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Amid changes in the North American socio-cultural/political and dating landscape, there exist questions about whether the sexual double standard and the inequality (e.g., of pleasure) in sex still exist for young women today. In this study, we explored the discourses that shape young women's navigation of and talk about heterosexuality, or heterosex. Young, heterosexual women of diverse demographic and relationship backgrounds aged 18–24 (N = 28) attended one of five online focus groups. Informed by feminist post-structuralism and discursive psychology, we analyzed women's talk about doing heterosex. Many participants mobilized a discourse of expectations of compulsory heterosex practices in casual and committed contexts. Within that discourse, young women were positioned as both constrained and regulated in their sexual lives and as needing to comply with unwanted sex. Risks of non-compliance included the risk of being perceived as being defective and/or "bad." Participants' talk also linked coercion, assault, and other male-perpetrated violence against women with how heterosex is done in today's context. Our findings suggest that despite #MeToo and other exposés of rape culture, young women remain constrained by heterosexual norms. However, their language, ability, and willingness to challenge the current situation concerning heterosex is more sophisticated than previously observed. These advancements are promising, as they suggest the importance of continued research and activism in this area and carry several practical implications, including for sex education programming and counselling and support services in sessions with young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nella Larsen's Passing has been commonly read through a queer lens that presents Clare and Irene's relationship with each other as erotic yet repressed. Irene's repression of her desire and the subsequent narrative can be read as stemming from compulsory heterosexuality. This causes Irene to uphold the institution of marriage at any cost to prevent the sexual freedom that could lead to open queerness on not only her part, but also Brian's and Clare's. All three characters interact with their queerness in conjunction with their race, attempting to use or suppress it for different societal ends. As such, the queer dimension to Passing can be understood as standing in direct opposition to the inevitability of heterosexual union, as Irene alone attempts to preserve heterosexuality, even to the death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the connection between methamphetamine use and sex have tended to focus on gay men or men who have sex with men. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with 40 cisgender heterosexual women who used methamphetamine in rural Missouri, we investigate the multiple ways in which sex played into their market navigations. Our findings reveal the nuances of sexual agency within patriarchal structural constraints. We use and expand upon a queer criminological framework to investigate the intersecting gendered and sexualized expectations that cisgender heterosexual men imposed on women. Our study reveals how compulsory heterosexuality shapes behavior within the rural methamphetamine market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWhile the concept of “coming out” is relatively well-critiqued, few of these critiques trouble the way a near exclusive focus on disclosure positions sexuality as an essential identity. Based on life history interviews with 18 lesbian, pansexual, and queer women elders (ages 65+), I find coming out did not describe disclosing or even acknowledging same-gender desire, but, rather, choosing to act on it. For participants, coming out is the process of forming desire into a coherent identity (lesbian woman), a process that required continued interactions with lesbian existence; contrary to essentialist understandings, desire alone did not enable participants to become lesbians. In this article, I describe the two paths participants followed while becoming lesbians and consider how the historical context in which participants came out, specifically the second wave feminist movement, uniquely facilitated coming out for white women. Ultimately, I argue lesbian sexuality is a richly constructed social identity formed in community and defined by resistance to compulsory heterosexuality. By viewing sexual identity as based on shared political commitments formed in community, this article both corrects an essentializing tendency in the coming out literature and offers a potential point of repair between older and younger generations of lesbians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate the benefits and potential risks associated with utilizing participant observation to gain a deeper understanding of sexual identity. Specifically, my focus is on examining how young, heterosexual, middle-class, cisgender individuals in South Africa perceive and understand their heterosexual identities, exploring how privilege and heteronormativity shape their experiences. In my ethnographic study, I employed various qualitative data collection methods, including participant observation, to analyze how normative practices were negotiated and sustained in contemporary South Africa. As a feminist researcher, I reflect on the epistemological and methodological choices I made in the study, with reflexivity and positionality playing crucial roles in data collection and analysis. Drawing on experiences in three distinct social spaces in Johannesburg—high-end nightclubs, Tupperware-style sex-toy parties, and traditional braais [barbecues]—I examine the advantages and challenges of participant observation. This paper contributes to the broader discussion on the method's use, highlighting its potential to offer a nuanced understanding of a normalized phenomenon while acknowledging associated risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate the benefits and potential risks associated with utilizing participant observation to gain a deeper understanding of sexual identity. Specifically, my focus is on examining how young, heterosexual, middle-class, cisgender individuals in South Africa perceive and understand their heterosexual identities, exploring how privilege and heteronormativity shape their experiences. In my ethnographic study, I employed various qualitative data collection methods, including participant observation, to analyze how normative practices were negotiated and sustained in contemporary South Africa. As a feminist researcher, I reflect on the epistemological and methodological choices I made in the study, with reflexivity and positionality playing crucial roles in data collection and analysis. Drawing on experiences in three distinct social spaces in Johannesburg—high-end nightclubs, Tupperware-style sex-toy parties, and traditional braais [barbecues]—I examine the advantages and challenges of participant observation. This paper contributes to the broader discussion on the method's use, highlighting its potential to offer a nuanced understanding of a normalized phenomenon while acknowledging associated risks.

