Jacques Balthazart
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199838820
- eISBN:
- 9780199919512
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199838820.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Neuroendocrine and Autonomic, Development
This book presents a simple description of the biological mechanisms that are involved in the determination of sexual orientation in animals and also presumably in humans. Using scientific studies ...
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This book presents a simple description of the biological mechanisms that are involved in the determination of sexual orientation in animals and also presumably in humans. Using scientific studies published over the last few decades, it argues that sexual orientation, both homosexual and heterosexual, is under the control of embryonic endocrine and genetic phenomena in which there is little room for individual choice. The book begins with animal studies of the hormonal and neural mechanisms that control the so-called instinctive behaviors and analyzes how this animal work may potentially apply to humans. The book does not focus exclusively on homosexuality, however. Instead, the book acts as a broader guide to the biological basis of sexual orientation, and also discusses important gender differences that may influence sexual orientation.Less
This book presents a simple description of the biological mechanisms that are involved in the determination of sexual orientation in animals and also presumably in humans. Using scientific studies published over the last few decades, it argues that sexual orientation, both homosexual and heterosexual, is under the control of embryonic endocrine and genetic phenomena in which there is little room for individual choice. The book begins with animal studies of the hormonal and neural mechanisms that control the so-called instinctive behaviors and analyzes how this animal work may potentially apply to humans. The book does not focus exclusively on homosexuality, however. Instead, the book acts as a broader guide to the biological basis of sexual orientation, and also discusses important gender differences that may influence sexual orientation.
Cheshire Calhoun
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199257669
- eISBN:
- 9780191598906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199257663.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter focuses largely on lesbian feminist theorizing in the 1980s. It is argued that feminist theorizing on gender oppression has worked to conceal, rather then reveal, lesbian specificity. An ...
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This chapter focuses largely on lesbian feminist theorizing in the 1980s. It is argued that feminist theorizing on gender oppression has worked to conceal, rather then reveal, lesbian specificity. An attempt is made to determine what it is in feminist thinking that makes it difficult to see the lesbian in the feminist subject of woman, so that she is regarded as a ‘not‐woman’, and also as the quintessential form of feminist revolt against patriarchy because she refuses to be heterosexual. It is argued that this placement of resistance to patriarchy at the heart of what it means to be a lesbian is wrong.Less
This chapter focuses largely on lesbian feminist theorizing in the 1980s. It is argued that feminist theorizing on gender oppression has worked to conceal, rather then reveal, lesbian specificity. An attempt is made to determine what it is in feminist thinking that makes it difficult to see the lesbian in the feminist subject of woman, so that she is regarded as a ‘not‐woman’, and also as the quintessential form of feminist revolt against patriarchy because she refuses to be heterosexual. It is argued that this placement of resistance to patriarchy at the heart of what it means to be a lesbian is wrong.
Cheshire Calhoun
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199257669
- eISBN:
- 9780191598906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199257663.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
It is argued that lesbian and gay subordination differs substantially in form from gender and racial oppression. In particular, it does not materialize in a disadvantaged place that would sharply ...
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It is argued that lesbian and gay subordination differs substantially in form from gender and racial oppression. In particular, it does not materialize in a disadvantaged place that would sharply reduce the access of lesbians and gay men as a group to basic social goods. Instead, lesbians and gays are systematically displaced to the outside of civil society so that they have no legitimized place, not even a disadvantaged one. The displacement occurs because of the requirement that all citizens adopt at least the appearance of a heterosexual identity as a condition of access to the public sphere. Various aspects of this displacement are addressed in detail.Less
It is argued that lesbian and gay subordination differs substantially in form from gender and racial oppression. In particular, it does not materialize in a disadvantaged place that would sharply reduce the access of lesbians and gay men as a group to basic social goods. Instead, lesbians and gays are systematically displaced to the outside of civil society so that they have no legitimized place, not even a disadvantaged one. The displacement occurs because of the requirement that all citizens adopt at least the appearance of a heterosexual identity as a condition of access to the public sphere. Various aspects of this displacement are addressed in detail.
Nicole Vitellone
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719075681
- eISBN:
- 9781781700877
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719075681.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter presents a summary of the preceding discussions. This book began with the speculative question of how to address the history of the condom. How to make sense of safer-sex discourse? In ...
