Unspeakable Desires

Author(s):  
Kate Flint

This chapter explores how certain forms of desire are silenced by culture and convention, and how these desires, whilst they may be expressed through glance or action, can be difficult to express in verbal form. Chief among these desires are ones predicated on same-sex attraction, and both male homosexual and lesbian desires—and attitudes and legislation relating to them—are placed in the context of changing attitudes towards sexuality in Victorian society. The chapter also examines forms of desire that are manifested through such activities as flogging or the consumption of pornography. But the main emphasis falls on queer sexualities and relationships and on their expression in fiction and poetry. The idea that style itself may be understood as a form of queer expression is investigated, and the warning issued that we must be careful not to project our own twenty-first-century desires and forms of identification onto Victorian practices.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Sandra Patton-Imani

I begin this book with the story of my spouse and I essentially being kicked out of the Des Moines YMCA for being lesbians. I use this narrative to introduce the ways relationships between social and legal definitions of “legitimate” family are used to regulate access to social rights and resources. The most pervasive stories in public dialogues about families headed by lesbians and gay men at the turn of the twenty-first century suggest that legalizing same-sex marriage should be either the panacea for all the constitutional vulnerabilities of queer citizenship, or the downfall of civilization due to the crumbling of the institution of marriage. I argue that the construction of lesbian-headed families should be explored in the context of other arenas of social policy, including adoption, immigration, and welfare. I discuss my family’s location in this research.


Author(s):  
Jane Shaw

The churches of the Anglican Communion discussed issues of sex and gender throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Arguments about gender focused on the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. Debates about sexuality covered polygamy, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, these debates became intensely focused on homosexuality and were particularly fierce as liberals and conservatives responded to openly gay bishops and the blessing and marriage of same-sex couples. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the sex and gender debates had become less acrimonious, the Anglican Communion had not split on these issues as some feared, but the ‘disconnect’ between society and the Church, at least in the West, on issues such as the Church of England’s prevarication on female bishops and opposition to gay marriage, had decreased the Church’s credibility for many.


Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
Jie Guo

Abstract Reading the Taiwanese author Wu Jiwen's 1996 novel Fin-de-siècle Boylove Reader (Shijimo shaonian’ai duben), this essay considers the age-old figure of the male dan and the critical role it played in the emerging gay scene in the Sinophone world at the turn of the twenty-first century. Based on the Qing author Chen Sen's novel Precious Mirror for the Appreciation of Flowers (Pinhua baojian), Wu's version resorts to the figure of the male dan, often referred to as xianggong, to explore male same-sex intimacies, which were gaining increasing visibility in the 1990s Sinophone world. While scholars generally agree that the male dan in Wu's novel bears considerable resemblance to the figure of the contemporary gay man, some read the ending of Wu's novel, where the two protagonists, Mei Ziyu and Du Qinyan, part ways, as representing a compromise. I contend that this “unhappy ending” points to Wu's most radical departure from Chen's novel. The original novel's ending, where Ziyu lives happily ever after with both his wife and Qinyan, reaffirms the centrality of the “polygamous” patron-patronized relationship in the late imperial imagination of male-male relations. In contrast, the failed relationship between Ziyu and Qinyan in Wu's version points to the obsoleteness of the xiangong system, as well as the polygamous mode in the 1990s, which required new modes, categories, and symbols for the imagination of male same-sex relationships. Arguing that in this novel forces past and present, local and global converge, the author uses it to explore the larger question of how to approach the queer Sinophone.


2020 ◽  
pp. 563-600
Author(s):  
Jens M Scherpe ◽  
Thomas Eeg

The chapter describes the current law of succession in Norway with regard to mandatory protection of family members, explains its historical background, and situates it in the debates surrounding the changed realities of family life in the twenty-first century. Family law and family life have undergone many changes, not least the increasing prevalence of second or third families/remarriages and cohabitation, as well as the acceptance of same-sex families. The chapter argues that, despite recent reform proposals, the limited changes implemented by reforms in 2019 fall short of what is required of a modern law of succession for all families in Norway.


Old Futures ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 57-87
Author(s):  
Alexis Lothian

Building on the insights of the previous chapter, the second chapter of part 1 turns to feminist dystopian fiction written by antifascist British women between the First and Second World Wars. Man’s World (1926) by Charlotte Haldane and Swastika Night (1937) by Katharine Burdekin use divergent strategies to route modernity’s futures through reproductive bodies, troubling oppositions twenty-first-century critical theory tends to naturalize: between heteronormativity and its others, queer and straight time, futurity and negativity, deviant and normative pleasures. Both novels revolve around the production of futurelessness—not just an undesirable world for some, but the notion that the future could end altogether. This negative speculation resonates with the queer project of articulating a politics that might not rely on reproduction: a futureless politics. At the same time, both Haldane and Burdekin insist that same-sex desire can all too easily appear as one of the various interlocking forces that set in place politically horrifying futures. This convergence of reproductive oppression with homoerotic nationalism calls forth concerns and conflicts in queer studies over the ways in which nonheterosexual bodies, communities, and politics have participated in the perpetuation of racial and colonial violence.


Author(s):  
Stephen Amico

This book explores manifestations of same-sex love and attraction in the popular music landscape of contemporary Russia by focusing on performers, songs, spectacles, and audiences that in many ways served as embodied and audible instances of both homosexuality and homoeroticism. Drawing on a combination of theory and ethnography, the book highlights the corporeality of the homosexual self in post-Soviet, Russian space. It argues that Russian homosexuality in the first decade of the twenty-first century must be understood as bound up with embodiment—a term indicating a mode of experience of one's self, located culturally, spatially, temporally, and in relation to others, as a sentient, material, corporeal being. The book also shows that, in addition to sexual liaisons, the act of socializing with other gay men, either in private or public spaces, as well as in the growing area of cyberspace, is important to Russian gay men. This introduction explains the book's methodology and scope of study and provides an overview of the chapters it contains.


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