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Abstract: This paper presents an invitation to feminist and queer sociology to engage more frequently, enthusiastically, and deeply with animals. Feminist and queer sociology that attend to animals and animality stand to develop better knowledge for animals and animal studies and for women, queers, and feminist and queer sociology. Sociologists working from feminist and queer perspectives are also particularly well‐positioned within the discipline of sociology to contribute to and take advantage of the insights of the field of feminist animal studies. After a brief review of what feminist animal studies is, I proceed through three steps to elaborate the imperative for feminist and queer sociology to consider animals. First, I show how feminist animal studies as a theoretical perspective engages with issues that are core to feminist and queer sociology. Second, I center intersectional feminism and lay out how incorporating species can and does enhance our understanding of intersectional processes. Third, I present an ethical call, grounded in the traditions of feminist ethics and ecofeminism, to attend to species in feminist and queer sociology.

For a time, if one wanted to capture the emotional landscape of late medieval literature, psychoanalysis appeared to be the most acute and persuasive analytic tool. From the subjectivity of courtly love to the identification with a suffering God to the defenses against the pleasures of others and neighbors, psychoanalysis offered illuminating frameworks in startling sympathy with medieval texts. With the ascendance of affect theory and its associated (if varied) attention to the non-discursive, the biological or natural, and the conscious or self-understood, the role of psychoanalysis has become less clear. My essay explores the productive intersections between psychoanalysis and affect theory, and especially Lauren Berlant’s suggestion that we think again about sex and sexual desire as possible sites of individual and cultural transformation. The phenomenon of repetition is a focus shared by psychoanalysis and affect theory, and I propose the reiterative conventions of courtly love as a place where the tensions between the two approaches may provide a window into medieval meditations on sex, love, and cultural change.

Researchers can unintentionally reinforce societal prejudice against minoritized populations through the false assumption that psychological measurements are generalizable across identities. Recently, researchers have posited that gender and sexually diverse (GSD) people could feel excluded or confused by the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) due to its overtly heteronormative statements like "A man is incomplete without the love of a woman." Yet, the ASI is used for indexing the endorsement of sexism in GSD samples and across diverse populations. An ideal test of these experiences is to directly consult GSD participants for their reactions. In the current study, we report a reflexive thematic analysis of lesbian women and gay men's (N = 744) feedback immediately after completing the ASI. Four themes characterized participants' reactions to the ASI: Exclusion: Heteronormative items erase diverse genders and sexualities, Confusion: Inability to meaningfully respond due to heteronormativity, Hope: Exclusion understood as a necessary sacrifice toward progress, and Distress: Exclusion inflicts distress by reflecting societal prejudice. The themes captured the experience that many participants found heteronormative assumptions salient in the ASI and had varied reactions to the heteronormativity. Our results extend prior research that questions the generalizability of results drawn from the ASI, especially studies including GSD participants. We discuss the implications of the continued use of the ASI and encourage researchers to critically evaluate underlying theories and assumptions to ensure participants can engage with measures as intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Biopolitics of the closet" by Javier Sáez del Álamo addresses the experience of living in sexual dissidence in post-Franco Spain, exploring the concept of the "closet" as a device of domination of dissidence. The author invites us to reflect on the relationship between theory and experience, highlighting the importance of queer theory to understand non-normative experiences. It analyzes how the closet acts as a technology for the production of identifiable subjects within the binaries of sex, gender, and sexuality, and reflects on its ambivalence as a place of oppression and refuge. [Extracted from the article]

The significance of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood's bond in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility has been well acknowledged by critics. In the midst of lackluster suitors, malicious relations, and brazen gossips, Elinor and Marianne's relationship seems the only one that really matters in the end. Yet despite the centrality of Elinor and Marianne's intimacy, the novel concludes with their respective marriages to Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon. Turning our attention toward the phenomenology of hands and touch in Sense and Sensibility, however, changes the way we approach narrative by undermining the teleology of the marriage plot. In contrast to the hollow acts and mediating objects of affection offered by potential suitors, Willoughby and Edward Ferrars, Elinor and Marianne's handholding constitutes deeply affective and unmediated moments of physical contact that attest to the primacy of touch underlying the most passionate attachments. In this light, the concluding marriages do not recant the rest of the novel but rather serve a strategic choice motivated by what these marriages make possible. Far from enforcing heterosexual closure, Elinor and Marianne's marriages fulfill a different agenda: preserving the sisters' lasting haptic contact with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper seeks to analyze the queer aspects that are present and at times coded in "San Junipero," an episode of Black Mirror, through the lens of queer theory. The episode is subversive in the sense that it imagines a somewhat optimistic future for queer individuals, where even though its principal characters die at the end, they are given an alternate afterlife within the simulated reality of San Junipero. The present paper looks at some of the recent scholarships on queer television and attempts to situate "San Junipero" as a queer televisual representation within that framework, in order to enquire whether or not the episode subverts conventional narratives that support heteronormative politics. By drawing upon Gilad Padva's theorization of queer nostalgia, the paper examines how the episode queers the concept of nostalgia by reimagining the 1980s as a time when same-sex couples could get married. It also attempts to read Yorkie's closeted lesbianism with Adrienne Rich's concept of "compulsory heterosexuality". The article further looks at how the episode offers a moderately alternative vision to the "Bury your gays" trope. Finally, the paper presents another reading of the episode where queer union is possible only in realms distinct from everyday reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies two strands of thinking about