queer theory reader

Playing queer: sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:06:00 +0100

Playing queer: sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age:

New post over at my main blog to accompany article on sexuality and videogame design in Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds:

In short, my argument is that the inclusion of queer identities in mass-market RPGs has often depended on a logic of sameness, where the consequences of difference are reduced to the point where there can be little to distinguish between playing gay and playing straight. While this can be celebrated as part of a liberal politics of inclusion – and a welcome counter to the homophobia which pollutes parts of the gaming community – it also means that sexuality risks becoming inconsequential.

Come and hear all about our life drawing project: GI's Anatomy

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:56:45 +0100

Come and hear all about our life drawing project: GI's Anatomy:

gianatomy:

This summer there will be showcases, talks and an exhibition of the work produced! All welcome.

Sir Gerald Howarth: ‘I should have used ‘militant’ rather than ‘aggressive’ to describe the ‘homosexuality community’

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:19:00 +0100

Sir Gerald Howarth: ‘I should have used ‘militant’ rather than ‘aggressive’ to describe the ‘homosexuality community’:

Unfortunately, militant derives from militare and means “aggressive and combative; to serve as a soldier.”

Seriously, what’s the point of a privately-educated political elite if they haven’t done their Latin homework?

Gay marriage bill may lead to 'lesbian queen and artificially inseminated heir'

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:46:25 +0100

Gay marriage bill may lead to 'lesbian queen and artificially inseminated heir':

Shorter Lord Tebbit: gay marriage will dangerously undermine a model of aristocratic succession based on magical blood.

My 'crisis of masculinity' and how feminism set me free

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:40:24 +0100

My 'crisis of masculinity' and how feminism set me free:

When I realised that gender was made up I stopped worrying about what “being a man” meant.

".. rights must not be confused with equality nor legal recognition with emancipation."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:34:54 +0100

“.. rights must not be confused with equality nor legal recognition with emancipation.”

- Wendy Brown, States of Injury (1995: 133)

Swedish school sets up 'gender-neutral' dressing room

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:39:00 +0100

Swedish school sets up 'gender-neutral' dressing room:

“A Stockholm high school is set to open a third changing room for transsexual pupils and those who don’t want to define themselves as being male or female, a move believed to be the first of its kind in the country.”

100percentmen: The Group of 30, “a private, nonprofit,...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:58:30 +0100

100percentmen:

The Group of 30, “a private, nonprofit, international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia.”

Hmm:The office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Wednesday that their petition asking...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:18:53 +0100

Hmm:

The office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Wednesday that their petition asking for review of a case throwing out the state’s sodomy statute is “not about sexual orientation.”

Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature statute made oral sex - even between consenting married couples - a felony.

Incidentally, this would be the same governor who in 2009 said that “homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong.”

The stated desire to protect young people from abusive adults might be vaguely persuasive if Cuccinelli hadn’t blocked a earlier attempt to reform the sodomy law which retained protections for minors and non-consenting adults.

Despite describing youth education as a priority in the newly publish sexual health framework, the...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:32:03 +0000

Despite describing youth education as a priority in the newly publish sexual health framework, the UK government’s review of PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education) changes very little and will likely cut funding for some education services.

British Humanist Association:

The conclusion of the review is that almost nothing will change, with no new guidance or programmes of study on PSHE or Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) to be published.

Brook:

Clearly the Department for Education has not been looking at the same evidence as the rest of us or listening to the views of children and young people themselves. 20 months after the review was announced, this vital topic is clearly consigned to the very bottom of the DFE pile marked ‘non urgent’. This stubborn refusal of the Department of Education to improve PSHE and SRE fails children and young people yet again.

Comprehensive, accurate and inclusive sex education should be a priority for the UK’s LGBT political movement.

