1.6: Glossary, People, and Footnotes

Glossary

assimilationist. A strategy or one who enacts such strategy to gain access to, or assimilate into, existing social structures, like monogamous marriage or serving in the U.S. military.

constructionist. The view that identity is a sociocultural construct that influences identity formation.

discourses. An institutionalized way of thinking and speaking, which creates a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The U.S. military’s policy on gays, bisexuals, and lesbians serving in the military, introduced in 1994 by Bill Clinton’s administration. The policy required gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons to remain closeted while in the military. In exchange, it prohibited the discrimination of closeted service persons.

drag. Refers to the performance of femininity or masculinity, and is most frequently used to describe the performance of gender expressions that differ from those associated with the performer’s natal sex assignment.

drag queen. Most often someone who identifies as a man who behaves in an exaggerated performance of femininity. Drag queens are often associated with gay culture.

essentialist. The view of sexuality that assumes individuals possess a fixed and innate sexual identity that is both universal and transhistorical.

homonormativity. Academics and activists use the term to discuss attempts by LGBTQ+ persons to assimilate into institutions like marriage and the military that reproduce hierarchy and are associated with oppression.

homophile movement. Emerging in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1950s, the movement was a concerted effort to demand equal rights for homosexuals.

Human Rights Campaign. The largest U.S.-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group. It works for legal protections for LGBTQ+ persons, such as promoting legislation to prevent discrimination and hate crimes.

intersectional. Overlapping or intersecting social identities, such as race, class, and gender, that are produced by social structures of inequality.

intersex. Persons who do not have chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that meet medical expectations and definitions of sex within a binary system.

minoritizing. A term introduced by Eve Sedgwick to describe the view of homosexuality as relevant only to homosexuals. This view sees homosexuals as a specific group of people, a minority, within a largely heterosexual world.

neoliberalism. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. It accepts greater economic inequality and disfavors unionization.

performativity. The capacity of language and expressive actions to produce a type of being.

public sphere. Where identity should be abandoned to maintain the myth of universality.

same-sex marriage. The marriage of two people of the same sex or gender in a civil or religious ceremony.

sex-gender system. A phrase coined by Gayle Rubin to describe the social apparatus that oppresses women.

sexology. The scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions.

universalizing. A term introduced by Eve Sedgwick to describe viewing sexuality and sexual definition as important to everyone, rather than focusing on homosexuals as a distinct group.

People

Charlene A. Carruthers. A Black queer feminist activist and organizer. Her work aims to create young leaders in marginalized communities to fight for community interests and liberation.

Jack Halberstam. A gender and queer theorist and author, perhaps best known for work on tomboys and female masculinity.

José Esteban Muñoz. An academic in the fields of performance studies, visual culture, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical theory. His book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999) uses performance studies to investigate the performance, activism, and survival of queer people of color.

Susan Stryker. An American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality, and a founder of Transgender Studies.

Footnotes

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1. ACT UP New York (website), accessed March 8, 2021, https://actupny.com/. ↵
2. T. de Lauretis, “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities,” in special issue, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): iii. ↵
3. De Lauretis, iii. ↵
4. De Lauretis, vi. ↵
5. De Lauretis, iv. ↵
6. L. Duggan, “Making It Perfectly Queer,” in Theorizing Feminism Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Anne C. Herrmann and Abigail J. Stewart (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 219. ↵
7. A. Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 8; Duggan, “Making It Perfectly Queer,” 225. ↵
8. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 23. ↵
9. D. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love, illustrated edition (New York: Routledge, 1989); David Halperin, How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). ↵
10. J. D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity,” in The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, ed. Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo (New York: Routledge, 1997), 169–178. ↵
11. J. Ned Katz, “The Invention of Heterosexuality,” Socialist Review 20 (March 1990): 7–34. ↵
12. E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1. ↵
13. G. Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Women, Class and the Feminist Imagination, ed. Karen V. Hansen and Ilene J. Philipson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 74–112. ↵
14. Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 78. ↵
15. Rubin, 79. ↵
16. A. Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” Sciences 33, no. 2 (March–April 1993): 20–24. ↵
17. S. J. Kessler, Lessons from the Intersexed (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998). ↵
18. A. Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes, Revisited,” Sciences 40, no. 4 (July–August 2000): 18–23. ↵
19. E. Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 100. ↵
20. Newton, Mother Camp, 103. ↵
21. J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2006). ↵
22. J. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993). ↵
23. Butler, Bodies That Matter. ↵
24. J. “Jack” Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 1. ↵
25. Halberstam, 1. ↵
26. S. Stryker, “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies,” in The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. Susan Stryker (London: Routledge, 2006), 7. ↵
27. D. Valentine, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 33. ↵
28. L. Feinberg, “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” in Stryker, The Transgender Studies Reader, 4. ↵
29. S. Whittle, foreword to Stryker, The Transgender Studies Reader, xi. ↵
30. Feinberg, “Transgender Liberation.” ↵
31. L. Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Books, 1993). ↵
32. K. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (New York: Vintage, 1995). ↵
33. Bornstein, Gender Outlaw, 4. ↵
34. Bornstein, 12. ↵
35. “About,” Human Rights Campaign, accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.hrc.org/about. ↵
36. L. Duggan, “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism,” in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 175–193. ↵
37. J. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), xii. ↵
38. J. Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1. ↵
39. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. ↵
40. C. Carruthers, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018), 10. ↵
41. Carruthers, 10. ↵
42. Carruthers, 39. ↵
43. J. Chambers-Letson, After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 4–5. ↵
44. Chambers-Letson, 33. ↵