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Social Construction of Gender (Social construction of gender)

Queer Subversion of Gender

The Butlerian model of gender performance presents a homosexual perspective and explores the possible intersection between socially constructed gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality, diverging from the heteronormative analysis of gender and contending with the ways in which queer actors problematize the traditional construction of gender. Butler adapts the psychoanalytical term of melancholia to conceptualize homoerotic subtext as it exists in western literature and especially the relationship between women writers, their gender, and their sexuality. The melancholia of a homosexual relationship is not just the death of that relationship, but instead the societal disavowing of the relationship and the subject's ability to mourn, thus leading to these repressed feelings emerging in other forms both bodily and artistically. This idea is reflected in the sort of activism AIDS survivors partook in during the height of the AIDS crisis, many of them were homosexuals whom had lost their partners to the disease, organized by political groups such as ACT UP. The survivors commemorated the dead by quilting together their rags, re-purposing their possessions, and displaying their own bodies for premature mourning, all of these protests amounting to a message that some part of them will be left in the world after they have expired.

Queer Failure is a concept in queer theory that also calls gender into question, for it examines queer art and the bodies of LGBTQ+ people through the lens of what a parental figure may identify as "failure" on the part of their character. Instead of recognizing these instances as moral or psychological failures, this concept frames them as the resultants of a conflict between a person's sexuality and their gender.

Revised Draft

The Butlerian model presents a queer perspective on gender performance and explores the possible intersection between socially constructed gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality. This model diverges from the hegemonic analytical framework of gender that many claim as heteronormative, contending with the ways in which queer actors problematize the traditional construction of gender. Butler adapts the psychoanalytical term of melancholia to conceptualize homoerotic subtext as it exists in western literature and especially the relationship between women writers, their gender, and their sexuality. Melancholia deals with mourning, but for homosexual couples it is not just mourning the death of the relationship, instead it is the societal disavowal of the relationship itself and the ability to mourn, thus leading to repression of these feelings . This idea is reflected in the activism of organized by political groups such as ACT UP during the AIDS crisis. Many of the survivors that participated in this activism were homosexuals whom has lost their partners to the disease. The survivors commemorated the dead by quilting together their rags, repurposing their possessions, and displaying their own bodies for premature mourning. All of these protests amounted to a message that some part of them will be left in the world after they have expired.

Queer Failure is a concept in queer theory that also calls gender into question, because it examines queer art and the bodies of LGBTQ+ people through the lens of what a parental figure may identify as "failure" on the part of their character. Instead of recognizing these instances as moral or psychological failures, this concept frames them as the resultants of a conflict between a person's sexuality and their gender.

Annotated Bibliography for work on Social Construction of Gender

Hermann-Wilmarth, Jill M. and Caitlin L. Ryan. “Queering Chapter Books with LGBT Characters for Young Readers: Recognizing and Complicating Representations of Homonormativity.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Dec, 2016, Vol. 37 No. 6, p846-866. 21p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Jill Hermann-Wilmarth is a professor of socio-cultural studies at Western Michigan University and Caitlin L. Ryan is an associate professor of literacy studies, english education and history education in the College of Education at East Carolina University, and together they have written a book titled Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom. The article begins by establishing the theoretical frameworks of Butlerian queer theory and the concept of homonormativity, integrating them both into their methodology as a means of analyzing their sources. They use specific criteria in order to catalog 10 books, making sure that each has been released within 10 years of the article's publication, they are marketed towards students ages 8-11, the protagonist must be within one year of this age range, and the LGBTQ characters should have more than tertiary relation to the protagonist. The authors divide these books into three categories, the largest being those where the LGBT characters are the protagonists' parents, the next being those where the LGBT characters are non-parental adult figures in the protagonists' lives, and the last being those where the protagonists themselves are LGBT-identified. After establishing and analyzing these categories, the authors chart out how these books both undermine and reinforce the relation between queerness and gender, then queerness and hegemonic family structure, and then queerness and institutions. In their conclusion, they assert that these books do reflect a positive trend for LGBTQ representation in children's media, yet these books ultimately fail to fully break down heteronormative assumptions as applied to homosexual characters, thus playing into the concept of homonormativity. This source will be useful in my editing project because it provides solid examples of queer theory to illustrate certain concepts, and as well it delves into the intersection between queer representation and the social construction of gender.

McIvor, David W. “Bringing Ourselves to Grief: Judith Butler and the Politics of Mourning.” Political Theory. 2012, Vol. 40 No. 4, p409-436. JSTOR 25 Sep 2018.

