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Must Identity Movement Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma
Abstract
Drawing on debates in lesbian and gay periodicals and writings from and about post-structuralist ''queer theory'' and politics. this paper clarifies the meanings and distinctive politics of ''queerness,'' in order to trace its implications for social movement theory and research. The challenge of queer theory and politics, I argue, is primarily in its disruption of sex and gender identity boundaries and deconstruction of identity categories. The debates (over the use of the term ''queer'' and over bisexual and transgender inclusion) raise questions not only about the content of sexuality-based political identities, but over their viability and usefulness. This in turn challenges social movement theory to further articulate dynamics of collective identity formation and deployment. While recent social movement theory has paid attention to the creation and negotiation of collective identity, it has not paid sufficient attention to the simultaneous impulse to destabilize identities from within. That tendency, while especially visible in lesbian and gay movements, is also visible in other social movements. It calls attention to a general dilemma of identity politics: Fixed identity categories are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power. The insights of bath sides of the dilemma highlighted here raise important new questions for social movement theory and research.
... Given the limited number of empirical studies on attitudes towards bisexual individuals (see, for example, Dodge et al, 2016), a more comprehensive review seems warranted. While previous studies acknowledge the significance of intergroup conflicts within the LGBTQ+ community and discuss them explicitly and persuasively concerning bisexuals (Gamson, 1995), these assertions have not, to the best of our knowledge, undergone empirical examination with individual-level data, especially outside of the US, analysing the attitudes of homosexuals towards bisexuals, and vice versa. Our fundamental argument posits that sexual identity plays a pivotal role in shaping perceptions of sexual minorities, mainly when they are themselves associated with a particular social group. ...
... However, evidence has been provided about the distinct political profiles of bisexuals (see, for example, Jones, 2021). Subsequently, drawing on previous research (Gamson, 1995;Cohen, 1997;Murib, 2023), we explore perceptions within communities. ...
... One reason may be found in the binary normativity that most societies face (Butler, 1990;. Bisexuality challenges the conventional binary understanding of sexuality and fixed preferences (Gamson, 1995), a challenge that bisexual individuals themselves navigate but that might not be as evident for heterosexuals, gays and lesbians, who are situated within a more defined spectrum of sexual identities (Laumann et al, 2000;Herek et al, 2010;Kühne et al, 2019;Jones, 2021). This is probably the reason why bisexuals are viewed with scepticism by society, especially against the background that they question the fundamental order of fixed binary partnership ideals (Lahti, 2018). ...
With the increasing visibility of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer and other (LGBTQ+) individuals, sociological debates about attitudes towards the group and their intergroup dynamics have intensified. This article investigates the link between factors explaining homophobia and negative attitudes towards bisexuals, often referred to as 'biphobia' or 'bisexual erasure', using original data collected in August 2021 from Germany (N = 1,342). The study reveals that while factors influencing homophobia and favouring bisexual erasure are similar, they are not identical. Our findings indicate that when bisexual (N = 72) and homosexual (N = 70) individuals are grouped together, they exhibit lower levels of homophobia compared to heterosexuals (N = 1,200). However, we find no significant difference between them and heterosexuals regarding bisexual erasure. This effect is primarily driven by homosexuals' prejudice towards bisexuals. Furthermore, bisexuals, in comparison with homosexuals, are less likely to disagree with the notion that homosexuals are less capable of being good parents than heterosexuals. Keywords bisexuality • political attitudes • Lesbians • Gays • Bisexuals • intergroup solidarity • bisexual erasure • sexual identity Key messages • Attitude patterns that explain homophobia and bisexual erasure are similar but not identical. • Bisexual erasure and homophobia are rejected by large majorities of Germans, albeit with clear nuances. • Bisexuals are significantly less likely than homosexuals to believe that the latter are suitable parents. • Homosexuals are significantly less likely to be in disagreement with bisexual erasure than bisexuals. To cite this article: Wurthmann, L.C. and López Ortega, A. (2024) Bisexual erasure and homophobia: attitudinal patterns under consideration of sexual identity,
... Human sexualities are often popularly conceived via an 'ethnic model' (Beasley, 2005:123;Devor & Matte, 2006:402;Epstein, 2002;Gamson, 1995;Lovaas et al., 2006;Seidman, 1993Seidman, , 2002Rubin, 1993) which treats sexual orientation and identity as near-synonymous and fixed at birth, unchanging across history and geography. Scholars commonly describe this conceptualisation as 'essentialism' (Beasley, 2005:136-138;Fuss, 1989;Richardson, 2000:266;Sayer, 1997). ...
... Scholars commonly describe this conceptualisation as 'essentialism' (Beasley, 2005:136-138;Fuss, 1989;Richardson, 2000:266;Sayer, 1997). More scholars have been drawn towards social constructionist approaches which focus on the cultural, historical, and spatial specificities of sexualities (Beasley, 1995:137;Delamater & Hyde, 1998;D'Emilio, 2002;Epstein, 2002;Gamson, 1995;Nash, 2005:117;Phelan, 2000:433;Rubin, 1993;Seidman, 1993:125-127;Weeks, 1985Weeks, , 2002 and how these sexualities operate within society and as part of regimes of power structures (Beasley, 2005:165;Butler, 1990Butler, , 1997Foucault, 1978;Jagose, 2009;Lehring, 1997:190-191;Seidman, 1993Seidman, , 2002Stein & Plummer, 2002). There is no evidence of belief in an 'essential' Bear identity in the associated literature, and writers appear highly aware of Bear's 'constructed' nature and historical and geographic specificity. ...
... However I would argue that the bulk of the Bear literature points to the widespread expression of perspectives much more aligned with poststructural queer approaches to sexualities (though I have no doubt most Bear writers wouldn't label them as such). Such approaches focus on analysing and critiquing processes through which some sexualities are made 'normal' (Beasley, 2005:161;Butler, 1997;During & Fealy, 1997:117;Fryer, 2010;Gamson, 1995;Hostetler & Herdt, 1998;Jagose, 2009;Warner, 1993). They also reject the idea of fixed sexual identities (Beasley, 2005:164-168;Browne & Nash, 2010;Butler, 1997;Currah, 1997;Gamson, 1995;Seidman, 2001), articulating instead the instability, permeability, fluidity, and always ongoing co-constitution of sexualities and related identities (Beasley, 2005;Browne & Nash, 2010;Butler, 1997;Gamson, 1995;Hostetler & Herdt, 1998;Jagose, 2009;Muñoz, 1999). ...
... On this topic, Joshua Gamson (1995) describes the "queer dilemma," that is, the necessity to negotiate between the constraining character of definitional labels and their potential for helping the fostering of political agendas. According to Gamson, social movements face internal struggles over agendas that emphasize "sameness" and others that foreground "difference" (Gamson 1995, 95). ...
... However, this perspective ignores the fact that, despite having different perspectives on their demisexualities (thus destabilizing this category), all of the participants claim the label of demisexual (thus stabilizing this label). Therefore, taking into account queer politics' proposition against the resolution of contradiction and Gamson's (1995) arguments on the validity of both the tightening and the loosening of categories, the following sections present disputing narratives of demisexual experiences. ...
... Yet we constantly strive to fix it, stabilize it, say who we are by telling of our sex. (Weeks 1987, 68) As discussed previously, the claiming of a fixed identity can not only contribute to individuals' sense of self, but also foster the legitimization of non-normative sexualities (Gamson 1995). In the case of asexuality, this can help imagine asexual experiences that are not guided by medical models, thus contributing to the depathologization of these experiences. ...
