Search

Trans college athletes are subjected to inconsistent and inequitable participation regulations. We adopted feminist and queer theoretical lenses to examine the gender equity policies of eight sport governing bodies in attempts to further understand the systems and structures within which trans college athletes must participate and comply. Analysis indicated predominance of entrenched essentialist feminism and limited performative postmodern/queer perspectives, leaving trans college athletes vulnerable to discriminatory/exclusionary policies and practices. To conclude, we offer three recommendations to promote better trans athlete inclusion across college sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 several young male asylum seekers, migration to Europe was not only a necessity but also envisioned as a journey of social becoming – a means to claim maturity and assert social status. However, fulfilling these aspirations often depended on being formally categorized as minors – a classification that protected them from deportation and granted access to essential resources. Forever 17 examines how these young men navigate age classifications, often strategically claiming an age that aligns with their needs. This process queers temporalities of ageing and state-centred binary classifications, disrupting their normative associations with vulnerability. By closely analysing these practices and their queering of state-centred epistemologies, the book offers insights into the workings of state power – how it imposes its categories as self-evident truths – and the unintended, long-term consequences these practices often have for migrants’ lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the jurisprudential concepts of the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR): how legal norms and aesthetics are intrinsic to the show’s structure, and how in turn RPDR queers, or ‘drags up’, legal language, symbols and concepts. We consider the jurisprudence of RPDR across three frames: (1) the structuring of its legal system through the framework of the reality competition, its rules, and the role of RuPaul as judge, jury and executioner; (2) legal and moral principles: how values including liberty and equality are represented in RPDR; (3) RPDR’s court system: how law is performed, and its aesthetics and culture parodied and reproduced. Through RPDR, concepts of legality are queered, manipulated and reproduced in ways that both reinforce and reproduce those legal concepts and aesthetics. We argue however that RPDR is unable to realize its potential for radically queer, transformative, counter-normative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on data from a case study into a local women’s Australian Rules football team, investigating how players experienced the particularities of the sportscape in which they played. Emerging from the dataset was an overwhelming emphasis on discourses of belonging and inclusion, with players expounding on the nuances of this space as somewhere that their variously gendered bodies, sizes, abilities and selves were not just accommodated, but normalised. Reflecting various axes by which inclusion was experienced, players highlight the enactment of an intersectional lens which enabled a sportscape in which difference was seen, accepted and responded to inclusively. Drawing on queer theory, this paper explores how normalising difference – applying a queer theoretical lens – undermined normalising regimes across various axes of difference in this local sportscape, with implications for players’ experiences and participation. It further asks what role the active cultivation of this sportscape played in impacting players’ experiences and perceptions of acceptance, inclusion and belonging, and asks whether a queer lens – a critical consciousness of and around normalising regimes of power and hegemony along various axes – might offer us ways for thinking through the cultivation of more inclusive (safer) physical education spaces. A queer theoretical lens demonstrates the ways in which normalising regimes re/produce that which becomes hegemonic within different spaces. This paper considers how we can apply the principles of normalising difference within this football sportscape to physical education (PE) spaces to explore how PE teachers might cultivate spaces which foster inclusion, belonging, participation and engagement through normalising diversity in relation to intersectional axes of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on queer orientation in Thomas Mann's novel "Tonio Kröger", analyzing its portrayal of sexual desire and identity. Topics include the novella's autobiographical elements; its reflections on societal norms and artistic morality; and the spatial metaphors that express Tonio's search for belonging. The analysis also engages with queer theory, examining how the text destabilizes conventional gender binaries and aligns with a "politics of disorientation."