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This chapter presents a summary of the preceding discussions. This book began with the speculative question of how to address the history of the condom. How to make sense of safer-sex discourse? In addressing this question it has been argued that what is at stake is not whether it makes sense to refer to the condom in the context of AIDS as making visible or indeed invisible certain sexualities. Rather, the book has shown how the condom concerns the production and regulation of heterosexuality.Less
This chapter presents a summary of the preceding discussions. This book began with the speculative question of how to address the history of the condom. How to make sense of safer-sex discourse? In addressing this question it has been argued that what is at stake is not whether it makes sense to refer to the condom in the context of AIDS as making visible or indeed invisible certain sexualities. Rather, the book has shown how the condom concerns the production and regulation of heterosexuality.
Morny Joy
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719055232
- eISBN:
- 9781781700792
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719055232.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This book explores the work of Luce Irigaray, one of the most influential and controversial figures in feminist thought—although Irigaray herself disclaims the term ‘feminism’. Irigaray's work stands ...
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This book explores the work of Luce Irigaray, one of the most influential and controversial figures in feminist thought—although Irigaray herself disclaims the term ‘feminism’. Irigaray's work stands at the intersection of contemporary debates concerned with culture, gender and religion, but her ideas have not yet been presented in a comprehensive way from the perspective of religious studies. The book examines the development of religious themes from Irigaray's initial work, Speculum of the Other Woman, in which she rejects traditional forms of western religions, to her more recent explorations of eastern religions. Irigaray's ideas on love, the divine, an ethics of sexual difference and normative heterosexuality are analysed. These analyses are placed in the context of the reception of Irigaray's work by secular feminists such as Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as by feminists in religious studies such as Pamela Sue Anderson, Ellen Armour, Amy Hollywood and Grace Jantzen. Most of these thinkers reject Irigaray's proposals for women's adoption of gender-specific qualities as a form of gender essentialism. Finally, Irigaray's own spiritual path, which has been influenced by eastern religions, specifically the disciplines of yoga and tantra in Hinduism and Buddhism, is evaluated in the light of recent theoretical developments in orientalism and postcolonialism.Less
This book explores the work of Luce Irigaray, one of the most influential and controversial figures in feminist thought—although Irigaray herself disclaims the term ‘feminism’. Irigaray's work stands at the intersection of contemporary debates concerned with culture, gender and religion, but her ideas have not yet been presented in a comprehensive way from the perspective of religious studies. The book examines the development of religious themes from Irigaray's initial work, Speculum of the Other Woman, in which she rejects traditional forms of western religions, to her more recent explorations of eastern religions. Irigaray's ideas on love, the divine, an ethics of sexual difference and normative heterosexuality are analysed. These analyses are placed in the context of the reception of Irigaray's work by secular feminists such as Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as by feminists in religious studies such as Pamela Sue Anderson, Ellen Armour, Amy Hollywood and Grace Jantzen. Most of these thinkers reject Irigaray's proposals for women's adoption of gender-specific qualities as a form of gender essentialism. Finally, Irigaray's own spiritual path, which has been influenced by eastern religions, specifically the disciplines of yoga and tantra in Hinduism and Buddhism, is evaluated in the light of recent theoretical developments in orientalism and postcolonialism.
Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199743285
- eISBN:
- 9780199894741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743285.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter introduces the topic of premarital sex in America and highlights several introductory themes before describing the book’s parameters, data sources, and directions. Its ...
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This chapter introduces the topic of premarital sex in America and highlights several introductory themes before describing the book’s parameters, data sources, and directions. Its brief discussions include the changing definition of premarital sex, the nature of emerging adulthood, the sexual significance of turning 18, and the scope of heterosexuality among contemporary emerging adults.Less
This chapter introduces the topic of premarital sex in America and highlights several introductory themes before describing the book’s parameters, data sources, and directions. Its brief discussions include the changing definition of premarital sex, the nature of emerging adulthood, the sexual significance of turning 18, and the scope of heterosexuality among contemporary emerging adults.
Laurie Essig
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520295018
- eISBN:
- 9780520967922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
In Love, Inc., Laurie Essig argues that love is not all we need. As the future became less secure—with global climate change and the transfer of wealth to the few—Americans became more romantic. ...