David McIvor is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University that specializes in political theory. The article begins by explaining Judith Butler's concept of melancholia adapted from Freud that she uses as a critical framework for the mourning of queer individuals, analyzing the ways in which one's identity is disavowed and reemerges in other aspect of one's sense of self. McIvor argues that Judith Butler's contemporary, more ethico-political work creates an impasse with the strict Freudian concept of anti-political melancholia. In order to resolve this impasse, McIvor sets about reinterpreting queer melancholia through the psychoanalytical framework of Melanie Klein, and in doing so attempts to open the way to a more coherent politics based on Judith Butler's post-structural theory of gender. He identifies the fundamental issue being Butler's original focus on subversive bodily performance and foreclosure, then her movement to ethico-political implications without resolving the problem of foreclosure, which he suggests can be resolved by moving the mourning process from foreclosure to prohibition and eventually dispossession. He concludes that making this movement allows queer political actors to treat the superego as plurivocal, as Klein proposes, instead of as the monolithic manifestation it has in Freud; therefore, by way of treating the superego as plurivocal, queer political actors can address the heteronormative superstructure on multiple planes of political engagement, including on the basis of class, patriarchy, and colonialism. I elect to use this source in my editing project because, while it explains Butler's concept of melancholia succinctly, it is also critical of the failings that her analysis may possess.

Epstein, Julia. “AIDS, Stigma, and Narratives of Containment.” American Imago. Fall 1992, Vol. 49 No. 3, p293. 18p. JSTOR 23 Sep 2018.

Julia Epstein is a professor of English at Haverford College who has contributed many times to The Women's Review of Books. The article in question is a cultural study on the AIDS epidemic and the stigma and narratives of containment levied against those suffering from the virus and especially homosexual victims. Epstein notes that, not only are the majority of sufferers in the U.S. are LGBT+, but that the majority of sufferers are also African American, Latino, and among largely marginalized ethnic groups. She characterizes a prototypical idea of the AIDS victim as constructed by stigmatizing culture, that they live in urban environments, queer, and they are either sexually active or they are a sex worker. Whether or not this characterization is demographically accurate, popular culture presents AIDS victims as such in order to play into the narrative that the AIDS virus is a "gay plague" or divine retribution against those deemed socially degenerate. Epstein moves into the field of epistemology to comment on how attributes recognized as sinful in pre-modern society are now recognized as perverse in modern society. Turning the AIDS victim into a singular character who has acquired their suffering from their own personal failings is a tactic meant to downplay the actual threat of the virus and excuse society from any responsibility it may have to these people. In order to combat this tactic, groups of both AIDS and queer rights activists like ACT UP have utilized protests that emphasize their humanity and the physical reality of their experience. This source is helpful to my purposes because it analyzes a specific period of history where homophobia has resulted in widespread bodily suffering and death, and as well it discusses how AIDS activists actively responded to the stigmatizing narratives about AIDS victims common to the mainstream.

Takemoto, Tina. “Queer Art / Queer Failure.” Art Journal. Spring, 2016. Vol. 75 No. 1, p85-88. 4p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Tina Takemoto is an associate professor of visual studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and performance artist that addresses issues of race, illness, gender, and sexual orientation through her work. In this article she references a number of recent pieces by fellow queer artists that she uses to propose a theme of "queer failure" tying them all together. These pieces all feature queer bodies either displayed in conjunction with or juxtaposed by items associated with being refuse, broken, or in some way failing to live up to expectations. For example, one piece by Xandra Ibarra places her own, floating body next to a gigantic cockroach, thus both implicitly referencing the themes of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and commenting upon sexualized racial tropes. "Queer failure" is a concept that looks at how queer experience mis-aligns with the expectations placed upon queer actors by their society, culture, and families, culminating into an anxiety that they have failed to reach their potential because of their queerness. This concept is particularly important for non-white LGBT+ individuals, combining the issues of religious stigma, racial prejudice, and economic insecurity to make them feel that they have become outsiders in both their own culture and the hegemonic culture that is at once white supremacist and heteronormative. Takemoto argues that the point of these pieces is not just to simply display this anxiety through visual means, but also an attempt to reconfigure "queer failure" into a statement of pride and radical self-expression. I believe that this source will be quite useful for my purposes because it addresses the issue of how queer artists subvert the hegemonic construction of gender, as well as doing so from the perspective of a queer artist and non-white academic.

Lagaert, Susan, et al. “Engendering Culture: The Relationship of Gender Identity and Gender Conformity with Adolescents’ Interests in the Arts and Literature.” Sex Roles. Oct, 2017, Vol. 77 No. 7-8, p482-495. 14p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Susan Lagaert is a PhD student in the department of sociology at Ghent University, she has written many articles related to both gender identity and culture, Mieke Van Houtte is a professor in sociology at Ghent University, and Henk Roose is an associate professor of sociology at Ghent University. The article is centered around a sociological survey of young people grouped by the categorical variable of gender, inquiring into their interest in pursuing "highbrow culture," defined as art, music, theater, and literature. The methodology also includes controls based on social class, educational track, age group, and ethnicity along with metric variables of interest in highbrow activity, gender typicality, and gender pressure. The hypothesis that the authors led into the survey with was that young women are encouraged towards highbrow cultural activities by both socially constructed gender roles and the pressure imposed by their peer groups, while young men are discouraged from these activities by the same factors. The results of the survey align with the hypothesis and finds that young men, but especially young men of lower social class and non-dominant ethnicities, exhibit low interest in highbrow culture that coincides with strong social pressures to conform to gender typicality. Understanding and participation in highbrow culture leads to social capital later in life, yet with young men it appears that they characterize highbrow culture as generally alien to their interests and day-to-day experience. This article is useful for my purposes because it focuses on one aspect of socially constructed gender in relation to art, and much of this highbrow art (particularly theater) is denigrated as the interest of women and queer men.

