Why is there no queer international theory?

Over the last decade, Queer Studies have become Global Queer Studies, generating significant insights into key international political processes. Yet, the transformation from Queer to Global Queer has left the discipline of International Relations largely unaffected, which begs the question: if Queer Studies has gone global, why has the discipline of International Relations not gone somewhat queer? Or, to put it in Martin Wight’s provocative terms, why is there no Queer International Theory? This article claims that the presumed non-existence of Queer International Theory is an effect of how the discipline of International Relations combines homologization, figuration, and gentrification to code various types of theory as failures in order to manage the conduct of international theorizing in all its forms. This means there are generalizable lessons to be drawn from how the discipline categorizes Queer International Theory out of existence to bring a specific understanding of International Relations into existence

Queering identity : becoming queer in the work of Cassils

This chapter explores the work of genderqueer artist Cassils in order to address the question of what it is to be human from a queer perspective. The challenges from queer and postmodern scholarship to the “identity politics” so central to earlier activist and academic agendas have been well documented. Yet, notwithstanding these valid critiques, identity remains a powerful organizing concept in contemporary experience. These contradictory stances on identity serve as a prompt for thinking about what queer brings to our understandings of being human now and in the near future

Leadership and charisma: a desire that cannot speak its name?

Leadership has proved impossible to define, despite decades of research and a huge number of publications. This article explores managers’ accounts of leadership, and shows that they find it difficult to talk about the topic, offering brief definitions but very little narrative. That which was said/sayable provides insights into what was unsaid/ unsayable. Queer theory facilitates exploration of that which is difficult to talk about, and applying it to the managers’ talk allows articulation of their lay theory of leadership. This is that leaders evoke a homoerotic desire in followers such that followers are seduced into achieving organizational goals. The leader’s body, however, is absent from the scene of seduction, so organizational heteronormativity remains unchallenged. The article concludes by arguing that queer and critical leadership theorists together could turn leadership into a reverse discourse and towards a politics of pleasure at work

LGB+ and heterosexual-identified people produce similar analogies to intersex but have different opinions about its medicalisation

Qualitative researchers have long observed that rationales for medical interventions on intersex characteristics, or variable sex characteristics (VSC), invoke heteronormative ideals. Such medical interventions are controversial and described as infringing human rights. Recent survey research has confirmed that support for medical intervention, and opposition to its legal limitation on human rights grounds is predicted by (1) identifying as heterosexual and (2) endorsing gender binary beliefs. We replicated both findings here among 59 LGB+ and 61 heterosexual participants. Opinions about medical interventions on intersex characteristics were additionally predicted by belief in heterosexual complementarity among all participants, and by strength of heterosexual identification among heterosexual-identified participants. Participants read excerpts from three published interviews with a medical professional, a parent of a child with intersex characteristics, and an adult with intersex characteristics and generated analogies to these experiences. Participants who generated more diverse analogies endorsed the gender binary and medical interventions less, and supported legal limitations more. The results are discussed in relation to the formation and distribution of public attitudes to the controversial medicalisation of intersex characteristics

Introduction to “Binary Binds”: Deconstructing Sex and Gender Dichotomies in Archaeological Practice

YesGender archaeology has made significant strides toward deconstructing the hegemony of binary categorizations. Challenging dichotomies such as man/woman, sex/gender, and biology/culture, approaches informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and queer theories have moved beyond essentialist and universalist identity constructs to more nuanced configurations. Despite the theoretical emphasis on context, multiplicity, and fluidity, binary starting points continue to streamline the spectrum of variability that is recognized, often reproducing normative assumptions in the evidence. The contributors to this special issue confront how sex, gender, and sexuality categories condition analytical visibility, aiming to develop approaches that respond to the complexity of theory in archaeological practice. The papers push the ontological and epistemological boundaries of bodies, personhood, and archaeological possibility, challenging a priori assumptions that contain how sex, gender, and sexuality categories are constituted and related to each other. Foregrounding intersectional approaches that engage with ambiguity, variability, and difference, this special issue seeks to “de-contain” categories, assumptions, and practices from “binding” our analytical gaze toward only certain kinds of persons and knowledges, in interpretations of the past and practices in the present

An epitaph to Section 28? Telling tales out of school about changes and challenges to discourses of sexuality

This is a postprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,© 2007 Copyright Taylor & Francis; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, is available online at http://www.informaworld.comThis article seeks to develop an understanding of the professional and personal lives of LGBT teachers in relation to the discriminatory statute Section 28, which prohibited 'promotion' of 'the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship' by local education authorities in the UK (except Northern Ireland). Interviews with a small sample of serving teachers are analysed using a feminist poststructuralist methodology to discover whether the removal of this legislation marks a shift in theorization, policy or practice. Findings are arranged to focus on the workings of official policy, on informal or unofficial classroom and staffroom practices, and on relations with a local community. Analysis and discussion reveal a complex matrix of constituents (space, relationships and other variables) only some of which respond to the (perhaps) superficial stimulus of legislative change. Such change goes only a small way to challenge a deeply embedded discourse of inequality, which may respond only to a more profound epistemological transformation

Ethnicity and sexuality

This paper explores the connections between ethnicity and sexuality. Racial, ethnic, and national boundaries are also sexual boundaries. The borderlands dividing racial, ethnic, and national identities and communities constitute ethnosexual frontiers, erotic intersections that are heavily patrolled, policed, and protected, yet regularly are penetrated by individuals forging sexual links with ethnic "others." Normative heterosexuality is a central component of racial, ethnic, and nationalist ideologies; both adherence to and deviation from approved sexual identities and behaviors define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes. To illustrate the ethnicity/sexuality nexus and to show the utility of revealing this intimate bond for understanding ethnic relations, I review constructionist models of ethnicity and sexuality in the social sciences and humanities, and I discuss ethnosexual boundary processes in several historical and contemporary settings: the sexual policing of nationalism, sexual aspects of US-American Indian relations, and the sexualization of the black-white color line

Penetration and power

This paper analyses the ways in which it is possible to imagine the relationship between sexual penetration and the expression of power. Taking the particular instance of a penetrative act in the US gay porn film Hard at Work, it applies a series of critical approaches in an attempt to make sense of perceived power relations in that text. Equations of power and activity, power and physical strength, power and the possession of a penis, power and the ability to gaze and power and the control of discourse are all considered and found to be inadequate to the task. The paper finally suggests that in order to usefully discuss relations of power in sexual acts, it is necessary to accept the radical reconceptualisation of power suggested by Mark Gibson, and begin to understand it not as an objective, measurable and real quantity, but as an effect of the interpretation of particular situations