LGBT Queer Literary Theory Ms Nicole CIS Literature

LGBT (Queer) Literary Theory Ms. Nicole CIS Literature

What have you learned about gender expectations and behavior?

Focus: power disparity as a result of adhering to/rejecting gender roles Gender Theory Queer Theory Focus: power disparity as a result of heterosexism Feminist Theory Focus: power disparity as a result of male domination

A person’s gender is … • Created category focused on “feminine/masculine” behavior, but behavior is a performance Masculine Feminine

A person’s sexuality is… Similarly a spectrum = difficult to define in simple terms Bisexual Asexual Homosexual Heterosexual Trans-sexual & Transgender

Queer Theory: Early History • All people have “homoerotic” feelings • Holy, transitional rite of passage, taboo

Queer Theory: Victorians (mid-1800 s) • • Homosexuality as separate ID Inherent/unchanging part of personality U. S. : Gay life flourishes through 1920 s U. S. 1930 s: researchers prove homosexuality is significant proportion of population and not correlated to any significant difference

History Continued • 1950 s/Postwar America: needs order to support capitalism • Gender roles solidified in public and private sphere • Legislation to criminalize gay people/treat as psychiatric condition

• 1969: Gay Liberation Movement responds to police brutality • 1970 s: Institutionalization ends (ECT, Lobotomy, prison, aversion therapy) • 1990: Restrictions on homosexual immigration lifted from 1952

A person’s sexuality is… • Element of identity and therefore difficult to research empirically • ID formation in youth: self-categorization in teen years; family and faith community • Society often separates sexual acts into “normative” (heteronormative) and “deviant”

Homophobia: fear, loathing of homosexuality Mild bias Overt phobia • Form of social control – intimidate sexual minorities, validate heterosexuality • Results from view that gender order is disrupted – similar to fear of ethnic minorities • Can lead to discrimination

What to do? • Character’s options/playing out of expectations? • Access to power based on sex and gender? • How does the text represent gender roles and/or sexuality?

Questions to ask of the text • What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters? • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer works? • What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history? • How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual? • What does the work reveal about social, political, and/or psychological homophobia? • How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity, " that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?

BIG QUESTION • How does the text comment on power disparities resulting from characters’ sexual orientation?