Van Eeden-Moorefield, Brad, et al. “Same-Sex Relationships and Dissolution: The Connection Between Heteronormativity and Homonormativity.” Family Relations. Dec, 2011, Vol. 60 No. 5, p562-571. 10p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Bradley Van Eeden-Moorefield is an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Montclaire State University, and along with three of his colleges he analyzes common trends within same-sex relationships. This article takes a feminist lens to examine how same-sex couples face dissolution, a topic that has not been addressed commonly in mainstream media. The article reviews demographic information and references how the heteronormative nuclear family relationship is imposed upon same-sex partners and erases non-standard same-sex couples. The authors find that, while same-sex couples overall reflect the demographics of the united states in general, the homonormative same-sex couple is white, upper-middle class, and is portrayed as perpetually romantically involved without regard for dissolution. In reality, the authors establish, same-sex couples face dissolution as much as heterosexual couples, but face many more problems because of the institutional bias in pathways of dissolution such as divorce proceedings. Moreover, these problems reflect gendered assumptions immanent to the process that characterize women as better care-givers and men as more financially solvent, which becomes more problematic when both partners are the same sex. This article will assist in my purposes because they discuss a topic for same-sex relationships that is not often addressed and does so in a way that brings socially constructed gender roles to the surface. The article is somewhat limited by being written before the supreme court decision that legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country, but it focuses on states where these partnerships were already recognized as legal.

Zhou, Yuxing. “Chinese Queer Images on Screen: A Case Study of Cui Zi’en’s Films.” Asian Studies Review. Mar, 2014, Vol. 38 No. 1, p124-140. 17p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Yuxing Zhou studies film theory and Asian cultures at the University of Melbourne. The article begins by establishing how queer characters and actors are largely absent from Chinese cinema because of the prohibitions applied by the censorship of the Chinese communist party. One avenue for queer media that has emerged in recent years is digital video, which the queer activist and filmmaker Cui Zi'en has put to use in creating 10 different LGBT-centered Chinese films all focused on displaying the day-to-day lives and experiences of LGBT people in the country. He uses techniques such as wideshots, long takes, unstable cameras, and minimalist narrative as a way to make experimental films that leave the viewer most receptive to the true experiences of these subjects. Much of Cui's work is inspired by Western New Queer Cinema and adapts it to China, using the language of film in order to distinctly subvert the official propaganda of the Chinese communist party. It is notable that a widely held perception not only in China but in many Asian countries is that queer identities are inherently western and alien to their culture, while Cui makes a point to show that queer people are immanent to China and all the world and have existed within the larger Chinese culture all along. This source is useful to my purposes because it discusses a specific queer Chinese artist and includes an interview with him in a way that pointedly reflects how queer activism is both universal and varied throughout the world.

Melero, Alejandro. “‘El Paseo de los Tristes’: Homosexuality as Tragedy in the Spanish Films of 1960s.” International Journal of Iberian Studies. 2010, Vol. 23 No. 3, p141-157. 17p. EBSCOhost 25 Sep 2018.

Alejandro Melero is a dramatist, essayist, and Professor in Spanish cinema at the University of Londres. The article focuses in on the Francoist period of Spanish history where "all forms of sexual perversion... including sexuality" were prohibited from representation, yet during this period a number of Spanish films centered around gay characters during the 60s. Within Spanish cinema an archetype was created of the gay man as a sad, tortured individual that is most apparent in Luis Delgado's Diferente (1963) and the work of Richard Dyer. This archetype of tragic homosexuality manifests as the misery infesting every aspect in the life of a gay character, which in the English work of Tennessee Williams and Samuel Beckett exists as an everyman character only remarkable in the suffering that anti-gay stigma imparts upon him. In Spanish cinema, this tragedy is acknowledged, yet attraction to men in general is portrayed as both tantalizing and repulsive to the character, yet the man is given an out through a female archetype that represents a bridge back to an acceptable existence. The author notes that such a narrative is markedly tragic in of itself, precisely because it sacrifices this central conflict, much like that of the queer melancholia discussed in the work of Judith Butler. This source will be useful to my purposes because it shows how queer characters became evident in Spanish cinema, yet the facets of this archetype reflect a conflict that is common to how queer people as a whole wrestle with gender.