Demisexuality is one of the subset categories on the asexual spectrum (also called the “gray area” − a continuum that includes diverse identities based on varied levels of sexual attraction). It is defined by Demisexuality.org as “a sexual orientation in which someone feels sexual attraction only to people with whom they have an emotional bond.” (Demisexuality Resource Center, n.d.) Since no articles dealing specifically with demisexuality can be found in the main academic repositories, it could be said that there is a lack of research on the discourses that construct the sexuality of people who identify with this category. Moreover, although the demisexual community seeks to dissociate itself from an image of sexual conservatism, an association is oftentimes traced between this sexual identity and the set of sexual expectations that is traditionally imposed upon women. Thus, drawing on a non-essentialist understanding of sexual identities/subjectivities and on a qualitative interpretive approach to knowledge production, I conducted in-depth semi-structured individual interviews with nine Brazilian women who identify as demisexuals in order to investigate how they discursively construct their (demi)sexualities. Based on these interviews, in the thesis I reflect upon the following questions: What role do gender and sexuality play in the lived experience of demisexuality? How do demisexual people construct meanings of gender and sexuality in their narratives about their demisexual identification?
... To understand Pride from a bisexual perspective or through a bisexual lens (Moss, 2012), we must begin by recognizing the curious social location bi+ people occupy vis-à-vis the broader BTLG population. On the one hand, bi+ people represent the largest sexual minority population (Barringer et al., 2017;Compton et al., 2015;Gates, 2011), and a population that has been actively involved in modern BTLG history and politics (Eisner, 2013;Gamson, 1995;Simula et al., 2019). On the other hand, bi+ people are consistently underrepresented and/or erased from media, religious, political, LG, and other narratives and assumptions about BTLG populations and sexualities more broadly (McLean, 2007;Mize, 2016;Monro et al., 2017). ...
... In so doing, our work here also responds to sociological questions raised a quarter of a century ago (Duggan, 2004;Seidman, 1993;Stryker, 2017). Surveying the development and fractures within lesbian/gay populations on the one hand, and bisexual/transgender populations on the other hand, in the early 1990's, Gamson (1995) demonstrated a split wherein most lesbian/gay movements adopted essentialist, assimilation (later named homonormative, Duggan, 2004) politics geared toward fitting into heterosexual, cisgender norms predicated upon the continued marginalization of bisexual and transgenderas well as racial minority, lower class, polyamorous, and kinkyothers. At the same time, most bisexual and transgender movements aligned with emerging queer politics predicated upon the eradication of social binaries, such as gay/straight, woman/man, and moral/immoral. ...
... At the same time, most bisexual and transgender movements aligned with emerging queer politics predicated upon the eradication of social binaries, such as gay/straight, woman/man, and moral/immoral. As a result, Gamson (1995) asked if such divisions might facilitate very different standpoints on BTLG inter-population dynamics over time (see also Duggan, 2004). ...
Within and beyond Symbolic Interactionism, sociological studies of bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and gay (BTLG) populations have expanded dramatically in the past two decades. Although such studies have invigorated our understanding of many aspects of BTLG life and experience, they have thus far left BTLG Pride relatively unexplored. How do BTLG populations experience Pride, and what insights might such efforts have for sociologically understanding such populations and events? We examine these questions through an interview study of bi+ people (i.e., sexually fluid people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, or otherwise outside of gay/straight binaries; Eisner, 2013). Specifically, we analyze how bi+ people negotiate both (1) experiencing Pride as “outsiders within” the broader BTLG population (Collins, 1986), and (2) framing who Pride is for and what it means in practice. In so doing, we demonstrate how Interactionist analyses of certain groups’ meaning making around and experiences of Pride can expand existing sociologies of BTLG populations, bisexual experience, and Pride.
... As Weeks (2012) argues, 12 though, it is important to acknowledge that the work of queer theorists, who built on the work of their predecessors, would have been impossible without the major paradigm shift attained by Lesbian and Gay Studies in the 1970s and 1980s. 13 Informed by scholarship emanating from poststructuralism, feminism, Lesbian and Gay Studies, as well as by reconceptualisations of identity as discussed in the previous section in relation to Hall's notion of new ethnicities, queer theory interrogates fixed identity categories, discursively produced binary social categories such as man/woman, straight/ gay, cis/ trans (Gamson 1995;Browne, Lim and Brown 2007) and their deployment in maintaining social norms, dominant orthodoxies and dualisms. This critical approach makes it possible to understand identity categories as social constructs, shaped by histories, practices, taboos, social rules, customs and traditions, which are necessary, viable and politically useful (Gamson 1995). ...
... 13 Informed by scholarship emanating from poststructuralism, feminism, Lesbian and Gay Studies, as well as by reconceptualisations of identity as discussed in the previous section in relation to Hall's notion of new ethnicities, queer theory interrogates fixed identity categories, discursively produced binary social categories such as man/woman, straight/ gay, cis/ trans (Gamson 1995;Browne, Lim and Brown 2007) and their deployment in maintaining social norms, dominant orthodoxies and dualisms. This critical approach makes it possible to understand identity categories as social constructs, shaped by histories, practices, taboos, social rules, customs and traditions, which are necessary, viable and politically useful (Gamson 1995). Butler (1990) uses the expression 'regulatory fictions ' (1990, 32): fixed identity categories and binary social norms -or rules -are real in that they exist and regulate all aspects of people's lives in society, especially the lives of those who trespass or breach them. ...
... Mobilising around fixed identity categories is the basis for political power, but also the basis of oppression: this represents a 'queer dilemma' (Gamson 1995); or more generally an 'identity dilemma' (McGarry and Jasper 2015), as we have seen in Chapter One. In response to exclusion, stigmatisation, marginalisation and discrimination, Roma and Roma rights activists have been claiming equal rights, equity and equality of access and opportunity, and protection from discrimination, thus asserting the notion of belonging in, with and to the dominant national identities. ...
... By contrast, poststructural theorists in general and queer theorists 2 in particular tend to take a dimmer view of such policies as remedial at best, and insidious at worst. A chief concern is that in the name of broader social justice goals, they actually serve to perpetuate inequality, by masking the problem of systemic norms that marginalize and exclude certain groups to begin with (Bell, 2004;Cohen, 1999Cohen, , 2005Delgado, 1991;Gamson, 1995;Mayo, 2006;Piazza, 2014;Spade, 2015). Changing society for the better, according to queer theories, involves an explicit focus on intersecting axes of power and on normativity-on "interfering in the production of 'normalcy'" (Bryson & de Castell, 1993, p. 285), and interrogating the status quo along multiple and intersecting lines of oppression and identity (e.g., Anzaldúa, 2001, Brockenbrough, 2015Britzman, 1998;Darling-Hammond, 2019;Kumashiro, 2002, Luhmann, 1998. ...
... The primary aim of this article is to bring together concepts and commitments from liberal and queer theories with the purpose of designing an integrated framework for education policy analysis and implementation: a queer democratic framework. In keeping with related theory-building (Eng, 2010;Gamson, 1995;Mayo, 2006Mayo, , 2007Phelan, 2000), we aim toward a stronger conceptual bridge between queer and liberal theories. We hope to challenge Liston's (2015) characterization of poststructural theories as fraught with "conceptual narrow-mindedness and a confused admixture of political and scholarly goals" (p. ...
... We thus challenge liberal theorists to integrate queer ideas of identity into concepts of autonomy and recognition, which are central to liberty and equality-focused policies (Moses, 2002;Gutmann, 1999;Kymlicka, 1991;Mayo, 2006;Petrovic, 1999Petrovic, , 2002Taylor, 1994). Doing so would compel these theorists to consider the nuances of how conventional identity categories and related group membership based (separately) on gender, race, ability, language, or sexuality ignore the dangers of essentialism and fail to capture intersections and margins; these oversights matter to how we understand and position students with multiply marginalized identities, their subsequent lived experiences (Annamma et al., 2013;Brockenbrough, 2013Brockenbrough, , 2015Kumashiro, 2001;McCready, 2010;McRuer, 2006), and in policies intended to support them (Crenshaw, 1991;Gamson, 1995;Loutzenheiser, 2014;Rasmussen, 2003). The third key idea of the QDF emphasizes the relationship between theory, policy, and practice. ...
