scholarly journals Converging Feminist and Queer Legal Theories: Family Feuds and Family Ties

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Craig

The notion that queer theory and feminism are inevitably in tension with one another has been well developed both by queer and feminist theorists. Queer theorists have critiqued feminist theories for being anti-sex, overly moralistic, essentialist, and statist. Feminist theorists have rejected queer theory as being uncritically pro-sex and dangerously protective of the private sphere. Unfortunately these reductionist accounts of what constitutes a plethora of diverse, eclectic and overlapping theoretical approaches to issues of sex, gender, and sexuality, often fail to account for the circumstances where these methodological approaches converge on legal projects aimed at advancing the complex justice interests of women and sexual minorities. A recent decision from the Ontario Court of Justice addressing a three-parent family law dispute involving gay and lesbian litigants demonstrates why recognition of the convergences between feminist and queer legal theories can advance both queer and feminist justice projects. The objective of this article is to demonstrate, through different and converging interpretations of this case that draw on some of the theoretical insights offered in a new anthology called Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, one rather straight-forward claim. The claim advanced here is that activists, advocates, litigants and judges are all well served by approaching complex legal problems involving sex, sexuality and gender with as many “methods” for pursuing and achieving justice as possible.La notion que la théorie homosexuelle et le féminisme sont inévitablement en conflit l’un avec l’autre a été bien développée à la fois par les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels et féministes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes homosexuels ont critiqué les théories féministes les qualifiant d’être anti-sexe, trop moralistes, essentialistes et étatistes. Les théoriciens et théoriciennes féministes ont rejeté la théorie homosexuelle la qualifiant d’être pro-sexe sans esprit critique et dangereusement protectrice du domaine privé. Malheureusement, ces descriptions réductionnistes de ce qui constitue une pléthore d’approches théoriques aux questions de sexe, de genre et de sexualité qui sont diverses, éclectiques et qui se chevauchent manquent fréquemment de tenir compte de circonstances où ces approches méthodologiques convergent sur des projets légaux visant à faire avancer les intérêts juridiques complexes des femmes et des minorités sexuelles. Une décision récente de la Cour de justice de l’Ontario portant sur un litige en droit de la famille entre trois parents et impliquant des parties homosexuelles et lesbiennes démontre pourquoi la reconnaissance des convergences entre les théories juridiques féministes et homosexuelles peut faire avancer à la fois les projets légaux homosexuels et féministes. Le but de cet article n’est pas de suggérer qu’une seule «théorie juridique féministe homosexuelle» convergente soit possible, ou même désirable. Plutôt, le but est de démontrer, par le biais d’interprétations différentes et convergentes de ce cas qui s’inspirent de certaines intuitions théoriques présentées dans une nouvelle anthologie intitulée Feminist and Queer Legal Theory, une proposition assez simple. La proposition avancée ici est que les activistes, les avocats, les parties à un litige et les juges sont tous bien servis en abordant des problèmes légaux complexes au sujet de sexe, de sexualité et de genre avec autant de «méthodes» que possible pour considérer la justice dans tous ses détails.

2008 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meg Wesling

‘Why Queer Diaspora?’ intervenes at the intersection of queer theory and diaspora studies to ask how the conditions of geographical mobility produce new experiences and understandings of sexuality and gender identity. More particularly, this essay argues against a prevalent critical slippage between queer and diaspora, through which the queer is read as a mobile category that, like diaspora, disrupts the stability of fixed identity categories and thus represents a liberatory position within the material and geographical displacements of globalization. Instead, I posit that the work of ‘queering’ diaspora must be to examine the new articulations of normative and queer as they emerge in the transformations of the late twentieth century. To this end, the essay looks to two contemporary documentaries, Remote Sensing (Ursula Biemann, 2001) and Mariposas en el Andamio/Butterflies on the Scaffold (Margaret Gilpin and Luis Felipe Bernaza, 1996), as models of alternative articulations of the queer and the diasporic. Ultimately, I argue, it is a focus on the labour through which the seemingly natural categories of gender and sexuality are produced, that a queer diasporic criticism might offer.