sexuality and identity within queer theory: culturalist and naturalist. First, the article critically assesses culturalist queer theory penned by Judith Butler and Lee Edelman by showing that their theories, even when acutely aware of the traps of exclusionary identity politics, remain indebted to thinking on the basis of exclusion and separation by positing a rigid identity and the untouchability of the 'human', of the 'cultural'. The article proceeds by taking acts of sex as objects of analysis and, with the help of Leo Bersani, elaborates how naturalistic thinking might help us break with the double edict of both culturalist thought and contemporary identity politics, i.e. sociocentrism and the injunction to the untouchability and unbespeakability of the singular ('human', 'cultural', 'queer', 'gay', 'lesbian', 'trans', 'black', etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a wider project investigating the theory and practice of song translation and performance. It derives – specifically – from my own desire to attempt to translate Ne me quitte pas into English. (See: Appendix.) It is designed as an investigation into the tenacious misconception that certain English-language versions of Brel's songs are translations thereof. Using Peter Low's typology, many of these versions can more accurately be described as adaptations or as replacement texts. One objective of this comparative study is to draw attention to the need – in theory – to distinguish between translation and adaptation. This work also calls for more precision in attributing authorship to the lyrics or texts sung by different performers. Examination of eight English-language versions of Ne me quitte pas – an exceptional corpus made up of texts sung by Rod McKuen, Scott Walker, Marc Almond (×2), Momus, Arnold Johnston, Des de Moor and The Black Veils – seeks to illustrate and discuss the history of approaches to rendering this song in English. That is one sense in which this article aims to put the record straight. This aim might also hint at the idea of respecting (high) 'fidelity' to the original. However, whether translation, adaptation or replacement text, any Target Text – even if assessed by criteria provided by Song Translation Theory – can only ever be interpreted subjectively. Thus, imagining a single way of putting a record straight is futile. Comparison of versions of Ne me quitte pas can, however, illustrate how different strategies and priorities can 'succeed' differently. Understanding the potential for 'queering' Ne me quitte pas was a by-product of research and close reading of the texts themselves. As this appears to pertain significantly in a handful of versions in the Anglophone world – but not, seemingly, in Turkish versions – this article seeks also to open up the 'queering' (or not) of Brel, in particular, as an avenue of future inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article reports on findings from interviews with ICT-based content creators whose work focuses on documenting and curating queer history and culture. The research specifically examines how as amateur historians, the participant's embodied knowledge plays a central role in how they engage with discourse about queer historical figures, methods of queer historiography and community accountability. Design/methodology/approach: The research deploys a queer constructivist framework to qualitatively gather and analyzes the semi-structured interviews of 31 North American content creators who curate digital project related to queer history and culture. The interviews were gathered between August 2022 and August 2023. Findings: The research highlights how the subjectivity of queer embodiment aids, rather than hinders, participants' ability to collaborate with LGBTQIA+ communities while also addressing more significant ethical questions around intersectionality and inclusive historiographic work. Research limitations/implications: The content creators' own positionality and commitments to community accountability and queer inclusivity fostered richer stories and historical documentation, while also helping make visible queer identity as affirming and valuable within queer culture. Additionally, practical implications include highlighting the value of ICT-based content within the distribution of educational and informational resources related to queer history. Originality/value: This research offers an underexamined intersection of historiography and queer embodiment. While extensive scholarship on institutional and community-based historiography work exist the content creators interviewed within this study exist within the space of both, often using a combination of embodied knowledge and traditional curatorial work to translate between such spaces, inviting, in turn, new ways of thinking about queer archival knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multi-site qualitative research study utilizes a queer theoretical framework to analyze norms and normativity in organizational diversity work. The findings suggest that diversity work contributes to an ontological bifurcation of the individual and organization that foregrounds the individual and casts the organization to the background as an accessory to personal development. To understand how this ontological bifurcation emerges, the analysis traces three metaphors as focal points of norm inquiry related to diversity work – journey, container, and table – and considers them alongside the practices of training, data collection, and positional leadership. The persistent bifurcation of organization and individual helps to reinstate the very inequities that diversity work seeks to address, suggesting to both scholars and practitioners the need for a more durable disruption of the status quo in diversity work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem: The career development and professional growth of LGBTQ+ faculty members in higher education is an under researched topic in the field of human resource development (HRD); particularly as it relates to ways that exclusionary diversity policies and practices can hinder well-being and perpetuate marginalization of this group. While current diversity policies and practices in higher education acknowledge and address race and ethnicity, gender identity and sexuality have tended to receive far less attention. This issue is particularly problematic within the HRD career development paradigm. The reinforcement of cisheteronormativity leads to feelings of marginalization and exclusion among LGBTQ+ faculty members, highlighting systemic barriers that hinder their professional growth. Solution: The purpose of this study was to explore six LGBTQ+ faculty members' perceptions of diversity policies and practices at their respective institutions, investigating how the language and implementation contributes to a sense of marginalization and exclusion. The role of critical human resource development (CHRD) in challenging the social injustices emanating from exclusionary diversity policies and practices are discussed. Implications for positive career development outcomes from implementing and enforcing inclusive diversity policies and practices are highlighted. Stakeholders: The stakeholders are higher education institutions (HEIs), human resource development (HRD) practitioners who may work with them, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoints