women were also identified as having the syndrome,
AIDS nevertheless continued to be imagined as a particularly gay male issue
(Treichler 1999, 42), was understood only in terms of affecting white men
despite prevalence in Black and Latino communities (Hammonds 1987, 34),
and indeed early on was presumed to be simply an unpleasant effect of a gay
“life-style” (Crimp 1988, 238). This particular framing of AIDS as an effect of
homosexuality was undoubtedly primed by the existing historical association
of homosexuality as a “contagion” and threat to the heterosexual way of life
(Edelman 1994, 307).
Despite hundreds of reported cases in the USA by 1982, there was little
media attention on the issue outside of the gay press, despite early activ-
ism and fundraising on the issue within the LGBTIQ community. Notably,
gay press materials from the USA were banned from circulation in the UK
until 1986, severely limiting communication on the issue between affected
 AIDS and Acting Up 95

Queer theory in practice: Trans experiences of the AIDS crisis

Though the AIDS crisis was imagined predominantly as an issue for gay
men, many others within the LGBTIQ community were affected but
could not easily access treatment. As Stryker describes, many transgen-
der people were affected who survived on sex work, shared hormone
needles or were involved in gay male spaces, yet already experienced
barriers in accessing healthcare due to poverty and stigma (2008,
113). In the USA into the 1990s AIDS organisations came to recognise
transgender people as a vulnerable group, and specific funding and ini-
tiatives were directed to trans communities (Stryker 2008, 132).

communities (Watney 1987b, 13). In April  1983, The New York Times picked
up the issue, following outcry over a large AIDS benefit in Madison Square
Garden that they failed to cover (Nelkin 1991, 297). Simultaneously, in the UK
at this time, a “moral panic” emerged among the general population, though
there was little government action (Weeks 1989, 301). Although AIDS was
officially classified as a syndrome, the popular discussion of it as a “disease”
perpetuated the false fear that it was easily communicable (Grover 1987, 20).
As  greater attention to AIDS emerged, talk turned to the possible suscep-
tibility of heterosexuals, with a focus on bisexual men and contact with sex
workers as possible risk factors. This expansion of imagining the risk of AIDS
for a broader community increased both fear and interest in the syndrome
(Nelkin 1991, 297). As Bersani contends, “Nothing has made gay men more
visible than AIDS. If we are looked at more than we have ever been looked at
before  – for the most part proudly by ourselves, sympathetically or malevo-
lently by straight America – it is because AIDS has made us fascinating” (1996,
19 emphasis in original).
Despite growing awareness, the danger of AIDS to women remained largely
undiscussed, as medical experts argued that transmission from women to men
was less likely than from men to women or other men. In other words, because
women were not understood as dangerous carriers, there was little focus on the
risk to women who themselves might be affected (Treichler 1999, 45). Yet, in
New York City in 1987, AIDS-related illnesses were the leading cause of death
among women aged 25–29, many of whom were Black and Latino (Worth
and Rodriguez 1987, 63). Where safe sex campaigns were targeted at women,
focus was on women taking responsibility for ensuring that male partners
96 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: AIDS and the politics of disgust

Ramzi Fawaz’s work, “Political Disgust and the Digestive Life of AIDS”
(2015), focuses on the political significance of disgust in the AIDS crisis,
using Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America as a point of exploration.
Drawing on affect theory (discussed in more detail in Chapter 7), Fawaz
describes:

I treat the visceral as a potent cultural site where the literal and the
figurative aspects of embodiment are so tightly wound as to become
coterminous, so that linguistic representations of the body figura-
tively invoke, and materially elicit, affective responses. (2015, 123)

Here Fawaz focuses on vomiting as a key point of interest. Nausea might

be a response to the shock of a HIV diagnosis and indeed the symptoms
of AIDS, but nausea might also be provoked by disgust at the lack of
political and institutional responses to AIDS. Fawaz suggests that we
should seek to understand how the negative affects (feelings, bodily
sensations) of AIDS were able to be mobilised politically and creatively,
to signify AIDS in a way that didn’t do away with the abject, but rather,
found a way to rework it for political ends.
As Fawaz acknowledges, engagement with disgust in the context
of the AIDS crisis can be traced to Douglas Crimp’s (1987) work
and Bersani’s key 1987 essay Is The Rectum a Grave? (discussed in
Chapter  8), among others. These theorists argued for the materialities
of AIDS to be better represented, particularly given that such embodied
aspects were utilised for political ends to promote stigma and associa-
tion between homosexuality and disgust, disease and death.

used protection (Patton 1987, 72). Furthermore, within the gay male commu-
nity there was some sense that not only were lesbians not at risk of AIDS, but
that they were not interested in activism around the crisis. As Douglas Crimp
argues, such views among (some) gay men were simply a result of demoralised
politics, and that divisions within the community on the issue were not inevi-
table given the coalitional politics of the earlier gay and women’s liberation
political movements (1988, 251). Indeed, with the emergence of some later
 AIDS and Acting Up 97

AIDS activists groups, lesbians and other women ended up playing a central
and visible role in organising (Cvetkovich 2003, 174).
Prior to the emergence of AIDS, as Crimp points out, earlier social move-
ments around gender and sexuality had made particular self-identifications
possible/claimable with pride. However, following the decline of the social
movements of the 1960s, differences within the gay and lesbian movement
had also forced a bunkering down into notions of essential identities as well
as an orientation towards more liberal rights-based discourse. Within this
context of a downturn in activism, AIDS arose, causing a crisis that Crimp
claims, “brought us face-to-face with the consequences of both our separatism
and our liberalism” (1993, 314). In other words, following the peak of Gay
Liberation and second wave feminism, coalition building had become more
difficult. The model of identity politics that had emerged became an obstacle
with the emergence of AIDS, requiring a response that moved beyond the
assumption that the syndrome was simply an issue for white gay men.

Queer theory in practice: AIDS and bisexual stigma

Though AIDS was initially imagined as a gay men’s disease, as under-
standing of the multiple populations affected grew, so too did panic
increase around “who” might spread HIV between groups. To this end,
many media reports promoted a particular form of stigma around
bisexuality and the risk of contracting AIDS, particularly bisexual men.
As Marshall Miller outlines, even when not discussing AIDS specifically,
media representations of bisexuality in the 1990s promoted a skewed
notion of HIV transmission by promoting the stereotypes that (2001,
98):

1. Bisexuals are non-monogamous and have multiple sexual partners at

once.
2. Bisexuality is a trend and a dangerous “decision” in the face of the
AIDS crisis.

Miller describes, “Bisexual men were seen as the logical link and became
an easy target for blame” (2001, 99). Miller suggests that far from
enhancing HIV prevention strategies, this framing linking AIDS and
bisexuality merely promoted biphobia.
98 Queer Theory Now

Regardless of these internal debates what was entirely clear was that the
minority communities most affected by AIDS were seen as the problem, rather
than in need of assistance (Cole 1996, 280); the mainstream response to AIDS
was focused on keeping straight white men safe. In the USA, this focus on
preserving white male health, occurred within the larger context of the emer-
gence of the New Right, with a focus on family values and “healthy” muscular/
strong masculinity (Cole 1996, 287). Though Reagan finally addressed the
issue of AIDS in 1985, it was not until 1987 that his administration set up
a commission on AIDS (Nelkin 1991, 304). Much discussion focused on the
possibilities of compulsory testing and quarantine, a move which many saw
as reinforcing homophobia rather than effectively responding to the issue, as
Bersani reflects: “To put this schematically: having the information necessary
to lock up homosexuals in quarantine camps may be a higher priority in the
family-oriented Reagan Administration than saving the heterosexual mem-
bers of American families from AIDS” (1987, 201). Similarly, in the UK, it was
not until 1986 that the government, led by Margaret Thatcher, decided to act
on AIDS, with a large amount of funding dedicated to an education campaign
focused on monogamy, only suggesting use of protection outside of monoga-
mous relationships (Weeks 1981, 303). Such responses marked casual sexual
relationships as both deviant and dangerous (Sontag 1989, 73). The political
response (or lack thereof) to the AIDS crisis and the shaming around sexuality
that emerged would later shape the activism to come, and in turn, the insights
into heteronormativity that queer theory would begin to pose in the 1990s.

Queer theory in practice: AIDS and the New Queer Cinema

movement
New Queer Cinema is a queer independent film movement of the 1990s.
The term was coined by film theorist B. Ruby Rich to refer to a wave of
queer films that were met with acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in
1991 and 1992. These films included Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning
(1990), Todd Haynes’ Poison (1991) and Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992). Films
grouped under the banner New Queer Cinema reject so-called “posi-
tive” LGBTIQ representation and evoke queer as an aesthetic strategy
by defying cinematic conventions. As Monica B. Pearl suggests, “this
defiance can take the form of being fragmented, non-narrative, and ahis-
torical” (Pearl 2004, 23). Many films within the movement focus on the
 AIDS and Acting Up 99

experience of marginalised groups within the lesbian and gay community

such as Black gay men, sex workers and transgender people of colour.
There are strong connections between the AIDS crisis and New Queer
Cinema. Many theorists argue that the AIDS crisis actually gave rise to
the aesthetics and politics of the movement. As Monica B. Pearl sug-
gests, “New Queer Cinema is AIDS cinema” (Pearl 2004, 23), not only
because it emerged from a particular historical context, but because the
narratives and “formal discontinuities and disruptions [of the films], are
AIDS-related” (Pearl 2004, 23).
While not all films within New Queer Cinema deal with the subject
of AIDS, the movement is built on a disruptive form of expression that
is reflective of the cataclysm of the AIDS crisis, which not only had
­far-reaching impacts on individuals and communities but also on the
understanding of identity itself. As the HIV virus “becomes part of the
body that it infects”, the AIDS crisis represented a major disruption
of identity, undermining any understanding of self or subjectivity as
“whole, sacrosanct, inviolable, and definable” (Pearl 2004, 24).
Writing about this in 1993, José Arroyo argues that as gay men, “[w]e
know different things about ourselves and we know ourselves differently
(and part of that change is questioning who is ‘we’ and what is the self)”
(1993, 92). From this sparked New Queer Cinema’s “Homo Pomo” (Rich
2004, 16) approach to identity and the desire to “utilize irony and pas-
tiche, represent fragmented subjectivities, [and] depict a compression of
time with sometimes dehistoric [and dystopic] results” (Arroyo 1993, 92).

AIDS ACTIVISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF “QUEER”

As discussed so far, with AIDS came a homophobic offensive against

the LGBTIQ community, but in turn the community responded with
­re-invigorated activism (Seidman 1996, 10). As Bersani argues, “it is as if
AIDS, the devastating depletory of the body’s energies, had energized the sur-
vivors” (1996, 20). However, before the use of the term “queer” in this space,
prior to an orientation towards a more coalitional-based politics, early empha-
sis on pride was key. Pride was seen as essential in order to overcome the
shame and stigma of AIDS that was being promoted within medical and policy
discourse, particularly to avoid individuals dis-identifying with AIDS, which
had the potential for fatal consequences (Gould 2009b, 233). In response to
100 Queer Theory Now

the shaming of gay men – with the mainstream idea circulating that those
suffering had brought on the illness themselves – initially a discourse of gay
responsibility emerged. As Deborah Gould notes: “This gay pride … pointed
toward gay similarities with dominant society – gays as responsible, mature
caretakers” (2009b, 236). This orientation reinforced ideas of what ought to
be shamed (namely “promiscuity”), while simultaneously emphasising the
need for gay pride.

Key concept: Necropolitics

Central to the social constitution of AIDS during this time was medical
discourse that provided particular framings which then fed into homo-
phobic state responses. AIDS revealed the problematic ways that medi-
cal expertise could be deployed to manage populations and occlude lived
experience (Berlant and Warner 1995, 345).
Though History of Sexuality: Volume 1 preceded AIDS, Foucault’s
insights from this text are useful for making sense of the response of
the medical establishment to the crisis. As Foucault explains, a histori-
cal shift had occurred, from sovereign arrangements of power of letting
live, to bio-political arrangements of managing life and letting certain
people die. Foucault writes,

A power whose task is to take charge of life needs continuous regula-

tory and corrective mechanisms. It is no longer a matter of bringing
death into play in the field of sovereignty, but of distributing living in
the domain of value and utility. (1976, 144)

The response to AIDS is perhaps the most obvious example of this turn
towards the management of life, particularly in the USA where certain
populations were left to die.
As theorists such as Che Gossett have pointed out, this wasn’t just
“gay” populations. “HIV Criminalization” and the “war on drugs” were also
part of this, affecting an array of people, communities “of colour, queer,
transgender, gender non-conforming, poor and disabled” (2014, 31). Here,
Gossett reminds us that the politics of life are also the politics of death,
drawing on the notion of “necropolitics”, that is, the normative politics
that determine who should die (or, as Gossett also discusses, be incarcer-
ated), while others live.
 AIDS and Acting Up 101

The delayed policy response largely came only after public pressure around
protecting “life” more broadly, particularly the lives of children. However,
those children who became the focus of AIDS’ moral panic were tainted by
the association with homosexuality. For example, Dorothy Nelkin notes that
the haemophiliac boy Ryan White who had famously contracted AIDS from
a blood transfusion, was accidentally referred to by one media source as a
“homophiliac” (1991, 305). As Cindy Patton remarks,

AIDS has provided a sophisticated screen for constituting and reconstitut-

ing identities, and a deadly opportunity to link specific institutional prac-
tices with both gay assertions of self-knowledge and new-right assertions
that homosexuality is an object of scientific knowledge. Importantly, if race
had once served as a quasi-genetic metaphor for visualizing and policing
difference, HIV, as a form of genetic interference, now provides the vessel
for essentializing differences. (1993, 153)

However, while medical discourse referred to AIDS “victims”, and attempted

to individualise the issue by emphasising the need for individuals to man-
age their sexual activities to avoid the “dangers” of promiscuity, a new term
emerged to counter this language: Persons with AIDS (PWAs) (Treichler 1987,
48). Such responses were part of AIDS activists not only re-framing the terms
of the discussion, but also countering medical knowledge as the only valuable
perspective from which to understand and engage with AIDS. As Max Navarre
reflects, “I am a person with a condition. I am not that condition” (1988, 143).
While there remained some in the LGBTIQ community who attempted to
engage with medical arguments about “innate” sexuality in order to mobilise
the community (harking back to positions taken up during the homophile
movement), others began to turn to a more diffuse notion of sexual identity
reflected by “queer” identity (Seidman 1996, 11).
Part of this shift had its basis in the practicalities of LGBTIQ communities
responding to AIDS. This was in spite of the prevailing discourse at the time
focusing on white gay men: as Allan Bérubé explores, gay men have stereotypi-
cally been imagined as white, and whiteness has functioned as an unmarked
norm in gay communities (2010). However, AIDS itself did not discriminate
so easily. As Bersani notes, AIDS acted as a “boon to the cause” of homopho-
bia because “it never stops killing” (1996, 29). As such LGBTIQ community
responses had to turn towards a focus on safe sex practices rather than sexual
identities, meaning that the new activism emerging out of the AIDS crisis began
to challenge prior conceptions of clear lines of identity (Jagose 1996, 94). To
this end, HIV-prevention strategies turned to a focus on categories based on
102 Queer Theory Now

sexual activities such as “men who have sex with men” (MSM) to identify risk
groups (Hames-García 2011a, 75). From within this context of de-emphasising
identity, along with the need for a coalition-based politics to address the cri-
sis, use of the term “queer” emerged. In relation to the emergence of coalition
work, Patton also suggests, “regardless of how you contracted the virus, you
become nominally queer” (1993, 154). According to Patton, a “queer paradigm”
had emerged wherein sexually non-normative communities were seen as vul-
nerable to AIDS, but once you contracted HIV your sexuality was irrelevant:
non-normative status was then attached to you via the virus. As Crimp also
suggests, AIDS confronted activists with the limits of earlier identity politics:
“It is within this new political conjuncture that the word ‘queer’ has been
reclaimed to designate new political identities” (1993, 214).
Notably this linguistic shift also occurred within a broader context of
postmodern/poststructuralist thought which involved a turn towards decon-
struction of categories. Treichler goes as far as to suggest that the anti-essential-
ising aspects of postmodern theory at this time was “a godsend in the struggle
against AIDS” (1999, 272). The activist efforts to address the AIDS crisis nec-
essarily led to a shift in conceptualising identity that had profound effects on
queer theory to come. As Berlant and Warner note: “The labor of bringing
sexual practices and desires to articulacy has tended to go along with a labor of
ambiguating categories of identity. Just as AIDS activists were defined more by
a concern for practice and for risk than by identity, so queer commentary has
refused to draw boundaries around its constituency” (1995, 345). While the ini-
tial AIDS activist response involved a turn towards affirming homosexuality, the
designation “queer” was seen to challenge the fixity of sexual identity offered by
those promoting pride (the activists) and shame (mainstream discourse) alike.
As Seidman suggests, the approach to un-unified sexual identity as signified by
“queer”, that is central to queer theory more broadly (1996, 11).

Unleashing power: ACT UP

Central in the shift towards coalitional AIDS activism was the emergence of a
group in New York in 1987, which called itself ACT UP, which stood for “AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power”. The aim of the group was to increase pressure
on governments and other agencies to invest in targeting AIDS, or more suc-
cinctly, to “get drugs into bodies” (Halcli 1999, 142). Between 1987 and 1991,
ACT UP chapters emerged across the USA, as well as in Europe, Canada and
Australia (Christiansen and Hanson 1996, 167), from Adelaide to Windy City
(Halcli 1999, 141).
 AIDS and Acting Up 103

Key term: ACT UP

ACT UP described themselves as “a nonpartisan group of diverse individu-
als united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis”
(Crimp 1987, 7). Many women were involved in ACT UP chapters, looking
to AIDS activism in order to leave behind “the vehemence and bitterness
of the feminist sex wars of the early 1980s” (Cvetkovich 2003, 175).
ACT UP have been described as heralding in a new “queer sensibil-
ity” that differed from existing “establishment-oriented gay leadership
and institutions” (Gould 2009a, 256). As Crimp describes, the activists
involved were “mostly a bunch of queers”. However, he also points out
that in this context queer didn’t just mean taking part in certain sexual
practices (such as men having sex with men), but rather, queer reflected
one’s place in society, one’s vulnerability to contracting the disease,
which was not as simple as sexual identity (1993, 317–318). Many of
the activists involved had HIV themselves, or friends or family members
who were affected (Halcli 1999, 142).

The first years of ACT UP involved shifting discourse on the “punitive moral-
ism” of AIDS, and exerting pressure on governments and drug companies to
undertake research and develop new accessible treatments (Crimp 1993, 303).
ACT UP protests were often theatrical, artistic and confrontational in style.
Various artists became central to ACT UP, with autonomous art groups such as
Gran Fury affiliating with ACT UP to create political art installations and hun-
dreds of graphic posters (Crimp and Rolston 1990, 16). ACT UP’s signature
direct action activity was to stage “die-ins” in public places, where protestors
would lie down and have others draw chalk outlines around them, to highlight
the brutal reality of the crisis (Christiansen and Hanson 1996, 157). Other
theatrical stunts involved highlighting issues around sexuality specifically,
with actions such as the “kiss-ins” held during the “Nine Days of Protest” coor-
dinated by the AIDS Coalition to Network, Organize, and Win (ACT NOW)
across the USA in 1988 (Crimp and Rolston 1990, 53). Kiss-ins were seen as
a way to enact sexual resistance against homophobia, as the leaflet that fea-
tured at the kiss-ins, “WHY WE KISS”, explained:

We kiss in an aggressive demonstration of affection.

We kiss to protest the cruel and painful bigotry that affects the lives of les-
bians and gay men.
104 Queer Theory Now

We kiss so that all who see us will be forced to confront their own
homophobia.
We kiss to challenge repressive conventions that prohibit displays of love
between persons of the same sex.
We kiss as an affirmation of our feelings, our desires, ourselves. (Crimp and
Rolston 1990, 55)

Another example of one of ACT UP’s many militant theatrics occurred in

1990, when ACT UP Chicago protested against the lack of an AIDS ward in
Cook County Hospital. Activists from several caucuses within the Chicago
chapter, including the Women’s and People of Color groups, blocked traf-
fic with mattresses covered in slogans about AIDS. Though over 100 people
were arrested, the protest was successful in getting a ward opened (Stockdill
1997, 9).
During their direct action stunts and other activities, ACT UP made the
symbol of the pink triangle prominent, alluding to the Nazi practice of forc-
ing homosexuals incarcerated in concentration camps to wear pink trian-
gles as identification (Edelman 1994, 302). Just as “queer” was given new
meaning at this time, so too was the pink triangle reclaimed as a signifier
of resistance in the face of PWAs being seen as deviants marked for death.
Indeed, ACT UP’s main slogan was “Silence = Death”, originally created by
a group of six gay men that identified at the “Silence = Death Project” who
then became part of ACT UP (Crimp and Rolston 1990, 15). As Edelman
reflects:

Silence = Death can be read as a post-AIDS revision of a motto popu-

lar among gay militants not long ago – “Out of the closets and into the
streets” – and as such it similarly implies that language, discourse, public
manifestations are necessary weapons of defense in a contemporary strat-
egy of gay survival. (1994, 302)

Here we also see the symbiosis between the ideas of the time – the focus on
the linguistic and representational in poststructuralist thought – and the
actions and slogans being taken up by activists. Activist groups such as ACT
UP (as well as Queer Nation that followed) are frequently associated with
postmodernism because of pastiche tactics employed during protest, such
as creating billboards and other posters imitating advertisements (Patton
1993, 147). Furthermore, artistic pursuits around ACT UP, such as the post-
ers and artworks created by Gran Fury, were action-oriented, taking art out
of institutions and into the streets (Crimp and Rolston 1990, 19). Despite
 AIDS and Acting Up 105

the new ideological shift towards questions of cultural representation, away

from earlier movements centred around redistribution and the restructuring
of society, many activists who had been involved in the earlier Gay Liberation
and feminist movements were also part of ACT UP. As such, ACT UP reflected
a new period of protest that differed from earlier social movements, but that
was also inflected with the spirit of an earlier time (Willett 2000, 191).
ACT UP groups in the USA had a major influence on activists in many
other countries, and similar ACT UP groups formed across the world albeit
in different political contexts. For example, ACT UP groups began forming

Queer theory in practice: The politics of life and death

In one canonical ACT UP speech, Vito Russo – who had also been a key
figure during the 1970s – talks about the difficulty of “living” with
AIDS, given that people tend to think of PWAs as either in a state of
“dying”, or not suffering at all. He reflects:

So, if I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from homophobia. If

I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from racism. If I’m dying from
anything, it’s from indifference and red tape, because these are the
things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If I’m dying from any-
thing, I’m dying from Jesse Helms. If I’m dying from anything, I’m
dying from the President of the United States. And, especially, if I’m
dying from anything, I’m dying from the sensationalism of newspa-
pers and magazines and television shows, which are interested in me,
as a human interest story – only as long as I’m willing to be a helpless
victim, but not if I’m fighting for my life. (1988)

Helms, who Russo refers to here, was one of the many US politicians
who argued for the quarantining of homosexual people who tested
positive for HIV (Crimp 1987, 8). We see in Russo’s speech that he isn’t
railing against death from AIDS per se, but rather the slow death of a
homophobic society.
However, while ACT UP activists such as Russo advocate for life (here
we see he is “fighting” for it), as we discuss in Chapter  8, queer theo-
rists influenced by the AIDS crisis such as Bersani and Edelman would
respond to the same issue from another angle, that is, they would come
to embrace “death” as the rejection of normativity.
106 Queer Theory Now

in Australia in 1990, but while in the US context ACT UP was a necessary

response to a conservative government slow to act on the issue, the story
in Australia was rather different given a much swifter response to the issue
generally. Nonetheless, ACT UP in Australia employed similar direct action,
performance-based, disruptive antics to their US counterparts. For example,
in 1991, the Australian National Council on AIDS was encouraging the Federal
government to introduce new experimental drug treatments that had been
trialled in the USA and UK, though they had not been tested in Australia.
When the health minister refused this recommendation, ACT UP activ-
ists staged protests, such as digging up a famous floral clock in Melbourne
and replacing it with a graveyard, and abseiling onto the floor of Federal
Parliament House during question time (Willett 2000, 190). The effect of
these actions, and lobbying from other groups, was an expansion of clinical
trials in Australia and a change of regulations that made it easier to access new
drugs.

Queer theory in practice: ACT UP and needle exchange

Though the actions and activities of various ACT UP groups were
wide and varied, of particular note is ACT UP New York’s involve-
ment in a needle exchange programme in the early 1990s, as it dem-
onstrates the group’s aims to tackle AIDS as it affected a diversity of
populations.
Though the New York chapter was dominated by white middle-class
gay men, as Christina Hanhardt discusses, “needle exchange presented
both an opportunity and a challenge for ACT UP to expand its identity
across race and class lines” (2018, 427). The New York chapter dissemi-
nated information across ACT UP in order to educate other members
about needle exchange and complex issues around race and class, and
illegally distributed needles in at-risk neighbourhoods. However, these
activities also provoked some tensions with some leaders of Black com-
munities, who claimed that the exchange programme facilitated access
to drugs.
Hanhardt (2018) suggests that because of the conflicts and complica-
tions of this activity, the ACT UP involvement in needle exchange has
rarely been included in historical reflections on the period.
 AIDS and Acting Up 107

Bashing back: Queer Nation

While at first ACT UP mostly involved coalitional organising around sexuality,
a split emerged in the group between those who thought that a more offensive
approach to tackling homophobia specifically was needed. On this basis, it
was from an ACT UP New York meeting that the group “Queer Nation” then
emerged in 1990 (Berlant and Freeman 1993, 198). Crimp reflects:

As queers became more and more visible, more and more of us were getting
bashed. Overburdened by the battles AIDS required us to take on, ACT UP
couldn’t fight the homophobia anymore. That, too, was a full-time strug-
gle, a struggle taken on by the newly formed Queer Nation. I don’t want
to oversimplify this capsule history. Queer Nation didn’t take either the
queers or the queerness out of ACT UP. But it made possible, at least sym-
bolically, a shift of our attention to the nonqueer, or the more-than-queer,
problems of AIDS. (1993, 316)

According to Crimp, ACT UP had suffered from a proliferation of antagonism

within the group, rather than broadening of alliances (1993, 317). ACT UP
groups began to decline, and by 1998 there were only a handful of chapters
remaining.
Unfortunately, some historical reflections on the period merely list ACT
UP and Queer Nation alongside each other as examples of AIDS activism,
rather than drawing out the unique aspects of the two groups. Unlike ACT
UP, the politics of Queer Nation centred on “outing” and “bashing back”, and
enhancing militancy, which was perceived to have been lacking (Crimp 1993,
302). Like ACT UP, Queer Nation held kiss-ins, in an attempt to confront the
public with sexuality and erotics (Berlant and Freeman 1993, 208), but the
rage and anger expressed in Queer Nation materials acted to create further
distance from the victim status that had been placed on the community
with the AIDS crisis. As E. Rand writes, Queer Nation’s approach meant
that, “Being queer, in this sense, is no longer associated with passivity or
victimization but with anger, strength, and the ability to defend oneself”
(2004, 295). The  Pink Panthers group also emerged from Queer Nation
(eventually organising separately), acting as a street “foot patrol” dressed
in “black T-shirts with pink triangles enclosing a black paw print” with the
slogan “Bash Back” (Berlant and Freeman 1993, 206). Furthermore, Queer
Nation marked a distinct turn towards constructing “queer” as an identity,
as R. Anthony Slagle explains: “While Queer Nation uses many of the strat-
egies that characterize identity politics, the collective identity of the queer
108 Queer Theory Now

Key concept: From Queer Nation to queer theory

Academics working on questions of gender and sexuality turned
to Queer Nation to unpack the possibilities of employing a more
strategic and deconstructed notion of identity in social movement
politics. Simultaneously, the notion of “queer theory” began to be artic-
ulated, and early academic imaginings of the possibilities of “queer” are
­discussed in the following chapter.
Queer Nation provided a key source of inspiration and an exemplar
of queer politics for queer theory discussion in the years following
its emergence. As several early queer theory discussions identified,
the challenge for academics working in this space was to maintain the
political (and not just “theoretical”) angle of queer. This tension, and the
paradoxes and contradictions of working with deconstructed identifica-
tion as the basis for identity work, would come to be a persistent issue
for queer theorists.
As Duggan suggested at the time, “The continuing work of queer
politics and theory is to open up possibilities for coalition across
barriers of class, race, and gender, and to somehow satisfy the paradoxi-
cal necessity of recognising differences, while producing (provisional)
unity” (1992, 16).

movements is based not on a unitary identity but rather emphasizes that

members are similar because they are different” (1995, 88). In other words,
Queer Nation helped to cement “queer” as a category distinguished by its aim
to deconstruct sexual identity.
Perhaps because of the stigmatisation of the LGBTIQ community that had
occurred throughout the AIDS crisis, Queer Nation sought to actively shame
heterosexuality. As Gould suggests, “nonrecognition may become reciprocal”
(2009b, 224) – in other words, “gay shame” can transform into heterosexuals
becoming alien, unrecognisable, to queers themselves. In 1990, Queer Nation
handed out thousands of leaflets at New York and Chicago pride parades titled
on one side “Queers Read This”, which among the opening pages read:

I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public

displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that pro-
mote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and
 AIDS and Acting Up 109

Queer theory in practice: Queer Nation in Taiwan

Tracking the appearance of queer theory discourse in Taiwan in the
1990s, Fran Martin describes how the language of “Queer Nation” was
adopted by a lesbian publication, Ai Bao, in 1994. Martin suggests that
rather than simply repeating the Western idea of Queer Nation and
remaining US-centric, reference to Queer Nation in Ai Bao is distinctly
local. She writes:

The unevenly globalized “nation” in this redeployment of Queer

Nation becomes an ambivalent sign, indexing the weakening of the
ties of the nation-state on culture while simultaneously pointing to
their continuing hold. (2003, 2–3)

The language of Queer Nation appeared at this time in resistance to

specific nation-state homophobia. Furthermore, Martin points out that
Queer Nation as referred to in this context of Taiwan Mandarin lan-
guage reflects multiple possibilities beyond Western concepts of “queer”
and “nation”. This leads Martin to claim that, “appropriation is not the
same as replication and that translation is also rewriting” (2003, 4).
Martin challenges the US-centrism that sees concepts as “travelling”
globally without understanding the specificity of the take-up of ideas in
context. In other words, though Martin’s research shows that the idea
of Queer Nation was adopted in Taiwanese gay and lesbian culture, this
iteration is specific to the context and cannot be understood as a “rep-
lica” of the US group (2003, 5).

sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over
to me and my queer sisters and brothers. Straight people will not do this
voluntarily and so they must be forced into it. Straights must be frightened
into it. Terrorized into it. Fear is the most powerful motivation. No one will
give us what we deserve. Rights are not given they are taken, by force if
necessary. It is easier to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight
people are your enemy. (Anonymous 1990)

Here we can see Queer Nation as a more distinct break from the Gay
Liberation and feminist movements of the 1970s, involving a turn away
110 Queer Theory Now

from structural accounts of oppression and towards a clearer focus on

individuals as the source of suffering, in this case, “straights”. Yet, perhaps
paradoxically, Queer Nation’s view of identity was nonetheless “situational
and strategic”, not essential (Rand 2004, 297). The other side of the same
leaflet was titled “I Hate Straights”, presenting an anti-assimilationist
manifesto that painted straightness as a dangerous social affliction (Berlant
and Freeman 1993, 200). The idea of this propaganda was to point out the
danger that heteronormativity posed to LGBTIQ persons. Activists had also
begun to notice the rampant nationalism of the USA at the time, apparent
also within LGBTIQ communities. Many within the LGBTIQ community
continued to adhere to an “ethnic model” of sexual identity based on notions
of biology and desire (Duggan 1992, 12). Along these lines, according to
Berlant and Freeman, Queer Nation acted as a kind of postmodern parody
to this nationalist complex, emphasising fluidity over fixity. They suggest,
“Its tactics are to cross borders, to occupy spaces, and to mime the privileges
of normality – in short, to simulate ‘the national’ with a camp inflection”
(1993, 196).

