Queer Essays

  • Queers

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    natural” (Baird 114). Part of the homosexual agenda is to make people believe that homosexuals are the same as heterosexuals when it comes to engaging in sexual behavior. This is absolutely not true. In Michelangelo Signorile’s book Cassel’s Rawlings 2 Queer Companion, a dictionary of lesbian and gay life and culture, he describes some of the sexual activities that homosexuals practice. These includes “fisting, when one partner shoves his whole hand up the anus of the other partner” (Signorile 96). In

  • Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and "Queer as Folk

    2160 Words  | 5 Pages

    reality-makeover show that became a national obsession. The show was "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Two years earlier, in December of 2000, Showtime produced what was to become one of the most controversial and popular television shows in the network's history: "Queer as Folk," inspired by the BBC original of the same name. Queer was here- in a big, bold way. These two pop culture phenomenon set up a discourse for the pivotal word in each title, "Queer." Examining both in the context of their own, self-prescribed

  • Judith Butler Critically Queer

    1548 Words  | 4 Pages

    of the symbols that have been used against LGBT+ or queer individuals have been reclaimed as symbols of pride, whether that be the pink triangle used by Nazis to mark homosexuals, or the bloodied hands from AIDS adopted by ACT UP, who used that imagery as symbolic of the Reagan administration’s ignoral of AIDS. Regardless of its past and current use as a pejorative, the term “queer” has a worthy place and unique definition in the realm of queer theory. Unlike the rather concrete definitions of the

  • The Importance Of Queer Theory

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    biological condition of it; therein creating space for the conceptualization that gayness is, in fact, a disease to be cured. According to Jay Prosser in Judith Butler: Queer Feminism, Freud’s ideology of sexuality was that, first and foremost it was inherently created by sensation of the body (1998). In this understanding, queer is a learned trait, deriving its basis from bodily experience. Freud was not implying that such a thing should be corrected, but it was nonetheless a projection of the bodily

  • The History Of The Queer Community

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    the way society uses the term queer. Queer was a term used to describe “odd” “peculiar” or “strange” beings or things alike, but over the centuries societies began to adapt and incorporate the term into their vocabulary. Many authors such as Natalie Kouri-Towe, Siobhan B. Somerville, and Nikki Sullivan have distinct ways of describing the way the word queer has been shaped over the years and how society has viewed it as a whole. In effect, to talk about the term queer one must understand the hardship

  • The Queer Theory

    1881 Words  | 4 Pages

    Queer, a word first used by the Scottish in 1508 to mean strange, peculiar, or eccentric, has evolved into a critical theory signifying resistance to the traditional views on gender and sexuality since the early 1990s. An Italian author and professor, Teresa de Lauretis coined the term “Queer Theory” during a conference on conjecturing gay and lesbian sexualities held at the University of California. Heavily influenced by deconstruction, post-structuralism, and feminism, queer theory challenges the

  • Queer Theory In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    Madness and Mollyhouses: Queer Theory in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde “...[T]he same offence be from henceforth ajudged Felony,” said the Buggery Act of 1533. The offence, of course, was gay sex. It has never been easy to be a man who desires other men. In England, the punishment for sodomy was being hanged. Because of this, English authors frequently resorted to using subtext and coded language to explore homosexual relations in their country. This was especially true in the 19th century, a time of rapidly

  • American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism

    1123 Words  | 3 Pages

    American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism Works Cited Missing Nancy Ordover argues that current attempts to regulate marginalized social groups are eugenicist movements couched in new language. While "today, the preoccupation with immigrant fertility is couched in concerns over expenditures rather than in classic eugenicist worries over the depletion of the national gene pool" (54), that supposed strain on the national economy presented by immigration is still located

  • Re-Imagining For Representation: Fanfiction And Queer Youth

    1674 Words  | 4 Pages

    Re-Imagining for Representation: Fanfiction and Queer Youth The medium in which a story is told often tells a deeper story. In terms of pop culture, modern media is still targeted to a predominantly heterosexual audience. Consequently, queer characters are under-represented, represented poorly, and often killed. The message within the medium is that to exist as queer is to exist as deviance and to result in death. However, queer audiences are not mindless consumers of these products. One empowering

  • AIDS: Keeping New Queer Cinema Alive

    3357 Words  | 7 Pages

    AIDS: Keeping New Queer Cinema Alive “Queer Cinema is Back” – headlines the front page of the 2005 issue of the Advocate, signifying to a new flood of movies making way into theatres. Five years prior to this news release B. Ruby Rich, who coined the art as New Queer Cinema almost a decade earlier, declared that the cinema had co-opted into “just another niche market” dominated by popular culture (Morrison 135 & Rich 24). What had seemed to be a movement, turned out to be only a moment in the brief