of interestSanism is an oppressive system which discriminates against people who are labelled or identify as Mad. This article offers tools to describe the structure, operating modes and dynamics of sanism. It thereby refers to the concept of white fragility. I observe sanism on three levels: The structural frame, aspects of individual interactions and issues of intrapersonal processes. Sane fragility occurs on each level. It manifests in the fragile state of sanity as a whole, the lack of stamina or strength a lot of sane people display when confronted with Mad people and in madphobia - the fear of becoming Mad oneself and therefore othering Mad people. I conclude that sanism is an overlooked type of oppression with multilayered dynamics and intersections with fatal consequences. I am a Mad, Queer person and this article contains Mad storytelling along with insights gathered from Black feminism, Queer Theory and Mad Studies.Sane Fragility I am a person with mental health problems and besides living with those issues, I also have to struggle because of discrimination against me as a Mad person.This discrimination is called sanism and I want to observe it, in order to understand it, so we can be able to fight it.For this purpose, I lean into different theories to define the term ‘sane fragility’.Sane fragility means, that people who do not struggle with mental health issues are often overwhelmed and not able to cope, if other people are in crisis, while Mad people developed a strenght to deal with it.This sort of stress leads to sane people avoiding and discriminating Mad people, because they are too fragile to bear with us.I am a person with mental health problems and besides living with those issues, I also have to struggle because of discrimination against me as a Mad person.This discrimination is called sanism and I want to observe it, in order to understand it, so we can be able to fight it.For this purpose, I lean into different theories to define the term ‘sane fragility’.Sane fragility means, that people who do not struggle with mental health issues are often overwhelmed and not able to cope, if other people are in crisis, while Mad people developed a strenght to deal with it.This sort of stress leads to sane people avoiding and discriminating Mad people, because they are too fragile to bear with us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractPhenomenon. The language of medicine (i.e., biomedical discourse) represents queerness as pathological, yet it is this same discourse medical education researchers use to resist that narrative. To be truly inclusive, we must examine and disrupt the biomedical discourse we use. The purpose of this study is to disrupt oppressive biomedical discourses by examining the language and structures medical educators use in their publications about queerness in relation to physicians and physician trainees. Approach. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ERIC in October 2021 and again in June 2023 using a combination of controlled vocabulary (select terms designated by a database to enhance and reduce ambiguity in search) and keywords to identify articles related to sexuality, gender, identity, diversity and medical professionals. Searches were limited to articles published from 2013 to the present to align with the passage of The Respect for Marriage Act. Articles were included if they focused on the experiences and paths of physicians and physician trainees identifying with or embodying queerness, were authored by individuals based in the United States, and presented empirical studies. We excluded articles only discussing attitudes of cisgender heterosexual individuals about queerness. Two authors independently screened all articles for inclusion. We then used narrative techniques to “re-story” included articles into summaries, which we analyzed with four guiding questions, using queer theory as a sensitizing concept. Finally, we sought recurrent patterns in these summaries. Findings. We identified 2206 articles of which 23 were included. We found that biomedical discourse often: characterized individuals associated with queerness as a single homogenous group rather than as individuals with a breadth of identities and experiences; implied queer vulnerability without naming–and making responsible–the causes or agents of this vulnerability; and relied minimally on actual intervention, instead speculating on potential changes without attempting to enact them. Reflections. Authors each reflect on these findings from their positionalities, discussing: disrupting essentializing categories like “LGBT”; addressing harm through allyship around queerness; editorial responsibility to disrupt structures supporting oppressive biomedical discourse; the importance of program evaluation and interventions; and shifting the focus of medical education research toward queerness using QuantCrit theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorises the concept of sane-heteroprofessionalism as a regulatory mechanism operating at the intersections of sanism, cis-heteronormativity, and other structural oppressions within pre-service post-secondary education programmes. Building upon existing discussions of heteroprofessionalism, we examine how sane-heteroprofessionalism functions to govern m/Mad, queer, and trans knowledge and subjectivities within these programmes, positioning professionalism as a tool of social control. We advocate for future critical analyses of sane-heteroprofessionalism to explore how notions of professional competency and regulation systematically marginalise queer, m/Mad, and trans perspectives among faculty, students, and instructors in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the experiences of boys and young men grappling with anxiety surrounding potential ‘homosexual’ orientation, particularly within the context of societal expectations of normative heterosexuality. Using data from queries submitted to a Finnish sexual counselling service between 2017 and 2019, we highlight a dissonance between societal equality initiatives and the lived experiences of boys and young men in Finland. Drawing on queer theory and social norms critique, we analyse the constraints that limit the exploration of sexuality and self-identification among young Finnish men. Our findings underscore the pervasive impact of enduring societal norms on young men’s ability to express their sexuality openly and authentically. We advocate for strategies to promote a more supportive environment for young persons to navigate their sexual identities and advocate for the well-being of young people, alongside considerations for professionals working in youth support roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham's 5‐decade‐long personal and professional relationship has always been subject to speculation. This paper considers the historiography of this important and enigmatic relationship from 1920s Vienna to today. