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Nella Larsen's Passing has been commonly read through a queer lens that presents Clare and Irene's relationship with each other as erotic yet repressed. Irene's repression of her desire and the subsequent narrative can be read as stemming from compulsory heterosexuality. This causes Irene to uphold the institution of marriage at any cost to prevent the sexual freedom that could lead to open queerness on not only her part, but also Brian's and Clare's. All three characters interact with their queerness in conjunction with their race, attempting to use or suppress it for different societal ends. As such, the queer dimension to Passing can be understood as standing in direct opposition to the inevitability of heterosexual union, as Irene alone attempts to preserve heterosexuality, even to the death.

In this paper, I investigate the benefits and potential risks associated with utilizing participant observation to gain a deeper understanding of sexual identity. Specifically, my focus is on examining how young, heterosexual, middle-class, cisgender individuals in South Africa perceive and understand their heterosexual identities, exploring how privilege and heteronormativity shape their experiences. In my ethnographic study, I employed various qualitative data collection methods, including participant observation, to analyze how normative practices were negotiated and sustained in contemporary South Africa. As a feminist researcher, I reflect on the epistemological and methodological choices I made in the study, with reflexivity and positionality playing crucial roles in data collection and analysis. Drawing on experiences in three distinct social spaces in Johannesburg-high-end nightclubs, Tupperware-style sex-toy parties, and traditional braais [barbecues]-I examine the advantages and challenges of participant observation. This paper contributes to the broader discussion on the method's use, highlighting its potential to offer a nuanced understanding of a normalized phenomenon while acknowledging associated risks.

A bold and contemporary discourse of the intersection of disability studies and queer studies Crip Theory attends to the contemporary cultures of disability and queerness that are coming out all over. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as “normal” or as abject, but Crip Theory is the first book to analyze thoroughly the ways in which these interdisciplinary fields inform each other. Drawing on feminist theory, African American and Latino/a cultural theories, composition studies, film and television studies, and theories of globalization and counter-globalization, Robert McRuer articulates the central concerns of crip theory and considers how such a critical perspective might impact cultural and historical inquiry in the humanities. Crip Theory puts forward readings of the Sharon Kowalski story, the performance art of Bob Flanagan, and the journals of Gary Fisher, as well as critiques of the domesticated queerness and disability marketed by the Millennium March, or Bravo TV’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy . McRuer examines how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed, and considers the vibrant ways that disability and queerness unsettle and re-write those identities in order to insist that another world is possible.

While a majority of people identify as \"heterosexual\" if asked about their sexual identity, what does that really mean? How did identifying as \"straight\" arise, particularly in relation to identifying as \"queer,\" \"lesbian,\" and \"gay\"? How are individuals socialized to view themselves and others as straight, even when many people are sexually fluid? How do institutions like government bodies, the educational system, and the family reinforce heterosexuality? This collection introduces the field of Critical Heterosexualities Studies and key lines of inquiry within the field. Like Masculinity Studies and Whiteness Studies, Heterosexualities Studies critically examines the dominant category and identity group in order to illuminate the taken-for-granted assumptions that surround heterosexual identities. This critical perspective questions the idea that heterosexuality is natural, normal, and biologically driven. A recurring question throughout this Handbook is: what does it mean to say that there are multiple forms of heterosexuality? The answer is provided by cases showing how straightness varies between men and women but also across different racial groups, social classes, and one's status as trans or cisgender. Organized around key themes of inquiry including heterosexualities across the life course, straight identities and their intersections, the power of straightness in state politics, and the changing meaning of heterosexualities in the context of sexual fluidity, this collection provides readers with an introduction to Critical Heterosexualities Studies through important theoretical statements, key historical studies, and current empirical research. Featuring both classic works and original essays written expressly for this volume, this collection provides a state-of-the-art overview of this exciting new field in sexualities studies.