The aim of this paper is to bring together concepts and commitments from both liberal and queer theories with the purpose of designing an integrated framework for equity-focused education policy analysis and implementation. In essence, we aim to build a conceptual bridge between queer and liberal democratic theories and to develop what we call a “queer democratic framework” for policy analysis and implementation. We use the case of the Fair Accurate Inclusive and Respectful Education Act (FAIR) throughout this paper as an exemplar of how queer policy analysis and implementation change the terms of the policy discussion. We argue that as an example of a policy that comes out of liberal democratic theory, FAIR can only go so far. It is symbolic and positive, but cannot reach emancipatory aims in practice without queer analysis and implementation.
... Ergo, the aim of gay and lesbian activism is to legitimate their 'natural' non-heterosexual sexuality, which rightfully they want to be able to perform in a heteronormative society (Gamson, 1995). 'Culture' ...
... is thus constraining their ability to display 'nature'. Furthermore, in gay and lesbian identity politics, non-heterosexual identity precedes the movement (Gamson, 1995) -identity is in the individual and is not determined, or affected, by interaction with others. In other words, society and culture are uninvolved in someone's sexuality. ...
Seeing the need for an ecofeminism that respects difference but maintains political solidarity, this dissertation proposes a way to converge queer theory, which is poststructuralist and anti-identity politics, with cultural ecofeminism, which currently depends on fixed identity markers. It attempts to resolve a long-standing debate in academia about the tensions between nature and culture, essentialism and constructivism. Furthermore, it constructively criticises Gaard’s article “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism” (1997) by using a different definition of ‘queer’, conceptualising it as a verb of deconstruction rather than a noun that represents minority identities, leading to a discussion about the incompatibilities between queer theory and ecofeminist practice. There is a clash between the two disciplines regarding identity politics; ecofeminist practice uses strategies that emphasise the ‘female’body, such as maternalism, whereas queer theory denies that ontology can dictate identity. I see new materialism as a potential solution because it changes how we understand identity due to its argument that culture/epistemology and nature/ontology are intertwined and inseparable. I theoretically analyse all three disciplines to piece them together; their union is possible and necessary but requires dismissing problematic tendencies and focusing on their respective strengths, in the end producing a queer ecofeminism.
... These early years in the community focused on the creation of a unified identity (Stein 1992, Taylor andWhittier, 1992). However, the community, like other movements formed around an identity, experienced dissension, and division (Gamson, 1995). As Joshua Gamson (1995) notes, lesbian feminism, like other movements on the LGBTQ + continuum, has an impulse to both construct for the sake of political gain, and deconstruct as way of making cultural change, bringing community dissension and division. ...
... However, the community, like other movements formed around an identity, experienced dissension, and division (Gamson, 1995). As Joshua Gamson (1995) notes, lesbian feminism, like other movements on the LGBTQ + continuum, has an impulse to both construct for the sake of political gain, and deconstruct as way of making cultural change, bringing community dissension and division. The intitial focus on a unified lesbian feminist identity was later challenged on multiple fronts (Stein 1992). ...
Based on a content analysis of a compilation album released in the early years of the women’s music community, we find that music aids in the construction of collective identities by bridging the individual and collective. The women’s music community was a part of lesbian feminism and emerged in the mid-1970s and was centered around the concerts, festivals and production and consumption of music. We analyze individual themes of pride in/claiming a lesbian identity, romantic yearning to illustrate how musicians and poets presented lesbian lives and loves as desirable and without stigma. We examine how collective themes that acknowledged societal homophobia and encouraged group resistance created a sense of community and a need for change. We argue that music played a key role in the construction of a positive lesbian feminist identity in a time of homophobia and discrimination. We find that this process provides a framework for understanding how music can play a role in the construction of positive collective identities in times of societal bias and/or backlash.
... First, instead of taking a dominant stigma as given, the multiple competing stereotypes, associations, and normative conversations about the social group (i.e., "how they see us") must be included in the empirical analysis. Second, the analysis must capture the various ways in which gay men represent themselves as members of a stigmatized social group (i.e., "how we see ourselves") rather than assuming a subcultural positionality (Gamson 1995). Finally, the analysis must remain open to diverse consumption strategies and micropolitical purposes, well beyond consumption as avoidance, coping, and resistance. ...
... In Germany, normalized representations of gay men prevail in contexts where derogatory stereotypes have been replaced by a variety of images, emotions, statuses, and consumption styles too diverse to coalesce into a single dominant representation that could be used to label and discriminate against gay men (Gamson 1995). This new variety allows gay men to occupy respectable status positions that were previously inaccessible to them. ...
How do historically stigmatized social groups consume strategically when they have achieved greater recognition, status, and respectability in society? Based on a seven-year interpretive social representations analysis of gay men in Germany, the authors first show that dominant, stigmatizing representations of such groups do not ameliorate uniformly and for all. Instead, they fragment into oppressive, enabling, and normalized societal representations that different consumers encounter to different degrees in their everyday lives. In the wake of these societal shifts, the stigmatized group itself disintegrates into five representational subgroups, referred to as underground, discrete, hybrid, assimilated, and post-stigma social groups. These subgroups use consumption for different and partly opposing strategic purposes, such as hiding and denial, collective resistance, and deconstruction of differences. The authors synthesize their findings into a conceptual model of consumption under fragmented stigma that extends prior research on consumption under dominant and total stigma configurations and suggests ways in which consumption can mitigate but also reinforce stigma. In doing so, they also shed light on the complex lived experiences of a vulnerable social group that has become almost equal.
... One of the markers of this process is the growing number and scope of pride events outside the three main cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. Pride events have long been considered a major factor in the construction and presence of LGBT+ identities, politics, and activism in public space (Gamson 1995). The first Israeli pride parade took place in Tel Aviv in June 1998. ...
... Subsequently, I dedicate one class to looking at how normative discourse of sexual identities operates at the individual level, using Joshua Gamson's (1995) article 'Must identity movements self-destruct?' and Baden Offord and Leon Cantrell's (1999) article 'Unfixed in a fixated world' as the base for class discussion. Both articles explore the complexity of identity in a fixed world. ...
In this article, I discuss how I design a sexuality course using queer theory. Based on the key concepts of queer theory, I structure the course into eight areas: (1) problematizing the notion of sexuality, (2) rethinking sexuality through queer theory, (3) the historical and social construction of sexuality, (4) the social organization of sexuality, (5) managing sexuality institutionally, (6) the institutionalization of sexuality, (7) the fluidity of identities, and (8) forms of resistance. The goals are to help social work students (1) understand how social, cultural and political forces, as well as institutional practices (informed by sexual knowledge), shape and regulate sexual life that in turn produces privilege and oppression, and (2) engage them to rethink and develop social work practice that is socially transformative.
... Aunque, si bien parece haber un correlato, una problemática a la que se exponen estos estudios es a la concepción de las personas LGB como un grupo homogéneo. La denominación histórica de las personas pertenecientes a minorías sexuales como "Colectivo LGTBI" o "Personas Queer" tenía como fin presentarlas como una unidad, de forma que pudiera ejercer acciones políticas en pro de sus derechos (Gamson, 1995). Sin embargo, la pertenencia a este grupo se puede deber a una cuestión de carácter biológico, de género, de atracción romántica y sexual, o varias de ellas a la vez. ...
... As politics became more centralised among different identity groups, such efforts were accused of an "inability to see intragroup differences" (Shi 2018: 272). Although identity politics set out to challenge the traditional liberal public identity category of the universal citizen (Tully 2003;Hekman 2004) or the neutral citizen who "was the bearer of an identity coded white, male, bourgeois, able-bodied and heterosexual" (Heyes 2020:4), it is criticised for falling into the same trap (Gamson 1995). In line with this, scholars argue that identity politics has the potential to erase differences and assimilate a variety of members within a certain identity group into one homogenous category such as black, women, gay and so on (Hekman 2004;Bernstein 2005;Heyes 2020). ...