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology, which theorises sexual orientation and whiteness in spatial terms, I illustrate how the relationship was seen as deviating from the ‘straight lines’ of mid‐20th century heteronormative society. I extend this queer phenomenological approach to think about cultural orientations to the relationship through an examination of its depiction in biographies published in the 1980s, the collections at the Freud Museums in London and Vienna, and a fictionalised account of Anna Freud's life published in 2014. Extending Ahmed's queer phenomenological vocabulary, I identify examples of ‘straightening up’, ‘straightening devices’ and ‘straightening up by queering’. The possibility of finding ‘queer angles’ in Anna Freud's early clinical writings, in contrast to the normative tendencies of her later writing on ego psychology, is explored as a counterbalance to discussions about non‐normative sexuality and gender in psychotherapy which typically position these as something new. The relevance for clinical practice today is considered through the lens of an ethical imperative to find space for queer angles in the history of psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss reproductive justice in the context of Finland, a Nordic welfare state often considered as having achieved exceptionally high ethical standards in reproductive health and overall justice. Every now and then, however, this reproduction is interrupted by ghosts in the machine: the problems, past and present, of marginalised, racialised, and/or otherwise non-normative people whose presences provoke specific Finnish hauntings, seething presences of reproductive injustice that suggest something is to be done. Instead of offering data analysis, this article aims to envision transformative reproductive justice futures through processual, collaborative theory development. This study uses an intersectional lens to understand how interlocking systems of oppression shape our lived experiences through an interdisciplinary, ethical analysis that suggests that what is required to resolve such hauntings is moral vigilance and care for a consistent reproductive justice orientation in global solidarity. Specifically in Finland, it requires the willingness to disavow the imperative to protect Finnish whiteness and active and meaningful solidarity across differences. Building on Black feminist and queer thought, we urge queer white people who may be tempted to become enfolded by homonationalism to take a more encompassing view of reproductive justice for a more sustainable welfare state ethic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on Statius's Silvae has emphasized the poet's efforts to create "intimacy" with his private patrons through espousing a value system based on friendship, connoisseurship, and shared literary interests, a system opposed to the public values of political ambition and the blunt glorification of military power in imperial expansion. This essay, however, argues that we have yet to comprehend the extent to which the dynamics of empire itself inform the creation of such intimacy in the Silvae. Specifically, what Sara Ahmed has described as empire's "queering" effect on the subject's relation to objects of desire has a formative role in Statian intimacy. I focus on one of the Silvae that has been central to the formation of the current view of Statius outlined above: Silvae 4.6, on a Hercules statuette owned by Novius Vindex but previously the possession of three empire-builders, Alexander, Hannibal, and Sulla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to revitalize feminist engagement with citizenship by articulating the concept of reproductive citizenship. Drawing upon the work of feminist and queer citizenship theorists, among others, it argues that a feminist conceptualization of citizenship with reproduction at its core is a useful tool for identifying, exploring, and addressing women's ongoing exclusion from and subordination by the Western liberal intellectual and legal tradition. Citizenship, understood as a contested process around the right to have rights and to determine the scope of those rights, has long operated to exclude and oppress liberalism's others on the basis of bodily difference, reproduction, and sexuality. Focusing on abortion access and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), this article will argue that the framework of reproductive citizenship is a helpful and effective means of understanding why abortion and SRHR are so viscerally contested and is helpful for navigating the difficult conceptual and real-world terrain that limits their full realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer Aesthetics will be a new section for GLQ, and this essay explains its focus and rationale as it replaces the Moving Image Review. This essay outlines the need for queer aesthetics as an analytic as it relates to changes in liberal governance and media representation, subjectless critique, and academic discourse. In addition, it outlines a genealogy of queer aesthetics and form and questions the centrality of representation as a discourse for queer theory and studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the complex ways in which children and adolescents subvert heteronormativity in/through comics. Situated at the intersection of Comics Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies, this research engages with queer theoretical contemplations by locating it within the impetus of queer theory's inquiry into the figure of the child, more specifically, the crisis of identity as experienced by queer children. It focuses on select contemporary Indian comics by platforms like Gaysi Family and Pratham Books, published both digitally and in print between 2018 and 2022, and employs a theoretical framework drawing from Butler's conception of the heterosexual matrix and interpellation, as well as Munoz's theory of disidentification. The article comprises three sections offering four different perspectives on the mechanism of subversion: the first section explores disidentification in characters and their subversion of heteronormative norms, the second delves into disidentification at the intersection of romantic/sexual desire and gender, and the final section examines the role of these comics in reshaping the heteronormative boundaries of 'children's literature' and their role in introducing subversion to comic readers through narratives of disidentification. The article illuminates the transformative potential of comics in challenging norms, fostering resistance, and envisioning alternative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caregivers can play a key role in helping intersex children face a world in which intersex issues are often misunderstood, pathologized, and stigmatized. However, there is a dearth of literature centering intersex individuals' perspectives, experiences, and needs. In order to aid caregivers in becoming more positive socialization influences for their intersex children, we explored intersex emerging adults' recommendations for caregivers of an intersex child based on their own experiences growing up. Consultants from interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth advised on this project throughout design, recruitment, analysis, and reporting stages. Guided by a critical intersex perspective and social cognitive theory, the first author conducted interviews with 28 emerging adults (ages 18–29) who identify as intersex and/or have a variation in sex characteristics. Using thematic analysis to analyze these interviews, the coding team identified four themes of recommendations for caregivers of an intersex child based on participants' experiences growing up: (a) Make it Okay to Talk About, (b) Get Informed and