Author(s):  
Patrick Colm Hogan

The introduction first sets out some preliminary definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender. It then turns from the sexual part of Sexual Identities to the identity part. A great deal of confusion results from failing to distinguish between identity in the sense of a category with which one identifies (categorial identity) and identity in the sense of a set of patterns that characterize one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior (practical identity). The second section gives a brief summary of this difference. The third and fourth sections sketch the relation of the book to social constructionism and queer theory, on the one hand, and evolutionary-cognitive approaches to sex, sexuality, and gender, on the other. The fifth section outlines the value of literature in not only illustrating, but advancing a research program in sex, sexuality, and gender identity. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the chapters in this volume.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 758-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Henrickson

The Dame Eileen Younghusband Lecture is presented every two years at the joint world conferences of international social work. In 2016 it was presented in Seoul and was based on the conference theme ‘promoting the dignity and worth of people’. The lecture includes a review of heroes, legal, political and social successes, and challenges for sexual and gender minorities around the world. It challenges the binary of gender and sexuality. The privilege of social work is to choose either to challenge or to reproduce oppression based on sexuality and gender, and protect the dignity and worth of all peoples.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Dwyer

Using interview data on LGBT young people’s policing experiences, I argue policing and security works as a program of government (Dean 1999; Foucault 1991; Rose 1999) that constrains the visibilities of diverse sexuality and gender in public spaces. While young people narrated police actions as discriminatory, the interactions were complex and multi-faceted with police and security working to subtly constrain the public visibilities of ‘queerness’. Same sex affection, for instance, was visibly yet unverifiably (Mason 2002) regulated by police as a method of governing the boundaries of proper gender and sexuality in public. The paper concludes by noting how the visibility of police interactions with LGBT young people demonstrates to the public that public spaces are, and should remain, heterosexual spaces.


Queer media is not one thing but an ensemble of at least four moving variables: history, gender and sexuality, geography, and medium. Although many scholars would pinpoint the early 1990s as marking the emergence of a cinematic movement in the United States (dubbed by B. Ruby Rich the “new queer cinema”), films and television programs that clearly spoke to LGBTQ themes and viewers existed at many different historical moments and in many different forms: cross-dressing, same-sex attraction, comedic drag performance; at some points, for example, in 1950s television, these were not undercurrents but very prominent aspects of mainstream cultural production. Addressing “history” not as dots on a progressive spectrum but as an uneven story of struggle, the writers in this volume stress that queer cinema did not appear miraculously at one moment but arrived on currents throughout the century-long history of the medium. Likewise, while queer is an Anglophone term that has been widely circulated, it by no means names a unified or complete spectrum of sexuality and gender identity, just as the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup struggles to contain the distinctive histories, politics, and cultural productions of trans artists and genderqueer practices. Across the globe, media-makers have interrogated identity and desire through the medium of cinema through rubrics that sometimes vigorously oppose the Western embrace of the pejorative term queer, foregrounding instead indigenous genders and sexualities or those forged in the Global South or those seeking alternative epistemologies. Finally, though “cinema” is in our title, many scholars in this collection see this term as an encompassing one, referencing cinema and media in a convergent digital environment. The lively and dynamic conversations introduced here aspire to sustain further reflection as “queer cinema” shifts into new configurations.


Author(s):  
Page Valentine Regan ◽  
Elizabeth J. Meyer

The concepts of queer theory and heteronormativity have been taken up in educational research due to the influence of disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Queer theory seeks to disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries that structure our understandings of gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity describes the belief that heterosexuality is and should be the preferred system of sexuality and informs the related male or female, binary understanding of gender identity and expression. Taken together, queer theory and heteronormativity offer frames to interrogate and challenge systems of sex and gender in educational institutions and research to better support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ youth. They also inform the development of queer pedagogy that includes classroom and instructional practices designed to expand and affirm gender and sexual diversity in schools.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 455-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Meyerhoff ◽  
Susan Ehrlich

Research on language and gender encompasses a variety of methods and focuses on many aspects of linguistic structure. This review traces the historical development of the field, explicating some of the major debates, including the need to move from a reductive focus on difference and dichotomous views of gender to more performative notions of identity. It explains how the field has come to include language, gender, and sexuality and how queer theory and speaker agency have influenced research in the field.


Perspectiva ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 1041-1068
Author(s):  
Luciana Kornatzki ◽  
Maria Isabel Seixas da Cunha Chagas