Descriptive analyses of same-gender-loving (SGL) Black male characters in scripted television series are lacking. This content may expose SGL Black viewers to distinct narratives. Accordingly, I adopt queer theory and Black queer studies, specifically the visibility of sexual identities, and examined the Netflix series Designated Survivor's two SGL Black male characters, Dontae Evans and Troy Bae. Findings illustrated themes including sexual intimacy, visual representations of safe sex practices, and discussions of emotional and physical health. I argue that visibility, not to be confused with numerical representation, offers SGL Black men the lens to see their complex and layered existence on-screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with Abdellah Taïa, a Moroccan writer and filmmaker, about his artistic works and the themes of his latest novel, Le Bastion des larmes. Topics include the intersection of queer memory and Moroccan identity, the enduring impact of colonial legacies on perceptions of queerness, and resistance to Western-centric narratives of sexuality.

Drawing on a larger year-long ethnography at a public, urban, comprehensive high school in the Midwestern United States, this article describes the texts students composed in a co-taught sophomore (grade 10) humanities course combining social studies and English language arts. Bringing together sociocultural perspectives on literacy and composition with queer theorizations of time, I argue for the utility of attending not only to time's multi dimensionality but also its multi directionality. Doing so in writing instruction can help thaw binary polarization and foster more humanizing temporal and in turn ideological movements. To illustrate, I present an ethnographic case of students writing about the history of gendered clothing in 20th-century U.S. society. I examine how different temporal ideologies had consequences for students (not) reproducing antagonistic, polarized binaries with respect to oppressive values, in particular anti-LGBTQIA+ values as they intersect with class, race, and politics. Although my emphasis is how gender and sexuality intertwine with economics, race, and politics, this article suggests that attending to the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of time is a productive site for scholars and educators committed to praxes of justice in writing instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the negative affects and tension between futurism and no-future within queer theories, between futurity and utopia, and destructiveness and pessimism, as well as queer relationality in Alexis Langlois' film "De la terreur, mes soeurs!" It examines various forms of transmisogynist violence depicted in the movie, the relational work of negative affects concerning sexual liberation, use of violence and self defense, and use of camp humour to deflect social violence and stigma.

The article applies queering as a process of deviation to elaborate on the concept of unbecoming in Virginie Despentes' novel "Vernon Subutex 1." It examines the failure of the character Vernon, a cisgender straight white man, to become a normative subject as a narrative process of undoing, unbecoming, or as a form of gender disidentification, displacement and disorientation within the hereronormative mode of living, as well as an antithetical representation to socialization.

The article compares the novels "Playboy" and "Love Me Tender" by Constance Debré and "Permafrost" and "Boulder" by Eva Baltasar to show the relational aspect of queer antimaternalism and the figuration of queerness through nomadism that allows for the resignification of motherhood as kinship. It analyzes the novels' revelation of anxiety about homonormalization, the appropriation of masculine gay imaginary of nomads, and parental bonding through the alliance of queer adults and children.

AbstractTemporal constructs are central to reproduction and kinship, as epitomised by the pervasive concept of the biological clock within public imaginaries. While queer scholarship has problematised linear models of kinship and reproductive temporality, the specific temporalities associated with donor-conceived families have received less scholarly attention, despite the increasing prevalence of these family structures. In this article, we explore the question: how does donor conception reconfigure temporal logics. More specifically, we ask how does donor conception challenge (hetero)normative temporalities and kinship organisations. We examine donor conception through narratives of the embodied and intimate experiences of key stakeholders in the form of clinical staff, parents and donor-conceived adults, across case studies conducted in Denmark, Sweden and Australia. Our analysis illuminates distinct temporal perspectives: for clinic staff, donors exist in a static present; for recipient parents, the donor’s past is integrated into the present; and for donor-conceived adults, the donor is embedded within fragile futurities. We propose the concept of sideways temporalities to capture the queering of temporal logics in donor conception, characterised by non-normative scale (e.g. extensive sibling networks) and velocity (e.g. immediate matching via DNA testing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMy paper analyses Ali Smith’s innovative use of queering as a narrative strategy in Girl Meets Boy (2007) and The