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In Love, Inc., Laurie Essig argues that love is not all we need. As the future became less secure—with global climate change and the transfer of wealth to the few—Americans became more romantic. Romance is not just what lovers do but also what lovers learn through ideology. As an ideology, romance allowed us to privatize our futures, to imagine ourselves as safe and secure tomorrow if only we could find our "one true love" today. But the fairy dust of romance blinded us to what we really need: global movements and structural changes. By traveling through dating apps and spectacular engagements, white weddings and Disney honeymoons, Essig shows us how romance was sold to us and why we bought it. Love, Inc. seduced so many of us into a false sense of security, but it also, paradoxically, gives us hope in hopeless times. This book explores the struggle between our inner cynics and our inner romantic.Less
In Love, Inc., Laurie Essig argues that love is not all we need. As the future became less secure—with global climate change and the transfer of wealth to the few—Americans became more romantic. Romance is not just what lovers do but also what lovers learn through ideology. As an ideology, romance allowed us to privatize our futures, to imagine ourselves as safe and secure tomorrow if only we could find our "one true love" today. But the fairy dust of romance blinded us to what we really need: global movements and structural changes. By traveling through dating apps and spectacular engagements, white weddings and Disney honeymoons, Essig shows us how romance was sold to us and why we bought it. Love, Inc. seduced so many of us into a false sense of security, but it also, paradoxically, gives us hope in hopeless times. This book explores the struggle between our inner cynics and our inner romantic.
Kwok Pui-lan
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195161199
- eISBN:
- 9780199835201
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019516119X.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This essay explores three issues that will influence liberation theology in the twenty-first century. The first section focuses on the relation between postmodernity and liberation theology and ...
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This essay explores three issues that will influence liberation theology in the twenty-first century. The first section focuses on the relation between postmodernity and liberation theology and explores the extent to which the preferential option for the poor is still viable in postmodernity. The second section explores the implications for the study of religion of the fact that many of the world’s poor are non-Christians. The last section challenges patriarchy and heterosexuality in liberation theology and shows why gender and sexuality must be fully integrated into liberation discourse.Less
This essay explores three issues that will influence liberation theology in the twenty-first century. The first section focuses on the relation between postmodernity and liberation theology and explores the extent to which the preferential option for the poor is still viable in postmodernity. The second section explores the implications for the study of religion of the fact that many of the world’s poor are non-Christians. The last section challenges patriarchy and heterosexuality in liberation theology and shows why gender and sexuality must be fully integrated into liberation discourse.
Martha H. Verbrugge
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195168792
- eISBN:
- 9780199949649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168792.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, American History: 19th Century
Chapter 2 examines how female physical educators (primarily white teachers) conceptualized active womanhood: How did female bodies resemble and/or differ from male anatomy, physiology, and physical ...
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Chapter 2 examines how female physical educators (primarily white teachers) conceptualized active womanhood: How did female bodies resemble and/or differ from male anatomy, physiology, and physical aptitude? Were women’s and men’s psychosocial traits similar and/or divergent? What did sex differences imply for female exercise, recreation, and sports? Answering these questions proved difficult as American notions of fitness and femininity changed, scientific debates over human differences intensified, and professional physical educators sought social legitimacy between the 1890s and 1940s. White gym teachers fashioned complicated views that sustained the value of their profession, affirmed bourgeois whiteness and heterosexual femininity, justified both sex segregation and gender equity in the gym, and left room for new ideas about active womanhood.Less
Chapter 2 examines how female physical educators (primarily white teachers) conceptualized active womanhood: How did female bodies resemble and/or differ from male anatomy, physiology, and physical aptitude? Were women’s and men’s psychosocial traits similar and/or divergent? What did sex differences imply for female exercise, recreation, and sports? Answering these questions proved difficult as American notions of fitness and femininity changed, scientific debates over human differences intensified, and professional physical educators sought social legitimacy between the 1890s and 1940s. White gym teachers fashioned complicated views that sustained the value of their profession, affirmed bourgeois whiteness and heterosexual femininity, justified both sex segregation and gender equity in the gym, and left room for new ideas about active womanhood.
Martha H. Verbrugge
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195168792
- eISBN:
- 9780199949649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168792.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, American History: 19th Century
Chapter 4 contrasts two prominent physical educators: Mabel Lee (1886-1985), a white woman who spent much of her career at the University of Nebraska, and Maryrose Reeves Allen (1899-1992), a black ...