Full text available at: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-98987
This thesis is concerned with the problematics of contemporary identity politics of body acceptance as situated in the visibility logics of digital media. It examines how seemingly progressive narratives of body-acceptance can rely on normative discourses and dominant ideologies. Thus, it carries out a case study of an American online body-acceptance platform called StyleLikeU which claims to strive for social change by challenging normative beauty ideals. StyleLikeU, also claims to create visibility for everyone, interviews individuals as they take off their clothes while talking about their experiences of suffering due to their non-normativities. This study applies multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the textual, visual and audio-visual online content created by StyleLikeU. Theoretically, the Foucauldian understanding of neoliberal governmentality is applied. Moreover, emotional capitalism is mobilised in terms of the commodification of affect and affective publics of digital media. Lastly, postfeminism is adopted and viewed through the lens of depoliticisation and inclusion. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on how SLU represents its movement, its actions, its participants and its aims as an online movement. The study concludes that although StyleLikeU claims to challenge normative beauty ideals, it heavily relies on normative neoliberal, postfeminist and middle-class discourses around identities, bodies, beauty and suffering. The study also finds that while StyleLikeU claims to liberate people from normative judgements of beauty with their online content, it creates a new category of non-normativity of its own. The study argues that StyleLikeU makes use of online content to create and sustain affective publics by highlighting personal experiences of suffering which, in turn, become colonised and commodified as they are situated in the landscape of emotional capitalism.
... It was a movement that agitated for the globalization of sexual orientation identities, what Carl F. Stychin (2004) calls 'the universalizing of same-sex sexualities as identities' (Stychin 2004). It was a movement with its flag, festivals, neighborhood, and so on (Gamson 1995). On this understanding, one will notice that, as Msibi argues, 'both the concepts of "homosexuality" and "gay" have no meaning in Africa, as they come from a specific historical and political Western experiences' (Msibi 2011, 57). ...
This essay discusses the right to same-sex marriages in Africa within the purview of African thought systems. The consensus among Africans appears to be that LGBT rights and lifestyles are imported ways of life from the West and are inimical to the communal cultural values of Africa. However, the West has insisted that African countries recognize LGBT rights or face sanctions. We examine this tension within the purview of the African thought system, specifically within the perspective of moderate African communitarian values, and conclude by offering a more comprehensive resolution strategy to ending the impasse.
... Put together, aces simultaneously experience feelings of inclusion and exclusion and thus occupy a marginal position in the LGBTQIA + community. These dynamics are typical of the boundary work in many groups (Gamson, 1996), and aces are not immune from it. Ironically, the exact logic that relegates aces to a marginal position in the LGBTQIA + community was used by some informants to justify the marginalization of allies. ...
Compulsory sexuality refers to the ways that social institutions both assume and privilege sexualities while marginalizing asexuality—the relative lack of sexual attraction. However, experiences of compulsory sexuality are not uniform. This paper documents how the institutions of compulsory sexuality can variously impede or facilitate the development of asexual citizenship, sometimes simultaneously. Data come from exploratory, semi-structured interviews with young adults who identify as asexual in the central U.S. Informants talk about their experiences with intimate relationships, religion, media, and LGBTQIA + groups in contradictory ways: each institution figures into discourses of both citizenship and alienation. We argue that there are multiple pathways to sexual citizenship for aces, which depend not only on how compulsory sexuality intersects with other structures, like race and gender, but also according to one’s experiences with the institutions of compulsory sexuality.
... One of the markers of this process is the growing number and scope of pride events outside the three main cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. Pride events have long been considered a major factor in the construction and presence of LGBT+ identities, politics, and activism in public space (Gamson 1995). The first Israeli pride parade took place in Tel Aviv in June 1998. ...
... Movements that deconstruct social categories run the risk of undermining their own existence. Gamson (1995) calls this the "queer dilemma." However, Bernstein and De la Cruz (2009) find that the multiracial Hapa movement deconstructs traditional understandings of (mono)racial identities while simultaneously claiming recognition for a new multiracial identity, thus overcoming the queer dilemma. ...
The term “identity politics” refers to activism engaged in by status‐based social movements organized around such categories as gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality, in contrast to class‐based movements. The term also applies to any mobilization related to politics, culture, and identity. It is sometimes used in a derogatory manner to criticize movements as exclusionary and focused on individual rather than societal change. Debates about the validity of identity politics reveal competing theoretical ways to understand the relationships among experience, culture, identity, politics, and power.
... The widespread disregard of the stigma concept is also surprising given the great interest it arouses in various scientific disciplines such as psychology, medicine, sociology, political science, criminology, and geography (Bos et al., 2013). The spectrum of stigmatized groups studied ranges from psychiatric patients (Kroska and Harkness, 2006), to LGBT activists (Gamson, 1995), and overweight people (Carr and Friedman, 2006). The few publications in communication studies on the stigma concept include Smith (2007) ...
... contrast with identity politics, that has been increasingly associated with a strive for the recognition and celebration of specific identities (Bernstein, 2005;Fraser, 2000), and which has been criticized for overfocus on recognition at the detriment of redistribution and of an analysis of the material consequences of discrimination (Fraser, 2000;J. Gamson, 1995;Michaels, 2006). This dichotomy has been criticized as being too caricatured: groups often combine strategies for gaining recognition and materialist goals of equality (Bernstein, 2005;D. Fassin & Fassin, 2006a;Sabbagh, 2010), and I agree with these criticisms. For instance, I do believe that -especially in the context of the workplace - ...
A growing body of research analyzes how corporate social responsibility programs are used to absorb and neutralize the social criticisms coming from social and environmental movements and to superficially respond to the ensuing new regulations. If companies have powerful tools to resist changes and blunt the meaning of the law, then we need further research on how social movements develop forms of legal mobilizations to interfere in the endogenous design of organizational policies. While important bodies of social movement literature look at how social movement actors keep denouncing and monitoring symbolic structures exogenously – relying on contentious or disruptive repertoires of actions – I take the case of French diversity programs to explore ways in which social movement actors seek to get involved within the interpretation and the design of these organizational symbolic structures. Relying on a qualitative research design (ethnography, interviews, textual analysis), I study how activists and social movements organizations developed repertoires of actions to seek to change what happened within diversity programs of public and private organizations. Most insider activists and non-profit organizations I studied within this research used forms of prefigurative diversity programs, designing and proposing to organizations new practices to source job applicants, assess them, raise awareness about discrimination, monitor discrimination, or develop more equitable policies, in the hopes that organizations would appropriate or recuperate them.
... No conhecido final de Bodies that matter,Butler (2019: 378) notou que o termo queer tinha a força de atrair "uma geração mais jovem que quer resistir às políticas mais institucionalizadas e reformistas". A desestabilização da ação política que está no coração da torção queer é explorada porGamson (1995). 8 Em Ranniery (2017b) busquei oferece uma conceituação topológica e performativa de normatividade a fim de problematizar o currículo como uma paisagem homogênea de poder. ...
Este texto performa a montagem de um nome e de uma figura, ecoar o possível, para interrogar a combinação entre teoria queer e (teoria de) currículo, argumentando em torno de um exercício deslocamento do currículo queer para a queerização da teoria de currículo. Para tanto, parto da experiência de orientar pesquisas descritas sob o arranjo currículo, gênero e sexualidade e organizando o artigo em três partes: a primeira explora as encrencas de uma leitura paranoica do currículo; a segunda retoma o possível de Gilles Deleuze e as noções de eco e escuta na teoria curricular; por fim, o texto situa o queer para além do reconhecimento da diferença.