First Person and Other Stories (2008), focusing on her transformation of narrative structures, epistemic realities, and identity through intertextual engagement. Smith’s fiction queers temporality and narrative agency by reimagining classical and literary texts, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, John Lyly’s Gallathea, Shakespeare’s plays, and Jane Eyre. I suggest that in Girl Meets Boy, Smith reinterprets Ovid’s myth of Iphis and Ianthe to celebrate fluid and transformative identities, intertwining this with feminist activism and queer desire. By employing techniques such as prolepsis and analepsis, she destabilizes binary categories of gender and narrative form. My paper also examines The First Person and Other Stories, where Smith uses the short story form to experiment with self-reflexive and elliptical structures, disrupting traditional notions of linearity. I will examine how stories such as “third person,” “second person,” and “fidelio and bess” illustrate her capacity to reframe historical and cultural narratives, transforming them into spaces for queer textual exploration. Drawing on insights from Judith Butler, Marina Warner, and Linda Hutcheon, my analysis positions Smith’s work within a lineage of literary metamorphosis that resists static notions of identity and storytelling. Ultimately, I argue that Smith queers the boundaries of knowledge, time, and narrative itself, creating fiction that is endlessly dynamic and self-referential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research puts queer terror management theory to an initial test by drawing upon sex, gender and desire as aspects of a queer gender construct. Death acceptance was expected to inhibit the activation of gender-related stereotypes when controlled for mortality salience. To test the theory, we ran a quasi-experiment with 75 US participants in two waves. Results of Implicit Association Tests and surveys did not sufficiently support the idea of a queer gender construct, but indicated the imprecision of binary measures for gender and desire. As expected, more implicit death acceptance was associated with less gender stereotypes. However, ambivalent sexism towards women increased with explicit death acceptance. Positive death valence – as a precursor of death acceptance – reduced implicit stereotypes on sex, gender and desire. Against our expectations, no experimental mortality salience effect was found. In conclusion, death attitudes beyond acceptance or denial may better serve for intervention in gender-related stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental provocations are a common pedagogical strategy for early childhood educators and are often planned for the purpose of contributing to the wider goals of sustainability and environmental education. However, the transformative potential of the environmental provocation is compromised by its grounding in human-centric perspectives of Place. When examined through the lens of queer phenomenology, the orientations of environmental provocations are shown to privilege familiar bodies, ideas, and things. Consequently, the provocation leads to familiar outcomes and reinforces the logic that humans can somehow manipulate and control the environment. With the aim of disrupting this logic, this paper revisits empirical documentation involving young children and a creek in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia and proposes three queer interventions. The interventions demonstrate how queering the environmental provocation is necessary for noticing and attending to the inherent queerness of Place-child(ren) common worlds. The three practices of queering temporality, risking attachments, and queering language are proposed as speculative interventions for (re)imagining and (re)framing the environmental provocation in ways that (re)situate children within the common worlds they share with all kinds of queer kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical underpinnings of police and penal abolition can provide important epistemological guidance to social science researchers. A review of the conceptual frames of abolition and the social science theories underlying it provides a basis for an abolitionist epistemology that incorporates insights from queer theory, critical race theory, feminism, historical materialism, and postcolonial theory. An exposition of existing studies that conform to these theoretical frameworks shows this approach's value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the contemporary comic book's potential to generate an ecological consciousness that reflects on the many forms of heteropatriarchal oppression at the same time that it presents the reading experiences as a way of escaping them. I examine how Limeño artist Rodrigo La Hoz elaborates a queer urban ecology in his 2010 comic book Islas to critique and subvert Lima's normativity. Situating his work in the broader context of Peruvian and Latin American comics reveals it as a critical intervention about the failed attempts to humanize and normativize cities and a call to the creative possibilities of those failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we provide a snapshot of critical theories with salience for adult education to illuminate their enduring efficacy within the discipline, including critical feminism, queer theory, and race‐based critical theories. Critical theories seek to make