Queer: A Graphic History E-Book

Meg-John Barker

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Graphic Guides
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 116

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

'Queer: A Graphic History Could Totally Change the Way You Think About Sex and Gender' Vice Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal' - Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media. Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.

Leseprobe

Published in the UK in 2016 byIcon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPemail: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia byFaber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,74–77 Great Russell Street,London WC1B 3DA or their agents

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ISBN: 978-178578-072-1

Text and illustrations copyright © 2016 Icon Books

The authors have asserted their moral rights.

Edited by Kiera Jamison

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

How to Introduce Queer Theory

Who are You?

Making Things Perfectly Queer

Where We’re Headed

What is “Queer”?

“Queer” Meaning Strange

“Queer” as Hate Speech

Reclaiming “Queer”

Queer Umbrella?

Queerer Umbrella?

Queering Queer

Multiple Meanings of Queer

Queer Interventions

What Queer has in Common: Anti-identity Politics

How We Came to Think this Way about Sex: A (Very) Potted History

Understandings are Always Contextual

The Early Sexologists

Open and Closed Doors: Early Sexological Understandings

Freud

Open and Closed Doors: Freud’s Theories

Masters and Johnson and Sex Therapy

Open and Closed Doors: Early Sex Therapy

Gay Rights Movement

Open and Closed Doors: Early Gay Rights Movements

How We Think about Sex

Key Assumption 1: Identities are Fixed and Essential

Key Assumption 2: Sexuality and Gender are Binary

Key Assumption 3: Normal and Abnormal Sex Can Usefully be Distinguished

Enter Queer Theory

Precursors to Queer Theory

The Existentialists

Sartre’s Homosexual

De Beauvoir

Becoming

Kinsey: Sexual Diversity

Kinsey: Categories are an Invention

Kinsey’s Legacy

Simon and Gagnon’s Sexual Scripts

Bem’s Androgyny

Black Feminists

Multiple Identities and Marginalization

Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality

(De)Constructing Compulsory Heterosexuality

Wittig’s Straight Mind

Crenshaw’s Intersectionality

Rubin’s Thinking Sex

The Sex Hierarchy

The Domino Theory

Gay Rights/Queer Activism

After Stonewall

Hiv/Aids and Activism

Queer Agendas

The Turn to Post-structuralism

Post -structuralism 101

Occupying Our Identity

Subjectivity

Queer Theory is Born

De Lauretis

Queer Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Key Features

Foucault and Butler

Michel Foucault

The Panopticon

Self-monitoring Society

Neoliberal Consumer Capitalism

Power

Bodies and Normality

Docile - and Insecure - Bodies

Discourses and Technologies of the Self

Power Relations

Judith Butler

The Category of Woman

What Butler Saw

The Assumptions of Identity Politics

The Heterosexual Matrix

Challenging the Heterosexual Matrix

Gender Performativity

Doing Gender

Gender Trouble

Foucault and Butler Recap

Foucauldian-butlerian Resistance

Heteronormativity

Heteronormativity, Homophobia, and Heterosexism

...Oh My!

Straight Privilege

Problems with Privilege

Other Normativities

Interrogating Heteronormativity

Inside/Out

Coming Out

Sedgwick: How to Bring Your Kids up Gay

The Epistemology of the Closet

Nature/Nurture

Assumed Norms

Queer Beyond Sexuality and Gender

Queer Engagements

Focus on Texts

Discourse Analysis

Playing with Language

Queering

Queer Moments

Camp

Halberstam and Low Theory

“Dude, Where’s My Gender?”

Collectivism in Finding Nemo

Queer Art

Guerrilla Tactics

Queer Biology

Nature/Nurture

The Heteronormative Gaze of Science

Evolution’s Rainbow and Biological Exuberance

Sexing the Body

Delusions of Gender

Biopsychosocial

Sexual Configurations

Critical Sexology

Features of Critical Sexology

Thinking from the Margins

Kink

Open Non-monogamy

Queering Sexual Medicine

Queering Sex Therapy

Criticisms and Tensions

Why Should Race be Central to Queer Theory?

Interrogating Race

Responses to This Marginalization of Race

White Minority-world Focus

Southern Theory

Queer Goes Global

Strategic Essentialism

A Place for Identity Politics after All?

Queer and Bisexuality

Erasing Bisexuality

Queer and Feminism

Queer Feminism?

Queer Masculinity

Queer and Trans: The Terf Wars

Butler on Trans

Co-opting Trans Experience?

Trans Studies

Genderqueer

Cisgenderism

Materiality Matters

Lived Experiences

Inaccessible?

Ineffective?

Driven by Fashion?

Good Queers and Bad Not-Queers

W(h)ither Queer Theory?

The Trouble with Normal

The Crab Bucket

New Normativities

Polynormativity and Kinknormativity

It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way that You Do It.