Connected, (c) Center Your Child's Choices and Feelings, and (d) Disrupt Systems of Oppression. These findings suggest that caregivers in the lives of intersex children and adolescents work to break the silence around intersex topics, seek education about intersex issues, connect to resources, center the child's feelings and choices, and disrupt systems of oppression that harm intersex individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes additional critical media literacy principles regarding bodies and performance to be implemented in the media higher education classroom, based on the findings of an interpretive action-research based study. The study took place in a media literacy classroom taught at a northeastern university. The goal was to develop methods to further decolonise the classroom and make it more equitable. Prefacing the study with theoretical perspectives of performance studies, queer theories, critical race theories, and education theories, I further used Potter's stages of media literacy development to assess student understandings of media literacy concepts. I further examined student's understanding of bodies and performance as the focus of decentring normative perspectives was consistent throughout the course. With the use of monster films, I explored how unconventional narratives could be used to decentre norms of whiteness and heteronormativity in classroom conversations. Results concluded that using monster films in the classroom did aid students in participating in conversations that decentred heteronormativity and whiteness, and in doing so created a more inclusive environment where students felt comfortable and willing to engage in critical conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forwards critical inquiry as a tool for hope against authoritarian movements in American public higher education. We utilize a speculative case study approach to interrogate the present moment, with its rising tide of authoritarian fascism in the United States and its manifestations in higher education. Rather than viewing this case (and its analogue) as solvable, we orient to it as a predicament. After introducing the problem of authoritarianism in higher education and presenting a speculative case rendering of it, we shift to explore three critical theories: queer theory, futures studies, and speculative feminisms. We use each of these theories to reorient the predicament the case study presents. To read the case with these theories enacts critical anticipatory practices, offering new questions by which to teach and inquire with critical theory in our present fascistic moment. Such enactments spark hope for imagining participatory democratic futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream media portrayed monkeypox as a sexually transmitted disease through government guidance and increased a sense of hypersexualization and stigma among gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM). The purpose of this study is to understand how the US mainstream media perpetuated stigma toward gay and bisexual men (MSM) in its coverage of monkeypox in 2022. This article, therefore, contributes to the fields of queer studies and health communication. Using discourse analysis, we found three discourses including: Global disparities, LGBTQ Behavior and Stigma, and Racialized Discussion of Health Disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay theorizes the concept of curiosity from a queer perspective. Examining the intersections between philosophical understandings of curiosity as a passion for knowledge and more everyday understandings of it as a euphemism for incipient homoerotic desire, it argues that queer curiosity emerges at the point where nonnormative sexual and gender practices meet and complicate particular forms of knowledge about the self. To support this line of argument, the article first examines the intellectual history of curiosity, as curiosity has, in different historical moments, been both celebrated as an epistemic virtue and denigrated as an antisocial vice. After examining this history, it analyzes the figure of the queerly curious subject in several gay short stories from the Nifty archive (an online collection of self-published queer erotica founded in 1992) and the Wachowski sisters' 1996 lesbian (and arguably trans) neo-noir film, Bound. Ultimately, the essay suggests that curiosity's characteristic openness—its appetite for novelty and experimentation, its refusal to be contained by existing categories of knowledge about gender and sexuality—makes it a useful tool for thinking through the limitations of modern queer identity and the homonormalizing tendencies of gay and lesbian identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the author's argument on queer studies' antipathy toward habit as the field's critical habit as claimed in the essay, thoughts on Brilmyer's insistence that the field's critical rigidity arises from its allegiance to the performativity thesis, and views on the metadiscourse of queer theory.

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the author's agreement with the conclusion reached by Brilmyer in her essay, his discussion of crystal habit as an alternative framework for understanding the persistence of people's attachments proposed by Brilmyer, and thoughts on Brilmyer's critique of queer studies and its characterization of voluntarism.

The author presents a rejoinder to the critiques of her essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the basic aims of queer theory, the author's thoughts on the suggestion that she would do well to treat queer theory less as a set of theoretical claims through metaphor and more as a historical object, and her views on the import of acknowledging queer theory's historical roots in feminism as stressed by a responder.

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the author's thoughts on the metaphors used by Brilmyer that she argued have undergirded and limited queer theory, his reference to Leslie Feinberg's novel "Stone Butch Blues," and the connection of Brilmyer's habit as rigidity to the crystal that appeared in a sentence of Félix Ravaisson's "Of Habit."

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include critic Walter Pater's views about the formation of habit in reference to Tom Stoppard's play about poet A. E. Housman "The Invention of Love," the author's views on the term straight pride, her argument on Brilmyer's queer theory, and her experience with various LGBTQ community spaces and fluidity.

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include the author's reflexive thoughts on the training method of kata or karate in Japan, her argument on the prismatic perspective on habit adopted by Brilmyer referencing the characters of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 musical "My Fair Lady," and her views on the queerness of the work.

The author presents a critical response to S. Pearl Brilmyer's essay "Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis" published in the Summer 2024 issue. Topics include comments on Brilmyer's account of underlying metaphysics of queer theory, the author's view on dual-aspect metaphysics offered by Judith Butler in her works "Gender Trouble" and "Bodies That Matter" and other works that explore what metaphysics might offer queer theory such as that of Jasbir Puar and Mel Chen.

