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Re-Sourcing Queer Subjectivities: Sexual Identity and Lesbian/Gay Print Media
Abstract and Figures
With most critical discussions of lesbian/gay identities and media focusing on mass-circulation representation, visibility and stereotyping, the lesbian/gay community small press has remained neglected, particularly as it plays a role in the constitution of the performative lesbian/gay subject. This paper brings queer theory and communication theories closer together by focusing on both the reading positions inculcating subjective performativity and the mediation of contemporary discourses of sexuality. By examining the role of the gay press as an affirmative ‘first encounter’ site with oft-censored discourses of non-heterosexuality, it is concluded that there are issues of responsibility in the discursive foreclosure on sexual alternatives beyond the hetero/homo binary in contemporary media formations.
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... Seeking ways in which to demonstrate the ongoing utility of queer critique for social outcomes after twenty-five years since its conceptualisation, while paying attention to the possibilities and potentialities of a materialist queer theory is something I would like to do in this paper, noting the context of creative writing as that which actively recirculates information utilised by many vulnerable younger persons as 'saving refuges' to provide a logic for living a particular kind of non-normative life (Gross 1998). In that sense, queer writing and the broader cultural context of contemporary creative media and online communication that depicts stories and narratives of queer lives has the enormous potential to serve as a resource for identity (Cover 2002), whether that be identities of vulnerability and self-harm or of resilience and liveability. Following some of my work on youth suicide (Cover 2012), the conjuncture of queer theory's potential interest in neoliberal identity formation and its usefulness for addressing social problems focuses on the figure of queer youth in the context of sexual citizenship. ...
... Where upward social comparison is a known factor in psychological adjustment of readers and audiences who may utilise neoliberal queer writing as a resource for identity constitution (Cover 2002), the perception that one is worse off than one's community or minority peers becomes a problem that needs to be addressed. Queer people are, indeed, doing so much better if the narrow homonormative depiction is seen as representative. ...
Contemporary sexual citizenship is governed by neoliberal concepts of selfhood that
both encourage subjects to manage their own risk and that establishes risks by creating
hierarchies of affluence, self-commodity and belonging. These risks relate to the ways
in which LGBT self-harm and sexuality-related suicide are conditioned and normalised,
with continuing high rates of suicidality. While neo-liberal formations of sexual
selfhood have created the conditions for writing and making sense of fictional and nonfictional narrative accounts in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific for the legalised
expression and representation of non-heterosexuality, they continue and exacerbate
risks that can lead to the cultural formations associated with youth suicide. The fact that
non-heterosexual youth have traditionally made use of the ‘logics’ of non-normative
sexuality given in queer writing calls for an ethical approach to the ways in which
narratives of non-heteronormative sexuality are written. This article presents a framing
account of how contemporary neoliberal forms of ‘homonormative’ queer cultures
serve as a backdrop and context for queer creative representations that may be utilised
as forms of support, frameworks for identity norms or projections of queer lives that
can, arguably, exacerbate risks of suicide. It examines some of the ways in which we
can come at the conditions that make queer youth suicide possible and thinkable from a
queer culturalist angle, allowing us to consider how suicide risks are creatively
represented, produced, or contributed to.
... QT subscribes to the 'queering of culture, ranging from the reinterpretation of characters in novels and cinema, to the deconstruction of historical analysis' (Kirsch, 2000, p. 33). Cover (2002) emphasises QT's importance and media's critical role in offering positive lesbian and gay representation. When undertaking media analysis into sexuality, QT and Communication Theory (CT) need to be combined, still a limited practice. ...
Pride Festivals have contributed significantly to social change through increased visibility and campaigning for gay rights, highlighting the importance of the events industry in enhancing the LGBTQIA+ movement’s representation. This has not been reflected in research with a lack of convergence between queer, social cognitive behaviour and communication theories. This study addresses this gap by investigating UK news media’s representations of Pride and their impact on public perceptions of the LGBTQIA+ community. ‘Sentiwordnet’ opinion mining software was used to analyse media representations of Pride in eight UK newspapers. Selected images and headlines were then embedded into a survey to understand image perception, headline correlation and exposure to different media types. The study found limited influence of traditional news media on participants’ perceptions of Pride, despite some negative framing. Fifth Estate Journalism emerges as positive and influential, revealing a shift in media representation influences. The paper proposes a revised framework incorporating the Fifth Estate when measuring public perceptions of LGBTQIA+.
... This aligns with recent research indicating that young people learn about sex through a range of sources (Albury & McKee, 2017;Fine & McClelland, 2006), with classroom and curriculum-based approaches often criticised as being simplistic, overly focused on penetrative heterosex, or wholly concerned with STI or pregnancy prevention (Clarke, 2017, p., 4). Acknowledging the need for a more multi-dimensional understanding of sexual learning (Gourlay, 1995) that goes beyond reproducing existing exclusions and inequalities (Sanjakdar et al., 2015), both the 1970s' and 1990s' born placed significant focus on entertainment media, including films, books and magazines, as importance spaces for learning about topics that remain unacknowledged in classrooms (Hillier et al., 2010), especially those of relevance to queer youth (Bragg, 2006;Cover, 2000;Cover, 2002;Rasmussen, 2006). ...