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Chapter 4 contrasts two prominent physical educators: Mabel Lee (1886-1985), a white woman who spent much of her career at the University of Nebraska, and Maryrose Reeves Allen (1899-1992), a black woman who worked at Howard University. Physical activities were highly gendered at both institutions between the 1920s and 1950s: elite competition and the public display of masculinity for male students versus mass participation and the cultivation of inconspicuous heterosexual femininity among female students. This differentiation by sex suited Lee and Allen’s philosophy of separate programs of, by, and for women. Sex separation, however, also entailed modest budgets, second-rate facilities, and limited clout for women’s programs—disparities that offended both teachers. The chapter analyzes how Lee and Allen handled the “difference dilemma” by comparing their concepts of gender and race, instructional philosophies and programs, and efforts to attain fair treatment for their students and themselves at male-dominated coed institutions.Less
Chapter 4 contrasts two prominent physical educators: Mabel Lee (1886-1985), a white woman who spent much of her career at the University of Nebraska, and Maryrose Reeves Allen (1899-1992), a black woman who worked at Howard University. Physical activities were highly gendered at both institutions between the 1920s and 1950s: elite competition and the public display of masculinity for male students versus mass participation and the cultivation of inconspicuous heterosexual femininity among female students. This differentiation by sex suited Lee and Allen’s philosophy of separate programs of, by, and for women. Sex separation, however, also entailed modest budgets, second-rate facilities, and limited clout for women’s programs—disparities that offended both teachers. The chapter analyzes how Lee and Allen handled the “difference dilemma” by comparing their concepts of gender and race, instructional philosophies and programs, and efforts to attain fair treatment for their students and themselves at male-dominated coed institutions.
C. Winter Han
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479831951
- eISBN:
- 9781479824700
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479831951.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented magazines and media, the buff, macho, White gay man is exalted as the ideal. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by their peers as ...
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In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented magazines and media, the buff, macho, White gay man is exalted as the ideal. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by their peers as submissive or too “pretty,” being sidelined in the gay community is only the latest in a long line of racially motivated offenses they face in the United States. Repeatedly marginalized by both the White-centric queer community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic Asian American community that often privileges masculine heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced and alienated in present-day culture and society. This book constructs a theory of queerness that is inclusive of the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male experience in the United States. The book argues that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall American society. It also shows that many Asian American gay men can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique, special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging stereotypes about beauty, nativity, the book makes a major intervention in the study of race and sexuality in America.Less
In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented magazines and media, the buff, macho, White gay man is exalted as the ideal. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by their peers as submissive or too “pretty,” being sidelined in the gay community is only the latest in a long line of racially motivated offenses they face in the United States. Repeatedly marginalized by both the White-centric queer community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic Asian American community that often privileges masculine heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced and alienated in present-day culture and society. This book constructs a theory of queerness that is inclusive of the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male experience in the United States. The book argues that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall American society. It also shows that many Asian American gay men can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique, special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging stereotypes about beauty, nativity, the book makes a major intervention in the study of race and sexuality in America.
Jennifer Tyburczy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226315102
- eISBN:
- 9780226315386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226315386.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter tracks the material conditions of what the author calls “display choreography” through two museum events: the first, the history of the collection and display of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 ...
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This chapter tracks the material conditions of what the author calls “display choreography” through two museum events: the first, the history of the collection and display of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World) and its role in establishing Lacanian theories of the (white, heterosexual) gaze; the second, the history of the reception of Andrea Fraser’s 2003 film Untitled, a work that implicitly critiques the representational economies circulated through Courbet’s example. The story of the performances that occurred around these sex objects offers a unique chain of events where one can examine the profound impact of display on art historical meaning, the history of sexuality, and the cultivation of sexual consumptive practices that converge and diverge at the sites where the objects became visually accessible. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the transnational provenance of L’Origine du Monde and the film Untitled in order to examine the phenomenon of patriarchal perspectivalism, a way of seeing intricately entangled with capitalism, patriarchal heterosexuality, and collecting and displaying art.Less
This chapter tracks the material conditions of what the author calls “display choreography” through two museum events: the first, the history of the collection and display of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World) and its role in establishing Lacanian theories of the (white, heterosexual) gaze; the second, the history of the reception of Andrea Fraser’s 2003 film Untitled, a work that implicitly critiques the representational economies circulated through Courbet’s example. The story of the performances that occurred around these sex objects offers a unique chain of events where one can examine the profound impact of display on art historical meaning, the history of sexuality, and the cultivation of sexual consumptive practices that converge and diverge at the sites where the objects became visually accessible. Specifically, the chapter analyzes the transnational provenance of L’Origine du Monde and the film Untitled in order to examine the phenomenon of patriarchal perspectivalism, a way of seeing intricately entangled with capitalism, patriarchal heterosexuality, and collecting and displaying art.