Recent work on Statius's Silvae has emphasized the poet's efforts to create "intimacy" with his private patrons through espousing a value system based on friendship, connoisseurship, and shared literary interests, a system opposed to the public values of political ambition and the blunt glorification of military power in imperial expansion. This essay, however, argues that we have yet to comprehend the extent to which the dynamics of empire itself inform the creation of such intimacy in the Silvae. Specifically, what Sara Ahmed has described as empire's "queering" effect on the subject's relation to objects of desire has a formative role in Statian intimacy. I focus on one of the Silvae that has been central to the formation of the current view of Statius outlined above: Silvae 4.6, on a Hercules statuette owned by Novius Vindex but previously the possession of three empire-builders, Alexander, Hannibal, and Sulla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The JW Anderson patchwork cardigan from the spring/summer 2020 menswear collection has become an iconic fashion item during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worn by Harry Styles, the cardigan inspired a worldwide TikTok trend of crafting and DIY-ing a replica at home with over 90 million views to date. In response, JW Anderson published the pattern online and the V&A museum acquired the knitwear for its permanent collection. One year later, Olympic gold medallist Tom Daley was pictured knitting in the stands at the 2020 Olympic games – a craft he had picked up during the lockdowns. Both instances are challenging the notion of knitting and needlework as a feminine craft. In the past, men who embroidered, knitted or sewed their clothes were designated as infantile, effeminate and deviant from the hetero masculine norm. In today's post-pandemic climate, these associations are being challenged. Taking the cardigan and the resurgence of needlework as a case study, this article investigates the ways the COVID-19 pandemic influenced contemporary fashion consumption and re-stitched the meaning of male knitting. Focusing on the transformative aspects of slow fashion and gender fluidity in contemporary society, this article draws on a theoretical framework deriving from queer theory and sustainable fashion. Coined by Kate Fletcher, slow fashion encompasses a recalibration towards a focus on high-quality items over quantity and a slower production that does not exploit natural and human resources. Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity exposes gender as a social construct produced and maintained by a stylized repetition of acts, such as commonplace speech or nonverbal communication. Analysing the resurgence of male needlework through this critical lens, this article argues that it is the result of seismographic shifts within the contemporary fashion and popular culture that have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Disrupting the fashion industry profoundly on a global scale, this article discusses how the pandemic can be seen as a catalyst for fashion in renegotiating masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article investigates how and why the cultural script of inequality persists for queer identities despite major legal advancements such as marriage, anti-discrimination, and employment protections. By regarding LGBTQ legal advancements as part of the American settler colonial project, Iconclude that such victories are not liberatory or empowering but are attempts at colonizing queer identities. American settler colonialism's structural promotion of a normative sexuality illustrates how our settler colonialist legacy is not just a race project (as settler colonialism is most widely studied) but also a race -gender - sexuality project. Even in apparent strokes of progress, American settler colonialism's eliminationist motives continually privilege White heteropatriarchal structures that dominate nonheteronormative sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how undergraduate students enrolled in a postsecondary course centering LGBTQ+ young adult literature came to discursively construct notions of queer youth. Braiding postdevelopmental and poststructural theories of childhood with queer theory, we interrogated how what we name as the (il)logics of adolescence shaped who and what queer youth, as a construct, was and could be for participants. Reading across classroom artifacts and student talk about texts, our findings highlight the shifting and multiple (il)logics offered by students as they attempted to unsettle understandings of queer youth in conjunction with course novels. In particular, we examine how two constitutive theories—homonormativity and chrononormativity—generated both contingent and contradictory moments wherein the subject of the queer child was both regulated and liberated by participants. Offering implications that expand understandings in both the reading and teaching of queer young adult literature, the study closes by discussing this particularly contentious moment, noting possibilities in how LGBTQ+ adolescents can and cannot be rendered and understood through stories of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDrawing on in-depth interviews with 17 participants, this study explores the experiences of Chinese queer university students in managing their queer identity on campus. A range of strategies is outlined, including passing, covering, being implicitly out, and being explicitly out. This study also presents participants’ expectations regarding institutional support, as well as their ambivalence toward it. While participants expressed various expectations of university support, they simultaneously considered institutional support difficult or impossible due to the campus climate and broader political context. Informed by queer theory and the concept of heteronormativity, this paper engages in a queer critique of Chinese higher education, examining the manifestations of heteronormativity at both institutional and interpersonal levels. Situated within the context of Xi Jinping’s presidency, which has reinforced political control over higher education in China, this study examines the impact of intensified authoritarianism on the campus experiences of queer university students. In this challenging environment, the study highlights a unique facet of contemporary China, providing empirical insights into the power dynamics among queer individuals, educational institutions, and the party-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nLAY SUMMARYIn this essay, we argue that the 7-eyed model of clinical supervision (as well as most models in psychotherapy) are in need of “queering.” What we mean by “queering” is to make the model adaptable to the wider work with gender, sex, sexuality, erotic, and relationship diversities (GSERD) in clinical supervision. It is applicable to supervisors and/or supervisees and the clients who identify outside the societal heteronormative, mono-normative, and cisgenderist norms. Psychotherapy and psychology, and by extension, clinical supervision, have been criticised for being white, middle-class, heteronormative, and euro-centric. This article will provide a framework and guidance for clinical