Key concept: The queer international

In her work Israel/Palestine and the Queer International (2012), Sarah
Schulman describes how Queer Nation influenced her idea of the “queer
international”. As she describes, the “nationalism” inflected by Queer
Nation was satirical, given the effective exile from public citizenship
that those living with AIDS experienced.
Schulman draws on this historical idea of a non-nationalistic “queer
nation”, and puts this into conversation with the issue of Israel and
Palestine, resulting in a concept of the queer international. Schulman
describes this as:

[A] worldwide movement that brings queer liberation and feminism

to the principles of international autonomy from occupation, coloni-
alism, and globalized capital. (2012, 66)

Schulman suggests that a transgressive global queer solidarity is pos-

sible. We discuss the issue of sexual citizenship in further detail in
Chapter 5.
 AIDS and Acting Up 111

Racism, whiteness and AIDS

While the historical event of the AIDS crisis and the activist response shaped
queer theory, it is also important to note that the general myopia of the
movement around questions of race also arguably influenced a lack of atten-
tion to race and intersectionality within some segments of queer theory.
In the decade between 1981 and 1991, Black men in the USA made up a
disproportionate number of AIDs cases, yet this was a cause for little public
concern given the assumption that it was normal for Black men to die young
(Harper 1993, 239). Furthermore, following medical discourse claiming AIDS
emerged from Africa, the political “New Right” had begun to rhetorically con-
nect homosexuality and Africa, marking both homosexuality and Blackness
as unnatural/diseased (Patton 1993, 157). This endemic racism impacted on
the response of Black communities in the USA to AIDS, with Black leaders
and commentators largely remaining silent on the issue. The general lack
of organisation against AIDS in Black communities cannot be understood
in terms of resistance to the health issue as much as the social baggage of
AIDS, as H.L. Dalton reflects, “[O]ur leaders, however defined, seem to run
away from the issue of AIDS. They talk about it as little as possible and even
more rarely involve themselves in efforts to develop constructive solution”
(1989, 209). The emphasis on “Africa” as the origin of AIDS enrolled African
Americans as responsible by association, adding to the reluctance of many
to address and thereby further associate themselves with the issue (Dalton
1989, 211).
Where AIDs was spoken about there was distancing from the issue of
homosexuality – with Black leaders wanting to maintain what cultural capi-
tal they had in the face of racism (Cohen 1996, 379). Similar dynamics were
noted in Latino communities in the USA, with a general silence around the
issue prevailing among marginalised groups (Alonso and Koreck 1993). This
is not to claim that AIDS activists were predominantly white, rather, that
racism impacted upon how AIDS was constructed as an issue, which in turn
led to a general failure to centre racial politics in response to the crisis. In
many cases, communities formed in marginalised groups in order to respond
to the health crisis. As Lionel Cantú argues, for example, “HIV/AIDS has had
a tremendous influence over queer Latino social space”, insofar as respond-
ing to the crisis necessitated the imagining and formation of a Latino “com-
munity” (2009, 151). However, it is to say that the mainstream awareness
and activist response to the impact of AIDS on marginal groups remained
sidelined. Indeed, in many academic commentaries produced during the
period, race was rarely focused on despite the clear racism of AIDS discourse
112 Queer Theory Now

in the public arena, and activists of colour were often made invisible (Cohen
1996, 369). Further, where more liberal responses to AIDS were on the front
foot against the “New Right”, there was still an emphasis on “colour blind-
ness” that meant race was infrequently attended to. As Evelynn Hammonds
argues, such blindness “buries racism along with race” (1987, 29). Though
Hammonds was one of the earliest commentators on the question of race and
AIDS, few took up the concerns she raised around the continuing racism of
AIDS discourse.
As Cohen argues, the emergence of “queer” politics promised a new anti-
assimilationist vision to interrupt normativity (1997). Indeed, as Ana Maria
Alonso and Maria Teresa Koreck called for, on the issue of silence on AIDS
in Latino communities, there was a need to build “new coalitions based on a
post-modernist consciousness of ‘affinity’ rather than an essentialist con-
struction of ‘identity’ and establishing political alliances with those who are

Key debate: The whiteness of queer theory

Understanding the racial dynamics of this context, and the failure of
some activists and thinkers writing about AIDS to more distinctly cen-
tre questions of race, is important to keep in mind when examining
the queer theory that was influenced by the epidemic. This historical
failure cannot simply be rectified by re-writing the queer theory canon,
but rather, necessitates more deeply understanding the racial dynamics
influencing what has emerged as theory.
As Michael Hames-García contends, “to add race and colonialism to
queer theory is to overlook the formation of queer theory as thoroughly
grounded in the Eurocentric narratives of the coloniality of power”
(2011b, 42 emphasis in original). However, while Hames-García empha-
sises Eurocentric ideas as the problematic white origin of queer theory,
as we also pose in this book, ideas are not merely influenced by earlier
ideas, but also shaped by material conditions.
Looking to the whiteness of thinking around AIDS helps us to
understand that the inattention to race – as seen in some seminal
queer theory texts that emerged in the 1990s – was also because of the
racial and racist dynamics of AIDS politics that queer theorists were
influenced by.
 AIDS and Acting Up 113

also ‘other’ and ‘different’” (1993, 122). Yet, as Cohen contends, queer did lit-
tle to disrupt the racialised normativity widespread in much gay and lesbian
political organisational structures:

[Q]ueer politics has served to reinforce simple dichotomies between

heterosexual and everything “queer”. An understanding of the ways in
which power informs and constitutes privileged and marginalized sub-
jects on both sides of this dichotomy has been left unexamined. (1997,
438)

For Cohen, much queer politics has involved an over-emphasis on sexuality, to

the detriment of other dimensions of oppression (1997, 440), an issue which
we explore further in Chapter 7. Cohen argues that materials such as “I Hate
Straights” produced by Queer Nation illustrate a narrow focus on a hetero-
sexual/queer divide, rather than attending to additional concerns over race,
gender and class oppression (1997, 448). Furthermore, some have noted that
the actions carried out by Queer Nation hinged on particular racial and class
dynamics, as Mary L. Gray suggests, “[Queer Nation’s] class and race privilege
also gave them knowledge of what would be most disruptive, yet tolerated –
namely, displays of an urban stylized queer sexuality with purchase power”
(2009, 225). Where there was desire to attend to and centre questions around
gender, race and class within some Queer Nation groups, there was also resist-
ance from those who wished to focus only on sexuality (Gray 2009, 228).
Importantly, LGBTIQ press also often characterised Queer Nation merely as
a new wave of militant gay and lesbian activism, rather than highlighting the
more complex vision of “queer” identity that some aspired towards – and in
turn, where there was attention to more intersectional issues, this was some-
times occluded (Gray 2009, 229).
The racialised aspects of AIDS history, and the racialised ways that activist
history is remembered, reported and recorded, is essential to keep in mind in
the following sections as we explore some of the key queer theory ideas that
emerged in the wake of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Further, we might wonder
how queer perspectives, influenced by the postmodern focus on deconstruc-
tion, can adequately account for structures of oppression. While we continue
to explore key texts in queer theory throughout this book, Cohen’s contention
that queer activism can easily slip into an over-simplified binary of the queer
versus not queer, that ignores questions of race and racism, is worth keeping
in mind throughout.
114 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Transgender Nation

Shortly after Queer Nation emerged, a subgroup called Transgender
Nation formed in San Francisco in 1992. As Stryker describes, this
group began in part in response to concern around how trans issues
were being sidelined or erased by some members in Queer Nation (2008,
135).
Though Queer Nation declined, the presence of Transgender Nation
signalled a new queer appreciation of trans issues, a departure from
the vitriol experienced within some strands of feminist organising (dis-
cussed in Chapter 3). Stryker suggests that the formation of this group
played some part in the addition of “T” to LGB organising (2008, 137), a
change that we consider in much more detail in Chapter 6.

CONCLUSION: QUEER THINKING AFTER AIDS

Though this chapter has focused on the influence of the AIDS crisis on ideas
of queer identity and theory, we might also note the changing landscape of
AIDS politics since the 1980s that has perhaps turned in a more conserva-
tive direction. As Anne Cvetkovich argues, as well as being connected to the
emergence of radical ideas, AIDS activism can also be understood as the foun-
dation of “mainstream gay politics and consumer visibility”, as she laments
“something got lost along the way” (2003, 156). Or, as Cantú contends, “the
institutionalization of HIV/AIDS prevention” among other social changes
had provided both space for community formation while simultaneously con-
structing limitations on imagining identity within Latino groups (2009, 146).
More broadly, there has been a turn away in LGBTIQ activism from the shame
and stigmatisation associated with the mainstream discourse of the AIDS
crisis, towards an attempt to embrace pride and forget a darker past associ-
ated with death. As Heather Love argues, homonormativity (discussed exten-
sively in Chapter 6) has emerged where the murky side of queer life has been
replaced by “lighter and airier versions of gay life” (2008, 52). She continues:

Emotional conformism, romantic fulfilment, and gay cheerfulness consti-

tute the dominant image of gay life in the contemporary moment. Not only
are gays being represented as shiny, happy people in major media outlets,
but traces of the history of gay unhappiness are being expunged as well.
(2008, 55)
 AIDS and Acting Up 115

While groups like Queer Nation argued against assimilation, much LGBTIQ
politics in the past decade has focused on issues such as marriage equality,
ostensibly campaigning on the basis of similarity rather than difference. In other
words, many political demands from the LGBTIQ community today are about
aspirations towards normality, a fantasy of “being normal” (Love 2008, 53).
Yet, these shifts in LGBTIQ activism have not occurred without debate and
friction between those advocating for “equality” versus those arguing against
“assimilation”. For example, in 1998 in New York, a new group calling them-
selves “Gay Shame” emerged in order to interrupt the mainstreaming and
corporatisation of LGBTIQ communities (Sycamore 2008, 269). The debate
over “gay shame” generated a great deal of discourse that is still playing out in
queer theory discussions today, and highlights the ongoing tensions between
the academy and activists, queer theory versus queer activism, and what is
“queer” versus what is “mainstream”.
There is disagreement about whether the concept of gay shame is a useful
rallying point on the basis of shared oppression (being shamed), whether it
relates to something more fundamental (how shame structures queer iden-
tity), or whether it is a specific queer activist strategy (we should “shame”
mainstream LGBTIQ advocacy). As Gould argues, the concept of gay shame can

Key concept: Gay shame

Various gay shame groups have emerged across the world, sharing tac-
tics including interrupting various pride marches, holding speak-outs,
and staging “Gay Shame Awards” to disgrace various LGBTIQ individu-
als and groups involved in mainstreaming activities (Sycamore 2008,
272).
In 2003, academics who had been engaging with this emerging issue
in LGBTIQ activism decided to hold a “Gay Shame Conference” at the
University of Michigan, which was met with scrutiny from Gay Shame
activists who challenged the level of “critical thinking” involved in the
organisation of the conference (Sycamore 2008, 286).
As Halberstam also argues, the Gay Shame Conference was marked
by racial dynamics that saw white men dominating panels and discus-
sion. As Halberstam suggests, “If queer studies is to survive gay shame,
and it will, we all need to move far beyond the limited scope of white gay
male concerns and interests” (2005, 231).
116 Queer Theory Now

be productive for forming collectives based on the shared experience of being

shamed, while still recognising differences between individuals (2009b, 223).
Further, both Didier Eribon (2004) and Sally R. Munt (2008) argue that shame
is fundamental to the constitution of gay identity in the West. Munt argues
that in Western culture it is through the Judeo-Christian shame narrative of
Adam and Eve that the idea of sexual difference comes from. Munt c­ ontends:
“shame produces shamed subjectivities, however it is an aspect of the dyna-
mism of shame that it also can produce a reactive, new self to form that has
a liberatory energy” (2008, 80). Munt concludes that shame can be a driving
force for transformation. In contrast to these academic approaches, some
queer activists have rallied the idea of gay shame in terms of shaming certain
LGBTIQ mainstreaming efforts. For example, prominent Gay Shame activist
Mattilda Berstein Sycamore describes handing out fliers in San Francisco that
read: “Are you choking on the vomit of consumerist ‘gay pride?’ – DARLING
spit that shit out – GAY SHAME is the answer” (2008, 271).
The mainstreaming and corporatisation of the pride marches around the
world and the turn away from the militant politics seen during the AIDS crisis
continues to be a source of trouble and contention for activists, organisers
and academics. As Love suggests, “If there were ever a time that we needed
our cynicism, it is now – when the future that is being marketed to us is so
insanely bright” (2008, 63). It is our hope that our account of AIDS, and the
activism around it that helped to shape early queer theory thinking, might go
some way to attending to the history of “queer unhappiness” that Love sug-
gests we turn to (2008, 63).

Further reading
Douglas Crimp, and Adam Rolston. (1990). AIDS Demo Graphics.
Seattle: Bay Press.
This work gives a great sense of the kinds of actions undertaken by ACT
UP, detailing protests held by ACT UP New York in the 1980s. The work
includes many images and posters from protests and actions which
give an excellent sense of the representational and discursive strategies
employed by the group.
Michael Warner (ed.). (1993). Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and
Social Theory. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press.
 AIDS and Acting Up 117

A collection of seminal texts on queer theory and activism, including

numerous key pieces reflecting on the AIDS crisis.
Cathy J. Cohen. (1997). “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The
Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and
Gay Studies, 3: 437–465.
This important article from Cohen explores the limitations of the
“queer” politics promised by AIDS activists, in terms of engaging with
questions of gender, race and class.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• What were the similarities and differences between the politics of ACT UP
and the earlier period of Gay Liberation and second wave feminism?
• Why was reclaiming the term “queer” useful for AIDS activism, and what
were its limitations?
• What did the racial politics of the AIDS crisis reveal about the limits of
some queer activism?
• Is “gay shame” a useful idea? How does “gay shame” jar with the idea of
“gay pride”?

Recommended films
Chocolate Babies (Stephen Winter 1997). This film looks at issues of
race and class in the context of the AIDS crisis, and the failure of main-
stream AIDS activism to attend to the queer Black people being affected.

The Gift (Louise Hogarth 2003). This documentary explores the phe-
nomenon of “bugchasing” – that is, of those seeking to become infected
with HIV. For more on “viral sex” see Gregory Tomso 2008.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo 2017). This film offers a
fictional account of the real-life activities of ACT UP in Paris during the
1990s. The film explores personal and activist struggles around AIDS at
the peak of the crisis.
5  Outing the Closet

KEY TERMS the heterosexual matrix, gender melancholy, gender

AND performativity, subversion, drag, camp, the closet, queer
CONCEPTS reading, paranoid reading, reparative reading

QUEER THEORY ARTICULATES ITSELF

When did queer theory come out of the closet? Or, as we might also say,
when did queer theory challenge the notion of a closet altogether? As discussed
in Chapter 1, in an academic context feminist and film theorist de Lauretis
coined “queer theory” at a conference that she had organised at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, in 1990 and she later published it in her introduc-
tion to a special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies in
1991. De Lauretis used the term “queer” as a means to “mark a certain critical
distance” (1991, v) from the terms “lesbian and gay” which she understood
as having become “the standard way of referring to what only a few years ago
used to be simply ‘gay’ … or just a few years earlier still, ‘homosexual’” (1991,
iv). In proposing queer theory, de Lauretis sought to challenge these stable
identity categories as a strategy of resistance, one that afforded individuals
the possibility “not to adhere to any one of the given terms, not to assume
their ideological liabilities, but instead to transgress and transcend them – or
at the very least problematise them” (1991, v).
In this chapter we take a close look at the theoretical articulations of
queer theory that gained traction alongside de Lauretis’ work in the 1990s,
with a particular focus on the works of Butler and Sedgwick. Both Butler
and Sedgwick take a poststructuralist approach to sex, gender and sexuality,
seeking to deconstruct the relationships between these categories and prob-
lematise normative models of identity. Though de Lauretis coined the term,
as William Turner writes in A Genealogy of Queer, Butler and Sedgwick, “laid
much of the conceptual groundwork for the emerging field in the early 1990s”
(2000, 106). However, as we will see, Butler and Sedgwick’s work developed
separately and along slightly different trajectories.

118
 Outing the Closet 119

To begin, this chapter explores the work of Butler, particularly Gender

Trouble first published in 1990 (and updated with subsequent prefaces; see
Butler 1999), with a focus on her critique of the gender binary and her theory
of gender performativity. As we explain, this is the idea that gender involves
the repetition of acts in a pre-determined social context over time, which
makes gender appear natural and innate. We also look at the significance of
psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Freud, to Butler’s theory, includ-
ing notions of gender mourning and melancholia, and her re-thinking of the
“primary prohibition” against homosexuality. Consideration is also given to
Butler’s discussion of subversion, including her comments on drag. In the
latter half of this chapter, we outline Sedgwick’s key theoretical contribu-
tions, particularly her work in Epistemology of the Closet (1990), starting with
her axioms and conception of “the closet”. From here we explore Sedgwick’s
notion of queer reading practice and outline her ideas of paranoid versus
reparative reading, which continue to be central to many contemporary queer
theorists.

WHAT’S SO QUEER ABOUT JUDITH BUTLER?

Butler’s writing reflects her philosophical training in phenomenology,

German Idealism (particularly the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
and The Frankfurt School (with a particular focus on neo-Marxist critique).
While her work operates within feminist, psychoanalytic and Marxist
frameworks, she is best known for her contributions to queer theory. She
is most famous for her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity, first published in 1990, but Butler has published many influential
books and articles interrogating intersections of power, identity, gender and
sexuality.
In her early work, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-
Century France published in 1987, she traces Hegel’s notion of the desiring
subject through modern French philosophy. The following year, her essay
“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” laid out the first iteration of her
theory of gender performativity, which would later be developed in Gender
Trouble in 1990. Through each of these works, Butler theorises identity for-
mation and subjectivity with notions of the body, sex, sexuality, language
and speech. As Sarah Salih notes, Butler’s works reveal a lifelong dedication
to interrogating “the ways in which identity norms are taken up and subject
positions assumed” (2004, 2).
120 Queer Theory Now

Notable works: Butler

• Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France
(1987)
• Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)
• Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993)
• The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (1997)
• Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997)
• Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000)
• Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (2004)
• Undoing Gender (2004)
• Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)
• Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009)
• Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012)
• Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (co-authored with
Athena Athanasiou 2013)
• Senses of the Subject (2015)
• Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015)

As we explore through this chapter, Butler developed a theory that suggested

identity to be “a contingent construction which assumes multiple forms even
as it presents itself as singular and stable” (Salih 2004, 2). Butler’s theorisa-
tion had a profound and far-reaching impact upon the ways that gender, sex
and sexuality have been understood within and beyond academia in the post-
1990s era. Butler argued that feminism’s focus on the “woman” question was
deeply flawed because the subject of its analysis – woman – was an exclusion-
ary construct that was stabilised only via a gender binary underpinned by het-
erosexuality (Butler 1999, 3). As Butler writes in the 1999 preface to Gender
Trouble:

I was most concerned to criticise a pervasive heterosexual assumption

in feminist literary theory. I sought to counter those views that made
presumptions about the limits and propriety of gender and restricted
the meaning of gender to received notions of masculinity and femininity.
(1999, vii)

Butler suggests that the term “woman” (or “man”) does not refer to a sin-
gular, coherent or stable identity category. Instead she asserts that all such
 Outing the Closet 121

categories are unstable constructions that depend on regulation and ritual

in order to exist. As Salih argues, this line of argument leaves “little room for
belief in identity categories as stable, self-evident, or ‘natural’” (2004, 6).
Like many poststructuralist writers, Butler has been criticised for the dif-
ficulty and density of her work. However, she asserts that her style of writing
is part of her critical project, arguing, “neither grammar nor style are politi-
cally neutral” (1999, xviii). Hence, when we discuss Butler’s work, we need to
acknowledge her prose as an aspect of her methodology; it functions to decon-
struct the grammatical norms that naturalise identity formation. In offering
subsequent commentary in preface form to Gender Trouble, Butler reveals a
little more about her thinking behind this. She writes:

The dogged effort to “denaturalize” gender in this text emerges, I think,

from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by
ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about
natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary
and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturaliza-
tion was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or pre-
scribe theatrical antics in the place of “real” politics, as some critics have
conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done
from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as
such. (1999, xx)

With this in mind, we move on to exploring Butler’s key contributions to the

field of queer theory as it developed through the 1990s.

Butler’s approach to sex and gender

What is the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality? Does sex deter-
mine gender? Does gender determine sexuality? These questions are at the
centre of Butler’s project. Butler’s discussion in Gender Trouble opens with an
interrogation of what she describes as “the compulsory order of sex/gender/
desire” (1999, 9). By this, she means the fantasy that a person’s sex is natu-
rally aligned with their gender and their sexual identity. In other words, this
is the assumption that a person assigned female at birth (sex) will ideally grow
up to be a feminine woman (gender) and her desire will be directed towards a
man (e.g., a person of the opposite sex/gender). Butler calls this set of expec-
tations the “heterosexual matrix” (2008, 7) that underpins the gender binary
(see Figure 5.1).
122 Queer Theory Now

Desires women Desires men

(exclusively) (exclusively)

Desire
Man Woman

(masculine) (feminine)

Gender

“It’s a boy!” “It’s a girl!”

(designated male) (designated female)

Sex

The Heterosexual Matrix

Figure 5.1  The gender binary as determined by the heterosexual matrix, adapted
from William Leonard’s wedding cake model

For Butler, the concept of the “heterosexual matrix” is a “grid of cultural

intelligibility” where sexes, genders and desires are maintained and natural-
ised under a binary heterosexual logic (1999, 194). Another way of think-
ing about this is via Leonard’s wedding cake model, which represents these
binary logics as a three-tiered cake (2005, 94). The bottom tier of the cake
represents sex; it is split into two sides correspondingly labelled as male and
female. The second tier represents gender; it too is split according to a binary
of masculine and feminine which aligns with the binary of sex. The top tier
represents sexuality; it presents heterosexuality as the natural result of the
lower tiers and the pinnacle of the model. In this model, sex (seen as “natu-
ral”) underpins gender, which in turn is the foundation of desire. According to
Butler, the “coherence” and “continuity” of sex, gender and desire are “socially
instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” that stabilise what we
understand as identity (1999, 23). When we see this pattern repeated over
and over across a sustained period of time, we come to see it as natural and
normal.
While earlier feminist discourse sought to distinguish between sex and
gender, as Butler highlights, by making this distinction feminist scholars had
asserted that sex had been reinforced as a “natural” basis upon which gender
was built. To critique the assumed naturalness of this sex/gender relationship,
 Outing the Closet 123

Butler draws attention to some possible discontinuities between “sexed bod-

ies and culturally constructed genders” (1999, 10). For Butler, understanding
gender via binary oppositions reifies the assumed causal relationship between
sex and gender, because it assumes that gender difference mimics sexual dif-
ference. Even if we assume there is a binary sex (an idea which Butler later
challenges) and if we assert that there is no causal relationship between this
binary sex and gender, then it would be possible for the construction of “man”
or masculinity to relate to either male or female bodies, and the same for
“woman” and femininity. Hence, as Butler suggests:

If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gen-
der cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to its logical
limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between
sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment
the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of “men”
will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that “women” will interpret
only female bodies. (1999, 10)

Taking this even further, Butler argues that if we think of gender as more flex-
ible and fluid than sex (which we often do), then there is “no reason to assume
that genders ought also to remain as two” simply because we think of sex as a
binary (1999, 10).
Importantly, Butler does not ask us to consider gender as cultural versus
sex as biological/natural. Butler argues that perhaps this thing we call “sex”,
which we may have always thought to be natural and never thoroughly
interrogated, is just “as culturally constructed as gender” and she suggests,
“perhaps it was always already gender” (1999, 10–11). Throughout Gender
Trouble, Butler outlines a queer proposition: that it is not enough to re-think
our assumptions about what gender is and how it works, we must also do the
same for sex. However, if we were to think of sex as a constructed category
that was always already inflected by gender, then our existing definitions of
gender also need revising.

What is gender anyway?

In Gender Trouble, Butler prompts us to reflect further on the question of
gender. As we have noted, a long-held view within feminist discourse was
that gender functioned as the cultural interpretation of a person or sub-
ject’s sex. However, Butler’s work suggests that sex does not operate as an
124 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Butler outside the West

Butler’s approach to sex and gender relies on Western conceptions of sex
and gender, and thus her work may not be applicable in the same way
outside of a Western context. As Marie-Paule Ha suggests, we can “trou-
ble” Butler’s work through thinking it through in a Chinese context,
which historically involves a different theorisation of the body than
offered in Western medicine. She writes:

Within the Chinese cosmological framework, the gender markers

of the Chinese body … differ radically from those of its European
biomedical counterpart … within the Chinese body schema, the
­
categories of “male” and “female” were explained in terms not of bio-
logical differences but of relative predominance of yin and yang. (Ha
2010, 140–141)

Ha’s conclusion is that even though Western medical frameworks have

been adopted in China, at a social level “many Chinese in fact function
within a plurality of body schemas” (2010, 142). Ha suggests that stu-
dents should think through localised examples outside of the West such
as this that might trouble Butler’s work in its application.

“interior ‘truth’” (1999, 44) or essence to gender identity. For Butler, gen-
der is the apparatus that makes us believe in this myth of a natural inner
truth. As we have noted, Butler’s work suggests that gender is the discursive
and cultural means by which sex is produced. Gender is thus a set of power
relations; it is the reason that we think of a sex as binary, natural, “as ‘pre-
discursive,’ prior to culture, a political neutral surface on which culture acts”
(Butler 1999, 11, emphasis in original). Querying (and indeed queering) the
hegemonic discourse of gender requires a lot of conceptual work, in particu-
lar “a radical rethinking of the categories” and formations of identity (Butler
1999, 16). Deconstructing the concept of gender, she asks whether there is
“‘a’ gender which persons are said to have” or whether gender is “an essential
attribute that a person is said to be” before putting forward her argument
that gender is neither of these things (1999, 11, emphasis in original).
Butler’s most cited contribution to queer theory is her argument that gender
is a doing, not a being.
 Outing the Closet 125

Butler suggests that gender does not refer to a singular, coherent or sta-
ble identity category. Instead she asserts that the appearance of a “gendered
self” is “produced” via “the regulation of attributes along culturally established
lines of coherence” (Butler 1999, 32–33). As Butler highlights, genders are
unstable productions, dependent upon socio-cultural regulation to exist. By
this she means that those gendered behaviours and attributes that we com-
monly associate with femininity or masculinity are in effect imposed upon
us by normative sexuality (within the heterosexual matrix). However, as she
notes, forms of sexual practice do not produce certain genders, rather, that
heterosexuality is maintained by policing a strict gender binary.
Taking this a step further, Butler asserts that the production of gender is
performative. Though it might be tempting to think of gender as a sort of
act that is performed by a subject who exists in some form of pre-gendered
state, Butler argues that there is no doer behind this process. This is because,
for Butler, the production of gender constitutes identity. She borrows a line
from Friedrich Nietzsche to make this argument. In his 1887 On the Genealogy
of Morals, Nietzsche argues that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting,
becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is every-
thing” (Nietzsche 2010, 45). Extending from this, Butler argues that identity
is an effect rather than a cause, writing: “There is no gender identity behind
expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very
‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (1999, 33). Here Butler destabilises
norms of identity formation by suggesting that there is no identity behind
the expression of gender. For Butler, identity is retroactively constructed and
comes to be through these expressions.

Gender melancholy
Foundational to her theory of gender formation, Butler draws on psychoa-
nalysis to put forward a theory of gender as melancholic. Through this she
aligns heterosexuality with the lost possibility for same-sex desire. In Freud’s
“Mourning and Melancholia” and The Ego and the Id, both mourning and mel-
ancholia are theorised as reactions to loss (1962, 2001). Freud views mourn-
ing as a healthy reaction to loss (a reaction that is ultimately resolved), but
melancholy as a pathological response wherein the subject cannot let go of the
lost object. In Freud’s account of melancholia, this loss is refused and subse-
quently internalised into the self (or ego) through imitation. In simple terms,
Freud argues that this loss is incorporated into identity, essentially suggesting
that the melancholic becomes what they cannot love.
126 Queer Theory Now

Butler takes up these ideas in her discussion of gender formation, arguing

that we could use them to re-think gender and sexuality. Butler suggests that
masculinity and femininity are “rooted in unresolved homosexual cathexes”
(1999, 69) and she makes a complex argument to explain this, asserting that:

The melancholy refusal/domination of homosexuality culminates in the

incorporation of the same-sexed object of desire and reemerges in the
­construction of discrete sexual “natures” that require and institute their
opposites through exclusion. (1999, 69)

In other words, there is a taboo around homosexuality which cannot be

mourned, which means that we become what we cannot love, in gendered
terms. In relating this notion of melancholia to the formation of subjectivity,
Freud refers to the incest taboo (otherwise known as the Oedipus complex)
to explain the ways that the child identifies with and against their parents
along gendered lines. Butler alters this argument suggesting that there is a
taboo against same-sex desire that comes before the incest taboo. For Butler,
gender formation is the result of this prohibition becoming internalised and
incorporated into identity. According to this argument, we mimic the gender
that we are not allowed to have an attraction to. As Butler’s work suggests, the
taboo initiates a loss of a love-object, which is then recuperated into identity
through the internalisation of the taboo. In other words, this theory suggests
that heterosexuality is based on a social repudiation of homosexuality. Taking
a Foucauldian approach, she considers how these prohibitions against homo-
sexuality function as a generative force, producing the very possibilities that
they are thought to prohibit. Butler also suggests there is a melancholic refusal
of heterosexuality involved in the formation of homosexuality. However, this
is complicated by the layers of prohibition that inflect same-sex desire.

Gender performativity
In her first theorisation of gender performativity, Butler suggests that gender
is not an attribute or essence, but “an identity instituted through a stylised
repetition of acts” (1988, 519). Butler’s argument rests on the idea that gender
comes to exist through “the stylization of the body” (1988, 519). However, she
does not mean to suggest theatrical bodies, instead focusing on how this for-
mation of gender functions within the everyday. She refers to “the mundane
way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds
constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (1988, 519). In Gender
 Outing the Closet 127

Trouble, she revises her argument to highlight the role of regulation and tem-
porality in this process, writing that:

[G]ender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts

within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce
the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. (Butler 1999, 44)

Hence, Butler suggests that gender involves the performative repetition of

acts in a pre-determined social context over time in such a way that it appears
to be natural and innate. It is important to note the difference between perfor-
mance and performative, because Butler does not view the expression of gender
as a performance per se. As we have noted, Butler views gender as the process
that constitutes subjectivity rather than as an active choice and performance
on the part of the subject.
The idea of the “performative” comes from the philosopher John Langshaw
Austin, who theorised performative as speech acts that perform actions.
For Butler, an example of this is the proclamations “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a
girl!” that call embodied subjects into a world of gender, whereby their bod-
ies are thus rendered understandable/legible (“intelligible” as Butler would
suggest). Butler’s notion of performativity also borrows from the work of
Jacques Derrida, who theorised the notion of “différance” which refers to
the deferral of meaning and the deconstruction of the notion of origin. For
Butler this means challenging the very notion of an original “sex” underlying
gender. Following Austin and Derrida, Butler’s gender performativity can be
explained as “an expectation that ends up producing the very phenomenon
that it anticipates” (Butler 1999, xiv). In her preface to the tenth anniversary
edition of Gender Trouble, Butler further clarifies her use of the term “per-
formativity”, arguing that in her work:

[P]erformativity is not a single act, but a repetition and a ritual, which

achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body,
understood, in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration.
(1999, xv)

Butler’s contribution to queer theory is her insistence that “what we take to be

an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts,
posited through the gendered stylization of the body” (1999, xv). Her work
seeks to deconstruct the foundations of identity by demonstrating how gen-
der, which we have traditionally thought to be an interior feature, is produced
through the repetition of bodily acts.
128 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Performativity as bodily practices

What does gender performativity look like in practice if there is no
“doer” behind the deed? Fundamentally, Butler is concerned with
how a gender binary is produced and reproduced in society in a way
that occludes the socio-cultural aspects of this, and masquerades as
“natural”.
An example of this might be to think about the assumptions we have
about differences between men’s versus women’s bodies. It is assumed
that men are always naturally bigger and stronger than women, and
that women are always naturally smaller and weaker. In reality, men and
women come in all shapes and body sizes, but even taking this diversity
into account some may claim there is a “natural” difference.
However, if we look at the bodily practices that men versus women
are expected to adopt, we can understand how bodily acts solidify into
seemingly “natural” differences. For example, typically:

• boys are expected to be active, go outside, and use their bodies,

whereas girls are expected to be relatively less active;
• girl’s/women’s clothing and shoes often allow less mobility than
boy’s/men’s;
• in gyms, many women exclusively use the cardio area while men use
the weights area;
• women are expected to diet and eat salads/light food, whereas men
are expected to eat protein and red meats/heavy food;
• men are expected to take up physical space (“manspreading”)
whereas women are expected to take up very little space;
• men are expected not to express themselves in ways that might be
read as “feminine”, including walking and sitting in particular ways.

While many people do not conform to these expectations, on a societal

level (including the ways that “normal” men and women are repre-
sented) they play out in ways that shape a “natural” sense of men as
bigger and stronger, and women as smaller and weaker. These acts of
eating, sitting, walking, working out and so on, repeated over time on a
societal level, is gender performativity: “gender” emerges from the styl-
ised repetition of acts shaped by gender norms. These may slowly shift
and change over time and context.
 Outing the Closet 129

In her later work, Butler uses the same logic to think about sex and sexuality.
For instance, in her later essay “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, she
deconstructs the hierarchical relationship between heterosexuality and homo-
sexuality, through which homosexuality is considered a “bad” copy or version
of an original heterosexuality. In this work she argues that both homosexual-
ity and heterosexuality are produced, and that heterosexuality only maintains
stability via repetition (Butler 2004a, 119–137).

Subversion and drag

A core tenet of Butler’s work is the suggestion that if identity categories are
not innate, if they are always in the process of formation, then they can be
refused, resisted and subverted. We can see this idea operating in Butler’s
discussions of subversion, which she locates as a deconstructive strategy to
undermine the power of existing gender norms.
Butler suggests that certain enactments of gender, such as drag perfor-
mances and butch/femme relationships, can be subversive because they ques-
tion the foundations of gender norms; such enactments can “suddenly and
significantly upset” the assumptions that we make about sexed bodies (1999,
140). For Butler, the norms of gender can be split, exaggerated and parodied.
Such subversive actions highlight “the strange, the incoherent, [and] that
which falls ‘outside’” (Butler 1999, 140), revealing the constructed nature of
what is often considered to be “natural” and “normal”. As she writes: “Only
from a self-consciously denaturalized position can we see how the appearance
of naturalness is itself constituted” (1999, 140).
Underlying Butler’s argument is the perspective that “power can be neither
withdrawn nor refused, but only redeployed” (1999, 158). Hence, she posits
certain subversive bodily acts as deconstructive strategies, writing:

[T]he more insidious and effective strategy it seems is a thoroughgoing

appropriation and redeployment of the categories of identity themselves,
not merely to contest “sex,” but to articulate the convergence of multiple
sexual discourses at the site of “identity” in order to render that category,
in whatever form, permanently problematic. (1999, 163)

Thinking about this in relation to lesbian cultures, Butler suggests that butch
and femme identities both recall and displace heterosexual exchange, mean-
ing that they are “internally dissonant and complex in their resignification
of … hegemonic categories” (1999, 157). The implication of this is that both
130 Queer Theory Now

identities put “the very notion of an original or natural identity into question”
(Butler 1999, 157).
From this discussion, Butler also outlines some initial thoughts on drag as
a subversive bodily act, though as we will see her views on drag are tempered
through her later writing. In Gender Trouble, Butler elaborates on her theory of
gender performativity to emphasise the role of “corporeal signification” in the
production of gender (1999, 173). By this she means that certain “acts, ges-
tures, and desire” create the illusion of an inner truth to gender but that this
is produced “on the surface of the body” (Butler 1999, 173, emphasis in origi-
nal). What Butler does here is suggest that there is an interior and exterior
element to gender. This idea becomes essential to her thoughts on drag.
Feminist theory had earlier viewed drag as an imitation of an original gen-
der identity. Drag was viewed as a problematic style of performance because
it was thought to mock and degrade women. Complicating this critique,
according to Butler, are the slippery relations between the “imitation” and the
“original”, and the internal and external realms of gender. Drag performances
are commonly thought to play upon a distinction between a performer’s sex
and the gender of performance. For instance, we know self-proclaimed drag
superstar RuPaul Charles to be a male-identified person who performs as a
woman on stage and screen. Some would suggest that the pleasure of RuPaul’s
performance lies in this awareness. Butler complicates this neat sex/gender
distinction by highlighting that when we watch a drag performance, we actu-
ally witness three contingent dimensions of gender: anatomical sex, gender
identity and gender performance. Hence, Butler argues:

If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the
performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the perfor-
mance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between
sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender and performance.
(1999, 175)

So for Butler, drag is a subversive tool because it teases out the distinctness of
these three aspects of gendered experience, which are naturalised as a unified
picture through the heterosexual matrix. Butler also views drag as an imita-
tion of gender that implicitly reveals how all genders are produced through
imitation.
Butler’s comments on drag build upon Esther Newton’s Mother Camp:
Female Impersonators in America, published in 1972, which suggests that
drag can reveal the mechanisms through which gender is socially con-
structed. From this, Butler suggests that drag exposes mechanisms of gender
 Outing the Closet 131

production, in particular the interior and exterior qualities of gender, and

“fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space” (1999,
174). She also considers drag as a subversive tool to parody “the notion of a
true gender identity” (Butler 1999, 174). This is an important point, as Butler
does not consider drag as a parodic imitation of an original gender. Instead,
she makes a bolder claim, arguing that what drag parodies is “the very notion
of an original” (1999, 175). According to this view, drag is not a parody of any
so-called “real” women; it is instead a parody of the assumption that a natural
gender exists.