By using the method of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), this article examines how sport is a conservative institution so far as sexuality and gender identity of female athletes are concerned. The article enquires to know what it means for a sportswoman to be physically strong and active like a man. It explores how the process of binary sex segregation in competitive sports affects the non-heterosexual female athletes and how their sexuality and physicality are considered as a foil in the patriarchal domain of sports. It highlights how the ‘gender verification test’ as a discriminatory tool is used by the sports regulatory bodies to prove female athletes’ sexuality, especially heterosexuality and to maintain the system of patriarchal hegemony in the world of sport. The article looks into how the hegemonic masculinity within sport works to uphold male power, while subjugating the female athletes. It unveils the incidents, how the non-heterosexual female athletes fall victims of homophobia and go through mental stress to confirm to the societal norms of compulsory heterosexuality. More specifically, through in-depth analysis of two contemporary cases of intersexual hyper-androgenic female athletes, this article examines the status and challenges being faced by the non-heterosexual female athletes in sport and focuses upon how their sexuality are addressed in the field of competitive sports. The article also focuses on the agony as well as resilience of intersexual female athletes to break the gender stereotype in sport in postmodern era unlike before.

This Teaching Note describes the process of forming a panel of straight students to answer questions from Martin Rochlin's Heterosexual Questionnaire. The activity highlights heterosexism and heterosexual privilege, provides an opportunity to talk about satire and queer humor, and is a useful way to engage with concepts from class readings in introductory LGBTQ Studies and Women's Studies courses.

This study examines the representations of male and female social actors in selected Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. It is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and uses van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network Model to analyze social actor representations in the gendered discourses of compulsory heterosexuality. Findings from the analysis show that the representations endorse the discourse of compulsory heterosexuality which is an institutionalized form of social practice in Iran. Three male and three female students were interviewed to find out what they think about these representations. Their responses with regard to whether they think textbooks should also include representations of other forms of sexuality were non-committal and vague. To them LGBT people are the “Other” practicing a form of sexuality that is not normal. Such exclusions could obscure the reality regarding the existence of such gender identities and represent the world in a particular manner.

Displacement and Borderland: An Oblique View from the Decolonial Feminism to the Scheme Migration, Heterosexual Regime, (Post)colonialism and Globalization Abstract This article is the result of my research thesis to qualify for the title of Master in Gender and Ethnicity from the University of Utrecht, which entailed doing research, action, participation, and building interviews with a biographical approach, analyzing the way in which Latin American lesbian or women who have lived homoerotic experiences are situated along their paths of life: a) within the networks of power that operate both in their countries of origin and in Spain (biopolitics), as well as in a series of complex global relations ( geopolitics); b) within certain collectives (micropolitics) and; c) in their personal or couple relationships (micropolitics). I set out in this research to employ a heterarchical and intersectional look.

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal--the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the realm of sex and gender--we might need to take a break from feminism. Halley also invites feminism to abandon its uncritical relationship to its own power. Feminists are, in many areas of social and political life, partners in governance. To govern responsibly, even on behalf of women, Halley urges, feminists should try taking a break from their own presuppositions. Halley offers a genealogy of various feminisms and of gay, queer, and trans theories as they split from each other in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. All these incommensurate theories, she argues, enrich thinking on the left not despite their break from each other but because of it. She concludes by examining legal cases to show how taking a break from feminism can change your very perceptions of what's at stake in a decision and liberate you to decide it anew.

Current research on sexual minority youth tends to be concentrated in the fields of public health, social work, and psychology with a focus on psycho-social health risks that often rely on sexuality as a fixed unit of analysis. A sociological understanding of the processes that drive an individual to identify as gay in the first place makes an important contribution to this existing body of literature, allowing an opportunity to understand not just how sexual minority youth are vulnerable, but why. Drawing on my ethnographic research with adolescent males who frequent a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth drop-in center, I demonstrate how sexuality gets constructed through four processes: violating compulsory heterosexuality, seeking an explanation, exploring sexuality, and negotiating identity. I will show how individuals make meaning of their sexual selves within the context of a patriarchal, heteronormative structural system, where symbols of homophobia and masculinity inform their identity development, and how that reiterates heteronormative development. I conclude by drawing attention to how the shifting boundaries of queerness should inform efforts to improve conditions for sexual minority youth and inform future research.