  • How Is Alice In Wonderland Related To Queer's Denotation

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    usage of the term queer is one case in Alice in Wonderland where there are multiple denotations and connotations with a touch of ambiguity. Queer’s denotation has taken many forms over time. Denotation, or the literal definition of a word, can greatly change the interpretation of a text. The

  • Canadian Drama

    1439 Words  | 3 Pages

    The representation of queer culture within Canadian literature, and more specifically theatre, can vary based on the multiple means that the playwright chooses to animate. In this instance, by differentiating French Canadian and Western Canadian queer theatre, we are able to analyze what drives each cultural representation. Montreal had experienced gay liberation in the mid 70’s, and theatre was empowered by such a movement to captivate audiences with the idea of a gay individual rather than

  • A Unique Perspective of The Yellow Wallpaper

    2856 Words  | 6 Pages

    perspective on the story, although in my readings of psychology, particularly the psychological knowledge surrounding both women and queers, I find the discipline incredibly tainted with patriarchy and heterosexism. At this point, I’d like to define a few terms somewhat precisely, at least as I intend to use them in the context of this paper. In this paper, I use the term "queer" for two reasons: one of which is in the spirit of reclaiming a word that has traditionally been used to verbally abuse non-heterosexual

  • Lexa In 'The 100': A Character Analysis

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    lives off sexual energy, her desire to be with female characters in addition to male characters is not overly sexualized. One of Bo's main love interests is Dr. Lauren Lewis who is a human doctor for the Fe. Lauren and Bo are actually one of the few queer lady couples to have a canonically happy ending when the series ended, however their journey to that point was ripe with the same issues caused by covering and tropes. (Lost Girl, Showcase

  • Self-Validation and Social Acceptance

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    People often need to have validation from themselves, in regard to both their sexuality and general self, before being able to be accepted others. Too often this important fact is disregarded by today's culture and societal norm. This appears to be a recurring theme throughout the many passages and articles we have read in class, as well as in various piece of fictional literature. I will be using the 1991 film "Paris Is Burning," a short work of fiction by Jane S. Fancher called "Moonlover and

  • Post-Colonial Criticism In Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    American lives amid the many years of the most recent century. His verse is normally effortlessly comprehended and straight forward to the point. However, it could be analyzed in three different theories; New Historicism, Post-Colonial Criticism, and Queer Theory. “The Weary Blues” is a verse ballad with two voices. The focal story voice portrays an African American or Negro, in this 1923 sonnet, in Harlem, New York, who is watched singing and playing a soul number. The lyric gives an example of soul

  • Fetishism, perversion and the Gay Identity

    1300 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Sedgwick, even the language used to identify the gay identity "queer" is non-referential. Queer describes the gay identity in as many uncharacteristic ways that fail to overlap certain individual homosexual experiences as it does in describing characteristic ways that overlap other homosexual experiences. Queerness is not always translatable just as being queer means different things to different gays. "'Queer' seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person's undertaking

  • Homophobia: Andre’s Mother by Terrence McNally

    2011 Words  | 5 Pages

    . middle of paper ... ...uly is oppressive to completely exclude a group of humans based on something that is out of their control, and makes them free to exercise their right to self- expression. Works Cited Goldstein, Richard. The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right. London: Verso, 2002. Print. McNally, Terrence. “Andre’s Mother.” A Little Literature. Eds. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. San Francisco: Longman, 2007. 880-883. Print. Rader, Dotson. "Playwright

  • 'Words In Eli Clare's Exile And Pride'

    1663 Words  | 4 Pages

    Queer. Exile. Class (Clare 31).” When Clare writes about losing home, he is writing about the parts of his identity that pulled him away from the place that he raised, as well as the parts of his identity that prevent him from finding home in other places (Clare 41). These words, queer, exile, and class, are both driving forces behind why Clare can’t find a place where he feels fully comfortable

  • Esther Newton's Unrequited Love And Gay Latino Culture

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    central to queer theory itself since it has ascended in contemporary academic theoretical venues as the singular approach to gay and lesbian studies. Contreras explains that drag symbolizes many important and conflicted questions regarding the modern urban queer identities and gay male identities in particular. The drag queen can represent a lively fixture in a gay parade or a homophobic representation in mass culture. In this book he wrote some statements about drag that function as queer common