As histórias estão presentes nos espaços escolares da infância e contribuem na construção da criança, de suas sensibilidades e subjetividades. As narrativas digitais, que possibilitam a relação entre história e tecnologias digitais, podem contribuir na inserção das Tecnologias Digitais na escola e em propostas em educação sexual. Objetiva-se, neste artigo, refletir sobre esse recurso como possibilidade pedagógica na problematização do gênero e sexualidade com a infância. Para isso, são apresentadas algumas reflexões sobre histórias e narrativas, assim como uma revisão de literatura, resultante de uma metodologia de pesquisa bibliográfica às bases de dados de Educação, sobre o uso das narrativas digitais em contextos educativos e também em educação sexual, sexualidade e gênero. Reflete-se também sobre limites e possibilidades desse recurso nas temáticas em discussão e mostra-se um cenário de aprendizagem que clarifica e objetiva a proposição das narrativas digitais nessas temáticas. Dessa forma, compreende-se a importância da busca por novas propostas pedagógicas de educação sexual com crianças, incluindo contribuições das tecnologias digitais nesse processo. Digital storytelling in childhood sexuality education: possibilities and limitations AbstractThe stories are present in kindergarten and contribute to the construction of the child, his/her sensibilities and subjectivities. The digital narratives that enable relationships between stories and digital technologies, can contribute to the integration of digital technologies in schools and to the rise of new proposals on sex education. We aim to reflect on this feature as a learning possibility to the problematization of gender and sexuality with children. Therefore, we present some reflections about stories and narratives, as well as a literature review, resulting from a bibliographical research methodology to databases of Education, on the use of digital storytelling in educational contexts as well as in sex education, specifically sexuality and gender. We also reflect about the limits and possibilities of storytelling in sex education and present a learning scenario that clarifies and concretizes the proposition of digital storytelling in these themes. We understand the importance of the search for new educational proposals for children’s sex education, including the contributions of digital technologies in the process.Keywords: Sexuality. Storytelling. Computers and education. Récits numériques dans l'éducation sexuelle a l'enfance: possibilités et limites Résumé Les histoires sont présentes à l'école maternelle et contribuent à la construction de l'enfant, ses sensibilités et subjectivités. Les récits numériques qui permettent établir des relations entre les histoires et les technologies numériques, peuvent contribuer à l'intégration des technologies numériques dans l’école et à la création de nouvelles propositions sur l'éducation sexuelle. Nous visons à réfléchir sur cette fonctionnalité comme une possibilité d'apprendre à la problématisation du genre et la sexualité avec les enfants. Par conséquent, nous présentons quelques réflexions sur les histoires et récits, ainsi que d'une revue de la littérature, résultant d'une méthodologie de recherche bibliographique à des bases de données de l'éducation, sur l'utilisation de la narration numérique dans des contextes éducatifs ainsi que dans l'éducation sexuelle, en particulier la sexualité et le genre. Nous réfléchissons aussi sur les limites et les possibilités de la narration dans l'éducation sexuelle et présentons un scénario d'apprentissage qui clarifie et concrétise la proposition de la narration numérique dans ces thèmes. Nous comprenons l'importance de la recherche de nouvelles propositions pédagogiques pour l'éducation sexuelle des enfants, y compris les contributions des technologies numériques dans le processus.Mots-clés: Sexualité. Contes. Ordinateurs et Éducation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Michael Denton

Retention literature and concepts warrant examination through the lens of queer theory, a poststructural body of thought about sexuality and gender, to understand their implications for queer students. Five themes found in the retention literature are addressed from a queer perspective: framing retention as an economic and labor problem; campus climate; the focus on programs, policies, and services; psychological traits; and positivistic approaches. Queering retention involves deconstructing retention binaries; problematizing the production of normative subjects through retention theory; focusing on institutional transformation; and examining retention as heteronormative domination. Queer failure and futurity are offered as possible new frames for retention. This essay seeks to raise questions, tensions, and complexities with no clear or simple solutions. Tentative and limited implications for practice and research are offered; however, they raise more questions than provide answers.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-192
Author(s):  
Diederik F. Janssen

Late modernity’s binary intrigue of child sexuality/abuse is understood as a backlash phenomenon reactive to a general trans‐Atlantic crisis concerning the interlocking of kinship, religion, gender, and sexuality. Tellingly dissociated from 1980s gay liberation and recent encounters between queer theory and kinship studies, the child abuse theme articulates modernity’s guarded axiom of tabooed incest and its projected contemporary predicament “after the orgy”—after the proclaimed disarticulation of religion‐motivated, kin‐pivoted, reproductivist, and gender‐rigid socialities. “Child sexual abuse” illustrates a general situation of decompensated nostalgia: an increasingly imminent loss of the child’s vital otherness is counterproductively embattled by the late modern overproduction of its banal difference, its status as “minor.” Attempts to humanize, reform, or otherwise moderate incest’s current “survivalist” and commemorative regime of subjectivation, whether by means of ethical, empirical, historical, critical, legal, or therapeutic gestures, typically trigger the latter’s panicked empiricism. Accordingly, most “critical” interventions, from feminist sociology and anthropology to critical legal studies, have largely been collusive with the backlash: rather than appraising the radical precariousness of incest’s ethogram of avoidance in the face of late modernity’s dispossessing analytics and semiotics, they tend to feed its state of ontological vertigo and consequently hyperextended, manneristic forensics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document