Queer Studies

In this lecture, I use scholar Anna Chave's arguments in "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power" as a springboard into a discussion of white privilege and institutionalized discrimination as found in art historical narratives and pedagogy. I then discuss the ways that artists, such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Glenn Ligon, use minimalism to complicate, question, and expand the canon.

Scholars consistently read the texts of Eliza Haywood through a culturally defined heteronormative lens. Yet Haywood’s texts in multiple genres throughout the course of her career structurally and descriptively present same-sex relationships of varying degrees of intimacy. This essay explores what happens when we disrupt our methods for interpreting Haywood and complicate our readings by recognizing her creation of non-normative possibilities for intimacy, gender formation, and narrative structures across the span of her career.

In this article, I argue that the labor movement could and should be advocates for the dramatic reform, if not abolition, of the PIC, and work against national conditions that empower the existence of a police state. My intervention contributes to the current body of criticism against the criminalization of queer people by offering a concrete next step, grounded in a theory of social change through organized mass resistance. First, I provide a brief history of “social movement unionism” through an analysis of labor’s past. Then, I offer a theoretical framework through a review of the literature from scholars and activists who have inserted questions of class and race into the workings of the state, specifically queer of color critique, prison abolition, and critical trans politics. Next, I synthesize case studies of the abuse of LGBTQ people by police and prisons to further illustrate why this should be a point of focus for both the LBGTQ and labor movements. Finally, I draw on my own participatory-action ethnographic work with Pride at Work (PAW), the LGBTQ constituency group of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), and other labor organizers, to reveal the arguments and perspectives that advance or constrain a queer justice labor agenda. Through an interrogation of labor union discourses, I argue that police and prison guard unions that advocate for the expansion of these institutions should not be part of the vision for the future of a labor movement that has proclaimed a commitment to social movement unionism. That is, as the mainstream labor movement devotes more energy pushing for justice issues not directly related to organizing workplaces—such as immigration reform, marriage rights, and environmental justice—it should also expand that vision to resisting police abuse and the expansion of the PIC. This resistance must, by definition, include a refusal to align with police and prisons themselves, even when unionized.

Aims and objectives. The study aimed to examine the experiences of patients and meanings attached to ‘treatments’ of sexual
deviations, which included homosexuality and transvestism, in the UK (1949–1992), exploring reasons for such treatments,
experiences and how individual lives were affected.

Background. Male homosexuality remained illegal in England until 1967 and, along with transvestism, was considered an
antisocial sexual deviation that could be cured. Homosexuality remained classifiable as a mental illness until 1992. Nurses were
involved in administering treatments to cure these individuals; however, there is a paucity of information about this nowdiscredited
mental health nursing practice.

Design. A nationwide study based on oral history interviews.
Methods. Purposeful and snowball sampling was utilised when selecting participants for the study. Participants were recruited
via adverts in gay establishments/media. All participants gave signed informed consent. Face-to-face oral history interviews were
conducted and transcribed for historical interpretation.

Results. Seven former male patients made contact, aged 65–97 years at interview. All reported that the treatments had been
unsuccessful in altering their sexual desires or behaviour. Most sought treatment owing to unsupportive and negative
attitudes from friends, family and wider society. Others selected treatments instead of imprisonment. Most eventually
found happiness in same-sex relationships. However, all were left feeling emotionally troubled by the treatments they
received.

Conclusion. Defining homosexuality and transvestism as mental illnesses and implementing what could be argued to be
inefficient treatments to eradicate them appears to have had a lasting negative impact on the patients who received them.

Relevance to clinical practice. Nurses who care for older gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients need to be mindful of
their potential past treatment by healthcare services and ensure that they are non-judgmental and accepting of their sexual
orientation and current gender.

This thesis analyses the male homosexual arena of inter-war Berlin, to investigate how queer men's travels to the German capital helped shape their subjectivities and contributed to the formation of individual and collective sexual selfhoods. Arguing that time and space matter in the construction of gay identities, it explains how these were created and acted out in pre-1933 Berlin. In contrast to other historians' propositions that Western gay identities did not solidify until between 1945 and the late 1960s, this dissertation suggests that travellers provide the link between Weimar Germany's emancipation movements and those in other places during later decades.

Reading from Behind is a study of the ass, the anus, the rectum, the posterior, the bottom in literary and cultural studies. More particularly, Reading from Behind is an intervention in feminist and queer theories, which aims to shift attention away from the governing totality of the phallus, and the less governing gynophallic, towards the anus, an organ of symbolic potential that we all have, that we all share, and that we all know. Unlike the phallus, the anus unites us insofar as we all have access to its knowledge, and therefore, I believe, it provides a fruitful site of investigation, particularly because of the ways in which it is allo-erotic, auto-erotic, and universally available. What the anus does, that the phallus cannot, is that it is inherently not indebted to a form of thinking that is based on exclusion.
One cannot have anus envy in the same was as one might have penis envy or womb envy (at least Dr.Phil and other pop psychologists aren’t talking about anus envy).
         
In Reading from Behind, I ask a number of questions: what would happen – even if only ever as a thought experiment –we privileged the anal dimensions of texts and textual and cultural analysis? What if the anus, the booty, the moneymaker, the tukhus were fully loaded signs endowed with rich and complex meanings much like the anus’s numerous sensual nerve endings? What if we relaxed, loosened up our critical inquiries, embraced the deep fullness of the pleasure of the text, a pleasure that tickles and titillates, and removed ourselves from the paranoid, sphincter-tightening hermeneutics of suspicion?

I primi studi propriamente detti di linguistica lavanda in Italia e per la lingua italiana sono stati formulati da psicologi, giornalisti e non professionisti del settore linguistico. Gli studi propriamente detti formulati da linguisti, puntavano ad evidenziare come la comunità linguistica italofona definisse il gruppo sociale queer.
La linguistica lavanda intende ora, invece, invertire questa prospettiva permettendo direttamente a membri del gruppo sociale queer di formulare un glossario completo di lemmi di gergo gay in lingua italiana. La possibilità ora concepibile di unire la professionalità del sociolinguista ad una maggiore apertura della comunità linguistica italofona verso il gruppo sociale queer, permette di rilevare e analizzare per la prima volta un glossario di gergo gay di lingua italiana novecentesca e contemporanea. La linguistica lavanda quindi si pone come applicazione linguistica di tesi formulate negli studi queer.
Alla prospettiva aggiuntiva e innovativa del gruppo sociale, è possibile trattare anche l'ambito poliedrico dei linguaggi specialistici. Le nozioni chiave, dunque, saranno
1) il sistema lingua,
2) il sistema dialetto,
3) il gergo e
4) il linguaggio specialistico.
La tesi che è possibile evincere adesso è quella che è in atto una degergalizzazione del gergo gay italiano grazie a condizioni socioculturali nuove e positive, presso le giovani generazioni.
Ricordiamo in particolare tra questi fattori extralinguistici: la depenalizzazione e depatologizzazione dell'omosessualità e della bisessualità, riconoscimento istituzionale del cambio di sesso, formulazione di leggi contro la discriminazione, l'istituzione di matrimoni per coppie dello stesso sesso e riconoscimento istituzionale dell'omogenitorialità in ogni sua formulazione possibile.
La gergalizzazione in atto è piuttosto concernente ad una criminalizzazione dell'omofobia e di conseguenza del gergo omofobo.
In ogni caso la metafora resta fulcro che impedisce una stabile e totale tesi di degergalizzazione queer in lingua italiana contemporanea.