In popular and academic discourse, sexual identity is regularly linked to a concept of sexual engagement with others. Recent thinking on sexuality has, however, opened up the possibility of understanding ‘identity’ in ways different from sexual behaviour. This paper considers data from the Australian Queer Generations project, in which findings indicate that young Australian participants express complex ambivalences towards sex and sexual expression, and disavowals of the importance of sex. We consider what this might mean for young people's gender and sexual identities as well as implications for support for LGBTQ young people.
... Minority identities such as LGBTQ sexualities are also relational, constituted in the citation of discursive resources that enable belonging through recognition. Such resources have traditionally been accessed through popular culture (Cover, 2000) and minority community media resources (Cover, 2002); in recent years, this access is occurring through the interactive process of social networking, which further shifts the constitution of identity into representational and confessional modes. ...
Following the development of online sites dedicated to the preservation of individuals’ photographic and textual memorialisation of cities, a number of archiving sites using Facebook have been developed that cater to the interactive and co-creative practice of memorialising LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) city-based communities, events and public spaces (e.g. Lost Gay Perth and Lost Gay Melbourne). Such minority community practices of memorialisation invoke deeply felt and affective attachments to ‘past’ in ways which have implications for identity, belonging, ageing and agency. This article utilises a critical approach to archiving, temporality, identity and attachment to interrogate some of the ways in which digital cultural practices related to archiving social networking sites are implicated in the memorialisation of community belonging through notions of past, networks of knowing, and the temporal and historical production of ways of thinking about and knowing minority sexuality, particularly LGBTQ subjectivity.
... One site through which we see substantial early adoption and a fleshedout account of the centrality of mobile telephone technologies to the formation of contemporary queer communities and identities is in Russell T Davies' Queer as Folk (UK 1999(UK -2000. Like other television texts focusing on queer youth, this serves as pedagogical (Cover 2002), in the sense of performing an accessible role "in producing narratives, metaphors and images that exercise a powerful pedagogical force over how people think of themselves and their relationship to others" (Giroux 2004: 62). From the mid-1990s, there is an identifiable "renaissance point" in the representation of lesbian and gay characters in mainstream film and television with a clear shift from relative invisibility of non-heterosexual characters, themes, and personages (Russo 1981) to a proliferation of films and television with lesbian/gay-affirmative themes and content emerging from large production companies and broadcast on major television networks (Cover 2000;Gross 1998: 98). ...
This chapter explores how the British television program Queer as Folk functions as popular sex education about mobile sexual identities. In a digital/media-saturated contemporary culture, identities—including marginal and youth subjectivities—are constituted in the context of new digital technologies, and the processes of relationality that these produce. These include mobile phones. Such pervasive devices encourage interactivity with texts, narrative, discourses, and new relationalities with other users that re-configure the constitutive power of space and place in identity. Russell T. Davies’ Queer as Folk (UK 1999–2000) presented an early representation of the centrality of mobile technologies to community support, networking, sexual identity, and resilience. The program teaches viewers about the ways in which digital communications are pivotal in the everyday performativity of selfhood.
This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and television LGBTQ+ themes, characters and narratives they viewed while they were growing up. Aspects of place and space were centred in these accounts, from memories of watching a shared television in the domestic family setting to the physical artefact of the video tape. Participants emphasised the theme of mobility toward the city and a rural/urban distinction in the film and television they discussed, and the role of city contexts in providing better access to screen media that represented LGBTQ+ lives – for example, through access to independent cinemas. These memorial accounts were considered formative and often provided the framework by which participants perceive and navigate everyday life as members of minority communities. At the same time, these place-bound accounts of encounters with LGBTQ+ screen texts expressed a complex attachment to domestic spaces, tangible objects and narratives of mobility.
This study focuses on podcasts produced in Turkey that incorporate queer culture and experiences by exploring the dynamics of podcasting as an alternative broadcast medium. We examined six podcasts consisting of conversations focused on queer culture and issues, with at least ten episodes distributed. We conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with nine participants – at least one representative of each podcast. We found that the programmes, as effective alternative publicizing channels of solidarity, make personal experiences audible. Queer podcasts in Turkey demonstrate the characteristics of alternative media, being carriers of non-hegemonic discourse and representations, and their organizational forms and structures support audience participation. On the other hand, the distribution channels of the content are commercial and not independent on state or market.
This student book discusses issues of journalism ethics within a broader concept of how we understand, negotiate and embody ethics in western culture. The work of Charles Ess on ethics and digital culture as well as the work of Michel Foucault on governmentally have been influential in how the terms and debates discussed in this book are conceptualised.
Rob Cover examines ethnic minority (migrant) community media production in South Australia. Drawing on interviews with publishers and editors of print publications and hosts and producers of community radio, the chapter interrogates the role of migrant community media from the perspective of what is referred to as ‘networked mobility’ – the increasing transnationalisation of the ongoing experience of being a migrant to Australia, in which mobility of information and flows of news, entertainment and popular culture occurs across a networked diaspora. The chapter explores the ways that producers, editors and hosts envisage the benefits of transnational mobility and employ models of networked mobility for the future of ethnic minority media.
