scholarly journals Homonormativity or queer disidentification? Rural Australian bisexual women's identity politics

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruby Grant ◽  
Meredith Nash
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Knowledge Gap ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Queer Youth ◽  
Women's Identity ◽  
Rural Australia

Recent research shows that queer youth increasingly reject traditional sexual labels in favour of more fluid identifications. Despite well-rehearsed debates around queer identity politics under neoliberalism, there is a dearth of research examining how queerness is understood and expressed in rural Australia. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines bisexual and queer young women's understandings of sexual labels in Tasmania, Australia. Drawing on Jose Esteban Muñoz's disidentifications, we argue that while neoliberalism and homonormativity do influence rural queer women's identity politics, their lived experiences present specific challenges that draw attention to the urban-centricity of homonormativity.

Not Getting Better: Sex and Self-Harm in It Gets Better / Glee Fanfiction

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Derritt Mason
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Television Show ◽  
Young Audiences ◽  
Queer Youth ◽  
Critical Elements ◽  
Self Harm

This chapter explores how fanfiction writers deploy characters from the television show Glee in the context of the It Gets Better anti-bullying YouTube project to imagine scenarios where the project’s teleological narrative fails to describe the lived experiences of queer youth. Glee reached peak popularity in 2010–2011, the year that It Gets Better was launched and queer YA began undergoing a publishing boom. In fanfiction that combines Glee with It Gets Better, fans repurpose It Gets Better to bring critical elements to the YouTube project that are missing from its official stories: sexual pleasure, and the possibility that it doesn’t always get better. These traces in material culture of young people writing back to It Gets Better, Mason concludes, illustrate problems with Jacqueline Rose’s argument about the untouched “middle space” between adult authors of children’s literature and the genre’s young audiences.

Who Gets to Be a #TruvadaWhore

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (140) ◽  
pp. 157-163
Author(s):  
Devon Betts
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Preventative Health ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Preventative Health Care

Abstract In 2012 the FDA’s approval of Truvada as a type of HIV preventative health care (PrEP) generated a considerable amount of criticism. This discourse was exemplified by the #TruvadaWhore campaign, in which gay men used the hashtag to reclaim this derogatory term and made information on PrEP more accessible. Although this campaign is queer in its rejection of heteronormative logics, it also highlights the limitations of queer identity politics. The #TruvadaWhore campaign masks differences of power and privilege among MSM. It presumed that a critique of slut shaming could function universally across race, despite the racial myths about Black hypersexuality that have existed throughout modernity, and undergird the ongoing regulation of Black bodies, both queer and straight. Ultimately, this article calls for a queering and reimagining of such activism as an intersectional and coalitional project through an exploration of the question: who gets to be a #TruvadaWhore?

Difference-Conscious Critical Media Engagement and the Communitarian Question

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Jennifer Fredette
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Media ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Critical Media ◽  
French Model

This chapter examines the critical media engagement of an activist and author (Rokhaya Diallo) and an organization (the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France [Collective Against Islamophobia in France]) that describe their work as oriented toward the cause of equality in France. Their interventions in traditional and New Media challenge stereotypes and draw attention to racial and religious discrimination. This kind of discourse about the lived experiences of racial and religious minorities in France, however, opens them up to criticism from those who believe that the French model of equality demands difference-blindness and the rejection of identity politics. The chapter suggests, however, that critical media engagement by post-migratory postcolonial minorities (PMPM) is a product of experiences and values born in France, and that while it may sometimes draw on movements and strategies used by equality activists in the United States, it remains a thoroughly French affair. Rather than a rejection of France, PMPM critical media engagement should be read as yet another chapter in the ongoing negotiation and articulation of what it means to be French.

scholarly journals Samoan Queer Lives

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seuta’afili Patrick S. Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Careful Documentation

Fa’afafine are a visible and significant presence in everyday Samoan life. However, stories written from a fa’afafine perspective are sorely lacking in both academic and general literature. Most texts written on fa’afafine have been penned by non-fa’afafine and Western researchers who have often theorized the existence and lived experiences of Samoa’s most visible queer identity through Western, colonial eyes. Samoan Queer Lives aims to help remedy this by reclaiming this space through the careful documentation of the narratives of broadly defined queer Samoans from a transnational perspective.

scholarly journals Valuing queer identity in Monster High doll fandom

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Mariel Austin
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Queer Identity ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Communities Of Interest ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Queer Politics ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Fan Practices

According to Mattel, Monster High dolls topped $500 million in annual sales in 2014, quickly gaining on Barbie, whose $1.3 billion in annual revenue plummeted for the fourth quarter in a row. Monster High's recent ad campaign claims, "We are monsters. We are proud." Race, ethnicity, and disability are coded into the dolls as selling points. The allure of Monster High is, in part, that political identity and the celebration of difference become consumable. The female body, the racialized body, and the disabled body have long been coded as monstrous. Monster High reclaims this label, queering it. Using Jack Halberstam's work on children's culture and Richard Berger's and Rosalind Hanmer's work on fandom, this article explores the queer potential of Monster High. Fans rewrite the Mattel narrative through fan fiction, repainting the dolls, and embodying them through virtual avatars, makeup, and costume play. These fan practices both queer the dolls' identity politics and create communities of interest that act as safe spaces for expressing queer identity and generating fan activism. These fan practices have also influenced Mattel's branding of the dolls, specifically with the recent inclusion of activism campaigns such as WeStopHate and The Kind Campaign into the Monster High Webisodes and Web site. By exploring the queer politics of Monster High fandom, this paper explains how that queering generates social change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document