individual change while dismantling the structures that suppress freedom and democracy, like discrimination, devaluation, and marginalization, and can be a catalyst for making substantial contributions to transforming society. Considering this, we believe structural changes should also reshape how critical theories are discussed, expanding the canon to include Black intellectualism. We conclude by providing evidence‐based tools for the adult educator's toolbox to transgress the politicized, raced, gendered, and othered environments in which adult educators work and adult learners learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of psychological assessment as it has been practiced for over a century has contributed to, reinforced, and promulgated White supremacist, cisheteronormative, and otherwise oppressive systems and structures. While maintaining the scientific rigor of research-backed tests, measures, and methods, the field needs to shift in order to be explicitly antioppressive. Queering psychological assessment—applying the tenets of queer theory and therapy to the assessment process—centers client identity, lived experience, narrative, and language in the test interpretation, integration, and conceptualization processes, with an emphasis on collaboration and an acknowledgement that much of what has been identified as psychopathology represents natural human diversity mismatched with a society that is built for those from dominant groups. This article discusses how queering psychological assessment can accomplish a shift from gatekeeping (resources, accommodations, access) to collaboration, partnering with clients to figure out how to improve their lives. Public Significance Statement: The process of psychological assessment has the potential to benefit clients, but it can also reinforce oppressive structures and gatekeep access to resources. Queering the process of psychological assessment, described in this article, has the potential to shift the process to a collaboration with clients to figure out how to improve their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay recovers Judith Butler's theory of self-narration for queer theory and narratology. The essay shows how self-narration unlocks relational capacities not entirely stifled by disciplinary power. The essay spotlights the importance of renarratability, or the capacity for an event to be renarrated, to Butler's theory. Renarration engenders recursive inconsistencies rife with queer potential. Through renarration, one can compose a scene of redress that revises the violent and otherwise life-denying contours of narratability itself. As an example, the essay turns to Danez Smith's essay, "How HIV Ruined My Sex Life. Then I Met My Match" (2021), published at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Smith renarrates a scene of redress that transformed their affective and social relations to sex as a Black, queer, nonbinary person with HIV. Through self-narration, Smith revises the nar-ratability of Black queer bonds and demonstrates how self-narration can sustain and strengthen the capacities of queer relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides an introduction to the special issue of differences titled Unaccountably Queer, which commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Judith Butler's contribution to moral philosophy, Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). Through Butler's work, the introduction theorizes queer metarelationality as a vernacular ethical practice that is vital to queer life. Reframing queer theory's debates over the antisocial thesis, the essay argues that Giving an Account of Oneself offers valuable insight for contemporary debates over critique and postcritique, queer and trans kinship, and the relationship between ethics and politics. The essays in the special issue consider Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself in relation to a range of fields, specifically queer theory, Black studies, trans studies, disability studies, postcolonial theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, life writing, and narratology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chaplains can play a unique role in providing care for trans and gender-diverse (TGD) people by addressing their spiritual needs. However, spiritual care for TGD individuals may fail to be inclusive in at least three ways: spiritual care may focus solely on religious TGD people, on a limited part of the whole range of gender identities, or on a specific route toward gender affirmation. In this article, the aim is to develop an inclusive perspective on spiritual care for TGD people. To that end, inspired by work by Susan Sontag, we examine spiritual care for TGD individuals through the philosophical lens of social imaginaries, focussing particularly on metaphors, tracing how metaphors used in care for TGD people have changed over time. We elaborate on the potential of the metaphor of "orientation in gender-expansive space," based on queer theory and literature about worldview-inclusive chaplaincy, for envisioning an inclusive approach to gender-affirming spiritual care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the process of queering public leisure spaces through the intentional use of 'pop-up' informal volleyball play. Specifically, this study employed qualitative semi-structured interviews and participant observations