Another Funny Turn

No Future

Queer Feelings

Affective and Temporality Turns

Queer Subjectivity

Queer Beyond Queer

One Step Beyond

Post-Queer?

Queer Communities

Queering Communities

Queer Ways Through the Double Binds?

Thinking Queerly

Thinking (Completely) Queerly

Resources

Acknowledgements

Biographies

HOW TO INTRODUCE QUEER THEORY

Writing an introduction to queer theory poses something of a challenge. Why? Here are some of the reasons:

THERE ARE MULTIPLE QUEER THEORIES RATHER THAN ONE QUEER THEORY. SEVERAL OF THESE ACTUALLY CONTRADICT EACH OTHER.EVEN BACK WHEN QUEER THEORY BEGAN, PEOPLE WERE ALREADY ASKING WHETHER IT WAS OVER.QUEER THEORY HAS BEEN INACCESSIBLE AND FULL OF DIFFICULT WORDS.THE WORD “QUEER” ALSO HAS MANY DIFFERENT MEANINGS.MANY QUEER THEORISTS REFUSE TO SAY WHAT QUEER THEORY IS, ARGUING THAT IT RESISTS DEFINITION AND IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CAPTURE.IT IS A DISCIPLINE THAT REFUSES TO BE DISCIPLINED. - NIKKI SULLIVAN*

* Author of A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (2003). We’ll introduce a number of key authors throughout this book; bear in mind that speech bubbles attributed to them shouldn’t be read as direct quotes - they’re often paraphrased to give a sense of each author’s ideas, rather than their exact words.

WHO ARE YOU?

When we were putting this book together, we imagined it being helpful to these kinds of people.

AM I QUEER?THIS DOESN’T WORK FOR ME AT ALL.THIS IS SO HARD. NORMATIVITY? PERFORMATIVITY? WHAT DO ALL THESE LONG WORDS MEAN?QLGBTTQIA?

MAKING THINGS PERFECTLY QUEER

Clearly, any introduction can only give you part of the picture, and can’t possibly cover the whole complex, diverse, and ever-changing world of queer theory. This book aims to:

WHEN YOUR APPETITE TO FIND OUT MORE (THERE’S A LIST OF ACCESSIBLE FURTHER RESOURCES AT THE END OF THE BOOK).EXPLAIN HOW QUEER THEORY BECAME NECESSARY AS A WAY OF QUESTIONING POPULAR - PROBLEMATIC - ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT SEX, GENDER, AND IDENTITY.INTRODUCE YOU TO SOME OF THE KEY QUEER THEORY IDEAS AND THINKERS - AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE - AS WELL AS TO SOME OF THE TENSIONS WITHIN QUEER THEORY, AND TO THE DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS THAT IT HAS TAKEN IN RECENT YEARS.PULL OUT WHAT SEEMS MOST USEFUL FROM QUEER THEORY FOR OUR EVERYDAY LIVES, RELATIONSHIPS, AND COMMUNITIES.THE IDEA IS TO INVITE YOU INTO QUEER THEORY AND TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO TRY THINKING QUEERLY.

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

Through the rest of this book we’re going to:

1. Explore the various meanings of the word “queer”.

2. Consider how wider Western culture came to understand sex and sexuality in the ways that it currently does, and how queer theory challenges this.

3. Introduce some of the scholars, writers, and activist movements which provided the foundations on which queer theory is built.

4. Explain some of the key concepts that queer theory initially put forward and where they came from.

5. Describe how queer theory has engaged with popular culture, biology, and sexology.

6. Cover some of the main criticisms of queer theory, and tensions within it, and how queer theorists have responded to these.

7. Outline some of the main directions queer theory has taken in recent years.

8. Suggest some ways in which you might think more queerly in your everyday life.

WHAT IS “QUEER”?

The word “queer” has had many different meanings in different times and places. It originally referred to strangeness or difference, and became a term of abuse. It has since been reclaimed as a positive word.

It can operate as an umbrella term for people outside of the heterosexual norm, or for people who challenge the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans) “mainstream”. It can also be a way of challenging norms around gender and sexuality through different ways of thinking or acting.

“QUEER” MEANING STRANGE

The original meaning of “queer”, in 16th-century English-speaking countries, referred to something strange or illegitimate, as in “there’s nowt as queer as folk” or being “in queer street”, meaning someone having financial difficulties.

Using queer to mean odd, in the 19th century, social reformer and founder of the cooperative movement, Robert Owen, famously said to a colleague: “All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”

Even in the early 20th century the word “queer” was still often used in this way, for example, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s also the American phrase “queer as a three dollar bill”, from a similar time, suggesting something odd and suspicious.

THE DIOGENES CLUB IS THE QUEEREST CLUB IN LONDON, AND MYCROFT ONE OF THE QUEEREST MEN.