Huw Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Double Falsehood is a story of love, but also of loss. Theobald’s play alters many details from the assumed source of the original, the Cardenio narrative in Cervantes’s Don ...
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Double Falsehood is a story of love, but also of loss. Theobald’s play alters many details from the assumed source of the original, the Cardenio narrative in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, available to Fletcher and Shakespeare in Shelton’s 1612 translation. This chapter argues that some of these changes are the result of altered understandings of the relationships between friendship, sexuality, and class as represented on the public stage, and particularly the loss of passionately physical expressions of male friendship, common in the earlier period. Those differences are traced across all these interrelated texts, and other relevant plays, in the service of illuminating a shifting politico-erotic territory in which substantial changes occurred in the relationships between homosociality, homoeroticism, and the figure of the ‘friend’.Less
Double Falsehood is a story of love, but also of loss. Theobald’s play alters many details from the assumed source of the original, the Cardenio narrative in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, available to Fletcher and Shakespeare in Shelton’s 1612 translation. This chapter argues that some of these changes are the result of altered understandings of the relationships between friendship, sexuality, and class as represented on the public stage, and particularly the loss of passionately physical expressions of male friendship, common in the earlier period. Those differences are traced across all these interrelated texts, and other relevant plays, in the service of illuminating a shifting politico-erotic territory in which substantial changes occurred in the relationships between homosociality, homoeroticism, and the figure of the ‘friend’.
Linda Martín Alcoff
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195137347
- eISBN:
- 9780199785773
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195137345.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter focuses on women's specifically gendered identity and its basis in sexual difference. It argues that there are persuasive grounds for an objective rather than totally fluid account of ...
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This chapter focuses on women's specifically gendered identity and its basis in sexual difference. It argues that there are persuasive grounds for an objective rather than totally fluid account of sex categories, that objectivity does not require an escape from mediation in human knowledge or the ability to have “out of theory experiences”, and that the tendency for descriptive accounts to become prescriptive is a variable rather than uniform or absolute tendency and can be offset. The objective basis of sex categories is in the differential relationship to reproductive capacity between men and women, but a sexual categorization based on the biological division of reproductive labor does not establish a necessary link between reproduction beyond conception and heterosexuality.Less
This chapter focuses on women's specifically gendered identity and its basis in sexual difference. It argues that there are persuasive grounds for an objective rather than totally fluid account of sex categories, that objectivity does not require an escape from mediation in human knowledge or the ability to have “out of theory experiences”, and that the tendency for descriptive accounts to become prescriptive is a variable rather than uniform or absolute tendency and can be offset. The objective basis of sex categories is in the differential relationship to reproductive capacity between men and women, but a sexual categorization based on the biological division of reproductive labor does not establish a necessary link between reproduction beyond conception and heterosexuality.
Joe Rollins
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780814775981
- eISBN:
- 9781479803842
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814775981.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
Legally Straight offers a critical reading of the legal debate over lesbian and gay marriage in the United States in order to understand how change happened so quickly. The book relies on key ...