Responses, critiques and lasting influence

As Tim Dean notes, in the early 1990s, Butler’s writing and Livingston’s film
Paris is Burning helped to canonise each other. On the one hand, this dis-
seminated the emerging discipline known as queer theory beyond the acad-
emy, while at the same time “intensifying academic attention to issues of

Key concept: Camp

In 1964 New York writer Susan Sontag published her infamous essay,
“Notes on ‘Camp’”. In the essay Sontag describes camp as a “sensibil-
ity” that involves “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”
(1982). For Sontag camp described an aesthetic mode that was not
necessarily tied to homosexual subcultures, yet her description of camp
in terms of “the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off’, of things-being-
what-they-are-not” has distinctly queer overtones. In the 1970s Esther
Newton took up the term in application to a study of drag queens in
the USA, emphasising the aspects of both humour and glam involved
(1972).
As Nikki Sullivan writes, camp “foregrounds the performative char-
acter of gender, sexuality, race, class, and so on” (2003, 193). Reading
Butler with Sontag, we might see how camp style reveals the imitative,
performative aspects of gender. Importantly, though often associated
with gay men, camp is not exclusive – as Katrin Horn points out, camp
can be a queer subversive style for anyone. As she suggests, pop singer
Lady Gaga is exemplary of someone who adopts camp style, to reveal
their own artifice (2010).
132 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Paris is Burning

In the years following Gender Trouble, Butler qualified her views on
drag, re-focusing her argument in relation to the documentary film
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston 1990). Filmed throughout the 1980s,
Paris is Burning documents New York City’s underground drag ball cul-
ture wherein participants contest a range of categories in which they
perform social norms. The film combines footage of drag balls with
interviews of contestants, providing insight into LGBTIQ culture with
a specific focus on people of colour within the LGBTIQ community and
the significance of groups known as “houses” (a term borrowed from
fashion-house) which functioned as chosen families for the contest-
ants. Paris is Burning was a key text in the emergent New Queer Cinema,
a film movement that developed alongside queer theory in the early
1990s. Film critic B. Ruby Rich argued that Paris is Burning was among
a group of films that broke with humanist approaches to the politics of
gender and sexuality on screen, radically deconstructing the very foun-
dations of identity (Rich 1992, 30–35).
In Paris is Burning, Butler saw the powerful evocation of subversive
models of kinship. These were enacted in defiant and affirmative ways
through the various “houses” and alternative family models presented
by the film. However, in addition to this, she saw a simultaneous reit-
eration of norms that led her to question her initial comments on the
subversive potential of drag. Butler argued that the film prompted her
to question whether parody is an effective means of displacing domi-
nant norms. Qualifying her initial views on drag, Butler argues in Bodies
That Matter, first published in 1993:

Although many readers understood my book Gender Trouble to be

arguing for the proliferation of drag performances as a way of sub-
verting dominant gender norms, I want to underscore that there is
no necessary relation between drag and subversion and that drag
may well be used in the service of both the denaturalisation and the
reidealisation of hyperbolic heterosexual gender norms. At best, it
seems, drag is a site of certain ambivalence. (Butler 2014, 85)

In an important qualification to her earlier comments on drag, Butler

stresses the influence of heterosexual privilege, which leads her to argue
 Outing the Closet 133

that there are some forms of drag produced by and for heterosexual
culture. As evidence of this, she cites examples such as Jack Lemmon
in Some Like it Hot as “high het entertainment”, Hollywood moments
wherein heterosexuality “concede[s] its lack of naturalness and original-
ity but still hold onto its power” (Butler 2014, 85).
With a particular focus on evocations of race, class and gender within
the film, Butler ultimately concludes that Paris is Burning offers a decon-
structed vision of identity because it suggests, “the order of sexual
difference is not prior to that of race or class in the constitution of the
subject” (2014, 89). What Paris is Burning highlights for Butler are the
intersecting norms of class, race and sex that constitute subjectivity – it
is important to note that she doesn’t view any of these as coming before
the others. Ultimately, Butler concludes that drag is only subversive “to
the extent that it reflects on the imitative structure by which hegemonic
gender is itself produced and disputes heterosexuality’s claim on natu-
ralness and originality” (2014, 85).

transsexualism, cross-dressing and non-white identity” (Dean 2000, 68). Since

then, many have responded to and developed Butler’s work (including Butler
herself), continuing the project of deconstructing sex, gender and sexual-
ity. Butler’s ideas have had profound influence in the development of queer
theory, and have been taken up by activists and academics alike. For instance,
Butler’s approach to gender has been adopted in legal studies, literary stud-
ies, media and cultural studies, sociology and political theory. Her notion of
performativity has also been taken in many directions in film, video visual art
and the performing arts. However, this project has not been without critique.
In Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality, published in 1998,
Jay Prosser discusses the impact of Gender Trouble, noting key misreadings
of Butler’s work, which have had profound impact on the understanding of
transgender subjectivity. In the first instance, Prosser points out the assump-
tion that gender performativity involves a subject who gets to perform gen-
der at their will (1998, 28). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Prosser
identifies that transgender subjectivity has been taken as inherently queer and
subversive (1998, 29) (this issue is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6). As
Prosser argues, “transgendered subjectivity is not inevitably queer” (1998, 31).
Prosser argues that trans people do not necessarily “trouble”, unfix or queer
gender in the way that Butler suggests, and he argues that many people may
134 Queer Theory Now

desire to simply “be” rather than be enrolled in “doing”. Finally, Prosser argues
that Butler’s work lacks relevance to trans lives because it cannot account for
identity to be desired. Explaining this, he writes:

One is not born a woman, but nevertheless may become one – given sub-
stantial medical intervention, personal tenacity, economic security, social
support, and so on: becoming woman, in spite of not being born one, may
be seen as a crucial goal. (1998, 33)

This notion of Butler’s theory being incompatible with lived experience is

taken up in many critiques of her work. In John Champagne’s The Ethics of
Marginality: A New Approach to Gay Studies, Butler’s work is critiqued as insuf-
ficiently responsive to lived experience. Champagne’s perspective is that
Butler’s early theorising was as part of a larger problem with poststructural-
ist theory conflating sexual politics with style (Champagne 1995). A similar
argument is posed by Martha Nussbaum, who claims that Butler’s theoretical
approach “makes only the flimsiest of connections with the real situation
of real women” (Nussbaum 1999). For Nussbaum, Butler’s work is limited
because it suggests that parody and subversion are the only possible modes of
resistance, and that these must work within the pre-established boundaries of
power.
Butler’s later book, Undoing Gender, published in 2004, attempts to ground
her work in dialogue with politics and lived experience as part of her shift
towards an ethical theoretical framework. As she writes in her introduction to
this book:

[M]y own thinking has been influenced by the “New Gender Politics” that
has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with
transgender, transsexuality, intersex and their complex relations to femi-
nist and queer theory. (2004b, 4)

In Undoing Gender, Butler asks what it means to “undo restrictively normative

conceptions of sexual and gendered life” (2004b, 1) and she devotes time to
critically reflect on the experiences of those marginalised groups, pushing at
the edges of what is culturally recognised as human. In relation to trans people
she questions “why violence against transgender subjects is not recognised as
violence, and why this violence is sometimes inflicted by the very states that
should be offering such subjects protection from such violence” (2004b, 30).
Trans theorist and activist Viviane Namaste puts forward an argument
against Butler’s approach in Undoing Gender. Namaste asserts that theorists,
 Outing the Closet 135

following Butler’s lead, have long looked at trans bodies to ask questions
about the formation of gender without thinking about the lived experience of
trans people. In her essay “Undoing Theory: The ‘transgender question’ and
the epistemic violence of Anglo-American feminist theory” Namaste questions
“the extent to which transsexual women themselves have been served by such
an academic feminist project” (2009, 12). In Butler’s work, Namaste sees the
exclusion of trans people, which she links to a broader history of marginalised
people being excluded from academia and the production of knowledge.
Namaste also finds Butler’s tight focus on issues of gender to be problem-
atic because it excludes other frames of analysis. Namaste argues that Butler
fails to consider questions of labour and capital in relation to trans bodies.
For instance, while Butler shows how drag performances raise questions
about how gender comes into formation, Namaste highlights how “they are
also inextricably linked to matters of work” (Namaste 2009, 19). Hence, for
Namaste, Butler’s contributions to queer theory provide little insight into the
lived-experience of trans people, and in fact, may be “complicit with broader
social relations of capitalism” (Namaste 2009, 21).
As we have noted, transgender theorists such as Namaste and Prosser have
critiqued Butler’s work. These are not the only arguments against Butler, but
they are evocative of broader tensions between queer theory and trans lived
experience, which are taken up further in the following chapter where we con-
sider queer approaches to identity politics.
In 2016, Butler was prompted to reflect upon the legacy of Gender Trouble
in an interview with Sara Ahmed for the journal Sexualities. In this interview,
Butler links her earlier writing to her more recent projects focusing on the
vulnerability and liveability of LGBTIQ experience. She also muses over the
changing nature of the term queer, which over time has been used in contra-
dictory ways: queer has been engaged to reject the politics of identity, as an
umbrella term to refer to many identities and as an identity in itself. In this
interview, Butler raises questions that suggest her theoretical approach to
gender and sexuality has been greatly informed by the responses to her work.
For instance, she asks:

If “queer” means that we are generally people whose gender and sexuality
is “unfixed” then what room is there in a queer movement for those who
understand themselves as requiring – and wanting – a clear gender cat-
egory within a binary frame? Or what room is there for people who require
a gender designation that is more or less unequivocal in order to function
well and to be relieved of certain forms of social ostracism? (quoted in
Ahmed 2016, 490)
136 Queer Theory Now

To answer this, she suggests that we must re-think the questions that we pose
within queer theory, shifting the conversation from identity to liveability  –
one key question Butler poses is “what kind of a life do I want to live with
others?” (quoted in Ahmed 2016, 491). As we will see in the final chapters of
this book, this shift in Butler’s approach transports her from the emergent
queer to queer theory’s future, relating her project to contemporary debates
around intersectionality and queer futurity. However, before we can move to
queer theory’s new directions, it is necessary to consider the field’s other key
influencer, Sedgwick.

WHAT’S SO QUEER ABOUT EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK?

Sedgwick (2 May 1950 – 12 April 2009) was a feminist, literary critic, poet,

artist and teacher. She grew up in Dayton, Ohio and Bethesda, Maryland
and later studied at Cornell University. Like Butler, Sedgwick completed
her PhD at Yale. Across her academic career, Sedgwick taught at many
universities including Boston University, Amherst College, University
of California, Berkeley, Dartmouth College, Duke University and City
University of New York. However, it was her time at Duke University
where she gained notoriety as a key voice in the emergent field of queer
theory.
Sedgwick’s writing reflects her training in feminist theory and literary
criticism. While she is most famous for her book Epistemology of the Closet,
first published in 1990, she produced many influential books and essays over
the course of her life. As we will see, what Sedgwick brought to queer theory
was a methodology for deconstruction that enabled a deep interrogation of
sexuality, gender, bodies and pleasure in and across Western culture. As she
describes in an interview with The New York Times in 1998, “It’s about trying
to understand different kinds of sexual desire and how the culture defines
them” (quoted in Smith 1998).
Sedgwick’s first book, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial
Desire, published in 1985, laid out her initial thoughts on this and her meth-
odology for deconstruction. In her preface to the 1992 edition of this book,
she describes herself as a “deconstructive and very writerly close reader”
(vii). Reading literary texts including works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot,
William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson and others, Sedgwick uncovers traces
of desire between male characters. She pays particular attention to “erotic
triangles” (1992, 20) through which the plot is driven by a volatile relation-
ship between men who both vie for the affection of a woman. Through this,
 Outing the Closet 137

she highlights how desire informs relations between men and how this desire
is transmitted through women. The purpose of this is to interrogate the rela-
tionship between power and sexuality, carefully teasing out the limits of a
cultural system wherein desire between men emerges only under the pretence
of heterosexuality.
In Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick uses this methodology to highlight
how “the closet” functions as a structuring metaphor in Western culture.
In this work she traces correlations between “the closet” and structures of
knowledge, drawing heavily on the works of Herman Melville, Henry James,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde. While Epistemology of
the Closet is credited as a pioneering text in queer theory, Sedgwick did not
explicitly engage with the term “queer” until her 1993 book Tendencies.
In this book, which collected a series of her essays including “Jane Austen and
the Masturbating Girl” and “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay”, she famously
defined queer as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances
and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent ele-
ments of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made)
to signify monolithically” (1993, 8). Tendencies was the first volume of the
influential Duke University Press Series Q, which brought together gender,
sexuality and cultural studies to interrogate intersections of sex, gender, sexu-
ality class, race, nationality and culture – the series concluded upon Sedgwick’s
death in 2009.
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, published in 2003,
was the last of Sedgwick’s books to be published in her lifetime. In this
work she reflects upon the emergence of queer theory, paying particular
attention to the affective conditions of the era. As we will discuss in this
chapter, Sedgwick’s later work lays out “tools and techniques for nondual-
istic thought” (2003, 1) through which she seeks to interrogate emotion
in many forms. Sedgwick was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991 and
her work from the late 1990s onwards – particularly her poetry, prose and
literary criticism – muses on her experiences and feelings stemming from
this.
As we explore through the latter parts of this chapter, Sedgwick developed
an approach to the study of sexuality, bodies, feeling and power, which has
proven useful to many critics, scholars and artists. Across her work, Sedgwick
demonstrates that any analysis of the relation between sexual desire and
political power must move along two axes. The first “needs to make use of
whatever forms of analysis are most potent for describing historically variable
power asymmetries” (1992, 7). By this she means gender, race, class or nation-
ality. The second axis is that of representation, as she argues that this is the
138 Queer Theory Now

Notable works: Sedgwick

• Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985)
• Epistemology of the Closet (1990)
• Tendencies (1993)
• Fat Art, Thin Art (1995)
• Performativity and Performance (1995, coedited with Andrew Parker)
• Shame & Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (1995, coedited with
Adam Frank)
• Gary in Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher (1996,
coedited with Gary Fisher)
• Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (1997, coedited with Jacob
Press)
• A Dialogue on Love (2000)
• Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003)
• The Weather in Proust (2011)

only way to get insight into the “range of ways in which sexuality functions
as a signifier for power relations” (1992, 7). With this in mind, we can move
on to exploring Sedgwick’s key contributions to queer theory as it developed
through the 1990s.

Sedgwick’s Axioms
In Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick lays out seven axioms (see Table 5.1).
These are statements that underscore her work and serve as queer starting
points for her later arguments, so it is worth exploring them in some detail.
The first is simple but far-reaching: “people are different from each other”
(2008, 22). Sedgwick argues that critical and political thought is limited by
its use of only a small number of axes for distinguishing and understanding
people. These are typically gender, race, class, nationality and “sexual orienta-
tion”. The latter axis is Sedgwick’s key site for analysis, and she argues that
there is a problem with viewing sexuality as an “orientation” towards people of
a particular gender – in the case of heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexu-
ality. Sedgwick highlights that sexuality extends along many dimensions that
cannot be described in this limited way. She notes that certain things could
differentiate people who may seem to have identical configurations of class,
 Outing the Closet 139

Table 5.1  Sedgwick’s Axioms and some examples illustrating her claims

Sedgwick’s Axiom Practical example

1. “People are different from each other” While many people experience sexual
(2008, 22) attraction towards others, some people
never do and describe themselves as
asexual.
2. “The study of sexuality is not Having sex in public versus in a private
coextensive with the study of gender; setting is primarily about sexual acts, not
correspondingly, antihomophobic gender per se. However, in addition to
inquiry is not coextensive with attending to questions of sexual space/
feminist inquiry. But we can’t know desire/acts/etc., we may wish to bring in
in advance how they will be different” other lenses around gender, race, class
(2008, 27) and so on for analysis.
3. “There can’t be an a priori decision Homophobic discourse in popular media/
about how far it will make sense to politics/culture might implicate both
conceptualize lesbian and gay male lesbians and gay men (and others), creat-
identities together. Or separately” ing a shared interest.
(2008, 36)
4. “The immemorial, seemingly ritual- The idea of the “gay gene” (“nature”)
ized debates on nature versus nurture ignores the regime of compulsory het-
take place against a very unstable erosexuality that pervades everyday life.
background of tacit assumptions and However, understanding sexuality from
fantasies about both nurture and a purely constructivist (“nurture”) lens
nature” (2008, 40) does not eliminate cultural bias against
homosexuality.
5. “The historical search for a Great Even though we might have a huge range
Paradigm Shift may obscure the of words for sexual identifications today,
present conditions of sexual identity” terms and identifiers will continue to
(2008, 44) change and complexify. We shouldn’t
presume that we fully “know” sexuality
in the present.
6. “The relation of gay studies to debates We can work under the assumption
on the literary canon is, and had best that minority canons relevant to
be, torturous” (2008, 48) lesbian and gay studies can be found in
any context.
7. “The paths of allo-identification are While we may presume that homosexual-
likely to be strange and recalcitrant. So ity simply means desire for “same-sex”
are the paths of auto-identification” coupling, it may be bound up with much
(2008, 59) more complicated schemas of identifica-
tion “with” and “as”.
140 Queer Theory Now

race, gender and sexual orientations. For instance, she suggests, “Even iden-
tical genital acts mean very different things to different people” (2008, 25).
According to Sedgwick, we could disrupt dominant ways of thinking about
sexuality by taking some of these differences seriously. In doing so, we could
also consider many more dimensions of identity and reveal different forms of
oppression and subordination.
Sedgwick’s second axiom builds on this and relates to the conflation of
gender and sexuality within critical inquiry. She asserts that we can’t study
gender and sexuality through the same lens because “in twentieth-century
Western culture gender and sexuality represent two [distinct] analytic axes”
(2008, 30). While Sedgwick acknowledges that gender is definitionally built
into sexuality in that “without a concept of gender there could be … no con-
cept of homo – or heterosexuality” (2008, 31), she highlights that there are
many other dimensions of sexuality that have no connection to gender
(such as when an individual’s sexual desire is regardless of gender, or where
preference is based on something other than gender). Taking a Foucauldian
approach, she notes that the reduction of sexuality to a hetero/homo binary
is the result of medical, legal and psychological discourse that emerged in the
nineteenth century.
Sedgwick’s third and fourth axioms relate to the conceptualisation of lesbian
and gay identities. In the former, she argues that we cannot make assumptions

Queer theory in practice: How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay

In 1991 Sedgwick published an essay, “How to Bring Your Kids Up
Gay”. In this piece, Sedgwick further disentangles sexuality and gen-
der, ­highlighting how these categories have been represented in co-­
dependent binaries in studies of sexuality. She argues that early studies
of sexuality development rely on the assumption “that anyone, male or
female, who desires a man must by definition be feminine” (1991, 20),
and vice versa for those who desire women.
This assumption has had a profound impact on psychological and
psychoanalytic debates on youth sexuality, which Sedgwick notes
have tended to promote a cultural acceptance of homosexuality
only when it is founded upon gender conformity (such as males not
being too ­effeminate). This has meant that those who do not conform
to traditional gender roles have been typically marginalised and
pathologised.
 Outing the Closet 141

about the relevance or irrelevance of one identity to the other. In the latter,
she argues that we need to re-think the commonly recited essentialist versus
constructivist debates on sexuality and identity. She argues that these debates
“take place against a very unstable background of tacit assumptions and fanta-
sies about nurture and nature” (2008, 40). Sedgwick draws attention to a dead-
lock between the essentialist and constructivist positions on identity, clouding
every conceptual tool we have for analysing it. Furthermore, both accounts of
sexuality can be skewed towards arguments for the elimination of homosexual-
ity, which she encourages us to resist. She puts forward an alternative, which
she describes as a universalising versus minoritising approach and she explains
them in relation to the question of sexuality (see Table 5.2).
In her fifth axiom, Sedgwick critiques what she calls “the historical search
for a Great Paradigm Shift” (2008, 44). She argues that those who seek to
uncover a “transhistorical” essence of homosexuality or provide a genea-
logical account of homosexuality’s origin, problematically juxtapose notions
of “the past” with a unified image of contemporary gay experience. She writes
that “in counterposing … the alterity of the past [against] a relatively uni-
fied h­ omosexuality that ‘we’ do ‘know today’” these accounts “underwrite
the notion that ‘homosexuality as we conceive of it today’ itself comprises a
coherent definitional field rather than a space of overlapping, contradictory,
and conflictual definitional forces” (2008, 45). Hence, for Sedgwick, a more
productive, and indeed queerer approach to historical projects, involves a deep
analysis of the “relations enabled by the unrationalized coexistence of differ-
ent models [of sexuality] during the times that they do coexist” (2008, 47).

Table 5.2  Sedgwick’s universalising vs. minoritising models

Universalising model Minoritising model

This model views sexuality through This model views sexuality through a
a universalising lens. It suggests that minoritising lens. It suggests that sexuality
sexuality is fluid, and that all people is reasonably fixed, and that only a minor-
are capable of experiencing a range of ity of people experience non-heterosexual
sexual desires. desire.
Sedgwick’s question: “In whose lives is homo/heterosexual definition an issue of
continuing centrality and difficulty?” (2008, 40)
Universalising answer: Minoritising answer:
Questions of sexuality are relevant Questions of sexuality are only relevant
to everyone, across a spectrum of to a select few, those in the homosexual
sexualities. minority.
142 Queer Theory Now

Sedgwick’s final two axioms relate to the literary canon and to issues of
identification in literary theory, feminist theory and activism. In the first
instance, she argues that “the relation of gay studies to debates on the liter-
ary canon is, and had best be, torturous” (2008, 48) and she reflects upon the
power structures at play in the process of canonisation (and re-canonisation).
Through this she suggests that the literary canon is a space of white, het-
erosexual privilege and that the establishment of mini-canons could create
opportunities for greater acceptance of LGBTIQ literature. In the second
instance, she notes, “the paths of allo-identification are likely to be strange
and recalcitrant. So are the paths of auto-identification” (2008, 59) and she
reflects on the difference between “identifying with” and “identifying as” (2008,
59–63, emphasis in original). These final axioms seek to justify her analyses
of particular texts (which is always to the exclusion of others) and her critico-
theoretical positioning as a seemingly heterosexual woman – we should note
she was married to a man but rejected rigid identity categories in favour of
a fluid/queer conception of identity – writing about homosocial and homo-
sexual relations between men.

Sedgwick and “the closet”

In Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick demonstrates how the metaphor of
the closet functions in Western culture. The term epistemology refers to the
theory of knowledge, so this means her project interrogates the intersec-
tion between knowledge and sexuality. Coming “out of the closet” is never
simple and it is never something that LGBTIQ people have to do just once.
As Sedgwick notes, “the deadly elasticity of heterosexist presumption” means
that new closets constantly appear as LGBTIQ people come out of them
(2008, 68). Coming out is something that LGBTIQ people must do with every
new person they meet:

[E]very encounter with a new classfull of students, to say nothing of a new

boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, doctor, erects new closets whose
fraught and characteristic laws of optics and physics exact from at least gay
people new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of
secrecy or disclosure. Even an out gay person deals daily with interlocutors
about whom she doesn’t know whether they know or not. (2008, 68)

As we will discuss, Sedgwick does not see the closet operating only in rela-
tion to the lives of LGBTIQ people, but she does acknowledge its central
place in LGBTIQ experience. She argues, “the closet is the defining structure
 Outing the Closet 143

for gay oppression in this century” (2008, 71), writing that for many gay
people, the closet is:

[S]till the fundamental feature of social life; and there can be few gay peo-
ple, however courageous and forthright by habit, however fortunate in the
support of their immediate communities, in whose lives the closet is not
still a shaping presence. (2008, 68)

Sedgwick argues that the closet (and sexuality more generally) has occupied
a privileged relation to “identity, truth, and knowledge” in twentieth-century
Western culture (2008, 3). She reads the closet through the notion of per-
formativity, which, as we have noted in our discussion of Butler, refers to acts
of speech that perform an action. She argues that the closet is performative
in that it is part of a “language of sexuality” that “not only intersects with but
transforms the other languages and relations by which we know” (2008, 3).
However, Sedgwick notes that the closet also problematises what counts as
speech and language. This is because being in the closet involves the specific
act of not disclosing or speaking about one’s sexuality or gender identity. For
Sedgwick, this silence is “rendered as pointed and performative as speech …
[which] highlights more broadly the fact that ignorance is as potent and as
multiple a thing … as knowledge” (2008, 4). As she notes, like knowledge,
ignorance can be harnessed, licensed and regulated. Here Sedgwick illumi-
nates not only how sexuality is made visible through the closet, but also
how it is implicated in structures of oppression. Hence, she argues that the
“centrality of homophobic oppression in the twentieth century … has resulted
from its inextricability from the question of knowledge and the process of
knowing in modern Western culture at large” (2008, 33–34).
Taking a universalising approach, Sedgwick argues that “many of the major
modes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture
as a whole are structured – indeed fractured” by these relations (2008, 1).
She traces this back to what she describes as “a chronic, now endemic crisis of
homo/heterosexual definition … dating from the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury” (2008, 1). Drawing on Foucault’s History of Sexuality, which we discussed
in Chapter 2, Sedgwick highlights how this was the point where binary ideas
of sexual identity came into use in medical, legal and psychological discourse.
From this point, she notes that knowledge and sexuality became “conceptu-
ally inseparable from one another” (2008, 73) and the concealment of identity
(the closet) began to proliferate in cultural texts.
With this in mind, Sedgwick argues that within Western culture, the binary
between heterosexuality and homosexuality has been a “presiding master
144 Queer Theory Now

term of the past century, one that has the same, primary importance for all
modern Western identity and social organization (and not merely for homo-
sexual identity and culture)” (2008, 11). She argues that the power dynamics
and knowledge structures of the closet are not only relevant to LGBTIQ peo-
ple, but that this metaphor has come to structure many other binaries beyond
those implicated directly by its doors. As examples she notes:

secrecy/disclosure, knowledge/ignorance, private/public, masculine/femi-

nine, majority/minority, innocence/initiation, natural/artificial, new/old,
discipline/terrorism, canonic/noncanonic, wholeness/decadence, urbane/
provincial, domestic/foreign, health/illness, same/different, active/passive,
in/out, cognition/paranoia, art/kitsch, utopia/apocalypse, sincerity/senti-
mentality, and voluntarity/addiction. (2008, 11)

What Sedgwick suggests here is that the closet not only marks what we know
about sexuality, it has been subsumed into our very structures of thought.
Hence, her key intervention in Epistemology of the Closet is to deconstruct
these binaries by revealing the mechanisms through which they work.
Sedgwick demonstrates that many of these categories, which are typically pre-
sented as symmetrical binaries, are actually part of an “unsettled and dynamic
tacit relation” and she describes this as a process:

[F]irst, term B is not symmetrical but subordinated to term A; but, second, the
ontologically valorised term A actually depends for its meaning on the simul-
taneous subsumption and exclusion of term B; hence, third, the question of
priority between the supposed central and the supposed marginal category of
each dyad is irresolvably unstable, an instability caused by the fact that term B
is constituted as at once internal and external to term A. (2008, 9–10)

Thinking about this in relation to the heterosexual/homosexual binary is

revealing. Following Sedgwick’s logic, heterosexuality and homosexuality
are presented as a symmetrical binary in and through culture. In this binary,
homosexuality (term B) is subordinated to heterosexuality (term A), but
heterosexuality only gains meaning in relation to homosexuality – via what
Sedgwick terms a “simultaneous subsumption and exclusion” of the latter
term (2008, 9–10). This means that heterosexuality can only exist in relation
to a previously defined homosexuality. Sedgwick suggests that we cannot
assume anything about the cultural centrality and/or marginality of these
categories nor anything about the power relations between them, because the
binary is “irresolvably unstable” (2008, 9–10).
 Outing the Closet 145

Queer readings: paranoid and reparative strategies

In Between Men and Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick pioneered the usage
of a set of conceptual tools for deconstructing assumptions about sex, gender,
sexuality and desire, and thereby demonstrating the pervasive mechanisms
of oppression and homophobia. These tools were part of an intellectual tradi-
tion of “inveterate, gorgeous generativity”, “speculative generosity”, “daring”,
“permeability” and “activism” which Sedgwick describes as queer reading
(1992, x).
In the introduction to her third book, Tendencies, Sedgwick explains what
she means by this. She begins by describing the childhood experience of form-
ing intent attachments to “a few cultural objects” (1993, 3). She notes that
these might be from high culture or popular culture or both, but they are
significant for us as children because their meaning seems “mysterious, exces-
sive, or oblique in relation to the codes most readily available to us” (1993, 3).
As a result, they are important to us because they provide “a prime resource
for survival” in the world of adults (1993, 3). Taking this childhood experience
into adulthood and explicitly enmeshing it with sexuality, desire and queer
politics, she writes:

I think many adults (and I am among them) are trying, in our work, to
keep faith with vividly remembered promises made to ourselves in child-
hood: promises to make invisible possibilities and desires visible; to make
the tacit things explicit; to smuggle queer representation in where it must
be smuggled and, with the relative freedom of adulthood, to challenge the
queer-eradicating impulses frontally where they are to be so challenged.
(1993, 3)

What Sedgwick means by queer reading is this process of challenging the

dominance of heterosexual representation by making hidden desires vis-
ible, making inferred relations overt, and smuggling queerness into texts
that were previously thought to deny it. As we have noted, this is what
Sedgwick’s earlier works achieved in their analysis of homosocial desire
and the closet. Sedgwick describes queer reading in relation to her own
writing as:

[A] kind of formalism, a visceral near-identification with the writing I cared

for, at the level of sentence structure, metrical pattern, rhyme, was one way
of trying to appropriate what seemed the numinous and resistant power of
the chosen objects. (1993, 3)
146 Queer Theory Now

Ultimately, Sedgwick’s approach to queer reading positions the strategy as a

means of survival for LGBTIQ people who are confronted with exclusion, mar-
ginalisation, homophobia, shame and violence on a regular basis. However, in
her later work, Sedgwick argued that her conceptual tools for queer reading
were informed by a “paranoia” that sometimes undermined the power of her
critique.
In her essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading or, You’re So
Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You”, published roughly
a decade after Tendencies, she revised her methodology and delineated two
distinct reading strategies. On one hand Sedgwick describes paranoid read-
ings, which she argues had become the dominant form of analysis within
queer theory, feminist analysis and poststructuralism more generally.
Paranoid readings come from Paul Ricoeur’s concept of the “hermeneutics of
suspicion” – a phrase used to describe the position of thinkers such as Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud and others who have followed in their intellectual tradi-
tions. Sedgwick highlights an intimacy between queer theory and paranoia,
tracing the idea to Freud who argued that it was linked to the repression
of same-sex desire and, following this, to 1970s French theorist and activ-
ist Guy Hocquenghem who suggested paranoia revealed the mechanisms
of homophobia and heterosexism. By the mid-1980s, Sedgwick argues that
paranoia had found a central place within feminist and anti-homophobic
theory, eventually becoming a methodology on its own. By the early 2000s,
Sedgwick argues that paranoid analysis had come to be the only form of the-
ory, rather than simply one strategy or form of theoretical practice among
others.

Queer theory in practice: Queer methods

Given the slippery nature of queer theory, with its focus on decon-
struction and destabilisation, how can we “use” queer theory in our
research? We discuss different and diverse applications of queer theory
in more detail in Chapter  7. However, briefly, we might define queer
methods as anything that involves a deconstructive/destabilising bent.
As McCann suggests, “[Q]ueer methodology is about troubling the sub-
ject, employing a queer reading approach, and drawing from multiple
perspectives and traditions, all in order to challenge ‘dominant logics’”
(2016, 236).
 Outing the Closet 147

Along these lines, Halberstam (1998) proposes “scavenger meth-

odology” as a queer approach to methods, that involves drawing on a
range of fields and cultural paraphernalia, such as popular culture,
cultural events and other archives and fragments. This approach con-
nects to the queer archival method discussed in Chapter 8. Halberstam
suggests that a queer approach means resisting strict disciplinary
coherence.
As Plummer (2011) also outlines, ethnography and performance
have become key queer methods, often involving insider accounts
and/or work that is deeply situated within queer cultures in specific
contexts.
As discussed in this chapter, “queer reading” following Sedgwick
is one key way to approach the question of queer “method” in queer
theory. This involves using reading strategies to see the (otherwise
heteronormative) world differently. Alexander Doty (2000) deploys this
approach to re-read film classics such as The Wizard of Oz in queer ways,
understanding characters in these films in terms of camp (exaggeration,
artifice, queerness). Queer reading involves over-emphasising subtext,
and over-investing in queer elements of the storyline over and above
the dominant reading that might otherwise emerge. However, caution
is needed: as Martin Ponce (2018) argues, historically gay and lesbian
reading practices have often reinforced a white Western literary canon
of homoeroticism, only reading and reinforcing particular texts as part
of queer tradition.

For Sedgwick, paranoid readings always anticipate their own outcomes,

they are rigid and reject “the possibility of alternative ways of understanding
or things to understand” (2003, 131), they place an emphasis on exposure
and they are imbued with strong negative affect. Sedgwick locates paranoia in
studies such as Butler’s Gender Trouble, drawing attention to Butler’s unwaver-
ing insistence that there is no subjectivity prior to gender and her repeated
usage of terminology such as “reveal”. Sedgwick argues these are markers of a
paranoid reading of gender formation.
In theorising paranoid reading, Sedgwick reflects on the work of Melanie
Klein who views the paranoid as a position that is always “in the oscilla-
tory context of a very different possible one” (2003, 128). For Sedgwick
that other possible position is reparative reading. In contrast to paranoid
148 Queer Theory Now

reading, a reparative approach is open to possibility and surprise, to alter-

nate outcomes, ways of understanding and things to understand. Sedgwick
writes:

[T]o read from a reparative position is to surrender the knowing,

anxious paranoid determination that no horror, however apparently
unthinkable, shall ever come to the reader as new; to a reparatively
positioned reader, it can seem realistic and necessary to experience sur-
prise. Because there can be terrible surprises, however, there can also be
good ones. Hope, often a fracturing, even a traumatic thing to experi-
ence, is among the energies by which the reparatively positioned reader
tries to organize the fragments and part-objects she encounters or
creates. Because the reader has room to realize that the future may be
different from the present, it is also possible for her to entertain such
profoundly painful, profoundly relieving, ethically crucial possibilities
as that the past, in turn, could have happened differently from the way
it actually did. (2003, 146)

It is important to note that the paranoid and the reparative are not conceptu-
alised as ideologies, but rather methodological approaches or as strategies for
reading and knowing. As we will discuss in later chapters, Sedgwick’s repara-
tive approach has had profound influence on the way that contemporary
queer theorists think about temporality and the future (issues discussed in
more detail in Chapter 8).

Responses, critiques and lasting influence

As we noted in our discussion of Butler, early queer theory was critiqued
for its lack of relevance to LGBTIQ lives. In relation to Sedgwick’s early
writing, we have noted that she did not respond to the immediate politics
of Gay Liberation and activist discourse in the USA. Instead, Sedgwick’s
early writing takes up traditions of European thought and literature.
Though her ­methodology was explained through her works, some critics
found their lack of connection to the lived experience of gay men to be
problematic.
Nevertheless, Sedgwick’s contributions to queer theory have had immense
influence. Following Sedgwick, a number of scholars have taken up the closet
as a key site for analysis. Many of these have thought about the closet in
relation to coming out and the politics of identity, which is our focus in the
following chapter. For instance, in the introduction to the edited collection
 Outing the Closet 149

Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, Fuss argues that the hetero/
homo binary is intimately connected with the in/out binary of the closet.
Fuss raises the closet as a space where both of these binaries are contested.
For instance, she argues that sometimes “to be out is really to be in – inside
the realm of the visible, the speakable, the culturally intelligible” but other
times it is to be marked as an outsider (1991, 4). Fuss suggests that placing
emphasis on coming out of the closet risks further affirming the structures
of heteronormativity, because it implicitly suggests heterosexuality to be the
norm.
Butler’s essay “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, which was first
published in Inside/Out, also tackles the idea of the closet in relation to iden-
tity politics. She argues that the coming out and claiming an LGBTIQ identity
actually creates and maintains the closet. She writes:

Conventionally, one comes out of the closet (and yet, how often is it the
case that we are “outed” when we are young and without resources?); so we
are out of the closet, but into what? What new unbounded spatiality? The
room, the den, the attic, the basement, the house, the bar, the university,
some new enclosure whose door, like Kafka’s door, produces the expecta-
tion of a fresh air and a light of illumination that never arrives? Curiously,
it is the figure of the closet that produces this expectation, and which guar-
antees its dissatisfaction. For being “out” always depends to some extent
on being “in”; it gains its meaning only within that polarity. Hence, being
“out” must produce the closet again and again in order to maintain itself as
“out”. (Butler 2004a, 122–123)

Similarly, in the introduction of Fear of a Queer Planet, Michael Warner links

the closet, coming out and identity politics when he builds on Sedgwick’s
ideas to incorporate social politics into queer theory. Beyond her contribu-
tion to closet discourse, Sedgwick’s discussion of queer reading practice and
ideas of paranoid versus reparative reading have been central to many queer
theory texts, including the writings of Halberstam whom we discuss in later
chapters.
In her later career, Sedgwick turned towards analysis of affect and emotion,
prompted by her feelings around her cancer, death, homophobia and the AIDS
crisis. Her ideas have since been taken up by queer affect theory and her intel-
lectual lineage runs through works of Lauren Berlant (Cruel Optimism), Sara
Ahmed (The Promise of Happiness), Ann Cvetkovich (An Archive of Feelings and
Depression) and Heather Love (Feeling Backwards). Sedgwick also influenced
contemporary queer theory through her teaching. During her time at Duke
150 Queer Theory Now

University, she fostered many queer theory graduate students including José
Esteban Muñoz, a scholar whose work we examine when we encounter queer
utopias in Chapter 8.