... For Macleod and Durrheim (2002, 56), resistance requires feminist alliances, and liberation involves a "freeing from the assumption that prevailing ways of understanding ourselves and others are necessary and self-evident." Migrants Pride enacted this politics of resistance, drawing on broader feminist social justice activism that seeks "to challenge oppression in [activists'] everyday lives and animated by a vision of an alternative social order" (Maiguashca 2011, 543), and also queer activism that seeks to disrupt and queer dominant norms of space, identity, and social hierarchies, offering a radically different vision of a queer future (Gamson 1995;Highleyman 2002;Shepard 2011 ...
This article focuses on the articulation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) identities, lives, and rights at Pride events in Hong Kong. I argue that analyzing Pride as a Foucauldian “regime of truth” reveals how it is embedded in and reproduces broader ideological effects and structures of global capitalism. Focusing specifically on the corporate Out Leadership Asia Summit and Hong Kong Migrants Pride, organized by migrant domestic worker (MDW) unions and LGBTQ+ activists, the article explores transnational discourses of “global homocapitalism” that frame LGBTQ+ identities in individual and economically productive terms. By contrast, Migrants Pride highlights the exploitation of work and the precarity of MDWs and forges intersectional alliances with the feminist social justice movement. These differing conceptions of LGBTQ+ lives and needs form a contested “politics of truth” that exposes the tense and incongruous relationships between local and global, neo-liberal and collective, and rich and poor that underpin the dynamics of privilege and marginality of LGBTQ+ subjects in Hong Kong. The article argues that Pride’s co-option is an uneven and shifting process across global contexts. Migrants Pride, by enacting queer resistance to discourses of “corporate Pride,” offers a case study of how Pride can be a platform for social justice activism.
... Campbell and Hartmann (2007: 253) Many people now freely combine or experiment with social categories to identify themselves. "In today's presumably more accepting world, people with complex cultural and racial origins become more fluid and playful with what they call themselves" (Funderberg 2013). One example is Özlem Türeci -one of the founders of the COVID-19 vaccine company BioNTech -who describes herself as a "Prussian Turk" (Oltermann 2020). ...
... Once the othered position becomes saturated with a morally righteous victimhood, it becomes nigh impossible to do anything other than reproduce the binary terms of an oppressive system ad nauseam. One consequence is that human being is reduced to structural markers, where we can never exceed the terms given to us for who we can be (see Brown, 1995;Gamson, 1995). Another is that some subjects are reduced to the status of evil, where privilege and ignorance become, not structural consequences, but markers of individual badness . ...
... This paradox is not entirely novel to the digital era, as JoshuaGamson (1995) long ago noted that anti-discrimination movements undermined the conditions necessary for their continued existence by attempting to eliminate from use the very same categories that were also the source of collective identification and political mobilization. What is arguably new in the digital era is the way algorithmic technologies directly weaken processes of group formation, arguably making Gamson's paradox all the more acute. ...
In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively.
... Finally, in order to go further in the reflection about this fifth dimension, it is important to raise a tension inherent to identity movements developed by Gamson J. (1995). He explains that there is a dilemma between an essential and a deconstructionist politic for these movements. ...
This paper seeks to define and operationalize the different dimensions of political citizenship. With the help of those dimensions, I can then grasp how activists of minority groups understand political citizenship. I argue that those understanding define the realm of imaginable in terme of ends and means of activism and this shape activists' forms of civic and political action.
... Once the othered position becomes saturated with a morally righteous victimhood, it becomes nigh impossible to do anything other than reproduce the binary terms of an oppressive system ad nauseam. One consequence is that human being is reduced to structural markers, where we can never exceed the terms given to us for who we can be (see Brown, 1995;Gamson, 1995). Another is that some subjects are reduced to the status of evil, where privilege and ignorance become, not structural consequences, but markers of individual badness . ...
The book was inadvertently published without the acknowledgement texts of funding from the Library of the University of California, Berkeley, for this book in the front matter. This has been updated in the book.
... The different approaches and definitions of activism are related to the fact that the "activist" represents a "negotiated identity". Previous research provides clues about how actors in activist movements challenge definitions and challenge self-identification about being "activists" (Bobel, 2007;Corrigall-Brown, 2012;Gamson, 1995). To help in the understanding of competing for cultural constructs about what an "activist" is and what they do, the findings of Cortese (2015) allowed the creation of three types of "activists" --Emphatics, Demarcators, and Reconcilers (Cortese, 2015, p. 217). ...
The digital environment has brought new forms of activism, but television remains the privileged mean to access information for most citizens in Portugal and Europe. In this study we analyze the TV news reports that journalists identify as being about “activists” and “activism” aired on the four Portuguese free-to-air channels in 2017. By measuring which issues were given the most extensive coverage, it was possible to conclude that television news gives more airtime to international news related to political and human rights issues. In which concerns national level initiatives, more coverage is given to activist initiatives that result from movements organized in time and space. The action of activist groups that practice violent acts is not highlighted in the news. The results allow a reflection on the role of television for certain groups to be publicly positioned with legitimacy, in a time of adaptation to media convergence and technological transformation.
... Group boundaries are social markers that link people to a collective. They are contested internally as activists construct competing visions of who they are and externally against other groups, an external them (Cohen 1999;Gamson 1995;Ghaziani 2011). These processes interact to constitute a collective "us," providing recognition to some collective identities and group boundaries over others. ...
Using the formation of a lesbian and gay electoral constituency as a case, this article demonstrates how activists and party elites contest and construct collective identities and groups. Activist–party interactions produce identity-building feedback that recognizes some groups and identities and rejects others, creating conditions for people to see themselves as partisans. I call this process “constitutive group mobilization.” I find that, when party actors affirmed civil rights and libertarian constructions of lesbian and gay people and politics, mobilization was relatively bipartisan. Republicans’ emerging alliance with the Christian Right, however, brought activists to form the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Democratic Clubs, crystallizing civil rights as the dominant linkage to partisanship. These developments reveal how groups and identities form endogenously to parties rather than entering the party system as preformed entities with fixed interests and partisanship. Thus, the lesbian and gay case provides insights about group and identity formation previously overlooked in party and LGBT politics scholarship.
... Minorities may also utilize the "politics of becoming" (how we have been represented and how we might represent ourselves) as a tool for mobilizing a collective consciousness in response to dominant groups who impose a hegemonic narrative and seek to naturalize imbalanced power relations in society (Hall, 1996). In their struggle for citizenship, belonging, and groupdifferentiated rights, minorities might employ fixed identity constructions (Gamson, 1995), in the sense of autochthone politics or nationalism, for example, to legitimize their collective claims. By reference to the example of secular and religious Palestinian movements in Israel, we will discuss how the discourses of belonging, identity, nationalism, and citizenship are adopted by both movements to form narratives of belonging that can be categorized into three narratives: the romantic, the practical and the visionary. ...
This chapter focuses on the search for meaning and belonging of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel by discussing how belonging is framed in Arab politics in Israel. More specifically, the chapter maps and analyzes three narratives in the Arab politics of belonging: the romantic, the practical, and the visionary. The first advocates belonging to what the authors term a “lost paradise” of Palestine and Islam. This nostalgic type of belonging yearns for idealized places, times, and characters in the history of Palestine and Islam. The second narrative, the practical, defines belonging first and foremost as a developmental act, practiced at the community level through voluntary and charity programs. The third, the visionary, promotes belonging as an ideological position to be articulated and educated for at the national level. These three concepts are circulated and mobilized by both secular Arab political and Muslim religious actors but in different versions and to different extents.
... Scholarship around queer theory began to destabilize earlier conceptions of fixed identity. Joshua Gamson (1995) famously stated that queer social movements spotlighted a general dilemma of identity politics (for example, racial, ethnic, and gender movements): "Fixed identity categories are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power" (p. 391). ...