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Legally Straight offers a critical reading of the legal debate over lesbian and gay marriage in the United States in order to understand how change happened so quickly. The book relies on key judicial opinions to trace changes in our understanding of heterosexuality, as what was once characterized as an elusive object of analysis was brought into the spotlight. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the cultural value of marriage was becoming tarnished, and the trouble appeared to center around one very specific issue: reproduction. As opponents of lesbian and gay marriage emphasized the link between marriage and accidental pregnancy, the evidence mounted, the arguments proliferated, and resistance began to turn against itself. Heterosexuality, it seemed, was little more than a set of palliative prescriptions for the worst of human behavior, and children became the victims. It thus became the province of the courts to reinforce the cultural value of marriage by resisting what came to be known as the “procreation argument,” the assertion that marriage exists primarily to regulate the unruly aspects of heterosexual reproduction. Our conceptions of children and childhood were being put at risk as gays and lesbians were denied marriage. Writing lesbian and gay families into the law of marriage became the better option.Less
Legally Straight offers a critical reading of the legal debate over lesbian and gay marriage in the United States in order to understand how change happened so quickly. The book relies on key judicial opinions to trace changes in our understanding of heterosexuality, as what was once characterized as an elusive object of analysis was brought into the spotlight. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the cultural value of marriage was becoming tarnished, and the trouble appeared to center around one very specific issue: reproduction. As opponents of lesbian and gay marriage emphasized the link between marriage and accidental pregnancy, the evidence mounted, the arguments proliferated, and resistance began to turn against itself. Heterosexuality, it seemed, was little more than a set of palliative prescriptions for the worst of human behavior, and children became the victims. It thus became the province of the courts to reinforce the cultural value of marriage by resisting what came to be known as the “procreation argument,” the assertion that marriage exists primarily to regulate the unruly aspects of heterosexual reproduction. Our conceptions of children and childhood were being put at risk as gays and lesbians were denied marriage. Writing lesbian and gay families into the law of marriage became the better option.
Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9789888139330
- eISBN:
- 9789888180196
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888139330.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalise homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for ...
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Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalise homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for the rise of mediated queer cultures in Singapore's current milieu of illiberal citizenship. This collection analyses how contemporary queer Singapore has emerged against a contradictory backdrop of sexual repression and cultural liberalisation. Using the innovative framework of illiberal pragmatism, established and emergent local scholars and activists provide expansive coverage of the impact of homosexuality on Singapore's media cultures and political economy, including law, religion, the military, literature, theatre, photography, cinema, social media and queer commerce. It shows how new LGBT subjectivities have been fashioned through the governance of illiberal pragmatism, how pragmatism is appropriated as a form of social and critical democratic action, and how cultural citizenship is forged through a logic of queer complicity that complicates the flows of oppositional resistance and grassroots appropriation.Less
Singapore remains one of the few countries in Asia that has yet to decriminalise homosexuality. Yet it has also been hailed by many as one of the emerging gay capitals of Asia. This book accounts for the rise of mediated queer cultures in Singapore's current milieu of illiberal citizenship. This collection analyses how contemporary queer Singapore has emerged against a contradictory backdrop of sexual repression and cultural liberalisation. Using the innovative framework of illiberal pragmatism, established and emergent local scholars and activists provide expansive coverage of the impact of homosexuality on Singapore's media cultures and political economy, including law, religion, the military, literature, theatre, photography, cinema, social media and queer commerce. It shows how new LGBT subjectivities have been fashioned through the governance of illiberal pragmatism, how pragmatism is appropriated as a form of social and critical democratic action, and how cultural citizenship is forged through a logic of queer complicity that complicates the flows of oppositional resistance and grassroots appropriation.
Christina Simmons
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195064117
- eISBN:
- 9780199869565
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195064117.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Social History
Freer from censorship by 1930, reformers from the birth control and marriage education movements, many of them physicians, published a large body of sexual advice literature. Through it, they sought ...
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Freer from censorship by 1930, reformers from the birth control and marriage education movements, many of them physicians, published a large body of sexual advice literature. Through it, they sought to assist couples in finding satisfactory forms of sexual relations for the new marriage. In these writings, strains of feminist support for women's sexual pleasure contended with demands for more sexual activity in the context of ongoing male control. Advice writers separated sex from reproduction by promoting birth control and more frequent intercourse. Unlike psychoanalysts, they made the clitoris central to women's pleasure and underplayed the vaginal orgasm. Yet they also sustained male initiative and symbols of male dominance like the missionary position. The highly unequal partnership of marriage limited women's ability to act on the advice, but the books normalized a new female heterosexuality for American women.Less
Freer from censorship by 1930, reformers from the birth control and marriage education movements, many of them physicians, published a large body of sexual advice literature. Through it, they sought to assist couples in finding satisfactory forms of sexual relations for the new marriage. In these writings, strains of feminist support for women's sexual pleasure contended with demands for more sexual activity in the context of ongoing male control. Advice writers separated sex from reproduction by promoting birth control and more frequent intercourse. Unlike psychoanalysts, they made the clitoris central to women's pleasure and underplayed the vaginal orgasm. Yet they also sustained male initiative and symbols of male dominance like the missionary position. The highly unequal partnership of marriage limited women's ability to act on the advice, but the books normalized a new female heterosexuality for American women.
