Compulsory Heterosexuality and Homophobia: Reading of Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta and The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif

Traditionally, sexuality has often been determined by one’s gender and has further been complicated by heterosexism and homophobic ideas. This paper examines the topic of sexuality as portrayed in fiction from selected literary texts. It constitutes the discussion of various factors that affect people at different levels in association with same-sex relationships, as reflected in the literary texts. The main objective of the paper is to analyse how heteronormative societies respond to lesbian homosexuality. To establish this argument, this paper explores Sarif’s The World Unseen (2007) and Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015). It seeks to answer the question: what is (are) the response(s) of heteronormative society to lesbianism in the selected texts. Ultimately it hopes to contribute to the existing but limited research on understanding experiences of lesbian homosexuals by shedding light on cultural practices that are put in place in an attempt to normalise heterosexuality. The paper utilises Judith Butler’s Queer theory to achieve its objective. The significant concern in this theory is the correlation between gender and sex. The major tenets being gender performativity, the fluid nature of sexuality, and the deconstruction of characterisation structures.

A EXPERIÊNCIA SOCIAL DA LESBIANIDADE REPRESENTADA NO DRAMA AUTOBIOGRÁFICO-MEMORÍSTICO EM QUADRINHOS

Alison Bechdel é uma cartunista e memorista estadunidense, que publicou em 2013 sua segunda graphic memoir, intitulada Você é Minha Mãe? Um drama em quadrinhos, refletindo sobre suas relações, sua subjetividade e discutindo a sua própria identidade e sexualidade. Dessa forma, o objetivo central deste artigo é analisar como a artista representa a experiência da lesbianidade ao recriar as memórias da relação mãe-filha a partir da mobilização de recursos visuais e verbais. Para essa análise multimodal, tomamos como base o suporte teórico-metodológico proposto na gramática do design visual (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006), enfatizando a metafunção representacional, em seus significados narrativos e conceituais a fim de analisar a representação da experiência social da lesbianidade. No tocante ao enquadramento crítico, adotamos conceitos desenvolvidos no artigo Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (RICH, 1980) e no capítulo Lesbian Psychology (ELLIS, 2015). Os resultados da análise revelam a mobilização de recursos verbo-visuais na representação da experiência da sexualidade apontando para suas dimensões subjetiva e institucional, assim como processos de invisibilização e de opressão socialmente experienciados em função da lesbianidade.

‘And I would ask myself, what’s being gay got to do with this anyway?’ Constructions of queer subject positions in student’s stories

In this paper, the author explores some of the issues associated with teaching about compulsory heterosexuality and schooling in an undergraduate sociology programme. Using a novel approach to gathering data, the article analyses the stories students submitted about themselves or others who were counter normative in terms of gender and sexuality in school. Informed by the work of Ahmed and Foucault, this article explores what kinds of gendered and sexualised subject positions become possible through the stories of students, and how are these subject positions interpellated and constituted relationally? Despite progressive legislation, queer activism and the significant visibility of gender and sexuality counter-normative identities in the South African media, the analysis highlights that students’ position school attending queer youth as (1) stereotyped caricatured subjects, (2) objects of fear and (3) subjects of violence. These subject positions serve as straightening devices that interpellate queer school attending youth as unfamiliar, not belonging and unworthy and therefore requiring change. Insights from this article can inform the research and practice which is pivotal to addressing cisheteronormativity not only in schools but cultural ideas, norms and practices too.

“A Gay Agenda”: Troubling Compulsory Heterosexuality in a South African University Classroom

Not only does teaching about gender and sexuality diversity lead to some very interesting and often emotionally evocative, pedagogical exchanges; it can also create challenging issues for teachers and students alike. This article focuses on what happens when a module that addresses compulsory heterosexuality and schooling is broached in an undergraduate sociology class. More importantly, it offers an analysis of the critical incidents and tensions that pay specific attention to how power, knowledge, and emotion feature in teaching and learning. Using antioppressive and affect theories, this article offers an analysis of how we might understand pedagogical practice, especially as it relates to addressing the power of normative heterosexuality in a university classroom. With reflections emerging from the module, I argue for more sociological theorization and analysis of the role of affect in pedagogies that seek to advance liberatory teaching and learning in the area of anti-heterosexism education.