CONCLUSION: QUEERING CRITICAL INQUIRY

Though their work developed along slightly different trajectories (only inter-
secting in a few terse essays), Butler and Sedgwick laid the foundation for
a queer approach to critical inquiry. Both scholars took queer as a means of
destabilising, unsettling, revealing, subverting, opening and questioning
established norms around categories of sex, gender, sexuality and identity.
They sought to reveal the mechanisms through which these categories are
naturalised in Western culture. Butler offered a way to deconstruct the rela-
tionship between sex and gender, demonstrating how both are produced
as effects of the heterosexual matrix. Sedgwick, on the other hand, focused
largely on the relationship between gender and sexuality. Her work demon-
strates that sexuality is comprised of many characteristics (not just gender of
one’s “orientation”), challenging the notion that sexual identity is supposed
to organise into a seamless unitary category. Both scholars placed significant
attention on interrogating the precarity and contingency of the relationships
between these categories.
It is important to re-visit the works of these influential scholars as
they offer insight into the early development of queer theory as paradigm
that resists normalising forces of discourse, identity and the closet. In
her introduction to Tendencies, Sedgwick considers the power of queer,
writing:

[A] lot of the most exciting recent work around “queer” spins the term
outward along dimensions that can’t be subsumed under gender and
sexuality at all: the ways that race, ethnicity, postcolonial nationality
criss-cross with these and other identity-constituting, identity fractur-
ing discourses, for example. Intellectuals and artists of color whose
sexual self-definition includes “queer” – I think of an Isaac Julien,
a Gloria Anzaldúa, a Richard Fung – are using the leverage of “queer”
to do a new kind of justice to the fractal intricacies of language, skin,
migration, state. Thereby, the gravity (I mean the gravitas, the meaning,
but also the center of gravity) of the term “queer” itself deepens and
shifts. (1993, 8)
 Outing the Closet 151

Though Sedgwick wrote this in 1993, her description of queer’s shifting centre
of gravity remains a powerful image. This notion of a queer theory that spins
outward, intersecting and challenging other discourses is a vital foundation
for understanding how queer theory is being developed in current debates and
it is a notion that we take up in the following chapters.

Further reading
Judith Butler. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity. London: Routledge.
This important book, first published in 1990, introduces Butler’s theo-
ries on gender formation including gender melancholia and gender per-
formativity. This edition includes a useful preface written by Butler that
may help readers to navigate the text.
Teresa de Lauretis. (1991). “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities.
An Introduction”. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies,
3(2): iii–xviii.
In this essay Teresa de Lauretis coins the term “queer theory”, which
makes this a useful text for reflecting on the development of the field
through the early 1990s.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. (2008). “Introduction: Axiomatic.” Epistemology
of the Closet: Updated with a New Preface. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 67–90.
Sedgwick’s introduction to Epistemology of the Closet lays out her views
on sexuality via the seven axioms which inform her later work.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• What is queer about Butler and Sedgwick’s approaches to sex, gender,

sexuality and identity?
• Does Butler’s notion of gender performativity have relevance for trans and
non-binary experiences?
• What problems does Sedgwick’s approach to sexuality raise for
contemporary understandings of identity politics and LGBTIQ activism?
• In what ways does the closet continue to hold a central space within
LGBTIQ culture? How is it represented culturally and how is it implicated
in broader structures of contemporary thought?
152 Queer Theory Now

Recommended films
Orlando (Sally Potter 1992). The instability of gender is played literally
in this film in which Tilda Swinton portrays a young nobleman named
Orlando who is commanded to stay forever young by Queen Elizabeth.
Orlando experiences several centuries as a man before one day waking
up a woman.

Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston 1990). Documentary exploring

New York City’s underground drag ball culture wherein participants
contest a range of categories in which they perform social norms. This
film has a significant place in Butler’s writing on drag.
6  Theory Meets Identity

KEY TERMS identity politics, neoliberalism, strategic essentialism,

AND cultural capital, homonormativity, homonationalism,
CONCEPTS sexual citizenship, cisgender, transgender studies,
transnormativity, phenomenology, non-binary identity,
assemblage

QUEER THEORY VERSUS IDENTITY

This chapter examines the tensions between identity politics and queer theory
following shifts in thinking about “queer” in both activist (Chapter 4) and aca-
demic (Chapter 5) contexts during the 1990s. Here we consider the relation-
ship between queer identity and queer theory in more depth. Should the aim of
our activist and academic work be the acceptance of LGBTIQ identities in soci-
ety, or should mainstreaming be seen as an unwelcome form of assimilation?
Is acceptance antithetical to a queer theory approach? How does the supposed
radical openness of queer theory sit with the lived realities of sexuality and
gender?
In this chapter we turn attention towards key debates around “homonor-
mativity”, and the neoliberal queer subject, as discussed by many queer theo-
rists. Though this chapter considers the enduring relevance of queer theory
critiques of identity politics, it complicates any notion of abandoning identity.
Rather, here we examine how we can understand lived experiences of queer
identity in different ways. Most significantly, this chapter gives time to con-
sidering how and why queer theory does not necessarily centre around sexual-
ity, but rather, is also intimately related to questions around experiences and
embodiments of gender.
Many queer theorists describe identity politics – in its broad sense, as
politics organised around discrete identity formations – as antithetical to
the deconstructive aims of queer theory. Some have argued that the inten-
tion of the term “queer” was always to remain radically open, not to describe
a specific sexual group or orientation. For example, as Moya Lloyd describes:
“as a non-identity politics, ‘queer’ must not become inscribed as ‘the sexual

153
154 Queer Theory Now

Key term: Identity politics

Queer theorists frequently engage with and critique “identity politics”,
though the term is deployed in multiple ways by different theorists.
Broadly speaking, the term refers to political activities that are organ-
ised around identities, where identity categories are treated as discrete
and definable (Riggs 2010, 345). Ronald L. Jackson and Michael A.
Hogg offer the following definition: “Identity politics is the political
activity and theories rooted in social justice for marginalized, oppressed,
or disadvantaged social groups” (2010, 368).

minority’ … thereby alienating and excluding those sexual minorities that do

not fit in” (Lloyd 2005, 160 emphasis in original). As discussed in Chapter 4,
the advent of the AIDS crisis highlighted the need to focus less on sexual
­identity, and more on sexual practices. This was the impetus for using queer as
a term that challenged discrete sexual identity categories such as gay and les-
bian. As many suggested during the early 1990s, even talking about “identity”
does not necessitate talking about distinct categories. Rather, identity can be
understood as fluid and dynamic (Anzaldúa 1991).
This new “non-identity politics” approach that emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s sat in stark contrast with the earlier Gay Liberation movement
­(discussed in Chapter 2). While LGBTIQ people and people affected by HIV/
AIDS were activists, the focus of solidarity was not sexual identity in the same
way as it had been during the Gay Liberation movement of the 1960s and
1970s. In contrast, in earlier movements identity was the basis upon which
people organised. The social movements of the earlier period are considered
by many to be illustrative of “identity-based liberation movements” where
identity conferred a special understanding of oppression as the basis for fight-
ing back; for example, women led the charge for women’s rights (Alcoff and
Mohanty 2006, 1–2).
Others have challenged the idea that all forms of these earlier movements
should be considered “identity politics”. For example, Nancy Fraser argues
that identity politics is a specific political formation connected with the neo-
liberal political and economic shift towards individualism. Fraser suggests
that groups such as the women’s liberation movement only shifted towards
identity politics after the 1970s, when a new focus “recognition” emerged
under neoliberal economic regimes (2005, 296). While the aim of coalitions
 Theory Meets Identity 155

Key term: Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is a contested term that is sometimes used as a synonym
for individualism without reflecting on the historical, economic roots of
the term. Neoliberalism is best defined as a political ideology that took
hold in the 1980s that has both economic and social dimensions.

• Economically, neoliberalism refers to free market and free trade

ideology, is pro-privatisation and pro-corporate, and advocates for
small government and big business.
• Socially, neoliberalism is associated with individualism, depoliticised
advocacy and support for ideals of privacy and individual liberty.

We might say that on a cultural level, neoliberalism represents a move

against the feminist slogan of the 1970s “the personal is political”,
towards “the personal is privatised”. In terms of activism, neoliberal
ideology has encouraged a turn away from structural accounts of
oppression, towards individual and depoliticised accounts. As Duggan
describes, neoliberalism severely impacted LGBTIQ organising by
entrenching homonormative politics (2002).

such as Queer Nation (as discussed in Chapter 4) was to challenge normative

constructions of sexual identity, such “anti-identity” formations might never-
theless constitute their own form of identity politics. As outlined in Chapter 4,
Cohen argued that the language of “queer” politics at the time merely served
to entrench a hetero/homo binary (1997, 438). As Fraser also writes,

Despite its professed long-term deconstructive goal, queer theory’s practical

effects may be more ambiguous. Like gay-identity politics, it too seems likely
to promote group solidarity in the here and now, even as it sets its sights on
the promised land of deconstruction … The queer-theory recognition strat-
egy thus contains an internal tension: in order eventually to destabilize the
homo–hetero dichotomy, it must first mobilize “queers”. (1995, 83)

Whether we agree with Fraser here or not, what is common to definitions of

“identity politics” is the suggestion that: (a) it is organised around identity;
and (b) involves striving for some form of justice in relation to that identity.
156 Queer Theory Now

Key term: Strategic essentialism

Strategic essentialism is a concept proposed by postcolonial theorist
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in the 1980s, in the context of “Subaltern
Studies”. Here the subaltern refers to the marginalised/non-elite,
specifically within the context of colonialism. Spivak argued that
­
­strategic essentialism around discrete (subaltern) identity terms might
sometimes be necessary to collectivise for political ends. She described
this as “strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible
political interest” (1996, 214, emphasis in original). Yet she also argued
that strategic essentialism should always be adopted with the decon-
struction of categories at the forefront of analysis.
Spivak became critical of how her concept was sometimes deployed by
activists, as strategic essentialism became a go-to concept for ignoring
heterogeneity in the face of demands for homogeneity/single-axis prior-
itising (Danius, Jonsson and Spivak 1993, 35). As Raksha Pande argues,

In its wide-ranging adoption, strategic essentialism has lost its

deconstructive strain and at its best has become a reference for
­coming to terms with the inevitability of essentialism in feminist and
postcolonial discourses. (2017, 5)

Strategic essentialism is often misread as permitting calls for “unity”

(without deconstruction), in order to achieve political goals, which was
not Spivak’s original aim.

However, as Spivak (1996) argues, “strategic essentialism” around identity

might sometimes be necessary in order to make political claims. Sherry
Wolf also points out that the danger of queer theory critiques of identity
politics is they can veer towards seeing all forms of group solidarity as
problematic. Instead, we might look to understand what holds p ­ articular
groups of people together, such as shared experiences of oppression.
She writes:

While identity politics tends to strengthen the divisions between

oppressed groups, queer theory unwittingly lends itself to disavowing the
validity of oppression entirely by denying the common points of identity
between members of subjugated groups. (2009, 195)
 Theory Meets Identity 157

Following Wolf, this suggests that we should approach queer theory critiques
of identity politics with caution if we are to remain doing justice to ques-
tions of oppression. As some such as Seidman have argued, the aim of queer
theory is not to eliminate claims to identification altogether but to open the
Pandora’s box that is the question of sexuality in the first instance: “[T]he
aim is not to abandon identity as a category of knowledge and politics but
to render it permanently open and contestable as to its meaning and politi-
cal role” (1996, 12). As we will continue to explore, the difficult question of
negotiating identity within queer theory is an ongoing area of discussion and
debate.

THE NEW HOMONORMATIVITY

The 1990s ushered in a new era in LGBTIQ politics in the West. As Seidman
argues, “In the early 1990s, gays became a visible, seemingly permanent part
of the American mainstream” (2002, 125). During this time the idea of the
“normal gay” emerged (Seidman 2002, 161). While the AIDS crisis led to some
“anti-identity formations” such as Queer Nation (Chapter 4), simultaneously
the intensification of neoliberal ideology during the period brought with it a
new form of mainstreaming in LGBTIQ politics.
As Duggan describes, in the late 1990s, a strand of advocacy emerged that
argued for “full inclusion” and “equality” for gays and lesbians, but against
“progressive” visions that clashed with the prevailing social and economic
order (2002, 175). Duggan’s critique centres on a conservative US-based
website that emerged, called the Independent Gay Forum (IGF), which pro-
moted social and economic principles consistent with neoliberal ideology.
Duggan termed this politics “the new homonormativity” given its refusal to
engage with critiques of heteronormative structures and institutions such as
the family (2002, 179). As Duggan defines:

[Homonormativity] is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronor-

mative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while
promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privat-
ized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption.
(2002, 179)

While queer activists during this period aimed to deconstruct the assump-
tions underlying heteronormativity (such as discrete sexuality categories and
the gender binary), new homonormative advocacy aimed to maintain these
158 Queer Theory Now

foundations and aim for “equality” within an existing system. Importantly,

homonormativity is not just about maintaining current “norms”, but spe-
cifically is about enshrining neoliberal ideas about what should remain in the
private sphere. In other words, homonormative politics aims to protect the
private rights of LGBTIQ individuals and aims for “equality” in the private
sphere, rather than in the public sphere (Nagle 2018, 79). Homonormative
politics are concerned with individual domestic liberties such as marriage
equality, rather than the collective public issues of Gay Liberation past, such as
around housing, employment and education. As Seidman explains, alongside
greater “gay normalisation” in the 1990s, there was simultaneously a tighten-
ing of other moral codes around sexuality; “a fear that other sexual outsiders
will demand inclusion, further fueling anxieties of impending disorder” (2002,
160–161). Homonormative politics of inclusion necessarily advantage upper-
middle-class, white and otherwise “normative” LGBTIQ persons who already
have a great deal of cultural capital and mobility.

Key concept: Cultural capital

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu coined the term “cultural capital” to account
for the capital that is accumulated and reproduced within certain classes
that is not just “economic” (though the economic and cultural forms are
intimately linked). According to Bourdieu, cultural capital helps to main-
tain class distinctions.
Cultural capital has three forms:

1. Embodied: cultural capital is embodied, insofar as “external wealth

[is] converted into an integral part of the person” (1986, 244–245).
An example of this might be one’s accent, which may identify to
others which region and class one is from.
2. Objectified: cultural capital is objectified when one “owns” certain
cultural objects, and where the owner also possesses the ability to
engage with this on an appropriate symbolic level (such as owning,
interpreting and understanding the value of artworks) (1986,
246).
3. Institutionalised: cultural capital is institutionalised insofar as it is
formally recognised, for example, through an academic certification
(1986, 247).
 Theory Meets Identity 159

Homonormativity is now a widely used term in queer theory. Some have

extended the term; for example, Magdalena Mikulak has proposed the idea
of “godly homonormativity”, that refers to advocacy for LGBT acceptance
within the institution of Christianity (2017, 19). Mikulak’s work on LGBT
politics in Poland suggests that within the context of a neoliberal state and
a mainstream LGBT movement that rejects recognition of religious beliefs,
a strand of LGBT activism has developed that supports inclusion within the
country’s dominant Roman Catholic Church in conservative and homonor-
mative ways.
However, homonormativity is also sometimes employed as a synonym for
“normative”-seeming LGBTIQ persons, rather than persons who express the
kind of “non-political” sentiments that Duggan described. For example, as
Andrew Gorman-Murray (2017) discusses, gay and lesbian “domesticity” (or
home life) has frequently been regarded as emblematic of “homonormativity”.
Yet, attending to the lived experiences of gay and lesbian persons in domestic
settings reveals a more complex picture than simple accounts of mainstream-
ing would suggest. Gorman-Murray suggests that Duggan’s critique is firmly
based within a US-context, and as such misses the nuances of the private
sphere operating in other locations. Gorman-Murray writes: “Quite simply,
some lesbians and gay men desire privacy and domestic ‘comfort’, not to be
‘normal’ but just to be ‘content’ … many remain outside the normative bounds
of neoliberalism, being non-professional, undereducated and reliant on social
welfare” (2017, 155).

Queer theory in practice: Queer Eye for the normative guy

The popular US reality television series show Queer Eye (known in its
earlier form as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) offers a space to explore
issues around homonormativity. In both its older and new versions,
Queer Eye is essentially a “makeover” show, where five gay men trans-
form the looks and lives of (in most cases) straight men. As critics of
the earlier series have suggested, while the show enhances gay visibility
in popular culture, it also promotes neoliberal ideas around personal
improvement and consumption (Sender 2006). Columnist Laurie Penny
describes the new version as the “pornography of emotional labor”
and adds that “Money is the silent sixth member of the rescue squad”
(Penny 2018). Though a beloved show of many, the question remains as
to what is “queer” about Queer Eye.
160 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Homonormativity in Lebanon

While some have critiqued the US-centric basis of Duggan’s theory of
homonormativity, others have deployed the concept to understand
the dynamics of LGBTIQ politics in other locations. For example,
John Nagle (2018) describes the fraught issues of LGBT organising in
Lebanon, where a government power-sharing arrangement organised
along sectarian lines means that there are strong incentives to form
distinct identity-based groups to enable rights-based claims. The issue
here is that this system also often accommodates the views of groups
who advocate against sexual minorities. Nagle describes two different
political responses to this problem:

As rights can only be awarded to distinct communities, some activists

endeavour to construct “groupness”, a unified public identity. Those
opposing the homophobia of power-sharing do so by rejecting its
core logics: groups must form homogenous and distinct communi-
ties. Activists deny this by developing a “non-identarian” politics that
emphasises intersectionality and communal unbecoming. (2018, 86)

Nagle suggests that while the power-sharing system encourages both

homophobia and homonormativity, there are activists who actively
reject these limits through the strategy of “non-groupness” (2018, 86).

One of the most contentious issues involving questions of domesticity and

homonormativity is marriage equality – the legal right of LGBTIQ persons
to marry. This is also often referred to as “same-sex marriage” or “gay mar-
riage”. As Michael Warner writes in his 1999 piece “Beyond Gay Marriage”, the
issue of marriage equality poses questions for the LGBTIQ community around
sex, state interference, normality, mainstreaming and inclusion. As Warner
­suggests, marriage was never historically the focus of Gay Liberation, yet with
increasing liberties and legislative changes in the West the question of mar-
riage equality came to the fore. As historian Graham Willett notes, in Western
countries like Australia, marriage came to be seen as a final legislative bat-
tleground for LGBTIQ advocates (2010, 195). Yet, debate has been split: some
argue that marriage equality leads to further LGBTIQ integration (and sup-
port it on this basis) while others argue this is a profoundly homonormative
assimilatory shift in LGBTIQ life (and oppose it on this basis) (Yep et al. 2003).
 Theory Meets Identity 161

For example, Butler warns that investing in the narrow parameters of “mar-
riage” forecloses other more radical possibilities for sexual life and imagining
kinship, negating the non-biological ties that bind many in the queer commu-
nity (Butler 2002). Butler further suggests:

Variations on kinship that depart from normative, dyadic hetero-sexually

based family forms secured through the marriage vow are figured not only
as dangerous for the child, but perilous to the putative natural and cultural
laws said to sustain human intelligibility. (2002, 16)

In other words, Butler argues that the heteronormative foundation of mar-

riage cements the idea that any family formations that do not fit this logic
are dangerous – and thus, that marriage equality further reinforces this logic.
Amy Brandzel extends this critique, suggesting that the norms institutional-
ised by marriage are also connected to racialised and classed notions of who
belongs to the nation-state, revealing “the state’s interest in promoting the
reproduction of certain kinds of citizens” (2005, 195–196).

From homonormativity to homonationalism

Related to the debate around marriage equality, questions of citizenship have
come to the fore in queer theory in recent years, with many raising questions
about LGBTIQ mainstreaming and the construction of “ideal” (homonorma-
tive) queer citizens. The foundation of this is the concept of the citizen as the
male head of a family household, who is both masculine and heteronormative
(Johnson 2003). Historically, feminist activists have campaigned against this
ideal of the (male) citizen, and have argued for full inclusion, with demands
around issues such as property and voting rights. Similarly, civil rights activ-
ists, LGBTIQ activists, disability advocates and many other groups, have
fought for rights within nation-states that have been limited under narrow
models of citizenship. As Leti Volpp defines:

Citizenship differentiates the citizen from the alien and this refers not only
to civil, political, and social rights; it also concerns membership within the
community of the nation-state. (2017, 155)

The concept of homonormativity underpins the more recent concept of

“homonationalism”, which is designed to address this question of the norma-
tive sexual citizen. In mainstreaming of queer culture under late capitalism,
162 Queer Theory Now

Key concept: Sexual citizenship

The idea of “sexual citizenship” specifically refers to issues around sexu-
ality and reproduction and citizenship, as well as questions around the
citizenship/belonging of various sexual subjects (Volpp 2017, 164–165).
With the emergence of homonormativity and the attendant emphasis
on domesticity, some theorists suggest that there has been a reinvig-
oration of the “private” over the “public” in debates around sexual
citizenship.
For example, Berlant argues that the political has become the per-
sonal, not in the way that feminists originally imagined (“the personal
is political”), but rather, where all politics is directed towards ­individual
and personal concerns, rather than politics concerning the collective
public (Berlant 1997). As McCann further argues, the original ­feminist
sentiment has been distorted into “the personal is the political” where
politics is seen to be done at the level of the body (through style,
­behaviour and so forth) rather than at the level of the collective (2018,
27). Thus, sexual citizenship in neoliberal times refers to a model of nor-
mative belonging that is enacted at the individual level, the ­consequence
of which is moving away from politics of collective struggle.

heteronormativity collides with homonormativity to produce homonational-

ism. Coined by Jasbir Puar, homonationalism refers to how LGBTIQ rights are
utilised and promoted by some nation-states for the purpose of evidencing
progress and exceptionalism, to assist in maintaining border regimes against
certain outside populations. Puar suggests that

[H]omonationalism is fundamentally a critique of how lesbian and gay

liberal rights discourses produce narratives of progress and modernity that
continue to accord some populations access to cultural and legal forms
of citizenship at the expense of the partial and full expulsion from those
rights of other populations. (2013, 25)

Puar’s theory of homonationalism relates sexuality to projects of imperial-

ism and xenophobia, explaining how “collusions” between “homosexuality
and US nationalism” produce violence (Puar 2007, 46). Puar argues that
homonationalism describes how particular notions of “us” versus “them” are
constructed through the state’s invocation of a respectability-based LGBTIQ
 Theory Meets Identity 163

Queer theory in practice: Colonial legacies of homophobia

On 6  September  2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that homo-
sexual acts between adults would no longer be criminalised under
Section  377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). As Jyoti Puri describes,
Section  377 was first introduced in 1860 via British Colonial rule in
India (2016, 4). The change came following decades of grassroots
activism in India around the rights of sexual and gender diverse
minorities.
While laws such as Section  377 have frequently been used in
homonationalist rhetoric as evidence of the relative sexual freedoms of
the West, Section 377 and laws like it are a colonial legacy. Section 377
remains in place across former British colonised countries, including
Singapore, Pakistan and Jamaica.

rights discourse, and used against migrant and other populations who are cast
as “perverse” in orientalist terms (2013, 25). According to Puar, US culture in
particular valorises a particular kind of “acceptable” (but not really “queer”)
queer culture, presenting itself as tolerant and diverse. Puar’s theorising of
homonationalism is part of queer theory’s geopolitical turn, discussed in more
detail in Chapter 7.
Homonationalism, which constructs ideas of ideal citizens, is similar
though different to “pinkwashing”, which refers to actions taken by states to
actively cover up discrimination against LGBTIQ persons through promoting
some gay rights (Puar 2013, 32). In other words, pinkwashing is a propaganda
strategy deployed to distract from LGBTIQ human rights issues through
appealing to some limited gay rights.

WOUNDED ATTACHMENTS

As a new “homonormative” identity politics emerged in the 1990s, so too did

theorists turn to critiques around this new emphasis on individual identity-
based politics. Of particular note is Wendy Brown’s work on what she calls
“wounded attachments” (1993, 1995). Brown argues that a kind of differ-
ence-based “alterity” politics had arisen: those positioned as marginal para-
doxically adopted categorisations of otherness (such as “queer”) in a political
164 Queer Theory Now

move that repeats the rhetoric of difference (Brown 1993, 53). According to
Brown, this categorisation of otherness contributes to the formation of an
excluded and injured sense of self, which sits in contrast to a (fantasy) notion
of a social ideal. She writes, “without recourse to the white masculine middle-
class ideal, politicized identities would forfeit a good deal of their claims to
injury and exclusion, their claims to the political significance of their differ-
ence” (Brown 1995, 61). In other words, identities require a continual ideal
reference point, to maintain coherent (relative) identification. As Stefan
Dolgert explains, “For Brown, the danger is that the wounds scored into us
by bourgeois discipline have become the only thing that liberal selves can
cling to” (2016, 359). Ultimately this obscures the economic operations of
class under capitalism, with minority claim-making based on identities that
effectively bolster capitalism (insofar as they seek equality within the system)
rather than critique it. Brown questions the transformative possibilities of
such claim-making under capitalism, leading her to ask, “what does politi-
cised identity want?” (1995, 62). Here, Brown turns to Friedrich Nietzsche’s
concept of “ressentiment”, which refers to a politics that is founded on ideas
of and attachments to injured subjectivity. The problem with ressentiment,
according to Brown, is that it leads to placing demands on the state to resolve
“deep political stress in a culture”, turning to institutions such as the law to
resolve this crisis (1995, 27). Brown suggests that not only are such strate-
gies impotent for naming the economic dynamics that create this stress, they
reinforce the power of the state rather than challenge it, and only serve to
normalise injured subjects.
Brown has been critiqued for dismissing what is identified as “ressen-
timent” politics, as necessarily bad. As Dolgert suggests, ressentiment
can be utilised: “Maybe what we should be doing is helping to show peo-
ple where to direct their smashing, against whom their rage should be
unleashed, rather than telling them that their rage is uncivilized, barbaric,
reactionary, uncouth” (2016, 365). Similarly, as Debra Thompson argues,
accusations of “ressentiment” are often used against historically dispos-
sessed groups, and that in fact the emotions mistaken for “ressentiment”
(such as anger, rage, resentment) can be politically productive (Thompson
2017, 473).
Brown might also be critiqued for ignoring not only the experience of
identity, but the possibilities of solidarity resulting from injury (i.e., from
what she would call “ressentiment”). For example, Love points out that queer
theory was always intended to create solidarity from the injured: “At its most
expansive, queer studies imagined a federation of the shamed, the alienated,
 Theory Meets Identity 165

the destitute, the illegitimate, and the hated” (2011, 183). As Love also writes
of her identification as a lesbian, “This investment in identity is, I realize, a
wounded attachment. But if an attachment isn’t wounded, what’s the point in
having it?” (2011, 187).

Queer theory in practice: Trigger warnings

Trigger warnings – the verbal or visual warnings given before an
­audience is exposed to content that may provoke negative response –
have become a hot topic in debates around the politics of injury. As Clare
Forstie (2016) describes, trigger warnings came into use in the 1990s,
with the formation of online feminist and similar spaces.
Some queer theorists such as Halberstam (2014) have critiqued
­trigger warnings for reinforcing queer vulnerability and adhering to
neoliberal individualistic politics. He suggests:

[A]s LGBT communities make “safety” into a top priority (and

that during an era of militaristic investment in security regimes)
and ground their quest for safety in competitive narratives about
trauma, the fight against aggressive new forms of exploitation,
global capitalism and corrupt political systems falls by the wayside.
(2014)

Forstie, however, suggests that trigger warnings ought not be so easily

dismissed. She writes:

The queer classroom is fundamentally affective, political, and imbued

with power, and whether trigger warnings enable inclusive and pro-
ductive individual and social change depends on how we frame and
manage the structural and political contexts that run through our
classrooms. (2016, 430)

Forstie suggests that the use of trigger warnings be determined based

on the specific affects, power dynamics and political discourse at play
in one’s classroom. Rather than rejecting trigger warnings altogether,
Forstie encourages us to think about what function such warnings play
in specific contexts.
166 Queer Theory Now

CONNECTIVITY AND TRANSGENDER IDENTITY

While theorists such as Duggan and Brown were concerned with neoliberal
forces, another historic shift was taking place that contributed to new forma-
tions around identity: the rise of the Internet. As Steven Whittle argues,

The growth of home computer use in the 1990s … was crucial to the
development of a new, geographically dispersed, diverse trans community
in the 1990s … Online, this newly formed community was able to discuss
its experiences of fear, shame, and discrimination, and, as a result, many
community members developed newly politicized personal identities.
(2006, xii)

While trans identities of course pre-dated the Internet, the Internet provided
a space and platform for sharing experiences. This new form of connectivity
meant that previously isolated individuals could find networks of like-minded
individuals across the globe. From this, new articulations of identity were
made possible, as people began to cohere around similar life experiences,
desires and understandings. It was during this time that the term “transgen-
der” came to be commonly used as an umbrella term for a range of gender
diverse identities (Williams 2014, 232).
The precise origins of the term transgender are uncertain, but it is known
to have been used as early as the 1960s as a broad way to describe a range of
gender diverse embodiments and experiences (Williams 2014, 233). Some
accounts distinguish between transgender identity as “somebody who perma-
nently change[s] social gender through the public presentation of self, without
recourse to genital transformation” and transsexual identity as “somebody
who permanently change[s] genitals in order to claim membership in a gen-
der other than the one assigned at birth” (Stryker 2006, 4). Others argue that
transgender – often shortened to trans – can be used as an umbrella term
for a wide range of gender diverse identifications, gendered bodily modifica-
tions and expressions (Williams 2014). Today, some theorists and activists
suggest using the term trans* to represent an infinite number of possible
gender embodiments. As Halberstam writes, “This terminology, trans*, stands
at odds with the history of gender variance, which has been collapsed into
concise definitions, sure medical pronouncements, and fierce exclusions”
(2018, 5).
Leslie Feinberg’s 1992 self-published pamphlet “Trans Liberation: A
Movement Whose Time Has Come” is widely cited as influential in early dis-
cussions of transgender activism. Feinberg argued that trans is not simply a
 Theory Meets Identity 167

descriptor but might be a site for collective mobilisation sexuality. On this

issue of gay and lesbian versus trans identity, Feinberg writes:

While oppressions within these two powerful communities are not the
same, we face a common enemy. Gender-phobia – like racism, sexism and
bigotry against lesbians and gay men – is meant to keep us divided. Unity
can only increase our strength. (2013, 206)

Feinberg’s language of “gender-phobia” echoes the now more widely used term
“transphobia”. While we must acknowledge that trans persons may also be gay
or lesbian, and that there may be overlap in these communities, Feinberg’s
point was that the common experience of oppression around gender and sexu-
ality within these groups might be the basis of a shared politics. This idea is
reflected today in the acronym LGBTIQ.
Other theorists such as Susan Stryker have suggested that historically
there was a need during the 1990s to differentiate between mainstream gay
and lesbian politics and the emerging trans politics, given that trans issues

Key term: Cisgender

B. Aultman describes a cisgender person as having gender identity that
is “on the same side as their birth-assigned sex” (2014, 61). Just as the
term “heterosexual” was only coined following that of “homosexual”, so
too did the term “cisgender” emerge following the development of trans
activist discourse around transgender identity in the 1990s.
This reveals that often the unmarked norm is just that: what is
considered “normal” and “natural” is not given a referent in language.
Introducing the language of “cisgender” has been a way to try and
rectify this imbalance, to highlight that trans identity is not more
­
abnormal nor unnatural than any other experience of gender. As
transgender studies theorists remind us, “gender is relevant to every-
one” (Califia 1997, 6).
The term “cisgenderism” refers to discrimination based on privileging
cisgender status over other gender diverse embodiments and identifi-
cations. As Erica Lennon and Brian J. Mistler suggest, “The pervasive
nature of cisgenderism creates, designates, and enforces a hierarchy by
which individuals are expected to conform and are punished if they do
not” (2014, 63).
168 Queer Theory Now

were often sidelined or actively marginalised, within a homonormative politi-

cal landscape. Stryker describes how trans activists began to use the language
of queer for their own purposes, to talk about the radical possibilities opened
up by trans ways of being:

People with trans identities could describe themselves as men and women,
too – or resist binary categorization altogether – but in doing either they
queered the dominant relationship of sexed body and gendered subject.
We drew a distinction between “orientation queers” and “gender queers”.
Tellingly, gender queer, necessary for naming the minoritized/marginalized
position of difference within queer cultural formations more generally, has
stuck around as a useful term; orientation queer, naming queer’s unstated
norm, has seemed redundant in most contexts and has not survived to the
same extent. (Stryker 2008, 147 emphasis in original)

Here Stryker alludes to the fact that trans subjectivity is a challenge to

traditional binary accounts of gender. This point sits in contrast to the
transphobic accusations of radical feminists since the 1970s, that trans
identity reinforces patriarchal notions of gender, as touched on in Chapter 3.
For example, trans writer Kate Bornstein describes their own experience of
being excluded from the feminist community, and the pain of being defined
by others (and not having your own self-identifications recognised) as
such: “They said that I’d been socialised as a male, and could never truly be
a female; that what I was, in fact, was a castrated male” (1994, 50). These
painful exclusionary ideas expressed by some feminists are based on the
incorrect assumption that transgender identity necessarily reinforces fixed
gender roles.

The rise of transgender studies

The transformative possibilities of imagining gender raised via trans identity
meant that trans became a key “example” in some queer theory accounts in
the 1990s. However, these theorisations often occurred without acknowledg-
ing trans people’s lived experiences. As Namaste argued at the time,

[Queer theory] remains incapable of connecting this research to the

­everyday lives of people who identify as transgender, drag queen, and/or
transsexual. Indeed, queer theory refuses transgender subjectivities even
as it looks at them. (1994, 229)
 Theory Meets Identity 169

Queer theory in practice: Street Transvestite Action

Revolutionaries (STAR)
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, both activists who played a key
role in the Stonewall riots described in Chapter  2, formed the group
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in New York in
1970.
The aim of STAR was to provide a space and political platform for
trans sex workers at risk of homelessness and police violence. An early
trans activist group, STAR was connected within a broader context
of resistance, including Gay Liberation and anti-racist movements.
As Roderick A. Ferguson describes: “STAR attempted to radicalize
transgender difference into a social mode that would challenge systemic
forms of homophobic and transphobic violence and poverty” (2019,
33–34). STAR clashed with mainstream Gay Liberation organising at
the time, particularly given the transphobia expressed by some lesbian
feminists within the broader movement.
Today, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project exists in tribute to Rivera, which
takes an intersectional approach to legal reform and fights for justice for
the gender diverse community, based in New York.