Copyright of Çankaya University Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences is the property of Cankaya University Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Intersecoes: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Within the framework of the current drive to transform psychology in South Africa, this paper highlights "other" axes of identity that are arguably largely overlooked within the field. The conversation exposes the discipline of psychology – specifically within the South African context – and its many unexamined assumptions concerning "expected" identities of psychologists – specifically, those along heterosexual and able-bodied lines. By engaging in an autoethnographic conversation, the two authors, both "other", practising psychologists – one queer, one disabled – share and reflect on some of their experiences of feeling othered in their chosen profession. Drawing on parts of queer theory, critical disability literature, as well as the theoretical framework of biopolitical power, we start to make sense of our experiences of difference, deviance, and defiance. How the field of psychology marginalises "other" psychologists, and the impacts on those who bear the oppressions, is exposed; and a conversation is begun in which the discipline's assumptions around compulsory forms of identity – straight, not disabled, among others – are disrupted in productive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines social panic surrounding trans youth, arguing that rhetorics supporting "rapid onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD) emerge from and reinforce hegemonic scripts about race, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability. Building from Jay Dolmage's concept of "disability drift," I demonstrate how anti-trans activists channel other social anxieties into transphobia. Arguments about ROGD frame trans people as infinitesimally rare and as threats to all other communities, but these claims rely on the same narratives used to stigmatize mental illness, to dehumanize people of color and queer people, and to police the bodies and behavior of cisgender women. Introducing the concept of "affective drift," I consider how ROGD rhetorics draw from ableism, racism, and heteronormativity to fuel transphobia and vise versa. In direct opposition to the logics of ROGD, then, I propose that rhetorical studies is equipped to foster connections across contrived social divides, and to enact solidarity in one another's struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football is an area of activity that ratifies power relations based on gender and feeds heterosexism, homophobia, and discrimination in Turkey. Accordingly, and as is seen in other countries, the body and sexuality of women footballers is the subject of considerable debate. The enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity are reproduced by many actors in football. In this research, based on a feminist perspective, the experience of female footballers is examined, along with how the decisions and behaviours of the referees are shaped by the appearance of the player. In-depth individual interviews with eight élite level female footballers and seven referees were conducted and the themes analysed. The findings suggest that the referees' decisions and behaviours on the field are not always equal and may vary with the physical appearance of players. Referees appear to discriminate particularly against short-haired and 'masculine' footballers while favouring long-haired and 'feminine' players. As a result, referees may reconstruct compulsory heterosexuality through a homophobic approach to the players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the representation of AIDS-related deaths of gay men in Young Adult (YA) literature. As Eric Tribunella argues, traumatic loss is integral to the ideological work of narratives for young readers; death is often a catalyst for heteronormative maturation in an adolescent subject. The first YA novels about the AIDS-related deaths of gay men focused on securing the heterosexual development of an adolescent onlooker amidst an attacked masculinity, rather than memorialising queer loss. New YA novels about those deaths – examples of AIDS Crisis Revisitation, a term used by Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr to describe a renewed cultural investment in the start of the crisis – move from a pedagogy of heterosexualisation to a politics of memorialisation. By using queer melancholia theory to interpret the changing role of traumatic loss across these representations of the AIDS-related deaths of gay men, this article examines the changing signification of queer grief in the maturation narratives that typify YA literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite public outcry, South Africa has decided to roll out comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Currently, however, there are no scripted lesson plans for teachers of learners with visual impairment. Local literature suggests that the current sexuality education curriculum fails to engage with sexuality diversity and is imbued with notions of compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness, perpetuating homophobia, transphobia and ableism in schools and broader communities. The paper sought guidance from disability professionals on how to best