Evelyn Blackwood
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834425
- eISBN:
- 9780824870461
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834425.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This book offers a compelling view of sexual and gender difference through the everyday lives of tombois and their girlfriends (“femmes”) in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. While likening ...
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This book offers a compelling view of sexual and gender difference through the everyday lives of tombois and their girlfriends (“femmes”) in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. While likening themselves to heterosexual couples, tombois and femmes contest and blur dominant constructions of gender and heterosexuality. Tombois are masculine females who identify as men and desire women; their girlfriends view themselves as normal women who desire men. The book shows how these same-sex Indonesian couples negotiate transgressive identities and desires and how their experiences speak to the struggles and desires of sexual and gender minorities everywhere. It analyzes the complex and seemingly contradictory practices of tombois and their partners, demonstrating how they make sense of Islamic, transnational, and modern state discourses in ways that seem to align with normative gender and sexual categories while at the same time subverting them. The book reveals the complexity of tomboi masculinity, showing how tombois enact both masculine and feminine behaviors as they move between the anonymity and vulnerability of public spaces and the familiarity of family spaces. It demonstrates how nationally and globally circulating queer discourses are received and reinterpreted by tombois and femmes. Their identities are clearly both part of yet different than global gay models of sexuality. In contrast to the international LGBT model of “modern” sexualities, this work reveals a multiplicity of sexual and gender subjectivities in Indonesia, arguing for the importance of recognizing and validating this diversity in the global gay ecumene.Less
This book offers a compelling view of sexual and gender difference through the everyday lives of tombois and their girlfriends (“femmes”) in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. While likening themselves to heterosexual couples, tombois and femmes contest and blur dominant constructions of gender and heterosexuality. Tombois are masculine females who identify as men and desire women; their girlfriends view themselves as normal women who desire men. The book shows how these same-sex Indonesian couples negotiate transgressive identities and desires and how their experiences speak to the struggles and desires of sexual and gender minorities everywhere. It analyzes the complex and seemingly contradictory practices of tombois and their partners, demonstrating how they make sense of Islamic, transnational, and modern state discourses in ways that seem to align with normative gender and sexual categories while at the same time subverting them. The book reveals the complexity of tomboi masculinity, showing how tombois enact both masculine and feminine behaviors as they move between the anonymity and vulnerability of public spaces and the familiarity of family spaces. It demonstrates how nationally and globally circulating queer discourses are received and reinterpreted by tombois and femmes. Their identities are clearly both part of yet different than global gay models of sexuality. In contrast to the international LGBT model of “modern” sexualities, this work reveals a multiplicity of sexual and gender subjectivities in Indonesia, arguing for the importance of recognizing and validating this diversity in the global gay ecumene.
Heather Rachelle White
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469624112
- eISBN:
- 9781469624792
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469624112.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, this book challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious ...
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With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, this book challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious and sexual past. The book argues that today's antigay Christian traditions originated in the 1920s when a group of liberal Protestants began to incorporate psychiatry and psychotherapy into Christian teaching. A new therapeutic orthodoxy, influenced by modern medicine, celebrated heterosexuality as God-given and advocated a compassionate “cure” for homosexuality. The book traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant anti-homosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. The text highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, the text challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.Less
With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, this book challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious and sexual past. The book argues that today's antigay Christian traditions originated in the 1920s when a group of liberal Protestants began to incorporate psychiatry and psychotherapy into Christian teaching. A new therapeutic orthodoxy, influenced by modern medicine, celebrated heterosexuality as God-given and advocated a compassionate “cure” for homosexuality. The book traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant anti-homosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. The text highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, the text challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.
Jane Ward
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479860685
- eISBN:
- 9781479835782
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479860685.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity? This book ...
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A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity? This book looks deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For the author, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can, and do, have sex with other straight white men; in fact, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. The book illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. The book's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality, not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege.Less
A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity? This book looks deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For the author, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can, and do, have sex with other straight white men; in fact, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. The book illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. The book's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality, not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege.