Namaste accuses queer theory of only taking up trans for discussion insofar
as “transgender people are only looked at, observed, scrutinised, and spo-
ken about” (Namaste 1996, 196). Here, Butler’s discussion of drag in Gender
Trouble (1999), and trans subjectivity more specifically in her later work
(Butler 1993, 2004b), came under a large amount of scrutiny, as discussed in
Chapter 5.
Following these critiques, transgender studies has emerged as a field of
study in its own right. Stryker suggests that even though the field shares a
similar history drawing on feminism and sexuality studies, transgender stud-
ies is “queer theory’s evil twin” (2004, 212). Transgender studies specifically
places experiences of trans identity and embodiment at its centre. Yet, as
Stryker describes, the implications of this field are broad:

Ultimately, it is not just transgender phenomena per se that are of interest,

but rather the manner in which these phenomena reveal the operations of
systems and institutions that simultaneously produce various possibilities
170 Queer Theory Now

of viable personhood, and eliminate others. Thus the field of transgender

studies, far from being an inconsequentially narrow specialization dealing
only with a rarified population of transgender individuals … represents a
significant and ongoing critical engagement with some of the most trench-
ant issues in contemporary humanities, social science and biomedical
research. (2006, 3–4 emphasis in original)

Much of this work engages critically with both biologistic essentialist and
simple social constructivist accounts of gender. As Julia Serano notes, neither
biological nor social constructivist accounts alone do justice to the lived expe-
rience of trans life (2007, 234).
However, as the field of transgender studies began to grow, some also ques-
tioned the theory of gender informing these discussions. As Lucy Nicholas

Queer theory in practice: Serano’s Whipping Girl

Transgender studies have been crucial for highlighting the limits of
feminist and queer theory accounts that preceded the field. One key
example of this is Serano’s work on experiences of femininity, which she
argues has been marginalised in both feminist and queer history:

[P]eople who are feminine, whether they be female, male, and/or

transgender, are almost universally demeaned compared with their
masculine counterparts. This scapegoating of those who express fem-
ininity can be seen not only in the male-centered mainstream, but in
the queer community, where “effeminate” gay men have been accused
of holding back the gay rights movement, and where femme dykes
have been accused of being the Uncle Toms of the lesbian movement.
(2007, 5)

Serano suggests that the emphasis on femininity as always already

subordinate to masculinity has marginalised many LGBTIQ people
for whom feminine embodiment is a central part of their gender
­expression. The term “femmephobia” is sometimes used to describe
discrimination (Blair and Hoskin 2015). Serano’s work has been key in
opening up new perspectives on femininity in both LGBTIQ communi-
ties and in academic discussions of gender.
 Theory Meets Identity 171

argues, a fixed idea of the gender binary – as two distinct genders (male/
female) – underpins many discussions of trans identity. Nicholas states:

[T]he limits of these models tend to be the separation of gender from

biological sex, resulting in a fixed category of masculine/feminine gender
not continuous with male/ female sex, or the idea of an expansion of gen-
der displays such that this is more variable, but still with a fixed, binary
bodily sex … these accounts tend to assume that these models could be
implemented on an individual level, downplaying the weight of social and
cultural attribution in sex/gender identity, and overemphasising how vol-
untaristic this process could be. (2014, 25)

As some trans theorists suggest, articulating trans identity is fraught because

while essentialist accounts offer limited visions of the gender binary, they also
often allow for greater recognition, access to medical interventions and more.
As Sandy Stone remarks, “What is gained is acceptability in society. What is
lost is the ability to authentically represent the complexities and ambiguities
of lived experience” (1991, 295).
Indeed, a “wrong body” discourse (the idea that trans identity is simply
about being born into an incorrect body), emerged in mainstream accounts of
trans experience, that has been reiterated in medical gatekeeping around trans
identity. J. R. Latham describes this as a “feedback loop” between medicine
and how trans people experience their identity, where the self-description nec-
essary to access to medicine and surgery reinforces a narrow range of ways of
talking about trans experiences (2018, 4). Legal theorists such as Dean Spade
(2003) have also pointed out the double standards applied to trans people

Queer theory in practice: The problem of “recognition”

In his examination of contemporary trans politics, Dean Spade (2015)
suggests that demands centred on “equality” and “recognition” are lim-
ited insofar as they rely on the nation-state as arbiter. Echoing Brown’s
arguments from the 1990s, Spade argues that reform-focused politics
reinforce the existing system. He draws on Critical Race Theory’s
­challenge to biologically essentialist ideas and suggests that a more
transformative trans politics or “critical trans analysis” is needed that
moves beyond the paradigm of “recognition”.
172 Queer Theory Now

who may wish to seek surgical interventions versus cisgender people who
may elect to undergo purely cosmetic procedures such as breast augmentation.
While the former requires persons to jump over various legal, psychological,
medical and social hurdles to obtain surgery, cisgender women are culturally
encouraged and supported to undergo surgery to align with feminine ideals.

Phenomenology and the lived body

The limits of both biologistic and social constructivist accounts in under-
standing trans identity bring to the fore the importance of phenomenologi-
cal approaches in transgender studies. Originating in philosophical writing
from Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2010) and others in the early twentieth cen-
tury, phenomenology is useful as it takes into account subjective embodied
experience without reliance on essentialist notions. In 1998, Henry S. Rubin
first described the usefulness of phenomenology to trans studies. As Rubin
defines, “phenomenology takes it as a matter of fact that essences are always
already constituted in relationship to embodied subjectivity, hence they are
unnatural and malleable” (1998, 267). Phenomenology emphasises experi-
ence as it is “lived” (Kruks 2014, 75), and in this way is seen by some as an
antidote to the limits of queer theory which often overlooks the question of
experience in favour of deconstruction. Prosser, for example, claims that it
is the “bodiliness” of some trans experiences that show queer theory’s limits
(Prosser 1998, 6).
Phenomenology has been taken up by some transgender studies
scholars as a dynamic framework for understanding the centrality of
embodiment and bodies in many trans accounts. As Rubin further adds:
“Phenomenology recognizes the circumscribed agency of embodied sub-
jects who mobilize around their body image to sustain their life projects”
(1998, 271). Describing the application of a phenomenological approach to
trans subjectivity, Ulrica Engdahl argues that the “wrong body” discourse
might be adapted to better account for the complexity of the body as it is
“lived”:

Wrong body as lived body expresses the situatedness of trans body expe-
rience as wrong, hence relativizing it. Wrong body as trans embodiment
expresses subjectively felt bodily meaning interacting with cultural inter-
pretations of bodies, where the subjective and the cultural are not always
congruent. This way the gender binary is replaced with gender variance as a
frame for understanding gender, offering a more fluid understanding of the
trans body. (2014, 269)
 Theory Meets Identity 173

Such an approach stresses that bodies are at once socially constituted and the
site of identity and sense of self. As Sonia Kruks describes, “one’s body is also
one’s mode of ‘being-in-the-world’: it is the site of both one’s lived experience
and one’s particular style of acting, and of expressing and communicating who
one is” (2014, 85). Importantly, this approach to trans subjectivity does not
see “lived experience” as diametrically opposed to “theories” of gender – or
what Gayle Salamon describes as “[a] call for a return to ‘real’ gender” (2010,
71). While some theorists such as Prosser have been critiqued for opposing
“transgender” to “queer” (Hale 1998, 340), phenomenological accounts help to
illuminate the value of subjective embodied experience in theorising gender.

Transnormativity and the issue of representation

Following the language of heteronormativity and homonormativity,
“transnormativity” has been proposed to delineate trans identity formations
that bolster fixed notions of gender that undermine more transformative
understandings. As Austin H. Johnson suggests:

Transnormativity … is a hegemonic ideology that structures transgen-

der experience, identification, and narratives into a hierarchy of
legitimacy that is dependent upon a binary medical model and its accompa-
nying standards, regardless of individual transgender people’s interest in or
intention to undertake medical pathways to transition. (2016, 466)

Since the 1990s, awareness of trans identity has become increasingly mainstream,
leading the USA’s Time magazine to announce in 2014 that “the transgender tip-
ping point” was upon us (Steinmetz 2014). The visibility of some trans celebrities,
such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, is often used as evidence of this “tipping
point”, yet some theorists have warned that conservative figures such as Jenner
have been key in promoting transnormative ideas (McIntyre 2018).
Along these lines, there have been critiques of those who wish to “pass”
and “fade into the woodwork” rather than become trans activists, for some
time (Califia 1997, 225). This debate raises similar concerns to those around
homonormativity – are those who seek “normality” (or what others might
call “assimilation”) a problem? This conundrum raises broader issues around
speaking, who can speak on behalf of marginalised groups, and what the value
of representation of marginal identities is in the first place. While mainstream
media have announced a “transgender tipping point”, trans celebrities do not
necessarily represent the interests of all transgender people (many of whom do
174 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Halberstam’s Female Masculinity

Halberstam’s (1998) Female Masculinity is a key text that reimagines the
possibilities of untying masculinity (and thus also femininity) from its
presumed “biological” basis. Drawing on several popular film and tel-
evision texts and drag king performance artists, this work was not only
an important precursor for many discussions about diverse gendered
embodiments and styles, but has also influenced the field of masculinity
studies. As Halberstam suggests: “[F]ar from being an imitation of male-
ness, female masculinity actually affords us a glimpse of how masculinity
is constructed as masculinity” (1998, 1).
One example that Halberstam offers of “female masculinity” is the
1953 Hollywood film Calamity Jane, that features Doris Day as a “butch
cowgirl” (as Halberstam puts it) (1998, 209). Halberstam’s reading of
Calamity as “butch” suggests a queer reading strategy: through under-
standing that stylisations of female masculinity rupture gender expecta-
tions, we are given a way to “see” queerness where we might not see it
before.

not share the same values or desires to present/embody their gender in the
same ways). Yet, some may rightly point out that these same trans celebrities
have helped to raise the profile and awareness of trans issues, and that this rep-
resentation – albeit limited – matters.

Non-binary identity
Alongside discussions around trans identification, new terminology has come
into use to describe different experiences of gender. The use of the term “non-
binary” is relatively recent, particularly in academia, with terminology around
genderqueerness/genderfluidity preceding it. As Christina Richards, Walter
Pierre Bouman and Meg-John Barker note, 2016 saw the first academic
conference, PhD thesis and journal special issue dedicated to non-binary
(2017, 2). They define non-binary identity as encompassing a wide range of
subjectivities:

In general, non-binary or genderqueer refers to people’s identity,

rather than physicality at birth; but it does not exclude people who are
 Theory Meets Identity 175

intersex … Whatever the birth physicality, there are non-binary peo-

ple who identify as a single fixed gender position other than male or
female. There are those who have a fluid gender. There are those who
have no gender. And there are those who disagree with the very idea of
gender. (Richards, Bouman and Barker 2017, 5)

Here we must recall that the gender binary as discussed by Butler and oth-
ers is a distinctly Western construct, and that there is a long history of
non-Western alternative gender identities. These include hijra (South Asia),
kathoey (Thailand), waria (Indonesia), two-spirit (North America), machi
(Chile and Argentina) and many more terms and identifications. Crucially,
while contemporary Western frameworks separate gender and sexuality, in
many other contexts these distinctions are not so clear. As Ben Vincent and
Ana Manzano suggest, “Gender variance and sexuality are now conceived
separately in a Western context, but historically and cross-culturally they have
been entwined” (2017, 26). Scholars suggest that the binary man/woman is a
relatively recent Western concept, and that Western frameworks cannot sim-
ply be used to understand experiences of gender diversity in other contexts
(Richards et al. 2017, 6).
The language of non-binary identities emerged in the West as a result of
growing awareness of trans identity, illustrated in 2014 when social media
corporation Facebook introduced multiple gender options on their platform.
With growing awareness around non-binary conceptions of gender in the
West, many within trans communities have welcomed the terminology to help
describe complex and sometimes ambivalent relationships to existing gender
frameworks. Richards, Bouman and Barker suggest that

[W]hilst relatively few people may identify as non-binary (to the point of
using a non-binary gender label or refusing to tick the “male/female” box
on a form), many more people experience themselves in non-binary ways.
(2017, 6)

Their point here is to suggest that the language of non-binary does not
only articulate an identity position (from which one might make claims,
such as the right to change one’s gender to “X” on a passport), it also
describes a way of relating to the gender binary that is broader than this.
As Richards, Bouman and Barker suggest, many people feel removed or
alienated from the strict norms suggested by the binary man/woman and
have “non-binary” experiences of their own gender as it is embodied and
lived.
176 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Waria identity in Indonesia

The language of gender diversity differs worldwide. One example is waria
identity in Indonesia, a term which combines the Indonesian words for
woman (wanita) and man (pria). Western scholarship and media fre-
quently represents waria in terms of transgender identity – however,
waria cannot simply be collapsed under this language. Research shows
that waria-identifying persons often use the language of “transgender” in
specific reference to (youthful) periods in their life course which involved
moving to cities, where “transgender” was a term used in reference to
sex work. For waria, “The distinction over whether one is transgender or
not boils down to participation in national and transnational sex work”
(Hegarty 2017, 74). This use of language reveals the way that gendered
terms migrate across borders and are taken up in specific ways.

CONCLUSION: WHERE TO NOW FOR POSTIDENTITY POLITICS?

This chapter has explored some of the tensions that have emerged between
queer theory and emerging articulations of sexual and gender diverse identi-
ties in the West. While the queer theory critiques of identity politics outlined
at the beginning of this chapter pose significant questions to newly prolifer-
ated identifications, areas of discussion such as transgender studies offer dif-
ferent ways to think through questions of lived experience and identity.
Theorists such as Puar even suggest that we ought to bring in ideas around
materiality and “assemblage theory” to try and deconstruct identities in a way

Key concept: Assemblage

Assemblage is a theoretical term most notably used by Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari (1987). The idea of assemblage places emphasis on notions
of becoming, process, connection and transformation. As Kennedy et al.
describe: “assemblage refers to complex flows, connections and becom-
ings that emerge and disperse relationally between bodies” (Kennedy
et  al. 2013, 46). While that may sound like a rather obtuse definition,
assemblage can be useful for thinking through how things, feelings,
objects, events and other ephemera, are both connected and dynamic.
 Theory Meets Identity 177

that does not simply reify discrete identity categories. Puar suggests that tak-
ing a material assemblage approach might enable us to see:

There is no entity, no identity, no queer subject to queer, rather queerness

coming forth at us from all directions, screaming its defiance, suggesting a
move from intersectionality to assemblage, an affective conglomeration that
recognizes other contingencies of belonging (melding, fusing, viscosity, bounc-
ing) that might not fall so easily into what is sometimes denoted as reactive
community formations – identity politics – by control theorists. (2007, 211)

As Puar highlights here, rather than thinking about identity politics in terms
of “identity” (which only reinforces discrete categories), we might instead turn
to “assemblage” to help understand the material elements of belonging (the
way things feel, embodiment and so forth) that cannot be reduced to identity
in any discrete categorical form. As Anzaldúa similarly suggests, “Identity is a
river – a process. Contained within the river is identity and it needs to flow,
to change to stay a river” (2009, 166). Introducing other frameworks – such
as assemblage theory, or phenomenological approaches – offers additional
frameworks for extending queer theory’s capacity for critique.

Further reading
Jasbir Puar. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer
Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Puar’s germinal work unpacks the construction of the figure of the
terrorist in Western society, exploring how this is entangled with
­
homonationalist rhetoric. Drawing on Deleuze and assemblage theory,
Puar offers a unique intervention into “identity politics”.
Susan Stryker, and Steven Whittle (eds.). (2006). The Transgender Stud-
ies Reader. New York and London: Routledge.
This is a key collection of early texts in the field of transgender studies
that shows the breadth of ideas in the field, and its aspirations for criti-
cal intervention.
Christina Richards, Walter Pierre Bouman, and Meg-John Barker (eds.).
(2017). Genderqueer and Non-Binary Genders. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
This collection provides an invaluable discussion of non-binary identities (and
related identities), which have been oft neglected in academic discussions.
178 Queer Theory Now

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• What are the specific political underpinnings of “homonormativity”? Can

you think of anything that is often called “homonormativity” that might
not reflect the politics that Duggan was originally referring to?
• What do critiques of “identity politics” look like today? How are these
critiques articulated, and whose political agenda do they tend to support
(even if accidentally)?
• What challenge do transgender studies pose for queer theory critiques of
identity? How might trans accounts extend queer theory?

Recommended films
All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar 1999). This film explores
issues of gender, grief and motherhood, and addresses complex ques-
tions about sexuality, trans identity and kinship.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell 2001). This cult
rock comedy-musical follows the life of the queer character Hedwig,
born in East Germany. The film explores political issues around Western
culture and gender identity, and the complex relationship between drag,
performance, trans identity and the lived experience of gender. Stryker
describes this film as “[exploring] shift in post-cold war possibilities for
gendered embodiment” (2006, 8).

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan 2018). Based on

the young adult novel of the same name, the film centres on the experi-
ences of a young white woman, Cameron Post, who is sent to a Christian
gay conversion therapy centre. The film features a diverse cast and
touches on the intersections of sexuality and disability, religion, race
and two-spirit identity.
7  Negotiating Intersections

KEY TERMS queer(s) of colour critique, whiteness, disidentification,

AND Quare Theory, geopolitical, diaspora, Indigenous stud-
CONCEPTS ies, decolonise, Marxism, affect theory, ontology, queer
failure, disability studies

THE PROBLEM OF ERASING DIFFERENCE

How have theorists used queer theory in areas beyond the study of sex, gen-
der, sexuality and identity? How have intersections between queer theory and
other theoretical frameworks been negotiated? How does contemporary queer
theory respond to the idea that subjectivity, identity, privilege and oppres-
sion may be constituted through multiple axes? Addressing these questions,
in this chapter we consider how queer theory relates to other key theories in
gender studies and beyond, including disability studies, postcolonial theory,
Indigenous studies, affect theory and more. We also examine critiques of
queer theory, which suggest that queer studies reified a universal (white, able-
bodied, middle-class, cisgender, male homosexual) subject (see Bérubé 2010).
Highlighting the resilience and flexibility of queer theory, we demonstrate
how many queer theorists have embraced intersectionality to extend the field.
Drawing on a diverse range of theorists, this chapter turns towards a more
substantial discussion of places where queer theory meets other frameworks.
While this is not an exhaustive list of places that queer theory intersects with
other theoretical lenses, it does highlight several significant avenues of con-
temporary queer thought.
Queer theory, at its best, may resist the conflation of sex, gender and
sexuality, normativity and assimilation, rigid binaries and hierarchies of
power, and identity categories. However, paradoxically this insistence upon
an anti-foundational, anti-identity, anti-normativity ethos, may at its worst
result in a tendency to reify a relatively closed-off universal queer subject.
As Sullivan notes, both queer theory and queer politics have been accused of
being “informed by, and inform[ing], an overly simplistic definition between
what or who is deemed to be queer, and what or who is not” (2003, 48). Other

179
180 Queer Theory Now

critiques argue that queer theory largely deals with middle-class issues from
middle-class perspectives, and/or neglects class altogether (Taylor 2018).
As outlined in Chapter 3, we can understand intersectionality theory in
the context of the history of feminist theory. We have already noted many of
the intersectional critiques of queer theory throughout this book. For exam-
ple, as discussed in Chapter 2, lesbian feminism takes aim at the foreground-
ing of gay male experience within queer studies, critiquing queer theory’s
ability to deal with the specificity of gender. As also discussed in Chapter 6,
transgender studies theorists have raised questions about the way that trans
bodies are “used” by queer theory without taking trans lived experience into
account. Throughout we have noted the largely US-centric origins of queer
theory in terms of its articulation, and the issues of race and location that
this raises. The relationship between queer theory and the politics of race is
particularly fraught given that the categories of sexuality and race are often
thought about separately. As we discuss, the problem with some attempts
to account for race, gender, class and more in queer theory, has been to seg-
ment these dimensions of oppression, rather than understand how these
are intimately interconnected, or as Ferguson describes, “forms of struggle
and modes of oppression are necessarily interlocking” (2018, 3, emphasis in
original).
In what would later be known as the “queer(s) of colour critique”, academics
and activists in the 1990s challenged the separation of race and sexuality,
critiquing the implicit whiteness of queer theory and questioning its revolu-
tionary potential within and beyond the academy. Barbara Smith’s 1993 essay
“Queer Politics: Where’s the Revolution?” argues that queer politics and theory
had lost the radical and revolutionary potential of earlier movements because
it focused only on singular forms of oppression:

Unlike the early lesbian and gay movement, which had both ideological
and practical links to the left, black activism and feminism, today’s “queer”
politicos seem to operate in a historical and ideological vacuum. “Queer”
activists focus on “queer” issues, and racism, sexual oppression and eco-
nomic exploitation do not qualify, despite the fact that the majority of
“queers” are people of color, female or working class … Building unified,
ongoing coalitions that challenge the system and ultimately prepare a way
for a revolutionary change simply isn’t what “queer” activists have in mind.
(Smith 1993, 13–14)

Similarly, in 1994, Sagri Dhairyam challenged the singular focus and implicit
whiteness of queer in her essay “Racing the lesbian, dodging white critics”, in
 Negotiating Intersections 181

which she argued that queer theory had coalesced around questions of sexual
difference and sexuality at the expense of questions of race. As she writes:

“Queer Theory” comes increasingly to be reckoned with as a critical dis-

course, but concomitantly writes a queer whiteness over raced queerness; it
domesticates race in its elaboration of sexual difference. (1994, 26)

Ruth Goldman’s 1996 essay, “Who is that Queer Queer? Exploring Norms
Around Sexuality, Race, and Class in Queer Theory”, notes how queer theory
produces its own normalising rhetoric which limits what or who is understood
as queer. Goldman suggests inconsistencies between the allure of queer the-
ory and its dominant applications in the mid-1990s, writing:

[W]hen I came across the term “queer theory,” I thought I had finally found
my academic home, a theoretical space in which my voice would be wel-
come. Because I understood the term “queer” to represent any number of
intersecting anti-normative identities, I expected queer theory to provide an
appropriate framework in which to continue my explorations of the inter-
sections between representations of race, sexuality and gender … However, I
found that it was very difficult to apply existing queer theory … without col-
lapsing some of the very nuances that I was trying to highlight. (1996, 169)

Academics and activists working through queer theory’s critical lens have
increasingly turned to intersectionality as a means of addressing some of these
problems of erasing difference evident in queer theory’s historical articulation.

Key term: Whiteness

Whiteness studies are about analysing and critiquing the dominance
of whiteness, an otherwise unmarked norm, and centring this in cri-
tique rather than always focusing on a non-white racialised “other”. As
Damien Riggs explains, the aim is to challenge whiteness as a norm: “To
queer whiteness is thus both to speak of it, and in so speaking to remark
upon the oddness of the fact that it must be explicitly spoken of in order
to be challenged” (2010, 347). Whiteness cannot be simply understood
as an individual quality, but rather, a macropolitical issue integral to
“operations of empire and colonialism” (Pugliese and Stryker 2009, 4).
Critical whiteness studies as a field is concerned with issues of how rac-
ism is related to whiteness, white privilege and white supremacy.
182 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Intersectionality applied

Many interpretations of intersectionality have arisen since Crenshaw’s
original article discussed in Chapter 3. However, as Patricia Hill Collins
(2011, 88) describes, there are several shared aspects to the way
that intersectionality is often applied. As she outlines, intersectional
approaches are concerned with looking at:

1. “how race, class, gender and sexuality constitute intersecting

systems of power” – that is, power operates on multiple axes rather
than a single axis (e.g., we should not just focus on gender);
2. “how specific social inequalities reflect these power relations
from one setting to the next” – that is, different contexts mean
different axes may be more or less relevant, producing site-specific
inequalities (e.g., a gay man might be disadvantaged among straight
men but advantaged among other LGBTIQ persons);
3. “how identities of race, gender, are socially constructed within
multiple systems of power” – that is, subjects are produced in
relation to these inequalities (e.g., “the Black lesbian”);
4. “how social problems and their remedies are similarly constructed
within intersecting systems of power” – that is, analysing how power
operates on multiple axes also helps us understand how to challenge
this system.

These typical aspects of intersectionality theory in application are use-

ful particularly for challenging the ideas that it is a mere “buzzword”.
Morphing from its specific use in the field of legal theory to a more
general application, intersectionality is now understood as “a method
and a disposition, a heuristic and analytic tool” (Carbado et  al. 2013,
303). As Hill Collins writes, intersectionality functions as a field of
study, a framework for analysis and as “critical praxis” where it is taken
up in activism (2015, 3).

INTERSECTIONALITY OR DECONSTRUCTION?

As discussed in Chapter  3, intersectionality theory extended earlier Black

feminist critiques and provided a new framework for thinking about how
power operates via multiple axes. In 1991, Crenshaw elaborated on her
 Negotiating Intersections 183

initial definition and use of the term, suggesting it as a means of enhancing

the organising principles of community and activist groups. In “Mapping the
Margins”, she writes, “identity-based politics has been a source of strength,
community, and intellectual development” but it is troublesome for the way
that “it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences” (1991, 1242).
Crenshaw’s call to extend and complexify identity politics nonetheless relies
on the idea of identity-based organising, which has often been a point of con-
tention in queer theorising, as discussed throughout Chapter 6. Here we see
a contrast between intersectional and deconstructionist approaches – while
the former tends to complexify subjectivity, the latter tends to challenge the
notion of a subject altogether.
Crenshaw saw intersectionality not as a tool for deconstructing sub-
ject positions, but specifically as a means of addressing the problem of
­single-identity-based organising, “a way of mediating the tension between
assertions of multiple identities and the ongoing necessity of group politics”
(1991, 1296). Here, intersectionality is called upon as a means of re-thinking
social and political coalitions. Crenshaw also encourages us to re-think or
problematise the identities and communities that seem like “home” to us,
acknowledging other parts of our identities that may be excluded.
Particularly relevant for thinking about the relationship between intersec-
tionality and queer theory, is Crenshaw’s distinction between intersectional-
ity and postmodern anti-essentialism. Crenshaw argued that postmodern
approaches often elide the specificity of marginalisation. As an example of
this she gestures to the crude anti-essentialist argument that “since all catego-
ries are socially constructed there is no such thing as, say, Blacks or women,
and thus it makes no sense to continue reproducing those categories by organ-
ising around them”, but reminds us, “to say that a category such as race or
gender is socially constructed is not to say that category has no significance
on our world” (Crenshaw 1991, 1296). This is not to misconstrue queer theory
as necessarily involving a “social constructivist” position (a characterisation
that theorists such as Butler and Sedgwick would reject), but rather to high-
light the possible tensions between intersectional and (postmodern) queer
theorising.

AN INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH TO QUEER THEORY

Cohen’s 1997 essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” was one of the
first to take up Crenshaw’s articulation of intersectionality to challenge the
single-axis approach of queer politics (which, in turn, had implications for
184 Queer Theory Now

queer theorising). Cohen argued that intersectionality was a useful tool for
queer politics, which had organised around sexuality for much of the 1990s.
As Cohen writes:

Undoubtedly, within different contexts various characteristics of our

total being – for example, race, gender, class, sexuality – are highlighted
or called upon to make sense of a particular situation. However, my
concern is centered on those individuals who consistently activate only
one characteristic of their identity, or a single perspective of conscious-
ness, to organize their politics, rejecting any recognition of the multiple
and intersecting systems of power that largely dictate our life chances.
(1997, 440)

Queer theory in practice: Intersectionality and queer politics

Cohen argues that queer politics is frequently “coded with class, gender,
and race privilege” (1997, 449), and advocates for intersectionality as
a means of addressing this. Cohen (1997, 441–446) suggests that an
intersectional queer approach might enable:

1. better understanding the limits of political identities that might

inadvertently exclude others who stand outside norms (e.g., we need
to broaden what “queerness” means);
2. the tools to recognise intersecting oppressions and to understand
how these intersections limit or provide access to power (e.g., we
need to look at who has easy access to state resources and who does
not within queer communities, and the factors that contribute to
this);
3. an understanding of how heteronormativity is not separate from
institutional racism, patriarchy or class exploitation, but interacts
with these forms of oppression (e.g., we should question how
people within the queer community experience different forms of
interconnected oppression).

In other words, Cohen contends that intersectionality helps us to

extend our thinking around identity, power and oppression, to radically
transform queer political approaches.
 Negotiating Intersections 185

In 1997, around the same time as Cohen’s call for queer politics to embrace
intersectionality, the journal Social Text published a special issue on “Queer
Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender” edited by Phillip Brian Harper,
Anne McClintock, José Esteban Muñoz and Trish Rosen. Rather than criti-
quing the existing field of queer theory, the volume explicitly sought to locate
productive interstices of queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonial
studies. While not all of its articles explicitly negotiated Crenshaw’s version of
intersectionality, they all addressed broader intersectional ideas.
Beginning the project of re-thinking queer through intersectionality, they
argued that queer theory could move beyond sexuality to also address ques-
tions of nationality, gender, race and class. Articles in the volume put queer
theory into conversation with questions of “racial identity and diaspora,
nationalism and border panic, AIDS and social normativity, drag performance
and transsexualism, privacy and public space” (Harper et  al. 1997, 1). As
Harper, McClintock, Muñoz and Rosen note in their introduction, the volume
sought to harness “the critical potential of queer theory” to show how multi-
ple axes of social experience “can cut across or transect one another” (Harper
et al. 1997, 1). The authors challenged queer theory’s seemingly singular focus
on sexuality in order to think broadly about social experience.
Nearly a decade later, Social Text again took up the question of queer inter-
sectionality as part of a special issue published in 2005. In the introduction,
editors David Eng, Halberstam and Muñoz question “what’s queer about
queer studies now?” Noting that queer theory has historically shied away from
broaching wide-ranging social issues, the authors stress the importance of
asking questions such as:

What does queer studies have to say about empire, globalization, neolib-
eralism, sovereignty, and terrorism? What does queer studies tell us about
immigration, citizenship, prisons, welfare, mourning, and human rights?
(Eng, Halberstam and Muñoz 2005, 2)

Much like 1997’s “Queer Transexions”, the authors offer not simply a critique
of the field, but rather, attempt to illuminate the potential of queer inter-
sectionality while mapping out some of queer theory’s recent intersectional
developments. Specifically, the editors argued that an intersectional approach
in which queer is employed as “a political metaphor without a fixed referent”
(i.e., “queer” ought not solely imply sexuality) (Eng et al. 2005, 2). They sug-
gest that this imagining of queer might offer a means of addressing an array
of late twentieth-century global crises. They suggest queer theory as a “sub-
jectless critique”, which sits in continuous tension with identity politics:
186 Queer Theory Now

What might be called the “subjectless” critique of queer studies disallows

any positing of a proper subject of or object for the field by insisting that
queer has no fixed political referent … A subjectless critique establishes …
a focus on a “wide field of normalisation” as the site of social violence. (Eng
et al. 2005, 3)

Despite the continuing tensions of the meaning of “identity” within intersec-

tionality and queer theory, intersectional queer approaches promise a move
beyond single-axis analysis. However, more than simply adding additional
categories of marginality to our existing frameworks, Cho et al. (2013) suggest
we could view intersectionality as a sensibility:

[W]hat makes an analysis intersectional is not its use of the term “intersec-
tionality,” nor its being situated in a familiar genealogy, nor its drawing on
lists of standard citations. Rather, what makes an analysis intersectional …
is its adoption of an intersectional way of thinking about the problem of
sameness and difference and its relation to power. (Cho et al. 2013, 795)

As Notisha Massaquoi argues, combining queer theory with this intersec-

tional sensibility and vice versa opens up the possibilities for articulating
lived experiences of the intersections of gender, race, sexuality and so forth
(Massaquoi 2015, 765). Refracted through intersectionality, queer theory
might better understand “queer subjects”, even as it aims for a “subjectless”
critique. From this perspective, intersectionality might ground queer theory
in the material conditions and lived experience of difference, while queer
theory might deepen intersectionality’s critical engagement with subjectivity.

Key debate: A queer critique of intersectionality

Taking an intersectional approach to queer theory today is not uncon-
tested. For Puar, “intersectional identitarian models” are limited “however
queer they may be” (2007, 204). She explains why via three interrelated
critiques:

Critique 1: Intersectionality centralises white women’s experience

Puar describes how intersectionality has been dominantly employed to
disrupt the whiteness of feminist discourse. However, she argues that
 Negotiating Intersections 187

it has actually had the opposite effect, instead working to centralise the
experience of white women. What Puar suggests here is that intersection-
ality creates a problematic model of subjectivity by focusing on “difference
from” rather than “difference within”, establishing white womanhood as
a norm and othering women of colour (WOC) by defining them via their
“difference from” this norm (2012a, 53).

Critique 2: Intersectionality is based on stable and knowable identities

While intersectionality seeks to recognise difference within social
groups and categories of identity, queer theory seeks to denaturalise
such categorisations. Yet as Puar notes, intersectionality is based not
only on recognising difference, but also on fixing it into a stable form.
As she writes:

Intersectionality demands the knowing, naming, and thus stabilizing

of identity across space and time, relying on the logic of equivalence
and analogy between various axes of identity. (2007, 212)

A similar argument has been put forward by Grosz, who describes inter-
sectionality as “a gridlike model that fails to account for the mutual
constitution and indeterminacy of embodied configurations of gender,
sexuality, race, class, and nation” (1994, 19).

Critique 3: Intersectionality allows/produces state violence

Similarly to Brown’s critique of identity politics discussed in Chapter 6,
Puar argues that because intersectionality insists upon a knowable and
stable subject it reifies the mechanisms of power that confer subject sta-
tus in the first place. Intersectional approaches to identity fit comfort-
ably with state operations of surveillance. As Puar writes:

[I]ntersectionality colludes with the disciplinary apparatus of the

state –census, demography, racial profiling, surveillance – in that
difference is encased within a structural container that simply wishes
the messiness of identity into a formulaic grid. (2007, 212)

Puar suggests that intersectionality’s focus on defined and neat

­categories of difference (or axes) aligns with the understanding of iden-
tity that underpins acts of state violence such as racial profiling.
188 Queer Theory Now

NEW AVENUES FOR QUEER THEORY

Throughout the 2000s, many new applications, reinterpretations and

appropriations of queer theory critique emerged. A significant body of work
crossed disciplinary boundaries, bringing queer theory into conversation
with a range of different social issues. This included a broad range of queer
theory reflections on the intersections of gender, class, race and sexuality
across issues of identity, nation, citizenship and belonging (see Delany 1999;
Eng 2001; Fiol-Matta 2002; Muñoz 1999; Reid-Pharr 2001). In the wake
of this, diverse theoretical approaches to queer theory began to prolifer-
ate. While the term “intersectionality” refers to an analytical framework to
explore the multiple axes of identity, subjectivity and social formation, we
can also use the term “intersection” to refer to instances where one theoreti-
cal frame meets another. As discussed below, these theoretical trajectories
have included work between queer theory and Critical Race Studies which
produced Black Queer Studies and queer analyses of race; queer theory’s
geopolitical turn, focused on issues including migration and diaspora; queer
Indigenous studies; queer theory’s ontological turn, focused on issues includ-
ing materiality, affect, and a turn away from representation; intersections
between Marxism and queer theory; and deployments of disability studies
with queer theory.

Queer theory in practice: Queering the curriculum part 1

There are many intersections of queer theory that emerge where the
critical perspectives and analytical frameworks of queer theory have
been taken up in other areas of study. Some of these intersections do
take on intersectional ideas (in Crenshaw’s terms) though they do not
always employ intersectionality as an organising principle.