address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexualities' (LGBT+) issues as part of comprehensive sexuality education for learners with visual impairment. Bourdieu's work on doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy underpinned the study. Three professionals working with learners with visual impairment were interviewed in a focus group, and one school principal working in a school for learners with visual impairment was interviewed individually. Data were thematically analysed. Pre- and in-service teachers are encouraged not to see comprehensive sexuality education offered to learners with visual impairment as different from that provided to their sighted peers. Professionals urged teachers to accept LGBT+ learners with visual impairment in their dress, expression and embodiment. However, teachers need to be aware of learners' cultural and religious differences. Current lesson plans need to be revisited to safeguard against compulsory heterosexuality and able-bodiedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Teaching Note describes the process of forming a panel of straight students to answer questions from Martin Rochlin's Heterosexual Questionnaire. The activity highlights heterosexism and heterosexual privilege, provides an opportunity to talk about satire and queer humor, and is a useful way to engage with concepts from class readings in introductory LGBTQ Studies and Women's Studies courses.

This article explores the discursive intersections of masculinity, class and heterosexual desire in the still undervalued British police procedural film, Jigsaw. It considers the film both as an example of a new style of cinematic crime narrative and as a significant conjectural text in which 'compulsory heterosexuality' and marriage, especially in their post-war and mid-century forms, are re-articulated, here as compulsive heterosexuality: a masculine drive that can ultimately lead to sexual murder. The film's low-key naturalistic style owes much to the newly realist television drama of the period, while its identification of middle-class masculinity as the locus of transgression carries cultural resonances well beyond the ostensible project of the film's narrative. Released in 1962, Jigsaw was in effect squeezed between, on the one hand, the British New Wave and, on the other, the pop musicals and London-focused films that dominated cinema in the UK in the mid-1960s. However, the casting of dependable Jack Warner as the investigating detective and its Brighton setting mark it out as an important text situated on the cusp between older versions of the crime film and the new permissiveness. Jigsaw's interrogation of the problematic sexual behaviour of two ostensibly middle-class, middle-aged men is therefore particularly interesting, especially when placed within the context of the cultural anxieties about marriage, the increasingly fluid class system of the early 1960s and an emergent youth culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forum Modernes Theater is the property of Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co.KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When the Chinese version of CosmoGIRL! was launched in Hong Kong, the editorial board was explicit about the magazine's intention to create an alternative approach for girls in a cosmopolitan city to find their own way of living. This paper examines how the magazine frames the concept of 'the girl' through the lens of postfeminism. It asserts that the freedom of choice among girls emphasized in the magazine is not an unlimited form of freedom. This is largely because the idea of 'compulsory heterosexuality' underlies much of the content in the magazine. This paper argues that the magazine's unquestioning inclination towards the complementary framework of opposite-sex relationships dichotomizes the bitch and feminine characteristics. This situation is reflective of the one facing postfeminists in their arguments regarding the development of girls in a neoliberal economy such as Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As mentioned by Esquelín (2010), the novel The red of his shadow by the Cuban / Puerto Rican writer Mayra Montero, narrates various displacements by Haitian immigrants working in the Dominican Republic. In addition to the political and economic factors behind the migratory wave to the sugarcane region of La Romana, Montero's novel shows us the social tensions and religious practices experienced by these Haitians immigrants. The character ZuléRevé, a voodoo priestess who leads us along the paths of the mystical experience of voodooism and the paths of sexuality is the protagonist of the narrative. Based on Butler's (2003) idea that sex, gender, desire and sexual practice are categories that present different possibilities of performance, this article analyzes the sexual experiences of Zulé as displacements that erase the perspective of a compulsory heterosexuality and questions the role of a nuclear family with procreative purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad: Revista Latinoamericana is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Female sexuality has remained a taboo subject in Pakistani literary and cultural representations. However, a considerable shift has occurred in contemporary Pakistani English fiction. Focusing on female bodily behaviour, the fiction explicates multiple shades of female sexual relations and experiences