to interrogate the ways in which a community of queer, predominantly Asian 'volleyballers' engage in the animation of public spaces through volleyball and associated activities. The meanings behind such actions are also explored. Specific attention is paid to the role of informal volleyball gatherings during social distancing measures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ways in which volleyball is used to challenge homophobia, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, and the sharp rise in anti-Asian violence. Findings contribute to understanding the role of informal leisure and pop-up spaces in queer lives and placemaking, highlighting the particular importance of this placemaking for queer Asian individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Queer subjectivity invites discussions around gender performativity, culture, narratives of "coming out," and identity politics. Postcolonial queer subjects—like those emerging from the Philippines—require additional layers of critique attending to language, practice, and resistance. This brief reflection will explore the place of camp, rampa, and posthuman worldviews in the constitution of Filipino queer bodies. It argues that as queer narratives become global—and normalized— camp and rampa offer a place where queerness can both expand critical theology and imaginations of the human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do queer Christians navigate the tensions between faith and sexuality? This article points to the spirituality of struggle as an answer. In the context of the Philippines, a society known for its religious and moral conservatism, we define this spirituality as an ongoing process in which queer Christians aspire to discover and fulfill God's will for their lives. We explain this spirituality in the form of three questions we gathered from our interlocutors: Who am I? Whom can I love? And why me? Taken together, these questions reflect the deepest concerns they have about faith and sexuality. Recognizing the spirituality of struggle offers significant contributions to studying religion and gender in the Philippines: by recognizing queer religious identities as dynamic, negotiated acts steeped in ambivalence and by serving as an empirical counterpoint to the militant Christianity in the country. These insights are drawn from semi-structured interviews with sixty-six young adults who self-identify as non-heterosexual men. They are also from different Christian denominations in the Greater Manila Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the 20th century, the Cartesian paradigm of identity has been the object of criticism, raised by different epistemological perspectives, including post-structuralism, feminism, constructionism, and philosophy of language studies. A common aspect of these new theoretical-epistemological perspectives is the search to overcome an idealistic, immaterial, vision of the psychological subject, emphasizing the concrete character of its subjective construction, and the anchoring of the whole process in corporeality. These new trends rediscover the body as a concept within the human and social sciences, especially, inspired by Michel Foucault's work. In Psychology, although the body has recently become an object of increasing interest for different perspectives, a theoretical gap concerning its political dimension, the power forces that cross through corporeity is still observed. This article draws, then, on Queer Theory's epistemological contributions to critical psychology and the construction of such a notion of embodied subjectivity within Cultural Semiotic Psychology, considering the sociocultural processes that operate in the construction of subjects. Additionally, we seek to provide arguments to refuse the understanding that social markers such as sex, gender, and race are mere variables associated with the human, and reinforce that subjects are constitutively sexed, gendered, and racialized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of queerness within Romanian literature remains relatively marginal and is often treated as an exotic subject, thus representing a substantial opportunity for literary scholarship. Furthermore, in Romanian cultural discourse, queerness is frequently perceived as deviant, perverse, or scandalous, and conceptually aligned with the monstrous. Employing Susan Stryker’s theory of queer monstrosity, it becomes visible how queerness is often commonly interpreted and represented as a form of monstrosity. Broadly speaking, queer characters are depicted as having grotesque and unintelligible qualities, rendered into symbolic embodiments of the monstrous and as delineating the boundaries of the (un)representable. Engaging with Stuart Hall’s coding-decoding framework, this study aims to examine the dimension of gender queerness within the construction of male characters in several key texts: Remember by Mateiu I. Caragiale (1924), Ambigen by Octav Șuluțiu (1935), and Travesti by Mircea Cărtărescu (1994). I will analyse how the ambiguity of gender identity, arising from the feminization of masculinity, is encoded through representations of monstrosity, emerging in both character portrayal and narrative structure. The selected texts exemplify an enduring trend in interwar prose characterized by a dual encoding of queerness – through both explicit and fragmented representations – a trend that