Queering Articulation

This chapter uses key ideas from queer theory in order to argue that the queerness of Terence Davies’s The Long Day Closes (1992) lies less in its protagonist’s presumed homosexuality and more in its formal arrangement of quotations from disparate cultural texts. This bricolage exposes the operation of a culture committed to reproducing compulsory heterosexuality. Criticism, however, has concentrated on explaining the density and arbitrariness of cultural quotation through reference to Bud, insisting that the scraps of film and popular music that make up The Long Day Closes reflect the boy’s escape into self-expression, offering relief and release from the humdrummery and cruelties of life. Building on Derrida’s post-structuralist theories, this chapter argues that the mosaic of references does not provide a medium through which characters can speak, but rather speaks over characters and limits what is sayable. Far from nostalgic, this articulation-through-quotation constrains the possibilities of individual identity.

‘We Are Equal but Different’: Challenging Compulsory Heterosexuality by Intersexual Female Athletes in the World of Sport

By using the method of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), this article examines how sport is a conservative institution so far as sexuality and gender identity of female athletes are concerned. The article enquires to know what it means for a sportswoman to be physically strong and active like a man. It explores how the process of binary sex segregation in competitive sports affects the non-heterosexual female athletes and how their sexuality and physicality are considered as a foil in the patriarchal domain of sports. It highlights how the ‘gender verification test’ as a discriminatory tool is used by the sports regulatory bodies to prove female athletes’ sexuality, especially heterosexuality and to maintain the system of patriarchal hegemony in the world of sport. The article looks into how the hegemonic masculinity within sport works to uphold male power, while subjugating the female athletes. It unveils the incidents, how the non-heterosexual female athletes fall victims of homophobia and go through mental stress to confirm to the societal norms of compulsory heterosexuality. More specifically, through in-depth analysis of two contemporary cases of intersexual hyper-androgenic female athletes, this article examines the status and challenges being faced by the non-heterosexual female athletes in sport and focuses upon how their sexuality are addressed in the field of competitive sports. The article also focuses on the agony as well as resilience of intersexual female athletes to break the gender stereotype in sport in postmodern era unlike before.

Analysis of Female Masculinity During Wartime in The Night Watch From the Perspective of Gender Performativity

The novel The Night Watch（2006）by Sarah Waters, a contemporary British novelist, tells the story of four women whose fortunes were intertwined before and after World War II. By Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, this paper analyzes the wartime female images in the novel. Women’ s wartime drag subverts the binary opposition of people’s presupposed notion about sex and women’ s occupation of men’ job that breaks the fictitious perception of gender opposition; the lesbian love affairs challenge the compulsory heterosexuality. Through the interpretations of the feminist thoughts conveyed by Waters in The Night Watch and Butler’s theory of gender performativity, it can be discovered that the nature of gender identity is actually fictional and can be constructed, reflecting the appeal for gender equality.

Gender Progress and Interpretation

Conservative ballet partnering protocols have been slow to change even in contemporary iterations, for reasons that relate to history, training, gender bias, and ballet’s tendency to operate as a closed and unified system. This chapter focuses not only on trends in gendered ballet duets but also on the way they have been analyzed and interpreted, drawing examples from the post-Diaghilev era of Balanchine to the present, including interpretation of Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, and a discussion of gender in the work of Chase Johnsey, Édouard Lock and Ruth Page. While ballet’s “compulsory heterosexuality” may reflect the culture in which it originated, it is suggested that the contemporary ballet pas de deux should start reflecting the culture in which it now resides.