In this study, I examine the development of the ecosexual movement, a social movement that begins at the intersection of environmental and sexual struggles, from its inception in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Previous research suggests intersectionality in social movements often ends up being divisive because it emphasizes difference. Using a mixed qualitative methods design including ethnographic field work, interviews, and content analysis of related web and print materials, I analyze how the ecosexual movement negotiates intersectionality. I found the ecosexual movement links processual notions of environmental justice and sexual justice through a dominant collective action frame of queer, erotic, “irreverent environmentalism” (Seymour 2012; 2018) and “eco-camp” (Whitworth 2019) that resonates in a time of mainstream apocalyptic narratives. The use of disruptive strategies incorporating a celebratory style of collaborative experimental art, radical performance, and other absurd, creative, sensual, emotive, visceral tactics facilitates moving away from modern binary or dichotomous “either/or” ideology starting with the human/nature division. The ecosexual movement not only challenges modern hierarchical dualisms that frame issues as a struggle between two opposing sides, it opens participatory space for creating potential alternative models that demonstrate an embodied example of the postmodern alternative cultural discourse and social organization that situates all humans in “humanity” and humans in nature, the dialectic of humanity-in-nature (Moore 2015).
... Taylor chaired the sociological group that in 1997 awarded Mary Bernstein a best-article prize for her analysis of the strategic uses of identities in gay and lesbian rights groups (Bernstein, 1997). Josh Gamson was in ACT UP as the term queer emerged, quickly assessing the challenge that it posed to any and all claims to collective identities: any label that fits some individuals will discomfit or exclude other potential participants (Gamson, 1995). Many other young scholars found inspiration and evidence in the LGBTQ movements of the 1990s. ...
The Capitol breach that occurred on 6 January 2021 immediately revived images of protest crowds as irrational, emotional, violent, and out of control. This frame had flourished for millennia, but had been displaced by more sympathetic ideas about protest in recent decades. Inspired by the civil rights and feminist movements, scholars had come to see street protest as politics by extraordinary means for those closed off from more mainstream channels of influence. Journalists, politicians, and police did not entirely change their minds along with researchers, but they had softened their views somewhat: protestors are not necessarily criminals to be attacked. In a society where protest is common, Americans had developed more nuanced thinking and feelings about crowds – all of which went out the window on January 6th. In this paper I trace some of the history of European and American ideas about crowds in order to show how easy – and how mistaken – it is to see a crowd of protestors as “a hostile crowd” or “a violent crowd,” or simply “the mob.”
Lésbicas e gays estão prestes a conquistar a cidadania plena no Canadá e em vários países da Europa. Isso representa uma mudança notável, trinta e cinco anos depois do início do movimento contemporâneo pela libertação homossexual iniciado pelos motins de Stonewall. Essas conquistas são produto de um movimento social cuja história é fortemente marcada pela mobilização militante. Simultaneamente, o processo de reestruturação do capitalismo abriu espaço para a existência lésbica e gay. A penetração cada vez mais profunda do mercado na vida cotidiana criou espaços para formas mercantis da existência homossexual, representada por bares, restaurantes, publicações comerciais, modas e cortes de cabelo. O capitalismo acomodou elementos da existência lésbica e gay, ao defrontar frequentes mobilizações, concomitantemente abrindo e fechando espaços para as práticas dessas comunidades. A era da cidadania e da mercantilização da homossexualidade abre novas possibilidades para políticas anticapitalistas, queer e marxistas-feministas.
Bisexual men stand at a distinct intersection of stigmatisation, and binegativity
is a unique social problem distinct from homophobia. This thesis scopes the
breadth of binegativity and its various forms, developing a typology and
exploring plural understandings of bisexuality. Drawing on 17 semi-structured
interviews with bi+ men and their partners (25 participants overall), experiences
of binegativity are explored, with romantic relationships analysed using
interpretative phenomenological analysis. Despite no explicit questions about
prejudice, all participants reported experiencing binegativity, often unakin to
homophobia, both implicitly and explicitly, the latter as threats or acts of
violence from strangers. In contrast, implicit binegativity denies bisexuality’s
existence, and was displayed by close family, whose understanding of bisexuality
was overshadowed by stereotypes, and participants were burdened undoing
misunderstanding through education. Romantic relationships were sites of
safety, positivity and growth, with identities being explored and developed,
mutual understandings reached and experimentation outside of monogamous,
heteronormative and patriarchal relationship structures negotiated. Some
participants relayed that their partner choice was in some way shaped by
heteronormative family expectations. Identities were often expressed plurally,
with participants often expressing at least two sexual identity labels
simultaneously, some of them contextually used over others. I conclude that
bisexual+ people suffer epistemic injustices which exclude them from
articulations of LGBTQ equality and same-sex marriage debates which emphasise
monosexuality, sameness to heterosexuality and fixity. I suggest that education
is a possible avenue away from binegativity, along with everyday articulations of
bisexuality that challenge a status quo characterised by binary thinking about
gender and sexuality.
Parlour: women, equity, architecture is a group whose name derives from a rather subversive feminist take on the 'parlour' as the room in a house traditionally used for receiving and conversing with visitors. In its first five years, Parlour has grown from a scholarly research project into an activist group with an international reach, but a localised approach to working through issues of equity and diversity in architecture. This paper is a lightly edited version of a keynote 'lecture' given jointly by four of the key members of the Parlour collective.
This paper considers the ways in which discourse around the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak reflects differences in framing and symbolic boundary negotiation amongst animal rights organizations, small scale farming advocates and meat industry representatives. Frame analysis shows how “Swine Flu” is treated as a “boundary object” to negotiate its significance and meaning for human and non-animal health writ large. The ambiguity of the virus’ origins, who was responsible, and who should care allowed Swine Flu to emerge as a boundary object for stakeholders to negotiate within public health discourse. Thematic analysis identified six separate frames, revealing patterns of meaning-making by animal rights organizations ( ARO s), farm-to-table groups, and meat industry networks. Frame use illustrates how Swine Flu was situated by competing stakeholders to reinforce a network of boundaries. Future directions consider the applicability of frames to understand boundary processes during COVID -19.
Within social movement theory, collective identity refers to the shared definition of a group that derives from its members’ common interests, experiences, and solidarities. It is the social movement's answer to who we are, locating the movement within a field of political actors. Collective identity is neither fixed nor innate, but rather emerges through struggle as different political actors, including the movement, interact and react to each other. The salience of any given collective identity affects the mobilization, trajectory, and even impacts of social movements. Consequently, collective identity has become a central concept in the study of social movements.
Chapter 2 laid the conceptual foundations for the treatment of communication and observation as well as group communication. Chapter 3 dealt with the concepts of group and identity. The differences between collective identities, group identities and individual identities were discussed, in the process of which a distinction was made between practical and objectified identities for both group identities and individual identities. Chapter 4 was devoted to identifying eight environments of identity fabrication. This chapter now concretises and extends the conceptual framework created so far by bringing it to bear on the results of empirical studies. Numerous examples plausibilise the conceptual devices introduced earlier and, conversely, are integrated by them into the framework presented. To this end, we first revisit the distinction between precommunicative and communicative processes (Sect. 5.1), as it can now also be discussed in terms of its relations to the environments of identity fabrication. Subsequently, the fabrication of collective identities is examined in more detail (Sect. 5.2). The main focus of the chapter is on the fabrication of group identities (Sect. 5.3). The relationship between narratives, historicity and change, the relations between practice and objectification, possible elements of objectified group identities, the role of external groups and individuals in group identity fabrication, and the dynamics of group identity fabrication are discussed.
How and why do advocates choose frames, and what are the effects of these choices? This study draws on two decades of data about the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), an advocacy organization founded by feminist early childhood educators in 1977 to raise child care wages. It traces how contextual factors shape framing choices, and how framing choices shape advocacy goals and claims. Archival research and interview data reveal that discursive barriers led CCW to lobby for ensuring “quality” child care, a strategic choice that inadvertently prioritized professional educators’ interests over those of other caregivers.