outside the cultural and religious norms in an unusually direct and explicit fashion. This study analyses the way Pakistani fiction, written in English, responds to the variety of different ideologies imposed upon women's bodies and sexuality. It analyses some key sexual experiences of pubertal sexual awakening, post-marital sex, women's urge for proactive sexual intercourse, and disavowal of motherhood, pregnancy and birthing. The collective representation of female sexuality in each case embodies a transgressive experience outside the shame/shameless, licit/illicit binaries. However, the representation, despite its explicitness, does not constitute in any way women's sexual autonomy against the predominant masculine discourses. The issues have been analyzed within the framework of debates on the female body, heterosexuality, the male gaze and commodity fetishism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Rich's [Rich, A. 2004. "Reflections on 'Compulsory Heterosexuality.'." Journal of Women's History 16: 9–11; Rich, A. 1980. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5: 631–660] conceptualization of heterosexuality as an institutionalized and compulsory system that supports gender and sexuality inequality, this paper answers the following questions – how do queer youth take up, question and say what they need from sexuality education. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 19 queer learners, aged between 16 and 19 years and living and schooling in the Free State Province, South Africa. This paper contends that what queer youth say need from sexuality education is a curriculum that – recognizes sexuality diversity; is without assumptions about their sexual experience or lack of it and does not focus solely on associating non-normative sexualities with issues of disease, deviance and danger. The findings highlight the inescapable power of compulsory heterosexuality and its perilousness and argue for a more defined and inclusive sexuality education curricula framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an incident involving a gay pride T-shirt, printed with the slogan "Some people are gay. Get over it!," that I wore during a university lecture, and students' predominantly negative responses to it. I use the lens of modern prejudice research, particularly discursive psychological approaches to modern prejudice, to interpret the students' responses to a qualitative survey about their views on the T-shirt. They related strong feelings of upset and anger, particularly because I had—in their view—implicitly accused them of being homophobic. They passionately refused this supposed accusation on the grounds that "everything's equal now" and "gay people are no different from us." I argue that the ideological themes of cultural heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality provide a productive framework for making sense of the students' responses, as they sanction a rational neoliberal subject who is both non-homophobic and inculcated into heteronormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its publication, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's debut novel, has been studied and analysed from a myriad of perspectives. However, considering that few essays in Brazil approach the novel from a Queer standpoint, I propose to investigate and analyse two well known scenes from Jane Eyre to illustrate the discussion of how compulsory heterosexuality, as discussed by Adrienne Rich (2003), has become a means to erase both the attraction and desire which Jane feels towards Helen Burns and Blanche Ingram, two other female characters in Brontë's novel. So as to enrich the discussion, I also tackle two essays written by Sigmund Freud (1996, 2007) to highlight how Jane's desire towards the aforementioned characters is constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical drama GREY'S ANATOMY (Peter Horton, US 2005-) features weddings as pivotal life events and has portrayed 14 unions over the program's 13 seasons on ABC. This article is a synthetic approach combining communication, gender studies, and grounded theory methodology to examine weddings in Grey's Anatomy through a feminist lens. We employ Judith Butler's theory of gender performance and Rich's1 concept of compulsory heterosexuality to examine weddings throughout the show's extensive run. Depictions of women and weddings demonstrate dissonance between hegemonic gender performance and the potential to redefine the performance of woman in one's own ways. Tension exists between the program's portrayal of traditional heterosexual weddings and its progressive inclusion of a lesbian ceremony. We argue that the program's portrayal of both traditional white weddings and ceremonies which are more private and self-defined reflect the challenges inherent in navigating cultural expectations and personal objectives associated with performing as a woman in contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I offer a platform in which to theorise sexual violence against men. In doing so, I critically interrogate the ways in which male sexual victimisation is socially and culturally constructed in the public space of compulsory heterosexuality. Drawing on male rape as a case study and focus, I explore how rape against men is constructed and socially defined in public territory where homosexuality is often marginal, excluded, and stigmatised. The