supervisors on how to adapt the 7-eyed model to diverse populations.The field of psychotherapy is generally embedded in white and heteronormative assumptions. These assumptions also apply to clinical supervision. This paper explains how we can adapt the 7-eyed model of clinical supervision to be more effective for clients and supervisees who are outside of the societal norms and marginalised, to foster an anti-oppressive practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNaming oneself, and claiming an identity and a community, depends largely upon how people define and represent themselves, and whether that self-definition and representation is accepted by, or legible to, others who inhabit different social positions based on age, gender, sexuality, and often generation. My aim is neither to rehabilitate the lesbian past or lesbian words for identity, nor to reject the increasingly broad use of the term queer. Rather, as a Generation X lesbian, I contend that lesbian culture, identity, and community continue to have much to offer for other categories of queerness that are similarly “untidy”, contested, or less well-understood by the mainstream. Approaching lesbian history, culture, and identity as dynamic and complex broadens possibilities for who might find connection and belonging in a lesbian past and a queer future. I explore an eclectic lesbian archive with an intergenerational Canadian focus that centers lesbian identity, community, and representation. My analysis supports my assertion that lesbian and queer inheritance flow multi-directionally, across and among people of varied generations and different social locations. I further posit that far from being anachronistic, lesbian, as a term for identity and culture, and as a political project, has ongoing productive potential, vitality, and agility that exceeds generational or linear understandings due to its fundamental grounding in self-definition. (Re)circulating lesbian and queer culture, therefore, functions as intergenerational wealth, community building, and cultural memory, bridging past pleasures, knowledge, and affective attachments with present and future possibilities for living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trans composers, like other people marginalized by race, gender, or sexuality, are often caught in the trap of identity constructs, which both envoice minorities and also pigeonhole their possible range of musical expression. In this essay on US-based transgender Indigenous Mexican choral composer Mari Esabel Valverde, I let my consideration of "trans music theory" be guided by her view that writers have sensationalized trans identity, and that while she celebrates trans lives in her choral work Our Phoenix (2016), she is not attempting to create music that "sounds" transgender. With Valverde in mind, I construct an intersectional interpretive framework that calls for various kind of limits (the limits of queering, of authorial subjectivity, and of the notion of "unconscious" expression of identity) and proposes essential conditions (the centrality of the voices, bodies, and musical structures of trans composers) that create an ethical environment for a compassionate trans music theory to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proffers the author's 2018 staged production of Gloryfire in the HopKins Black Box Theatre as a case study in the staging of experimental mop water performance. Mop water performance is a creative and embodied method of critical inquiry that animates feminist and queer storytelling, poetry, and polemic on the stage. Drawing from the author's directorial and devising experience, this essay offers dirty mop water as a theoretically informed arts-based qualitative practice within queer performance studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay begins with the premise that Evelynn Hammonds's highly cited "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality" provides a reading strategy that has largely been ignored by subsequent scholarship. This work theorizes science as a Black episteme and addresses space-time as a self-reading strategy and an exemplar for how scientific analogies can illuminate analyses in Black thought. It problematizes the uptake of physical ideas without taking care to understand those physical concepts in conversation with Black scientists. The author shows how Black queer thought can and should inform the creation of intellectual links between Black scientific thinkers and Black thought outside of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The span between 1973 and 1981 marks a number of significant changes in computer history, medical history, and queer and transgender (trans) history in the United States: the development of the earliest object-oriented graphical user interfaces used in the Xerox Alto computer prototype and its commercial successor the Xerox Star; the development and publication of the third revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (or DSM-III), used by physicians for medical diagnosis, which more than doubled its number of diagnostic categories from the DSM-II; and finally, the removal of "Sexual Orientation Disturbance (Homosexuality)" from the DSM and the addition of a new diagnosis, "Gender Identity Disorder" (now "Gender Dysphoria"), in the DSM-III. This article performs a horizontal cut across time to place medical history, queer and trans history, and computer history side by side, looking closely at how changes in the visualization and datafication of medical diagnosis developed alongside the ways computers were imagined into visual, screen-based technologies that recapitulate the same racialized and gendered logics of medical surveillance and thus of the state: that seeing something is the same as understanding its nature. We must think of software history as medical history, and computer history as queer and trans history. Intimately connecting these threads of trans history, trans of color critique, medical history, and computer history is the invisibility of mediation and the normalization of power that occurs as the result of it: the mediation of the visuality of the computer's graphical user interface; the mediation of medical diagnosis as the conversion of embodied experience into so-called medical fact; and the mediation of bureaucratic documentation that reduces human life into data points, digestible and computable en masse by institutions and by computers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of the 2014 video game Dragon Age: Inquisition, this essay brings two contemporary problematics into dialogue—the neoliberal gamification of society and the logic of queer liberalism—to suggest that they converge upon a common, long-standing animus: the figure of the massified Oriental. The massified Oriental haunts Asianness, and retains East and Southwest Asia as its primary cultural referents, but the deterritorialization of Orientalism as an epistemic apparatus locates Orientalism in the realm of affect rather than geography. Thus, this paper proposes a heuristic of "actional Orientalism," which draws attention to the procedural and discursive production of agency and the consequent narrative validation of that agency, contrasting agentic players against