Queer education
Queer theory has been used within the field of education studies to help
think about how knowledge is produced. Academics working in this area
show how adopting a queer pedagogy might involve undertaking differ-
ent “reading” practices to uncover what cannot be otherwise known/
thought (Britzman 1995).
 Negotiating Intersections 189

Queer performance
Academics in performance studies have borrowed significantly from
queer theory and have contributed to queer projects (Muñoz 1999).
Queer performance can simply refer to LGBTIQ performance art and
practice, but it also takes up queer theory’s interest in the performa-
tive and the political. Queer performance studies focus on destabilising
political, social and aesthetic norms of the body, gender and sexuality.

Queer screen
Taking queer theory beyond gender studies, a substantial body of schol-
arship unites the interests of queer theory with a range of screen theo-
ries. This field includes diverse works ranging from historical analyses
of LGBTIQ representation (Russo 1987) to closer examinations of indi-
vidual texts, genres and auteurs to a broader discussion of the aesthetic
and narrative possibilities of queer. Queer film theory also seeks to
decode film storytelling and write queerness into the history of cinema
(Doty 1993, 2000; Dyer 1990; White 1999). Many ideas from queer the-
ory are distilled in New Queer Cinema, a film movement that emerged
in the USA in the 1990s. New Queer Cinema moves away from issues of
LGBTIQ visibility to reflect queer theory’s focus on queer politics and
the construction of sex, gender and sexuality (Aaron 2004; Benshoff
and Griffin 2004; Gever et al. 1993). As a union of theory and practice,
New Queer Cinema is also notable for experimentation with cinematic
form to evoke queer as an aesthetic. Other work in this field seeks to
explore the aesthetic possibilities of queer in relation to the pleasures
and effects of other screen media such as television (Chambers 2009;
Davis and Needham 2009; Villarejo 2014) and videogames (Ruberg
2018), while additional writing demonstrates how queerness has been
central to the development of global cinema cultures (Schoonover and
Galt 2016).

Queer theology
Taking queer ideas to the study and practice of religion, queer theology
challenges the assumption that queerness and spirituality are incompat-
ible (see Cheng 2011; Goh 2017). Queer theologians look to religious texts
to demonstrate that gender diversity and non-heterosexual desire have
always had a place in human cultures and religions. Other avenues of queer
theology seek to open religion to the LGBTIQ community.
190 Queer Theory Now

Queer(s) of colour theory, queering race

Taking up some questions posed within queer(s) of colour critiques, academ-
ics in the 2000s explored the intersections of queer theory and Critical Race
Studies to interrogate relationships between sexuality, ethnicity, race, raciali-
sation and nation. Out of this developed Black Queer Studies and other queer
analyses of race. One tipping point for this was the “Black Queer Studies in
the Millennium” conference held at the University of North Carolina in 2000,
which sought to interrogate how “current formulations of queer theory either
ignore the categories of race and class or theorize their effects in ‘discursive’
rather than material terms” (Alexander 2000, 1285). This conference set the
tone for future work in Black Queer Studies and was later developed into Black
Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Johnson and Henderson 2005). Early Black
Queer Studies used intersectionality to pose a set of important questions to
queer theory:

What are the implications of queer theory for the study of gay, bisexual
and transgendered people of color? Does “queer,” as a term, actually ful-
fil its promise of inclusivity as it is currently deployed in Queer Theory?
(Alexander 2000, 1285)

Building upon these questions, academics have fleshed out the intersections
between queer theory and Critical Race Studies. For instance, Sharon Patricia
Holland points to the myopia on race evident in some histories of queerness,
such as Foucault’s History of Sexuality which ignores historical events “such as
trans-atlantic slavery or Indian removal as if these events bear no mark upon
our sexual proclivities” (2012, 11). Similarly, Ferguson develops queer(s) of
colour analysis to argue that discourses of race and sexuality have been deeply
entwined, linking the “multiplication of racialized discourses of sexuality and
gender” in the USA to the “multiplication of labor under capital” (2003, 12).
As Ferguson and Grace Kyungwon Hong further suggest, neoliberal forces
demanding “upward redistribution” have severely, violently and dispropor-
tionately affected minorities (2012, 1058), and thus a critique of neoliberal-
ism must be central to queer(s) of colour critiques. Also working in this area
is E. Patrick Johnson, who brings together Butler and Critical Race Studies,
to argue that “Blackness” is performatively constituted (Johnson 2003). As
we noted in Chapter  5, Butler argues that gender is “an identity instituted
through a stylised repetition of acts” (1988, 519). Building on this, Johnson
argues that Blackness has no essence, but is produced through the repetition
of everyday acts.
 Negotiating Intersections 191

A similar argument is put forward in Ian Barnard’s Queer Race: Cultural

Interventions in the Racial Politics of Queer Theory. Barnard uses queer theory
to draw out some of the social, and cultural and political meanings of “race”.
Seeing sexuality and race as intersecting axes of subjectivity “that formatively
and inherently define each other” Barnard delineates the racial inscription
of the “queer” in queer theory, politics and identity, arguing that sexuality is
always racially inscribed and race is always sexualised (2004, 2). Barnard high-
lights the constructedness of race, how race is shaped by sexuality and funda-
mentally “how queer race is” (2004, 10).

Key concept: Disidentification

Muñoz proposes an approach to identity that rejects both homonorma-
tive identity politics and the dismissiveness about identity evident in
some queer theory critiques.
In his 1999 work Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the
Performance of Politics Muñoz explores the potential ways that dominant
regimes of identity can be worked through to simultaneously reference
and dismantle identity. Focusing particularly on queers of colour doing
drag performances, Muñoz describes how their performances at once
reference normative and punitive gender, sexual and racial oppression,
while at once calling these into question. He suggests:

Disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies

the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majori-
tarian public sphere that continually elides or punishes the existence
of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citi-
zenship. (1999, 4)

Disidentification is a way to describe the strategy of negotiating fields

of identity constituted within the context of oppression, in ways that
refer to, but do not harden, those identity positions.
Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, Muñoz refers to the
“counterpublics” where disidentification is practised. Here, coun-
terpublics refers to those formations outside of the normative pub-
lic sphere (such as queer bars) where the subordinated can gather
together.
192 Queer Theory Now

Muñoz also takes on the project of queering racial categories, describing the
complex experience of not quite identifying with particular aspects of your
identity, subject position or culture. His theory of “disidentification” as noted
in Chapter  6 refers to the ways that minority groups negotiate identity in a
world that erases difference by punishing those who do not fit the normative
mould. This is used to describe how queer people of colour negotiate main-
stream culture not simply by assimilating into it or rejecting it outright, but
rather by transforming it for their own purposes, in effect producing queer
counterpublics. Relating race and sexuality to performance theory, Muñoz
argues that disidentifications are both “a process of production and a mode of
performance … shuffling back and forth between reception and production”
(1999, 25). This theory shows how minority subjects – such as queer people
of colour – participate in queer world-making through complex negotiations
with dominant ideologies.
Also contributing to this area of queer(s) of colour theory is E. Patrick
Johnson, who argues that queer theory is limited in its capacity to “accom-
modate the issues faced by gays and lesbians of colour who come from ‘raced’
communities” (Johnson 2001, 3). To deal with this, Johnson developed an
approach to queer theory, which he coined “Quare Theory”. As he describes,
Quare Theory:

not only speaks across identities, it articulates identities as well. “Quare”

offers a way to critique stable notions of identity and, at the same time, to
locate racialized and class knowledges. (2001, 3)

Johnson’s “Quare Theory” takes an intersectional approach to theory, ground-

ing the critical project of “queer” in the material conditions and lived experi-
ence of class and race.

Queer theory’s geopolitical turn

Academics have taken up queer theory as a critical framework to investigate
queerness alongside geopolitical issues, focusing on colonial histories and
postcolonial discourses, nationality and nationalism, citizenship, migration
and diasporic identities. Viewing the intersectionality of gender and sexuality
as “a function of geopolitical formations” (Arondekar 2004, 236), this work
is known as queer theory’s “geopolitical turn” and has tended to take either a
historical or contemporary focus.
 Negotiating Intersections 193

On the one hand, a significant area of scholarship looks at colonial

archives and historical contexts to think about sexuality and sexual difference
(Holden and Ruppel 2003; Fiol-Matta 2002). Several notable projects take
on the project of queering colonial archives by correcting historical materi-
als and writing queerness into the colonial past (Arondekar 2005; Arondekar
2009; Vanita 2002). The other key approach to the geopolitics of queer
theory focuses on contemporary issues. Building upon what Cantú (2009)
refers to as a “queer political economy of migration”, scholarship in this area
uses a queer framework to reveal “the complex interplay of sexuality, gender,
race, politics, economics, and culture in shaping desire and the mobility of
different bodies across many different kinds of borders” (Lewis and Naples
2014, 912). As such, this area focuses on migration, globalisation, queer
diasporas and homonationalism, much of which critically interrogates US
exceptionalism.
As discussed in Chapter  6, homonationalism is a key concept in queer
theory’s geopolitical turn. Discussing the effects of homonationalism in
the specific context of the USA, Puar (2007) examines national stigmas in
the aftermath of the World Trade Center September  11 attacks, and how
LGBTIQ rights discourses were used by the US state to support imperial-
ist and racist agendas in relation to “other” cultures. Puar shows how in
obituaries and media reports, gendered, sexualised and racial codings were
used to associate September 11 US hero Mark Bingham with positive attrib-
utes such as masculine, white, American, hero, gay patriot, while negative
connotations once associated with homosexuality were used to racialise
and sexualise the figure of the terrorist. The effect of this was to position
mainstream “homonationalist” homosexuality as “good”, while simultane-
ously associate “bad” queerness with terrorism and an explicit threat to US
values.
Also theorising hegemonic sexual cultures in the context of the USA,
Eithne Luibhéid’s research locates the US border as a site for controlling, con-
testing, constructing and renegotiating women’s sexual identities (Luibhéid
2002). Her later work on queer migration focuses specifically on queer immi-
grants of colour, honing in on the experiences of migrants from places such
as Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador and the Philippines (Luibhéid and Cantú 2005),
and additionally explores the role of heteronormativity in shaping discourse
surrounding migration (Luibhéid 2008, 2013).
While much work within the geopolitical turn in queer theory maintains a
focus on the USA, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV extend
queer geopolitics towards a global understanding of queerness (Cruz-Malavé
194 Queer Theory Now

and Manalansan 2002). Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan draw attention to

the impact of globalisation on queer cultures and communities. As we have
noted in Chapter  2, the global visibility of LGBTIQ issues, queer sexualities
and queer cultures has resulted in the commodification of queer, which we
discussed through the contemporary pride movement. Yet Cruz-Malavé and
Manalansan also suggest that because politics have been equally globalised
in the millennial era, the terrain for queer political intervention has also
expanded. In other work, Manalansan suggests such issues of globalisation
have produced a range of queer identities and subjectivities, arguing that
“migration can be an important factor in the creation of a variety of sexual
identity categories and practices that do not depend on Western conceptions
of selfhood and community” (2006, 229).
Another key focus of the geopolitical turn, which is also reflected on by
Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan, is the area of queer diaspora. This includes the
analysis of sexuality, LGBTIQ identities and kinships within diasporic com-
munities (see also Fountain-Stokes 2009) and more conceptual projects that
focus on queering the notion of diaspora (see Eng 2003; Gopinath 2005). As
Gayatri Gopinath argues, diaspora has traditionally relied on a “genealogical,

Key term: Diaspora

Diaspora refers to the dispersion of people and communities from their
place of origin or homeland. The term has often been used in relation to
refugee and immigrant populations as well as other communities expe-
riencing displacement from their homeland, but it has been taken up by
cultural studies to refer to more complex cultural interchanges between
“home” and elsewhere.
Some queer scholars have sought to understand the experience of
LGBTIQ individuals and communities within diasporic cultures. As
Richard Mole (2018) suggests, the concept of “queer diaspora” enables
us to think differently about “identity, belonging and solidarity among
sexual minorities in the context of dispersal and transnational net-
works” (2018, 1269).
However, for others, queer theory troubles traditional understand-
ings of diaspora as it encourages us to question these narratives of
migration and to think critically about the concepts, such as “home” and
“origin”, that underpin them.
 Negotiating Intersections 195

implicitly heteronormative reproductive logic” (2005, 10) that has tended to

reinforce ideologies of the nation-state. For Eng, the process of queering dias-
pora prompts,

[N]ew ways of contesting traditional family and kinship structures – of

reorganizing national and transnational communities based not on origin,
filiation, and genetics but on destination, affiliation, and the assumption of
a common set of social practices or political commitments. (2003, 4)

Taking a queer approach to diaspora denaturalises traditional narratives of

migration, prompting critical reflection on concepts such as “origin”, “home”
and even “nation”. Hence, as Eng et al. suggest, the field of queer diasporas

investigates what might be gained politically by reconceptualising diaspora

not in conventional terms of ethnic dispersion, filiation, and biological
traceability, but rather in terms of queerness, affiliation, and social contin-
gency. (2005, 2)

In relation to this question of diaspora and transnational queer studies, many

queer theorists continue to note the problems of transposing Western con-
structions of sexuality to other geopolitical regions and cultural contexts (see
Wallace 2003).
Problematically, a Western-focused approach to understanding “queer” has
often been re-inscribed in transnational approaches. As Hayes, Higonnet and
Spurlin point out:

While work on queer globalization often attempts to make postcolonial and

non-Euro-American forms of queerness more visible, such legibility is often
an extension of Western gazes that read non-Western, same-sex desires as
queer. (2010, 8)

Importantly, as discussed in Chapter 6, many cultures do not view gen-

der and sexuality in the binary and essentialist ways that have dominated
Western discourses, and many other terms circulate for culturally specific
non-heterosexual, gender diverse identities. These include hijra (South Asia),
waria and bissu (Indonesia), tom and dee (Thailand), kathoey or phuying
(Thailand), two-spirit (North America), tomboy and po (China), sistergirl
and brotherboy (Australia), and fa’afafine (Samoa). The term “queer” also
translates into different forms/is appropriated/has completely new meaning
in different cultural contexts, including quare (Ireland), guaitai and ku-er
196 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Heteronormativity and resource

access
Working at the intersection of queer theory and feminist politi-
cal ecology, Rebecca Elmhirst’s (2011) work highlights the role that
­heteronormativity can play in determining resource access. Elmhirst
highlights how norms of “conjugal partnership” in Indonesia’s province
of Lampung play a large role in which land-poor migrants from other
areas of south-east Asia are able to access resources.
This work suggests that while race and class factors are important,
the intersection of these with gender and sexuality ought not be
­overlooked in terms of the role they play in constructing “ideal” citizens.
Here, the conjugal partnership cemented through marriage and family
works to figure migrants as “stable”.
As Elmhirst writes, “the negotiation of resource access is simulta-
neously a process of regulation, discipline and subject-making that
cements gender categories and inculcates gendered (and heteronorma-
tive) ideologies of the ‘ideal citizen’” (2011, 176). Elmhirst concludes
that the relationship between the politics of resource access and heter-
onormativity are mutually reinforcing, and that men are also affected
and constrained in such gendered regimes.

(China and Taiwan), kuir (Turkey) and kvar (Serbia). Differences in language,
origin and meaning highlight the fluidity of “queer” in a transnational con-
text. Some academics even suggest that “Western-style Queer Theory has a
neo-imperialist quality that limits understandings or radical practice” in local
contexts (Schoonover and Galt 2016). Rejecting a monolithic understanding
of what queer theory is and how it may be used, the geopolitical turn seeks
to remedy this, developing queer critiques that are attuned to local and cul-
turally specific understandings of gender, sex, sexuality, politics and identity.
These works are concerned with how “We are queer. Locally” (Kulpa et  al.
2012, 137).

Queer Indigenous studies

Academics and activists have also brought queer theory together with
postcolonial and Indigenous studies, examining the links between heter-
onormativity and settler colonialism (see Smith 2010; Morgensen 2011),
 Negotiating Intersections 197

Queer theory in practice: Takatāpui in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Elizabeth Kerekere (2015) describes how the term takatāpui is used
in Aotearoa, New Zealand as a broad umbrella term for sexually and
gender diverse persons. While the term was originally used to describe
persons with “same-sex” attractions”, Takatāpui is now used as a term
to embrace radical inclusivity, rather than focusing on the individual.
Kerekere writes,

Takatāpui often have to choose between being Māori and prioritising

our gender or sexuality. Claiming takatāpui enables us to bring all of
the parts of ourselves together – to be all of who we are. While the
Western world tends to classify and label identities, takatāpui offers
opportunities to discover and change. (2015, 8)

Kerekere also highlights how British colonisation changed sexual prac-

tices in Aotearoa, New Zealand, introducing punishment of queer and
gender diverse practices and relationships within Indigenous Māori
populations. Colonial rule also introduced the marginalisation of Māori
women, and the heteronormative ideal of the nuclear family unit.

a term used to refer to the displacement of Indigenous populations via

invasive settler societies. For instance, tracing a cultural and literary his-
tory of Native American representation, Mark Rifkin argues that settler
colonialism has sought to “straighten” Indigenous peoples by inserting
them into “Anglo-American conceptions of family, home, desire, and per-
sonal identity” (2011, 8). As part of this, Indigenous peoples have been
cast as a perverse problem to be fixed. At the same time, Rifkin notes a
parallel tradition wherein non-native people have claimed Indigenous social
structures and customs as expansive and counterhegemonic symbols of
resistance to heteronormativity. Within this tradition, Indigenous cultures
are viewed as liberating models to be emulated. As Rifkin highlights, both
traditions erase Indigenous political autonomy by interpreting “indigenous
social dynamics in ways that emphasize their cultural difference from domi-
nant Euramerican ideals as opposed to their role in processes of political
self-definition” (2011, 8).
Queer Indigenous studies seek to decolonise Indigenous knowledges about
sex, gender and sexuality. As Driskill et  al. note, this involves “interruption
of colonial authority over knowledge and a recognition of Indigenous people
198 Queer Theory Now

as central to all knowledge claims about themselves” (2011b, 4). In the North
American context, the project of queer Indigenous analysis regularly centres
on queer and two-spirit as organising terms.

Queer carries with it an oppositional critique of heteronormativity and an

interest in the ambiguity of gender and sexuality. Two-Spirit was proposed
in Indigenous organizing in Canada and the United States to be inclusive
of Indigenous people who identify as GLBTQ or through nationally spe-
cific terms from Indigenous languages. When linked, queer and Two-Spirit
invite critiquing heteronormativity as a colonial project, and decolonizing
Indigenous knowledges of gender and sexuality as one result of that cri-
tique. (2011, 3)

A key scholar taking up this project is Scott Lauria Morgensen, who stages
a conversation between Native American Studies and queer theory to inves-
tigate sovereignty and nation alongside a historical analysis of two-spirit

Queer theory in practice: Fa’afafine in Samoa

Fa’afafine is a term used in Samoa to refer to persons who are assigned
male at birth, but adopt feminine identities. As many scholars have
discussed, fa’afafine is not synonymous with Western concepts of homo-
sexuality or transgender identity, and must be understood within the
specific Samoan cultural context. In her discussion of fa’afafine identity,
Johanna Schmidt argues that labour practices and the preference to
do “feminine” tasks in the home at an early age has been traditionally
understood as a determining factor for being fa’afafine, rather than
sexuality.
However, with globalisation, and the increasing influence of Western
capitalism and cultural formations, Schmidt argues that there is greater
emphasis on individual gender expression for all Samoans, which has
changed self-conceptualisations and embodiments of fa’afafine. Schmidt
concludes: “Fa’afafine in Samoa seem to walk a fine line between rupture
and continuity, often identifying as gay and fa’afafine simultaneously as
a means of adopting and adapting to aspects of globalized western cul-
tures while maintaining and enacting identities through processes that
are distinctly Samoan” (2003, 429).
 Negotiating Intersections 199

activism (Morgensen 2011). Morgensen argues that within settler states such
as the USA, queer subjectivities are the result of distinct sovereignties that
developed through US colonial settlement.
Andrea Smith also uses queer theory to “unsettle” the phenomenon of
settler colonialism as a formative logic (2010, 44). Rather than simply focus
on the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the US context, Smith uses both
queer theory and Indigenous studies to advocate for a broader systemic cri-
tique attuned to the normalising logics of colonial rule. Indigenous studies
programmes and calls for decolonisation of the curriculum have proliferated
in universities, with queer Indigenous studies emerging particularly across
North America and the Pacific, in locations such as Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and Samoa (see Driskill et al. 2011a).

Queer Marxism
As Kevin Floyd (2009) suggests, following the global financial crisis queer the-
orists have recently been more open to consider the resonance between queer
theory and Marxism (e.g., see Crosby et  al. 2012). In Reification of Desire:
Toward a Queer Marxism, Floyd suggests productive ways that key Marxist con-
cepts might be extended by taking a queer approach, and indeed how queer
theory might be more open to considering a theoretical genealogy informed
by Marxism. As Rosemary Hennessy (2006) argues, the legacy of Marxist
feminism on later lesbian and gay studies (and subsequently queer theory)
has often been forgotten. Floyd also suggests that the crisis of capital has also
encouraged a return to discussions of “utopia”, a topic that we discuss further
in Chapter 8.
Karl Marx was a German philosopher, born in 1818. He is perhaps most
famous for his 1848 work The Communist Manifesto, written with Friedrich
Engels. Fundamentally, Marx’s theory relies on the idea that society under
capitalism is fundamentally underpinned by class struggle, namely the ago-
nism between the working class (the “proletariat”) and the ruling class (the
“bourgeoise”). The ruling class own the means of production (the factories
and infrastructure), and extract profit from the working class who provide
labour. It is precisely this hierarchal model of power that sits at odds with
some queer theory accounts, such as Foucault’s idea of power as dispersed, as
discussed in Chapter 2.
While queer theory and Marxism have often been perceived at odds
from one another, there have been many who have theorised gender and
sexual relations using Marxist ideas, though these would not necessarily
200 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Decolonising the curriculum

Since the 2010s there have been growing calls to “decolonise the cur-
riculum” in universities across the world. The term “decolonise” in this
context is often used in reference to teaching practices, and the kind of
materials and readings that occupy a privileged place (that are canon)
in the curriculum. Decolonising the curriculum is about displacing the
whiteness and Western civilisation as the centre of all knowledge.
For example, since 2015, students in South Africa have called for
their universities to decolonise, often rallying under the hashtag
#Rhodesmustfall. This is a reference to a statue of former colonial Prime
Minister Cecil Rhodes, which was defaced as part of student protests
against white imperialism at the University of Cape Town (Francis and
Hardman 2018, 67).
Similarly, in 2017, student Lola Olufemi’s open letter to Cambridge
University in the UK went viral, as she called on the Literature depart-
ment to include more women of colour in their syllabus. Commenting
on the letter she described, “Decolonising the curriculum … means re-
thinking what we learn and how we learn it; critically analysing whose
voices are given priority in our education and for what reason. It is not
an easy process and why should it be?” Olufemi argued for greater inter-
rogation of whose voices were taken as representative of “humanity”
and whose were not.
Some scholars have been critical of the use of the term “decolonise”
in the context of curricula, given the original political material mean-
ing of the term. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argue, decolonisation
should not be mistaken for a metaphor. They write:

Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land

and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to
improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonising
­discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the
increasing number of calls to “decolonise our schools,” or use “decolo-
nizing methods,” or, “decolonise student thinking,” turns decoloniza-
tion into a metaphor. (2012, 1)

Yet others have proposed that decolonising the curriculum need not be
understood as merely metaphorical. As Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia
 Negotiating Intersections 201

Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu suggest, though the term is contested,

decolonizing approaches are both political and methodological. They
argue that these approaches involve bringing focus on “colonialism,
empire and racism” to the fore and thus provide a different lens through
which to understand and politically respond to the world (2018, 2). As
they suggest, given the historic centrality of universities within colo-
nised territories, it is no wonder that there are demands for transforma-
tion of these institutions.

be understood as “queer theory” approaches to gender and sexuality. For

example, like many Marxist accounts of sexuality, Hannah Dee argues that
the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons is funda-
mentally a result of the regime of the economic family unit of the family
under capitalism. Dee writes, “LGBT people are seen as a problem because
we undermine and disrupt the relationships and roles that the traditional
family rests on” (2010, 9). Unlike Foucauldian accounts, Marxist accounts of
sexuality do not emphasise that sexuality is produced through prohibition,
but rather, that oppression based on sexuality only exists because of class
society.
However, for many queer theorists looking to the intersection with Marxist
theory, discussions of sexuality and gender in Marxist theorising have histori-
cally been insufficient. Many, such as Ferguson, have attempted to re-think
Marxist concepts to better account not just for questions of sexuality, but
also race (see Ferguson’s discussion in the roundtable Crosby et  al. 2012).
Similarly, for some Marxist theorists, discussions of capital and class in queer
theorising have historically been lacking. As Yvette Taylor suggests, “Theories
of identity are increasingly preoccupied with the queer subject of desire,
rather than with material needs and constraints” (2018, 201). As Hennessey
also argues, queer Marxist theorising understands there is an intimate rela-
tionship between class and sexuality, such that the sexuality one can express
is determined by class (2006, 129). Petrus Liu (2015) takes this approach to
understand queer cultures in Mainland China and Taiwan, focusing on the way
many Chinese writers in the postwar period fused Marxism with inquiries into
gender and sexuality within their writing. In this analysis, Liu uncovers the
Marxist underpinnings of queer thought in China and Taiwan and highlights
how certain geopolitical tensions impact the way queerness is both under-
stood and expressed within these contexts.
202 Queer Theory Now

Some have also taken a queer Marxist analysis to explain the hierarchi-
cal system of social difference through which gender, sexuality and race are
organised with respect to capitalism. Discussing the relation between capital-
ism, gender and sexuality, Hennessy notes:

In positing male and female as distinct and opposite sexes that are natu-
rally attracted to one another, heterosexuality is integral to patriarchy.
Woman’s position as subordinate other, as (sexual) property, and as
exploited laborer depends on a heterosexual matrix in which woman is
taken to be man’s opposite; his control over social resources, his clear
thinking, strength, and sexual prowess depend on her being less able, less
rational, and never virile. (2002, 24–25)

However, she also notes that such relations are not fixed and essential but
rather historical and differential. This acknowledges that not all experi-
ence power and oppression in the same manner. As Holly Lewis (2016)
argues, one of the great mistakes made by many queer thinkers has been
to assume that there is something inherently radical to queer sexuality,
and as such there has been a disproportionate amount of concern about
queers who consume/fail to be radical (the “homonormative”, as discussed
in detail in Chapter  6). Lewis suggests that to move on from this lacuna,
and to pay proper attention to theorising sexuality and economy, “Queer
Marxists must disengage with queer nationalism. The time spent denounc-
ing upper echelon queers for behaving like upper echelon queers would
be better spent fighting the battles it is wrongly assumed they will fight”
(2016).

Queering affect, affect-ing queer theory

The intersection between queer theory and affect theory has also become a
significant avenue of exploration in queer theorising in recent years, some-
times referred to as the “affective turn”. The term “affect” is sometimes
used synonymously for emotions or feelings. Others, strongly influenced
by Gilles Deleuze’s approach, deploy affect to refer to sensations, intensi-
ties or impulses and negate the association of affect with emotion (Massumi
2002, 27). That is, some scholars argue that “emotions” already carry the
weight of cognitive interpretation, whereas affect refers to feelings that are
pre-cognitive.
 Negotiating Intersections 203

Queer theory in practice: Affect according to Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher who worked closely with
Félix Guattari, and was heavily influenced by the philosophical work
of Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza and Henri Bergson. According
to Deleuze, affect is pre-cognitive, and refers to intensities, becom-
ings, changes and reactions. As Felicity J. Colman writes, “Affect is the
change, or variation, that occurs when bodies collide, or come into con-
tact” (11). Here “bodies” is broadly conceived not in terms of the human
body, but rather, any thing, from the smallest animal body to ideas as
concepts as bodies. Given his emphasis on bodies many queer and femi-
nist theorists have explored sexuality and gender using Deleuzian ideas
of affect as a foundation (e.g., see Grosz 1994).

As Puar (2011, 154) – drawing heavily on Deleuze – defines, affect theory

often involves:

• a shift in focus from rational human agency, to ontological perspectives

that understand agency as more broadly dispersed;
• a turn towards the sensory and biological without taking up essentialist
positions;
• highlighting non-conscious bodily processes rather than conscious or
psychological ones.

As Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg identify, there are multiple strands
of affect theory, but the definition they offer perhaps most applicable to work
in gender studies and queer theory is described as:

[T]he regularly hidden-in-plain-sight politically engaged work – perhaps

most often undertaken by feminists, queer theorists, disability activists,
and subaltern peoples living under the thumb of a normativizing power –
that attends to the hard and fast materialities, as well as the fleeting and
flowing ephemera, of the daily and the workaday, of everyday and every-
night life, and of “experience” (understood in ways far more collective
and “external” rather than individual and interior), where persistent, rep-
etitious practices of power can simultaneously provide a body (or, better,
204 Queer Theory Now

collectivized bodies) with predicaments and potentials for realizing a world

that subsists within and exceeds the horizons and boundaries of the norm.
(2010, 7)

While this definition is a lot to take in, the key takeaway is an understand-
ing of queer theory’s focus on questions of marginalisation and normativity in
concert with affect theory’s focus on materiality, bodies and potentiality.
Despite many affect theorists tracing trajectories from Deleuze, much of
the turn towards theorising affect within queer theory has been inspired by
the work of Sedgwick (discussed in Chapter 5), who moved to studies of affect
later in her career. Sedgwick’s engagement with affect is best reflected in her
analyses of psychologist Silvan Tomkins’ work on affect theory (Sedgwick
2003). Tomkins argued that humans are born with innate affects, of which
shame is central. As Sedgwick and Adam Frank describe, “Tomkins hypoth-
esizes a set of excruciating scenes in which a child is shamed out of expressing
his excitement, distress, anger, fear, disgust, and even shame” (1995, 518).
Sedgwick takes up this central focus on shame in much of her later work. Her
writing on the intersection between affect and queer theory has been influen-
tial in discussions of gay shame as discussed in Chapter 4.
Ann Cvetkovich (2003) explores the intersection of affect theory and
queer theory, teasing out the connections between sexuality, trauma and
the creation of queer public cultures. Focusing on trauma, Cvetkovich

Key term: Ontology

Ontology refers to “being”, often used in the context of philosophi-
cal discussions of the nature of life. The term the “ontological turn” is
sometimes referred to in the humanities and social sciences, and refers
to the general trend towards thinking about/concern with questions
of ontology, often placed in contrast to representation (see Mol 1999).
While earlier poststructuralist accounts focused on issues around
language and signification, the ontological turn has been an attempt
by scholars to grapple with questions of materiality and life beyond,
before, or in addition to discourse. As Clare Hemmings remarks, “If
­poststructuralist epistemology is the problem, it is perhaps not enor-
mously surprising that a post-deconstructivist ontology is offered as the
solution” (2005, 557).
 Negotiating Intersections 205

argues that so-called negative affects can be the foundation for political
solidarity and community formation. Her later work on depression focuses
on affects associated with mental illness (Cvetkovich 2012). Cvetkovich sug-
gests we ought to get to the “depression” at the heart of things, that is, not
the negativity and negation of life, but more specifically the “negative” feel-
ings that are part and parcel of being in and surviving the world. This work
explores how politics are felt on an affective level, and offers a queer analysis
of depression as a historical category, a personal experience and a spark for
cultural production and  political activism. Cvetkovich suggests a dissolution
of the binary  between the social and the anti-social, the positive and  the
negative, because while things such as depression can be anti-social (in quite a
literal way – through withdrawal), there is also the possibility that a new soci-
ality may form through making these affective states public, and indeed, mak-
ing publics around these affects.

Queer theory in practice: Depressed? It might be political

In the early 2000s, Berlant and a group of other scholars and artists
formed a group called “Feel Tank Chicago”, which came out of earlier
feminist organising following the Barnard Conference discussed in
detail in Chapter  3. The aim of the feel tank – a play on the idea of a
“think tank” – was to explore feelings (which are often understood
as very individual, private and frivolous) as historical, political and
important.
As Berlant describes, “Comprised of artists and academics, the feel
tank is organized around the thought that public spheres are affect
worlds at least as much as they are effects of rationality and ration-
alization” (2004, 450). Here, rather than the notion of “the personal is
political”, Berlant evokes the idea of “the political is affective”, that is,
public life is comprised of feelings, and indeed, feelings inform public
life.
Rather than understanding this relationship between feelings and
the political as merely personal, the aim of Feel Tank Chicago was to
unearth and attend to these feelings. Berlant describes how the group
held a protest “International Day of the Politically Depressed”, as a way
to make feelings (such as apathy, depression and anxiety) public. Along
these lines she suggests the slogan “Depressed? ... It Might Be Political”
(2004, 451).
206 Queer Theory Now

Love also focuses on negative affect, describing the contemporary queer expe-
rience through the metaphor of “feeling backward” (2007, 27). Love argues
that feelings associated with social exclusion and the prohibition of same-
sex desire, such as shame, despair and regret, have an immense impact on
present-day LGBTIQ culture (2007, 4). Love advocates for exploring feelings
of backwardness in LGBTIQ history, without simply overlooking “the difficul-
ties of the queer past” (2007, 32).

Key concept: Queer failure

Inspired by Love’s work on the connection between loss, “backwardness”
and queer life, Halberstam’s 2011 book The Queer Art of Failure explores
failure as a queer mode. Emerging within a specific ­postfinancial-crisis
context, Halberstam not only draws out the resistant possibilities
of “failure” but also the link between failure and anti-capitalism.
Halberstam (2012) outlines the possibilities of failure in terms of:

1. failure as a space that can be a site for collective mobilisation;

2. the connection between queerness and failure (as non-conformity/
non-belonging);
3. how to aesthetically track failure, looking at artists and popular
culture to see where failure is being represented and how;
4. that we need to look to the “losers” of the past, not just glorify queer
history;
5. how failure can be anti-social but political, and can come from
popular-culture sources, not just high-culture.

Children’s texts are a key source for Halberstam. In this way Halberstam
also demonstrates “failing” at being an appropriate scholar, through
engaging with low culture, children’s texts. Halberstam takes the very
queer approach of reading these texts in terms of the space that they
open up for thinking differently. In these texts Halberstam finds hope, as
he suggests: “Renton, Johnny Rotten, Ginger, Dory, and Babe, like those
athletes who finish fourth, remind us that there is something powerful in
being wrong, in losing, in failing, and that all our failures combined might
just be enough, if we practice them well, to bring down the winner” (2011,
120). Queer feminist theorist Robyn Wiegman describes Halberstam’s
approach as “converting loss into heroic loserdom” (2014, 6).
 Negotiating Intersections 207

In contrast to exploring negative affects, Sara Ahmed’s (2010a, 2010b) work

examines the limitations of seemingly positive affects, specifically happiness.
Her work draws attention to links between the Western construction of hap-
piness, the ideal of “the good life” and heteronormativity. As we discuss in
more detail in Chapter  8, Ahmed critiques regimes of happiness that neces-
sitate assimilation into particular (white, heteronormative) modes of being
(2010, 45).
Berlant (2011) also explores the idea of “the good life”, and suggests that
striving towards this ideal can entail “cruel optimism”, a concept that we dis-
cuss in more detail in Chapter 8. Cruel optimism refers to labouring under the
promise that things will get better, while staying stuck in the toxic conditions
of the present. Berlant argues that the culturally constructed image of “the
good life” often conflicts with the conditions of everyday experience, and that
the (cruel) promise of a better future horizon demoralises and demobilises
political action.
Similarly, Puar (2012b) suggests that we might think about how the slo-
gan “It gets better” used in programmes supporting LGBTIQ youth offers a
promise – for a particular white, upwardly mobile gay milieu – that homo-
phobia ends after high school. These kinds of slogans confer a sense of
inevitable progress, that homophobia is merely a symptom of age, rather
than systemic. Following Berlant, and drawing on disability justice activ-
ism, Puar turns her attention to the concept of “slow death”, or the idea of
ongoing ailment endemic to marginalised populations. Like Berlant, Puar
is concerned with the link between experiences of daily life and broader
economic structures, as she argues, “Debility is profitable to capitalism,
but so is the demand to ‘recover’ from or overcome it” (2012b, 154). Puar
advocates for the term “debility” to refer to bodily injury and social exclu-
sions that are brought on by economic and political factors under late
capitalism.