"Ex-gay minorities"

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:09:37 +0000

Also featured in the London bus advert ban story linked below is a renewed attempt to frame “ex-gay” people as a persecuted minority unfairly excluded from equality legislation rather than - as the logic of ex-gay rhetoric might suggest - freshly minted members of a totally-heterosexual-no-kidding-this-time majority.

fucktheory: From the Department of Duh (click)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:05:24 +0000

fucktheory:

From the Department of Duh

(click)

'Ex-gay' London bus advert ban ruled lawful

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:05:02 +0000

'Ex-gay' London bus advert ban ruled lawful:

Though the process of the ban was ruled ‘procedurally unfair’, the judge ruled these errors were:

outweighed by factors against allowing the ad, including that it would “cause grave offence” to those who were gay and was perceived as homophobic, “thus increasing the risk of prejudice and homophobic attacks”,

I notice that the potential offence to straight people doesn’t seem to have been considered significant (though the lawyers for Transport for London did base part of their argument for the ban on the grounds of the protection of ‘public morals’).

Why do defenders of DOMA and Prop 8 worship coitus?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:19:16 +0000

Why do defenders of DOMA and Prop 8 worship coitus?:

Interesting reading of the status of non-reproductive straight couples in the same-sex marriage debate:

Ostensibly, copulation is crucial because it leads to procreation. But that pretense collapses when George gets to the problem of straight couples who can’t procreate. He writes that “an infertile man and woman can together still form a true marriage” because “an act of sexual intercourse is organic bodily union whether or not it causes conception.” The couple’s “bodies are still united in coitus,” he reasons, and “the behavioral part” of their coupling “remains ordered to reproduction even when nonbehavioral factors … prevent conception.”
In other words, you should copulate with your opposite-sex spouse not to make a baby, but to behave in a way that would make a baby if you were fertile. Coitus is sacred not as a means, but as a performance.

Does “true marriage,” then, require an audience for whom the intention towards fertility is performed? And is one performance enough to confirm the state of true marriage, or does “organic bodily union” need to be renewed on a regular basis, to the approval of religious authorities?

"Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there..."

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:04:10 +0000

“Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman’s politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging or changing themselves or the culture.”

- bell hooks (Feminism is for Everybody)

Motor racing legend Stirling Moss: 'I don't want a poofter to play me in a film'

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:27:47 +0000

Motor racing legend Stirling Moss: 'I don't want a poofter to play me in a film':

Quote:

According to the Daily Mirror, Sir Stirling said: “I hope the actor would be masculine – not a poofter or anything like that. Perhaps the guy from Skyfall.”

Last night the row deepened after Moss, who some say was the greatest driver never to win the World Championship, defended his comments, telling the Daily Mirror: “I think it would be difficult for someone of the other persuasion, who is homosexual, to take on the part, as I have spent my life driving cars and chasing girls.

Ten points if you guessed that he followed this by explaining that he has “homosexual friends” and that “there’s nothing wrong with it.”

School kids invent gender-neutral singular pronoun

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:16:41 +0000

School kids invent gender-neutral singular pronoun:

From the Grammar Girl blog:

What’s also interesting about the kids’ language is that people — mostly academics — have been trying to introduce a gender-neutral singular pronoun into the English language for about 200 years, with very little success. And then a group of kids in Baltimore just make one up and start using it.

Highlights from Scottee’s Hamburger Queen, “the...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:05:56 +0000

Highlights from Scottee’s Hamburger Queen, “the beauty pageant for fat people.”

Also see Scottee and Amy Lame’s conversations with Dr Charlotte Cooper: why are you fat?

Pensions and partners could still cost trans people dear in same-sex marriage bill

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:05:59 +0000

Pensions and partners could still cost trans people dear in same-sex marriage bill

"Fighting for gay rights? The Queen won’t even mention them. […] No, to refrain from..."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:59:22 +0000

“Fighting for gay rights? The Queen won’t even mention them. […] No, to refrain from specification is to collude with silence, the Grand Pause that keeps lesbians and gay men invisible, suffocating in marriages of inconvenience or trapped in police cells.”

- Patrick Strudwick in The Guardian.

Also see Peter Tatchell’s earlier piece on anti-gay law across the Commonwealth nations.