their objectified, thingified, and massified gameworlds. Whereas in Tara Fickle's "ludo-Orientalism," wherein racialization is premised upon the otherness of the type of risk-taking and play, actional Orientalism draws on whether the racialized figure is capable of agency at all, finding within the Oriental the complete absence of the bounded, liberal, choosing subject. Dragon Age: Inquisition deploys actional Orientalism on full display, offering liberal transgender representation contingent upon acceptance of an individualist affect, requiring the full abjection of massified, Orientalized, queer others to enable this representation to survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the intersection between group analysis, feminism, and queer understandings of sexuality, aiming to initiate a dialogue and generate new insights in these fields. I examine key concepts from group analysis, such as the 'group matrix' and the 'social unconscious', to explore how therapeutic groups can generate openness to others and differences. The article presents group analysis as a historically grounded psychosocial theory capable of bridging gaps between discourses to generate new ways of understanding social identities. The term 'figuration' borrowed from feminist and group analytic theory serves as a framework to synthesise conflicting perspectives, with the analytic group serving as a dynamic space of creative tension. By exploring this shared term, previously unconnected subjects can find potential common ground. Elizabeth Freeman's exploration of queer temporalities and spaces is then considered, followed by an examination of symmetric and asymmetric logic by psychoanalyst Ignatio Matte Blanco. These concepts shed light on conscious and unconscious modes of thought. By juxtaposing the histories of figuration alongside symmetric and asymmetric logic, the article elucidates the consequences for group analysis in understanding sexuality and gender. The group analytic concept of the location of disturbance and the processes involving logic and counter-logic within the analytic group matrix are instrumental in delineating these consequences. By bridging the gaps between fields and encouraging creative engagement, the article contributes to expanding the understanding of sexuality and gender within the context of group analytic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role of consolation in a biopolitical and queer reading of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). As a critique of contemporary Indian politics, Hindu nationalism, casteism, and economic neoliberalism, the novel promises to bring hope to those marginalized and dehumanized in "New India" — the "Unconsoled". It is argued that Ministry 's liberatory potential is best realized when approached from a combined perspective of biopolitical liminality, that of Agambenian homo sacer and Butlerian precarity, as well as the reformative and reparative practices of queer theory. When viewed through queer readings of failure and non-imperative happiness, the alternative world of Jannat Guest House becomes a queer counterpublic, whereas its inhabitants become agents of subversion, whose mere existence defies the imperative of religious, caste, cisheteronormative and capitalist hegemonies endorsed by the state. The article positively assesses the novel's ability to bring consolation. However, it indicates that there are also limitations to that and offers suggestions as to how to reaffirm the reformatory potential of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My comment addresses a theme in several of the papers in this collection that gestures to the limits of queer theory, as a body of scholarship developed mainly from within Euro-American feminist frameworks. I will ask if perhaps groundedness in place and historical specificity might suggest registers of 'queerness' that exceed the potentials of queer theory. Particularly considering precarity - a sense of embodied vulnerability to each other - this piece will examine the potentials of frameworks that are rooted in place-based ideas about reciprocity, kinship, and intimacy as integral to understanding queer precarities. Indeed, such a view might suggest that what is 'queer' is often framed through a normatively modern and often colonial rendering of binary gender, and sexuality as fixed in sexual identity. It will ask what an archive of queer precarity might look like, and what geographies it might suggest if we decentred queer theory. Simultaneously, the essay will ask how forms of reciprocity, indebtedness, kinship, and homemaking that exceed the limits of coloniality might open up registers for queerness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While queer and trans perspectives and theories are significant themes in most areas of critical human geography today, the same cannot be said of economic geography. This paper argues for the importance of theorising the relations between non‐normative sexualities and gender identities in economic geography. This argument builds on research in feminist economic geography and beyond about the centrality of cisheterosexuality to the economy and structures of capitalism. I show how queer and trans geography and feminist economic geography have already contributed to research about the relations between non‐normative sexualities and gender identities and the economy, then outline three queer economic geographies as examples of how economic geography might further engage with sexuality beyond cisheterosexuality: (1) sexual hegemony; (2) queer and trans work; and (3) homocapitalism. Together with existing research on the economy in queer and trans geography, these queer economic geographies—each touching on concepts central to economic geography—contribute further to our understandings of how non‐normative sexualities and gender identities can be theorised in economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the mise en espace of an anti‐drama‐liturgy written for the Conference "Salute e Benessere delle Persone Transgender e Gender Diverse: Buone Prassi e Nuove Prospettive [Wellbeing of Transgender and Gender Diverse People: Good Practices and New Perspectives]". By providing an example of conferencing differently, the paper depicts an elliptical (round)table that questions normative assumptions on gender and sexuality and established practices of academic knowledge production and dissemination. It does so, along the edge of anti‐binarism, in three ways. Firstly, there is the choice of an elliptical (round)table that is polycentric: it broadens the point of view from the margins. Secondly, our writing sought to favor embodied questioning and dialog over the structured speech report typical of conferences, and the third way is inherent to the genre of theatrical writing related to the mise en espace format, which enables us to ask questions about the relationship between our bodies, broader materiality, and the dominant norms of academic and gendered practices. The intertwining of these elements makes our queering the AcademicConferenceMachine, which is an invitation to recognize the political performativity and imaginative possibilities of any (academic) encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]