Queerness, disability and debility

The intersection of queer theory and disability studies focuses largely on bio-
politics, bodies, embodiment, pleasure and identity. Both fields are concerned
with unpacking the processes that produce cultural, political and social norms
around ability. For instance, one facet of queer disability studies challenges
cultural discourses that represent people with disabilities as “incapable or
uninterested in sex” (McRuer 2011, 107). Queer disability studies also cri-
tiques binaries that frame disability, ability, gender and sexuality as either
208 Queer Theory Now

normative or deviant. These binaries typically associate disability with medi-

cal models that frame particular minds and bodies as deviant and in need of
treatment.
Robert McRuer’s “Crip Theory” takes a radical approach to this, generating
a critical framework to challenge not only these binaries, but also the power
structures of neoliberal capitalist culture that produce them. Crip Theory
questions how some bodies are incorporated into the state, while others are
excluded. In doing so, it also exposes “the flexible corporate strategies that
currently undergird contemporary economics, politics, and culture” that
“invariably produce a world in which disability and queerness are subordi-
nated or eliminated outright” (McRuer 2006, 29). Crip Theory also rejects
demands for normativity, tolerance and assimilation, and advocates for
access, transgression and systemic critique of ability and “ideal” bodies and
minds.

Queer theory in practice: Disability and coming out

Taking a queer approach to disability studies, Ellen Samuels (2003)
explores the trope of “coming out” as an analogy for disclosing dis-
ability. Samuels suggests that while some scholars have drawn parallels
between coming out as LGBTIQ and coming out as having a disability,
“coming out” means a multiplicity of things that do not map so neatly
onto one another. Importantly, Samuels highlights how many accounts
of disclosing disability involve explaining disability to others, rather
than a liberatory practice of self-acceptance. Samuels highlights the
differential ways that coming out might play out, for example, the
scepticism that might be encountered with disclosure of non-visible
disabilities.
Samuels also explores the connections between coming out as femme
and coming out with a non-visible disability, given the common expe-
rience of not being immediately visible. Yet Samuels suggests that the
emphasis on visibility within discussions of disability further excludes
those who do not present with visible disabilities: “while disability stud-
ies has presented profound challenges to dominant cultural conceptions
of the body, social identity, and independence, it has not provided the
theoretical basis on which to critique and transform the equation of
appearance with ability” (2003, 248).
 Negotiating Intersections 209

Alison Kafer uses Crip Theory to frame disability through queer politics,
arguing that disability is a political, contested and contestable identity (Kafer
2013). This view rejects monolithic or fixed notions of identity and challenges
“disability” and “ability” as discrete and self-evident categories. Through this
intersection of queer theory and disability studies, Kafer shows how queer
frameworks are useful for questioning how “disability”, “impairment” and
“ability” are culturally produced and understood. Kafer also takes up Crip
Theory to reflect on the temporality of the feminist, queer, disabled embodi-
ment, which we discuss further in Chapter 8.
Critiquing Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure, Merri Lisa Johnson’s “A Crip
Feminist Critique of Queer Failure” argues that queer theorists have some-
times failed to adequately engage with questions of disability. Johnson sug-
gests that Halberstam romanticises the concept of craziness, “the conflation
of madness with countercultural adventure both reflects and contributes to
the cultural trivialization of psychological pain” (253). Halberstam’s use of
madness as productive for queer theory (rather than a state of mental ill-
ness) is also reflected in his later work Gaga Feminism, with his emphasis
on going “gaga”. Johnson argues that in turning towards the “pathological”
queer theory can sometimes occlude the experiences of people living with
certain conditions, in ways that both cover over and romanticise their
reality. Johnson argues that queer theorists need to be careful to avoid fet-
ishisation of disability, and more carefully engage with questions of mental
health.

CONCLUSION: QUEER INTERSECTIONS

As we have noted in this chapter, queer theory has undergone dramatic

transformation over the last two decades. Queer(s) of colour theory, Crip
Theory, postcolonial queer theory and other intersecting theoretical
engagements with queer have opened up a vast and dynamic array of queer
strands, taking queer theory into new directions. While queer theory
always sits in discomfort with intersectionality as it is deployed in identar-
ian ways, the tension between these lenses reminds us of the productive
power of uncomfortable relations. To put it simply, when we sit in dis-
comfort, we grow. As queer ideas continue to transgress, infect, pervert,
challenge, critique and question – and perhaps most importantly, be ques-
tioned – queer theory offers a multitude of powerful intersections with
other bodies of work.
210 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Queering the curriculum part 2

Queer biology
Drawing on queer theory’s focus on “transgressing boundaries” has
helped researchers to re-think the categories and linear definitions
used in biology to understand sex, bodies and individuals (Hird 2004).
Combining queer theory with the biological sciences has enabled schol-
ars to challenge the scientific assumption that opposite-sex sexuality
is natural and based on the need for species procreation. Scholars
working in queer biology have documented same-sex sexual behav-
iours across many species, highlighted the prevalence of species that
reproduce asexually, and those that change sex during their lifetime
(Bagemihl 1999; Roughgarden 2004). More directly responding to
human sexuality, other scholarship draws attention to the ideological
subjectivity of scientific studies, arguing that what we know about
sex, gender and sexuality is actually shaped by politics and biases
within the production of scientific knowledge (Fausto-Sterling 2000;
Lancaster 2003).

Queer code
Critical perspectives from queer theory have also been applied in the
field of computer science, intersecting with analyses and practices of
coding, software engineering, algorithms and artificial intelligence.
In this intersection, queer theory has been used to expose how gender
functions through the conventions of software programming (Stephen
2017) and how algorithms reinforce heteronormativity (Gieseking
2017).

Queer science and technology studies (STS)

Academics have used queer theory to critique the heteronormativity
of science and technology studies, which have often reinforced hegem-
onic points of view (Landström 2007). As it has developed through the
2000s, queer STS examines identity and sexuality in virtual worlds,
queer interactions between bodies and technology, and broader rela-
tionships between sexuality and technology, which in turn produce
diverse critical perspectives on race, class, ethnicity and nation. Queer
STS is connected to the ontological turn in theory more broadly (Barad
2007).
 Negotiating Intersections 211

Further reading
David L. Eng, J. Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz. (2005). “What’s
Queer About Queer Studies Now?” Social Text, 23(3–4 (84–85)): 1–17.
The introduction to this special issue discusses the potential of queer
intersectionality while mapping out some of queer theory’s recent inter-
sectional developments. The coeditors outline queer theory as a “sub-
jectless critique”.
Jasbir K. Puar. (2012). “‘I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’:
Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” PhiloSOPHIA, 2(1):
49–66. State University of New York Press.
Puar’s critique of intersectionality is outlined succinctly in this article.
She advocates for a theory of queer assemblage to make up for intersec-
tionality’s limitations.
Ian Barnard. (2004). Queer Race: Cultural Interventions in the Racial Poli-
tics of Queer Theory. New York: Peter Lang.
Barnard uses queer theory to draw out some of the social, and cultural
and political, meanings of race, demonstrating how race can be queered.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• In what ways does intersectionality address the risk of queer theory

erasing difference altogether?
• What value do you think queer theory has, as a “subjectless critique”, for
broad-reaching social issues such as globalisation?
• What are some practical ways you might “decolonise” the curriculum? How
is this different to “queering” the curriculum?
• What do the “intersections” between queer theory and other fields of ideas
(such as affect theory or disability studies) reveal about the limits of queer
theory?
212 Queer Theory Now

Recommended films
Margarita with a Straw (Shonali Bose 2014). This is a coming of age
film about a teenage girl with cerebral palsy coming to terms with her
sexuality. One of only a few narrative feature-length films to foreground
the intersectional experience of gender, sexuality, race, nationality and
disability.

Futuro Beach (Karim Aïnouz 2014). This film follows the story of a dif-
ficult relationship between a Brazilian man and his German boyfriend
who both live in Berlin. Director Karim Aïnouz aimed to capture the
experience of living in queer diaspora in this film.

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016). This award-winning drama is also a

coming of age story that focuses on issues of class, race and sexuality
through three key periods in the life of a young, African-American, gay
man growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.
8 Temporality and Queer
Utopias

KEY TERMS temporality, chrononormativity, anti-social thesis, ori-

AND entation, queer time, cruel optimism, utopia, happiness
CONCEPTS scripts, chronobiopolitics, temporal drag

QUEER THEORY AND TIME: A TEMPORAL TURN

What does queer theory have to say about time and temporality? As we
highlight in this chapter, a significant body of contemporary queer theory
known as “the temporal turn” raises questions about queerness and time, pro-
ductivity and what counts as a “good” life. Some theorists have asked where
queer theory stands in relation to the past, present and future while others
have considered what queer temporalities might look like or how they might
be experienced. Navigating queer theory’s temporal turn, we explore how
theorists have approached these questions of time by debating the relation-
ship between queerness and “the future”. Examining key perspectives from
opposing anti-social and optimistic theorists, we highlight tensions between
positive and negative affects that have been associated with past, present and
future orientations. We conclude with the question of queer time and consider
how different theorists have imagined the political potential of time through
queer theory.
As a re-framing of conversations and debates on sexuality and politics,
queer theory’s temporal turn has encouraged queer theorists to “rethink the
very meaning of queer” by recognising it “as concept that is always entan-
gled with temporality” (Monaghan 2019, 99). In a roundtable discussion
on “Theorizing Temporalities”, Elizabeth Freeman asked a range of queer
theorists, “how and why the rubric of temporality … became important to your
thinking as a queer theorist. What scholarly, activist, personal, political, or
other concerns motivated the turn toward time for you?” (Dinshaw et al. 2007,
177). For many of the theorists involved, the answer was to pose a critique
of historicism and linear narratives of progress, while for others the turn was

213
214 Queer Theory Now

Key term: Temporality

In the broadest sense, temporality means time. Philosophers have used
the term to refer to the experience of duration, the perception of time
passing and relations of past, present and future. Within humanities
research, temporality is also used to refer to the social organisation
of time through categories such as working hours and leisure time. To
describe queer theory as having a “temporal turn” means that the field
began to focus on intersections between sex, gender, sexuality, history,
power and time.

more personal. Carolyn Dinshaw notes that she had always had a concern with
the “relationship of past to present” (Dinshaw et al. 2007, 177), which bloomed
into “a queer desire for history” (Dinshaw et al. 2007, 178) in her later work.
For Christopher Nealon, who had been researching activism and social move-
ments, the turn towards temporality was motivated by recognition of the
queerness of “lesbian and gay writers who lived before the time of a social
movement … dreaming of collectivities, and forms of participation in History-
with-a-capital-H, that they might never, themselves experience” (Dinshaw
et  al. 2007, 179). For Jagose, the temporal came unexpected in her research
on figurations of lesbian representation in popular culture, while for Ferguson,
temporality was a necessary frame for critiquing narratives of progress in
discourses of African-American sexuality and “other geopolitical histories of
racialized sexuality” (Dinshaw et al. 2007, 180).
In an introductory essay on queer theory and temporalities, Freeman
set out some further ideas for thinking about queerness in relation to time.
This work suggested that queer theory and temporality could be united as a
critical framework to provide insight into everything from “life narratives to
the eight-hour workday, to premature ejaculation, the AIDS crisis, the queer
past and future, the lived experience of being an LGBTIQ person” (Monaghan
2019, 97). Freeman’s introduction preceded a roundtable “theorizing queer
temporalities” where theorists addressed several key questions: Is time part of
the history of sexuality and has it shaped Queer Studies? What might queer
theory’s attention to temporality open up “conceptually, institutionally, politi-
cally, or otherwise?” (Dinshaw et al. 2007).
A key text in queer theory’s temporal turn that responds to such questions
is Carolyn Dinshaw’s Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre and
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 215

Postmodern (1999) in which she seeks to queer the history of sexuality. In this
book, Dinshaw analyses both pre-modern and postmodern categories of
sexuality, focusing on the key question, “how do communities, then and now,
form themselves in relation to sex?” (1999, 1). In Dinshaw’s work, sex (or the
erotic) is “heterogeneous, multiple, and fundamentally indeterminate” (1999,
1), which means that it cannot be traced via linear path from past to present.
As such, Dinshaw follows “a queer historical impulse … making connections
across time between, on the one hand, lives, texts, and other cultural phenom-
ena left out of sexual categories back then and, on the other, those left out of
current sexual categories now” (1999, 1). By analysing queer sexualities within
this historical frame and describing them as “affective relations across time”
(Dinshaw 1999, 138), Dinshaw argues for an understanding of queer history
as non-linear. Describing queerness in this way, via non-linear forms of con-
nection across time, Dinshaw’s early contribution to queer theory’s temporal
turn “explode[s] the categories of sameness, otherness, present, past, loss,
pleasure” (1999, 2).

HETERONORMATIVE TEMPORALITY

Scholarship on queer temporality has tended to fall on either side of

opposing anti-social and optimistic perspectives. However, both sides of
the debate explore how heterosexual ideology shapes the way we under-
stand and o ­ rganise the temporality of social life. As we have discussed in
Chapter  1, heteronormativity refers to the pervasive and largely invisible
heterosexual norms that underpin society (Warner 1991). Within queer
theory’s temporal turn, heteronormativity is thought of in relation to time
with a particular focus on the question of what counts as a “good”, happy
or successful life. According to queer theorists, heteronormative life narra-
tives are marked by a particular set of celebrated milestones, which include
birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, marriage, reproduction, parent-
hood, anniversaries, retirement and death. As Halberstam argues, these are
based on “institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction” (2005,
1). We have plotted these along a timeline in Figure 8.1 to show their line-
arity as they progress from one milestone to the next. In Western culture, a
person is thought to have a successful life if they pass through each stage at
an appropriate speed. For example, behaviours associated with adolescence
(such as recklessness) should be forsaken as the person grows up, gets mar-
ried to someone of the opposite gender and starts their own family.
216 Queer Theory Now

Birth

Childhood

Adolescence

Marriage

Reproduction

Parenthood

Retirement

Death

Figure 8.1  The heteronormative timeline

For women, reproductive temporality is ruled by a biological clock; for

married heterosexual couples it is ruled by “strict bourgeois rules of respect-
ability and scheduling” (Halberstam 2005, 5). Halberstam identifies family
time as referring to the scheduling of daily life, particularly the phrase “early
to bed, early to rise” that accompanies the practice of child-rearing. Notions
of respectability and normality are also governed by “the time of inheritance”
(2005, 5), which refers to a generational time within which “values, wealth,
goods, and morals are passed through family ties from one generation to the
next” (2005, 5). This also connects family to the historical past and “glances
ahead to connect the family to the future of both familial and national stabil-
ity” (2005, 5).
While not all people keep these times, Halberstam argues that “many and
possibly most people believe that the scheduling of repro-time is natural
and desirable” (2005, 5). These temporalities have become ingrained into
our understandings of how a normal life should be lived. However, there are
some people or some groups of people who are unable or unwilling to fol-
low these normalised life narratives and there are others who are blatantly
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 217

rejected and  pathologised by them. In contrast to the linear “good” life,

queer life  narratives in particular are described in ways that conflict with or
challenge the  heteronormative timeline. As Monaghan argues, “Queer life
narratives …  do not fit with these dominant temporal logics. Non-linear
in their temporality, they do not follow the same milestones and are often
not celebrated”  (Monaghan 2016, 14). Halberstam acknowledges that not
all LGBTIQ people live their lives in opposition to these heterosexual life nar-
ratives, however, he argues that “part of what has made queerness compelling
as a form of self-description in the past decade or so has to do with the way it
has the potential to open up new life narratives” (2005, 1–2).

Queer theory in practice: Just a phase?

A pervasive trope within popular culture and popular discourse more
broadly sees queerness written off as “just a phase” with deviations
from heteronormativity often classified as temporary and therefore
unthreatening to the heterosexual status quo. This idea is represented
through a wide range of cultural forms such as film, television, music
and literature within which LGBTIQ identity has been associated with a
passing phase of adolescent development.
As Monaghan (2016) highlights, this can occur in television series
that introduce an LGBTIQ character for a few episodes, stories where
older women nostalgically remember their queer romances of their
youth and films where teenage boredom is associated with rebellion
against heterosexuality. Within examples like these, cisgender hetero-
sexuality is assumed to be a natural state and must be restored. As a
result, binary understandings of gender and sexuality are upheld.
Bisexuality, for instance, is erased if we consider same-sex desire
only as a temporary departure on the path towards a heterosexual
adulthood.
Beyond screen media, these ideas also relate to real-world experi-
ences of gender, sexuality and identity. For example, if you are an
adolescent who comes out as an LGBTIQ person you may be met with
the attitude that you are just experimenting or that you are too young
to know your true identity. Attitudes like this are reflective of the
interrelation between heteronormativity and temporality that many
­
contemporary queer theorists are keen to critique.
218 Queer Theory Now

Mainstreaming of LGBTIQ culture through homonormativity, which we have

discussed in Chapter 6, sees queer lives more closely follow the heteronorma-
tive timeline. As Duggan defines:

[Homonormativity] is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronor-

mative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while
promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized,
depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption. (2002, 179)

Viewing the politics of homonormativity through the lens of temporality shows

how particular life narratives are upheld as “good” by the association of suc-
cess with productivity in both a material sense, through consumption, and in a
domestic sense through the cultivation of a particular domestic ideal. Following
the above timeline, this ideal upholds monogamous long-lasting relationships
and child-rearing as the model for a “good”, successful or happy life.

THE ANTI-SOCIAL THESIS

Related to the concept of homonormativity, is the queer critique known as

the “anti-social” thesis, which emerged through AIDS discourse in the 1980s.
As we have discussed in Chapter 4, the AIDS crisis ushered in a wave of aca-
demic writing devoted to theorising sexual practice rather than identity. At
the peak of the crisis, US literary theorist Leo Bersani published a paper “Is
the Rectum a Grave?” (1987), which came to be influential in many later aca-
demic accounts of queer theory. In the paper, Bersani explores an association
between homosexuality and death that played out in a visceral way through
the AIDS crisis (1987, 199). Tracking homophobic responses to AIDS, as well
as the relationship between homophobia and misogyny (noting the conflation
between femininity and the “passive” position in gay male sex), Bersani advo-
cates strongly for an embrace of these subordinate positions to contest and
shatter hierarchies of power. Bersani also reflects on the issue of whiteness
in prominent AIDS discourse and how the media marked white heterosexual
families as those endangered by the epidemic (1987, 203). However, Bersani’s
focus here is not on the racism of AIDS discourse, but rather, the threat
of AIDS to the celebrated (white, heterosexual) reproductive family unit.
As Watney – who influenced Bersani’s work – writes:

[T]he spectacle of AIDS operates as a public masque in which we witness

the corporeal punishment of the “homosexual body”, identified as the
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 219

enigmatic and indecent source of an incomprehensible, voluntary resist-

ance to the unquestionable governance of marriage, parenthood, and prop-
erty. (1987b, 83)

The discursive construction of AIDS as a “homosexual disease” marked homo-

sexuality in opposition to the family unit at the heart of modern capitalist
society. Rather than attempt to wash homosexuality of this “failure”, Bersani
advocates an anti-social thesis, that is: embracing the imagined nihilism of the
homosexual position.
Bersani’s work ushered in an “anti-social turn” within theories of sexuality,
emphasising the negative and productive value of the negative, rather than
focusing on positivity, pride or destigmatisation. As legal theorist Janet Halley
describes (perhaps tongue-in-cheek), Bersani’s essay is a key piece of queer
theory work which, “[B]ids to be a sweeping critique of social dominance, of
which male dominance of women becomes only one example; and thus to be
more feminist than feminism” (2006, 161). Halley describes Bersani as hav-
ing “willingness to affirm sexuality as carrying an appetite for deep threats to
integrated selfhood” (2006, 165). In advocating for an anti-social approach,
Bersani’s essay also epitomised the turn away from identity politics past:
Bersani’s point was not to rally around homosexuality as an identity so much
as the social position of vulnerability.
Bersani continues this argument within his later work, Homos, in which
he argues that “homo-ness” is inherently anti-social. Questioning whether “a
homosexual [should] be a good citizen”, Bersani opposes a “rage for respect-
ability … in gay life today”, that he locates within the valorisation of mar-
riage and parenting within gay-rights activism, and in the sanitisation of
gay sex (Bersani 1996, 113). As Robert Caserio highlights, Bersani’s theoris-
ing inspired “a decade of explorations of queer unbelonging” (Caserio et  al.
2006, 819).

No Future and figure of the Child

One of the most infamous and influential ways that Bersani’s anti-social
thesis has been taken up in queer theory, is in the work of Lee Edelman,
specifically his book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004). In
this work, Edelman argues that the symbolic figure of “the Child” dominates
in politics and culture, operating to eliminate queerness and alternative for-
mations of sexuality and kinship. Pointing out the many ways in which the
Child is represented on television, in movies and in other media, Edelman
illustrates how the Child functions as a symbol of the future horizon: the
220 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Fake orgasms as resistance

Jagose extends queer theory’s focus on sexual practice to develop a
theory of orgasm. Jagose builds on Rubin’s influential essay “Thinking
Sex” in which she juxtaposes common understandings of “good” and
“bad” sex, arguing that bad sex “may be homosexual, unmarried, pro-
miscuous, non-procreative, or commercial. It may be masturbatory or
take place at orgies, may be casual, may cross generational lines, and
may take place in ‘public,’ or at least in the bushes or the baths. It may
involve the use of pornography, fetish objects, sex toys, or unusual
roles” (Rubin 1984, 13–14). Within queer theory, certain acts associ-
ated with “bad” sex have become privileged as inherently political acts.
When queer theorists valorise such acts, they attach political potential
to certain forms of queer sexual practice. In doing so, they suggest “it is
the queerness of erotic practice that makes it recognizable as political”
(Jagose 2013, 182).
Critiquing this, Jagose makes a case for understanding fake orgasm
as an ultimate embrace of negativity and thus as a form of resistance
to the heteronormative social order. Jagose argues that fake orgasm
“brings to visibility the presumptions that underpin claims to the trans-
formative capacities or potentials of some sex acts, some amatory trans-
actional relations or erotic spaces but not others” (Jagose 2013, 178).
She suggests that fake orgasm can be thought of as a critique of the
“disciplinary imperatives” of sex (Jagose 2013, 197), in a way “hold[ing]
open an alternate way of thinking about the political, offering not a
future-directed strategy for political transformation but an eloquent fig-
ure for political engagement with the conditions of the present” (Jagose
2013, 202).

promise of a better tomorrow, a future firmly rooted in the stability and safety
of the heterosexual nuclear family unit. Edelman argues that in contrast to
the Child, queer sexuality is understood as a perverse threat to the future,
via the association with death (as theorised by Bersani) and the reproductive
failure of homosexuality. Edelman suggests that even where queer couples
attempt to have children of their own, there is a social refusal to acknowl-
edge this as appropriate assimilation, and queer failure persists (2004, 20).
As Edelman writes, “[T]he cult of the Child permits no shrines to the
­queerness of boys and girls, since queerness … is understood as bringing
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 221

children and childhood to an end” (2004, 19). Edelman suggests that rather
than assimilate, queers ought to reject this regime altogether, writing:

Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we’re collectively ter-
rorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent
kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the
whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.
(2004, 29)

Edelman’s theory here not only builds upon earlier work inspired by AIDS
discourse, but also heralded a discussion around the question of queer tem-
porality and futurity. By proclaiming (and celebrating) the idea of queerness
as invested in “no future” and calling for the rejection of future, Edelman
proposes a consideration of radical presentism for discussions of queer life.
In  other words, Edelman offers a clear position in the debate about sexual
assimilation – Edelman calls for a rejection of the entire order of sexual moral-
ity in the first instance. Edelman’s approach, following Bersani, proposes a
radically different version of politics around sexuality, one that is not about
identity per se. Edelman’s political suggestion to “Fuck the social order”
suggests that what is needed is not an embrace of identity and unification
around this (as seen earlier in Gay Liberation), but rather, a call to shatter
social expectations of normative reproduction and thus the “future” of social
life altogether: “What is queerest about us, queerest within us, and queerest
despite us is this willingness to insist … that the future stops here” (Edelman
2004, 31).

Negative affect, the critical present and backward orientations

Theorists have responded in a myriad of ways to this anti-social and anti-
future paradigm laid out by Bersani and Edelman. Edelman’s work in par-
ticular has been critiqued by theorists such as Halberstam, who argues that
“No future for Edelman means routing our desires around the eternal sun-
shine of the spotless child and finding the shady side of political imaginaries
in the proudly sterile and antireproductive logics of queer relation” (2008,
148). Yet, Halberstam suggests caution be taken here: he argues that Edelman
may be caught in the symbolic to the detriment of the political (2008, 148).
As Halberstam also explains of Bersani’s theoretical outlook, “Rather than a
life-force connecting pleasure to life, survival and futurity, sex, and particu-
larly homo-sex and receptive sex, is a death drive that undoes the self, releases
222 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Play School and the figure of “the

Child”
In May  2004, Australian children’s television programme Play School
sparked a moral panic around the figure of the Child when it aired
a ­ segment featuring lesbian parents. The “Through the Windows”
­segment, which showed short documentary clips of the real world,
revealed footage of two girls and two adult women with one of the
girls’ voiceover narrating, “My mums are taking me and my friend
Meryn to an amusement park”. The segment caused controversy as
it aired shortly after the Australian Prime Minister John Howard
had announced a change in legislation to amend the Marriage Act to
re-define marriage between a man and a woman.
As a result, Play School gained a lot of media attention as commentators
debated whether it was appropriate to expose young children to lesbian
content. The prime minister accused the broadcaster of using its influence
to promote a particular agenda among children, invoking the notion of
the Child as an impressionable emblem of the future, one in need of pro-
tection from the “harmful” threat of queer content. At the time, Howard
was quoted as saying, “This is an example of the ABC running an agenda
in a children’s program. If people want to debate that issue, do it on a
(current affairs) program like Lateline, but not Play School”.

the self from the drive for mastery and coherence and resolution” (2008, 140).
In his essay “Hope Against Hope”, James Bliss poses another critique of the
anti-social thesis, challenging the assumed whiteness of the anti-social pro-
ject. Bliss argues that works such as Edelman’s No Future fail to account for
Black subjectivity and neglects “those modes of reproduction that are not
future-oriented, the children who do not register as such, as the ‘families’ that
are not granted the security of nuclear bonds” (Bliss 2015, 86). Bliss offers an
alternate conceptualisation of queer negativity as emerging from a tradition
of Black feminist theorising.
As we will see in later sections of this chapter, the major counterargument
to the anti-social thesis has been an optimistic, future-oriented rendering of
queer theory. However, not all theorists have taken up this hopeful orienta-
tion. Theorists such as Halberstam, Berlant, Love and Kathryn Bond Stockton
demonstrate the tensions between queer theory’s past, present and future
orientations.
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 223

CRITICAL PRESENT-NESS

In his book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
(2005), Halberstam emphasises the ways in which notions of “respectability”
and “the normal” are “upheld by a middle-class logic of reproductive tempo-
rality” (2005, 4). He argues that Western cultures “chart the emergence of
the adult from the dangerous and unruly period of adolescence as a desired
process of maturation” creating “longevity as the most desirable future” while
valorising the pursuit of long life at all costs (Halberstam 2005, 4). As  we
have noted, this normalised schema pathologises modes of living that dem-
onstrate little concern or desire for a life defined by longevity or stability.
Like Edelman, Halberstam argues that we should focus on these pathologised
modes of living in order to frame queerness through a politics of negativity.
Halberstam also argues that queer temporalities allow for lives to be imag-
ined outside of the celebrated milestones of life experience. Thus, in contrast
to Edelman, Halberstam suggests that queer uses of time may develop in
opposition to logics of normative reproductive temporality. Halberstam sug-
gests that queerness can be detached from sexual identity and considered
as a threat to the heteronormative social order when it is thought of as “an
outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric
economic practices” (2005, 1).
Queer time is exemplified, according to Halberstam, in writer Mark
Doty’s memoir about his lover’s death from AIDS. Indeed, Halberstam
emphasises the AIDS epidemic as one of the sources from which queer
time emerges in a dramatic fashion. Of the line “All my life I’ve lived with
a future which constantly diminishes but never vanishes” (Doty 1996, 4),
Halberstam notes:

The constantly diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here,

the present, the now, and while the threat of no future hovers overhead
like a storm cloud, the urgency of being also expands the potential of the
moment and, as Doty explores, squeezes new possibilities out of the time
at hand. (2005, 2)

Halberstam further notes that even as queer time emerges from the AIDS
crisis, it is “not only about compression and annihilation” (2005, 2). For
Halberstam, queer time allows a shift in focus from the pursuit of a normative
future to “the potentiality of a life unscripted by the conventions of family,
inheritance, and child-rearing” (2005, 2).
224 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Queer time and the Internet

How might some spaces on the Internet queer time? This is a question
that queer digital media scholars have considered: is there something
peculiar that happens to time in some social spaces online? How does
this impact and shape queer communities?
For example, as Alexander Cho (2015) suggests, the micro-blogging
site Tumblr queers time through allowing users to constantly recirculate
images and text in ways that keep affects in circulation, “a stubborn
persistence of the past” (2015, 44). Or, as Hannah McCann and Clare
Southerton suggest in their work on queer fandom on Twitter, the very
act of re-circulation of content lays the conditions for a form of queer-
ing: “When content is shared, something creative emerges in the new
engagements and readings it makes possible” (2019, 60).
Through the constant re-circulation and reverberation of queer
­content online, the past, present and future are collapsed, affects are
intensified and new queer possibilities emerge.

CRUEL OPTIMISM AND THE IMPASSE

As noted in Chapter  7, Berlant also theorises around critical present-ness

in her book Cruel Optimism (2011) in which she explores frayed fantasies of
“the good life” in mass media, literature, television, film and video from 1990
onwards. While Berlant theorises around optimism, her work also aligns with
the anti-social thesis as she explores difficult, negative and cruel relations
of contemporary social, cultural and political life. Berlant had earlier dealt
with the topic of optimism in two key works, where she developed theories
of “hegemonic optimism” (Berlant and Warner 1998, 549) and “dubious opti-
mism” (Berlant 2001, 129). We could relate Berlant’s description of “the good
life” to the heteronormative temporal regimes discussed by Edelman, Bersani
and Halberstam. Berlant suggests that things once closely related to “the good
life”, optimistic affect and structural transformation such as meritocracy,
“upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and lively, durable
intimacy” (2011, 3) are finding less and less traction in the contemporary
neoliberal-capitalist world.
With this in mind, Berlant argues that certain objects and scenarios that
once enabled fantasies of “the good life” have dissolved in recent times, giving
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 225

way to the “kinds of optimistic relation we call ‘cruel’” (2011, 3). For Berlant,
a cruel relation of optimism is “when something you desire is actually an
obstacle to you flourishing” (2011, 1). Taking an approach informed by affect
theory (discussed in Chapter  7), Berlant argues that attachments to things,
feelings, objects or scenarios are always optimistic because they are based
on the idea that “nearness to this thing will help you or a world to become
different in just the right way” (2011, 2). However, these optimistic attach-
ments become cruel when they ignite “a sense of possibility [that] actually
makes it impossible to attain the expansive transformation for which a person
or a people risks striving” (2011, 2). In this case, one’s optimistic attachment
becomes both the thing that enables them to hope for a better future and the
prevention of that better future from being attained. Describing this as being
stuck at an “impasse”, Berlant argues that this cruelly optimistic temporal ori-
entation provides a means of theorising around a critical present-ness.
Berlant describes the present as a “mediated affect”, and writes that
“the present is what makes itself present to us before it becomes anything
else, such as an orchestrated collective event or an epoch on which we can
look back” (2011, 4). By this she means that we know we are in the present
because, primarily, we feel it. Only in hindsight can we reflect on the moment
and describe it as an era, an epoch or a collective event. With this in mind,
Berlant suggests that if the present is “a mediated affect” it can also be
thought of “as a thing that is sensed and under constant revision” (2011, 4),
and up for debate. The present moment is not straightforward if, for instance,
one thinks about when “the present” begins and when it ceases. For Berlant,
the critical present or the impasse is perceived as a drawn out and elongated
present moment. She describes this as:

[A] stretch of time in which one moves around with a sense that the world
is at once intensely present and enigmatic, such that the activity of living
demands both a wandering absorptive awareness and a hypervigilance that
collects material that might help to clarify things, maintain one’s sea legs,
and coordinate the standard melodramatic crises with those processes that
have not yet found their genre of event. (2011, 4)

While it might seem shallow or hedonistic to focus only on the present

moment, Berlant’s critical present-ness highlights how this orientation
allows reflection on “various knowledges and intuitions about what’s hap-
pening” now (2011, 4), and also enabling a means of thinking about what
might follow on from such a reflection. This theory of the impasse provides
a means of imagining a better present while simultaneously revealing “what
226 Queer Theory Now

is halting, stuttering, and aching about being in the middle of detaching

from a waning fantasy of the good life” (2011, 263). For this reason, Berlant
argues that discussions about temporality and temporal orientation are
always profoundly political – “they are about what forces should be con-
sidered responsible and what crises urgent in our adjudication of survival
strategies and conceptions of a better life than what the metric of survival
can supply” (2011, 4). However, she argues that any political movement pro-
moting social change that emerges from this present impasse risks becoming
stuck in the double bind of cruel optimism, described as thus: “even with an
image of a better good life available to sustain your optimism, it is awkward
and it is threatening to detach from what is already not working” (Berlant
2011, 263).

QUEER CHILDHOODS

Kathryn Bond Stockton also challenges fantasies of “the good life” and striv-
ing towards normative futures. Like Edelman, Bond Stockton argues that
childhood is a key site where heteronormativity is played out. However, Bond
Stockton directly opposes Edelman’s rejection of the Child by centralising
childhood, in her theory of queer temporality outlined in The Queer Child; Or,
Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009). Bond Stockton highlights
that in history, theory, legal texts, literature, cinema and popular culture more
broadly, childhood development, “has been relentlessly figured as vertical
movement upward (hence ‘growing up’) toward full stature, marriage, work,
reproduction and the loss of childishness” (2009, 4). However, for many
LGBTIQ adults, childhood evokes memories of “desperately feeling there was
simply nowhere to grow” (2009, 3). Hence, she describes the experience of
queer childhood as:

[A] frightening, heightened sense of growing toward a question mark. Or

growing up in a haze. Or hanging in suspense – even wishing time would
stop, or just twist sideways, so that one wouldn’t have to advance to new or
further scenes of trouble. (2009, 3)

For Bond Stockton, these feelings associated with queer childhood are
politically useful because they reveal the limits of the heteronormative devel-
opmental model. From this perspective, the phrase “growing up” is “a short-
sighted, limited rendering of human growth” because it implies that growth
ceases “when full stature (or reproduction) is achieved” (2009, 11). By taking a
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 227

queer approach to analysing childhood, Bond Stockton argues that “there are
ways of growing that are not growing up” (2009, 11). Challenging the linear
“vertical, forward-motion metaphor of growing up” (2009, 11), she proposes
a theory of lateral development and argues that the queer temporality grows
sideways. Significantly, Bond Stockton uses this idea of lateral growth to
depart from Edelman and the anti-social thesis. That is, by refusing to reject
the Child and “the future”, this theory of sideways growth “locates energy,
pleasure, vitality, and (e)motion in … back-and-forth connections … that are
not reductive” (2009, 13). She describes these as “moving suspensions and
shadows of growth” (2009, 13). By this she means that forms of growth (per-
sonal, political and historical change) can be revealed by shifting focus from
linear development to lateral connection.