“QUEER” AS HATE SPEECH

The earliest recorded use of “queer” as a form of homophobic abuse is said to be an 1894 letter by John Sholto Douglas, the Marquess of Queensberry. He was the father of Alfred Douglas and famously accused Oscar Wilde of having an affair with his son.

“Queer” quickly became a derogatory term for same-sex sex, or for people with same-sex attractions, particularly “effeminate” or “camp” gay men.

“Queer” was also used as a more general insult to make things questionable by associating them with same-sex attraction, in much the same way that the phrase “that’s so gay” has more recently been used to imply that something is rubbish.

RECLAIMING “QUEER”

One activist strategy for dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression has been for people to reclaim the very words that are used against them. Examples include the reclaiming of words like “nigger”, “slut”, “dyke”, and “faggot”.

In the 1980s, people in LGBT communities began to reclaim the word “queer” as either a neutral word to describe themselves, or as a positive form of self-identity. One early example was the activist group Queer Nation who circulated a “Queers Read This” flyer at the 1990 New York Pride march.

Nowadays this neutral, or positive, use of “queer” has found its way into mainstream culture with TV shows such as Queer as Folk or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. “Queer” here is usually synonymous with “gay men” and sometimes still suggests that they might be good at stereotypically “feminine” things.

QUEER UMBRELLA?

“Queer” is also often used as an umbrella term for anyone who is not heterosexual (attracted to the “opposite” sex) or cisgender (remaining in the gender that they were assigned at birth). It’s a snappier and more encompassing word than the ever-extending LGBTTQQIA, etc. alphabet soup.

However … there are problems with this usage for many older people who have painful memories of “queer” being hurled at them as a term of abuse. Also many queer activists take issue with it because, for them, queer is about those who are further outside of “normal”. Queer theorists take issue with “queer” being used as an identity term.

QUEERER UMBRELLA?

Many queer activists see “queer” as an umbrella term for folk who are outside of the mainstream: both the heterosexual/cisgender mainstream and the conventional LG(BT)* mainstream.

They point out that being “equal” is not always “equally good” and question the gay rights movement’s focus on things like marriage, consumer culture, and serving in the military.

Maybe the focus should also be on the groups under the queer umbrella who are most marginalized, such as those who are at everyday risk of violence, suicide, poverty, and homelessness.

OUR PRIORITIES ARE OFTEN VERY DIFFERENT TO THOSE OF THE WHITE, MIDDLE-CLASS GAY “SCENE”.PERHAPS INSTITUTIONS LIKE MARRIAGE SHOULD BE QUESTIONED - NOT JOINED.

* B and T are in brackets here because LGBT rights agendas are often driven by gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians.

QUEERING QUEER

Both queer umbrellas still risk maintaining a binary division between those who are seen as queer, and those who aren’t. This division is also often based on people’s identities.

Queer theory is all about breaking down these kinds of binaries, which oversimplify the world into everything being either this or that. So, it would question any understanding that has some people under the umbrella and some people outside of it.

Queer theory is also all about questioning identity, so it would challenge any kind of fixed identity categories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, etc., including queer if it’s used in that way. Don’t worry if you don’t quite get these points, we’ll be coming back to them.

MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF QUEER

It’ll be helpful to try to hold all of these multiple – and sometimes contradictory – meanings of queer that we’ve just covered in mind.

Queer theory generally sees “queer” as a verb. Queer is something that we do, rather than something that we are (or are not).

“QUEER” CAN BE A(N):NOUN: “A BUNCH OF QUEERS”ADJECTIVE: “THE QUEER COMMUNITY” “MY RELATIONSHIP IS PRETTY QUEER”VERB: “TO QUEER SOMETHING“WE QUEER THINGS WHEN WE RESIST “REGIMES OF THE NORMAL”: THE “NORMATIVE” IDEALS OF ASPIRING TO BE NORMAL IN IDENTITY, BEHAVIOR, APPEARANCE, RELATIONSHIPS, ETC.

Michael Warner, author of The Trouble With Normal (1999)

QUEER INTERVENTIONS

Three related – but slightly different – queer disciplines or interventions are mentioned throughout the book.

• Queer activism is a form of sexuality/gender activism that opposes assimilationist agendas of trying to show how “normal” LG(BT) people are. Instead it celebrates difference and diversity, and challenges things like the commercialism of the gay scene.

• Queer studies is an academic discipline that tries to move beyond lesbian and gay studies to incorporate other sexualities and to take a more critical approach to sexuality as a whole, including heterosexuality. This is similar to how a lot of women’s studies departments became gender studies departments because masculinities and other genders are also important areas of study. It’s multidisciplinary because it draws upon many other disciplines, e.g. sociology, geography, history, literature, cultural studies, media studies.

• Queer theory is a theoretical approach that goes beyond queer studies to question the categories and assumptions on which current popular and academic understandings are based.

WHAT QUEER HAS IN COMMON: ANTI-IDENTITY POLITICS

Queer activism, queer studies, and queer theory generally share an opposition to