Η ανακοίνωση εστιάζει στις παραμέτρους που συνέβαλαν στην πρόσληψη του Ευριπίδη στην Ελλάδα κατά τον 19ο αιώνα, με σκοπό να χαρτογραφηθεί η διαδικασία πρόσληψης του τραγικού ποιητή ως μέρους της γενικότερης προσληπτικής διαδικασίας του αρχαίου δράματος κατά το χρονικό διάστημα αναφοράς, και πώς αυτή η διαδικασία λειτούργησε για την επικράτηση των απόψεων για την ποιητική αξία του Ευριπίδη. Η δεξίωση του Ευριπίδη μέσα από τις μεταφράσεις, τις εκδόσεις, τις θεατρικές παραστάσεις, τα κείμενα και τα δημοσιεύματα σε περιοδικά και στον Τύπο, αλλά και ως αντικειμένου διδασκαλίας στην εκπαίδευση, πραγματοποιήθηκε βαθμηδόν από τις πρώτες δεκαετίες του δέκατου ένατου αιώνα. Μέσα από την περιδιάβαση στην προσληπτική διαδικασία του ηγέτη της ρομαντικής σχολής Ευριπίδη, παρακολουθούμε τη σκιαγράφηση του πορτρέτου του ποιητή με χαρακτηριστικά που τον ακολουθούν ως σήμερα. Ανιχνεύεται η διαχρονικότητα της προσληπτικής υπερ-αξίας μέσω της διακειμενικότητας, καθώς οι απόψεις για τον Ευριπίδη που εμφανίστηκαν στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία του 19ου αιώνα φαίνεται πως έχουν φθάσει έως τον 21ο, κάποιες παραμένοντας ακλόνητα ισχυρές ενώ άλλες έχοντας διασκεδαστεί μέσα από κείμενα του 20ού, διατηρώντας ωστόσο την αρχική τους επίδραση ως προς τη φήμη του αρχαίου τραγικού.
בעשור האחרון אנו עדים להתפשטותם של מצעדי גאווה בעולם, מערי המטרופולין
הגדולות לעבר ערים קטנות, ואפילו לאזורים כפריים. תהליך זה כרוך בהתעצבות קבוצות
אקטיביסטיות ושיחים פוליטיים מסוג חדש, הבוחנים מהם המקומות הנכונים וההולמים
שבהם יש לקיים מצעדי גאווה. מאמר זה מתמקד באירועי הגאווה בעיר אשדוד, העיר
השישית בגודלה בארץ, ובוחן ממדים של זמן ומרחב קוויריים המעוגנים בצורות
אפקטיביות. ההתמקדות בניתוח המרחבי של מצעד הגאווה חושפת שהאקטיביסטים
שואפים לכונן מרחב ללהט"ב בעיר דרך קיום מצעד מרכזי ובעל נוכחות, בעוד המרחב
המוקצה למצעד בעיר הישראלית מנותק למעשה מהחיים העירוניים מבחינה מרחבית
וטמפורלית. התוצאה היא שהמצעד הוא מעין בועה המתקיימת למשך שעות ספורות,
והשפעתו על העיר ועל תושביה מועטה. לבסוף, המשתתפים הצעירים במצעד מסמנים
היבט נוסף של טמפורליות, ולפיו המצעד נערך עבור צעירים, המסמלים בנוכחותם אפשרות להמשך של חיים קוויריים בוגרים באשדוד ולהתגבשותם. לפיכך, טענתנו
המרכזית היא שמצעדים בערים ישראליות יוצקים לתוכם ממדים טמפורליים שבמסגרתם
ההווה מדומיין כבועת זמן, המנותקת הן מהעבר והן מהעתיד, ואשר נשענת על עתיד
מדומיין. מבחינה מרחבית, המאמר מראה שהלוגיקה המנחה את המצעד בעיר הגלובלית
מועתקת למרחב העיר הישראלית כמעט ללא התאמות. דבר זה מחדד את השאלה אם
העיר הישראלית יכולה להצמיח עתיד ללהט"ב שאינו תלוי בתרבות של העיר הגדולה.
This e-book aims at contributing to an in depth study concerning the reception of the Ancient
Greek Drama Values across Space and Time, in the light of a fertile debate between Science
and Art.
There are seven units in this Volume, containing the following: 1. Values in/and Ancient 2.
Theory/Adaptation 3. Ancient Texts 4. Comparative Readings 5. Ancient Theatre's & Drama's
Educational Value 6. Directors' & Stage Re-readings 7.The Festivals, Moderator.
With their well-grounded works, all the distinguished writers that participate in this volume,
confirm the active and functional presence of the ancient drama as a vehicle of values
internationally, timelessly and contemporaneously in the best possible way. They approach it
as a field of vision, inspiration and experimentation, exploration, diversion, freedom and
transformation. They highlight the importance included in its values and concepts, which not
only survive and eliminate the limits of time and space, but also support, reinforce and serve
the global culture in various ways. It appears through the articles of this volume, that the ancient
drama may be re-created because of its timeless, updated handling, thus setting new rules for
its interpretation and reception, re-defining the idea of “tragic”, shaping the concept of
“classic”, constituting its complex dynamics and eventually influencing all the fields of life and
creation. In our contemporary times of the multilevel deep global crisis that has affected all
aspects of social and private life, the present material proves that the ancient drama, with all its
many different aspects and anthropocentric core, is a challenging, inexhaustible field of
research. The scientific, educational and artistic community, realizes and justifies its
contribution to the formation of a “cosmopolis” of the Present and the Future, orientated
towards values that have ceased to be taken for granted, able to place modern humans in the
center of its planning and perspective.
Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan describes the ever-changing manifestations of sexes, genders, and sexualities in Japanese society from the 1860s to the present day. Analysing a wide range of texts, images and data, Sabine Frühstück considers the experiences of females, males and the evolving spectrum of boundary-crossing individuals and identities in Japan. These include the intersexed conscript in the 1880s, the first 'out' lesbian war reporter in the 1930s, and pregnancy-vest-wearing male governors in the present day. She interweaves macro views of history with stories about individual actors, highlighting how sexual and gender expression has been negotiated in both the private and the public spheres and continues to wield the power to critique and change society. This lively and accessible survey introduces Japanese ideas about modern manhood, modern womenhood, reproduction, violence and sex during war, the sex trade, LGBTQ identities and activism, women's liberation, feminisms and visual culture.
Casi cuatro décadas transcurrieron desde que finalizó la última dictadura militar en Argentina y aún sus marcas perduran en la sociedad, moldeando también la política del presente. La lucha de las organizaciones de derechos humanos que reclaman “memoria, verdad y justicia” por los crímenes cometidos en aquel entonces no ha perdido su vigencia; por el contrario, continúa recibiendo nuevas generaciones militantes. A mediados de 1990, las/os hijas/os de las víctimas (“hijxs”) irrumpieron en la escena pública nucleados bajo la agrupación H.I.J.O.S., alcanzando un marcado protagonismo entre las juventudes políticas de aquella época. A través de los ciclos políticos, la militancia de los "hijxs" fue adquiriendo diversas formas, renovando sus repertorios de acción y estrategias políticas. Llevando a algunas/os de ellas/os a ocupar cargos políticos en el Gobierno y el Congreso Nacional a partir del año 2007. Este artículo propone abordar las carreras militantes de estas/os “hijxs” desde sus dimensiones individuales y colectivas, explorando sus redes de inserción política, sus configuraciones identitarias, los capitales adquiridos y movilizados a lo largo de sus carreras. Indagando, a su vez, sobre el proceso de legitimación social atravesada por los “hijxs” a través de los años kirchneristas (2003-2015) y sus efectos en el campo político.