Mircea Cărtărescu later reinterprets as a central thematic focus. This analysis will interpret the queerness of hese characters through an exploration of the mechanisms of exoticization, racialization, animalization, and sexualisation of the feminine body, which concomitantly shape the notion of queer monstrosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on analyzing Indian writer Advaita Kala's debut novel Almost Single from two perspectives: that of the typical Indian woman who has been emancipated by feminism's achievements and that of the intersection of postfeminism and queer theory. The novel is based on the ideology of postfeminism, a theoretical framework that affords women the agency to embody both femininity and attractiveness while simultaneously embracing feminist principles. This emerging phenomenon is a novel manifestation of empowerment, tailored to the specific socio-cultural milieu of the present era. The foundations of this emerging feminism encompass principles such as autonomy, personal agency, the pursuit of sexual gratification, the influence of consumerism, the realm of fashion, the blending of diverse cultural influences, the use of humor, and the revitalized emphasis on the female physique. With its focus on themes of sexuality, female solidarity, independence, and the pursuit of romantic relationships, the novel seeks to challenge conventional gender norms by portraying a typical urban single woman and her companions. This article undertakes an examination of the extent to which the characters exercise agency in their personal lives, sexuality, actions, and decisions, while also exploring the influence of the desires of modern Indian women on the evolving concept of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For better or worse, Barbie (2023) was part of a summer blockbuster phenonemon. Much of the fanfare around the film included conersations about feminism, 'girlhood' and whether or not the film was reductive in terms of upholding an iconic yet often criticised doll. This article attempts to wade through that noise by focusing on my own experience of the film as a genderqueer feminist academic. Blending personal reflection with queer theory and feminist critique, I unpack the use of the gender binary in Barbie Land and the implications, if any, for viewers and the overall 'feminist' positioning of the film (and whether or not that matters). In particular, I focus on Jack Halberstam's concept of gender failure and what that failure looks like in the idyllic world of Barbie. Following my own feminist epistemological commitments, this article makes use of academic as well as non-academic texts, in addition to blogs and other pop culture sources. Ultimately, this article considers the role of whiteness in the acceptance of the non-normative characters in Barbie – particulalry Weird Barbie – and why it is essential for white queers to remember that their experiences are not the queer experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Danielle Abrams's performance art critically engages with late twentieth-century debates on race, queerness, and identity, positioning her as a vital figure in challenging monolithic and heteronormative structures of identity. Her early work Quadroon (1998), a live performance and four-channel video installation blending music, costume, gesture, and speech, compounds impassioned debates within the art world and beyond around the impact of multiculturalism on identity-based art, the invisibility of Jews of color and other marginalized members of the Jewish community, and the state of Black/Jewish relations in the United States following the Crown Heights riots of 1991. Abrams's pieces frequently negotiate the tensions and intersections between her Black and Jewish familial heritage and her lesbian identity through the embodiment of semi-fictional personae grounded in family lore, self-perceptions, and cultural stereotypes. This paper explores how Abrams destabilizes the readability of "authentic" identities on the surface of the body in Quadroon via her adoption of personifications of her Black grandmother, her Jewish great grandmother, her identification as a butch lesbian, and her (unsuccessful) teenage attempt at passing for Greek. Pairing video recordings of each character with interludes from an unpublished performance script, I consider the anxieties of passing expressed in the personas of Dew Drop and Janie Bell, and through the lens of Abrams's diaries, pose Butch in the Kitchen's potential as an indefinite body to queer socially imposed constructions of monolithic and essentialist identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform organizing does not unfold in a neutral realm. While interconnected communicative acts such as posts, shares, or likes constitute organizing on social media platforms, platform organizations condition how such platform organizing unfolds through content moderation. This study engages with the concept of contributorship, which is anchored in communication constitutes organization (CCO) scholarship, and theorizes content moderation as a process of authorization based on 'norms of contributorship'. Applying queer theorizing to engage with norms as a site of power vis-a-vis embodied difference, we investigate poetic speech acts as queering endeavours that interrogate norms of contributorship in the constitution of platform organizing. Drawing upon