lgqri

Lesbian feminism grew directly out of two movements that began in the 1960s: feminism and gay liberation. Though premised on essentialist notions of “woman,” the lesbian feminist movement was an important corrective to the displacement lesbians suffered in the feminist movement, (where they’d been dubbed the “lavender menace”) and in the gay liberation movement (which … Read more

What’s wrong with tolerance? And how could it possibly undermine real gay equality? In this talk, Walters considers how the pseudo-science of “born this way” can combine with demands for marriage equality and a place in the military to create a “trap.” The trap is to imagine that being tolerated is the same as robust … Read more

In this talk, Alex Kondakov will offer some explanations for the low rate of participation by lesbians and gay men in conventional political activity in Russia (such as rallies, petitioning, and LGBT-pride parades). Drawing on his previous work on (homo)sexual citizenship after the fall of the USSR, and using some insights from urban studies and … Read more

Chinese popular music displays increasingly high levels of queer visuality. But visual productions of queer romance and eroticism here do not necessarily produce a political presence of gender, sexuality, or the queer. On the contrary, the intervention of government in production and communication and of families in consumption and recontextualization produce its absence. This paradox … Read more

From New York and Paris to San Francisco, Berlin, and beyond, gay men for several decades have played a major role in urban gentrification. They’ve used the city as a means to create a visible and collective identity and changed the social environment of the urban landscape. Gay areas constitute spaces of freedom, but also … Read more

How do sex museums stage same-sex erotic materials, and for what purposes? Drawing on fieldwork at twenty-two museums in Asia, Europe, and North America, Professor Sender considers the relationship among sexuality, consumer culture, and global flows of cultural and economic capital. Museums ranging from highly commercial tourist sites to highbrow civic institutions exhibit same sex … Read more

In 2008 the diagnostic category of “hebephilia” (erotic preference for “pubescent children,” or young adolescents) was suggested for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, published May 2013). Immediately a vehement debate arose over whether or not this condition should be considered a disease, and in 2012 the proposal … Read more