מאמר זה בוחן תנועות להט"ב (לסביות, הומואים, טרנסג'נדרים וביסקסואלים) בישראל ומצביע על שני תהליכים מרכזיים בפוליטיקה של תנועות חברתיות להט"ביות מאז סוף שנות השמונים: עמותיזציה (NGOization) שהובילה לפוליטיקה של היטמעות (אסימילציה); והומולאומיות: שילוב של היטמעות ונורמטיביות עם הכלה לאומית. השילוב בין תהליכי עמותיזציה והומולאומיות השפיע מאוד על התנועות, על המטרות, על סדר היום, על הפרקטיקות, על ההישגים ועל הרשתות של ארגונים ותנועות להט"ב. במאמר אני מציגה ניתוח דרך עדשת הנאו-ליברליזם הישראלי, שהיה בסיס הכוח של התנועות החברתיות הלהט"ביות לכונן שינוי. הניתוח עוקב אחרי אירועים מרכזיים מתחילת שנות השמונים, שהייתה תקופת התגבשות, אל תוך המאה ה-21, תקופה של הומולאומיות, ולבסוף עוסק באתגרים החדשים המכוננים כיום את הפוליטיקה ואת מבנה הכוח של התנועות החברתיות הלהט"ביות. נקודת המבט הנאו-ליברלית חושפת כי תנועות חברתיות להט"ביות ממשיכות לעבוד, לצמוח ולהתמסד והן מאמצות פוליטיקה של נורמליזציה. עם זאת, תהליך זה משקף לא את כוחן הרב של תנועות חברתיות להט"ביות אלא את תהליכי ההפרטה של המדינה, המאפשרים לתנועות חברתיות להט"ביות להיכנס למרחבים שהיו בעבר באחריות המדינה ובשליטתה, ולמלא אותם. לפיכך במאה ה-21 הערך של להט"ב מתהווה דרך ההגיונות של נאו-ליברליזם והומולאומיות, שהם מבנים פוליטיים ומבני שיח שיוצרים דרכים חדשות לכינון שינוי, ובה בעת מגבילים את היכולת לחולל שינויים מרחיקי לכת. המאמר מראה כיצד החיבור בין הומולאומיות וניאו-ליברליזם הוביל למה שאכנה במאמר זה פוסט-הומולאומיות
This conceptual paper identifies future directions for information practices theoretical discourses addressing marginality, community, and embodiment. We extend arguments from critical research identifying how existing discourses fail to capture the nuanced, lived experiences of people and communities confronting marginalization, predominantly via their reinforcement of deficit narratives. We then connect a series of qualitative projects examining the information practices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual communities in the American South with relevant Library and Information Science (LIS) research to examine how marginality, community, and embodiment shape these practices. Specifically, we introduce a conceptual model that describes marginality by framing information practices as tactical and agentic responses to and refutations of social and structural barriers and risks. While some of the information practices of participants and communities appear to be uninformed or unsafe, they represent the products of community sharing and vetting. Embodied navigations further inform participant practices as they navigate information worlds produced and informed by their intersectional identities. These arguments coincide with key categories established within our model that describe information practices: defensive and protective, and community and self. Based on these insights, we offer directions for future research and theory to reorient existing discourses in ways that inspire middle‐range theory building that fully captures people's lived experiences.
Critical reflections on the question of national identity and the role of cultural policy.
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Cet article presente les avancees de la « queer theory », theorie de l'homosexualite differente des etudes « gay » et lesbiennes, dans le sens ou elle sort les differences sexuelles de leur ghetto. Si la « queer theory » est redevable a la sociologie de son approche constructionniste, les AA. se demandent comment la sociologie peut integrer le phenomene homosexuel sans le marginaliser. L'originalite de la« queer theory »est de remplacer une strategie de droits civils par une strategie anti-assimilationniste de deconstruction, en offrant une approche globale des rapports de pouvoir sexuel a tous les niveaux de la societe
This paper outlines the main tenets of poststructuralism and considers how they are applied by practitioners of queer theory. Drawing on both Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, queer theory explores the ways in which homosexual subjectivity is at once produced and excluded within culture, both inside and outside its borders. This approach is contrasted with more sociological studies of sexuality (labeling theory, social constructionism). Whereas queer theory investigates the relations between heterosexuality and homosexuality, sociologists tend to examine homosexual identities and communities, paradoxically ignoring the social construction of heterosexuality. Poststructuralism can inform a sociological approach to sexuality by emphasizing the generative character of all sexual identities. A sociological study of sexuality which is informed by poststructuralism would examine the exclusions implicit in a heterosexual/homosexual opposition. In this process, bisexual and transgender identities can become viable cultural possibilities, and a broad-based political coalition established. Whereas mainstream sociology focuses on the ways in which homosexuals are outside social norms, and whereas queer theory exploits the ways in which this outside is already inside, this perspective suggests that a critical sexual politics seeks to move beyond an inside/outside model.
Examining the dynamics and activities of the AIDS activist movement--here, through an analysis based on a participant-observation study of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in San Francisco--provides an opportunity to clarify issues on which social movements literature tends to be hazy. ACT UP mixes strategic action and material targets with expressive action and cultural targets; their cultural activity takes the form of boundary-crossing and the contesting of images. They often have difficulty distinguishing their targets, and are caught both denying and affirming that AIDS is a gay disease. I argue that these actions and dilemmas are best understood in the context of changed forms of domination, more and more an invisible and disembodied process of "normalization," with the state gradually less directly involved. This argument not only explains the particulars of ACT UP's activism, but also poses challenges to theorizing on contemporary ("new") social movements.
Etude de trois communautes de femmes homosexuelles aux Etats-Unis durant la periode 1965-1980. Analyse du processus d'auto-identification de ces femmes et de leur perception des autres membres de la communaute. Inscription de cette analyse dans le cadre plus global du mouvement feministe americain et de son influence sur ces femmes homosexuellles
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Identity and culture are two of the basic building blocks of ethnicity. Through the construction of identity and culture, individuals and groups attempt to address the problematics of ethnic boundaries and meaning. Ethnicity is best understood as a dynamic, constantly evolving property of both individual identity and group organization. The construction of ethnic identity and culture is the result of both structure and agency-a dialectic played out by ethnic groups and the larger society. Ethnicity is the product of actions undertaken by ethnic groups as they shape and reshape their self-definition and culture; however, ethnicity is also constructed by external social, economic, and political processes and actors as they shape and reshape ethnic categories and definitions. This paper specifies several ways ethnic identity and culture are created and recreated in modern societies. Particular attention is paid to processes of ethnic identity formation and transformation, and to the purposes served by the production of culture-namely, the creation of collective meaning, the construction of community through mythology and history, and the creation of symbolic bases for ethnic mobilization.
org/sici?sici=0097-9740%28199322%2918%3A4%3C891%3ADAIFAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement
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Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement "Newness"
Josh Gamson
Social Problems, Vol. 36, No. 4. (Oct., 1989), pp. 351-367.
Theory and the Missing Sexual Revolution in Sociology Arlene Stein
- I Can 't Even Think
- Straight
I Can't Even Think Straight" "Queer" Theory and the Missing Sexual Revolution in
Sociology
Arlene Stein; Ken Plummer
Sociological Theory, Vol. 12, No. 2. (Jul., 1994), pp. 178-187.
org/sici?sici=0037-7791%28198910%2936%3A4%3C351%3ASDATIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Queer Theory: A Review of the "Differences" Special Issue and Wittig's "The Straight Mind
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http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-7791%28198910%2936%3A4%3C351%3ASDATIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U
Queer Theory: A Review of the "Differences" Special Issue and Wittig's "The Straight Mind"
Rosemary Hennessy
Signs, Vol. 18, No. 4, Theorizing Lesbian Experience. (Summer, 1993), pp. 964-973.
CO%3B2-U Queer Theory: A Review of the "Differences" Special Issue and Wittig's "The Straight Mind
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-7791%28198910%2936%3A4%3C351%3ASDATIE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U
Queer Theory: A Review of the "Differences" Special Issue and Wittig's "The Straight Mind"
Rosemary Hennessy
Signs, Vol. 18, No. 4, Theorizing Lesbian Experience. (Summer, 1993), pp. 964-973.
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