a qualitative analysis of Instagram posts that challenge content moderation related to nudity as embodied difference, the findings reveal three practices of poetic speech – playfully altering, juxtaposing wor(l)ds and satirical challenging. Such practices skilfully repoliticize the entanglement of communication, control and normativity, and lay the foundation for collectively queering norms of contributorship in platform organizing. Building upon these insights, we highlight how organizational theory and practice are always implicated in normative regimes and underscore the need for attending to the existence of organizational subjects at and beyond the margins through queering organizing writ large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joana Estrela, born in Penafiel in 1990, is a Portuguese illustrator and comics artist whose short but rich career path intersects significantly with the concerns of girlhood and the dynamics of the transnational creation and circulation of graphic narratives. In 2013, she self-published the zine, Os vestidos do Tiago, which was later re-published by the independent Luso-Brazilian publisher Sapata Press in 2018 and is now available in English with the title James's Dresses (2019). The zine is a short immersion into the fictional, though quite realistic, world of Tiago, a boy who loves wearing feminine dresses and is not scared of experimenting with them. Despite having a boy as protagonist, Os vestidos do Tiago can be looked at as Estrela's first attempt at representing girlhood, given the presence, in the publication, of crucial aesthetic references to the realm of childhood and femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Recent initiatives have highlighted the need for integrating a gender perspective into English Language teaching (ELT), particularly in Colombia where gender diversity in education lacks significant sociocultural advancement. This study investigates the perceptions of 11 queer preservice English‐language teachers (PSELTs) from a Colombian public university, using semistructured interviews to explore their views on queering ELT and their future roles as educators. The findings emphasise the importance and challenges of adopting a queer perspective in ELT, essential for creating inclusive environments that respect (queer) students' identities. Moreover, the experiences of these PSELTs during their training have empowered and motivated them as future educators to advocate for societal transformation by promoting awareness of gender diversity in Colombian EFL classrooms. This study supports critical educational reforms that recognise and integrate diverse identities, enriching teaching practices and fostering inclusive learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to critically reflect upon queer experiences in the academic workplace, answering how the intersectionality of a gay and Black accounting lecturer encounters the presence of his body in a capitalist workplace. Drawing on collective biography methodology, we undertook a two‐and‐a‐half‐year engagement, working by critically and collectively (de)constructing a narrative of how an accounting lecturer has borne his gay and Black body into a violent academic workplace. The collective biography recites memory fragments from Miguel, focusing on the paradox of queer bodies (in)visibility and described how a capitalist workplace embedded in a heteronormative framework crafted Miguel's identity, oriented his body, and by making queer bodies vulnerable shaped Miguel's violent experience, which escalated from ethical forms of violence to symbolic and fear of experiencing physical violence, both from his academic peers and students of the university. Drawing on queer theory(ies), Judith Butler's and Lélia Gonzalez's works, this paper contributes to making a unique contribution to the literature on workplace, race, and sexuality from the subaltern and underrepresented Brazilian perspective. It also contributes to the diversity accounting literature, adding to the limited body of empirical work on diverse sexualities and their experiences in accounting academia. In doing so, we question the status quo, and the norms of accounting academia from Miguel's experiences, aiming to bring more diverse lived experience to be reflected upon, advancing the queer political project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs a queer theoretical framework to explore three student teachers’ interpretations and perceptions of two LGBT+ picture books, including their considerations on integrating these texts into classroom pedagogy. The participants are nearing completion of their initial teacher training at a university in the northern part of England. The picture books that are the focus of the study were purposefully selected owing to their exploration of varied queer themes. Discussion is anchored in metaphor of picture books functioning as either “window” or “mirror,” depending on children’s individual experiences or identities, therefore necessitating acknowledgment of children’s potential future queerness. Through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, the study uncovers multifaceted perspectives. Participants respond positively to both texts and express interest in incorporating these into their teaching practices. However, they additionally demonstrate awareness of potential limitations and complexities, including negative