interactional, social and cultural contexts wherein rape against men is constructed are considered, with the adoption of the theoretical framework of heteronormativity to make sense of the connection between male rape and ‘heterosexual spaces’. In respect of the binary distinction between the public and private, whereby homosexuality is deemed ‘private’ and heterosexuality ‘public’, and drawing on ideas of male sexual victimisation and victim blameworthy, I provide an improved understanding of the different ways in which rape against men is constructed within a heterosexual landscape that always surrounds us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displacement and Borderland: An Oblique View from the Decolonial Feminism to the Scheme Migration, Heterosexual Regime, (Post)colonialism and Globalization Abstract This article is the result of my research thesis to qualify for the title of Master in Gender and Ethnicity from the University of Utrecht, which entailed doing research, action, participation, and building interviews with a biographical approach, analyzing the way in which Latin American lesbian or women who have lived homoerotic experiences are situated along their paths of life: a) within the networks of power that operate both in their countries of origin and in Spain (biopolitics), as well as in a series of complex global relations ( geopolitics); b) within certain collectives (micropolitics) and; c) in their personal or couple relationships (micropolitics). I set out in this research to employ a heterarchical and intersectional look.

In the present study, I utilize objectification theory and compulsory heterosexuality as theoretical lenses to investigate lesbian and bisexual young Women of Color's sexual objectification experiences. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Black and Latina 16-19 year-old young women who identified as lesbian or bisexual. Using the Listening Guide method of narrative analysis, two voices pertaining to young women's objectification experiences were identified: a Voice of Surveillance and a Voice of Self-Surveillance. Findings suggest that young women experienced sexual objectification as rooted in their gender, sexuality, and racial identities. Experiences were further shaped by the contexts in which objectification occurred: participants voiced distinct struggles navigating (a) sexual harassment and violence in relationships with peers and romantic partners, (b) sexual harassment and discipline in school, and (c) street harassment and violence from men. Findings highlight the importance of understanding sexual objectification experiences as they are informed by gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the ways that young women actively cope with and resist objectification. Psychologists, activists, and mental health professionals are encouraged to consider how sexual objectification is rooted in multiple forms of oppression, its implications for young women's identity, desire, and well-being, and how young women can be supported as they struggle against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of La Manzana de la discordia is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores contemporary photography and film works that highlight same-sex intimacy among female Southeast Asian migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. My discussion expands upon feminist migration scholarship by examining how these projects document new migrant socialities and, further, how they invite reflection on the often transient intimacies they depict. As I show, the works render legible and validate sexual and romantic affiliations among migrant women that are commonly elided from their public representation. Yet the visual narratives move notions of intimacy beyond the frameworks of permanence, domesticity, and heteronormativity to interrogate how such framings intersect with concepts of good citizenship and market logics of privacy that foreclose the visibility of non-normative migrant socialities. What is more, by circulating “improper” images of migrant women's same-sex intimacies, the photography and film works mobilize alternative value economies through which the women's experiences are rendered legible without being made appropriable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partir da polêmica sobre a autoria de Frankenstein (1818), ensaio uma análise que o insere em uma história cultural da subjetividade. Exemplar do gótico inicial, provável primeiro exemplar de ficção científica, o romance também faz parte de uma vertente literária que explora a experiência de ser "assombrado" por um fantasma, uma memória, um monstro. Busco reconstituir essa experiência em termos históricos e psicossociais para compreender as relações entre desejo, normas e convenções culturais na emergência da heterossexualidade compulsória.Starting with the polemic about Frankenstein's (1818) authorship, I develop an analysis that includes it in a cultural history of subjectivity. The book is an example of the early gothic, probably the first book of science fiction, but it also takes part in a lineage of novels that explore the experience of being haunted by a phantom, a memory, a monster. I try to reconstitute that experience in historical and social psychological terms to comprehend the relations between desire, norms, and cultural conventions in the emergence of compulsory heterosexuality.