LOOKING FORWARD, FEELING BACKWARD

Love similarly embraces queer negativity in her book Feeling Backwards: Loss
and the Politics of Queer History (2007). Love’s contribution to queer theory’s
temporal turn focuses on the political potential of being oriented towards the
past. By focusing on the loss associated with queer histories, Love explores
the contemporary queer experience as a form of past-orientation. From this
perspective, queer activism, theory and criticism are founded on a history of
“suffering, stigma and violence” (Love 2007, 1), which means that both the
present and future will always be bound up in the losses of the past. As Love
writes:

Insofar as the losses of the past motivate us and give meaning to our cur-
rent experience, we are bound to memorialize them (“We will never for-
get”). But we are equally bound to overcome the past, to escape its legacy
(“We will never go back”). (2007, 1)

Love asserts that the contemporary queer experience is that of “looking

forward” while “feeling backward” because we are bound to memorialise the
losses of our past while also being “deeply committed to the notion of pro-
gress” (2007, 3). Even when embracing queer negativity, “we just cannot stop
dreaming of a better life for queer people” (2007, 3). To navigate this contra-
dictory experience of “looking forward” while “feeling backward” Love calls for
a criticism that pays particular attention to “feelings tied to the experience of
social inclusion and to the historical ‘impossibility’ of same-sex desire” (2007,
4) such as shame, despair, nostalgia, loneliness and regret.
228 Queer Theory Now

AFFIRMATION, OPTIMISM AND FUTURE ORIENTATIONS

Responding to queer theory’s embrace of negativity, other theorists have

developed theories of queerness and time that seek to emphasise affirma-
tion, optimism and utopias. In “Queer Optimism”, Michael Snediker calls
for a movement away from negativity and “a revaluation of optimism”
(Snediker 2006) as queer theory’s critical project. It is significant to note
that while Snediker considers utopian optimism to be “attached, temporally
to a future”, he argues that queer optimism is “not promissory” (Snediker
2006).

It doesn’t ask that some future time make good on its own hopes. Rather,
queer optimism asks that optimism, embedded in its own immanent pre-
sent, be interesting. (Snediker 2006)

Like Berlant, Snediker argues for an understanding of the queerness of

­present-orientation. However, departing from the anti-social thesis, he “seeks
to take positive affects as serious and interesting sites of critical investiga-
tion” and critiques what he describes as “queer pessimism” which he sees
articulated in the field’s attention to negative affect, melancholy, shame, the
death drive and shattering (Snediker 2006). For O’Rourke, queer theory has
always “been turned toward the future” because it is “a theory permanently
open to its own recitation, re-signification and revision” (O’Rourke 2011,
107). He writes:

in its earliest incarnations as the AIDS activism of ACT UP and Queer

Nation, both of which are privileged by utopian political thought that
promises an unmasterable future, and the “foundational” theorizations of
Eve Kosofksy Sedgwick and Judith Butler (among many others), queer the-
ory has always already been of, for, and promised, given over to, the future.
(O’Rourke 2011, 107)

The optimistic side of the temporality debate recognises this and con-
ceptualises a return “to the revolutionary potential of queer studies, and
seek[s] to reimagine a hopeful, forward-reaching, world-making queer
theory that matters as the future” (O’Rourke 2011, 108). These schol-
ars emphasise the power of the heteronormative temporal order, yet
they embrace the queer potential of the future rather than rejecting it
outright.
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 229

Utopias and the queer future

Directly opposing Edelman’s rejection of the future, Muñoz conceptualises a
critical hopefulness, relating queerness to utopia and arguing that “the future
is queerness’s domain” (2009, 1). Muñoz sets up a similar claim to Edelman,
using the phrase “straight time” to refer to the temporality associated with
both heteronormativity and homonormativity. According to Muñoz, this “self-
naturalising” and linear temporality figures queer subjects as futureless, telling
them “that there is no future but the here and now of … everyday life” (2009,
22). Hence, like Edelman, Muñoz argues that heteronormative culture views
LGBTIQ people as “developmentally stalled, forsaken” and without “the com-
plete life promised by heterosexual temporality” (2009, 98). This temporality
“makes queers think that both the past and future do not belong to them”
(Muñoz 2009, 112). “All we are allowed to imagine”, Muñoz writes, “is barely
surviving in the present” (2009, 112).
Here Muñoz departs from queer theory’s anti-social paradigm, rejecting the
embrace of negativity that characterises the anti-social thesis. Where Edelman
and others within the anti-social turn call for queer subjects to refuse the
pull of the future and embrace the negativity of this present, Muñoz argues
that the present is “not enough”, that it is “impoverished and toxic” for those
who “do not feel the privilege of majoritarian belonging, normative tastes,
and ‘rational’ expectations” (Muñoz 2009, 27). Explicitly refusing anti-social
queer theory’s emphasis on the “here and now”, Muñoz writes: “what we need
to know is that queerness is not yet here but it approaches like a crashing
wave of potentiality” (Muñoz 2009, 185). Muñoz positions queer theory as
a response to negativity and the “impoverished” temporality of the present,
arguing that queerness “should and could be about a desire for another way of
being both in the world and in time” (Muñoz 2009, 96). For Muñoz, “queer-
ness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and
feel beyond the quagmire of the present” (2009, 1). As part of this manifesto
for the queer future, he writes:

The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here
and now’s totalising rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.
Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we
must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact
new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately
new worlds. Queerness is the longing that propels us onward, beyond
romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that
thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough. (2009, 1)
230 Queer Theory Now

Muñoz’s theorisation of queer temporality responds to the assertion that

there is no future for the figure of the queer and subsequently that both hope
and the future are “imbued with and unable to be dislodged from a heter-
onormative logic” (O’Rourke 2011, 107). Presenting an optimistic side to the
debate on queer temporality, Muñoz sees the critical potential of hope and the
queer potential of future-orientation.

Queer happiness
Ahmed also challenges the anti-social thesis, with a particular critique against
the embrace of negativity, and the association between happiness, the future

Queer theory in practice: Barebacking and cruising as queer

futurities
Queer futurities are evoked in the subcultures of barebacking and cruis-
ing (anal sex without condoms and promiscuous anonymous sex) in Tim
Dean’s Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking
(2009). In this work, Dean argues that barebacking “concerns an expe-
rience of unfettered intimacy, of overcoming the boundaries between
persons” (2009, 2).
While barebacking and cruising are not gay-specific sexual prac-
tices, they provide a means of thinking about new forms of queer
relationality. Promiscuous sexual activity in particular gives rise to an
impersonal ethics where one cares about others “even when one can-
not see anything of oneself in them”, which in turn gives rise to an
“ethics of alterity” (Dean 2009, 25). Therefore, Dean argues that these
practices exemplify “a distinctive ethic of openness to alterity and
that – irrespective of our view of the morality of barebacking – we all,
gay and non-gay, have something to learn from this relational ethic”
(2009, 176).
With this in mind, O’Rourke suggests they represent “the queer
time and space of the not-yet-here” (2011, 112), shifting from an
­identitarian focus on lesbian and gay politics to open up a space of queer
­sexualities, future social relations and queer futurities. As Dean sug-
gests, “cruising … involves not just hunting for sex but opening oneself
to the world” (Dean 2009, 25).
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 231

and normativity. In doing so, she counters the argument that “if one is to be
queer, happiness is ontologically risky and therefore should be refused, given
up” (O’Rourke 2011, 111). Her book The Promise of Happiness (2010) analyses
the ways that happiness is culturally constructed, seeking to understand “how
happiness is imagined as being what follows being a certain kind of being”
(Ahmed 2010, 2). A key critique posed by Ahmed is against the cultural imper-
ative to “be happy”, which she argues is always linked to normativity. Ahmed
builds upon feminist, Black and queer scholarship to show how the idea of
“happiness” has long been “used to justify oppression” (Ahmed 2010, 2).
Ahmed explores a number of figures that are alienated from the model
of normative happiness. One of the most significant of these is the figure
of the “unhappy queer”. Looking at representations of queer people in liter-
ary and media culture, Ahmed contrasts unhappy queer characters against
images of happy heterosexuality. She argues that heterosexual love often
“becomes about the possibility of a happy ending: about what life is aimed
toward, as being what gives life direction or purpose, or as what drives a
story” (2010, 90). As a result, Ahmed argues “that it is difficult to separate
images of the good life from the historic privileging of heterosexual conduct”
(2010, 90). When heterosexuality is aligned with happiness in this way,
queerness becomes associated with unhappiness. To explain this, Ahmed
examines the phrase “I just want you to be happy” that is often linked to
parental grief about children coming out. This grief, she argues, “reminds us
that the queer life is already constructed as an unhappy life, as a life without
the ‘things’ that make you happy, or as a life that is depressed as it lacks cer-
tain things” (2010, 93).

Key concept: Happiness scripts

In The Promise of Happiness, Sara Ahmed describes “happiness scripts”
as devices that orient people towards both happiness and heteronorma-
tivity. Looking at how happiness is represented in cultural texts, Ahmed
argues that happiness “involves a way of being aligned with others, of
facing the right way” (Ahmed 2010, 45). Through this alignment, hap-
piness comes to mean “living a certain kind of life, one that reaches
certain points and which, in reaching these points, creates happiness
for others” (Ahmed 2010, 48). For instance, she describes the ideal
­happiness script for girls: “you must become a woman by finding your
happiness in the happiness of a good man” (Ahmed 2010, 90–91).
232 Queer Theory Now

However, we must note that Ahmed does not suggest that we should read
unhappy queer characters as a literal moral disapproval of LGBTIQ people.
She  instead argues that “we must consider how unhappiness circulates
within and around this archive [of the unhappy queer], and what it allows us
to do” (2010, 89). Ahmed theorises two models of queer happiness that riff
off this figure of the unhappy queer. The first is the “happy queer”, a figure
who follows normative happiness scripts towards a position of homonorma-
tivity. Discussing this, Ahmed writes, “if queers have to approximate signs
of happiness in order to be recognised, then they might have to minimize
signs of queerness” (2010, 94). This “happy queer” is a familiar figure within
popular film and television. It is embodied in the token queer characters that
function as background noise in overwhelmingly heterosexual narratives.
Happy queer characters are often desexualised characters that have love
interests, but are never represented being affectionate with their same-sex
partners.
In contrast to the “happy queer”, Ahmed locates the “happily queer”, a
figure who “does not necessarily promote an image of happiness that bor-
rows from the conventional repertoire of images” (2010, 115). The “happily
queer”, Ahmed argues, refuses to give up their desires, even if these desires
take them outside of the parameters of happiness (2010, 117). This figure
“still encounters the world that is unhappy with queer love, but refuses to be
made unhappy by that encounter” (2010, 117). An example of this occurs in
the Swedish teen film Show Me Love (1998) in which two teen girl characters
fall in love with each other (subverting the conventional happiness script) and
live a “happily queer” existence by refusing the unhappiness that their small
town associates with queerness. In the film’s final scene, they choose to be in
a relationship and joyfully drink chocolate milk together while listening to pop
music. Other happily queer films include The Strange One (Jack Garfein 1957),
The Fox (Mark Rydell 1967), That Certain Summer (Lamont Johnson 1972),
Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (John Erman 1977) and La Cage Aux Folles
(Ennio Morricone 1978).
As Ahmed argues, attention to “happily queer” figures like these offers a
means of refusing “to give happiness the power to secure a specific image of
what would count as a good life” (2010, 119). This figure also enables queer
theory to theorise around happiness without negating the political force of
unhappiness which, according to Ahmed, can actually be affirmative because
it can “gesture toward another world” (2010, 107). In presenting this figure of
the “happily queer”, Ahmed takes an optimistic approach to theorising queer-
ness and futurity. More directly responding to Edelman and the anti-social
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 233

thesis, Ahmed imagines the queer future as “what is kept open as the possibil-
ity of things not staying as they are, or being as they stay”, and imagines a
form of queer potentiality that “would be alive to chance, to chance arrivals, to
the perhaps of a happening” (Ahmed 2010, 197–198). As a means of subvert-
ing, challenging or simply problematising the scripted, linear temporal logics
of heteronormativity, Ahmed argues that queerness could be thought of as
“the future of the perhaps” (2010, 198).

An optimistic challenge to chrononormativity

In Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (2010), Elizabeth
Freeman coins the terms “chrononormativity” and “chronobiopolitics”
to refer to the ways that logics of heteronormativity have coalesced with
institutional forces. For Freeman, “chrononormativity” is the means by
which schedules, calendars and time zones “come to seem like somatic facts”
(2010, 3). She sees this play out in “manipulations of time [that] convert
historically specific regimes of asymmetrical power into seemingly ordinary
bodily tempos and routines, which in turn organize the value and meaning
of time” (2010, 3). For instance, the shift from agricultural to industrial
work re-temporalised many bodies that were once in tune with seasonal
rhythms. When this process is extended beyond the individual to an entire
population, it is referred to as a process of “chronobiopolitics”. Freeman
describes this as when “the state and other institutions … link properly
temporalized bodies to narratives of movement and change” (2010, 4) such
as marriage, reproduction and child-rearing, which we have mapped out in
Figure 8.1. Freeman highlights how this heteronormative timeline benefits a
nation’s economic interests, noting:

In the United States … states now license, register, or certify birth (and
thus citizenship, eventually encrypted in a Social Security ID for taxpaying
purposes), marriage or domestic partnership (which privatizes caretaking
and regulates the distribution of privatized property), and death (which
terminates the identities linked to state benefits, redistributing these ben-
efits through familial channels), along with sundry privileges like driving
(to jobs and commercial venues) and serving in the military (thus incurring
state expenditures that often serve corporate interests). In the eyes of the
state, this sequence of socioeconomically “productive” moments is what it
means to have a life at all. (2010, 4–5)
234 Queer Theory Now

Queer theory in practice: Queering archives

Where queerness is marked as “Other”, history is filled with queer
silences. As such delving into archives to recover lost or obscured LGBTIQ
voices has been understood as a crucial political activity. Considering
queerness via archives raises the question of whose stories are preserved,
and whose are yet to be unearthed? As Gemma Killen outlines:

The aims of queer historians are often similar to feminist historians in

that they are attempting to “recover” missing queer voices and produce
stories about queer history that resist the medical and legal discourses
within which they have traditionally been shrouded. (2017, 60)

As Killen (2017) also suggests, the digital era has heralded an entirely
different dimension to archival questions, as queerness is recorded in its
everyday forms via social media, blogs and other sites.
The question of archives has become central to many queer theory
scholars writing on temporality. As Cvetkovich details in her 2003 work
An Archive of Feelings, oral histories, ephemera and other community-
based records are crucial for understanding the history of everyday
queer experiences. Drawing on Cvetkovich, Sara Edenheim differenti-
ates the following (2014, 40):

The queer archive of feelings The scholar’s archive (public research archive)
ephemera written documents
fragments linearly structured around canonical events
open and unlimited closed and limited
everyday events normative, deviancy excluded
arbitrary value according to historical or research interests
marginalised and condemned coherent narratives
memories and feelings
“magical” or fictional value literal value only
material practices fulfils a scientific need
digital, “non-place” stagnant
fulfils a psychic/emotional need
sense of urgency
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 235

However, Edenheim suggests that such a distinction unwittingly posi-

tions the queer archive as radical in contrast to the (fantasy) of the
non-radical scholarly archive. Edenheim questions what is “queer” about
Cvetkovich’s archive and calls for queer theorists to do more to interro-
gate the desire to find queer identities in the archive.

Chrononormativity and chronobiopolitics operate even in zones “not fully

reducible to the state” (such as medicine, law and popular culture) because
more generally, having a life “entails the ability to narrate it not only in these
state-sanctioned terms but also in a novelistic framework: as event-centered,
goal-oriented, intentional, and culminating in epiphanies of major transfor-
mations” (2010, 5).
Much like other theorists we have engaged with in this chapter, Freeman
critiques these logics. Aligning with the optimistic side of the debate, Freeman
suggests that an exclusive focus on queer negativity risks losing sight of the
potential pleasures of queer theory’s unique critical intersection of erotic and
body politics. However, she also argues against taking “a purely futural orien-
tation” as she argues that this “depends on forgetting the past” (2010, xvi).
Therefore, while her position is situated on the side of optimism, her work is
not future-oriented in the same way as Ahmed or Muñoz. Her conception of
queer time emphasises detour, delay, deference, asynchrony and stasis as a
means of destabilising normative logics of “history ‘proper’ but also coming
out, consummation, development, domesticity, family, foreplay, genealogy,
identity, liberation, modernity, [and] the progress of movement” (Freeman
2010, xxii). Hence, she sees the queer potential of “living aslant to dominant
forms of object-choice, coupledom, family, marriage, sociability, and self-
presentation and thus out of synch with state-sponsored narratives of belong-
ing and becoming” (2010, xv), arguing that queer temporalities can provide
models for “moving through and with time, encountering pasts, speculating
futures, and interpenetrating the two in ways that counter the common sense
of the present tense” (2010, xv).
236 Queer Theory Now

Key concept: Temporal drag

Building upon Butler’s theorising of drag, Freeman coins the term “tem-
poral drag”. In  Gender Trouble, Butler argues that drag is a subversive
tool because it demonstrates the mobility of gender identification and
highlights certain excesses of gender that allow us to question the gen-
der binary and, more broadly, the heterosexual matrix.
Re-thinking drag through queer theory’s temporal turn, Freeman argues
that drag might also be thought of as a “temporal phenomenon” (2010, 62).
By this, she means that drag can be regarded “as a counter-genealogical prac-
tice of archiving culture’s throwaway objects, including outmoded masculini-
ties from which useable pasts may be extracted” (Freeman 2010, xxiii).
Hence, when we watch drag shows, we see present-day performers
raid the history closet for traces of the past: music, popular culture ref-
erences, gendered behaviours and costume. For Freeman, rather than
showing us only excesses of gender, drag represents an excessive and
exaggerated performance “of the signifier ‘history’” (Freeman 2010, 62).

CONCLUSION: QUEER TIME

As we have explored through this chapter, queer theory has much to say about
time and temporality. Drawing attention to this, we have mapped out some of the
major contours of the temporal turn, demonstrating how a particular application
of Marxist thought has enabled queer theorists to interrogate “the use of time
to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity” (Freeman
2010, 3). As we have highlighted, the key debate in this area of contemporary
queer theory is the question of how queerness should be oriented with regard to
the future. While some theorists have advocated for a past- or present-orientation
that rejects hope and futurity, others have argued for an affirmative or optimis-
tic perspective that imbues queerness with a hopeful transformative potential.
Common across all standpoints is an alignment between queerness and asyn-
chrony – in the sense of being out-of-sync with “chrononormativity” (Freeman
2010), “reproductive futurity” (Edelman 2004), “repro-time” (Halberstam 2005),
“straight time” (Muñoz 2009) or “the good life” (Ahmed 2010; Berlant 2011) –
and a desire to understand how queer theory could and should respond to this.
Comparing the work of Berlant and Muñoz, for instance, we see that
while Berlant offers a critical account of stagnation in the present, Muñoz
makes a case for why we should strive towards transformation to an ideal
world. Berlant describes how we ultimately desire political transformation,
 Temporality and Queer Utopias 237

though we sometimes problematically invest this hope in state mechanisms

for change. While Berlant focuses on the present saturated in history as the
site for the political, in contrast Muñoz critiques the present and focuses on
the queer potential of futurity. Arguments such as these, that seek to respond
to the temporal logics of heteronormativity, have also enabled theorists to
consider what a queer time might look or feel like, or how it might be expe-
rienced. Each theorist takes a different perspective on this. For instance, for
Edelman and other advocates of the anti-social thesis, a queer time amounts
to an embrace of queer negativity and a rejection of hope.
For others, such as Nguyen Tan Hoang, it is the innovative transmission
of queer knowledge and experience “from one generation to the next, a pro-
cess that exceeds … the heterosexual/kinship reproductive model” (Dinshaw
et al. 2007, 183). Halberstam suggests “It is a theory of queerness as a way of
being in the world and a critique of the careful social scripts that usher even
the most queer among us through major markers of individual development
and into normativity” (Dinshaw et  al. 2007, 182). Finally, for the optimistic
perspective, a queer time is open to the happenstance of the future, a future
that has not yet arrived.

Further reading
Carolyn Dinshaw, Lee Edelman, Roderick A. Ferguson, Carla Freccero,
Elizabeth Freeman, J Halberstam, Annamarie Jagose, Christopher
Nealon, and Nguyen Tan Hoang. (2007). “Theorising Queer Tempo-
ralities.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 13(2–3): 177–196.
This roundtable from GLQ’s special issue on “Queer Temporalities” fea-
tures engaging dialogue between prominent queer theorists who each
discuss their approach to queer theory’s temporal turn. A useful and
accessible text that maps out the contours of the debate.
Lee Edelman. (2004). “The Future is Kid Stuff” in No Future: Queer The-
ory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press, 1–32.
Edelman’s theory of reproductive futurity coalescing around the figure of
the Child is presented succinctly in this first chapter of his book.
José Esteban Muñoz. (2009). “Queerness as Horizon” in Utopia: The Then
and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press,
19–32.
Muñoz lays out his theory of queerness as a horizon of potentiality in
this first chapter of his manifesto for the future.
238 Queer Theory Now

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• Does the Child still function as a symbol of futurity, as Edelman has

argued? Where can we see this playing out?
• In what ways might queer life narratives challenge the linear logic of
heteronormative temporality?
• Where do you side within the anti-social versus optimistic debate about
queerness and the future? Why?

Recommended films
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock 1963). This canonical Hitchcock horror-
thriller about a family traumatised by birds is analysed in Lee Edelman’s
No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Edelman argues that the
birds in The Birds are figures of the death drive.

Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak 2004). This coming of age film tells the
story of an adult woman remembering a queer encounter in her past.
Analysed in Monaghan’s Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not
‘Just a Phase’ as an example of both Love’s theory of “looking forwards,
feeling backwards” and Muñoz’s approach to queer temporality.

Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson 1998). This acclaimed queer teen

film is about an unpopular teen girl crushing on her popular classmate.
The film has a happy ending that aligns well with Ahmed’s theory of the
“happily queer”.
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Index

ACT UP, 102–107, 116, 117, 228 brotherboy identity, 195

Ahmed, Sara, 207, 215, 230–233 Brown, Wendy, 163–165, 171, 187
AIDS, see HIV/AIDS butch/femme, 63, 82, 129
All About My Mother, 178 butch, 31
affect, 96, 147, 149, 165, 202–207 femme, 170, 208
Altman, Dennis, 6, 10, 43 queer femininity 3, 170
Angelides, Steven, 35, 46–47 But I’m a Cheerleader, 21
anti-essentialism, 93, 102, 183 Butler, Judith, 8–10, 13, 57–58, 71, 88,
antifoundationalism, 74, 179 119–136, 190, 236
anti-normativity, 14 Butterfly, 238
anti-pornography feminism, 75–85
antisocial thesis, 14, 206, 218–219, Califia, Patrick, 81
221–222 camp, 131, 147
Anzaldúa, Gloria E., 10, 71, 154, 177 CAMP (Campaign Against Moral
archives, 26, 83, 147, 193, 234–235 Persecution), 47
Arondekar, Anjali, 193 Cantú, Lionel, 111, 193
asexuality, 38 capitalism, 29, 58, 61, 69, 70, 76, 135, 161,
assemblage, 176–177 164, 165, 198, 199–202, 206–207
assimilation, 12, 43, 60, 115, 173, Celluloid Closet, The, 21
207, 221 Chocolate Babies, 117
Atkinson, Ti-Grace, 60, 63 chronobiopolitics, 233, 235
chronormativity, 233–236
barebacking, 230 cisgender identity, 167, 172, 179, 217
Beauvoir, Simone de, 37, 58 citizenship, 41, 110, 161–162, 185, 188,
Berlant, Lauren, 3, 102, 162, 205, 207, 191, 192, 233,
224–226, 236–237 see also sexual citizenship
Bersani, Leo, 94–96, 98–99, 101, 218–221 class, 32, 41, 60–62, 68–70, 106, 158,
binary gender, 9, 195 161, 180, 199–201
see also hetero/homo binary closet, the, 49, 104, 118–119, 137, 142–150
bio-power, 29 Cohen, Cathy J., 5, 8, 15, 112–113,
Birds, The, 238 183–185
bisexuality, 35, 46–47, 64–65, 97, 217 colonialism, 29, 110, 112, 156, 181,
Black feminism, 4, 60, 61, 69, 72–73 196–199, 201
Bond Stockton, Kathryn, 226–227 Combahee River Collective, 4, 60, 67, 69
Born in Flames, 90 coming out, 43, 49, 66, 70, 142, 148–149,
Bornstein, Kate, 168 208, 235
bourgeoise, 28, 164, 199 compulsory heterosexuality, 11, 65–67,
BPM (Beats Per Minute), 117 89, 139

264
 Index 265

consciousness raising, 62, 71 essentialism, 64, 101, 112, 141,

Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 4, 72–73, 170–172, 203
182–185 strategic, 156
cruel optimism, 207, 224–226 eugenics, 33
cultural capital, 111, 158 exceptionalism, 162, 193
curriculum
decolonising, 199, 200–201 fa’afafine identity, 195, 198
queering, 188–189, 210–211 failure, queer, 206, 209, 219–220
family, the, 11, 27, 42, 43, 62, 69, 73,
Daughters of Bilitis, 40, 53 157, 196, 197, 201, 215, 216,
Daughters of Bilitis Video Project, 53 218–220, 235
death drive, 221, 228 alternative, 132, 161, 195
decolonising, 23, 197–199, 200–201 family values, 79, 98
see also curriculum, decolonising Feinberg, Leslie, 166–167
deconstruction, 7, 62, 67, 86, 93, 102, femininity, 36, 120, 123, 125–126, 170
113, 127, 136, 146, 156, 182–183 feminism, feminist theory, 54–90
Deep Throat, 80 anti-pornography, 75–82
see also Inside Deep Throat Black feminism, 4, 61, 67–72, 73
De Lauretis, Teresa, 2–3, 118 intersectional feminism, 72–74, 87
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari, lesbian feminism, 7, 8, 11, 41, 63–67
176, 203 liberal feminism, 61
Derrida, Jacques, 8, 127 Marxist feminism, 61, 70–71
desire, 9, 12, 26, 30, 35, 37, 38, 61, 66, pro-sex/sex radical feminism, 81, 82–84
76, 110, 121–122, 126, 136–137, queer feminism, 88–89
139, 140–141, 145–146, 217, 221, radical feminism, 61
223, 225, 227, 229, 232 socialist feminism, 61
diaspora, 185, 188, 193–195 “third wave”, 86–88
disability studies, 207–209 Western waves theory, 56
discourse, 9, 19, 24, 26–27, 29–31, 34, Ferguson, Roderick A., 169, 180, 190, 214
51, 104, 140, 150, 204, 218, 234 Foucault, Michel, 6, 13, 23–34, 36, 74, 100
disgust, 96, 204 Freeman, Elizabeth, 213–214, 233–236
disidentification, 191 Freud, Sigmund, 35, 46, 59, 68, 119,
Doris Day, 174 125–126
drag, 129–131, 132–133, 135, 169, Friedan, Betty, 59–60, 63, 71
174, 191 Furies, The, 64
temporal, 236 Fuss, Diana, 15, 86, 149
Duggan, Lisa, 108, 155, 157, 159, 218 Futuro Beach, 212
Dworkin, Andrea, 75–80
Gay Liberation, 42–43, 46, 49, 63–64,
Edelman, Lee, 104, 219–223, 226, 229 83, 109
Ellis, Havelock, 32–33, 37, 39, 46 gay shame, 94, 108, 115–116, 204
equality, 12, 39, 49, 56, 58–59, 61, 115, gender binary, the, 8–9, 46, 89, 120–129,
157–158, 160–161, 164, 171 171–172, 175, 236
erotic, the, 76 gender melancholy, 125–126
266 Index

genealogical approach, 6–7, 9 and Gay Liberation, 43, 49

geopolitical turn, 192–196 and intersectionality, 73–74
Gift, The, 117 and HIV/AIDS, 93, 99, 101–102,
Grosz, Elizabeth, 68, 187 107–110, 112–113
and homophile identity, 39
Halberstam, Jack, 14, 17, 89, 115, 147, and LGBTIQ, 10–11
165, 166, 174, 206, 209, 215–217, and Sedgwick’s theory, 140–149
221, 223 and woman subject, 67, 120, 125
Halley, Janet, 17, 219 see also disidentification
Halperin, David M., 2, 3, 5 identity politics, 69, 97, 107, 149,
happiness, 231 153–157, 177
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 178 see also postidentity politics
hetero/homo binary, 15, 33, 47, 140, Indigenous studies, 196–199
149, 155 Inside Deep Throat, 90
heteronormativity, 11–13, 70, 98, 110, Internet, the, 56, 166, 224
149, 157, 193, 231–233, 237 intersectionality
and algorithms, 210 intersectional feminism, 72
and childhood, 226–227 inversion, 31–33
and homonationalism, 162 Itty Bitty Titty Committee, 90
and racism, 184
and settler colonialism 196–198 Jagose, Annamarie, 1, 14, 55, 83–84,
and time, 215–218, 229 214, 220
heterosexual matrix, 9, 121–122, 125,
130, 202, 236 kathoey identity, 175, 195
heterosexuality, 11–12, 15, 29, 65–67, 68, Kinsey, Alfred, 37–38, 46, 59
70, 82, 108, 120, 122, 125–126, 129, Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 30
133, 137, 144, 149, 202, 217, 231
see also compulsory heterosexuality Lacan, Jacques, 68
hijra identity, 175, 195 Lauretis, Teresa de, 2–3, 118
Hill Collins, Patricia, 182 Lavender Menace, 63
HIV/AIDS, 85, 91–117, 154, 157, 218– lesbian separatism, 59, 64, 86, 97
221, 223, 228 liberalism, 79, 97, 155
homonationalism, 161–163, 193 liberal feminism, 61, 63
homonormativity, 12–13, 114, 157–163, Lorde, Audre, 76
173, 218, 232 Love, Heather, 4–5, 116, 149, 164–165,
homophile movement, 36, 38–42, 43, 45 206, 227
homophobia, 91, 93, 98, 101, 103–105,
107, 146, 160, 163, 207, 218 Mackinnon, Catharine, 75–80
hooks, bell, 71–72 Margarita with a Straw, 212
marriage, 42, 59, 79, 108, 196, 215–216,
identity, 3, 4–5, 29–30, 67–70, 153–178, 219, 226, 233, 235
183, 186, 187, 192, 201, 217 marriage equality, 12, 115, 158,
and Butler’s theory, 119–136 160–161, 222
and disability, 209 Marsha P. Johnson, 44, 169
 Index 267

Marx, Karl, 199 phenomenology, 119, 172–173

Marxism, 40, 119, 146, 199–202 phuying identity, 195
Marxist feminism, 59, 60–61, 70, 75 Play School, 222
masculinity, 36, 77, 98, 120, 123, pleasure, 24, 27, 34–35, 79, 81, 82, 221,
125–126, 170 227, 229
female masculinity, 174 polymorphous perversity, 35
Mattachine Society, 40–41, 44, 45 postidentity politics, 176–177, 185–186,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 172 187
methods, queer, 146–147, 148 postmodernism, 7–10, 102, 104
Miseducation of Cameron Post, The, 178 postqueer, 17–18
Moonlight, 212 poststructuralism, 7–10, 23, 93, 102,
Mulholland Drive, 21 104, 121, 134, 204
Muñoz, José Esteban, 191–192, power, 7–8, 13, 26, 28–29, 62, 64, 69–70,
229–230, 237 73, 76–78, 82, 100, 112, 124, 129,
134, 137–138, 144, 165, 182, 199,
necropolitics, 100 203, 208, 218, 233
neoliberalism, 155, 159, 185, 190 pride, 43, 49, 99–100, 102, 219
New Left, 43, 58 pride marches, 45, 47–48, 49, 50–51,
new queer cinema movement, 98–99, 189 108, 115–116
New Right, 78–79, 85, 98, 101, 111 privilege, 60, 64, 72, 109–110, 113, 132,
non-binary identity, 174–175 142, 181, 184, 229
normativity, 11–13, 105, 112–113, 179, proletariat, 199
204, 208, 230–233 pro-sex/sex radical feminism, 80–82,
see also anti-normativity, 85, 87
chrononormativity, heteronormativity, Prosser, Jay, 133–134, 172–173
homonormativity, transnormativity psychoanalysis, 35, 68, 125
Puar, Jasbir, 162–163, 177, 186–187,
ontology, 204 193, 203, 207
orgasms, 14, 37, 59, 220
orientation Quare Theory, 192
sexual, 46, 65, 138 queering, 3, 16, 18, 124, 192–195, 224
temporal, 221, 225–230 Queer(s) of Colour Critique, 5, 71, 180,
Orlando, 152 190–192
Queer Eye, 159
paranoid reading, 145–148 Queer International, The, 110
Paris is Burning, 98, 131, 132, 152 Queer Nation, 107–110, 113–115,
pathologisation, 31, 36, 140, 217, 223 155, 228
performativity, 58, 119, 126–131, 133, queer reading, 145–148
143, 190 queer time, 223–224, 235
personal is political, the, 62, 81, 155,
205 racism, 33–35, 60–61, 67–72, 105,
perversion, 26–27, 30, 36, 41, 163, 111–113, 184, 200–201
197, 220 radical feminism, 55, 58, 60–67
see also polymorphous perversity Radicalesbians, 63–64
268 Index

recognition, 108, 154, 171–172 Spade, Dean, 171–172

Rejected, The, 53 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 156
reparative reading, 145–148 Stonewall riots, 43–45, 47, 49, 169
repressive hypothesis, the, 25–26 Strategic essentialism, 156
ressentiment, 164 Street Transvestite Action
Rich, Adrienne, 65–67 Revolutionaries (STAR), 169
Rubin, Gayle, 79, 82–85, 220 Stryker, Susan, 95, 114, 167–168
subversion, 129–136
sadomasochism, 81–82 Sylvia Rivera, 44, 169
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 136–150, 204
Seidman, Steven, 42, 102, 157–158 Takatāpui identity, 197
separatism, see lesbian separatism temporal drag, see drag
Serano, Julia, 170 temporal turn, the, 214, 215, 227, 236
sex/gender distinction, the, 9, 58, 88, transgender identity, 65, 95, 100, 114,
121–123, 130 133–135, 166–174, 176, 198
sexology, 30–32 Transgender Nation, 114
racism in, 33–35 transgender studies, 81, 168–172
transnational, 32–33 transnormativity, 173–174
sexual citizenship, 41–42, 110, 161–163, trigger warnings, 165
191, 196, 219 two-spirit identity, 175, 178, 195, 198
Sexual Script Theory, 42
sex wars, the, 79–82, 85, 86 utopianism, 228–230
Show Me Love, 238
Silence = Death, 104 Wages for Housework, 70–71
sistergirl identity, 195 Waria identity, 175, 176, 195
SlutWalk, 87 waves theory, feminist, 56
socialist feminism, 61, 68 When We Rise, 53
Solanas, Valerie, 59 whiteness, 27, 101, 111–113, 180–181,
Sontag, Susan, 131 222