reactions from stakeholders and promoting heteronormativity. Uncertainty is expressed around navigating these issues within existing curriculum and policy frameworks. The study concludes by advocating for enhanced exploration of these difficulties in initial teacher training and early career stages, if aiming to adequately support these emerging educators in effectively promoting LGBT+ inclusivity in their future classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes two strikingly different documentaries by Michael Liu which were included in the “Northeast China Yao-at-work Photography Exhibition” (dongbei yao zhanjie richang in Taipei 2017) on the lives of cross-dressed and transgender (male-to-female) sex workers in Dongbei and the way they discuss their futures and “yao” or “trans” identities differently according to the different modes of documentary employed. In Magic (nü yao er, 2014) we see their practices of everyday life, improvised queer forms of kinship and survival, their dark sense of humor and their business ambitions, whereas in Trans to a New Life (2016) they address their hardships and dreams of the future to the compassionate “NGO gaze” that demands testimonial about being a victim of discrimination (from family members, hospitals, and in employment). Understanding these rhetorical differences helps to intervene in a major debate in contemporary China over the role of NGOs, especially regarding transgender identity, sex work, HIV, and queer forms of kinship. I also connect these recent documentaries to films about queer sex workers in Beijing by Cui Zi’en [2005; 2012. Queer China, “Comrade” China. Brooklyn, NY: dGenerate Films], debates over the testimonial and ethnographic format of an influential U.S. documentary about transgender women of color and sex workers, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990), and current debates in China and the U.S. over trans cultural production, respectability politics, and the politics of visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological and social systems are in poly-crisis, whose present is mediated not only materially but also affectively. This article introduces the concept of speak-write – a form of writing to be performed for an audience – to address affective states that belong to processes of transformation but are silenced in organisational structures and professional practices, including academia. To contribute meaningfully to a sustainability transformation, this article argues, scholars have to include their conditions of work and what kind of responses they enable or disable. Reflecting on an experience with performing speak-write, this article shows how speak-write can perform an intimate public that might enable finding out what is collective and conventional in the affective atmospheres that circulate and organise our crisis present. Queering academic conventions, speak-write is part of an affective politics in the margins of conventional academic practices that gesture towards how to be home in a world yet-to-come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the under-examined short fiction of Joel Lane, which is largely set in the postindustrial landscapes of the English Midlands and the Black County. In so doing, it links Lane's employment of the weird, the eerie, and the numinous to processes of mourning and melancholia in the face of the unacceptable and unacknowledgeable – by society at large – losses of the Anthropocene, of industrial decline, and of the HIV AIDS crisis. It argues that Lane's queering of mourning and melancholia offers modes of resistance to the recuperation of radical losses and the transformation of storied place into homogenous space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the intersection of gender nonconformity and queer identity, specifically focusing on the experiences and expressions of queer femmes. It investigates the nuances of femme identity within the broader context of queer theory, challenging traditional understandings of gender norms and the complexities of feeling both queer and femme.

In this paper, the author considers how binary and categorical models of identity function as a means of maintaining hegemonic normative ideals. These frameworks necessarily create tremendous psychic tension for people with multiple, interrelated, mixed subjectivities, leading to the dissociation of aspects of self. Race theory, intersectionality, and queer theory are identified as fields that consider nonnormative, nonbinary, and multitudinous subjectivities. The author shares autobiographical experiences related to growing up mixed race and in poverty to reckon with his own intersecting identities and explore how hidden subjectivities and normative multiplicities manifest inside and outside of the consulting room and how professional psychoanalytic spaces assume homogeneity. A perspective of mixed-race experience is elaborated, and a new consideration of mixed-class experience is offered in which identity categories are considered from nonbinary, fluid, and trans perspectives that embrace a both/neither mentality. The author challenges the field of psychoanalysis to critically examine its unconscious transferences of the homogeneous analyst, as well as the structures, pedagogies, and theories within its institutions that maintain normative, binary standards of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]