A partir de uma perspectiva teórica queer, o artigo explora as transformações nas relações de gênero e sexualidade na sociedade brasileira do final do século XIX. Associa à reconstituição histórica do período uma análise sociológica do triângulo amoroso de Dom Casmurro de maneira a fornecer elementos para uma compreensão não heteronormativa de nossa história. O foco na obra de Machado de Assis permite explorar o temor social e a recusa violenta da transgressão da ordem sexual da época por uma mulher supostamente adúltera e um homem enamorado e provável amante de sua esposa. O vértice do triângulo é sempre um/a outro/a e, por mais que o identifiquemos com uma personagem, ela é apenas o simulacro do que sua época e sociedade rejeitavam como desestabilizador da ordem vigente das relações amorosas e sexuais.Based on a Queer theoretical approach, this article explores transformations on gender and sexual relations in Brazilian society at the end of XIX century. This work associates a sociological analysis of the love triangle in the novel Dom Casmurro to a historical reconstitution of the period, as a way to give elements to a non-heteronormative comprehension of Brazilian social history. The focus on Machado de Assis´s most famous work allows exploring the fear and the violent refusal of any transgression of the gender and sexual order. The triangle's vertex is always an Other and even if we identify s/he with a character, it is only the symbol of what that time and society rejected as a danger for the current structure of love and power relations.

Through the psychoanalytical concepts of "symptom" and "repression," this article looks at expressions of sexual prejudicebased violence in societies where heterosexuality is institutionalized and compulsory. With these concepts, it examines the tensions that exist between the prohibition of homosexual practices, the concomitant desire forthe prohibited, and the violence with which this desire and its effects are normalized. The article begins with a legal example to show how practices of subordination in terms of nonnormative sexualities are tolerated and maintained as sources of private pleasure, but how they become objects of exclusionary violence when the pleasure of the prohibited is made public. The text explores the vicissitudes of this transition from a psychoanalytical and political perspective.

This study examines the representations of male and female social actors in selected Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. It is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and uses van Leeuwen's Social Actor Network Model to analyze social actor representations in the gendered discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from the analysis show that the representations endorse the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality which is an institutionalized form of social practice in Iran. Three male and three female students were interviewed to find out what they think about these representations. Their responses with regard to whether they think textbooks should also include representations of other forms of sexuality were non-committal and vague. To them LGBT people are the 'Other' practicing a form of sexuality that is not normal. Such exclusions could obscure the reality regarding the existence of such gender identities and represent the world in a particular manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from numerous studies suggests that homophobia and heterosexism remain common on university campuses. Since the 1970s LGBT academics have been encouraged to ‘put themselves on the line’ and ‘come out’ in the classroom, and in so doing empower LGBT students and provide them with positive role models. Wearing gay pride badges and t-shirts has been discussed as one way in which gay lecturers can come out and challenge homophobia. This paper explores psychology students’ reactions to a gay slogan t-shirt I wore in an undergraduate lecture, and considers whether wearing such t-shirts is an effective and productive way of challenging heterosexism and coming out in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that key films of Indian director Rituparno Ghosh –Raincoat(2004) andNoukadubi(Boatwreck, 2011) – anatomize a condition of unrealized desire that is created by the social expectations and constraints of arranged marriage. This desire exists at a level of ‘open secrecy’, that is, it is at once acknowledged and disavowed. Specifically, through close analysis, it is demonstrated that Ghosh’s films evoke the metaphor of the ‘closet’ to characterize the mortifying ways in which desire is confined and denied within arranged marriage. By deploying the metaphor of the ‘closet’, these films also invite us to consider, albeit in a manner that is itself closeted or disguised, an analogy between the closet created by compulsory heterosexuality for those who are incipiently homosexual, and the rejection of love based on desire created by conditions of what is termed ‘compulsory arrangement’. This article thus explores the multifaceted ways that Ghosh anatomizes arranged marriage in terms of closeted desires and open secrets in a manner that articulates the particular saliency and cultural specificity of the closet in a society traditionally governed by rigorous social restraint upon the expression of desire. It proposes that Ghosh’s work offers a specific genealogy of the closet in which closeted desires and the open secrets they engender emerge with their own distinctive history within the context of India and, arguably, South Asia more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent public debates about sexuality in India and Vietnam have brought the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sharply into focus. Drawing on legal documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the urban centres of Delhi and Hanoi, this article shows how the efforts of civil society organisations dedicated to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have had different consequences in these two Asian contexts. The paper considers how these organisations navigated government regulations about their formation and activities, as well as the funding priorities of national and international agencies. The HIV epidemic has had devastating consequences for gay men and other men who have sex with men, and has been highly stigmatising. As a sad irony, the epidemic has provided at the same time a strategic entry point for organisations to struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. This paper examines how the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has been doubly framed through health-based and rights-based approaches and how the struggle for recognition has positioned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in India and Vietnam differently. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explored how British gay men make sense of their appearance and clothing practices and the pressures and concerns they attend to in discursively negotiating their visual identities. A convenience sample of 20 mostly young, White, and middle-class self-identified gay men responded to a qualitative survey on dress and appearance. The participants clearly understood the rules of compulsory heterosexuality and the risks of looking “too gay.” In the data, there was both a strong resistance to the notion of gay as a “master status” and an orientation to the “coming out” imperative in gay communities. The analysis revealed the overriding importance of discourses of authentic individuality for making sense of visual identity and the reported cultivation of appearance and clothing practices that communicate the message that: “I’m not hiding (too closeted), I’m not shouting (too gay), I’m just me (an authentic individual who just happens to be gay).” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Universitas Humanística is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Current research on sexual minority youth tends to be concentrated in the fields of public health, social work, and psychology with a focus on psycho-social health risks that often rely on sexuality as a fixed unit of analysis. A sociological understanding of the processes that drive an individual to identify as gay in the first place makes an important contribution to this existing body of literature, allowing an opportunity to understand not just how sexual minority youth are vulnerable, but why. Drawing on my ethnographic research with adolescent males who frequent a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth drop-in center, I demonstrate how sexuality gets constructed through four processes: violating compulsory heterosexuality, seeking an explanation, exploring sexuality, and negotiating identity. I will show how individuals make meaning of their sexual selves within the context of a patriarchal, heteronormative structural system, where symbols of homophobia and masculinity inform their identity development, and how that reiterates heteronormative development. I conclude by drawing attention to how the shifting boundaries of queerness should inform efforts to improve conditions for sexual minority youth and inform future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1960s, Swahili-speakers on the coast of Tanzania have talked about attacks by Popobawa, a supernatural creature said to sodomize his victims. This article examines both narratives and metadiscourse about Popobawa. I examine two salient features of this contemporary legend: intertextuality and a narrative frame that obligates Popobawa victims to spread the legend. People use Popobawa discourse for both conservative and transgressive purposes, not only reflecting and spreading moral panics about deviant sexualities and the violation of gender norms but also creating opportunities for Swahili-speakers to violate those very norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The medicalization of women's sexual problems under the overall rubric of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) has been thoroughly critiqued by feminist scholars, health practitioners, and sex therapists. However, there has been much less commentary on the medicalization of women's sexual pain—currently, a subset of an official FSD diagnosis. This article critically examines interdisciplinary understandings and ways of addressing sexual pain. It analyzes these frameworks in relation to feminist theories on medicalization, heteronormativity, and the reciprocal relationship between these two processes. We argue that many women who experience sexual pain have been eager for medicalization as a path to minimizing pain during sexual activity and reinstating normative heterosexual practices and identities. These goals have been lobbied for by patient advocacy groups and noted by professionals in the field. Although there are some clear benefits to this case for medicalization, there are also theoretical, personal, and political costs. Guided by a growing body of feminist theoretical and qualitative, empirical research on this topic, as well as the first author's personal experience of sexual pain, this article highlights some alternatives to medicalization and makes suggestions for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]